I missed that jazz musician/composer/poet Cecil Taylor passed away last week at the age of 89. I’ve listened to some of his music (and will listen more today), but not very much. I did see him perform his poetry one night at a tiny art/music venue in San Francisco called the Luggage Store Gallery. The performance was scheduled for after a sold out music gig somewhere else in the City and started late. LSG was on the second floor of a building on near 6th on the south side of Market. I lived at the time in a tiny studio right on the corner, so gigs there were easy for me. Usually experimental music of various kinds. I saw Henry Kaiser, Steev Hise, John Tchicai and a dozen others over the two years I lived in that neighbourhood, in a room that was probably zoned for no more than 100 people. It was generally brightly lit – as the name implies, it was a place for displaying art as much as for music, but the track lighting would be turned down for performance.  Taylor brought along several musicians to a packed gallery – they played percussion while he read this insane poetry sat at a desk in front of them. I was writing a lot of poetry at the time and watching and listening, I knew I had a long way to go. From what I can tell, he lived his art and his artistic life to the fullest. Here’s an example from a couple of years later…