250 Albums- An Arbitrary Rumble Through My Record Collection # 137 John Coltrane - A Love Supreme

 

I put   A Love Supreme on yesterday on a whim. It was the first time I'd played it for a long time. When I was considering whether to listen to it or not as you do when deciding whether or not to, Jazz classic  or go for Velvet Underground or Gang of Four or some other hipster manouvere.  A thought occured. 'Would I actuallly enjoy it. Was I in the right mood.'

I shouldn't have worried. It was a foolish thought, Because like all great records A Love Supreme dictates the mood. I'm listening to it again now and we're clicking into the mantra towards the end of the first side; 'a love supreme, a love supreme, a love supreme...... ' You know how it goes. 

When I was at university I bought this. I played it a lot in my last year. My fifth year in total . My university story was prolonged and complex. I won't bug you with specifics and anguish here. I'm not angling for sympathy.

Anyway to cut to the chase I used to sit in a snug flat in a univesrity residence listening to A Love Supreme and smoking cigarettes and thinking about a woman who was the first real love of my life and had now headed off tp Italy and was probably sleeping with other men I decided. Mainly because she told me she was. I didn't know it but it was the beginning of a long and painful emotional river of experience for both of us. Hey we meant a lot to each other. These things cannot be measured or contained in words or paragraphs. We're alive in order to experience such emotions.

Eventually the river reached the sea twelve years on when she wrote to me to say she was getting married. Yes, I do mean to someone elae not me. Listening to A Love Supreme is the best way I know to write about this particular emotional event fir me. I'm not in pain anymore. Meanwhile A Love Supreme is the river that will never run dry, A glorious and eternally rewarding experience..