The Two Zeros: The Best Album of 2008 - Of All The Things

"It feels good to have that kindred soul." - Jazzanova, Let Me Show Ya

Jazzanova's Of All The Things was a late entry to my 2008 collection and that seems appropriate. 2008 was all about big changes in the last part of the year. Much like the single most significant event of those 365 days, as soon as I was in it, I knew it was right.

Not just right, practically perfect. Of All The Things wound it's way around my heart with the first notes of Look What You're Doing to Me and hasn't let up since. While Zero 7's Simple Things (and other releases throughout the decade) always filled me with hope and possibility, representing my dreams and longings about love and life and the person I wanted to be, Of All The Things connects with me about what is.

Since Labor Day weekend of 2008, what is and what has been is she + me. José James sings out on Little Bird, "Of all the things I found in life, no moment's better than this. Of all the things I've ever known, nothing prepared me for your kiss."

Pause.

No, seriously, pause. Just writing that requires me to take a moment and reflect. I have spent most of this decade unlucky in love and yet, here I am, feeling nothing but warmth and passion about this woman. The moment she stepped off the plane, I knew it was right. I didn't believe it. Hell, we spent that first night watching ferrets on PBS and not touching. I could barely look at her. I thought direct eye contact might reveal cracks in the facade. That if I showed her the real me, she'd see the frailty of my heart. The uncertainty beneath my smile. That if I dared to face her, it would all turn out to be a wonderful but cruel dream.

I got over it.

We've repeated that initial moment, meeting at terminal five at LAX here, or the main concourse of Hartsfield there (and elsewhere across this country) as often as we can since then and each time I'm filled with some emotion that is conveyed by Jazzanova's latest release. Whether I'm waiting at the base of that escalator swaying back and forth wondering if she knows I'm planning to keep rockin' her eternally or on those days, which are too often, when we aren't in the same city and Phonte rhymes about how it's so hard to be alone, so hard to be so far from home. You see, while I may be sitting in this place that I pay rent on, I know that home is where ever she is.

Dial a cliché. Melle and I had this heated conversation about this album at Vermont about a month after I'd had it. She wanted innovative. I argued it was inspired. There's no denying that this is a straight ahead soul recording. There are no flights of fancy or deep exploration into the outer reaches of nu-jazz or whatever's hot in smoky European clubs these days. What it is is honest. And earnest. Sometimes the soul just wants to celebrate life and love in terms we know and understand. Everything's complicated but sometimes there's a simple truth -- love is.

Of all the things I thought I'd learn about life at the dawn of the 21st century, I never expected this.