I was scrolling through Instagram this morning when a short advertisement stopped me in my tracks.

Not because I was interested in the product. Quite the opposite.

For a moment I felt as though José Saramago had quietly reached over my shoulder and whispered, “There it is.”

I have read The Cave several times, and each reading leaves me with the same admiration—not only for Saramago’s imagination but for his affection for ordinary Portuguese people. His potter, his family, his neighbors are industrious, stubborn, practical souls. They live by work, by patience, and by the old sayings that have accumulated through generations. Saramago scatters these popular proverbs throughout the novel as though they were another form of wisdom, polished smooth by countless hands.

It is hardly surprising.

Saramago was born in the tiny village of Azinhaga, the son of landless peasants. Even his name tells a story. His family name should have been simply José de Sousa, but a registrar, on his own initiative, added the village nickname Saramago—the name of a wild herb once gathered as food by poor families in difficult times. The mistake remained, and the humble plant became the name by which the world would know one of Portugal’s greatest writers.

Knowing this, one begins to understand the tenderness with which he portrays working people. He never romanticizes them, yet he sees their dignity. He knew their sayings because they were the sayings of his own childhood. He understood their perseverance because it was the perseverance of his own family.

In The Cave, that world is threatened by the immense commercial Center, where life gradually becomes detached from reality. Desire is manufactured. Success is displayed in shop windows. People begin chasing images instead of lives. Saramago once described our age as an audiovisual world, one in which reality is increasingly hidden beneath carefully constructed appearances.

The novel reaches its unforgettable climax when the family discovers, beneath the Center itself, a cavern containing figures chained before a wall, believing the shadows cast upon it to be the whole of reality. Saramago is, of course, echoing Plato’s famous allegory, but he gives it new urgency. The cave is no longer an ancient philosophical thought experiment. It is beneath the very place where modern society shops, consumes, and entertains itself.

That image has stayed with me for years.

Perhaps that is why a simple Instagram advertisement brought the novel flooding back. It was not the advertisement itself that mattered. It was the feeling that I was once again being invited to mistake appearance for reality, to pursue another carefully polished promise.

The great courage of Saramago’s characters is not that they destroy the Center. They simply refuse to remain inside it. They choose the uncertain freedom of real life over the comfortable illusion of shadows.

Saramago understood the cost of following one’s convictions. When The Gospel According to Jesus Christ was prevented by the Portuguese government from being considered for a major European literary prize, he left Portugal and settled on the island of Lanzarote. Yet he never ceased being profoundly Portuguese. His imagination, his language, and above all his affection for ordinary people remained rooted in the country that had formed him.

Years after his death, his ashes were returned to Lisbon and buried beneath a 109-year-old olive tree outside the Fundação José Saramago. The tree itself had been brought from Azinhaga, the village where his life began. I cannot imagine a more fitting resting place for a man who never forgot the earth, the people, and the quiet dignity from which he came.

That final image seems to answer the novel itself. In a world increasingly captivated by dazzling shadows, Saramago returned, at last, to something real: an ancient tree, simple soil, and the village that had first taught him how to see.
​

The excitement surrounding Christopher Nolan’s new film The Odyssey has sent many people back to Homer. They are rediscovering a story nearly three thousand years old and wondering how it has managed to survive for so long.

The answer may surprise us.
It survived because it was never simply a book.

Long before there were libraries, there were voices.

Homer, if indeed he was a single historical figure, was probably not a writer in the modern sense but a bard—a poet who composed and performed epic poetry before audiences. Most scholars believe the Odyssey took shape in the eighth century BCE, yet it preserved stories that had already been carried in human memory for generations.

The story belonged not to the page but to the people. Before it was ever written, it passed from one human voice to another, carried across the firelight into memory.

The listeners already knew something of the tale, just as we know the opening notes of a familiar melody. Yet each telling was new. The poems were not memorized word for word as an actor learns a script. They were composed in performance. Each telling might differ slightly, yet listeners always recognized the same familiar journey.

As I thought about Homer, I found myself remembering other voices.

The troubadours of France wandered from castle to castle carrying songs of love, adventure, and longing. Their verses traveled farther than they ever could alone.

Years later, living in Mexico, I discovered another tradition: the corridos. They were not relics of the distant past but living stories set to music. They celebrated heroes and outlaws, revolutions and romances, the ordinary and the extraordinary. News traveled on horseback, but memory traveled in song.

Different countries.
Different centuries.

