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Streets can bring you to people or places, or they can bring people and places to you. You never know awaits. Maybe a moment so unexpectedly philosophical, like in this short piece by Agnès Varda, where her crew wander the streets looking for wisdom on happiness.

From Happiness? The People of Fontenay Respond

[thejuiceblog]

Parties

What makes a party? Amy Sedaris once wrote:

“When you see the word "party"...don't think of pony kegs and loud Southern rock or cigarillos and business women. Don't think of pools and diving for loose change. Don't think about cockfights - even though it's hard not to. Don't think tiki lights and fruity cocktails served in coconut shells on the patio, or a large group of drunken seamen clustered together shouting over each other. Think simplicity." 

Parties are as old as homo sapiens themselves. But for most people, the thing that makes a party a party and not just a meeting with snacks is usually the music; preferably upbeat, and preferably loud.

Buddy Bolden was somebody who knew about loud music and parties. It was said that when he played in New Orleans you could hear him from across the river. And his song Funky Butt was, as Danny Barker once put it, "a reference to the olfactory effect of an auditorium packed full of sweaty people "dancing close together and belly rubbing." That's definitely one way to party.

The Bolden band around 1905 (top: Jimmy Johnson, bass; Bolden, cornet; Willy Cornish, valve trombone; Willy Warner, clarinet; bottom: Brock Mumford, guitar; Frank Lewis, clarinet)

Even though he's considered the King of Jazz, there are no known recordings of Buddy Bolden, who improvised his music and never wrote it down. Really the only thing we have to go by is Jelly Roll Morton's rendition, which came to be known as Buddy Bolden Blues or I Thought I Heard Buddy Bolden Say. 

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Jelly Roll Morton wasn't a man who shied away from a party. He made a name for himself playing ragtime in the brothels of New Orleans, and ragtime was, of course, known as the Devil's music. His rendition of Buddy Bolden Blues was considered so rude at the time that it was offensive even just to whistle it on the streets. Ruder still when you find out what Jelly Roll means. Or olfactory.

Some parties are planned and some are spontaneous. The difference between an average day at work and a spontaneous party could be as simple as the the presence of some unattended bongos, like in this scene from Hellzapoppin' -  a weird film from 1941 with one of the most iconic dance scenes ever created.

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That was Frances "Mickey" Jones, WiIliam Downes, Norma Miller, Billy Ricker, Willamae Ricker, Al Minns, Ann Johnson and Frankie Manning, also known as Whiteys Lindy Hoppers - all dancing to music by the Slim Slam band.

When a dance floor is involved, parties become divisive: you're either on the dance floor or you're not. The dance floor is where life plays out, where you define yourself, where acquaintances become something more. In an American high school scenario, the dance floor is a status symbol. Being on the dance floor with the right person is everything.

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Good parties share a collective, unspoken energy. Maybe all parties serve some sort of need to rebel against something oppressive, something that you need to escape. At the very least parties are a chance to act out in a way you otherwise can't.

One epic film party scene worth mentioning is from Olivier Assayas' Cold Water, if only because the scene goes on for about thirty minutes. The director admits that at some point he felt he was witnessing an experience that was "possibly stronger than whatever [ended] up on the screen."  It's a brilliant demonstration of that unspoken, rebellious energy that escalates into something unforgettable, something an onlooker would describe as a party even if party feels like too shallow of a word to describe it for those who are part of it.

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It should also be said that parties can be shallow, and not everyone likes a party. Some people see them as just another feature of the hedonic treadmill. Tim Holmes of Rolling Stones wrote about this next song in 1985, saying, "In "Swinging Party," life is a lilting series of ultimately empty, but nonetheless compulsory, soirees."

What inspires you to party?