New Year's Eve with Coletrane

My new year's eve was eventful. I could go into the valet parking heist at the Watergate Hotel, but I won't. I will instead tell you that in spite of efforts to get an early start, everything about last night involved traffic and decidedly late starts. Mardina, my good friend from highschool, was about 45 minutes late to get me because of the snarl of vehicles on 95. It put our entire evening back so far, and given that she still needed to run an errand, and we needed to eat, we did not leave her apartment until 8:15. We had resigned ourselves to missing our show time at the Kennedy Center. We figured we would just go to the party that was being held there. I hated that she'd wasted her money (the ticket was a christmas present to me from her), but at the same time I felt uncharacteristically unstressed about this time warp in which we seemed to be trapped.

When we arrived at the theatre, the garage was full--which led to the Watergate scandal, but that's a story for a different time. Anyway, I felt resigned at that point. I thought 'Well, we should just try to hang out someplace else. This isn't happening.' But through a series of events, we ended up getting inside the Center just in time for the 9:30 show (which had been sold out when she tried to get tickets for that slot originally). We explained our parking woes to the head usher and not only ended up being able to be seated in the sold out auditorium but in Trustees' seats, since no trustees were coming to the show that night.

Cedar Walton and the Timeless All Stars came out and announced that we would all be partaking of the "wizardry" of John Coletrane's "Bluetrain." There was a ripple of awe that swept, audibly, through the audience. When those opening strains were pushed through the trombone, tenor sax, and alto sax, I felt that I was at home in the world. Those notes all bumping up against each other and swirling around together are like a favourite pair of jeans or shoes to me.

The second half of the evening was Lizz Wright and her trio. Her vocal range (contralto), depth, and timbre arrested me, and I was filled with awe. Fortunately, I was able to get her cd after the show (another gift from Mardina).

I ended up getting home a lot later than I wanted to today, but God really blessed me through my time with my old friend. The ringing in of 2004 at the Kennedy Center after a night of Jazz just felt like God talking to my soul, letting me know that all kinds of beauty is mine for the taking.