Missed Connections, New Orleans Craigslist

Honoring Clay January (Lightning Rod) RIP 2/6/2013
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Lightning Rod
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Missed Connections, New Orleans Craigslist

Post by Lightning Rod » December 23rd, 2010, 12:28 pm

Missed Connections, New Orleans Craigslist

She was an angel sitting under a single light. It played on her like she played on the piano, so lonely and perfect and forlorn. The light was cruel silver, she was tan and gold, the music was blue as half-a-block off Bourbon St. She played Epistrophe, not like Monk played it, but sad like it was a reflection of the youth she was trying to remember. I listened to her Straight, No Chaser and then I bought her one. She nodded and tossed it down. It was only three AM and the barges groaned on the Mississippi as she broke my heart with Funny Valentine.

She was probably the best piano player I have ever heard. The little bar was called Funky Butts just around the corner from the fancy joints in the Quarter. It was just me and her and the bartender and a couple of all-night boys drinking Tom Collins and even their tittering conversation she used to punctuate her phrases. Her improvisations were like little dreams suspended in the amber honey of her melodies. She played the old songs with a naive sadness, almost a resignation, she let them possess her. She sang, but not much, just to let you know where you were in the song now and then before wandering into her reverie, her inventions, her musings. I wondered if you had to be as sad as she was to play such music?

For two hours I listened. She looked like a waif sitting on the piano bench, a waif in supplication, her burgundy gown falling off her thin shoulders. You couldn't tell if she was caressing the keys or if she was simply letting the instrument feel her up like a schoolgirl whose priest had guessed her confession. She knew the tunes so well it was like hearing someone talking in their sleep. She knew the tunes and she also knew the times, the parties, the gigs, the memories that hovered around those songs like gnats hovering around a cow's nostril on a steamy afternoon. We were below sea level in the Quarter and the levees were tired as she was tired from jazz and trying to hold back an ocean of tears with nothing but a blue note.

That was forty years ago. I thought she was old at the time, but of course if I met her today she would be young. I was twenty-three and she was twice my age and I was a rookie at jazz and she owned the Real Book. This wasn't Carnagie Hall, this was Funky Butts and yet she was playing the finest music I had ever heard to the 4 AM brick walls of an empty house and still she played like Louis Armstrong was in the audience. She didn't care that nobody cared. She was in a conversation that was strictly between her and that piano and a lifetime of cold truths and disappointment. It touched me like no other music I had ever heard and that's why I remember it to this day. I asked myself, as a young musician, "Is this the type of sublime decline that I can expect?" Many times over the years I have pondered and replayed that memory. I think of it when I'm wondering why I play music.

She finished playing and sat at the bar to smoke. I bought her another drink. I told her that I was in love with her and it was true. She gave me a wise, tired look but indulged me by telling me that her name was Gloria. She noticed my horn case and said, "So, you're a player?" I told her that I tried. She looked at me with the eyes of a mother as her son talks about marrying a girl that she knows will break his heart. She also knows that there is nothing she can do about it. Only African eyes can express this sad resignation. I loved her even more. We walked to the French Market for coffee and scalded milk and watched the dawn steal across the Mississippi. She spoke of the road from Chicago to St. Lou to Kansas City. She didn't talk about her heartbreaks and divorces and all that went with a musician's life but I could hear it in her voice. She wouldn't have had it any other way. When she left I wanted to kiss her but she had already reached to brush the hair from my brow and she caressed my forehead gently with her magic fingers and bade me, "Do Well." I never saw her again but her MP3 will be on my iPod till the day I die. We don't forget true love.
"These words don't make me a poet, these Eyes make me a poet."

The Poet's Eye

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judih
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Re: Missed Connections, New Orleans Craigslist

Post by judih » December 23rd, 2010, 2:37 pm

beautifully described

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dadio
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Re: Missed Connections, New Orleans Craigslist

Post by dadio » December 23rd, 2010, 3:47 pm

Painted with words beautifully. 8)

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mnaz
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Re: Missed Connections, New Orleans Craigslist

Post by mnaz » December 23rd, 2010, 6:49 pm

it was forty years ago like last month... "below sea level in the Quarter and the levees were tired as she was tired from jazz and trying to hold back an ocean of tears with nothing but a blue note." tis true, you never forget that first true love. wow, this write kicked my ass, L-rod. thanks.

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