Zen Music Momnent - VooDoo Child

VooDoo Chile ‘09

Driving back to the house from the grocery store. I had just pickled up grocery stuff for the state track meet. It had been a long long day at the end of a hectic week.
Reservations at hotels and places to eat for the track team while we stayed for 3 days in the Oklahoma City area. Tired. Exhausted. Traffic was moving slow with everyone just off work and pushing to get back home to comfort of Cable TV and the 6 o’clock news.

My IPOD was on shuffle and the unseasonable heat beat through the windshield into my face and hands. It was at that moment, deep breath and sigh of resignation, that I heard the first quiet Wah-wah pedal sounds of Jimi Hendrix’s “VooDoo Child.”
Those soft waca-waca sounds turned into the sledgehammer power chords just after my hand, in anticipation, turned the volume high enough to vibrate the little Nissan I sat in, waiting for a green light.

“Well, I stand up next to a mountain
And I chop it down with the edge of my hand”

IT is a song that demands that you play air guitar! As Jimi wails both on guitar and vocals, the urgent solo weaving in and out of the repeated power chords, my ahnds at first thumping in time, then my right dropping to my chest to strum in poor imitation of Jimi’s Voodoo cry.
I lift my voice singing…


“If I dont meet you no more in this world then uh
Ill meet ya on the next one
And dont be late
Dont be late”

Unaware now, and uncaring, if the people sitting hot and impatient in the next cars see the idiot patting his hand in time, playing one handed air guitar, face twisted in rock and roll wail. The car becomes my stage. Jimi is my muse. The tired feeling sloughs from me like skin from a snake. I am energized again. My car moves, as the light turns green, maybe a bit too fast along the mile or so to our house. It is hard to keep Jimi Hendrix at 35 miles per hour.

Refreshed, I think, “I’ll see you in the next life, Jimi.” Why???
“cause Im a voodoo child voodoo child
Lord knows I’m a voodoo child”