18 Quotes by Stasia Ward Kehoe

Maybe he, like me,is engaged in the kind of unspoken rebellionyou don't want to perform too brightlysince you're never certainanyone in your family will noticeyour darkened eyes, skeleton shoes, tousled hair,patchy attendance record.You may be sacrificing body and soulon a ghostly battlefield, fighting across a divideseen by no onebut you.

I calculate the breadth of Steven's shoulders, now wider than mine;watch him tear open the Blokus game he likes to play with me after school;count the hours between now and Dad coming home to take overand I am only a little afraidof the night.

There are more guys than girls in jazz.Next-to-no lady trumpeters (oh, there are a few)but it doesn't matter because, for me, jazz trumpet is all about one guyMiles Davis.He made this famous album in 1959called Kind of Bluewhich is kind of, always,how I feel.That album gets into your bonesgoes and goesstarts, hesitates, reaches out, feelsfor the music, the sound, the thing you want to change.Always grasping for the unattainable makes youkind of excited,kind of sorry.

The tips of my overgrown bangsdip into the wet of my tears.My fingers, forehead, moisten with sweat.I fight the slipperiness, press the valves firmly,play the love, the hate,the misery, the hope,the freedom that I wanted, never wanted, can't have;that doesn't exist.

I play the music of Stevenfor Steven;ragged, helpless,it owns me, enveloping mewith an incomprehensible love -

Does it matter that people and thingsHave words,Have names?If not,Why read any book?A litany of useless lettersDetached from bone, muscle.Or are words the only things that make the muscle, bone, memory, movement,PersonReal?

Let's give our slave a big dream. A big future.

It seems to me that every dayIs an audition.

Let’s give our slave a big dream. A big future.