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| "Spirit Tree" Photo: Angela M. Counts |
I took this photograph of a tree in the Boston Public Garden for my girlfriend who is a painter. It was for my girlfriend but like most things, there was an underlying motivation waiting to be revealed. I took the picture of her, the spirit-tree, but she only longed to have me sit a while, to not rush off. She waited patiently while I investigated her with camera, trying futilely to capture her majesty, her ancient story.
She reminded me that we first met in 1991 when for the first time I made a trip to Boston with a fellow intern from the Ford Foundation. We travelled by car from New York City to visit my friend’s Boston cousins and for her family to give me a guided tour of the city. One of our stops was the Boston Public Garden. I remember crossing the Lagoon Bridge, and being the fun-loving young woman that I was, I pretended to climb the bridge and feigned jumping off, while my friend took my picture.
I imagine myself in light blue, high-waisted jeans (the fashion of the time!), big glasses, and a somewhat stylish flattop. I am young in age and definitely in spirit. I know my spirit-tree saw me then and she smiled. But I only noticed her for the first time on a starry New Year’s Eve in 2008. I had recently taken up amateur photography and the visual world had come alive looking through the lens of a camera. In one of the coldest New Year Eve’s on record I ventured out into the public garden and took her picture. She was decked out in snow-lace, and illuminated by colored fireworks. She posed for me again and again, delighted that I noticed her after all of these years.
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| Mary Lou Williams Photo: By Permission of Gottleib, William, P (1917-), Photographer |
J...Jazz @ Union
Since the 1960s, the story goes, historic Union United Methodist Church in Boston has been producing jazz shows. Longtime members talk of remembering the time that the great Duke Ellington played in the chapel. I can imagine the Duke decked out in white tails and top-hat, playing to a grateful and jubilant audience. These days the jazz concert at Union has been revived by music producer and freelance writer, T. Brooks Shepard, and renamed Jazz @ Union. Most recently the series has honored jazz legend Mary Lou Williams, by presenting concerts that feature one of her jazz compositions, Mass for Peace. I had the honor of writing a poem to commemorate her at the 2010 concert. The following is an excerpt, and the full-length poem can be read at my blog, Creative Living, Creative Writing.
Excerpt from "Tribute to Mary Lou" by Angela Counts © 2010 Commissioned for Jazz @ Union's Women in Jazz - "A Tribute to Mary Lou Williams's Jazz Mass for Peace" ~ United Methodist Church - South End, Boston - February 7, 2010
Her feet tapping the pedal, fingers knowing just when
Feeling the movement and the beat
Always one step ahead of ecstatic feet
This music she knew, from those old slave spirituals to blues
This music she knew, from slave ship to broken shore
From a dream deferred to expressions of evermore
Of freedom, neither black nor white
Jazz from this soil, jazz that changed the world
That’s right, and how couldn’t you adore what she could do with it
These are the days, we remember
The timber and sway, of the music,
Mary Lou’s Mass for Peace
