Just below the river's surface: smooth, white, sacred hands rub and loosen
spots of red from the golden skin of Buddy Bolden's cornet. Upon liberation,
the spots become wisps of red, mingling and joining together into a cloud of
nearly invisible pink, lingering with residual longing near the hands that have
freed them. When the hands have washed away every drop, the horn is pulled
back quickly into the tacky warmth of living air. There is no song to comfort
this thing, this cloud of faded, loose color. It must find its own, create its own.

Thus delivered and abandoned by the exquisitely cruel hands, the cloud of pink
is left to fend for itself in the great body of water. Locating its scent, tiny
life-forms are immediately drawn to the smell of it, investigating the possibility
of nourishment with hungry, minute thrashes, giving the blood-cloud its first bit
of information, telling it that it can no longer stay in one place and survive, that
it must move on. Must avoid premature consumption. Must deliver its message.

This is blood. This

(...)

is jazz.

The pink is humbled by its own fragile existence, feeding only on the energy of
its fear. It is fear that motivates it, fear urging it to complete some unknown
transformation or transaction, to become something brand new, something bold,
a pocket of strength from a thing recently weak, a garment extraordinary from
unremarkable plain cloth. The pink dives downward, elongating and thinning in
shape as it accelerates, occasionally pausing to dance, to hesitate and waver,
investigating; cautiously, gracefully, to trip and glide, to swoop and soar, to
make its own way, to devise its own type of existence; joy, pain, heartache,
triumph.

Its initial sense of longing for familiar pain evaporates quickly as it grows
accustomed to a freedom of movement it had never known in the veins of
Buddy Bolden. Its form changes at whim of speed and current -- there is no
recklessness in this movement for there is nothing to lose. It is a wondrous thing,
this elasticity of form.

The deeper it travels, the darker its surroundings become -- and the more
defined the lights. Lights. These are the lights of the dead; souls unknown
to blood.

Unknown to blood, this blood, this song en utero.

The cloud of red is no longer what it was. It has reached the Spiritworld. It is
home at last. Through water it will touch the world. Its time will come soon.
It cannot die. But immortality carries a price.

What is sacrificed is a thing newly absent from the soul of Buddy Bolden.