When I first saw John, I was taken aback by his appearance. I could imagine him as a

basketball player in his youth, streaking down the hardwood in shorts whose length envies those

of today’s teenage girls. In my mind, he would palm the ball in his grotesquely large mitts, and

would leap for the basket, barely having to jump to slam the orb through the rim. Or I could see

him as the classic farmer, who would take the straw hat off his head in order to wipe the sweat off

of his enormous brow, leaning on a pitchfork just taller than him for support. Seeing him in the

music room was about as logical as encountering a monkey in the supermarket.

Most of the time, John carries himself rather awkwardly. He blinks as if his contact

lenses are perpetually falling out of his eyes, which I know is not the case because of the glasses

that always hang around his neck. “Nifty” he calls them; I think that “weird” is a far more

suitable adjective. They are black rectangular glasses, thoroughly unremarkable at first glance.

However, the glasses are actually two half-glasses connected by a small magnet. When he takes

them off, he pulls them apart so that they come around his face, and then brings his hands

together below his chin so the halves snap together. I’ve had my share of laughs over this curious

ritual; whenever I do, he gives me a huge grin and a high-five, exclaiming “Dude!”

I don’t think a single day has passed without John calling someone “dude.” During

rehearsals, the band loves to play around with rhythm and phrasing, elements crucial to the

spontaneity and beauty of jazz. Every day in class, John leans against my piano, snapping his

fingers and stomping his feet to the beat of our tune. He will listen without a word for the

majority of the time, doing what he would call “groovin.” Now and then, he will hear something

he really likes, and his face will light up with joy. Each time, he looks directly at the creator of

the sound, and points with his finger that is as long as an unsharpened pencil. His eyes widen,

and he shouts, “Dude!” If I am fortunate enough to be the one pointed at, I walk on clouds for the

rest of the tune, feeling unstoppable. Once the song ends, John turns to me once again, and the

following conversation always takes place.

“That was a really groovy thing you did there. You know who you sounded like?”

“No, who?”

“[insert obscure jazz musician’s name]!”

“Oh no way!”

“Yeah dude, that was great. You know...”

I honestly never know who John is talking about. I have a reasonable knowledge of jazz

artists, but every time I have a conversation with him, I feel like an ignorant idiot. He could be a

walking encyclopedia of musicians for all the names he knows. It’s not like he just knows their

names either; he really knows them. He can immediately relate one of our playing styles to one

of theirs, and always follows up his comparison with stories about the musicians that are

completely random. I used to try to listen to his tales, but I realized that there was no use trying

to glean information from his words. Now, when he goes off on his rants, I just watch him

amusedly. As he talks, his enormous hands wave around as if he is swatting invisible flies, and

he constantly shifts his feet like a man stuck in an elevator that has a full bladder. It’s quite the

spectacle.

The only thing more confusing than hearing John talk about musicians is hearing him talk

about music. All my life, I thought that playing music was as simple as reading the notes on the

page. When I talk to John about keys and chord changes, I feel my brain melting and leaking out

of my ears. I will ask him a question about a particular chord, and he somehow finds a way to

have an entire conversation about it, telling me everything about the chord that I have no interest

in knowing. This is analogous to asking someone what their name is, and getting a response that

chronicles the history of their last name dating back to the middle of the 18th century.

When listening to recorded music, though, John enters his own world and doesn’t come

out until the song ends. When Dick, John’s coworker, puts on a piece of music that we will be

playing, John immediately closes his eyes and falls into the music. Much to the chagrin of Dick,

instead of listening to the music, I watch John listen to the music. He contorts his face in every

possible way over the course of five minutes, moving from a smile to a frown in a matter of

seconds. His entire body moves to the beat with utter disregard for its surroundings. Most

notably, he has kicked a chair, kicked me, knocked over an entire stack of sheet music, punched a

wall, and hit his head on the piano lid. I’m fairly certain that a normal person would react to such

actions with pain, or would at least show some realization of what they had done. In this respect,

John is about as human as a potato. He will make aggressive contact with something, and won’t

even care. Hopefully he doesn’t listen to music while driving.

The best parts of John’s listening are probably the sounds that he makes. During a

particularly textured solo, he will sometimes yell “Yeah!” or grunt: “UHH!” These outbursts are

far from rare, but they never fail to startle. The first time he made such a comment, I jumped in

my seat and banged my knee on the bottom of the keyboard; the resulting bruise took about a

week to fade. I worry that he’s going to give himself a heart attack; he very nearly gives me one

every day.

John plays the guitar more remarkably than anyone I have ever met. His hands seem too

clumsy to produce harmony from the supple instrument, but I have learned that this couldn’t be

farther from the truth. When he plays with us, he brings an unmatched complexity and depth to

our sound. His solos are lush and abstract; I imagine him running through a white room with lots

of different colored paintbrushes, adorning the plain background with incredible zest and variety.

There have been multiple occasions on which I stop playing my part to listen to his contributions.

Dick usually gets mad at me for ruining the flow of the piece, but John never does; he only smiles

in appreciation. He’s too cool of a dude to get mad.

I no longer see John as out of place in the music room; in fact, there is no other place that

I can imagine him. On the days that he isn’t in class, I feel like something huge is missing. It

isn’t just his hands; it’s his presence, or his “coolness” as he’d like to call it.