Good Things Happen
Slowly: A Life In and Out of Jazz
Fred Hersch
Crown Archetype
2017
Dear Fred:
I was going to write this to you directly, but I thought if
I published it, that it might lead more people to read your new autobiography.
It certainly is good!
I have loved your music, both as a player and as a composer,
for a long time. (Readers, in case you didn’t know it, Fred is an award-winning,
killer jazz pianist and composer. You should listen to him. He has released solo work, and
played with ensembles of varying size; he has also composed a lot of fully
notated music that is -- well, you could say that’s art music or whatever, the main thing is,
it’s GOOD.)
You are a little older than me, and we have some things in
common. For instance, we both got to New York around the same time – although you
stayed and I didn’t. It was great to read that your impressions of that nasty,
smelly, rough, dangerous NYC of the late ‘70s and early ‘80s align with mine –
and that we both loved it. Like you, I sat on the curbs outside the clubs I
couldn’t afford to get into and listened, blown away, to the music inside.
Unlike you, I am not gay, but I lost my best friend to the
first wave of AIDS, along with many other good and talented friends. Reading
about your life with the diagnosis for going on 30 years now helps me immensely
in understanding what he went through. It was very painful to bring all those
memories back up again, but in a way good too.
Like you, and like many folks that I think will like this
book, I have always felt ill at ease and different, yearning for acclaim and acceptance.
Me? I performed comedy for years – now I write. Your writing here is great, too
– clear and concise and straightforward, but evocative. I didn’t realize until
I got to a certain point in the book that David Hajdu helped you out with it.
He is one of my favorite non-fiction writers, someone I read and re-read to
remind myself how to communicate on the page effectively. (Don’t worry – you do
not sound like him, you sound like you. The best writing mentors help their
pupils sound like themselves.)
Jazz really sustains me as a writer, the idea that you just
have to swing with what you’ve got. And then you write: “In jazz, it’s
individuality, not adherence to a standard conception of excellence, that
matters most. . . . Difference matters – in fact, it’s an asset rather than a
liability. There is no describing how exhilarating this epiphany was for me, as
a person who always felt different from other people. In jazz, difference is
the key element that makes artistry possible.” Amen.
It’s great to read about all these aspects of your life –
how you approach creative projects, your struggles with addictions (I’m right
there with you, again), and just the contours of the changes wrought by time
and circumstance as they cut and shape your life and work. Thanks for being
brave about putting all that down on paper – it certainly inspires me to be as
rigorous. Didn’t someone once say that all the good stuff is hidden inside the
pain?
I was sorry to read of your recent and intense health
struggles. I am just coming out of a period of being physically and mentally
ailing to the point that I was in bed for three months – nothing compared to what
you went through, but nothing like anything I’ve experienced before. Reading
those passages was an inspiration as well, although I’d just as soon we could
all skip that shit and just have the inspiration straight. Still, reading about
your perseverance came at just the right time for me. Thanks for the help.
And hey, I still have a ways to go before I get through your
discography, but the one I’m most grateful for isn’t even on there. In 1999,
you made, in collaboration with Beth Kephart and Art Lande (Art lives near me
here in Boulder) Nourishing the Caregiver,
which I found providentially at the time my mother was dying from cancer., and
many nights when I couldn’t sleep after a day of taking her to her chemo I’d
put it on and feel better. It’s the best medicine I possess.
Anyway, that’s basically it. As a creative person, and simply
as a person, your book gets me where I live and makes me feel connected, not
wrong, like I’m not so different after all. I think that if the world doesn’t
grant you the feeling of fitting in, and if the impetus is strong enough, you
can build an entire culture out of yourself, and it ends up being a gift that
others can inhabit as well. I think that is exactly what you have done and are doing.
I hope you are feeling OK, being productive, and having
fun with Scott. Thanks for everything!
Sincerely yours,
Brad Weismann
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