Bernalillo is a small rural town just north of Albuquerque.
The town has some dirt roads, manufactured homes in disrepair, livestock grazing in back yards, Obama signs in front yards.
The Rio Grande River and the Bosque, a cottonwood forest, flow through town on their way to Mexico.
By the freeway, on the South Hill frontage road, is the Kaktus Brewery.
The brewery itself has taken over an old fashioned 1950’s house and modified it to fit the business needs of a 2019 craft brewery. What used to be someone’s bedroom has become a brewing area. In the bar, through what used to be a living room door, I can see an older group of pony tailed fans, men and women, drinking. The blues jam is happening in the back patio area where previous owners barbecued ribs and listened to Mozart.
Blues, as I usually think of them, belong on a front porch in Mississippi on a hot humid evening. An old black man sits on the edge of his porch, guitar strings sticking up like copperheads from the river. He hits a few chords and then his sad story comes out. The old man’s old favorite hound lays on a corner of the porch, his tail tapping the wood deck as his master’s knarled fingers move across the guitar frets.
Women light the place up tonight and their blues are always about sex and love getting in each other’s way.
The vibe at the Kaktus tonight is partly spiritual, partly venal, but mostly party.
Teaching and playing are different disciplines.
Some musicians play. Some musicians teach. Some musicians both play and teach.
There are lots of filters that can keep a teacher’s message from reaching his students gas tank. If Chadd could just run a USB from his brain to my brain, he could download his considerable music knowledge and we wouldn’t have to wait for me to go through hours and hours of practice.
At the heart of every jazz solo is technique, clarity of thought, pureness of emotion, and an intent to swing.
There is, unfortunately, no USB connection that can bypass practice.
My attempts to master flute playing have been unsuccessful.
Chadd tells me the oboe is the hardest instrument to play he has ever tried.
I’m stuck with alto sax and clarinet, my original horn.
Right now, playing one horn well is about all the gas I have left in my tank.
Right now, listening to Chadd play a flute solo, is as close to the flute as i want to be.
.
If you want to know what people are looking for, count the cars in the parking lot. Tonight, the parking lot is packed.
The dance floor is also packed,dancers barely having enough room to stand. The band is hitting their notes, ladies are dressed to kill, the audience rocks with the steady booming salsa rhythm and yell when a tune is done for another one just like it. Latin music has hot harmony, high note trumpet playing, fluid solos and tight, intricate, group ensembles.
When Ladies get dressed up to dance salsa, they light up the dance floor and have smiles that are contagious.
Tonight, this is a party to be at, especially if you are a little kid on the bandstand.
I thought, at first,the little boy on the band stand was the son of a band member but was told his parents have been bringing him to sing and be on the stage since he was three.
Watching the little boy sing with the band is worth the price of admission.
It never hurts to start any passion early, before you are told you can’t do it and you best find something more serious to do with your time and energy.
This rock, more than a stone but not a boulder, in Embudo Canyon in the Albuquerque foothills, has been moved onto the trail, by something other than wind, water or wishes.
It appears to have been lifted from a nearby mound of dirt. Where the rock used to be, on the mound, is a small hole that matches it’s size perfectly.
” Let’s move it back, ” Alex laughs.
If we move the rock back will some cosmic order be disturbed? Has moving rocks become against the law in an open space monitored by cameras and posted signs? Maybe the rock likes it here closer to the trail and doesn’t want to go back to where it was?
We keep walking quickly through this crime scene.
This situation has man’s dirty fingerprints all over it and I’m not putting things right.
Not wanting to get involved is a perfectly normal thing to do these days.
Eric, a retired Army Ranger, who patrolled streets of Iraq in full battle gear, has told me violence is a way of life and controlling or neutralizing it was once his mission as well as his livelihood.
When I talk with a man who has had to take another human life, regardless of reason, it makes me listen closer.
At Dion’s Pizza for lunch, the inscription on the man’s T shirt ,ahead of me in the order line, reads, simply, “ Deliverance of Controlled Violence. ”
I am at a loss to fully understand what this means? Is violence bad, or does it depend on what force is used to accomplish? If you use violence to subdue a violent person are you breaking the same law they are? Does this guy’s uniform legitimize his kind of violence? State violence- acceptable? Individual violence not acceptable?
I don’t know violence like Eric ,or this SWAT warrior, but I know about words.
You only need to get a few cattle to head for the barn to get the whole herd moving in the same direction.
Sweet talk and glorious words beat violence any day when you want to control, suppress, or channel human behavior.
The war for our minds is always being waged.
Recent Comments