A Tale of God's Will

I don't know much about God's Will, and I know absolutely nothing of what that will has to do with the chaos and suffering that came out of Katrina. What I do know is that despite all of that chaos and suffering, and in some cases because of it, there have been some amazing things to happen in addition to the really horrible things, and the moderately horrible things, and the not really horrible but still pretty damned inconvenient things.

Terence Blanchard's new album, A Tale of God's Will, is one of the truly wonderful things. The second song on the album, Levees, a slow, orchestral riff that plays off the New Orleans classic St. James Infirmary, leads into a winding collection of soft, thoughtful, emotive material that does exactly what it's intended to do. It puts the reality of Katrina two years later right in front of you, asks you to open your eyes and pay attention, and then holds you and lets you sit and have a good cry.

I had the accidental opportunity to hear part of this at Jazz Fest this year and it literally stopped me in my tracks and knocked me off my feet.

It is a beautiful, lovely album from a man who is to my mind and heart the greatest Jazz trumpeter of our present age. From his work on soundtracks for Spike Lee(from which some of this music comes), his previous work with Art Blakey (alongside fellow New Orleanian Donald Harrison Jr.) , his excited, heart felt campaign speech at the 2006 NOLA Jazz Fest for (unfortunately) losing mayoral candidate Mitch Landrieu , his work with young up and coming players, or sophisticated, heart shaped modern classics like this; the man has got the heart, the brain, the soul and the chops.

THIS is why there is music. BUY THIS ALBUM.

I'm an Island in a Blur of Noise and Color...

It's been an interesting week... It's been an interesting day. It started with some very weird dreams in the wee hours of the morning, led into some deep and intense reflection on life and what I'm doing with mine, and then a whole sort of stream of consciousness path that oddly seems to make sense (at least in my oddly constructed brain).

While digging around online this afternoon, I caught an interesting little bit of info on Bruce Cockburn, who is playing near me on Sunday at the Sol Fest. I was trolling the web for info when I found the True North site. In a really great article that covers most of his career, there's a comment about the fact that his song Night Train was written after " a long night of Absinthe drinking." I'm a great fan of absinthe. I'm even a fan of the faux American version called Absente, not to mention the made in New Orelans knock off known as Herbsaint.

The thing that captured my imagination about this particular bit of information is the factual tidbit that the song in question is a particularly psychedelic stream of consciousness poem about images and people and the state of the world. It happens to be one of my favorite songs by Cockburn because like so many of his songs it plays lightly along the line of dark and light, life and death, despair and faith. It's the first song on an album called "The Charity of Night" which displays (as you can see in the first picture here) a collection of disparate images including an angel, a machine gun, the yin and yang, the Muslim Crescent (an image that Cockburn has made use of before), pikes and stars and mysterious wisps of nothingness. The whole feel of the album is a bit hallucinogenic, but it's a reflection of the world, both in the late 90s when the album came out, and prehaps even more now, when the songs Cockburn is doing are as strange and profound as they have ever been.

The thing about the absinthe reference is that all of that strangeness feels completely appropriate. Whether it was Halloween ten years ago when I stood, in full costume, clamoring at the gates of Bartholomew Park Winery while my friends sat in the car, laughing hysterically, waiting to go to a Cockburn concert in Petaluma (the Charity of Night tour incidentally), or the interview I did with Dan Noreen of the Sonoma Wine Exchange, an avid collector of Absinthe Art, or the strange way I keep coming and going from the current heart of strangeness (and home of Absinthe) in America... The Crescent City.

It's a strange world... and the more I try to gauge a through line on the whole thing the more I seem to get lost and the hallucinogenic curly cue of distorted reality actually begins to make sense. How else to explain so much of what has gone on in my life over the last few years... few months... few days?

I used to think that things were supposed to make sense and that it was really my problem that I didn't get the concept. These days, I'm pretty sure that The Strangeness IS the basic reality... and if you've got some Absinthe handy... I think I'll have another drink.

Last Flight Out

Monday night at 6:15 pm I joined about two dozen other people on an Air Trans flight to Atlanta and then on to SFO. By 2:00 am Tuesday, I was at home in Petaluma. The fact that I was one of only two dozen people leaving from Louis Armstrong Airport (as John Fohl says, the only airport named for a reeferhead) at COB on Monday says a lot about the state of business in New Orleans these days, but that's for another blog.

The impetus for this spur of the moment transcontinental flight was the software meltdown of my Mac mini on Sunday afternoon, and my subsequent inability to find a way to fix this relatively simple problem in the reality of post-Katrina New Orleans. Previously, even during the dark days immediately post-Katrina, I used to have two places where I could get my Mac issues addressed, if not fully dealt with, but both of those businesses are gone now. The closest Apple store, as I was told by one person who tried to assist me, is in Houston... and, well you get my drift.

I let myself off the hook after things melted down on me on Sunday. I just shut off the power and went on to other things. Then, on Monday I set to trying to solve my problem. Facing into the hundred degree heat and long walks across town (since I don't drive these days and the public transport scheme in New Orleans is a bit less than dependable) with my computer and various peripherals on my shoulder, I went in search of assistance. Assistance that never materialized.

With limited options, ridiculous heat, and an air conditioner in my apartment acting seriously like it was about to crap out on me (and my hard drive already overheating as it was) I decided to gamble and check the flights west. It was clear to me that this was a problem that would take a week to fix in New Orleans and half a day to fix in San Francisco. So I bit the bullett, packed up my stuff and called a cab for the airport, all in less than two hours. This really might qualify as the clearest, most definitive choice I have ever made in my life, but the choice of the moment, at least for me, was clear.

Back in May I asked myself if I could make it in New Orleans right now and I never was able to gain a good strong answer. This time, in ten short days, the answer was clear... Absolutely not!

So here I am, prematurely back on the west coast with work to do in California, New Orleans, and Florida. What is clear for me this time around is that I remain called to and connected with The Crescent City, but like a hiker venturing into hostile territory, if I can't pack it in, I can't depend on having what I need to get by.

When I return (at some point in the next few weeks to few months, depending on what I can put together) I will return with full support resources for problematic computer issues. I will return with income and sources for income that are not dependent on getting gainful employment in New Orleans in order to survive, and I will have worked out my health issues with my neurologist and the DMV so as to be able to drive my own damn self. I will also bring a car.

This is the reality of New Orleans two years after The Thing. Yes, you can live in New Orleans, but not if you, in any way, depend on the support, assistance, and/or planning of government programs and a viable small business infrastructure for anything. It really is the Wild West right now, a Darwinian reality of haves and have nots. Another way in which New Orleans feels like a microcosm of the way of the world at the beginning of the 21st century.

I'm not even going to start on current weather conditions in The Tropics.