Back
up in Beijing. It’s hot up
here. I don’t quite get how
Beijing can be so much hotter than Shanghai. It’s dry heat though and at least we’re not sweating. One thing that is immediately notable
back home is I no longer have complete license to play whatever music I
want. My daughter’s have a singing
class this morning and we’re on route.
The younger one wants to listen to “Let it Go” from the movie “Frozen” a
few times in preparation for the class. Elsa is in the back. Not
exactly, 引吭高歌[1], the ice-maiden explains to my daughter being the older princess is hard. Embumbered with her gift, Elsa's soul is
“spiralling in frozen fractals all around.” I’d sent Maureen Dowd’s Op Ed
comparing Elsa with Hillary Clinton.
“The cold never bothered me anyway.” And upon asking, my older one had actually read it. Cool.
I have friends with daughters. Everyone’s daughter between the age of five and fifteen
seems to be into this movie that is apparently an adaptation of an old Norse
story. Everyone referenced seems
to be at their wits end having to listen to the songs over and over again. There is a central older sister /
younger sister dynamic that struck bulls eye perfect for my little one. Twenty minutes in I’ve finally
succumbed and asked her to listen to Elsa on my big headphones instead. In the front seat I’ve put Nara Leao’s moody
samba on to share with the Mrs. For the first time. This is a wee bit more gentle on the morning ears.
Two days in a row now I’ve been on the ring roads of Beijing
and been gob smacked at the ease with which we’ve navigated. Traffic’s been ‘not-so-bad.’ We’ve turned now on to Jianguomen Wai
en route from the fourth to third ring road and we’re completely
unencumbered. How can this
be? U-turning it now through
the sterile glass towers of Lang Jia Yuan Road. It’s Saturday and everyone has headed elsewhere.
We are now at the second floor of Ju Zi Shu, which appears
to be a private establishment of musical instruction, which my wife found. (A
quick Romanized search came up short.)
The lobby is confrontationally modern in orange and white and black. The lobby area I’m in outside is decidedly
less well coiffed with scotch tape holding the mirror to the elevator; grout on
the walls a bucket of something, up behind me and absolutely no air-conditioning.
Back home now.
En route, I picked back up with “1984” which my older one and I'd been reading together and started in reading aloud the next ten pages. We were
introduced to the comrade Ogilvy whom Winston has been tasked with creating and
introducing into history. This, as
another person, previously of note, had been eliminated and Big Brother’s earlier
speech had to be altered to remove any reference to this man, who now, never-has-been. Ogilvy is a
revolutionary hero that Wintson makes up in laser sharp anticipation of the
creation of Lei Feng and Ou Yang Hai, and other Cultural Revolution heroes, some
twenty years later. We
passed a large billboard of Lei Feng on the ride in, along JingMi Road. I’m sure the Chinese Winston responsible
would be happy to know this particular creation is still animate, demanding old
and young, rich and poor alike to “devote yourself to the service of others”
fifty one years after the initial manufacture. Craftsmanship.
Reuben Lincoln Wilson is shaping up this lazy Sunday
afternoon here in hot Beijing. The
seventy-nine year old continues on the progression of soulful jazz organists
we’ve been considering. We’ve got
a number called “Hot Rod” on from 1969 that invokes an environment that’s about
as cool as one dare take things.
These are all assembled on a disc called “BluesBreaks” but it originally
appeared on the end of that decade release “Love Bug.”
I just dropped the older one off at school, (yes, it is
Sunday evening at 5:20PM. This is
a standard practice.) and rode over to get an espresso at the Starbucks. (Also, relatively standard.) I turned
Mssr. Wilson up as loud as the Honda Odyssey would allow, rolled down the
windows and let him cast imprecations left and right in suburban Beijing,
“cease in your uncool ways, good people.”
You can take the American out of America but . . . And it dawned on me
that what I thought I’d heard before mostly all remained to be listened to. Who
is that drummer that seems like some evolutionary leap from Ziggy Modeliste of
the Meters? His solo on this “Hot
Rod” tune made me want to pull over.
Who’s shedding that alto like someone who caught the baton from John
Coltrane?
So I went and looked up who’s involved in this set. OK. I see. The man
on the horn did pick up the baton from JC in the Miles’ band. This we can discern as it’s George
Colman. Lee Morgan is on trumpet and Grant Green is that undeniable sound on
electric guitar. You don’t need
anyone working the bass when you got an eee-lectric organ. Solid on everyone concerned, but who
was Leo Moris the man on drums?
Turns out he would shortly thereafter turn his name to Idris Muhammad
and has quite a few dates to his name.
We will be proceeding to engage.
Fine it is, to be home.
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