Slowly, Proudly

We got birds.  Birds I haven’t heard from all winter are calling outside.  We got bees.  There are flowers in bloom on a wispy cherry tree and the pink petals are swarmed with bees.  Riding home from the gym this morning on my bike I stopped once or twice to consider the activity and snap some pictures out in front of a random neighbor’s home.  Spring’s here.

It’s good to have a bike again and not be looking through a dusty windowsill on some ride around, waiting for the automobile heater to kick in.  Over at the clubhouse they have a little faux farmyard with a family of bunny rabbits inside.  I’m sure these are a hit with all the little kids who pass through.  I didn’t bother to ask what happens to them after the resurrection celebration next Sunday. 

                                                                                                                                                                   

                                                                                                                                                                                                            

Our old place did such a good job on horticulture.  There were plumb blossoms that would bloom early and then a myriad of cherry trees would blossom next.  Bees would swarm the walkway.  The man made stream would be refilled and start to trickle and gurgle.  This place we’re in now somehow missed the memo on horticulture.  We have a predictable cast of cedars and pines that help in the winter.  But there ain’t much else.  Our house has a magnolia out front.  It’s pleasant.  The house down the road has a cherry tree.  But most of the landscape is dusty, monotonous, unimaginative.  I’m holding out hope that the tree in the back yard is a jacaranda, as that would yield some glorious purple flowers. 

Late at night, on line and Youtube has wound itself into a series of live Miles Davis recordings.  Stockholm 1960, with Coltrane wound its way to Paris in 1967 with Wayne Shorter and then on to the remarkable period of 1971 with Gary Bartz on sax, Keith Jarrett in rather amusing ecstasy on the keys, and Miles playing through a wah wah pedal.  Then I got it into my head that I wanted to hear Miles speak.  But there were no interviews I could find on film that went back before the 1980s.  The interviews after that were pretty rough, with his pavement voice, bulging eyes and loose-the-thread style of narration making you wonder what he was like, once upon a time. 

Could it be that there are no clips, no recordings interviewing him from before the 80s?  This seemed crazy.  There had to be something from when he was at the apex of popular culture.  There are a few links that are all inert to what was supposedly a 1952 interview. They all claimed that this was recorded before his voice became gravely.  How could he have gone for so long without any recorded reckoning of his thoughts?  One can only imagine that it was simply his decision to avoid such engagements that he defended vigorously.

I wasn’t looking (only listening) when the 1967 session was drawing down.  I returned the clip to a moment before the finale.  Miles blows his last note and just walks off.  No: “Thank you.” No: “You’ve been a wonderful audience.”  Definitely no “See you next year.”  Nothing.  He slowly, proudly, just holds his horn and walks off.  The rest of the band then follow.  A man of so few words, that for decades, nothing seems to have been captured.