Billie, Rain, A French Vineyard

It is raining softly here in Bordeax, France. You can hardly tell if it is raining or just a trick of your imagination. All of the workers are inside now and playing cards. Someone pulled out a Billie Holiday Cd and put it on quietly as background music. Her rich voice fills the front room. I can hear the whispers of the workers as they play gin. They are being quiet partly because they think I am sleeping in the back bedroom here, but it is also partly because they respect Billie so much, they don't want to disturb her singing.

Billie to me conveys the meaning of a soul. You can feel pain in every single note she sings. Her voice is liquid dripping off of every word and running lazily into your ear. She warms and chills you at the same time. You want to bask in her sun and pull a sweater around your shoulders to keep out her chill. The bass plucks your heart strings with its ecentric simplicity. An alto picks up on her loneliness and lets out a long loud wail as if crying with her.

You feel as if you are walking in to the nightclub where they are playing a small stage. The trumpet player stands stage right, the bass player always in the back, and the saxophone player is stage left. Billie is in front in all her crowning glory. She stands there swaying her hips slightly, rocking in time to the music, really feeling it. Her eyes are closed to the nightclub and her heart is open to the words. She doesn't hear her own voice as being her own, but rather the voice of the person who wrote the lyrics. In singing she becomes Juliet, Jane Eyre, Guinevere, or any other tragic heroine pining for her love throughout time. Truly, she feels she is telling their story. And also, a little bit of her own.

The Cd is almost finished now and the card game is winding down. It is dark outside, almost eleven at night. Outside the proped open window, you can hear the wind blowing through the vineyard beyond the house. A sweet smell of grapes and wine hits your nostrils and you feel very electric. As if anything you touched could start one fire like being hit by lightning. Billie is reminding us that it is summertime and the living should be easy.

And tonight my friends, it really is. If only for tonight.

Keep the jazz alive,
Mischalina.

Click here to listen to Billie Holiday sing Mandy Is Two