REMINISCENCES OF 1970s SAN FRANCISCO

A Song That Reminds Me of Something Exceptional

Music can trigger stirring memories of unique experiences

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The 1975 Köln Concert, Keith Jarrett, Part 1 (impromptu, live) (Youtube)

It’s not a song, so, technically, it doesn’t belong here. But it’s the inspiration for this reminiscence.

It is a strikingly glorious, live, improvisational jazz piano concert by a prodigy of his time, of whom, sadly, I knew nothing until that one Sunday morning I first heard its opening, dulcet notes.

It was early June 1977 in San Francisco. I had finished my second-year law-school exams the week before. I was due to start a summer internship in the San Francisco Appellate Defender’s office the following week.

About 9:00 that Sunday morning, the opening notes of Jarrett’s Köln Concert woke me. I was in a bed not my own with an empty place to my left where the man I had gone home with the night before ought to have been. Soft sunlight spilled into the room through white, cotton, voile sheers drawn partly across two french doors. The doors stood open onto a mottled stone patio. A snug, summery breeze came through the opening, billowing and furling the sheers toward me.

I thought lazily of the empty place and the man who had occupied it when I last fell asleep. Garnering energy, I was on the verge of rolling out of bed and going looking for him when I took cognizance of the sublime notes coming crisply out of the furniture-sized stereo speakers that stood against the wall on either side of the headboard.

Seconds later, he strode naked into the room. He was holding a wooden tray at about waist height. On it was a breakfast offering, a carafe of coffee, one of freshly squeezed orange juice, and a plate of bagels, lox, and cream cheese. He was one of the more handsome, alluring, fit men I’ve ever been with, perhaps the most at that time. He stood midway toward the doors, facing me, his back to them. The light bracketed him as if haloed. He looked at my eyes. Mine fell to below the tray. He saw where I was looking and guffawed but stirred as he did. I slipped out of bed and stood before him. His eyes traveled from mine down my belly. When he saw what stood stiffly there, he laughed again. “Later,” was his only word, and he nodded toward the doors.

We sat side by side at a circular, wrought iron table facing the mid-morning sun. It shone at first warm, then hot upon us as the breeze subsided. Jarrett’s enthralling music wafted through the doors, not softly, not loudly, but at just the level one thought one might have heard it live had one been there. By tacit agreement, we didn’t speak. As we listened, I brushed my bare thigh against his under the table. His eyes were closed, his face full-on to the sun. He smiled, and I was satisfied.

The music grew quiet, then Jarrett began a regular rhythm in the base range. He added a lilting sequence in the upper register. The notes rolled out the doors and across us. Sweeter music I thought I had never heard. In the audience, a man let out an involuntary moan, “Ooh!” The vellus hairs on my forearms and the nape of my neck stood up. A shiver ran across me despite the sun’s heat. He had turned to look at me. “I know,” he said, “It does that to me too.”

When the piece was over and breakfast eaten, we went back to his bed, where we spent the rest of that languid morning. The funny thing is, I can recall the feel of him as we moved against each other, what we did, and how lazily we did it, but I can not draw his face from my memory. I cannot remember saying goodbye or why he never became a presence in my life.

What I have is the scene on that loafing, San Francisco morning, of the breeze furling those white sheers toward me and the Köln Concert tickling my ears, indelible on my mind.

I hadn’t heard the concert in years or thought of that morning until today, when I saw Keith Jarrrett on a playlist as I was browsing Apple Music. Immediately, the memory of that morning came vividly to mind — the memory of waking to sunlight streaming on a summer breeze through billowing voiles, then hearing those first few notes on the piano.

That involuntary sigh occurs at 7:48 into the concert. I know. I checked it just so I could tell you.

If you have a similar memory, perhaps you would describe it for us in the comments and make it a story on your profile page.

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