Last night I was leaving the gym after an especially tiring workout. My legs felt like rubber and I just didn’t feel like going down into the hot subway right away – so I caught an uptown M104 and [...]]]> Musicians in the subway are pretty common. I see them every day. Some are impressive, some not.

Last night I was leaving the gym after an especially tiring workout. My legs felt like rubber and I just didn’t feel like going down into the hot subway right away – so I caught an uptown M104 and rode it cross town and up to Columbus Circle where I caught the A train.

As I descended down to the platform, I heard singing. I thought it was a woman singing tunes by The Temptations. Often singers and performers will sing or play to backing tracks blasting from boom boxes or battery powered amps. They nearly always sing through a microphone of some sort. I usually listen for a minute and go through my usually critiques: Are they in tune and singing in the right key? Do they know the song? Is there anything different or unusual about their style?

There was something that captured my interest last night. As I looked across the platform to the other side I scanned the Friday night crowd to catch a glimpse. I couldn’t seem to find her – although I did seem to locate the direction of the sound in the large underground echo chamber that is the station at Columbus Circle.

As I looked closer I saw an old man sitting on the wooden benches, mouth moving in time to the music and I realized he was the source of the music. He completely blended in with the crowd. He sat in the bench spread legged with his hands on his knees and sang the tunes with the the background tracks.

He sang the tunes spot on and then riffed around the melody. When the tracks stopped he kept singing. He’d go right into the next song when it started. He had no microphone – so the vocal was all him. Just that old man sitting on the bench completely filling that huge underground space with the the power of his voice and his love of the music.

My train came and I left. My parting thought was how utterly natural he was. Genuine. No hype. No glitter. No effects.

Just an old man sitting on a bench doing what he was born to do.

We got talking about our lives and it turned out she had been a dancer many years before. While she [...]]]> There was a physical therapist I met a few years ago when I was in the hospital. She was a very nice older middle-aged woman and we got along well from the start.

We got talking about our lives and it turned out she had been a dancer many years before. While she loved dancing, there were other things she wanted and wasn’t finding in her life. The lifestyle didn’t suit her and she moved into her current line of work helping folks like me learn to move our own bodies in better ways.

The thing I remember best about our brief acquaintance was a conversation that started out with a question I get asked frequently. It is an innocent question—but one filled with deeply rooted emotion for me.

The simple question was if I go out to ‘hear jazz’ anymore. My response, as always, was that I don’t play much saxophone these days, that I favor the piano, and that no – not really – I don’t go out to hear music much.

People’s’ response to my answer is usually one of surprise—or maybe a little embarrassment when they realize that I left a music career behind in a tactical decision—and perhaps that seemingly insignificant small talk of an ice breaker is just the opposite; and leaves me feeling defensive, nostalgic, and even a bit regretful all at the same time.

My friend the therapist surprised me. I went through my usual mental contortions of saying ‘no’ and trying to make this answer sound reasonable in such a way that most people would take my answer at face value and forget it. To my shock; she said something a kin to feeling the same way as I—having been a performer and left it behind, how difficult it was to go and see other people perform.

This might seem shallow at first – but imagine a relationship with something (or someone) that is so deep that your every breath is taken for it. All your dreams revolve around it. Everything you are, every friend you have, everywhere you’ve been, every victory and defeat – all involve this relationship. One day the relationship ends. You change. Your perceptions change. Your needs change. For one of a million reasons you just have to leave.

I sometimes look back on those years with a heavy heart – and though I know why I made the decisions I made – I don’t need to relive my twenties on a regular basis. In fact, it is painful to do so.

I still derive great pleasure from music. I bought a piano. I play it often. I’m constantly trying to work out new things to play. My listening tastes have expanded into new areas. The music is still in me. There is still a saxophone inside my head that gets played – so much so that on the rare occasions I do pick the instrument up, it is all still under my fingers. But this is all very private for me now.

There was a deep sense of belonging to something back then. This need to belong went way back to my earliest roots as a player in my teens. Maybe it is that camaraderie and the being ‘one of us-ness’ I miss. Maybe I feel like an outsider,  just a patron, on the other side of the curtain with no back stage pass.  It isn’t ‘us’ anymore and I cant say ‘I’m with the band’

I had a moment today on the fourth beat of the 28th bar of Tito Puente’s’ Oye Como Va.

So far I’m going on many words to express the singular special-ness of this one beat.

It [...]]]> On the worst of days I will find a moment and live there—in a precious place unto itself neither present nor past.

I had a moment today on the fourth beat of the 28th bar of Tito Puente’s’ Oye Como Va.

So far I’m going on many words to express the singular special-ness of this one beat.

It is no secret I like music, all kinds, and I spent the day at my desk listening to a mixture of Bach, Bird, Mozart and Bill Frisell. On my way home, to Washington Heights, I hungered for el sabor latino.

I recently downloaded the Anglo-Saxon Salsa for Dummies collection from iTunes – everything from cheesy 90’s’ synth pop dance numbers, to classic clave (clah-vay) tappin’ – drop everything else – this is the best time I ever had being human – and when can I book my next flight to San Juan, kind of music.

I queued up my salsa playlist and first up was Mr. Puente and crew from the Mambo Birdlandalbum. Everyone has heard Oye ComoVa a hundred times or more. Santana covered it. Its in the drug store, market, elevator, la bodega, everywhere. Its a simple cha-cha really, and the words roughly translate to “Listen to my rhythm girl, it is good for partying”

The moment for me lies in the last bar of that 28 bar intro. There’s a pause, a guttural “HOO!”, and then the fattest horn hit ever, “BAP!”

You feel that horn hit coming, you know it is inevitable but somehow it’s different when it arrives. It lands heavy on the beat like a fat man sitting down to eat lunch.

After the intro’s repetitive on the beat/off the beat riff, the click-click cha-cha squarely on the beat, and the riffing flute: those horns squash that last beat of the intro soundly in place.

I can live in a moment like that. My rhythm is ready for a party.

HOO!