No More, My Lord.

Been a while hasn't it? Or a week or so rather.

Despite the week I've been having, it changed drastically today. I'm not quite sure why the week I was having started to decline as quickly as it did, but I felt something very powerful today. Allow me to explain. There is a man named Charlie. He is the Father-in-law of a guitarist I know who plays in our church. His name's Gary, I've mentioned him before, he's the one that plays with Niles and I when we jam (all too seldomly). But anyway, that's beside the point. So there is a portion of the service where anyone who wishes to pray aloud can do so. Normally during this time I just sit and look at what John is drawing to my right and laugh silently at the stuff he comes up with. But today one of the Decans went to the front and began to pray. He has been very ill for a while was actually close to death for a short time. So he proceeded for a few minutes, and it was nice. Moving at that. But when that portion of the service was over and we stood he began to speak again. He spoke of Charlie. Now Charlie happened to be at the service today, and he is a whole different case altogether. Charlie has had many bouts with illness, but has recovered from all of them. He is an incredibly faithful and spiritual man, and I've had quite a few discussions with Gary about him and his life up to this point. I recently found out Charlie was (and technically is) in an A Capella group since the 60's. Gary let me hear a recording the rest of Charlie's band did for him recently on account of him being in a coma. Every now and then Gary would give everyone an update on his condition, and I was under the impression that he was still in the hospital because not a month ago he said that he was starting to be able to speak normally to others and was getting his memory back. Now as far as I can remember his condition wasn't a whole lot past that point last I heard. But he was there today, walking and talking to people and everything.

I remember when I was younger he used to come into church every now and then, and when he would speak I would cower in fear because his voice is so deep and brooding (yet lyrical and melodious because of his blues and soul singing for so long) that it frightened me. Also the fact that he is a 6 and a half foot tall black man didn't make me less afraid either. But anyway, I digress. So as the Lou (the Decan) adressed Charlie, Charlie stood up and began to speak what he needed to say. Like I mentioned earlier, he is a very spiritually wise man and has alot of power in everything he says. I'm afraid I can't relay what he said. If I tried I'd fail his words miserably. But he spoke, almost in a crescendo, to which he built upon his conviction, new understanding and new veiw, despite his being so ill and in a coma for the time that he was. What hit me so hard was the honesty and power behind his voice. I've never heard anyone, in any setting or in any way, have so much truth and conviction behind what they say. His voice felt like a blinding light that made my minds eye tremble in fear. Not a horror fear, but a different kind of fear. Fear of God perhaps. I guess I never really understood when people said things about "The fear of God within them". But I do now. As much as it made me cower, I still wanted to be closer to it.

I've heard honesty in what people say, I've heard truth in what people say, but it's always come to a point of acceptance. I've always had to think of what the person said and accept it or reject it first before I could really appreciate what they were saying. This was not like that. I had no choice but to accept it because it levelled me out. I tried to stand, not just physically, but emotionally so that I may put myself under the impression that I was strong in some way, but I couldn't. His voice, and the words behind them brought me to a humbled point that I had yet to reach until then. I wish everyone I know could've felt what I felt when he spoke. But I asked, and I recieved far more than I expected. I cannot understate this. I could go on for quite a bit longer, but I dont want my point to be lost or drilled into the ground, so I have to stop.

I know you get a far different feeling reading this from what I felt or feel while writing this, but that does not change anything. This was just one man's voice. If one man's voice could move me so much then why wouldn't I be afraid of the force behind what moved him to say what he said? And please, don't say something like a that's-great-that something-like-that-happened-to-you-best-of-luck, kind of thing. I'd rather have no one say anything at all than a remark like that. I just felt this was something I needed to make known because this was a big event for me. That is all.

In other news...

As I'm sure all of you are sick of reading anything to do with music from me, even though I enjoy writing about it, I suppose I'll stop.

So in other news I was with John for all of today. I was going to work with him at Veronica's Treats but that didn't happen. I did have quite possibly the best oatmeal raisen cookie I've ever had courtesy of John's fine bakemanship. Then we hung around for a while listening to Coltrane and other such things until we called Katie, multiple times mind you, but they were all necessary. So we eventually devised a plan to pick her up and head back to John's where... nothing would happen again. At least until we found out...

JOHN'S SISTER IS IN LABOR AND WILL PROBABLY BE HAVING THE BABY WITHIN A FEW HOURS!!!

