Got up before Paddy. Had breakfast and read from The Paris Review: Writers at Work, Miller, Huxley, Pound. Today Paddy is going to speak to the spokesperson of Civil Forum at 2:00 o’clock. I think we’ll go out this evening to a jazz club. Quiet day. But I feel something is missing, something essential that I’ll remember when he’s gone. Something to be said or somewhere to go? Just doing a list. Petřin Hill, Slavia, U Fleku? U Pinkasu. Coruna Automat. Angličtina Offices. None of them would connect. Charles will be going in four weeks or so. My course lasts seven weeks, or so.
Press Jazz Club1.
If there is a scene in Praha that young-Toby is part of, it’s centred around the Press Jazz Club.
The jazz there isn’t always very good. They can be a trad band, or something involving fusion, but people end up going every week — to sit at long tables covered in white cloths and to talk about whatever.
It is important to talk to as many people as possible, because that’s how you find what’s happening or going to happen. At some points, this might involve which shop will be selling decent toilet paper the following week. At other times, it could be a festival not been publicised or a gallery that’s showing interesting photographs.
I have never heard the Press Jazz Club mentioned since; it’s all Reduta, because Bill Clinton played sax there (and it’s still going).