Chasing Light: Notes on Grief and Divine Disruption

a open letter about finding peace in the midst of confusion and disarray.

Hey, friend…..

Sorry, I didn’t text back. Grief-filled smoke has filled the air, and it’s been hard to breathe lately. But, I’d like to talk to you about jazz for a moment if you don’t mind.

There's a moment in every great jazz arrangement when time itself seems to pause – that split second when the expected beat never arrives, and in its absence, something more profound emerges. They call it syncopation, but for me, it's always been more than a musical term. It's the language of possibility, a form of devotion – a rhythmic meditation that speaks to the soul's own dance between uncertainty and faith.

As a self-proclaimed "jazz girl," I've come to understand these displaced rhythms as a form of prayer- the pause between intense points- each unexpected accent a testament to divine improvisation. Like ancient spiritual practices that use breath and repetition to access deeper states of consciousness, jazz uses its rhythmic innovations to lift us beyond the mundane. In this sanctuary of sound, melodies, and harmonies intertwine like incense smoke, creating patterns too profound for words but instantly recognizable to one’s spirit.

At its heart lies an enigmatic pulse, not just as a musical technique but as a sacred proclamation – each disrupted rhythm an act of passion, every redirected beat a step closer to transcendence. Here, in this holy ground between the expected and the expressed, jazz reveals its truest nature: not merely as music but as a spiritual practice that teaches us to discover grace in the unforeseen moments, recognize divinity in the disruption, and uncover the rich truths that lie within the rhythm of our journeys, with each pause revealing a more profound meaning.

Perfuming every phrase with exuberance and endless potential. In these rhythmic disruptions, jazz (much like life itself) reveals its truest gift: the ability to transform the unexpected into the essential, the offbeat into the sublime. This is where I've made my home in these syncopated stories that speak to love, perseverance, and the boundless capacity of the human spirit.

In the depths of grief, where words often fail me, jazz speaks in tongues I didn't know I understood. Like the spaces between notes – what musicians call "the pocket" – grief creates its own time signature, one that doesn't conform to the steady 4/4 rhythm of everyday life. It intricately weaves through the fabric of our lives, displacing the familiar beats of our routines. Each unpredictable inflection of remembrance and loss presents memories that bring joy and sorrow, nudging us to reflect on everything we’ve cherished and lost along the way.

I first understood this during the autumn of 2019, again in 2021, and then once more in 2022. My grandmother's breast cancer diagnosis and my mother’s brain tumor, followed by my grandmother’s stroke months later, and finally, my mother’s brain surgery. In those hallow days, it was Miles Davis's "Blue in Green" that gave shape to my formless and numbed thoughts. The way the melody seems to chase itself, never quite resolving, mirrored my own circular thoughts. The trumpet's voice – sometimes clear, sometimes muted – spoke of things I couldn't yet articulate: the sharp edge of fresh confusion softening into a clouded memory. Repeating every day up until the days of each procedure.

Lately, I’ve been at my absolute lowest(and broke-ess), feeling the weight of grief that’s been with me for well over two years. Everything I thought I knew—about myself, my relationship with God, my connection to my partner, my sense of security—it’s all shifted. The veil has been lifted, and while it’s been absolutely f—ing terrifying, it’s also liberating and has transformed me in ways I never expected.

Jazz holds space for grief specifically because it embraces imperfection and incompletion. In Bebop's frenetic runs, we hear the desperate energy of early mourning – the need to fill every moment with movement to escape the stillness of our compulsive thoughts. In blues-tinged ballads, we find permission to linger in our pain, to let it scream through bent notes and minor keys. The music doesn't rush us toward resolution or demand that we "move on." Instead, like a skilled therapist, it simply witnesses.

Perhaps most importantly, jazz teaches us that grief, like improvisation, is both personal and universal. When John Coltrane recorded "Alabama" in response to the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing, he transformed tragedy into universal testimony. His saxophone wails with grief – demonstrating how personal pain, when expressed authentically, becomes a bridge to collective healing. The grief doesn't go away, we just learn to carry it differently than before, finding new melodies in the dissonance and breathing life into the breaks between the notes.

Just as Charles Mingus used layered compositions to express complex emotions in "Jelly Roll" healing through jazz often comes in layers. And much like Nina Simone's "Feeling Good" builds from a sparse, haunting opening to a deep-bellied celebration of life – each instrumental voice joining gradually, like community welcoming and supporting us on our journey back home.

As Ellington and Coltrane’s "In A Sentimental Mood" fades into silence, we're reminded that jazz isn't just a genre – it's a living archive of human experience. That opening saxophone line, tender as a whispered prayer, speaks the same emotional truth today as it did decades ago. When Samara Joy reinterprets these classics, her voice bridges generations, proving that while the vessels may change, the essence of jazz's emotional storytelling remains unaltered. Reminding us that it's a living, breathing conversation between past and present, structure and freedom, tradition, and possibility. We're tapping into something larger than ourselves. The pause that first drew us in reveals itself to be more than a musical technique – it's a demonstration of how beauty emerges when we dare to step away from the expected path. The music holds space for all of it – our celebrations and sorrows, our certainties and doubts, our traditions and innovations.

Like the best jazz standards, grief becomes part of a bigger story—repeated, reimagined, never fully ending and through its circular patterns of tension and release, it vows that while we may never return to the exact rhythm we knew before disruption, we can find new ways to dance/experiment/transition/manage, etc. This extraordinary gift of syncopation – teaches us that displacement can become its own kind of grace and that being "off" might just be the most foolproof way to find our footing again. That our lives don't need to follow a predictable pattern to be profoundly meaningful.

At the heart of it, jazz reminds us that healing doesn't follow a metronome's predictable tick. Some days, we swing. On other days, we stumble. The music holds space for both, teaching us that there is tremendous beauty in playing through the pain, in finding our voice amid the dissent, and in learning to dance freely with our shadows.

This is why it isn’t just music to me—it’s medicine. In its rhythms, I find permission to grieve all my imperfections, to heal in ways that don’t always make sense to the untrained eye, and to honor my losses without being swallowed up by them.

So while we keep listening, keep playing, and keep finding ourselves in these stories of jazz's endless capacity for renewal and in its ability to transform pain into beauty and confusion into grace, we will continue to discover not just music but a way of being – fluid, resilient, and eternally open to the possibility of the next note.