Abide With Me

Johnny, Hank, Steve, and Greg @ Vincente's Gourmet Pizza

The music of Miles Davis forged this encounter.  A random conversation about his soul-crushing album Elevator to the Gallows inspired a very drunk hepcat to plug OzGnosis, a jazzband that jams for free at Vincente's Pizza every Thursday afternoon.  Hepcat told me that he works there and would buy me a slice of pizza and a beer if I stopped by some afternoon.  Drunken promises aside, I'm always down for free jazz and took the initiative to check out OzGnosis a few weeks later.  It was a blast!  They swing, covering late-great ingrates such as Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, and especially Thelonious Monk.  It soon became apparent that OzGnosis' relationship with 'the monk who spins in cirlces' transcends simple musical appreciation.  As the guitarist was tuning up between songs, they made chit-chat about donating a copy of Monk's instrumental Abide With Me to the O.T.O for use in  rituals.  I overheard this and did a double-take:  The O.T.O, or Ordo Templi Orientis, is an esoteric sect that synthesizes the teachings of Aleister Crowley, Gnosticism, and various Mystery traditions. Ozgnosis aren't just jazz musicians, they're jazz mystics. 

Jazz can be so commodified nowadays, so I appreciated talking to the Jazz Gnostics of OzGnosis after their set.   They perceive Thelonious Monk as a sorceror of the ivories, his music manipulating the structures of time and sensory perception trapped wherein.  This brought to mind the work of Harry Smith, a visionary artist (and honored initiate of the O.T.O) who created a series of paintings mapping the precise notation of jazz songs such as Dizzy Gillespie's "Manteca" and used Monk's "Misterioso" to score his avant garde (and very trippy) animation Untitled 11.  I had never thought introspectively about jazz as a source of magical innovation, but it is very sensible due to the music's influence on the Post-War avant garde, an idiosyncratic American artistic movement with many subtle and not-so-subtle ties to the occult.   

Another auspicious coincidence was that OzGnosis' drummer, Greg Foster, had participated in my Tarot project a few months prior!  He informed me (Paul Wolfe) that after our previous encounter in Laurelhurst park, he went to an astrology group and met a gal named Sarah Wolfe.  Greg identifies with the Norse god Odin, who is often depicted with two wolves at his side and found it synchronistic to have met two strange Wolfes in one day!  I suppose that is the lottery of the universe playing it's strange game.  The dice rolls and the beat goes on.  OzGnosis can be experienced every Thursday at Vincente's from about 1:30 pm to 3:30 pm.  Check it out if you're into the sounds of the universe churning butter in your soul!