at the jazz festival tonight. i was seated next to this very friendly woman who kept finding famous chicago musicians scattered around the audience, entire branches, sub-branches and sub-sub branches of families from all over the south side of chicago. somehow she was related to all of them. i could tell she was really happy to be there. She gave me a very conversational survey of the history of  jazz, much of which I knew already but i didn’t interrupt her because I could tell she was taking such joy in telling me how this or that came to be, whom began whom, starting from Scott Joplin up to the guys she recognized in the audience.

The concert began with this really amazing group of musicians and the woman was astonished to see that a few whom she thought were dead, were nowhere near dead. Not even close And the one she was absolutely certain was dead, was the highlight of the show. his music was otherworldly but i think he was still inhabiting his earthly form.

Still it’s always nice when people when you run into people who used to be dead, but no longer are. this was particularly re-assuring since I learned earlier that day that I have skin cancer. It’s hopefully harmless and treatable, but there’s something about that C-word that gets to you in surprising ways.