Midnight wine after a very bad week...
It happens.
Yep… It’s freezing in Nashville (has been all week), and mid-week, on Wednesday, El Rushbo died and it crushed me, so tonight, it seemed Fridayish (the days run together…), and after heading out (in the snow), I came in and heard jazz—old jazz, deep jazz, heavy jazz… And time stopped. As if I’d lived before, I knew the lines, every note, every trill…
But it faded.
What WAS that? What about music I may not have heard hit a place so primordial, pleasant, and profound? I opened wine… I drink from a whiskey glass because I’m out of whiskey and my “goblet” broke. Now I’m on Youtube (post-midnight), digging Chet Baker (who hailed from Oklahoma) and I’m in the room, THERE, with babes dragging Pall-Malls… Or are those Chesterfields? (Fun fact: Legendary coach, Paul "Bear” Bryant, smoked “Chesters,” two or three packs a day.)
Doesn’t matter… I’m in the room… It’s 1960—so turn it up, turn on… Forget troubles.
They’ll be back.
Now I’m *smiling (*second round), but, well, that’s me. You can get the glow, that edge off, and grin or become “that guy,” the one who makes chalkboard fingernails sound good. I’m listening to a farm boy, an Okie, play Paris, City of LIGHT, which is great, but only if I don’t compare, and it’s reasonable to ask why old stuff is better. People say (unironically) that “it’s the best time in history,” it’s never been so GOOD, but I don’t see it.
I want to; it just ain’t there… In vino veritas (in wine, truth), and if you add Baker, Burgundy, and a keyboard—Truth outs… This ISN’T the best of times… No one - and I mean, NO ONE - in 2070 will pine and yearn for 2020. No one will sit, drink vino, and reminisce… Name a winner. One classic.
See.
It isn’t the best of times—culturally, politically… One can argue that technologically we’re buoyant, that we’ve “never been better,” but the reason we’re culturally down indicts gadgets—tech toys and pixels… Can you name a kid who regularly climbs trees? Who digs worms and hunts crawdads?
I doubt it… If you have to check-in to a hotel when the power dies, your Pioneer Spirit died, too.
No, it isn’t the “best of times,” it’s, for many, the worst, though a time to seek OLD times through iPads, so they’re good for something.
And now I’m curious as to why white drummers, in 1960, have glasses and am thinking aliens… All glassed. All black... All—wait… K.G.B.???
Rush would know.
Oh, Rush… It’s three a.m., I’m de-edged, and, in the screen-wash, I’m blue… Chet’s on trumpet, the instrument of angels, the one Rush heard when God cried “Mega-dittos,” and the song is “Leaving.” They’re always leaving… They never stop leaving.
But leaving is life… Leaving is life, and Rushbo left us, and the band keeps playing… And it’s here again…….. Deja vu.
~ Greg Halvorson
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