Who Does She Hope To Be?

Today I’m putting on “Who Does She Hope to Be” by Sonny Sharrock. This is music I grew up with cause of my brother’s influence. This to me is ultimate Record Store music. It comes on and you have to know everything about it. The song is mysterious, it’s collaborative and it doesn’t work like many jazz songs. The melody is short and it comes in frequently. It’s more like a bookend than a melody. It’s all legends on here with the leader perhaps being the least well-known. But Sonny is no joke and I hope you can enjoy this song.

I had a moment of pure simple joy last night climbing into bed. I ran trivia at the 331 Club and like so many Sundays in the last fifteen years that I’ve been doing that gig, I was ho-hum about doing it until I got there. But upon arrival I ran into a couple of friends and I put a funk playlist that I enjoy on to the speakers. The energy felt good and trivia was good. We are trying out the new app for Trivia Mafia and it is going well. It has been a tremendous uphill to get it going good and I give credit to Chuck Terhark from Trivia Mafia and the team from Code of the North for their work. After I ran trivia I spent a seemingly unimportant 5 minutes talking to a couple friends outside the bar. That included Benjamin from the 331 (bartender who also likes jazz, here’s one of his playlists). Mainly I talked to a woman whose name I don’t know who plays on a good team from 331 and I found out used to work at Gigi’s Cafe and now works at Pat’s Tap. She said she might make me a lb of the tuna salad from Gigi’s just as a gift which warmed my heart. She had a really warm energy about her (I know that sounds hippy dippy but I do mean it). She told me stop by Pat’s Tap and it had me realizing it’s been maybe a year plus since I’ve just gone into a bar to go into a bar, not to run trivia or do something else. The idea sounds incredibly intriguing to me. On the way home I listened to the podcast Ezra Klein did with the dude who will most likely be the next mayor of NYC, Eric Adams. He mainly talked about how becoming vegan helped him put his diabetes into remission cause he’s got a book on the topic. But he also talked about how to meet and fix problems at their root as opposed to just addressing the symptoms. By most accounts Eric Adams gathered a cross-section of NYC to support him at a time when a former cop who is firmly centrist on many points of view might not have locked the nomination. I enjoyed it.

The pure moment of joy was after getting home, doing my small set of night exercises, making the coffee for today and doing the littlest bit of cleaning. I climbed into bed and before I did my reading I thought about laying next to my spectacular wife, being about 15 feet from two daughters and being exactly 1/8 of an inch away from my punk ass dog Warren. I live in a home with the people I love, I do things I enjoy for work and magical things happen where I get to connect with heroes and interview them. I’ve gotten to interview Chuck D, Stone Gossard, Naughty by Nature, Michael Bland. I slept well last night and woke up with a good spirit.

Give this Sonny Sharrock album a try and see if it puts you in a good place too.