Beauty #10

One of the happiest moments of my adult life was when a friend took me to hear live jazz at the Bohemian Caverns. It was about a week before my birthday, I had flown into D.C. specifically to geek out on American History as a birthday present to myself. After arriving mid-morning I spent most of the day standing in front of The Gettysburg Address and Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address and wandering around various monuments and thinking about history. The evening was a total surprise--I had asked to be taken to do something I wouldn't find on my own. I didn't find out where we were going until we were there, and I barely had enough time to jump up and down before we were in and seated and listening to jazz.

I don't think I breathed the entire night. 

I love jazz. I love jazz like I love history and poetry and Doctor Who. My older brother introduced me to Thelonious Monk while I was in college and it was the start of one of the great aesthetic loves of my life. Throughout the years my brother has sent me Charles Mingus and John Coltrane albums. We've sipped Scotch and listened to free jazz.

My favorite jazz musician is Miles Davis. Undoubtedly. It's a little predictable, I know, but Miles is the one who reliably pulls at my heart, whose music I turn on after a long day or a bad day or when I'm just feeling kind of quiet and introspective. 

There was a great story on NPR about Miles Davis's concert at The New York Philharmonic in '64. If you haven't heard it, you should go take a listen. That concert resulted in two of my favorite jazz records of all time, and a version of "Stella by Starlight" that is unimaginably good. 

It's one of a very few jazz recordings that can do what the show at the Bohemian Caverns did. It makes me stop breathing, stop thinking, stop doing anything but listening to the music. Every time I hear it I can't help but think of that night in Bohemian Caverns--and revel (however briefly) in good music's ability to take you outside of yourself.