Category Archives: music

When I was in college and listening to a lot of Tom Waits (I’m still listening to a lot of Tom Waits, btw) one of my roommate’s many boyfriends commented that it sounded like a homeless person was singing out of a trash can.  There is no one who sounds like Tom Waits.  When he was young he wanted to sound like an angry old man, and now that he’s getting up there he’s sounding more like a cool old man.  I love that he’s always wanted to be an old man.

Salmon Rushdie has pronounced him the best rock poet since Bob Dylan.  He’s an actor, a raconteur, a composer, poet, musician, and pretty much seems to do what he wants to do artistically the way he wants to do it, and that changes often.

I feel like I’m sucking on lemons tonight.  I’m sour.   I’ve been going and going and…. Mars is in the blah house, apparently.  I’ve been told that my funny bone is broken.  Its Saturday night and I was thrilled that there was only one other person at the laundromat.   Actually, I resented his existence.

All day I’ve thought about JD Salinger’s death, about how it makes me sad even though he hasn’t wanted anyone to even think about him for the last 40 years.  I have lots of estrangement in my family.  I’m used to mourning people I haven’t seen or talked to in ages.  When they die it means that the reunion that probably wasn’t going to happen is definitely not happening now.  

I could take an herbal bath, or read some poetry, or go out dancing, or stay in and dance.  Any of those things might get me out of my funk.  Funk.  That’s what I need.  That’s the prescription for the night.  Who can listen to Freak of the Week and stay sour?

Day 10 of Gwen Bell’s December blogging challenge: What album rocked your world in 09?

This year I got to see John McLaughlin and Chick Corea play together at Jazz at Lincoln Center, forming the group 5 Peace Band with Christian McBride, Kenny Garrett, and Brian Blade.  McLaughlin and Corea hadn’t played together since Miles Davis’ Bitches Brew back in 1970.  They are masters and innovators whose contrasting compositions made for an exciting night.

Saxophonist Kenny Garret’s playing blew the roof off of Lincoln Center, sending some subscription holders fleeing, while the rest of us talked in tongues as we rolled on the floor.  (Not really, but almost.)

5 Peace Band is nominated for a Grammy in 2010.   Eventually I’ll check out the CD.  Sometimes when I see live music that shakes me to my core I can’t listen to anything recorded for awhile.  For days after the show I just wanted silence and the memory of the performance. 

I wrote the following poem for a friend I hadn’t talked to in ages who would have loved to hear them play.  I was thinking about the way we can be altered forever in an instant, while at the same time some fundamental part of us, the most sacred part, never changes.  That’s what the music brought up for me.

Instant Eternal

I must shoulder stones
to connect with this old friend.
The years form a cairn
between our doors.

So much has happened since even this morning.
I woke up vibrating still from the concert.
The union of sacred geometry
and raw divine love twining between masters,
spiraling from Fender to Steinway to alto sax
created a flying cathedral
that oscillated through the cosmos
on wings built from the heartwood
of an ancient forest.

My friend has a child I have not met,
though I imagine every moment spent with such a creature,
wise eyes starring at the undulating drapes
on the first warm night,
produces a cellular shift.

When we knew each other
we were full of dissonance
bouncing off of hard parallel surfaces
booming with echoes.

Now the liquid self
laughs at an absence
as timid as the flick of an eyelid.

He would know the sound
of that saxophone,
the Beloved round inside every note.