Soaring

Spent several days in New Haven; an ecstatic, nourishing trip for intellect, heart, and soul.
C was a brilliant star as he carried all of us through words and music into the spiritual world of John Coltrane. Along with good conversations with new friends, we soaked ourselves in African and Asian art; in Hopper, Turner, Pollack. And in the British Museum of Art, we sat in a quiet room of rare manuscripts and viewed original pages of William Blake’s Jerusalem.

When we arrived at New York the first day and flew over the harbor at sunset, sun rays burst through the clouds, highlighting swaths of the city, Lady Liberty, the Manhattan skyline. Frederic Church clouds of pinks, mauves, soft blues, lavenders. And as we traveled north to New Haven, an unusual orange globe of a moon rose into the night. Nature’s improvisations welcoming us, granting us good omen for this journey.

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I’ve found you’ve got to look back at the old things and see them in a new light.
– John Coltrane

No bird soars too high, if he soars with his own wings.
-- William Blake

All a musician can do is to get closer to the sources of nature, and so feel that he is in communion with the natural laws.
-- John Coltrane

I myself do nothing. The Holy Spirit accomplishes all through me.
-- William Blake