Love is Simple: The Light of Dixieland Music

"Sweet dreams that leave all worries behind you, but in your dreams whatever they be, dream a little dream of me." lyrics by Gus Kahn

My favourite duet with Louis Armstrong is with vocalist Velma Middleton singing That's my Desire. I've been listening to this duet recording on cassette tape for years until I found a rare video performance tonight. These old Dixieland jazz standards bring the kind of simple grandeur as understood by the likes of master improviser and jazz pianist Keith Jarrett, who said, "The more experience someone has, the more their simplicity is profound." Their musical simplicity is spacious enough to offer the needful release of Southern jazz artists mixed up in the lowly roil of dominant American prejudice. Music is the teacher, and with the intuitive language of sound, speaks to all indiscriminately, "Love is simple."

_________

She plays an acoustic piano with a Chinese zither in the body. Virtuosic at the keys and the zither strings simultaneously, the stage ignites with the mysterious vibes of a Native World Jazz fusion. Other musicians bend traditional instrumentation with a creative harmony so seamless its enigmatic ingenuity fascinates infinitely. 

Nocturnal Serenade by Jan Steen

The lead musician, a full-bodied older woman, exudes a singular light as the stage dims and the concert hall empties. She stands in redolent awe and reverence for the magic of music. I gaze at the stage, as the musicians remain immobile. Their colourful clothing bespeaks contemporary First Nations traditions. The light outshines my eyes, as I stagger off with a mind unfulfilled by the enduring silence. 

__________

What must you do to stay and decide
When you decide what to do with your life
When you feel you are alive and not as good as dead inside,
A nothing where you hide…
Not just a nothing
Where you lie…
...

One day you realize you must die,
So how to prepare for death,
First step live,
Second fail life with a smile

To see as clearly as your de-fogged morning
Mirror of bright possibility with pure face,
That freedom is a tear
And Death is a gift from the bosom of life herself.

excerpts from "Live life and Die"

 

Reflection on "Last Night I Dreamed of Peace: The Diary of Dang Thuy Tram"

"Last Night I Dreamed of Peace: The Diary of Dang Thuy Tram" translated by Andrew X. Pham is necessary literature for every one who reads English. I read the first half of the book aloud to my wife, who was born in Saigon. After a series of waking with crying fits, she shied away from hearing the rest. Finally, I read the final half of the book to myself almost unceasingly.

The communicative brevity in Thuy's voice is indicative of her honesty, and her clear soul, of sonic vibrance in her words, imbued with such complicated emotion and sweeping literacy. With references to Soviet, French and Vietnamese literature, she affixes her personalized sentiment in historic immediacy as with the timeless genius of contemplative humanity. Her anger towards the imperialist aggressors, the Americans, is always buttressed by a stern will in defending the fight of her fellow brothers and sisters dying around her with the visceral intimacy that only a doctor would be able to elucidate with such clarity. You can almost feel her breath, and indeed, I was powerfully moved many times with a whole spectrum of emotions, as her intense character and youthful innocence enlightens even the bitterest soul with universal intention toward human grace.

Throughout the book, she calls on her dreams, both emergent in sleep and her daily life, and from those around her, pressing her on into the obscurity of the ruined jungles. Her dreams are shared dreams, and in that sense are a constant offering of refuge within, giving reason and stability to her tested mind, fulfilling her with inner community. As the book moves on through her astute witnessing, her dreams become increasingly present as she pours out her uninhibited thoughts with an awe-inspiring magic, reminiscent of the phenomenal dream world exhibited from her inmost reflections, as with the highest ideals of her united comrades.

I could praise this piece of literature on and on, by referring to its unprecedented impact on literacy in Vietnam, or the innumerable anecdotes which resonate with masterful purpose in the mind of the reader, as a daughter speaking to her parent with such loving presence, bridged only by the purity of the listening, however, I'll leave the rest to your own reading.

A family friend of mine is now making a feature documentary on the story behind the book called, "Finding Thuy" check it out, and remain aware of the dream legacy of undying peace from the Vietnamese heart of the world.