The same human impulse.

We tell stories because they help us remember who we are.

There is something comforting in realizing that every age invents its own storytellers.
Homer had his lyre.

The troubadours carried a lute.

The corridistas traveled with guitars.

Django Reinhardt transformed six strings into stories no less compelling than words. One can listen to Nuages and feel an entire life unfolding without a single sentence being spoken. The melody wanders through light and shadow until, almost imperceptibly, it finds its way home. It is, in its own way, another Odyssey.

Before recordings, jazz standards lived in much the same way. Musicians knew the melody, but each performance became their own. No two versions were identical, yet everyone recognized the tune. Homer’s epics may have traveled through the ancient world in much the same fashion, reshaped by each gifted voice before they were finally committed to writing.

Perhaps that is why I have spent so much of my life following musicians. I thought I was listening to music. I was really listening to stories.

Fernando Pessoa understood something equally profound:

“Travel is the traveler. What we see isn’t what we see but what we are.”

Odysseus returns to Ithaca carrying more than memories of distant islands. He returns as a different man from the one who set sail.

The notes have not changed.

We have.

Perhaps every great story is a journey home—not to the place we left, but to the self we have become

In 2024, during the last season I was able to spend with my dear friend and novelist Darrel in Puerto Vallarta, we often talked about writing. Darrel had fallen deeply in love with the characters in his second novel and spoke of them almost as living companions. His excitement made me wonder what it would feel like to write from inside another person’s life.

When I came home, I decided to try. A young man I had known only briefly many years before quietly stepped into my imagination. I didn’t invent him so much as listen to him. His voice arrived first, and I simply followed where it led.



Paul

Hey. My name is Paul. I live in a little town called El Cerrito, the little hill. Well, there is a little hill here and overall it’s a pretty nice place. 

I got a mom and a dad and a sister and we live in a little house with three bedrooms, one for me, one for my sister and a bigger one for my mom and dad. There is a bathroom we all share and, of course, a garage. The house is painted gray. I helped my dad paint it a couple of years ago and he paid me $20. The house is located up against the hill, so it is fun to ride our bikes up and cruise down. The go carts my friends and I build from odd pieces we find around town are really cool too. We are not quite in that fancier part of the hills. We are just normal folks. 

My mom is a seamstress and my dad, I don’t know what he does but someday I’ll find out. Mom‘s family is Spanish from Spain. She cooks a lot. She cooks wonderful things. We love her Paella. When she gets a little extra money she buys shrimp and all kinds of good seafood and makes us a really yummy dish from the country of her childhood. My sister is younger than I am so, yeah, I kinda get to call the shots around here especially when my dad is not home. Did I tell you my dad is Italian and pretty good looking. I guess that is what my mom liked about him.

I’m 14 by the way and run around with some guys that are pretty cool frankly and we smoke cigarettes and roll up the sleeves of our T-shirts and kinda look a little bit like James Dean. The girls at school like us—they think we’re cool and we do some kind of outlandish things from time to time, pushing the limits you know, see what we can get away with, see what this world is all about. Did I tell you I love music? I really love music. I love the blues, I love jazz guitar. I’m not real good at playing it, but I like to play. Sometimes me and my buddies get together and throw some music together in somebody’s garage or, I don’t know, basement room. But mostly we just kind of hang out. We go to school  and I’m a fairly decent student. I’m not real into it but yeah, I’m a fairly decent student and I think the teachers like me OK. 

I’m not sure if my dad likes me. He’s a little hard on all of us but mom is just a wonderful mom. You couldn’t invent a better mom. She’s very very cool. Her name is Helen.  Helen, like the light. My sister‘s name is Elena did I tell you? And Elena is also the light so I guess these two ladies are the light of my life. I can’t tell you my dad‘s name because I think I forgot it. 

Sometimes when my sister has her friends over I think they’re kind of cute but I’m a little bit shy about asking girls out and stuff. I’m not even sure what I’m supposed to do. You know what I mean? I mean girls have such expectations and nobody told us guys what we are supposed to be coming up with so you go to the movies and see some stuff and maybe try to imitate someone like James Dean—he’s a pretty good one to imitate. Anyway life is pretty good here in El Cerrito. I’m not unhappy, sometimes a bit lonely, but not unhappy. There is this girl Laurel a friend of my sister. She’s pretty cute, funny and really smart. I might like to see her but she probably would think I’m too short or something. Maybe someday…maybe in another life.



