What is Jazz? Man, if you gotta ask you'll never know - Louis Armstrong

While this blog is about food, health and well being are also at the center of my thoughts. So today, I am writing about the one thing that nurtures my soul in the most powerful way, music.

Ahhh, Jazz.... that driving, pulsating force behind Jack Kerouac's journeys, that sophisticated melody that wrapped itself around Woody Allen films, When Harry Met Sally, and all things vintage New York. It is a refreshing gentility in an often base world.

Again, I recall my childhood. My Aunt Pat, working on her master’s degree in the city, would scoop my sister and I away for weekend trysts. Her apartment was always awash with sunlight and refinement. Upholstered sofas, rows and rows of books, hallways lined with art. We would walk the brownstone lined streets on Saturday morning and peruse the outdoor vendors selling used books, paintings, and handmade jewelry. I was at once in love with it all, and in awe of the beautiful black woman who guided me through it. My Aunt Pat's world helped me to understand the word eclecticism, and whether she knows it or not, I modeled myself after her. I strove for a sense of knowing, knowing the unfamiliar world around me, knowing the things that frightened me, knowing the things that challenged me. 

And so today, as Coltrane's notes flutter about the air, their melodies and connotations seeping into the nooks and crannies of my soul, I wish for what I always dreamed as a child: That my home and my life be as rich, and layered as they were in Patricia White's magical apartment.