Present At The Dawn

Serendipity is one of those damn words that is too pretentious for common usage. One wishes there were a simple, anglo-saxon word for running across a glory by merest or even the most perverse chance.

There was no reason for me to turn left off of Route 133 and walk down Bashamichi yesterday afternoon in Yokohama. First of all, I was not even supposed to be in Yokohama yesterday.

Yet I did make the turn and was walking down the bricked street, enjoying the time outdoors as much as my antihistimine-suppressed sugi-pollen hay fever allowed...when I saw a knot of serious looking policemen with a portable street barrier down a street to my left.

If I had not stopped to to look at whatever the heck those policemen were doing, I would not have noticed the final setting up of amplifiers and microphones for a free concert in front of Kannai Hall (whatever it was the policeman were doing had nothing to do with the concert, as it turned out).

Had my plans for the day not been in utter disarray, I would not have stopped to listen.

And I would have missed a free public set by the greatest acoustic guitarist no one has ever heard of.

Matsui Yuki creates music that defies the limitations of his instrument (Bent bell tones?). That he managed to make a mistake in his last piece was reassuring, not upsetting.

If you have 4 minutes and 35 seconds to spare today, try clicking on "Friend" on Matsui's homepage (Link). Not only is the recording unprettified (this is the song the way Matsui played it yesterday on the cold, wind-swept Bashamichi) but he has bagful of these compositions to loose upon the world.