About 10 days ago or so, I woke up with "Mood Indigo" stuck in my head. I had a whole arrangement in there, but couldn't remember which version it was. I thought it was the version on Thelonious Monk's trio album of Duke Ellington tunes, but it wasn't. I thought it was Marc Ribot's version from his album Rootless Cosmopolitans, but it wasn't. After listening to a few more, I remembered that Otomo Yoshihide has a great solo version on one of my favorite albums of his, Guitar Solo, but that wasn't the arrangement I had in my head either. I worked it out and played it and decided it was my own.
It didn't stop though. "Mood Indigo" followed me around for days. After listening to so many different takes on the song and playing it incessantly on guitar, it really got lodged in my brain. I started dreaming about it more - I can remember two consecutive mornings where I woke up thinking of the song.
I told Dan Blacksberg about this. He told me the same thing was happening to him, that he'd be listening to different versions of the song and had been practicing different arrangements of it. He sent me this incredible version:
The obvious answer would be that the two of us heard it somewhere while we were together, but we couldn't think of any time it could have happened. I can't even recall having head "Mood Indigo" for such a long time! We don't really know what to make of this.
I gave into whatever cosmic force is pushing this song into my consciousness and I've been playing it more. I've come up with a couple of different solo versions and so has Dan. On December 8, we're going to open our concert with a duo version of "Mood Indigo." It seems to be the only thing that makes sense.
Today I listened to Oliver Sacks' interview on Fresh Air from a few days ago. In the interview, he discussed his new book, Hallucinations, and talked about various types of hallucinations and his own experience with them. At the end of the interview, after Terry signed off, there was "Mood Indigo."
