Did y'all know that Bryan Ferry, Jeanie Buss, Serena Williams, and Gigi Hancock all share the same birthday? It's true! I knew about the first three, but that last one, Gigi, was a bit of a September 26th surprise.
Herbie Hancock's wife Gigi was serenaded by the man himself and their 7-month-old grandson, Dru, from the stage of the Hollywood Bowl on Sunday night, and I'll be goddamned if I didn't cry my eyes out at the sight and sound of it.
Now, it wasn't merely this moment of tender familial appreciation from a husband of 50+ years to his devoted and tolerant wife that made me cry, though knowing the depths of their story together, through his tail-chasing days in the 1970s to his literal crack addiction in 1999 (of all years!), certainly made the moment all the more poignant. Gigi and Herbie's love transcended the kind of darkness at which we mere mortals can only gawk, and hearing his vocoder warble "happy birthday" as baby hands mashed the keyboard, triggering a spiral of space sounds, felt divine.
Thing is, it was also my birthday.
There, in section M1 of the Hollywood Bowl surrounded by Los Angeles loved ones, watching one of the coolest people in the history of the world grace that iconic stage with his signature effortless charisma and musical virtuosity, I felt overwhelmed by what I can only describe as The Love Beyond.
The Love Beyond, as I am clumsily categorizing it, combines the commitment of the daimoku with the ecstasy of romance with the thrill of the unknowable with the appreciation that none of this can last though it simultaneously will never die. The warmth of friendship and the esoterism of The Holy Mountain... the flutter of the spirit in spite of the body's constraints. As we passed around red velvet mini-cupcakes and assorted other celebratory sweet indigestiants, warm wind and the Bowl's hallmark star-cross'd light beams embraced us in a moment suspended outside of time (ironic as it may be, for such a specific calendar date).
Herbie has a remarkable way of conjuring this extraterrestrial love from the ether, as evinced by his myriad works of musical brilliance. My particular favorite is, of course, 1980's "Textures" from his 30th album, Mr. Hands. He is the lone musician on the recording, working a loom of synthesizers to weave what one could and I will argue is the unrivaled anthem of chill. It's the unofficial/official theme song for my radio program, and I can't think of a single song I would rather hear during any given moment of my day-to-day life. So curious with "possibilities", it circles and spirals and sings out while staying just where it should be in its moment. His vocoder cushions the final few choruses, not as a human voice but as part of the grand music machine he'd strung together to work this magic into being.
In discussing Herbie's natural supernatural abilities, we would be remiss to so casually gloss over the daimoku, the Lotus Sutra, the rhythmic connection to the immortal beyond accessible by repeating "nam-myoho-renge-kyo" and feeling the hop-skip dance of your tongue through your mouth as your breath cycles it through. A foundational tenant of Nichiren Buddhism, the Lotus Sutra pervades a specific Los Angeles enclave of musicians that includes Herbie, Wayne Shorter, Bennie Maupin (dude's got the sutra printed on his business card bigger than his own name!), and famously, Tina Turner. She's said to have turned to the practice of chanting the sutra to escape the clutches of her abusive relationship, and rehabilitated at Wayne and Ana Maria Shorter's home in the process.
Herbie's reliance on the sutra is referenced time and time again in his autobio, from his heavy 80s touring days to his early 2000s drug rehabilitation that led him to an Album of the Year Grammy Award in 2007 (for his Joni Mitchell covers record, of all things! And featuring guitarist Lionel Loueke, who graced the stage with him on Sunday!). Herbie brought the sutra to all of us through his writings and interviews, but he also managed to work it into my life via an unexpected channel (as only he can).
While I would never claim to be a proper Nichiren Buddhist (or any kind of properly religious person), I have turned to the sutra to recenter myself in times of chaotic disorientation. In the week that followed my dad's heart attack, I steered myself out of the skid of panic by reconnecting to the lotus riddim. On the drive home following the worst DJ gig of my life, I locked into the sutra for the entire stretch of the 10 between Santa Monica and the 110 interchange. Though I laughed at the joke when Absolutely Fabulous roasted the chanters of the 90s trying to tap into its force like a spiritual ATM, I derived great physical and mental value from repeating the sutra as fast as I could, as rhythmically as possible, blowing past the 108 recommended repetitions and locking into a union of mind, body, and soul, sustainable only briefly but perfectly balanced within.
Digging through the resin-coated brain archives I sloppily keep, I'm able to recover the precise memory of the first time I heard and felt the power of the sutra harnessed and unleashed by those dedicated to it. Outside the hallowed walls of the temple, and instead carved into grooves of wax, the lotus sutra came into my life via Jon Lucien's "Creole Lady" off 1975's Songs for My Lady. Lucien, Wayne Shorter's baritoned Caribbean brother-in-law (and father of the Delila Lucien who died in the TWA 800 crash alongside her aunt, Ana Maria Shorter), featured Herbie Hancock's glowing liner notes on the back sleeve of the record, leading me to purchase it in the first place one dusty 2012 afternoon. Herbie is credited quietly on the sleeve (and nowhere online), but as the lusty melody of "Creole Lady" disintegrates, around it rises a choir of chanting that includes his and Wayne's voices. The speed at which the sutra is cycled is breakneck, rendering it almost unrecognizable, yet demonstrating the mastery with which Lucien, Shorter, and Hancock practice it.
And so it was with "Creole Lady" that I kicked off my birthday episode of Rare Air. The episode aired that afternoon, September 26, 2021, and featured cuts from the records in my personal collection graced by Herbie. The majority of the selections are downtempo joints from his repertoire, including the pleading ballad "Trust Me" (which, framed within the context of his five-decade marriage, seems to have worked), the sultry "Butterfly" from Thrust, and the satisfyingly climactic "Vein Melter" from his Head Hunting days (sexy fact: he admitted in his book that the "head hunters" were after that same kinda head we all are). I chose to bookend the set with Lucien, he who Herbie dubbed "the man with the golden throat", rounding out the show with Hancock's iconic "Maiden Voyage".
This episode, a gift to myself on my 37th birthday and recorded in the hours before I hit the road for the Bowl show, is up now in the dublab archives, and cements in time and space that whiff of The Love Beyond I was able to catch for a sublime moment... there at the Bowl, in the arms of my loved ones and the only city that will forever be home, holding a feeling of all possibilities realized.
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