Tonight I ate at a Mexican restaurant called “Malo,” sitting on the patio under a red umbrella. The outdoor speakers blasted salsa music as a thin crowd munched stale tortilla chips in the humid gray weather of Des Moines, Iowa.
And then there was piano music.
A black man in a red T-shirt sat at a spinet piano that was parked on the sidewalk outside the restaurant for anyone to play. He sat and he played and his sound was just a little too far away to drown out the salsa, but I could hear it. Was it jazz? Was he riffing on a well-known tune? I don’t know music well enough to be sure, but in the runs and breaths and pauses of his cascading song, I felt like I was inside his mind. I could feel his curiosity, his wondering what would come next, his joy when it arrived. He was listening, hard.
Then the tacos came.
When I glanced his way again, I saw that he was packing up his bicycle and getting ready to leave. So I jumped up to thank him for the music.
I walked over and said, “You should wear a T-shirt that says, ‘My other piano is a Steinway Grand.’”
He looked puzzled, then laughed.
I said, “I felt like I was inside your thoughts.”
He said, “Well, I guess you were, because I was making it up as I went along.”
I asked, “You were improvising? That is amazing! Where else do you play?”
He said, “Well, I don’t really, I mean, people have asked me to play, here and there around town, but I’m afraid to say yes, because, well, I’m homeless, and I’d hate to blow a gig because I was out sleeping in the woods or something. And homelessness, well, I know how people react. It’s new for me, too. But the problem is, see, I’ve got a record that says I’ve committed like 47 felonies, which is impossible, because I’d be in jail then, but still I’m afraid to tell people about it because for sure then they’d never hire me….”
He didn’t have a tip jar, but I gave him $10 and told him I really believed his luck could change.
I’m just passing through, I thought. How could I possibly help? Remembering Joni Mitchell: “He was playing real good, for free.”
Where is the refuge for the artist? Why can’t this man be sustained with food and shelter so he can continue his dialog with the unknowable, and give us the grace of eavesdropping?
