The notes that were coming out from that long piano flowed like a capricious butterfly around the room, touching and wounding the attentive hearts of those who worshipped him. It was a time of senseless happiness and exacerbated enthusiasm. Before the change of rhythm, he shouted an “ahhh!” that meant nothing else than his heart was about to come out of his chest from excitement. Standing up slightly from the piano stool, he rejoiced on his own notes, on his own fingers and his own feelings. What it had started as anger, pain, sadness… was now turning into acceptance, reconciliation, harmony and happiness, with no previous notice or anticipation. Everything was happening in that very moment. It was not going to happen before or after, simply because the concepts of before and after did not exist. There was only now, and that now was beautiful.
Some people called it improvisation. I prefer to call it geniality, excellence… art. It was raw art being created right in front of me, real time. And it was only when my own tears reached my lips and I learned their salty flavor, when I realized the power that that man had over me. That thin and ugly character that hid behind a pair of huge glasses which were probably older than himself, could awake in me deeper feelings than even love had awaken on me before, by simply moving his fingers a few meters away from me. He was a wizard. He was a god. He was Keith Jarrett.
A man who had sat down on the right side of the Father (a.k.a. Miles Davis) in several of the finest dives of New York, was now launching a salvo of celestial music in that theater of Milan. At some point I realized that he was causing me continuous goose bumping for almost a minute. My skin was like that of a countryside chicken and my eyes emanated water like a new spring flowing from an old mountain.
He changed the rhythm again, and I relaxed. Now everything was calm. He caressed my hair with his long delicate fingers while I kept my eyes barely opened. Along with his deep breathing I could distinguish an “everything is gonna be alright now”. Perhaps it was all my imagination. One way or another I believed him, completely, and so I abandoned myself to him, to his fingers, to his music… Only then I could finally rest and find the peace that I had been searching for so long.
The last notes announced that something was about to finish, however, everybody in the room knew that his music was never going to die. The music that had been born in that theater could never be destroyed. It would last eternally. I knew that those notes would keep living until the end of times, filling empty spaces, crossing vast meadows, endless roads, computer wires and radio waves… to end up finding shelter in the hearts of a new generation.
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