One day years ago, when my youngest daughter was still small and wide-eyed, we were driving through the sunlit pine trees of Dover, Massachusetts. Strapped into the back seat, she heard Debussy's Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun on the radio. With the windows open and the summer light filtering through the cedars, she took it all in with the enviable, unburdened tenderness that allows children to feel things so completely ...
"Mama, look ... the music matches the day!" And I could feel the best part of my brain locking that moment away like some profoundly precious 10-second film.
My commute now is shorter and less picturesque. For some weird reason, I've begun snapping pictures, randomly, out my window, while driving. I'm really not sure what I'm after, but I have noticed that combined with some random radio tune-ins, there have been some interesting matches.
Cecil Taylor's wildly unpredictable pianism, for example, with its high-velocity clusters and sudden lyricisms soaked my commute yesterday. I was in love that day with the teasing that he did -- the tune and harmonic changes buried under a barrage of mood-swings. Yet they were still there, those initial structures. I turned to my right and snapped a random shot that now seems to mirror the Taylor effect.
Another day, after a wind-swept storm of snow that left not a single, tiny twig untouched, I drove down Commonwealth Avenue under a bright blue sky. I opened my window at a stop sign and snapped. I think there was no music this time, but seeing the photo now, I wish I could say I'd been up to my seatbelt in Bach ...
