Its been a while since I wrote here. My buddy Monk keeps harassing me about it and I keep saying ‘I will soon, I will soon’. But in all honesty I just haven’t felt much like it. Well, thats not entirely true. I have felt like writing, I just think I lost my voice for a while. There is certainly plenty of things that have been on my mind. I’ve seen some power films since I last wrote here. Brokeback Mountain and Crash spring to mind. Both amazing films. I’ve picked up some great CD’s. In fact I’m listening to one I picked up last night right now (Massive Attack’s ‘Collected’. I was in the mood for subterranean Millennial angsty beats). In fact half the reason I’m actually writing is because I’m ripping my recent CD’s into the computer so I can put them on my MP3 player. It is an interesting assortment. The aforementioned Massive Attack, Mingus’s Ah Um, Matthew Sweet and Susanna Hoffs ‘Under the Covers Vol 1′, and Bob Dylan’s Time out of Mind. I really do mean it when I say I like a little bit of everything.
The other reason I’m writing is because I was trying to explain why I loved Coltrane to Jen the other night and I really touched on it. My favorite Jazz album is ‘A Love Supreme’. It is a pretty demanding album. It isn’t the kind of thing you can really put on in the background nd tune out. It wont let you. It asks far more of you than a lot of music. To me it is like a thunder storm. There is music all around, rising like the wind and falling like a downpour. It gets inside you. I almost feel like a ship at sea casting about helplessly as the ocean rages all around. And then Coltrane cuts through it with his saxophone. He is the lightning in that very same storm. Jagged shards of light flying around the sky with abandon. Dangerous and magnificent. And that is why I love Coltrane. Because he is the lightning in the thunderstorm.
On the other side of things is Miles Davis for me. His music is more beautiful but no less powerful. I will write more on Miles another time, but I will just say this. Sometimes I think the first three notes of ‘So What’ off of ‘Kind of Blue’ contain all the wisdom and compassion in world. I have never heard a piece of music that said as with three keystrokes than ‘So What’ does.
Anyway I need to get ready for work. I will try to write more. I think I have more to say still.