Late Coltrane(s)
John and Alice
built a living space:
walls of strings,
saxophone ceiling,
windows to the soul,
a door to infinity.
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23 January 2025
Charlottesville VA
Category: Music
Heaven In The Record Store
Nineteen, browsing the bins
at the lone record store in Potsdam, NY.
I walked out with three CDs:
The Berkley Concert by Lenny Bruce,
The Juliet Letters by Elvis Costello,
and Culture At Work by Culture.
Lenny because I’d found an album
in the stacks at my college radio station.
Elvis because I’d just heard
“Everday I Write The Book.”
Culture for reasons I can’t remember.
What context did I have for this music?
I grew up in a place with no record store,
the nearest one at the mall 30 minutes away.
Now here I was in a college town,
meeting new people who knew
way more music than I did,
with a well-stocked record store
and a tiny bit of money I’d saved up.
Heaven is a place where they have all the bands.
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22 January 2025
Charlottesville VA
Fast Fashion & The Guillotine
David Gahan was 21 when he sang
“the grabbing hands grab all they can.”
He turns 63 in May and that sentence
is even more true.
I’m reminded of the song because
I watched the video tonight,
projected onto my wall and pouring
out of my stereo speakers.
I watched it while eating
peanut-butter-filled pretzels
and drinking a Hank’s root beer.
It’s the very availability
of what passes for contentment
in our modern world
that prevents us from solving
the problem David sang about.
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17 January 2025
Charlottesville VA
Reflections
1.
When I was a child I saw a ghost
down at the end of the hall.
Just a face, floating beside a bookshelf
in front of the workshop door.
It faded as I approached.
I never mentioned it to anyone.
2.
My grandpa took me to my first concert:
two musicians from New Orleans.
That makes Grandpa sound pretty hip,
but really he liked the clarinet player
because the guy had been on Lawrence Welk,
the squarest show on TV.
Still, my grandpa seemed pretty hip to me.
For years I carried a picture
of Grandpa’s saxophones in my wallet.
Like so many other things,
I lost it.
3.
You hold up a mirror to me.
I hold up a mirror to you.
With that one act we create
Infinite universes in the glass.
Uncountable possibilities
for love and connection,
using nothing but photons
and angles of incidence.
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12 January 2025
Charlottesville VA
It’s Probably A Metaphor For Something
Midway through the whistling solo
the dog knocked over something in the kitchen;
that was the best take,
so now the clatter has become
part of the song.
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10 January 2025
Charlottesville VA
Weather Forecasting In Late-Stage Capitalism
Labi Siffre morphs into Marshall Mathers.
The kitten keeps watch from a high perch.
They say a storm is coming tonight.
We’re deciding if one egg will be enough.
My tea is already lukewarm.
Now Labi is singing a ballad.
He’s queer, so I feel like he’s singing to me.
Perhaps in the morning there’ll be snow.
A soft blanket on a hard world.
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5 January 2025
Charlottesville VA
The Next Pretty Note
Elvis Costello’s “Shipbuilding”
plays on a loop in my head,
even as Stephanie and I
pause
to diagnose what the kitten
might have just knocked over
out in the living room.
Chet Baker, late in life,
approaching the fall
that would kill him,
plays the most incredible solo
on “Shipbuilding” – including,
at one point, a delay pedal
that makes him sound
like a choir of trumpets.
I used to know a guy
who played with Chet:
“Everybody always wondered
what he was thinking to play
as beautifully as he did.
He once told me: ‘I’m just looking
for the next pretty note.’”
Meanwhile, in the living room,
Something else falls.
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1 January 2025
Charlottesville VA
In The Hall Of The Mountain King
In the hall of the mountain king
the radio plays Bing Crosby on a loop.
The king sits in his La-Z-Boy,
breathing in slowly so he can watch
the bowl of his pipe rekindle.
He buys his tobacco down in the valley
from a kid too young to understand
the wooden statue of the Indian outside the store.
The king goes to get it himself;
you can’t trust a lackey with your special blend.
As the smoke curls toward the distant ceiling,
the king knows all is right in his kingdom.
Bing sings: “Where the blue of the night /
meets the gold of the day / someone waits for me.”
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3 December 2024
Charlottesville VA
Jazz Means “I Dare You”
Feet hanging off
the edge of the bed,
even though I know
the cat will bite me.
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27 November 2024
Charlottesville VA
(The title is a paraphrase
of something said by
saxophonist Wayne Shorter.)
Very Early
A mourning dove coos, well, mournfully, through Bill Evans’ solo on “Very Early.” A Danish musician had these tapes for years before finally deciding others might like to hear them. What other treasures are hidden in attics and under beds? What magic waits behind downcast eyes? A neighbor drags his garbage to the street, then walks back to his house to do – what? Now it’s a bass solo with catbird accompaniment. The chai in my mug has gone cold.
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15 May 2024
Charlottesville VA
Wake Up To Find Out
In my late 40s I became
obsessed
with the Grateful Dead.
It happened just as everything
I counted on in my life died.
Again.
I took to the road
in a decades-old minivan,
no Tennessee to get back to, Jed.
It was freezing at night in Wilmington.
The winds blew a gale in San Diego.
I walked the road where James Dean died,
a little envious of his blaze.
In Monterrey, in Anza-Borrego,
in Key West, in Acadia,
in Falmouth, in Apalachicola,
I studied the road ahead for a sign.
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15 April 2024
Charlottesville VA
NaPoWriMo Day 15
Humans have come up with many ways to make beautiful sounds over the past several thousand years, but we’ve never outdone the first one: the voice. Tonight, at the Jefferson Theatre in Charlottesville, three sisters showed once again how the power of the human voice is enough to strip away your preconceptions and build a beautiful alternate world in their place. Joseph traded leads throughout the show and harmonized in that way that only family can. Accompanied by just a guitar and a digital bass drum, the trio surveyed their entire musical output and treated us all to what at times felt more like a secular revival meeting than a concert. Joseph is unafraid to celebrate, to mourn, to indict, to examine, to uplift. They are transcendent and we were all lucky to be there. We can’t know where humanity will end up, but if it’s somewhere bright, voices like this will be there.
Leave a CommentThe Ocean
We’re both listening to
Richard Hawley.
Not together, but
together anyway.
When “The Ocean”
comes on I imagine…
it doesn’t matter.
But I’m certainly
picturing it as the violins
dance in the background.
There’s no key
for this painting.
We just have to guess
at the colors,
try to keep them from
spilling off the canvas.
“You’ll lead me down
to the ocean.”
Guitar solo.
Here comes a wave.
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5 January 2024
Charlottesville VA
The Many Worlds Hypothesis & Song To A Seagull
Joni Mitchell sang into
an open piano
when she recorded
her first album
because David Crosby
thought it would
enhance her voice —
and it did,
but it also magnified
the other sounds in the room
so they were forced to
strip away the high frequencies,
leaving a flatter beauty,
and this is why
I am careful when I
look at you
because the universe
has limits.
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3 January 2024
Charlottesville VA
Everybody Thinks It’s True
If things were different,
if things were how I wanted them to be,
you’d have been the first one I told.
You could have celebrated with me,
given me some pointers,
loved all of me. Instead,
I’m sitting on the porch in the twilight
listening to Paul Simon sing
“Train In The Distance.”
In ten days I’ll be in Tucson.
Are you still there?
Are you there?
Are you?
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5 November 2023
Charlottesville VA