Through a Latin-Rock Haze

THROUGH A LATIN ROCK HAZE! Grupo Pagan gave a Latin/Rock clinic: driving rhythms, complex melodies, sweaty adrenaline, and earthy vibrations that plowed through the crowd at the Greenwood Winery on a perfect summer evening like a long-haul, fast freight thundering through the night! No! No! I mean like three god-damned diesels and a hundred forty-four ing fully loaded freight cars doing seventy miles per hour through the middle of your town, through the middle of your soul! Among the diners and dancers and the closest of friends, were two serious distractions, which, like merlot and dark chocolate, served as further proof that God really exists: Out on the dance floor, a full-bodied, middle-age woman with light brown skin, thick white hair, a long black dress, thin-soled flat black sandals, and very red lips; and sitting at my side, the silver-white moon that looked like my wife, a woman succeeding on the impossible journeys of looking better every year and somehow transforming more of me every moment, every day! There were volcanic eruptions in the back of my mind but through the syncopated throbbing of the Latin percussion, the screaming guitarist, the sexy lead singer, the seductive waa-waa of the keyboard and bass, and the provocative experience of the music of life, I said to myself: “Now settle down, Jack! These rhythmic vibrations stay with you for days: the white hair / black dress for a minute or an hour; but the orbiting moon, waxing and waning and the light of your night, the shadow of your days, and the whispering subtext of your spirit and soul, is a life-giving force and forever with you!”