A familiar accent in a stranger’s voice slices through the music and loneliness of a winter’s night out in Amsterdam. This story was selected as a finalist in our “A Human Moment” travel writing competition sponsored by Travel Lemming.
My Dad has always hated jazz. Having discussed the matter with friends over the years, I’ve come to understand that when dads dislike things, they do so with unmatched fervour. My Dad has the same passionate dislike of both Oasis and Pink Floyd. His feelings are so intense that I wonder whether he had a scrap with Liam Gallagher in a pub or had David Gilmour trip him over in the street. Dads, being as mysterious as they are, make it difficult for me to discount this theory.
Through no fault of our own, our beliefs are partly inherited from the people we hold dear. Indeed, there was a period in which I hated jazz too.
I always saw jazz as pretentious. The joke is longstanding: The only people who love jazz are jazz musicians. The melodies are inconsistent; the rhythms are hard to follow. The trouble is that jazz will never live up to the expectations of popular music.
What jazz is, however, is the music of the people. A genre that thrives on resourcefulness and quick thinking. In its earliest forms, jazz was the outlet of the working classes, a patchwork genre of classical pieces, ragtime, and blues. Jazz reflects the vibrancy of people who play it. A group of people with an unbridled longing to create and be recreated.
The streets of Amsterdam are rife with jazz. Fragments of tunes seep through side streets and out of cafés. The ghosts of trumpeters linger in hotel windows where neon lights shine red upon the pavement. In the Winter, jazz cafes beckon you in from the cold with promises of warmth.
It was in the middle of January, huddled in the back of a café, that I met Emma.
Café Alto is a mainstay of the Amsterdam scene. Every night since the 1950s, a different band has taken the stage. The styles vary, but regardless of who plays, lines stretch out the door and down the street. If you ever find yourself in Amsterdam, you will find another version of yourself in Café Alto.
It was an unassuming shopfront with a black awning and neon sign. Above the shop, a sculpture of a trumpet was mounted on the brickwork. The room was narrow with a wooden bar and tables. Christmas had just passed, and the rafters were decorated with tinsel.
I’ve never felt awkward being alone. In truth, I’ve never considered solitude to be isolating. Nevertheless, I ordered a glass of wine with a name I grossly mispronounced, feeling that a drink would give me a sense of purpose. I told myself I’d stay for an hour and return to the hostel. I could feel the pain in my knee slowly returning, an injury I’d been reconciling with for much of the trip.
There is something about being abroad that increases your sensitivity to accents. Overenunciated vowels become homely, and slang terms become a source of comfort. Emma was sitting beside me, talking to a guy in a plaid scarf.
My generation, like all those before it, has a unique uniform. We thrive on the sustainability of op-shops and second-hand goods. Emma had winged eyeliner and faded blue hair, which looked green in the light. There was something ephemeral about her that lay outside the bounds of explanation.
“I love your jumper,” I said.
It was a loose knit with orange and pink stripes whose sleeves fell over her hands. It reminded me of a Jim Henson puppet and was just as charming.
“Thanks,” she said. “It’s my mum’s, but she reckons it’s kind of daggy”.
I laughed and turned back to my glass. The wine was strong with a warmth that made the room feel fuzzy around the edges. It was a blur that I’d come to appreciate when I felt I’d overstepped or spoken out of turn.
“This is my friend Chris,” she said.
The guy across from her waved. She told me they were from Sydney and worked at a bar in Parramatta. It had been a month on the road with a week spent lazily in Amsterdam. We’d both travelled from Belgium, Bruges and Brussels respectively. In two days’ time, I was set for Berlin. The following morning, she was bound for Switzerland. We both wanted to see snow, but so far we’d been treated to blue skies and golden afternoons.
“Maybe we’d get bored if we saw it all the time,” she said, “But if I can feel like I’m in a Christmas movie at least once, I’d be happy.”
“Something a bit more hardcore than a Melbourne winter,” I joked.
