Paul Desmond riffing on his alto saxophone. For All We Know.
Reflections on a stream that come and go with the intricacies of improvisation.
That can’t help but be what they are -- us in reverse.
That we never get to see as we are.
Never get to know as we are.
Haunted by beauty.
Drawn by scent and touch imagined.
By the taste of Memory heard and gone.
A here and now, place and time, that can never be.
Yet the Now that you will always be to me.
Shorty Baker riffing on his trumpet. I Didn’t Know What Time It Was.
A call for love from time out of time.
And I didn’t know.
Notes gently trailing a caress across the whorl of preoccupation
Lifting me out of cold blankness into the warmth of acceptance.
By the vulnerability of subject in a room full of objects.
Cause beyond effect that needs no intoxicant, no commotion
To excuse the brashness of its intrusion.
I’m not done with it.
Can never be done with it, your call for Love.
Alyosha bidding Dostoevsky’s farewell. The Brothers Karamazov.
“There is nothing more wholesome and good
Than sacred memory preserved from childhood.
Let us be kind, then honest
And then let us never forget each other.
“You are all dear to me.
From this day forth I have a place in my heart for you all,
And I beg you to keep a place in your hearts for me.”