I’m
going to be late to a meeting.
There were no cabs to be had.
Usually you just dial up the front gate and they come within minutes. Today I fired off an email, ate a
banana and was still there waiting.
This means you need to schlep out to the high street and slug it out
yourself. The assumption is that
if there isn’t a cab sitting for you there, the guard out front is only ever
fighting so hard on your behalf. Sure,
he’ll raise his hand if a cab flies by, but he isn’t going to go all out.
I show up, clarify that I’m the guy he was otherwise
supposed to be getting a cab for and I plod out into the middle of the
road. Now I’m relevant for traffic
either way. I’ve been up late and
my mind is on a lag. I turn and
see a bus with his signal on running fast, turning into what would be the on
coming traffic lane. I turn to
regard what it is he’s turning towards.
Indeed, there is on coming traffic he would plow into. Turning back I realize he’s banked and
is now heading straight for me in the meridian. I ponder leaping for a second, but he straightens just in
time and continues on past me with a foot or so to spare.
I'm not sure why, but once you're physically out here something usually shows up pretty quick. Sure enough, there is
someone getting off at our compound within a minute or two. I go to stand beside as she pays and
collects her receipt. We should be
good. He hasn’t waved me off
yet. But you never know. My steed, which has arrived in just the
nick of time could snarl at me, wave his hand and speed off. Quickly I jump in and establish my credentials,
thick with swallowed r’s and
directional slang and a “look-I-fucking-do-this-every-day-of-my-life” vibe. He buys it. We’re off.
It’s hot today.
We’re not exactly 汗流浃背[1], but we’re getting there. I have a
blazer on and it is way too much coverage. I wish I was
wearing a tee shirt. This may be
the first day in Beijing where I’m actually sweating this year. We miss it all winter and then it comes
too soon, and it's a nuisance. The
air is thick. Surprise! It looks like it might rain at some
point today, which would help the air and the dirty ground, but would create a
new challenge for me when I need to find the return cab ride home.
This is an interesting area I’m driving through now. It’s old-suburban-factory,-warehouse
Beijing, out eastward from the 798 Art compound. This is what half the city looked like fifteen years ago. It’s what damn near the whole city
looked like between the third and fourth ring road fifteen years ago. What’s
the time stamp on these linoleum show rooms before they are finally flattened
for luxury condos? Pulling
up now to where the meeting must be.
Bring on the rain, but wait till I have my net cab, please. Today is Good Friday, and so I may as
well paraphrase St. Augustine.
“Give me the will to resist temptation Lord. But please, not yet.”
Meeting done.
Not a drop of rain. The
company called this fella for me and I didn't’ have to wait more then three minutes. This must be the “Uber” effect. No one wants to put up with merely
finding a cab now. (Unless you’re
a suburban fathead like me.) Just dial for one, or a third party service. The gent I was doing meetings with in
Shenzhen, the day before last did the same thing. Somehow I don’t think to do this out at my house, until the
one out of tenth time I’m stuck with no cab to grab and no one to dial. Now a days you can’t toot around in a Beijing
cab without listening to the incessant, garbled broadcast of this young lady or
that gravely man broadcasting to the entire city where it is they are and where
they wan to go. More than ever
headphones are required for cross-town sanity. For now I am stuck in good old-fashioned
cross-town traffic. It’s only 2:00PM
and the ride that would take ten minutes at 2:00AM grinds along for forty-five plus
minutes.
Oh, cute, in the car next to me they are cranking a bad song
that I know: The “I'm a Singer” T.V. show, “American Idol” aspirant young Taiwanese lady’s flat version
of the Beyonce song “If I Were a Boy.”
This earnest lass whose face I have reluctantly seen shot from
fifty or more angles, pensive, smiling, and whose name escapes me is belting it
out for all the traffic jam to hear.
For my daughters, for that young lady driver in this time and place,
she’s the shit. Agreed, sans italics.
Now look here.
I don’t usually talk about a performer twice if I can help it. No one
deserves mention twice before someone gets an initial exposure. That just isn’t fair. I have spoken about Blue Mitchell
before. The Miami trumpet player
has already had his day on the Brine.
But I am sitting in my downtown office, on- line at the Bookworm sipping
a glass of High West Whiskey “American Rye” and it is now the fourth time that
I have hit return to hear this perfectly entitled tune “Kinda Vague.” Couldn’t have said it better
myself.
Now mind you Wynton Kelly sounds commanding and Blue himself
comes in to the sparse mix like King Lear around minute six, but the one who
has me now thinking seriously about and indeed acting on the initiation of the
sixth listening of the tune, is the bass palyer whom I believe is Wilbur
Ware. (Sam Jones also plays bass
on some cuts.) But the choppy
angular infectiousness matches with the Chicago born Wilbur’s reputation for
percussive bass playing. It’s
ending now for he sixth time. He
keeps repeating the seven-note cycle, as if it answered everything over and
over again on this tune that Wynton Kelly and Blue Mitchell jointly wrote in
1960. I’ve found at least one of
Wilbur’s albums there on Rdio.
I’ll be on to it next. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilbur_Ware
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