When I listen to John Coltrane, I can hear my Grandmother washing dishes while talking to the next door neighbor through the kitchen window. I hear rain pop-lockin' on a yellow 3rd grade raincoat on the corner of Broadway and Lindero. I hear my father, a few drinks in, dirty work boots still on, rustling through his change pocket to bestow upon me a handful of quarters for the pinball machine down at the laundromat. And I hear my cousin snappin' her fingers to George Benson.
Coltrane's music sounds like a picnic accompanied by a ride cymbal. It hits me in the dreamlike spaces where haunted pools of memory accumulate. It's the soundtrack to the picture books of my childhood that I keep in my head. The things I still want to remember.
Sometimes, life is a long beautiful melodic line and sometimes you drop a fork in a quiet restaurant and everyone stares.. But it's all there: the magic of the Universe, the ghosts that dance in the alleyways of fuzzy childhood memory, the hope I keep like a secret love note gathering dust in my pocket, and the conversations I still have with my Grandmother, long gone, but somehow echoing through every note.
I hear it all in those records. Very few things come close.
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