Song of the Second Winter

I've been told if you can make it through your second winter in the San Juan Islands, you're well on your way to making a go of it here. Last week, halfway through my second winter on the island, my Windows Internet Explorer not responding, and after a full week of non-stop rain (I thought this was the banana belt of the Northwest), I started to lose hope of making it to Spring.

Then I got a little lift. From out of nowhere, Windows Internet Explorer started responding again, and Pandora, hidden away behind my word document, started playing Grover Washington Jr.'s arrangement of Take Five, written by Paul Desmond, and originally, and most famously, recorded by jazz pianist Dave Brubeck. 

When I was a little girl, my father listened to Dave Brubeck, or as one of my dad's minister friends liked to call it, "that nightclub music George likes". I've been listening to modern jazz ever since. I wonder how many times I've heard Take Five since then. It still cheers me up. I inherited from my dad a taste for jazz. As a teenager, when no one but me was home, I'd put The Dave Brubeck Quartet on the console and dance all around the house. 

My dad instilled in me a love of jazz and Dave Brubeck. But it was my brother-in-law who introduced me to Latin jazz. Cal Tjader, Stan Getz, Antonio Carlos Jobim, Ivan Lins. Later it would be Grover Washington Jr., Bob James, Dave Grusin, The Crusaders. While my friends were listening to Rock 'n Roll, I was being carried away by modern jazz, cool jazz, smooth jazz, or a Latin beat. 

I've always marched, or rather danced, to a different drummer. The closest I got to being a fan of hard core Rock and Roll was Carlos Santana. I loved Sergio Mendes, Herb Alpert, The Fifth Dimension, Spyro Gyra and Manhattan Transfer. Later I fell in love with synthesized jazz. My favorite was and still is Chip Davis' Mannheim Steamroller. 

Cool jazz instrumentals, vocal harmonies, romantic Latin jazz, fast tempo or slow, this type of music is my idea of the best kind of music. Although idea isn't the right word. Jazz, especially Latin jazz is music of the heart and soul, not of the mind. Maybe that's the saving grace for people like me who spend so much time in our heads. 

These days it's The Rippingtons. This is the kind of music you can dance around the house in your underwear to. I find myself listening to it more and more. When my grief addled brain can't hold a thought. When my once sharp wit and humor abandon me. When my memory fails. Those are signs it's time to put on the old favorites and dance. 

One time a man I know asked me, "What is it about women? Why does music make them want to wiggle?" He had other questions about women I couldn't answer either. But I don't think it's just women who like to dance. 

Three of my favorite movie scenes of all time are Tom Cruise dancing in Risky Business, Kevin Kline's trying not to dance scene from In and Out, and Hugh Grant dancing at Number Ten Downing Street in Love Actually. 

Whether they like to dance or not, most men I know have favorite music. Jim's favorite was Led Zeppelin. He'd been going through his old LPs just before he died. I'd given him a portable turntable to play them on and he was enjoying himself. Then he died, and when the second winter after Jim's death came around, feeling the need to get away, I was hanging out in Austin Texas. 

Through a friend of Jim's, I'd met a man, and he was showing me a part of the country I'd never seen. Austin, known for it's music. The highlight of that winter was listening to live jazz on 6th Street, having a Bailey's Irish Cream over ice with a group of friends I didn't know existed before Jim's death had pulled the rug out from under me. 

One of the friends I met in Austin gifted me with a very large collection of Mannheim Steamroller to play on my laptop while I was holed up watching the Food Network, working on my writing skills, knitting about a thousand dish cloths, and otherwise goofing around in Austin. The song of that second winter was a tune by Mannheim Steamroller called Chocolate Coffee.

I was far from the blue state, tree hugging, moss between your toes Northwest I was used to, and far away from everything that reminded me of Jim. At the end of that second winter I came back from Austin to Portland, having had a lot of fun, and having healed a lot of grief. 

That trip to Austin was the beginning of much subsequent "getting out of town", that eventually landed me in the San Juan Islands. Along the way, a lot of other music that suits me has been gifted to me by helpful music lovers. 

Now here I am, five years past Austin, in this place, a place that in my former life I had only in my dreams imagined myself winding up, having a different kind of second winter. Like other periods of transition in my life, from time to time since I moved here, I've been second winter frustrated. Like when my computer acts up, I get too many indecipherable insurance papers in the mail in a week, or it seems like it's been raining forever. 

That's when I need a little tonic music of the heart and soul. Sometimes I forget about music as tonic. And sometimes that's okay, like last week when Pandora took over and changed my frustration to happiness with a blast from the past in the very best way, Take Five, song of the second winter.

To listen to what Dave Brubeck's playing now, go to www.davebrubeck.com

© M.E. Rollins