Christie 

Paul was a Fox. His mother Helen had a little sewing shop just down the street from me when I lived on Grand Avenue back in the late 60s in Oakland, California. Paul was a friend of a neighbor of mine and one time they just stopped by my apartment and I thought “he is incredibly good looking”. Guys didn’t jump on me like other girls. I guess I was off putting or something or maybe I just wasn’t cute enough. But it was a long time before I actually got to know Paul a little bit. 

My friend, the neighbor, moved out, and Paul moved in to the apartment behind me. It was wonderful every time Paul came home from his job at a  long-term parking garage that kept very expensive cars for people who traveled overseas. He actually got to drive them around, keep them in shape. As soon as his door closed you heard Lou Rawls and other great jazz all evening and I loved that. He would kind of hum, drum or snap his fingers to it and I would think “Wow that Paul is such a Fox”. 

Later, much later, I learned that Paul had actually stollen a Porsche from that parking garage where he worked and driven it across state lines as far as the east coast. He was living in New York or New Jersey. He married and he and his wife came out to the west coast. They lived in the mountains near Eugene, Oregon and he drove a logging truck. I learned that the FBI had knocked on the door of their Oregon home and arrested him for that car theft. He went to prison. I later heard probably from Helen that he was released from prison and he had settled in Creswell, a small town just outside of Eugene where we used to go square dancing when I was in college and where I first saw people do the twist at a country dance hall.

It just happened that one August I was driving up to Corvallis for a high school reunion and traveling alone, an unusual thing for me since it was one of the few times I was not burdened with a husband. On the way I pulled off in Creswell and stopped at the little building that said Chamber of Commerce which also doubled as a gas station. I went inside and said hey, do you know Paul? Oh yeah they did and they could get ahold of him. So I spoke with Paul and he said  “oh my gosh I can’t believe you are here! I’ll be right down, but meet me across from the Dairy Queen parking lot because it’s the only place that’s big enough for my truck”. I imagined a pick up truck and was surprised to see a huge log truck pull up and park and Paul coming across the street to meet me. 

What an interesting experience catching up with Paul. He always was a sweet guy as well as being good looking. He told me that he had been recovering from MS. He had been riding rodeo some and working with horses. He had also been a race car driver. He just couldn’t get over that idea of speed. We had a nice conversation and parted and he said he was in San Francisco for horse shows frequently and he would contact me. And indeed he did but as usual the men who always happened into my life—and of course one did—interfered. I felt uncomfortable meeting Paul with my kids to go to the rodeo, which would’ve been a perfectly reasonable thing to do but “c’est la vie”, that’s the way it was.  So I really never saw Paul again and many years later I learned that he had passed away. 

My good friend Laurel, whom I had met in that same apartment building, remained close to Paul’s sister and to his mother Helen. Through Laurel I occasionally heard how life was unfolding for Paul.

Helen was a very instrumental part in both of our lives. She became good friends with my future mother in law. When I met my second husband Jorge, his mother came from Mexico to visit for a long long time. She met Helen and they became friends since they both spoke Spanish. Helen was Spanish. Paul’s father was Italian. The women were about the same age and now single.

Laurel had told me about what was going on with Paul so I kind of knew a little bit before I actually met him in person again.  When we talked, that time that we actually talked, he told me he had never really gotten together with anyone in the years since he separated from his wife and everything that followed. But he said “you know, I meet women but they don’t love jazz the way I love it”. Music was very important to him.

I believe he was kind of a lonely guy. Helen always said I wish my son had married you! I thought Paul would probably not have been happier with me or me with him. But I do wish I had taken advantage of the opportunity to know him better.

So that’s just a little story about the Fox, Paul. May he rest in sweet peace and may Lou Rawls and all his other jazz friends accompany him.



Paul 

Wow Christie you found me again! It was really nice to hear my name called and yeah, I’m here hanging out with my buddies. It’s like when I was a kid and we played jazz and blues in somebodies garage, just kicked around. Except these guys are really talented. That’s what they did in life.

It is pretty cool here, pretty calm and I guess I kind of like that there aren’t so many pressures on us here to do things right. We just kind of roam. There are no rules so there are no rules to break. That’s good.

Anyway yeah, it was really cool seeing you back in Creswell and I always wondered why you turned me down for that rodeo. I guess there was someone else in your life but that’s OK. I’m glad you had someone and I hope your life is good. Sometime I might just get out for a little trip around earth and pay you a visit and we can chat a bit. That would be cool or we might see each other over here someday that would be cool too. Bye for now, Paul.

