17h00, le 8 mai 2021
A memory of the first lockdown of 2020. After fleeing New York last year around mid-March, I didn’t move from my Maine home until Governor Andrew Cuomo announced a partial reopening of the city. My 24-year-old daughter, Amelia, had been confined to Maine for over three months with me and couldn’t wait to return home to Brooklyn. So, in early June 2020, I loaded her suitcases in the trunk of my car and we drove the six and a half hour drive to New York, to the rhythm of her cat’s meowing boredom.
I dropped her off and crossed the river to reopen my Manhattan apartment after twelve weeks of absence. The next evening, some friends invited us to dinner at their place, Amelia and I. They lived right across the street from the building where I spent the first nine years of my life. I am the oldest of three sons. We were then a middle class family and lived in a 65 square meter apartment on the corner of 2nd Avenue and 19th Street; a not very glamorous corner of the city, which I still love so much because, even now that the rents have become overpriced and have driven all middle class families out of the center, it reminds me of when Manhattan was a city socio-economically mixed and beautifully decayed.
Nighttime encounter with two threatening homeless people
After dinner, around 11:30 p.m., I insisted on ordering my daughter an Uber, then decided to walk back to Midtown. Our host, Isaac, a Canadian who works in music, asked me if it was reasonable to walk around alone at this time. I laughed as I reminded him that I was born in New York and that this area had always been safe. “Yes, but you weren’t there during the lockdown. We were. It has changed.”
Read also – EXCLUSIVE. “Life after Trump”, by Douglas Kennedy
I thanked him for worrying about me and left. I took 19th Street west towards Gramercy Park, an area with townhouses, mansions and Gothic buildings that reminds of the turn-of-the-century New York of Edith Wharton’s novels. That evening the streets were deserted. When I got to Park Avenue, I was struck by not seeing a single yellow cab on this major road. I turned north. The weather was overcast, and everything was closed: no bars, no restaurants, no night cafes; no rock or jazz clubs, no theaters, no cinemas. And not a single yellow taxi, zero! New York, the city that never sleeps, was dying. The only people outside other than me were homeless people and cops.
Growing up in New York City at a time when there were 2,245 murders per year – until 1990 – I developed a sixth sense early on for how to avoid potentially dangerous situations. As I walked up Park Avenue, I found myself blocked by two homeless people who looked exhausted, hungry and on edge. They were both white, in rags, and had spread out their sleeping bags on a corner of the sidewalk where I passed. It was their shelter for the night… as long as the police didn’t dislodge them.
“What are you doing outside at this hour? Asked the first one.
– I am coming back home.
– Are you stupid or what? threw me the second. Are you looking for trouble?
– I’m just trying to get back to my apartment.
“And I bet it’s cozy, your place,” the first commented threateningly.
– You are hungry? I replied without thinking too much.
– What the hell are you doing?
– I ask, that’s all. Because I only have $ 30 with me… but that might allow you to buy something to eat. “
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The homeless present everywhere, it should be a source of national shame
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I took two bills out of my wallet and handed them to the one who hadn’t yelled at me.
“I’m sure you’ve got more than that on you,” the other muttered.
To which his friend replied: “Shut up. He just bought us a dinner and a breakfast.”
Then, turning to me: “If I were you, I would get out of the way.”
Which I did, thinking that during all of my recent trips to America, the homeless were everywhere, and that should be a source of national shame.
Recovery from tough times
Let’s take a step back in time to two weeks ago. Three months after taking office, President Biden assured that more than 100 million Americans (including yours truly) had been fully immunized. And New York, like many other cities, has begun a gradual deconfinement. Some restaurants and cafes have reopened. Some cinemas too (with a limited gauge). Not theaters or concert halls. But you can now go to the museum by booking your ticket in advance.
And, although there has been a lot of cultural carnage (the fabulous Jazz Standard has gone out of business, and Village Vanguard, the world’s largest jazz club, has yet to reopen), a handful other clubs have resumed their activity. Notably Smalls and Mezzrow, both in the West Village, owned by the same owner, who organize concerts each evening for a maximum of fifteen spectators per session.
Jazz is one of my intimate passions. It is also the great vernacular musical language of America. Since the pandemic closed all clubs in New York – the undisputed jazz capital of the world – I was able to attend a few concerts at the Sunset / Sunside in Paris and at the B-Flat in Berlin (until the reconfinement of October in both cities). It was therefore a delight to be able to listen to one Sunday evening at Smalls the group Palladium (made up of five of New York’s best musicians, aged 22 to 70: the immense drummer Victor Lewis, Nicole Glover on saxophone, Sasha Berliner on vibraphone, Sean Mason on piano and Russell Hall on double bass) perform pieces by the great saxophonist and visionary Wayne Shorter.
An hour and a quarter of pure musical mastery
The concert was hosted remotely by Jesse Markowitz, a Canadian jazz manager living in New York for a long time but a refugee in Toronto since the start of the pandemic. He himself attended the concert, like thousands of people around the world, via free video streaming. But there was also a real audience there: there were fifteen of us, our tables separated by glass panels, which did not prevent us from sharing this moment of communion which reminded us why jazz always swings … even when it turns. to the cosmic, as is often the case in the extraordinary work of Wayne Shorter.
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It’s almost like the good old days, eh, daddy?
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It was an hour and a quarter of pure musical mastery. My son Max was in charge of photographing the concert and did his best to sneak his way into the cramped Smalls room to get the best angles without breaking the distancing rules. My daughter and I were sitting in front of the stage with a glass of beer, intoxicated by this explosive set. At the end, Amelia turned to me and said, “It’s almost like the good old days, huh, daddy?”
Almost, indeed… But we agreed that the good old days would only really be back when a club like this was packed again, no one was wearing a mask and the music would ring out until 4 a.m. (as it was before, whereas now everything has to stop at midnight).
That said, we can finally hear jazz again in New York! And America is slowly reopening, thanks to the fact that a competent man is now at the helm in the White House. For the first time in fourteen months, that evening I felt a surge of optimism … knowing full well that the Republican Party was already at work to redraw the electoral map and cut the right to vote to ensure to regain control of Congress and the Senate in 2022. Trumpism will not go away overnight. And, as I have pointed out several times in this chronicle series, there are two Americas who hate each other face to face.
But this evening at Smalls listening to these five exceptional musicians giving us a breathtaking jazz set, while remembering the deserted and dismal New York of a year earlier, was for me the most beautiful gift of reunion.
Douglas Kennedy’s latest novel, Isabelle, afternoon, is published by Belfond.
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