5 things about yesterday

Great kite weather we're having.

Wayne Shorter, The Soothsayer
Joe Henderson, Page One
Chet Baker, The Italian Sessions
Art Blakey, Roots & Herbs
Charles Mingus, Blues & Roots
Eddie "Jockjaw" Davis, Trane Whistle

1. Media: in this week's 225 blog, another mention about Jeanne Leiby's passing, the new Gorillaz album, and the roots rock offerings in town next week.
2. Yesterday was pretty "linky" for me between the Steely Dan thing and Jeanne. A number of fond memories about Jeanne are coming in on the comments. It all leaves me a little off balance. I don't really have that fierce a dog in the Steely Dan hunt, but it is fun to kick the ideas around and in the kicking, bigger things are occasionally unearthed. Jeanne and I weren't close on a personal level, yet my interactions with her on a writerly/professional level had the kind of kineticism that you can lose when things are too personal. She was really good at that quick inspiration and I like to think I'm good at that too and so we had a mutual admiration society with that as its charter.
3. Death has a way of making everything else around it seem flimsy and stupid, but I suppose it's those flimsy, stupid things like talking about bands and all that give life its poignancy and the blow of death comes from that sudden vacuum. The lightness is for a moment sucked out of the situation and heaviness naturally assumes its momentary place. Unemotional, nonspiritual Law of Thermodynamics business at play.
4. For instance: it was heartwarming to see people post well wishes on her Facebook wall as if she was still alive - and in a grand virtual sense, is still alive. Words have their own way of living and I suppose that's why we are compelled to say something in the face of events.
5. But then there was a thud to see a posting from Jeanne yesterday about the Michigan governor. Facebook has no break between this plane and the next, nor is there protocol for throwing things across the breach as there is in real life (and death), and I like that lack of protocol. They say the Internet fractures us, distances us from our social selves, and maybe it does, but it also bolsters us against the natural hesitancies we have around the Void, allowing emptiness to sit naturally next to the visceral, like they are old friends, like that "it's all 1's and 0's" cliche about digital things I hate but am now employing, just because I have to say something.