Whew, what a week.

On Monday someone in my circle’s sibling attempted suicide – it failed. A huge dose of sleeping pills and a lot of whiskey wound up eating all of Tuesday, but didn’t take the person out. So now the person is feeling even more a failure – failure at supporting their self, failure at meeting financial obligations, failure in love and building Relationships with a partner, and now failing at suicide too. I keep thinking that I’ve heard the same story before somewhere, but I can’t recall who was the prior attempter of self-exiting.

I got my drive back, and as soon as I can get someone here to help me plug it into a drive box I will survey what survived the drive crash. There is a possibility that some stuff might be on the disk, and I’ll be interested in what made it through the long dark night of the hard drive, a sort of data purgatory. I’m not hoping about any particular things, because I would prefer surprise at what survived instead of any disappointment for that which didn’t.

As I do each morning, I listen to an episode of Jazz in Words and Music. Today’s was interesting – Curt Elling’s jazz interpretations of music from the Brill Building (both major eras), an article on Miles Davis as a way-shower for writers (which I devoured, of course), and a Dave Duglas album. This third one was the most interesting; back in 2012 he released an album sprouting from the brass ensemble works he took from his mother’s recommendation and performed at her funeral after a three year fight with ovarian cancer. They’re all hymns. Dave Douglas left the Presbyterian Church when he was young and has felt no draw back to it, so he interpreted these pieces as folk music. I find this interesting, and I can get his point about those tunes. I enjoy his work, both as a modern player and also as a counter to Wynton, whose stuff seems too formalized and rigid – Wynton reminds me of people I played with at pub sessions back when I was exploring Irish folk music, and those folk players who thought of themselves as chroniclers and bastions against any coloration in their performance or anyone else’s (though I find the term offensive, they were called folk nazis in the community). Dave Douglas has been a clear voice that jazz played on the trumpet is a living thing and that it can grow and change – like what Miles did his entire life. This brings me back to the middle story in the episode – Writing like Miles played. I’ve heard an adage that sums it up well – say what needs saying, and no more. Miles did that, and it’s a powerful thing to remember and apply elsewhere.

I finished the book It Shines about the Ozark Mountain Daredevils. That was a crazy amount of drugs and alcohol. I now understand why a friend of mine was shocked when I mentioned I liked their song "Jackie Blue", because it's atypical for their stuff. And the book has lots of musician shenanigan's documented in its pages or seconds.