Old Friends, or: Bill Clinton, C’est Moi
It used to be said about Bill Clinton that if he was in a room with 300 people, 299 of whom adored him, he could be found in a corner trying to win over the one who didn’t. Lord knows I ain’t Bill Clinton, but I sometimes think I practice an analogous folly. I chase down books I haven’t read, records I haven’t heard, films I haven’t seen as if hunting terrorists, to what ultimate purpose it occasionally occurs to me to wonder. I know that the point is the journey, etc., and anyway I’m not likely to stop anytime soon, but surely one benefit of all this culture-vulture stuff — if not the central purpose — is to take pleasure from time to time in the body of work you’ve already gotten to know, to visit, you might say, with old friends.
That point was brought home to me on Saturday morning, as I painted while listening to — sorry to mention it again — my iPod. I was thumbing through lists of artists and songs, trying to decide which vocalist’s stylings to explore this time, when I came across an old instrumental-jazz favorite of mine, Ben Webster’s twenty-minute version of “In a Mellowtone.” I listened to it, and then I listened to another, the fifteen-minute 1952 version of “What Is This Thing Called Love?” with Charlie Parker and other greats, which, in my humble judgment, may be the finest jazz performance ever captured on record. Don’t worry, I’m not going to describe it. (For one thing, I already have, in one of the four pieces under “Essays” on this blog.) The point is that it was wonderful to check in with these “friends” I know so well. And it even helped motivate me in the painting I was doing, almost as if Bird, Ben, and the boys were blowing to cheer me on. That painting will not hang next to a Matisse, but I felt I was giving it my best. What else can we do? And that’s one thing about old, good friends: they spot what’s best in you, and inspire you to bring it out.