PS. Mom says hi! She’s making a Spanish Omelet and sharing some brandy Presidente with your mother in law Maria de Jesus. They found each other after you mentioned them in your story.

Oh, by the way, we don’t see each other here. It’s quite like life—all pretty much in our heads (if we had them).


Keep remembering! 

Yesterday—or perhaps during the night—Ali’s paintings unexpectedly returned to me. Perhaps because July 12 would have been my former husband Dick’s ninety-sixth birthday. Memory has its own mysterious rhythm. A single date can illuminate an entire landscape that had been quietly waiting in the shadows.

Whenever we visited Boston, we stayed at the Ritz-Carlton overlooking the Public Garden, at the corner of Arlington and Newbury Streets. Dick knew Boston intimately. Although he had built a successful business in California and moved comfortably in artistic circles, he never forgot where he came from. Raised in Chelsea, just across the Mystic River from Boston, he delighted in telling Bostonians he was from Chelsea rather than Boston, simply to watch their puzzled expressions. There was pride in those roots.

Newbury Street was lined with galleries, and one afternoon we wandered into one almost by accident.
There, hanging quietly on the walls, were paintings by an artist named Ali.
They were unlike any circus paintings I had ever seen. There were no cheering crowds or dazzling performances. Instead, the circus existed after the applause had faded. Performers practiced alone beneath impossible night skies. Tents glowed softly in empty fields. Figures waited, reflected, contemplated. The paintings spoke not of spectacle but of solitude.
I was immediately drawn to them, though at the time I did not fully understand why.
Only later did I realize that the answer lay in memories that had come before.

Years earlier, while living in Mexico with my second husband Jorge, I had come to know members of Circus Bell through mutual friends. Jorge and his friends had befriended a young trapeze artist whose career had ended after a terrible fall left her paralyzed. It was her courage that had first brought them together, and their friendship with the circus family continued for years.

Whenever Circus Bell came through town, we gathered to share meals and stories.

Their lives fascinated me. They traveled constantly, often performing outside Mexico. Because they could not easily return with cash, they came home carrying handcrafted objects they had collected abroad, selling them in Mexico to help finance the next journey. It was a simple, resourceful existence—always moving, always beginning again.
They spoke not of glamour but of work, family, endurance, and life on the road.
Without realizing it, they had already taught me to see the circus differently.
So when I later stood before Ali’s paintings in Boston, I wasn’t discovering an unfamiliar world. I was recognizing one. Ali had somehow painted what I had already come to know: the quiet dignity of lives lived beyond the spotlight.

That is why her work touched me so deeply.
I purchased a couple of her lithographs, and they remain among my favorite works of art. Not simply because of her remarkable technique—her luminous use of oil on velvet—but because she gave visual form to something I already carried within me.

Looking back now, I realize I wasn’t collecting prints.

I was collecting lives.

In recent years, I have begun to notice a pattern that had long escaped me. I thought I had spent my life following places—Lisbon, Paris, Samois-sur-Seine, Puerto Vallarta, Boston. But gradually another truth has emerged.

The places were never really the destination.

They were where I met the people.
Again and again I have found myself drawn to those who live quietly beyond the center of attention: circus families, wandering musicians, organ grinders, travelers, the man on the park bench whose story slowly unfolded over months of passing greetings.
Perhaps that is why Ali’s paintings still speak to me after all these years. She saw what I have always been searching for without fully knowing it myself—not fame or spectacle, but the quiet humanity waiting behind the curtain.
Sometimes our deepest themes do not announce themselves.
They simply accompany us through life, patiently waiting until one unexpected morning they step out of the shadows and into the light.

Following the Melody

A journey in four movements

List of movements 

1. Following Django 
2. Finding Django in Samois sur Seine
3. The Gift
4. We Won’t Know Until We’ve Played It

Following Django
​

Long before I began following musicians through the cafés and concert halls of Puerto Vallarta, another musician quietly changed the way I traveled.

His name was Django Reinhardt.

Looking back, I realize he taught me something long before I ever met the musicians who now fill these pages. He taught me that music does not exist only on a stage. It has a geography. It lives in cafés, along rivers, in family stories, and in the memories of those who keep listening.

