Half Blood Blues

‘There’s all sorts of ways to live, Chip. Some of them you give a lot. Some of them you take a lot. Art, jazz, it was a kind of taking. You take from the audience. You take from yourself.’

‘But what it gives, it gives in spades.’

‘What do it give, Chip?’ I said. ‘You a great artist, but you a miserable man.’

Chip was quiet, turning his drink in front of him.

Hiero said nothing.

At last Chip said, ‘I tell you what I know. The world’s damn beautiful. But it’s an accidental beauty. What we do, it’s deliberate. It’s the one damn consolation you can offer not just you own life, but other lives you ain’t even met.’ He gave Hiero a long, thoughtful look. ‘You don’t owe the world nothing, Thomas. I know it. And you a good man. But it sure as hell breaks my heart, missing your music. There been this one brutal emptiness I been hauling around my whole life, and it’s that damn beautiful music of yours. I ain’t never stopped being lonely for it.’

You should read this beautiful book by Esi Edugyan.