In shuffle mode Alice Coltrane's I Want To See You comes on whilst I'm in the back yard looking at the pale half moon hanging in the clear blue twilight sky...mmm...the way she strokes the eighty-eights, fingers running from one end to the other...notes blossoming as abundantly and beautifully as the flowers in the garden right now...
'I want to see who?' I wonder...Jesus? Only because of The Stones' going gospel on I Just Want To See His Face from Exile On Main Street...no, perhaps the face of her recently departed husband, John...and I try to imagine their domestic life together during the two years they shared...but can't because they surely existed on an ethereal plane, shimmering like holy visions themselves...not bickering in a supermarket aisle over which biscuits to buy...or...
"John, when's the last time you cleaned the toilet?"
"Er..."
"Exactly, so go do it, please."
Alice was a devotee of the Indian guru Sathya Sai Baba. Whether you're a 'spiritual' type or not, as with all great religious music, including her husband's A Love Supreme, we non-believers benefit from the artist's faith when it inspires such amazing sounds. And Alice Coltrane's music carries more conviction than decadent white boys dallying in church music...
