Saturday, November 14, 2015

[Your selection here.]

Fresca posted a link to a video clip that begins with a few seconds of a pianist playing John Lennon’s “Imagine” outside the Bataclan Theatre. I watched, and I lost it. (And I don’t even much like “Imagine.”) And then I remembered the words Sonny Rollins spoke to an audience on September 15, 2001:

“Yes, ladies and gentlemen, we are here tonight, and we must remember that music is the — one of the beautiful things of life. So we have to try to keep the music alive some kind of way. And maybe music can help. I don’t know, but we have to try something these days, right?”

Without a Song: The 9/11 Concert (Milestone Records, 2005).
And then I remembered that the one thing I have found helpful in times of tragedy is music. Maybe music can help.

[The post title is no mistake. It’s meant as a suggestion to seek out something helpful. I’m listening to Miles Davis, Anita O’Day, and Steve Lacy, who for many years made his home in Paris.]

comments: 5

Fresca said...

Thank you for this amazing quote. I have sent it to many people too.

Michael Leddy said...

And thanks to Sonny Rollins. :)

Michael Leddy said...

Rollins, by the way, was in his apartment in lower Manhattan on September 11. He saw the second tower fall.

Frex said...

Wow.

Michael Leddy said...

It’s quite a story (in the liner notes for the CD). He was evacuated by the National Guard the next day. His wife encouraged him to not cancel the concert, in Boston.