Today - 14 February 2018 - is a day like few others. First of all it's the day I post my first blog here, a day that is therefore unique, one of its kind. Second, it's the day that Ash Wednesday and Valentine's Day fall on the same day. And it will not be before 2029 before that will happen again.
Today is a day that best starts with this: a very nice performance of My Funny Valentine by Chet Baker (the most beautiful version of this song there is - IMHO).
Chet Baker's instrumental version of My Funny Valentine is the perfect soundtrack for this Wednesday. After 4 days of carnival it's a painkiller for the head and ointment for the soul in one. Together with the bright blue sky on this sunny day, this gem from the American Songbook couldn't illustrate my mood better than it does in this version of Chet Baker.
From the upside-down world of carnival, new insights have ripen from old habits, and from what has been established by tradition, thoughts have bubbled up to reveal what have quietly waited for discovery all those years.
Together with the observation that I have my nose still in front - and in the hope that the day will pass by without me overlooking anything important - I feel the remnants of a well lived carnival vibrating on the inside of my skull. Together with the passed conversations at the bar, which carry along with them a past that is forgotten too soon, the trumpet lines of Chet daydream about the impossibility of an eternity. As a landscape captured in music and language, that reveals that everything, eventually, will be touched by time. It is a landscape in which the mind is free to wander and the heart is warmed up by everything that is worth remembering.