Beltane\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Waning Flower Moon<\/p>\n
Hilton Head Island, S.C.<\/p>\n
Kate and I went out to the Jazz Corner tonight.\u00a0 We listened to the Earl Williams Blues Band.\u00a0 They were excellent musicians.\u00a0 Earl played New Orleans most of his life and his patter, his stage presence made us laugh, drew us into his songs.<\/p>\n
He happened to meet Kate and me at the door.\u00a0 He introduced himself, “I’ll be playing the music tonight.”\u00a0 I asked him what he played and he gave a list of instruments not all of which I recognized.\u00a0 I knew the saxophone(s), the harmonica, but the occa and others I had not heard.<\/p>\n
Near the end of the first set Earl turned to Kate and me, said, “I’d like to dedicate this next song to Katie and Charlie Ellis.\u00a0 From Minnesota.\u00a0 They drove all day just to be here tonight!”\u00a0 He then gave a credible imitation of Louis Armstrong singing his It’s a Wonderful World.<\/p>\n
We had table for two against the wall, the furthest toward the front.\u00a0 At one point, engrossed in the music, following it with my heart, a realization popped into mind.<\/p>\n
We were in a setting very similar to Max Beckman’s Blind Man’s Buff.\u00a0 In that tryptych, which hangs in the Minneapolis Institute of Art, the center panel has a band playing in a cabaret setting.\u00a0 The side panels have cabaret patrons in various enigmatic poses.<\/p>\n
Beckman said the band in the center are the gods playing.\u00a0 I imagine them playing the world into existence.\u00a0 We sat off to one side, in one of the panels.\u00a0 In that situation the other panel would have people far across the room from us.\u00a0 We listened to the same music, sat in the same cafe, but we could not communicate.<\/p>\n
The world at the end of World War II had many people in the same cafe, listening to the same music and unable to communicate.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Beltane\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Waning Flower Moon Hilton Head Island, S.C. Kate and I went out to the Jazz Corner tonight.\u00a0 We listened to the Earl Williams Blues Band.\u00a0 They were excellent musicians.\u00a0 Earl played New Orleans most of his life and his patter, his stage presence made us laugh, drew us into his songs. He happened to … Continue reading It’s A Beautiful World<\/span>