Reason Enough: Rabo De Nube

When you get a bit older you know who you are, for better or worse. At a certain point there's little use in setting about trying to change. I know that I'm not someone for whom life comes especially easily. And I can't even say, all aspirations or pretensions toward enlightenment notwithstanding, that I always love life itself. I'm not great at simply being, not like, say, a meditation master or my cat. No, but what I do love, unequivocally and with great passion, are the finest manifestations of life, which are innumerable, and when you stop to think about it, are so improbably beautiful as to be miraculous. Put another way, when I listen to something like this -- a performance of Silvio Rodriguez's "Rabo De Nube," featuring a ravishing arrangement by the great Carla Bley -- I know why I was born, and for a few moments anyway, feel completely and utterly at ease and at home. A yogi might say this need in me is nothing but a high end addiction. Perhaps. But it's who I am, and it's what I've got.

UPDATE: 12-23-2018
A few weeks ago I did a post about Keith Richards' song "Slipping Away," including a tribute to my favorite five seconds from the song, in this case featuring a bass interjection setting up a single jazz-like chord from Keith's guitar. I explained that I had been listening to that song over and over in large part because I wanted to hear that chord. Of course, you're not going to isolate that moment and hit repeat, because the power of it only makes sense in the overall context of the song. In "Rabo De Nube," my favorite small passage occurs when the lead trumpet steps forward at 1:35 and continues on for a few seconds, riding the cresting orchestra. Totally worth the price of admission right there. I might easily have chosen the French Horn entrance at 0:41, but, hey, life is about making tough choices, is it not?