Saturday, May 3, 2014

The Saint's Wife on Harp




A friend sent me this Youtube link this morning.  We’re both New Yorkers in exile and the hazy photo alone stimulates something mournful, evocative, beyond reach.  The music sets a time to the photo and with a bit of looking I believe it is from a session, which Alice Coltrane did with Joe Henderson from his 1973 album “Elements.”  Like the Elements mall in Kowloon, there is a song for each of the four.  The link is playing “Earth.”  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UpZJ_LQ4CFg

This same friend when he had been here in Beijing about 18 months ago, had chosen a song “Journey in Satchidananda” by Alice Coltrane with Pharaoh Sanders from her eponymous album of 1970, as the first track for a mix he put together that afternoon at a party we were hosting.  It fills the air so gently, and the sound of Cecil McBee’s acoustic bass seems to permeate the walls, as it makes its way around, slowly deliberately. 

All this to say I never gave much thought otherwise to Alice Coltrane.   I have a number of albums, with where she appears her husband, like “John Coltrane, Live at the Village Vanguard, Again,” that are among my favorite of (as they say at KPOO in SF) Saint John Coltrane’s work.  I think I’d heard a few subsequent albums, after JC’s death sniffed out a sruti box and tablas and figured it was fusion detour I wasn’t interested in pursuing.  If I’m honest I probably didn’t give her full due as an individual because of some latent, sexist nonsense that presumed she was getting a free ride on her husband’s hagiography.   What a nice morning it’s been unpacking and disposing of that misperception. 



I was up late last night, trying to do work.  This is rarely productive.  My brain slows to quarter time, if I’m sedentary at that hour.  But it was Saturday night and I was with my western mind, perhaps thinking that sipping wine, listening to music, trying to work, was my late Saturday night due.  Oh, but I live in China.  And today, unfortunately is one of those Sunday’s the authorities have seen fit to repossess.  So first thing this morning, about four and a half hours after lying down, I stirred and checked the clock and with more than a bit of hesitation, I was up with my routine: meditation, exercise, get the ladies up.  And knowing it was Sunday, the effort was literally half-hearted.

My little one was up early.  I think this is a good sign.  I think it’s healthy if your body is fundamentally perplexed when the government steals your Sunday.  I complained about it with the guards at the gym.  They seemed amused, as if I were arriving at the epiphany of a fifth grader.  Practically, the world around me is behaving as if this were Monday.  But Monday is a drag, with its own special rhythm and I maintain that tomorrow, is Monday. 

And indeed, it seemed that everyone was confused.  More good signs, perhaps.  My older daughter complained when I returned from the gym that I was late.  I had deputized her little sister who was apparently unsuccessful at rousing anyone on time.  But this was secondary.  My wife had just cut her thumb, slicing toast.  Get a band-aid.  There in the drawer over there.  The older one was yelling it’s time to go.  The younger one, who’d been up for hours now, still wasn’t ready to leave. 



“Can you please drive fast baba?”  “Um, yes.”  I punched on “Prefuse 73” which I’ve written about here on DustyBrine said, sounding ever so old: “this is some of the best hip hop, best rhyming I’ve heard in years.”  The entrance to the school was backed up for a few hundred yards.  Let’s just park here and walk.  The older one, who’s LATE, gets up and out in a flash and I follow her quickly.  On autopilot, I lock the car doors with a flick of the finger and strut off swiftly, and then realize about five seconds later that I’ve actually locked the younger one in the car.  Oh dear.  She’s crying.  I’m apologizing and laughing, and rubbing her back the whole walk down to the entrance. 

Walking back two parents have grazed one another’s car.  This is necessarily a nightmare and will invariably take them hours to sort out.  Is it just me or is everyone truly frazzled this morning, 心乱如麻[1]rushing, disoriented, looking for the other half of our weekend?




[1] xīnluànrúmá: one's thoughts in a whirl (idiom); confused / disconcerted / upset

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