Winter Wonderland

In the alley outside my window, like the jingling sleigh bells and clip clop of Clydesdales, the clinking bottles dug from dumpster into mudclad overcoat, near soleless sneakers, broken boombox overflowing grocery cart and thud of hinged lid dropping sounds not quite the squeak and pop of a clarinet player hunched on the 118 off-ramp at Tampa Thanksgiving morning. Between the quick gasp, achingly soundless downbreath, saliva squirts, key clicks, puff strained cheeks--lost embouchure with lost teeth--here and there, always sharp or flat, chirps an abject hint of Bye Bye Blackbird.

A crumpled reincarnation of Rafael Garrett: I first saw him in the mid 80s blowing a battered silver tenor outside the Wrigley field El Stop before midday drunk Cub fans looking askance or laughing and throwing him a quarter--just another raggedy lookin' black man--oblivious to the legacy of this multi-instrumentalist, who studied clarinet and bass under DuSable's Captain Dyett, recorded with Coltrane, helped found AACM, performed and taught across the world.

But for free improvisers busking truth--and for black men in Reagan America, which institutionalized the racist character of homelessness (49% of streetpeople are African American)--life could be shit 'til the next meal, so he might, to scrounge a little extra cash, crash another guys' gig--like Lester Bowie's trio playing in the back room of a West Side record shop. Bowie looked a little startled when half-way through his first set the old man walked in, but he graciously allowed Garrett's string tied bag of bells and whistles to transform tightly rehearsed arrangements into mismatched inflations of a tear.

Bloodshot eyes, are you listening?