Max Roach (Sunday, February 12, 2006)

I had a wonderful dream last night, perhaps one of the very best dreams I've ever had. I dreamt that in the mail, Max Roach, renown jazz drummer, a legend among legends, sent my mom a HUGE package. Now, Max Roach isn't dead, but has been out of the public for some time now due to Alzheimer’s, but more importantly than that, my mom doesn't know Max Roach, so I don't know why I would ever dream that they did. Many of you know that I have been drumming for the past year and a half and have been very interested in drums. So perhaps having come home from a night of playing the skins I had drums on the brain.
Anyhow, this stuff isn't even important. Here's what is, inside the huge refrigerator-sized box there was a very thick book and a BEAUTIFUL stand-up bass. I opened the book and inside was this poem that Max had written to my mom about what a wonderful person she was and how fond he was of her as a sort of daughter figure. And it was written by using torn out pages of story books and lyrics from songs and he had inserted these "quotes" into the stream of his poem/letter to my mom. It was such a sweet letter, very fatherly. Maybe I secretly wish I was the bastard son of a Bop drummer instead of the legitimate son of a jazz guitarist. Ha.
So, after the letter in the book, I'm turning pages and the pages are very thick so that you could cut out a shape in them and place an object in them. And Max had given my mom all these very beautiful gentlemen's pieces like this really handsome pair of glasses, a set of monocles for the right and left eyes, a men's smoking pipe, etc., men's trinkets and such. I can't remember but they were high quality gentlemen's accessories and they were old. Just the type of thing to grab my attention.
Then I took hold of the bass, (which I don't play but would like to someday) and felt a little overwhelmed by it. But later, some of my hip-hop and soul friends came over like Common, Lauryn Hill, Mos Def, flava flav and some other cats and they were chillin in this really nice room that had all this Max Roach stuff in it. And they were all playing me some of their cuts and as we're listening I pull out the bass and start to listen and emulate the bass lines. And all get very impressed and can't believe how quickly I picked it up. It felt good cause I've always thought bass would be an easy instrument for me to pick up. It was a great dream and it kinda smeared into another one about Bob Clark going bankrupt from buying all this Egyptian cotton bedding and giving it to me and our friends; comforters, top sheets, etc. We all felt bad that he had gone bankrupt, we sure slept well.