Coincidence and Flaming Assholes
Published by Quin June 16th, 2008 in "Science", Jazz is Dead, Mutterings Of The Disturbed
A couple of weeks ago, I was studying in a cafe in the middle of Tokyo. (Ah, if only I didn’t live in Tokyo, that would sound so sophisticated.) An elderly man and woman sat down at the table next to me. At some point after they had been there chatting for a few minutes, the man hummed the opening bars of “These Foolish Things”. Since I’m not fluent in Japanese yet, I couldn’t quite catch what they said next, but as the man seemed slightly bothered by something[*], I took a gamble, and said in my halting Japanese:
“Excuse me. That song… ‘These Foolish Things’.”
“Pardon me?” he turned to me, a bit shocked in the way Japanese people normally are when a scary gaijin is suddenly talking to them.
“I think… maybe… you forget name song. These Foolish Things.” (Yes, to Japanese ears, I really do sound like Tonto from the Lone Ranger. If I’m having a particularly good day, at least.)
“Yes, of course. I know that. I’m a jazz pianist, you see,” he said, perhaps a bit too proudly.
“What? Really? So am I!”
With some translation help from his slightly-more-English-literate lady friend, I learned that not only is he a jazz pianist, but:
(world-shaking coincidences after the jump)
- he’s the president of the Japanese branch of the IAJE, the International Association of Jazz Education (of which my beloved high school music teacher Mr. B was a proud member), and he’s published over a hundred jazz books.
- it just so happens that within the last couple of months, I had decided that it’s time to start taking jazz piano lessons again, and have been looking for a teacher.
- His teaching studio is literally located less than ten minutes walk from my apartment– frankly astounding in a city the size of Tokyo.
Okay, fine, they’re not WORLD-SHAKING coincidences. But they were enough to blow my mind a little bit.
Now, I’m not one who believes in synchronicity, or fate, or kismet, or “meant to be”. I believe in coincidence as just that– coincidence. Well, I say this, but the minute that all of these facts became clear, it was enough for my gut to tell me that this was clearly a meeting arranged by the Mysterious Forces of the Universe for my own personal benefit.
And so I forced him to agree to let me meet with him for a trial meeting.
I’ll cut to the chase here. He’s a nice old man, but it turned out that his teaching method more or less epitomizes everything I despise about jazz education. His method is all about memorizing soulless licks. When I played piano for him, he politely said my playing was good, but I really got the impression that he hadn’t actually listened to me at all. His own piano playing was soporific background music lounge stylings. I felt no spark of life from it, no pulse, no groove, no joy, except that of a technician who is proud to show off that he is able to press buttons in the same order as real masters.
The capper was when he told me his favorite pianists were Bill Evans, Dave Brubeck, and Bill Charlap. “Oh, is that so?” I said. “Yes,” he smiled. “All white men.” Maybe it was just an innocent observation; but there’s enough stupid mainstream Japanese attitudes about black people here to make me wonder.
So I came to accept that maybe God didn’t plan this chance encounter for me after all. Unless, of course, God is a devious fucker who is trying to trick me into believing that there is no God.
But it all got me thinking. What if this guy really had been exactly the kind of piano teacher I needed? Would I now be a believer in fate? Would I now be pushing the Celestine Prophecy and What the Bleep Do We Know on all of my friends?
I hope not, but I was awfully keen on pursuing things when it felt like they were going in my direction. So I guess I can’t say for sure. But I do know this: coincidences do happen, a lot more than most people realize. With 6.7 billion people living on this planet, any events that you would normally only expect to happen to you once every billion days (about 2.7 million years) are generally going to happen to somebody roughly 6.7 times per day. If Littlewood’s Law has it right, we can, each and every one of us, mathematically expect to experience a miracle (defined here as a one-in-a-million occurence) about once every month.
And you don’t need to know about The Law of Truly Large Numbers to recognize simple things like the fact that the lottery gets won all the damn time. Certainly plenty of lottery winners feel like God wanted them to win, but for that to be true, every lottery winner would need to be handpicked by God. (A claim which I’m sure some people make. Sigh. I suppose those people would also prefer it if our judicial system was based on Trial by Ordeal.)
Still, even knowing all this, when I was actually in a miraculous situation, my first reaction was to thank the Fates. Coincidence sure is seductive.
So here’s my deep thought for the day. In the same way that I started to naturally believe that the Universe was in my corner when I coincidentally ran into a Jazz Piano teacher, I think people for whom power comes by way of luck (even if the coincidence is simply being born white, male, and well-to-do) will find it natural to believe that the Universe is in their corner. And I bet that the more extreme their lucky privilege, the more they’ll think they’re entitled to it.
Dubya is of course our most famous lucky bastard. Born rich (with a silver foot in his mouth, as Ann Richards said), always got everything he needed, and no doubts in his mind that he is carrying out the Lord’s plan.
Lucky people are such assholes.
But, there’s no doubt that coincidences are really good fun. Probably because when they happen, they make us feel like rich white men for a while. Or something. Anyway, feel free to share your own coincidence stories in the comments.
[*]It’s completely irrelevent to the story, but the thing that he was actually bothered by was the fact that the IAJE has gone bankrupt.
I believe Ann Richards was talking about Dubya’s father, although it’s perfectly applicable to both.
Well, well, so you’re right. Guess I always had the wrong assumption there, what with her actually running directly against W for governor and all.
“So here’s my deep thought for the day. In the same way that I started to naturally believe that the Universe was in my corner when I coincidentally ran into a Jazz Piano teacher, I think people for whom power comes by way of luck (even if the coincidence is simply being born white, male, and well-to-do) will find it natural to believe that the Universe is in their corner. And I bet that the more extreme their lucky privilege, the more they’ll think they’re entitled to it.”
Reminds me a lot of learning about the Protestant work ethic and how it mingled with later “Social Darwinism” in US History in high school. Basically, if you’re on top, you deserve it…and even more pertinently, if you’re not, you deserve THAT. God put us in our appointed stations in life, after all.
I’m just waiting for someone to point out that the fact I was born white, male, and (in the scheme of things, at least) affluent naturally makes me– by my own logic– a privileged asshole. And I guess they’d probably be right, too.