Making Beautiful Music

My favorite musician of all time is Django Reinhardt. I own, I believe, everything he ever recorded that is on CD. I also own LPs. And now my daddy (jazz obsessed) told me he found some rare air checks on CD that he is bringing me--bootleg stuff.

And sometimes, listening to Django, I get almost depressed that I will never, ever, ever make music like that. I will never do anything like that ever. I can pick at my guitar from now until I drop dead, and it's just never, ever gonna happen. He was one of a kind.

And every once in a while, I like to put the LPs on my old Philco and listen to them, unpurified, hissing, the way people might have listened to them right when the LPs were pressed.

And every winter when my dad comes to stay with me, we go on these Django kicks, and we'll listen to 400 songs in a row until my mother threatens to kill us both with her knitting needles. And the neat thing about Django recordings? They were sometimes just recorded in these little Parisian cafes, and you will hear him, his Gypsy accent, talking to his bandmates in the background, in French.

And every time, my dad will say something like, "Can you imagine living in Paris then? And walking into this cafe and hearing him? Being there THIS night?"

And the thing is, I can.

And for that? I am grateful. As a writer I can do that. I can get lost and think it and believe it and write it even. I can make up whole worlds for a living. Even my current work-in-progress, which is a world that doesn't exist yet. Or my Magickeepers world, which also doesn't exist.

But for me, it does. And hopefully for my readers it does. And that, I guess, is a little like making beautiful music.

Thoughts? Have a happy Monday!