Pretty cool, isn't it? Soon, there's going to be a new black baby for us to play with. Not that Teresa isn't fantastic, cause she is. But this is a boy! Of course by the time he's grown up enough for us to say things that are usually funny to us around him without not him thinking and telling Keith what we said (who would in return cut off our mahood), we will be far too old (hopefully) to be making the kinds of jokes we do now. In some ways anyway. I mean, there's some stuff that if we said when we were mid thirties, well... you get the idea. Anyway, so then I drove Katie back to her MANSION, whereupon I proceeded to listen to a piece by Keith Jarrett, of whom I wasnt aware was playing in until that guy came on and said in that really slow voice; "And that waaaaas.......... Keith Jarrett on piano............ recorded lllllllive............... at the etc. etc...", that slow talkin bastard. So anywho, tomorrow could possibly be the first day in little (unnamed baby)'s life, and I await the news eagerly and... erotically. Goodnight.

The Tolerable Ear.

Hello everybody! I'm feeling particularly good this morning. Sitting here with my friend Coffee. Had a good night last night. John stayed over again on account of his working in the morning. We had a good talk last night about some things. I'll try to relay them as best as possible.

Thoughts are strange things if you approach them in a certain way. Unlike me, John has the mind to carry itself away on what seems to be a near unlimited amount of paths through which to think of anything really. When these paths are observed and picked through, they can start to become a haze. But these are not necessarily new thoughts. They could be re-heated old thoughts in which his brain tries to find some other little nugget of crazy whipwaps. When consciousness is abandon and subconscious takes the reign, things can get muddled. BUT, as muddled as they may seem, the subconscious could be trying to arrive at some conclusion that he is not aware of until it is done. When this happens, even he, the thinker, is taken aback by the magnitude of the full circle his mind went in to arrive at a conclusion of whatever he may or may have been thinking of. Now, for him, this can happen, at least compared to others, pretty often. Me being a person that only feels I can add anything to a conversation if I ask a question or have experienced the topic at hand personally, couldn't relate a whole bunch on that level. With my depression being cured, I no longer have the ability (at least the way it used to be even if I didnt want it to be) to let my mind wander to places that I have a hard time recovering from. But, in in a different, yet strangely similiar way, I had plenty to add from another viewpoint.

The effects that improvisation in music can have are very similiar to his train of thought in those times. At once being completely conscious and aware of your surroundings, you can be entirely sucked out of if there is a sort of "meeting of the minds" situation you find yourself in. I have been so blessed to find myself in many experiences like this with other musicians that can understand the importance of the melding of multiple spirits through music. When one "improvises", the person should take under great consideration the communication between the other musicians, or else the conversation is lost, never to be recovered in the same path it once was. Some of these paths can seem really strange or interesting, yet, like John's thoughts, could be re-heated old ones from past experiences. Alot of the time in improvistation, the person/group is still aware subconsciously of what he or she is doing. The mind conveys to the fingers what it already knows, so as to fit in some way with whatever the other people are trying to say with theirs.

This can be taken as improvisation, but to drift into completely uncharted territory is a different ballgame. Now with John's thoughts, the conclusions he reaches can be completely different from anything he's thought before, but sometimes they could be very different ways to look at what he already knows. This is the same situation I find with nearly all improvisational music, myself included when I'm a part of it.

Now to reach a different level of musical communication in a moment is when I believe true improvisation occurs. The moments when even you suprise yourself with a conclusion, or a new way of saying something, is when the real improvising happens. This is a rare occurence, and is not to be taken lightly, whether in thought, music, painting, poetry, math, or whatever. It is a glimpse at another level with which your mind realizes it can function. If you keep at it, or try to attain it again, consciously or not, the next stage in whatever you are doing it in will be reached. When you get to a point where you think, "Well, I've done so much (in whatever it is you do), it really doesn't seem like I can get any better", that is when your mind could be thinking, without you knowing, that it is time to move to another stage. It's happened to me a few times now, which I am eternally grateful for, but I know I really havn't even passed my first level. I may have in some aspects, but to me I have an infinite amount to learn about myself in what I love, as John can have an infinite amount of paths to lead to new or old ways of thinking. And as, I'm sure, all of you have at some point as well. Probably multiple times.

And I leave you with this.

"When we hear two men speaking in a foreign language, if we don't happen to know that language, everything they say sounds like gibberish. Only after we have begun to grasp their language can we decide whether they are talking wisdom or nonsense. Composers today are experimenting with a new musical language. There is as yet no dictionary for it, and no way of studying it except to listen to it without panic and without mental reservations. And the more we listen, the better able shall we be to weigh and estimate the value of what present-day composers are saying. Some of them are just talking pig-Latin; but others may be saying something that we may all, some day, be grateful to hear."
Deems Taylor
Of Men and Music