Happy
Thanksgiving. I just put the bird in the
oven. Guests, lots of them, will arrive
in about four and a half hours when its time to take it out again. We have a ritual of inviting people over and
introducing the tradition. Every year I
need to call my mom ahead of time to remind me of the proper turkey prep. Every year I prepare some of the same
obligatory dishes that you only have once a year. Every year the kids have a bunch of friends
over from school and they put on a play.
Every year we try to explain the joy and the complexity of this holiday
that testifies not only to “thanks” but to survival, near term survival, long
term survival, between cultures. Regardless, nearly everyone gets it. We should all adopt a 感激不尽[1]
posture for reasons innumerable.
Most folks coming over are Chinese. We used to do the same thing with our
overseas friends when we lived in San Francisco. Big feast, come on over. It’s usually a big hit. I like to try to explain that the meal ritual
is perhaps most like the rituals around food during Chinese New Year. I think of Chinese New Year as a sort of
combination of Christmas’ centrality but the banquet of Thanksgiving. Of course, people often have a big dinner at
Christmas but it tends to take second place behind the tree, the gift giving,
etc. Complicated and ironic though this day
may be, it serves to unify Americans, at least those of use far from home, in a
way that Christmas does for all nations, but not for all souls.
I’m just thankful I have an oven. Living here in the 90’s, forget it. It was off to the banquet at the Swiss Hotel
that put on a Thanksgiving spread. This
is one day I really want to be home. I
lived in Hong Kong five years ago in a lovely, modern apartment that was only a
stovetop as well. But today, you watch,
I’m gonna lay it all down.
Speaking of which I have a gorgeous duet filling the house
today and I pause to pen this. Mal
Waldron is someone I’ve known about tangentially for years. But I never really dug in. There are some thirty albums I’ve been
listening to on Rdio, one after the other.
Wiki tells me there are another 70 or more out there. I don’t know why but I am so deeply
“thankful” that the jazz tradition is manifestly inexhaustible. Remarkable.
Aided on this particular disc by the stately angularity of Mr. Archie
Shepp who I have loved for years.
This disc, “Left Alone Revisited” was recorded right before Mal
Waldron died in 2002. Waldron was Billy
Holiday’s pianist for her final years and as this lovely, brief review of the album John Fordham states in the Guardian, that Mal Waldron treats Archie
Shepp, with his graceful, poignant honking as if he were setting him up as a
vocalist. Setting him up as the
“singer’s personal representative on earth.”
Born in New York of West Indian parents, not unlike Sonny Rollins, not
unlike Herbie Nichols. Not unlike the
entire world of jazz that could only happen at the American cultural capital,
in those decades the way it did. What a
time and place to learn and listen.
No shortage of things to pause and nod grateful for. A good ritual that, pausing to consider the
bounty many of us enjoy, despite whatever persistent static we navigate through
every day. I’ve got to go chop
vegetables. I hope you are well fed and
well loved, wherever you are today.
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