________

Off the plane, at the airport hotel in Vietnam, a troupe of American country musicians and a Malian music duet see the receptionist for their rooms. I sit on my luggage as my wife, in full regalia for a performance, shoots off through a glass doorway, unseen with the swift flap of her flowery dress.

After a bitter wait, she re-enters the lobby, sweaty as a marathon runner in mid-race. The performance is finished. My jaw drops as we board our flight, returning to Canada after the most instantaneous long-distance travel experience I have ever had.

And in our hometown, she lights a stage at a Chinese arts festival. Before her set, a glowing dance company exhibits the icy decadence of masterful classical costuming, their white-painted faces mirroring their paper fans. I eye the stage from afar, sitting with old friends. Then, she walks onstage, without her instrument. To the nervous curiosity of the organizers and select audience members, she begins to sing.

She is gorgeous, and stuns with an evocative elegance with the articulated genius of high emotion and well-trained harmonies. Her upper register fills the audience with recognition of the one mind, a fortuitous stretch into the harmony of collective being, as a sitting admiration of beauty.

Proud, I am ever separate, an eye afar, while with a heart imbued with hers between powerful lungs, emanating together, one voice of honest humanity. 

_______

Singing

"To hear singing in you dreams, betokens a cheerful spirit and happy companions. You are soon to have promising news from the absent." (iDream)

_______

yes, and woo over the sonorous
blush in the taste of her feminine blossoming
steaming with the cooled anger of Japan's cherry mind
in the sake spring of our zheng-doumbek interpretive madness
following the playful muses of a drunk and bold life,
granting wishes and boons to each other's heart homes
peaceful and sonorous
breast of ice silver purity.

- excerpt from "woo over the sonorous blush" 

Humanism, Fathered Through A Song of Love

"Laura and Petrarch" by some pre-raphaelite master (anonymous)

I saw angelic virtue on earth
and heavenly beauty on terrestrial soil,
so I am sad and joyful at the memory,
and what I see seems dream, shadows, smoke:

and I saw two lovely eyes that wept,
that made the sun a thousand times jealous:
and I heard words emerge among sighs
that made the mountains move, and halted rivers.

From Petrarch's Canzoniere (Source)

_______

The opaque black void of sky billows in from under the deep sable cloud, a rain stirs, as invisible paint on the windows, whipped off the brush of some invisible painter on an unseen canvas of glass, smoked in the storm-tossed night. Clarity emanates from the computer screen light, an email. The message: you’ve been selected, to read your poem, at this event, congratulations. 

The hotel seethes with the aftermath of meaning, a post-sex ward of incongruous freedom in the squared shell of our toxic, flown might, rubbing against the thigh and heel of the lover asleep in her violent convulsions of metaphysical dream. 

She, transported beyond the narrow night, answers to the inborn possibility, a warming light screaming from her mind with elegant force, enough to welcome me inside, forever flushed with intimate secrecy, at her waking touch. The morning, lifeless in the southern winter, breeds an inhumane scarcity. In the lobby, I meet the event organizers, poets themselves. They greet me shyly. 

Sitting in the amphitheater, encased under the waning spotlight seating, I ask an organizer, only minutes before the show if I can have musical accompaniment. She says of course, after which my wife readies to retrieve her instrument back in town. On stage, a beat boxing, spoken word all star thespian nomad streams in the conscious wisdom of the unprepared emotional night. 

With lofty trespasses, I clamber on backstage, wondering, and waiting, ever patient to hear myself, together with the delicate instrumentation of my wife and me sing in the language of spirit.

_______

Singing

"If you sing in your dream, this is a lucky omen representing happiness, harmony and joy. You are uplifting others with your positive attitude and cheerful disposition." (iDream)

_______

"in the lonely pain of the unanswered desire
to be youthful and free
and not burdened with need

...

in embracing beauty as a gift
shown open to all equally
breathtakingly always

undisguised before the rapt maw
scraping carelessly inside marrow's falling pressure
to meet thee, only mortality"

- excerpt "unspoken love's glare"