Apocalypse in Blue: On Betrayal, Failure, Forgiveness, and Jazz

It was the summer of 2014, and I was in despair. Unable to forgive herself for a betrayal that nearly shattered her marriage, Amy Hassinger enrolls in a jazz combo class at her local community music school. What begins as an impulse to rekindle a college-era love for jazz opens into a long-term creative practice—one that helps her navigate a pervasive sense of failure, guilt, and shame. Combined with a sudden illness that threatens her life, as well as the broader upheavals of our time—ecological precarity, omnipresent anxiety, and the disorientation of living in an age of constant crisis—Hassinger must learn to not only accept herself as she is but rethink her ideas of "self" altogether. Written in lyric fragments, Apocalypse in Blue braids personal narrative with philosophical and spiritual insight to trace how improvisation transforms into a liberating practice for Hassinger. Interwoven throughout is an inquiry into the cultural history of jazz and the author's awakening to the brutal realities of American anti-Black racism—a history inseparable from the music that sustains her. In passages resonating with the sounds of Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, Keith Jarrett, and Cassandra Wilson, Hassinger demonstrates not only the aesthetic brilliance of the artists she loves but also their music's embodied philosophy of originality, playfulness, and resilience. By modelling an improviser's stance toward uncertainty, Apocalypse in Blue offers a searching, resonant meditation on how one might move through fear and despair toward self-acceptance, presence, and—occasionally—joy. Read more