My introduction to Django was wonderfully ordinary. Many years ago, while traveling through the southwest of France with a friend, we stopped at a small family-run restaurant deep in the countryside. As we settled into our seats, recorded music floated through the room. My friend immediately recognized it as Django Reinhardt and Stéphane Grappelli.

That lunch changed something in me.

Our hosts adored Django. His music seemed to belong there as naturally as the homemade foie gras they proudly served. Even today I cannot separate those warm smiles, that quiet French dining room, and the joyous sound of his guitar.

Curiosity became admiration, and admiration slowly became affection. I began reading everything I could find about the remarkable Romani musician who transformed tragedy into beauty. His story seemed almost impossible.

As a young man, Django suffered devastating burns in a fire that left two fingers of his left hand permanently crippled. Most musicians would have accepted that their career was over. Django simply invented another way to play. Using the two healthy fingers that remained, supported by the damaged ones when he could, he created a style unlike anything the world had ever heard.

His music never sounded limited. If anything, it sounded freer.

That resilience certainly inspired me, but it was not the only reason I was drawn to him. I found myself equally fascinated by the man behind the legend—the boy who wandered the streets of Paris with his banjo or guitar, the devoted family man, the fisherman who loved quiet mornings on the Seine, the painter who nearly abandoned music altogether in search of another form of expression.

The more I learned, the more I wanted to see the places that had shaped him. Not museums or monuments, but the landscapes of an ordinary life.

So I planned a journey through France: Paris, Nice, and finally Samois-sur-Seine, where Django spent his last years.

I tried not to burden the trip with expectations. I simply hoped to walk where he had walked and perhaps understand him a little better.

Only much later did I realize that I wasn’t really following Django.

I was learning how to travel.

Until then I had often visited places because history had happened there. Now I was beginning to understand that history is carried by people. The stories that endure are not found only in churches, castles, or museums. They survive in neighborhood cafés, in family memories, and in the quiet routines of ordinary days.

Years later, when I found myself listening to musicians in Puerto Vallarta, asking about their lives, writing about their music, and eventually becoming friends with many of them, I thought I had discovered something entirely new.

I hadn’t.

Without realizing it, I was still following the path Django had shown me years before.

I have never really traveled in search of concerts.

I travel in search of people whose lives have found expression through music.

I did not know it then, but Django had given me something far more enduring than beautiful music. He had quietly taught me how to listen for the people behind it.


***


Finding Django in Samois-sur-Seine

When I arrived in Samois-sur-Seine, I came with almost no plans.

I knew this quiet village outside Paris had been Django Reinhardt’s last home. I knew he had fished the Seine, painted, played billiards with friends, and lived there with his wife Naguine and their son Babik until his death in 1953.

Beyond that, I expected very little.

One of the dangers of making a pilgrimage is expecting too much. Reality rarely resembles the stories we have created in our imagination, so I decided to arrive with curiosity instead of expectations.

The surprises began before I even reached Samois.

On my first evening in Paris, while searching for jazz performances, one name caught my attention: Simba Baumgartner.

Surely it couldn’t be.

But it was.

Simba is Django Reinhardt’s great-grandson.

My daughter Laura, who had joined me for the first part of the trip, and I crossed the Seine to a small club on the Left Bank where he and his trio were performing. The room was intimate, the audience close enough to feel every note, glasses clinking softly between songs as conversation gave way to music. Much of the evening featured compositions from his new recording. Django’s spirit was unmistakably present, yet Simba’s own voice was equally clear.

Later I learned something that pleased me even more. Simba and his family lived quietly on the outskirts of Samois-sur-Seine in a modest house with a caravan nearby. I smiled at the thought. Django himself had begun married life in a caravan, surrounded by family and friends. The circumstances were different, of course, but the continuity was unmistakable. The music had remained part of everyday life. It had never become a museum piece.

The past had introduced itself before my journey had truly begun.

When I finally reached Samois, the surprises continued.

Walking toward the river on my first afternoon, I noticed a simple plaque on a nearby house.

It was Django’s home.

I hadn’t even begun looking for it.

As I stood there taking it in, a gentleman walking his dog stopped to ask if he could help. We began talking, and when I explained why I had come, he smiled.

He was Raynard, the grandson of Fernand, one of Django’s closest friends.

Within minutes I found myself hearing stories that no guidebook could ever contain.

His family had owned Chez Fernand, the neighborhood café where Django often stopped for tea before heading out to fish or spending an afternoon playing billiards with friends. Although the café had changed hands, the memories remained vivid, lovingly preserved from one generation to the next.

