Late Blues

John Lee Hooker and Santana, both so distinctive. John Lee may have the greatest voice of all time, and Carlos sure do play a mean guitar. I'd gotten up to pee and it was quite cool outside, below seventy for the first time in a week but darker than a coal mine. Quiet, except for the hooting of an owl. Anytime after midnight I often turn on the radio, usually just for a minute, to hear what's being played, but when it's John Lee and Carlos I get a wee dram and roll a cigaret. I met Santana one time, when they were playing a concert in Boston, on a stage where we were rehearsing La Traviata. The usual fuck-up of scheduling, we had a Thursday dress rehearsal, they played Friday, and we opened Saturday. We couldn't take our set apart, so they just set-up in the middle of it and used our lighting, the best in the world, Gilbert Hemsley, and it went off rather well, the set actually enhanced the sound, and I went to the party afterwards which was amazingly boring because everyone was so tired. I never met John Lee, but I did spend some time in Delta road houses. Garish purple cinder-block buildings with no windows. Scary, unless you're with a guy that played tackle for Ole Miss. Stainless steel hit the market in 1914, and this was a big deal. Silver oxidizes, so you end up scrubbing it away to nothing, stainless steel, with 14% chromium, holds up much better. My Dad always used carbon steel knives, which took a good edge, but lost it quickly, so much sharpening; a butcher knife became a filleting knife in just a few years, ended life as an oyster knife, with no edge at all. They stained with anything, but citrus was the worst. Lime juice becomes aniline dye. I still use some carbon steel knives, I enjoy the process of sharpening them, but my current and best knife is very hard stainless, which is difficult to sharpen but holds an edge for a long time. Also, it's easy to clean. It's a miracle metal, stainless, and it has a thousand applications. Ball bearings and the like. The acoustic qualities of the night are varied and interesting. There's an owl at the tree-line, working the clearing around the house. The hoots seem to linger. The owl's song is like Miles playing solo in the dark. Listening closely it's not quite solo, there's a rhythm, very light, under the horn: the bug section. This goes on for a long time, a concert for one; I'm sipping a smoky single-malt, considering a recording of this sound-scape, Owl Plays Miles, and how it would have a guaranteed sale of 100 copies, to all those birders who enjoy Miles Davis. Suddenly the performance ends, an angel flies through the room, it falls completely silent. Then a sound series I've never heard before in which the owl kills a small rodent, rips it apart and eats it. This is noisier than you might think and makes for a great radio show. The Death Of A Vole. This holiday snuck up on me, I lost a week to Macfarlane, an entire week buried in dictionaries, before I realized I needed to put on the brakes and at least look around. Winter is always around the corner.