Ian Sansom - September 1, 1939

*

Or perhaps he’s ‘sitting in’, in the way a jazz musician sits in on a session.

The songwriter and historian of American popular music Arnold Shaw explains what it means to ‘sit in’:

A man who sits in plays music that is unrehearsed, improvised and spontaneous. But the difference is that he invades a place where a set group of musicians is in residence at union rates. He comes for the sheer love of playing, for the stimulus of exchanging ideas with others, for the pleasure of speaking and communicating through his instrument.

‘Sitting in’ implies a freedom of movement, a body of shared feelings and a camaraderie that tended to disappear with the rise of bop and with the stringent enforcement of union regulations against free play. It was also based on a rare community of interests between performer and audience that placed communication and expression on the same level as entertainment . When the adventure worked, all three phases were present at a peak of excitement.

(Arnold Shaw, 52nd St: The Street of Jazz )

Communication, expression, entertainment: as good a definition as any of what one might expect from a work of art.

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Of course, the mere fact of sitting – whatever kind of sitting it is – says something. It says, ‘I am here with you.’ When we sit next to somebody we are sitting with them. We sit alongside them, or opposite them. We sit shiva. We sit and wait. We sit and eat.

‘You must sit down’, says Love, ‘and taste my meat.’

So I did sit and eat.

(George Herbert, ‘Love: Love bade me welcome’)

In The American Journal of Nursing , vol. 70, no. 5 (May 1970), there is a letter to the editor from Louise Ryssmann, R.N.:

I would like to contribute this idea to other nurses. When I am talking with patients, I sit in a chair next to the bed, rather than standing. By sitting, I can establish a closer rapport with patients because the physical distance is less and I am talking directly across rather than down to the patient. Sitting also creates a more relaxed atmosphere and the patient feels the nurse is not rushed and has time to talk. And as an additional benefit, I am not nearly as tired at the end of an eight-hour shift.

At the beginning of the poem Auden settles down, establishes a close rapport and starts to talk. Like a nurse, or a priest, or a therapist.

Or a man in a bar.

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