Standing in the rooms where Django had lived, only steps from the Seine, I realized that history is not always preserved in monuments.

Sometimes it survives because families continue telling stories.

The following morning I walked to the village cemetery.

It took some searching before I found Django’s grave, but once I did there was no mistaking it. Members of the Reinhardt family rested together, as so many French families do. Flowers and small tributes surrounded the tomb.

What moved me most, however, were two simple guitar picks resting quietly on the stone.

Someone had left them there.

I had brought nothing to leave behind. For a moment I wished I had.

Then I realized admiration does not always require an object.

Sometimes showing up is enough.

During my stay I had another unexpected encounter. I met the former mayor of Samois-sur-Seine, a man who had devoted years to helping build the annual Django Reinhardt Festival into the remarkable celebration it has become. He had just published a book about the festival’s history and the extraordinary musicians who had gathered there over the years.

When I told him that a musician friend and I hoped someday to organize a small festival in Puerto Vallarta, he seemed genuinely delighted. He opened his book, wrote a warm personal inscription encouraging our efforts, and signed it for me.

Not long afterward, the owner of the little café who had introduced us presented me with another gift—a poster from that year’s Django Festival.

Neither gesture was expected.

Both felt deeply personal.

For years that poster reminded me of the kindness I had found in Samois. Then, when I eventually left Puerto Vallarta, I knew exactly where it belonged. I gave it to a dear musician friend whose love of jazz manouche matched my own. Somehow that seemed fitting. The poster had continued its journey, carrying a small piece of Samois to another corner of the world.

One evening I wandered back toward the river intending only to enjoy a glass of wine at the restaurant that now occupied the site of the old Chez Fernand.

Instead, I stayed for dinner.

A fire glowed in the enormous fireplace. Crystal reflected the warm light. Outside, the Seine moved almost silently past the windows.

The owner recommended a red Burgundy from nearby Beaune and served what remains one of the finest pieces of cod I have ever eaten.

I remember almost nothing of our conversation.

I remember everything about the feeling.

Peace.

As I sat beside the river, I understood that I had not come to meet a legend.

I had come to discover the life that surrounded the legend.

The cafés.

The neighbors.

The family.

The fishermen.

The musicians.

The quiet rhythm of an ordinary village.

When I first planned this journey, I thought I was following the footsteps of one extraordinary guitarist.

Looking back now, I realize I was witnessing something much larger.

I was seeing how beauty survives.

A great-grandson continues to play.

A family preserves old friendships.

A former mayor devotes years to honoring a festival.

A café owner shares its history with strangers.

A traveler from California carries home a book, a poster, and a handful of stories.

None of these people were trying to preserve a monument.

They were simply living generously, passing along something they loved.

Years later, when I found myself writing about musicians in Puerto Vallarta, becoming friends with them, introducing audiences to their music, and telling their stories, I thought I had discovered a new passion.

I hadn’t.

Without realizing it, I was still following the path that had begun beside the Seine.

Django Reinhardt died in 1953.

Yet somehow, in that little village, he was still introducing people to one another.
Perhaps that is how music truly endures—not only through recordings or concerts, but because ordinary people quietly choose to carry it forward.
I like to think that, for a brief moment, I became one small part of that continuing melody.



***



The Gift
Sometimes the greatest gift a piece of writing can receive is not praise but recognition.

When I sent my essay about Django Reinhardt to my friend Alejandro, I thought I was sharing my own memories of Samois-sur-Seine and the remarkable people I had met there. Instead, he quietly handed the story back to me.
He told me I had a gypsy spirit.

Then he remembered.

As a boy, he had discovered a recording of Django Reinhardt and found himself captivated by the music. Years later, he remembered my traveling from Puerto Vallarta to Mexico City simply to hear his group perform on the roof of a museum overlooking the Zócalo. I had thought I was the fortunate one, grateful for his music and his friendship. His response reminded me that friendship is rarely one-sided.

When we first met, I sensed something generous in Alejandro’s nature. As we said goodbye that day, he smiled and said, “Let’s not lose track of one another.”

We didn’t.

Over the years our friendship has never depended on favors, recognition, or expectations. It has been sustained by something quieter—a reciprocal regard, a genuine delight in each other’s journeys. Those friendships are rare. They cannot be manufactured. They grow naturally because each person sees something in the other worth preserving.
As I reflected on his message, I realized he was not simply responding to an essay about Django.

