Garth Hudson, last surviving original member of The Band, died today. I listen to this version of Americana, haloed by his legend. He will never know how I feel. I trust he felt his feelings when he needed to feel them; stooped over the keys, teaching the fellas how to make it clean, looking for the sound…
…that’s when he felt my gratitude…
…before I was born, in His Harvest…
…in the ride retired a legend in ‘79…
…he had done his work five years before I cried.
A legend dead now to me, a creator of sound eternal.
The organ, synthetic or not, is near and dear to my youth. Grandma Diane had some sort of organ. She never minded my meager attempts to produce a sound. She never struck my fingers. She quickly left teaching of the instrument behind and focused on control of the volume level.
But maybe one day in a dream I will convince Garth Hudson to watch Grandma play the keys. She would play something from what she believed, heart and soul, and so too in turn would he.
Myself? I imagine I would be too distracted with my own devices in such a dream that I would not know nothing but gorgeous notes cascading down the sunlight late on a spring day.
...everything dies, baby...
...that's a fact...
...memento mori...
