Pacing the Bird

We enter the world of Witold Kazmirsky, a saxophonist of indefinable talent who has spent the majority of his adolescence mourning the disappearance of his parents and wallowing in a world of dead-end jobs and alcoholism. One day he meets Albert, a bassist and seasoned veteran of his own peculiar brand of misanthropy and cynicism who takes Witold under his wing to teach him the ways of the world and to join him in musical experimentation. Following victory in a substantial personal injury claim to fund them, the pair set off for Europe where they hope to discover their roots and play their strange form of improvisational jazz on various stages. Along the way Witold meets what appears to be the ghost of Edith Piaf and thereafter follows a disastrous path of obsession and infatuation to its conclusion.