There was a time in my life when I would come home from work and put this album on, then sit around and wait for someone to come home. I did it everyday for a few years and it never got old, always exciting as if it was the first time; a blind date. Eventually, like most everything else, I came home and put the same music on but knew that she wasn't coming home ever again. I knew of this Gershwin tune for some time but never heard it in earnest until one night at The Big Four in San Francisco, it was raining, it was midnight, and she was perfect; for some reason the Gods decided to give me something I would never forget both in the music and in her.
That was over five years ago and if it was fifty it would still be something I will never forget for the rest of my life. It doesn't belittle any relationships I've had since then, nor the one I have now. What it does mean is that there are points in one's life which are almost perfect until music completes them perfectly. And if you think back about all those nights in your life of which you will never forget it isn't the main attraction that is remembered. It is the tilt of a head, the crook of the mouth, the arch of a back and the hands in yours; the texture, dampness and fragility so unlike anything you've ever know.
Keith Jarrett's music personified retains such magnificent traits. He began with Art Blakey and Miles Davis until he found his own chops and walked out into the world in full. Since then his music has been both focused and intense as well as sporadic and rambling. He is a terrible performer, he'll cease playing for any disruption, walk off the stage if the piano falls out of tune and refuse to record if the setting is not perfect. But when one possesses such skill they cannot be faulted for their idiosyncrasies, like an old Italian sports car and fiery women you put up with all the bullshit for just as taste of their perfection, overjoyed to be in their light and prescience.
I have never heard anyone so conscious of each and every note, without just one flat this song would lose its appeal, take out Keith's moaning, ever so audible in the background and it would lose all its soul. Whether or not you know the words to this ballad is of no consequence, you need not have them committed to memory. But what you can commit to memory are those casual glances, tilts of the heads and arching of backs because every one of them is what you live for, the smells of the street after the rain, and how she looked at you when it was all over.
The other night I had such an experience, one which overwrote all those that came before it, erasing that night in San Francisco and leaving its own scar in my mind. Whatever becomes of that night, if one day I put the music on without her or in her presence is the nature of humanity. Thankfully such humans have the ability to record its musical parallels for posterity and when such memories fade I will always have this song in its clarity on vinyl to joggle my mind of such beautiful events.
