Rocco's here. Need I say more. Yes, I guess I do need to explain. Rocco, whom I refer to as "my Belgian" is an Art Pepper fan who has captured my heart by flying here on his own dime (the first time) and beginning the major chore of cataloguing my archives (cassettes, DATS and photos). He has returned for two weeks, this time my dime but his time, and Hugh has sacrificed his bedroom while Rocco finishes what he began. He's the one who "discovered" the Croydon material, and now he suggests that for the next release, if we can find enough material of decent audio quality, I put out some of Art's earliest comeback stuff. From '75, '76. When he was still playing things like Watermelon Man, etc. and the tunes he'd been playing at "casuals" he worked. I love the idea.
Meanwhile, I'm working away on the Memoir and even though it's still neither a celebrity memoir nor a literary memoir, I think its good and interesting, and I'm loving doing the work. And I'm even trying to persuade the folks at Berklee who've asked me to come and do something I'm not sure what, to let me read from the memoir and from Straight Life. I know they want to hear Straight Life. I'll force the memoir down their damned throats. Somewhere I saw a cartoon in which someone with a gun is holding a bunch of people hostage on a plane in mid-air. He also holds a sheaf of papers and he's saying, "Now, nobody is going to get hurt. I just want to read you a few of my poems." Do I bring a gun to Boston?
The other night listening to music I had one of those moments when I did KNOW that music was THE language in which God speaks to us. And the people who make it are angels or priests (no matter how awful they might be otherwise). And those who spend their time in the service of those people and of music are certainly something in the nature of, what? Deacons? At least we're sweeping the floor of the cathedral.