The moon on their wings

Alice Coltrane died on Friday. (Ignore the fact that the article interchanges Hinduism and Vedantism, although maybe I'm wrong in thinking they are two separate things.)

I was turned on to Alice Coltrane the same time I also got turned onto Cecil Taylor, and by the same source -- the music geeks upstairs at Borders where I worked in college. I was in the "books" section but I would go visit them, because of course, it was all the cool folks there. I mean this saracastically and earnestly. (Oh isht, I just realized while writing this saltjam is going to know exactly who I'm talking about.) So anyway, it was some Saturday and Brett was laughing because he'd just driven some customer away by playing "crazy jazz" and I asked who it was and went home to look it up. Sunday mornings soon became a popular time to play the Priceless Jazz collection of Alice Coltrane. We had a lack of good promo CDs that could be played during working hours, and this was on the shortlist. I have a copy of this CD but I don't think I swiped it from the promo bin, I think I bought later.

I don't 'get' all her music. I mostly just listen to three main albums: Journey to Satchidananda, Ptah the El-Daoud, and A Monastic Trio. I have a few others, but they're super out there. But I'm not opposed to wrestling with hard music and so someday I might come upon them and figure it out. Or maybe not. But I always loved reading her interviews and articles on her life and liked knowing she was still out there and I'm sad she's gone from this time and space that I'm currently inhabiting too.