Feliz año, and best wishes for running into at least a few revelatory, unintentional encounters as this new year gets underway. Experientially edifying moments. Some people talk about experiences because they were fun. It makes them happy, and that’s good. But often unforeseen experiences change our lives, teaching us things that change us, sometimes in large ways, sometimes in small.
Immediately leaving for Los Angeles after high school, a move that everyone in my rural home town said was crazy, like-minded new friends and I seemed to find ourselves in surprising territory this time of year. Sometimes it was unfamiliar geographically, sometimes an eye-opening social zone, or a startling aesthetic and cultural territory. I’d come from the Great Plains, and these things dazzled me, even if I didn’t understand them immediately. Riding the rails and hitchhiking always led to discovery. So did surfing untried slices of ocean in country we didn’t know. There was a sumptuousness to these unforeseen, enlightening surprises. One Sunday, on my way down Hollywood Boulevard to the Pickwick Bookstore, which then opened in the late Sunday afternoon for evening business, I was drawn into a semi-open jazz emporium/lounge by the sound of a dazzlingly played jazz piano. There, the great Oscar Peterson, broad back to the rest of the room, was nodding as he ran experimental riffs. Two obvious regulars were at the bar, seeking answers in their drinks. The bartender stood alone shining glasses, watching Peterson. I asked what the massive black musician was drinking. When the barkeep had poured a drink and handed me my change, he said with an amused expression, “He might not want this from a stranger.” Luckily, Peterson was either thirsty, feeling generous, or simply amused by someone so callow and awestruck. He said, “Pull up a chair,” when he heard I was reared in ranch country and bought ancient pawn-shop records of Bix Biderbeck and other early geniuses – not out of clever knowledge, but pure luck and casual reading at magazine stands. Nothing prescient took me to that place that afternoon. Hollywood Boulevard was nearly empty, mostly silent, on Sunday afternoons in those days. It was dumb luck and nothing more that introduced me to that calm Canadian jazz genius. It was an incident that demanded nothing of me; it could have happened to any kid on his way to the Pickwick. But it placed me up close to the world of jazz and black musicians, things that changed my life.
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