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!

Ache

I watched one of my favorite movies again this weekend. Sweet and Lowdown is one of those movies that has a devoted little group of people who adore it, I think. It was noticed by critics (and garnered 11 Oscar nominations) . . . and it's about a ficticious jazz musician, Emmett Ray, and his mute girlfriend. All I know is when I first heard the music Emmett played (Django Reinhardt songs), my heart ached.

Now, I've grown up around jazz my whole entire life. It's the soundtrack to my life. My father has (no kidding) about 10,000 rare jazz records, in a Smithsoneon-quality collection. I have stacks (and stacks, and stacks) of old 72s all over my house that he's give me over the years. They are stashed on bookshelves and in closets. They are heavy (if you have never held a BOOK of 72s, then let me tell you, you can use them as weightlifting devices). I grew up around jazz, but I had never heard the gypsy guitarist Django Reinhardt until I saw the movie. And when I did . . . it was like the world stopped spinning.

This weekend, when the movie came on . . . damn if it didn't happen again. It's like someone squeezing my heart and making it ache in the most beautiful of ways. Like a sweet heartbreak. I now own hundreds of Reinhardt songs on my iPod, own CD collections and boxed sets, as well as LPs. I have his biography. I read about him voraciously. But when I hear him . . .

And I can't explain it. Past life? I don't know. For a woman to go her entire life and then hear something that fundamentally, on some cellular level, takes her someplace else? But I feel that way over certain paintings. And certain books. I curl up and the sentences just send me someplace heavenly.

I wonder, sometimes, if all people feel this way. If everyone has the songs or books or paintings that make them ache in some beautiful way.

So today . . . share. What is one thing of beauty that sends you someplace else? What's your ache?