I made
it to Englewood Cliffs! I only had
a little time and I promptly headed out on to Hackensack Avenue and went the
wrong way on Route 4. I could feel
it instantly. I was heading west
and not east, away from the “west” side Highway and not towards “east” New
York. Turning around with an
illegal u-turn and got back towards where I needed to on Route 4, and then
turned left on to Fletcher Avenue, evoking the mnemonic of my alma mater. Up, and on to a busy boulevard and
there I was, cruising down Sylvan Avenue.
A few blocks on and the it was clear that I had arrived at #44. But it was a bank.
It wasn’t a new bank, either. I had seen on line a guy who visited Rudy van Gelder’s
studio two years back. This bank
was early 80’s vintage. Next-door
was a suburban office block, not a Frank Lloyd Wright inspired building. So it did not appear that anything was
recently destroyed. And this was
hardly the inspiring setting I imagined Lee Morgan and Hank Mobley walking past
en route to a session. I cursed
Google Maps, considered what could have gone wrong and realized that I’d copied
the address wrong. I still had
open the Wiki page and it was “444”, not “44.” Right.
Well then, further on down Slyvan Avenue . . .
And then, there it was. The suburban boulevard wasn’t any different four hundred yards
down. But there, between an office
park and some other roadside eye sore was a driveway that told you there was no
way turn around in side. I went and
parked the car, down the next street, which wasn’t at all straightforward and
went over to have a look. Sure
enough, #444 was the characteristic high ceilinged wooden building, I’d seen in
seen in photos on line. In the
parking lot were two cars, suggesting someone was home. I pondered going and knocking but held
true to my original thinking that it was best not to bother anyone 89 years old
when I only had a few minutes to spare anyway. “I’ve traveled from China to be here.”
“Really? Come in and stay a
while.” “I gotta go.”
Rather, I stood in the driveway and imagined, all the people
who walked down this simple path, year after year. I considered Horace Silver, and Donald
Byrd and Jackie McLean and thought longest perhaps about the “Love Supreme”
sessions recorded right over those walls.
How did Coltrane and Elvin Jones all make it out here for those
days? Did they take the bus with
their instruments? Did someone
from Blue Note have a car? Did
someone pick them up from a train station? What was the reaction like from the neighborhood with all
these folks coming and going, day after day, year after year?
I snapped a few photos and made my way back to my car that
was in a “no parking any time” zone and before long I was sailing up the
Palisades Parkway. On the way, I
tuned the dial and found, most happily to my ears, Phil Schaap himself on
WKCR. And it was, Phil reminded me
August 4th and that meant that it was Louis Armstrong’s birthday and
they’d be playing Pops all day long.
But wait? Wasn’t his
birthday the 4th of July?
It didn’t take long for Phil to explain that while Satchmo had always
claimed his birthday had been July 4th, 1900, it was actually
discovered that he was born on August 4th, 1901. So, and I quote Phil, “Only Pops is
important enough to have two birthdays” and so WKCR celebrates them both. “Black and Blue” in 1932, never sounded
so good.
I pulled over at a rest stop, called “Rockefeller View” or
some such thing. Perhaps he paid
for this, too. And there was a
view back over to Spuyten Duyvil, I’d never seen before that was lovely. The water was rolling down under the
bridge. If I strained I could see
Morningside Heights where Phil was broadcasting from and then off to the
skyline and the sea. It was grand.
Later that night we went to see a production of Othello at
the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival at Boscobel. The setting is just remarkable with the view down to
the marshlands and the bend in the river just before West Point. Trains blow and sail by and its
difficult to imagine a finer view of the Hudson. The production was solid and, my purpose was mostly to
expose my girls to the story, which was largely successful.
http://hvshakespeare.org/2014-season/othello.html
I was drawn in completely to the story and was particularly
fixated by Iago, the incarnation of evil manipulation gleefully, 背信弃义. [1]
For all those time we try to do something nice and try to position
something as a favor, but really have our own designs, it was fascinating to
consider the evil lieutenant. And somehow my mind, as always, was back in
China. This Elizabethan treatments
of raw power spoke to the opportunities and the reality of treachery when the some
people are above he law and power is simply personal fiat.
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