Plot Devices in the Occupation

The first scene establishes the situation. So we begin with these two in particular speculating as to when the might have actually begun. One of them we will call Paul. A white male in his early or mid-thirties, with features and habits unremarkable enough that it would make little sense to take up space in the attempt to conjure them up succinctly, meaningfully here. Owned a good record collection, though-good enough, especially where what he called classic stuff (meaning late forties, early-to-mid-fifties bop) was concerned, that we start with his moment of hesitation beside the Garrard changer, with an early Miles Davis lp halfway out of its sleeve. His intention had been interrupted; or, more precisely, had veered away in a new and temporary direction. What he had originally wanted to do was listen to Green Dolphin Street. Most of all to that exact moment when on the heels of Miles' muted tactful solo Coltrane's sax grabs the tune like a pair of big hands, half-hugging half-throttling it. As his eyes ranged over the old familiar rows of records on their shelves, Paul was at first idly, pleasantly struck by various specific memories of playing this particular cut for various close friends and lovers in various places over the years. Then he was assailed by an equally pungent but less happy thought. When he ran back over any one or all of these same memories he was for the first time aware of just how much his friends' and/or lovers' capacity to recognize the fully classy beauty of such great jazz moments rested on their access to a pool of sophisticated yet benevolent detachment, an essential cool which by now could only be remembered, not reassumed. Which was in turn, he realized, why he himself wanted to play that cut now: not to listen to the music really, not even to get back that cool, but to keep its memory, trap the slightest borrowed hint of its lost fragrance in his nose. For there was no such loving irony available now, not in these grim times. Not since the had set in, though Occupation is not how he himself sees it yet

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