He’s here. On his birthday. Miles Davis plays, Just listen. You’ll hear. Like honey golden brass poetry. Trumpeting tones beyond the spectrum of human possibility. Caressing the night with his horn.
Today green leaves of summer heat settled into Chicago. Neighborhood streets blissfully empty and still. Festivals and baseball games melting on into the night. Miles Davis telling stories of aching tenderness and dizzying hope and sadness and rage.
With the first hot summer night in Chicago comes the predictions of how many children will be shot down and die. Scarce comfort in the fact that the number is steadily shrinking. While the Bully in Chief stokes the fires with the dog whistle racism burning in the corners where there is no music.
But then all at once, a middle aged couple walking down their street right behind the Trader Joe’s at the beginning of evening, a cop standing and scanning the crowd at Millennium Park in the center of the city, a youngster walking through Garfield Park on the west side and a smiling old couple from Bronzeville, remembering the time they saw Miles play Chicago; they all hear from an unseen radio, the street corner symphony of Miles Davis on the horn.
All of them hearing Miles play the horn.
As if the music had answers.
As if the music had hope,