He was telling me, “I remember too.”

Perhaps that is one of the truest signs of friendship. Someone receives your story and answers not with applause but with a memory of their own. The conversation becomes larger than either person’s experience. It becomes something shared.
Looking back, I think that has happened many times in my life.

I have often believed I was traveling to hear music.
Perhaps I was really traveling to meet people whose lives would become intertwined with my own.

The music was simply the invitation.



***



We Won’t Know Until We’ve Played It
I have always loved jazz, though I have never been able to explain exactly why.

A jazz musician begins with a familiar melody. We recognize it immediately. Then, almost before we have settled into it, he leaves it behind. For several minutes he wanders through unexpected harmonies and rhythms. If we are impatient, we may wonder whether he has lost his way. But somehow he hasn’t. The melody has never really disappeared. It has simply been living beneath the surface, quietly waiting.

Then, near the end, it returns.

Only now it is no longer the same melody because we are no longer the same listeners.

Recently I came across an interview with the Argentine novelist Andrés Neuman. He was describing the freedom of writing poetry, where, he says, the syntax itself becomes “a living creature in search of something to say.” He writes not to express thoughts he already possesses, but to discover what he thinks and feels while writing.

I stopped reading.
For a moment I simply sat there smiling.

Finally, I thought, someone has described the way my own mind seems to work.

For years I assumed that good writers knew where they were going before they began. They started with an idea and carefully led the reader toward it.

My experience has been almost the opposite.

A piece usually begins with something very small: a gust of wind in Portugal, a cat demanding breakfast, a stranger on a bench, a concert in Berkeley, a cup of coffee in Lisbon. I rarely know why these moments have caught my attention. They simply refuse to let go.

So I begin writing.

Pessoa wanders into the conversation. Then Django Reinhardt. Then perhaps a memory of Provence, or the sound of the ocean, or a remark from one of my children. At times it feels as though I have wandered far away from where I started.

But have I?

Looking back, I don’t think so.

There has always been a melody beneath the improvisation.

Neuman writes that even when planning a novel, he knows the plan will fail. Yet he needs it because the failed plan is what begins the journey. He compares it to travel. We make lists of places we hope to visit, only to discover, almost immediately after arriving, something entirely different that changes the trip forever.

How true that has been in my own life.

I have traveled in search of cities and found people instead.
I have gone looking for Django and discovered lifelong friendships.
I have followed Pessoa through the streets of Lisbon only to discover that I was really following my own questions.
Again and again, the itinerary has quietly given way to something better.

Perhaps writing is no different.

Perhaps travel, music, and writing all ask the same thing of us.
Pay attention.
The jazz musician pays attention to where the melody wishes to go.

The writer pays attention to where the sentence wishes to go.

The traveler pays attention to what was never on the itinerary.

None of them begins with certainty.
They begin with trust.

When I think back over the essays I have written during these past few years, I realize they were never really about cats or coffee, music or travel. Those were simply the opening notes. The meaning revealed itself only after I had stayed with the melody long enough to hear where it wanted to lead me.
Maybe that is why I have always loved jazz.

Not because it is unpredictable, but because it teaches patience.

It reminds us that understanding does not always arrive at the beginning. Sometimes it waits quietly until the final phrase, then suddenly illuminates everything that came before.

Then I remembered a rainy evening in Querétaro.

I had gone well out of my way to hear my friend Caleb and his trio, Media Luna, play in a tiny café in Querétaro. Rain poured down all evening until the power finally went out. No one left. We simply sat together in the darkness, listening as the trio continued to play without amplifiers.
After the performance Caleb thanked me for coming, but then said something I have never forgotten.

“I love that, unlike other fans, you really pay attention to the music—every note, every nuance.”

At the time, I simply took it as a generous compliment.

Years later, reading Andrés Neuman, I realized Caleb had noticed something about me before I had. It wasn’t that I listened to jazz carefully. It was that paying attention was the way I moved through the world.

I imagine…

The musicians have finished playing. 

The audience has gone home. 

The instruments rest in silence.

Someone asks, “So what was the piece about?”
There is a long pause.

Finally, someone smiles.
“We won’t know until we’ve played it.”

The older I become, the more I suspect that is true not only of jazz, but of writing, travel, and perhaps even life itself.
There’s a lovely line by the essayist Montaigne: “I do not portray being. I portray passing.” He wasn’t trying to construct a grand philosophy. He was trying to understand himself as he moved through life. 

