Some Jazz and 4 words can make your New York day worthy

New York, Saturday September 18, 2010.

Can I start this post talking about how tricky it is that someone else, not you, be the one who chooses when you have to do something but you don’t know, you’re uncertain when exactly that call will come? Evil, and I’m not kidding, it’s the most appropriate word that’d describe the situation you’re placed in when you are left with no clues of the time such call is coming... But it’s much worse if it is a self inflicted wound, if you Fernando and not other are the only one responsible in a certain way for having created such a scenario.

I didn’t know how powerful that context could be until I read the post Sophie wrote last week. Do you remember it? Let’s refresh your memory reading here. If you are a person respectful of the commitments you've made you don’t take lightly those you’ve agreed upon before and more if the other person has done her part of the deal. Had Sophie decided to send the ‘sign’ at 3:00 or 4:00 AM in NY time it’d had been perfectly valid and I’d had waken up to start my post for that day describing what I was doing at that precise moment I was receiving the message.

Thank god Sophie didn’t do that last Saturday but anyway, it really bothered me the whole week. Can you just imagine how powerful an idea is! Ideas are expressed or translated into words but there must be something hidden, something more profound that is beneath their surface and connect our beings in such ways that our lives could be shaken or turned upside down (or the opposite hopefully) as a result of the meanings implicit in them. I couldn’t help but start thinking how important it is the choosing of our words, the importance of them to express our world, our feelings and the way we experience it or perhaps change both if that were the case, just for altering the dynamic (some physics here) how we present them...

Let me say that I had decided not to do anything until I got a message from Sophie (that doesn't count as cheating) because I was sort of paralyzed and I couldn’t make up my mind of what I should be doing. But then I thought the best that I could do, maybe, would be to make plans that I’d develop as soon as I receive the ‘signal’. Well, actually I took a shower and put some clothes on to be ready and execute what later I could come up with.

At 3:09 local time I don't know if I have said it out loud (no, no, of course I didn’t): my moleskine!, my moleskine: where is my moleskine? Because I just received the SMS from Sophie...Ah, finally!!! And the message caught me lying on the couch with my notebook on my lap minutes after watching an amazing performance live via Internet thanks to Medici.tv (you have to register but it's worth the effort) and the Vienna Philharmonic with Gustavo Dudamel conducting the last appearance of the summer in the Lucerne Festival.

You see the power of words! Only four in this case ("now is the time") and suddenly everything had been cleared all of a sudden. All the paralysis, the black clouds dissipated like the works of a magician. What a devastating effect (good in this case) words have! It was time then to make a strong black coffee because probably I was going to need it later on.

Two things I had in mind: the Neue Galerie exhibition of Franz Xaver Messerschmidt and finally going to see Cyrille Aimée at the Cupping Room in Soho.
That exhibition of Mr Messerschmidt looked very promising (I love to read faces or expressions) and I immediately directed myself towards that location. But the gods not always work in our favor and I got late..., I thought it would be open until 9, and also took the train and didn’t stop where I was supposed to.

  

Nevertheless Cafe Sabarsky is right next to the Neue Galerie as part of the complex and I know how to entertain myself and convert such errors in calculation to my advantage... In cafe Sabarsky they honor their Austrian and German heritage. You can never go wrong with Classical music, more coffee and a very surprising and more than delicious glass of hot spiced Red Wine unsweetened. On the side an orange slice with cloves.

                                                                                                              
It was very tempting to stay more time at the Cafe. That wine was superb and all the items in the menu that were offered; dishes and appetizers not to be neglected. I resisted though all my urges; I know I’m not Dorian Gray nor Oscar Wilde, and another Cafe was waiting.

                                                                  

So, I decided to go ahead with my original plans and headed to see instead what became the real treat of the night: Cyrille Aimée.

                                                                  

And let me tell you she’s great, Jazz is great and all the Bordeaux I took there were worth all the money I paid for ...and while listening her velvet voice (Ella F. would envy her) and the effect the instruments, the battery, the guitar, the trumpet play in us I had some hypnotic trance going... Hey, what a strange thing the rhythm of the music that transport us to realms where time has no existence!