Naima, by John Coltrane.
I’ve been working on this song for the better part of 25 years! I remember looking up the chords for the first time, in the dial-up years, in my New York apartment, learning the bits of it and trying to keep bringing it back from memory often. I put it on the list for this project early on, and doing But Not For Me a while back gave me a lot of confidence to just try it today. Full send.
I will not attempt to do my relationship with John Coltrane’s music justice here, but it should be enough to say that at times it has been religious for me. It has appeared in a film school project that I am particularly proud of (in that it was completed, and was, absolutely, entirely mine.) I’ve had the Blue Train poster on my bedroom wall, and the Love Supreme cover hung in offices. I’ve read and forgotten at least two Coltrane biographies, and I’ve bought reissues and remasters and probably, between CDs and vinyl and appearances on Miles and Monk records, own more of John Coltrane’s music than anyone else’s.
Naima in particular stands out in my mind as an unmatched piece of melody and complexity. Imagine the pressure, when you are Literally John Coltrane at arguably the peak of your powers, authoring what would become Giant Steps, writing a song for literally your wife. Who you would go on to split up with, and marry a piano player, who also played harp, named Alice, and I’m not sure there’s a matching number called “Alice,” because by then Coltrane was floating in outer space, musically, and honestly, Alice’s records for the next few years are better than the last couple years of Coltrane’s music, after A Love Supreme, at least.
Enough about Coltrane.
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It’s an instrumental, near the end, and the last day I woke up not knowing what I was going to play, and the first day in a long time I knew the number of the day without looking it up.