Driving
over the Brooklyn Bridge.
Wonderful feeling. No
matter where you live for how long, home is home. The way the concrete looks, the Caribbean-speed
Spanish on the gypsy cab radio, the color of the street signs, ineffable
familiarity here, there with every turn.
This morning I heard a sound. It wasn’t a North American blue jay's caw nor the sound of an
ambulance, but it was an undeniable New York City sound. My sister lives in Brooklyn right below
the Smith and 9th St. stop for the F & G Trains, which run overhead, all night long. But
this morning around 5:00AM I heard a much slower, heavier sound. A train designed for track maintenance,
I presume, slowly lumbered along.
And 30 years ago when you were down in the subway at 4:00AM having seen
music all night, reluctantly making your way back up to Grand Central to catch the
first train home these same cars would crawl by, disappointing you. I didn’t see the train this morning, but I heard it
and I felt it. Whatever its
purpose it wasn’t to take passengers around:
Arriving in Manhattan now. Thinking about a book I have in my bathroom at home from
around 1914 or so that captures the city in photography. As I recall it was my sister who found
it somewhere in the Czech Republic.
Many of those buildings are still here, like the city government
building to the right. I wish I
liked this new Freedom Tower but it looks as bad as it sounds. That’s OK. There are plenty of other buildings to look at.
Coming from a brief overnight in Los Angeles. There is,
simply no comparison to be made.
One is a commanding, vast suburban sprawl. The other a city.
I was fascinated there in Venice beach by a lonesome brick building that
may have been from the twenties.
And there, over there, is another building worth considering. There is another part of town with a
number of buildings worth considering.
How can we talk about that in the same breath as what’s laid out before
me this morning. 离乡背井[1] you learn discernment.
Now we’re on the FDR heading north under the Manhattan
Bridge. Up ahead my old friend the
Williamsburg Bridge. I lived right
beside it on Pitt St. for six years or so. And I’d come out running to the East River Park over here on
my right now. Even if it’s just a first-day’s flash,
even if it’s a mirage that doesn’t really exit, even if the Manhattan I knew
isn’t here anymore and all the artists have moved elsewhere and the music
venues don’t exist and the only people who can afford to move in are those
parking ill-gotten-gains . . . Even if the Freedom Tower looks insipid, and
sounds even worse, I do not care this morning. This is the best city and it still feels like the center of
it all to me.
Now I’m not sure what any of the thousands of people I knew
here, are up to today. All the
students I taught, all the colleagues I worked with, and the friends and
friends of friends who were all part of that familiar fabric that’s now down to
the threads of pure, immediate family.
They’re were pre email, and pre social media, pre ubiquity and so,
instead, I just imagine a vague, latent familiarity.
One man who, according to Wiki is still alive, is someone I
had the pleasure of meeting with a few times here in Manhattan. I suppose if I were allowing for some
poetic license, I could say we were colleagues for a bit there, me and Junior
Mance. He was the featured pianist
on the Terrace at the Village Gate back in 1989 and I was a waiter for a summer there at the Gate with a friend who waited there for quite a bit
longer. And I recall Junior
Mance saying that practiced for hours and hours a day to be able to continue
playing at the level he expected of himself.
Always stately as he is now, on this 1964 track, "Diane" from
the album “Straight Ahead,” I can remember how his commanding playing would
counter balance his quiet, friendly, demeanor. I’ve thought, as years went on of all the countless things I
could have asked him. What was it
like to work with Bird, Diz, Satchmo and a dozen other luminaries I’ve featured
on this page? He was Dinah’s
pianist for years. There had to be
a folder full of "the best Dinah Washington” stories alone to meander
through, learning about the tradition, from someone who helped write it.
I looked and he doesn’t appear to be playing this evening, but
more importantly he will be playing next month in Bryant Park. Which means at 85 years of age or so
Junior Mance is still playing jazz piano, and presumably still practicing every
day. Driving up the FDR
Drive, approaching the 59th Street Bridge, I offer a salute to you
then Mr. Mance. Keep playing hard, as long as you can.
[1] líxiāngbèijǐng: to live far from home (idiom) / away
from one's native place / to leave for a foreign land
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