The more we want things to change, the more they stay the same.

No matter how many times I listen to the Asylum St Spankers sing Summertime on Itunes, it won't bring back those first times on 6th St, the Hole in the Wall, and points downtown.

It won't bring back catching Guy's slide and handing it back to him. It won't beat hot sweaty wandering evenings looking for a place for them to play, or tense times at the Kizmet...

It won't replace the long dark time in my personal blues, sitting at that table in the corner, lost in the music and my own personal mysteries, joined only by a good friend or two.

It won't resuscitate Austin for me. It will only make me miss what I remember, more. I'm not past times of rich personal development, but I'm past THOSE times. There was a kind of new and desperate purity both in the music and in my own life, with a deep background note of pain and loneliness that I had accepted as my own motif.

"Until that day,
ain't nothin can harm you... "

Well, I'm lucky. I've never been harmed.

But the hurt of change, of growing older, watching things I found so precious fade away, watching everyone around me growing older, this is my new background note.

I'm out of the bubble of youth now. I'm dealing with my own aging in my own body, and supporting the aging of the battered soldier by my side. My profession being bodywork, I have received some of the best repairs on the planet, and can do pretty much any damn thing I please, far more than I could even 15 years ago (I am closer to 40 than not). My mate is spared many small hurts, and is better prepared for the big ones (his upcoming hip replacement).

I'm insanely lucky, though not in any really visible way.
These times, like the times I had in Austin, slinking alongside the blues, will someday be another set of glory days for me. I stand in this very soft place now, where I am in a kind of awe about how a strange, small fish can become interesting in a small enough bowl.

The jazz show we saw tonight just made me miss Austin all the worse. I knew the faces on stage, knew the relatives, talked the talk. But it was just too calm, too poised. The cops weren't coming, there was nothing at stake.
In a way, it was more relaxing. In a way...

It just wasn't the same.

So I'll let Guy Forsyth and Christina Marr's crystal clear, exquisite version of Gershwin's "Summertime" wind down, let it go and go to bed.