Every morning, I wake up to an explosion of color and joy.

When I open my eyes, there it is.

Years ago, in Paris, I visited a wonderful exhibition at the Musée de l’Orangerie of the works of Robert Delaunay and his wife, Sonia. Together with other artists, they helped create the Orphist movement, an extension of Cubism that abandoned muted tones in favor of brilliant, luminous color. I loved their work. Before returning home, I acquired a large print of Robert Delaunay’s dancing circles. It now graces the wall of my cave-like bedroom in Oakland.

How appropriate that many years later I discovered that their son, Charles Delaunay, was the man responsible for bringing Django Reinhardt into the limelight and, with him, the guitar into the forefront of jazz.

Charles, the only son of two extraordinarily busy and successful artists, was passionate about jazz and fortunate enough to indulge that passion. Along with other enthusiasts, he founded the famous Club Hot de France. Through his tireless efforts, Django became known far beyond the cafés and dance halls where he had first astonished audiences.

Django loved making music, but he loved freedom even more. Keeping a schedule was not one of his gifts. It is said that Charles and Django’s brother, Nin-Nin, often had to search Paris for him and practically drag him to his performances. On one memorable occasion, after becoming absorbed in conversation with a French boxer in a New York bar, Django nearly missed his celebrated appearance with Duke Ellington and His Orchestra at Carnegie Hall. He arrived late—without a tuxedo and without a guitar. Neither Charles nor Nin-Nin was there to rescue him that evening.

I sometimes think we owe Charles Delaunay more than history usually acknowledges. Without his persistence, Django’s music might never have reached so many ears. I can imagine no better image for those sounds than Robert Delaunay’s vibrant circles dancing across my bedroom wall each morning.

Last night I attended a concert presented by my neighbor, Michael Graham, the celebrated cellist whose Berkelium Quartet has begun hosting intimate concerts in private homes around the neighborhood. Their first performance took place just around the corner from me.

Nineteenth-century music in a nineteenth-century Victorian home.

What a delight.

The program opened with Beethoven’s String Quartet, Opus 127. I am hardly sophisticated in classical music, yet this work commanded my complete attention. Much of the audience consisted of musicians, and the conversations during intermission were as fascinating as the performance itself. I walked home in the dark, filled with music, and went immediately to bed.

This morning I awoke to another day.

Robert Delaunay’s festival of color greeted me from the wall. Beethoven’s wild imagination, written nearly two centuries ago, still echoed in my mind after being brought to life in one of Oakland’s colorful Victorian homes. And Charles Delaunay, almost unnoticed in history, quietly reminded me of the music he helped bring into the world through Django Reinhardt.

One family painted with color.

Another man painted with sound.

And somehow, decades later, they all meet on the wall beside my bed.

Scherzando.

People often ask, “What have you been doing?”
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It is a reasonable question. We measure our lives by activities and accomplishments. We traveled here. We attended that concert. We repaired the fence. We finished a project. We can make a list and check things off one by one.
But I sometimes wonder if a more important question might be:
“What have you been thinking about?”

The things we do often fade surprisingly quickly. Last year's trip becomes a collection of photographs. The concert ticket becomes a souvenir tucked into a drawer. Even major accomplishments eventually become part of the background of our lives.

Yet some thoughts stay with us for decades.

A conversation overheard in a coffee shop.
A sentence from a book.
A film whose title has been forgotten but whose meaning continues to deepen.
A man sitting on a park bench every morning.

The event itself may pass, but the reflection remains alive.

This may explain why I write.

Writing allows me to discover what I actually think. An experience enters my life as an event, but it becomes meaningful only when I spend time with it. The act of writing often reveals truths I did not know I was carrying. I begin with a story and end with an insight.

I love live music. The music itself is why I go. I sit among strangers and listen to gifted musicians create something beautiful that exists only for that moment.

Yet at home I rarely play music.

What I seek at home is stillness.

Silence leaves room for thought.

It creates a space where questions can emerge.

Who am I becoming?

Why did that moment affect me so deeply?

What am I meant to learn from this season of life?

At eighty-four, I am less interested in collecting experiences than in understanding them. Doing enriches life. Thinking gives it meaning.

Perhaps the richest life is not one filled with the greatest number of activities, but one in which experience and reflection remain in conversation with each other.

We do.

We think.
​
And somewhere between the two, we discover who we are.
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