Go Outside, Nerd
Dorothy Ashby—Soul Vibrations (1968 / Soul Jazz)
Hello internet pals of music. Today we’re welcoming rain in the Pacific Northwest with the unsung Detroit jazz harpist pioneer.
My very first girlfriend had her own apartment when she was still in high school. We met as she was finishing, I had only recently graduated. It was weird, but it also wasn’t—we were only about 6 months apart in age. Her parents were renting it for her because they had chosen to move out of town and she didn’t want to have to relocate schools. They struck a deal.
In her apartment was a harp.
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Who has a harp?
She played it for me once upon me asking, but otherwise it acted as a rack for various clothes.
Occasionally, I’d stay behind in the morning while she’d go off to school. I never felt relaxed alone there, because one morning her parents had shown up with about 15 minutes warning. It was a terribly awkward way to meet, and they never warmed up to me even after a year and change.
The harp was so intriguing. But intimidating. It took me forever to finally pluck it’s strings, and by that point in our relationship she was living in a new apartment with a friend who was one of those horse-girls, and insisted on pronouncing it “alu-minium” even though she’d grown up in Central-Ass Texas, in order that she could remind everyone that her parents were British. One time she got very frustrated because I was staying there all the time, and she became so upset arguing about it that she snorted and stamped her feet, exactly like a horse. My girlfriend and I just backed out of the room, bumping into her boyfriend who was over about as often as I was.
And so it was one morning while I was alone with no girlfriend, no horse-girl and no horse-girl’s boyfriend, that I finally dragged my hands across its bow. It was an amazing sound, even if it was slightly out of tune. It felt so good to bring it to life, this clothes rack that had been essentially silent this whole existence of our relationship but always present.
Could there be a metaphor buried in this story? Doubtful. We weren’t even in our 20s, there’s nothing too deep in your relationships at that age.
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