Out of Nowhere.

I had a pandemic-inspired old fart moment today.

The Monarch (wholesale beer distributorship) order arrived on schedule and the driver Ray phoned me according to our usual arrangement. My bike's back from the shop, so I rode it down to unlock Pints&union.

About halfway there I thought "crap, I forgot my mask." Ah, I further reasoned, we have some official Pints&union masks at work; no problem.

Ray was waiting by the back door. I rushed in and ran past all the masks stored by the taps, apologized to Ray because I'd forgotten my mask, said I'd keep my distance, and received the order.

Only then, with no one else around, did I think to grab a Pints face mask from the stack. I put away the beer and came home, sat down, and noticed my mask was right there, hanging from my neck the entire time.

Ray thinks I'm senile.

I'm wondering, too.

Happy 60 years + one day (to me).

Artie Shaw, a curmudgeon out of nowhere.

I'll be standing on the street corner when a car or truck goes past. There'll be a noise from somewhere -- a random sound, a child yelling or a chord produced by a squeaking load shift -- and a song just begins playing in my head.

As noted previously, any innate ability of mine to create music is limited to the point of non-existence, and yet music is with me every minute of every day. One of these days I'll awake to dead air in my brain, and know it's my time to die.

"Out of Nowhere" is not the first tune that comes to mind in the recorded canon of Artie Shaw, the swing era's resident contrarian (perhaps that's why I'm a fan). But it remains fresh and vibrant almost 75 years later, and somewhat summarizes the theory and practice of arranging during the ascendancy of the big bands. I've known this song since I was a kid, and it makes me smile when listening. It re-entered my head Saturday after a snippet of hip-hop was heard from a passing boom car. Why, I'll never know. These things come out of nowhere.

Shaw was a survivor who discarded music a half-century before his death at 94 in 2004. Apparently he was a bright, complex, narcissistic and impossibly difficult man, one whose talent has brought me a good deal of pleasure. Life remains grimly funny that way.

Artie Shaw: Swing and Loathing, by David Gates (NYT)

 ... And then, at the height of his powers, Shaw stopped playing the clarinet, walked away from the music business and spent the next 50 years busying himself with dairy farming, marksmanship, movie distribution, writing a never-to-be-finished autobiographical novel — anything except what he seemed put on earth to do. And wondering what his life had been about.