Rather Reasonable and Uplifting

This morning I translated Xi Jinping’s New Year’s message to the nation, in my Chinese news reading exercise.   Humble bragging by the Chairman.   It’s not a bad list.  Hey, we made progress on some new mega cities, we got the world’s longest bridge completed, kept the economy growing, and as we “raised our sleeve to wipe the sweat off our brow” we could enjoy a sense of collective accomplishment at what we’d done.  I have definitely been here way too long, because, reading it over and over again, to anchor the vocabulary, it all sounded rather reasonable and uplifting. 

Yes, I know, no mention of reeducation centers in Xinjiang, nor debt-trap hyrdo-power infrastructure projects gone array in Ecuador, nor protesters nor lawyers interred, nor workers unemployed.  No bad news that doesn’t have a simple justification or a pending resolution.  

I was listening to some Pharaoh Sanders as I read all this good news, and suddenly a guitar solo caught my ears.   Who is that?  It sounded a bit like Carlos Santana, fast, thin, soulful, but I could tell it wasn’t him. The album credited two different axe men as in attendance that day.  I think one of them played with Donald Byrd around this early seventy period as well.  I believe it was David T. Walker as he has that distinct, period sound.  But “Wah Wah Watson”, the other gent credited may have been the dude as well.  I found their earliest releases, before they and their genre melted into tepid, disco fuzack.  And this lead me to another guitar player named Little Beaver and somehow that progressed into Roy Ayers. 

The whole of this first day of 2019 was like that.  Gym was closed, so I didn’t have to go.  Wife wanted to cook.  Fine with me.  I just bobbed my trunk to these ever-so-limber grooves and wrote one and then another and then still another proposal.  Get em’ on.  Get em' out.  New Year's upon us. 

Tuesday, 01/01/19