“You’re from Melbourne?”
“It’s a cross I have to bear.”
She laughed.
“Your coffee is rubbish, no offence.”
“And our fashion.”
“Oh my god, yes! It’s like everyone’s trying to get into Bergheim.”
The room was filled with coats and scarves. Chris was sandwiched between a family from Wales whose conversation could be heard well over the band. It was a fusion quintet with sporadic basslines and trumpet solos. Jazz is a call-and-response genre. It’s a conversation between instruments that summons feelings of detective novels and film noir.
“Is that Edward Hopper?”
She pointed at my arm, where a tattoo of The Nighthawks was visible just under my sleeve.
I nodded, “I saw the painting in a book when I was like six and was sort of obsessed with it. I used to write stories about those people all the time, I imagined they were all detectives trying to crack a case in some big city”.
“Are you a writer now?” she asked.
“Sometimes, although most of the time I’m stuck trying to find anything worth writing about.”
“What makes something worth writing about?”
She waited intently for me to respond. It was as if the music had faded and the room had emptied. I was scared that if I left Amsterdam, no one would look at me like that again.
“I don’t know really,” I said. “I try to think about things other people would find interesting, but I feel like the only things I can write about are things I’ve lived through, and everything I’ve lived through is sort of boring.”
“Well,” she said. “I find that hard to believe, but maybe, if you’re really stuck, you could write about this.”
I was plagued by small-town fears. I find that proximity is enough to evoke them. It’s not necessarily being yelled at in the street or having slurs thrown at you from car windows. It’s often as simple as a sideways glance, an offhand comment, the weight that keeps you alone at family Christmas amongst the boyfriends of cousins. There are only so many instances of concealing yourself that you can stand before hiding becomes second nature. To sit beside Emma with our shoulders pressed together was to consider a part of myself I’d neglected.
I felt like I was reliving a part of my life I had missed–making up for lost joy–to sit beside a girl I’d just met and clap along to songs I’d not heard and would not likely hear again. The thrill of jazz is knowing that every night, regardless of the band or the songs being played, you will never hear the same thing twice. Reflecting on my travels, I feel the same way about people. It is knowing that you may never see each other again that makes knowing one another special.
I learnt that she played soccer in high school and sprained her ankle in a qualifying match. I learnt that she played guitar in a punk band and wrote songs on the side. She told me how the band was on hiatus because their singer was going through a breakup. I am not a believer in true love, but in the span of hours, I felt I’d met someone I wanted to spend an eternity getting to know.
I looked at my phone, noting the patrons slowly filing out of the room. Four hours had passed, and I found myself disappointed I couldn’t stay for another six. Emma stood and dusted herself down. She adjusted her scarf and made her way to the door. I walked alongside her, our hands brushing casually.
I found myself hesitating on the doorstep. The haunted part of me returned. If I crossed the threshold, I would cease to exist. The person I’d become would fade, wasting away in an Amsterdam café. Outside, the streets were dusted white. The canals were still, and the lights overhead made the water look like glass. I glanced up at the sky, which was speckled with clouds.
“I think it snowed,” I said.
Emma examined the street. Chris had separated himself from the Welsh family and joined us in a huddle by the door.
He scuffed his toe against the stone.
“It’s ice,” he said.
Wordlessly, we walked toward the canal railing. It was one of the only railings I’d seen outside the slopes of a bridge. I leaned against it; my hands having lost all feeling.
“It’s not quite a white Christmas,” she said, “but something’s better than nothing”.
We stood with Emma and Chris across from me. We reached the end of the street, a crossroads at which we knew we would part. There was a moment of shock as her arms enveloped me. It was fleeting and rare. She didn’t have to say anything as she turned to leave. It was inevitable, but the sting didn’t feel any less real. I watched as, with a hug and a smile, Emma and Chris walked down the street and disappeared into the night.
I walked under the lights of Amsterdam, Christmas trees illuminating the city centre. To go back to the hostel would be to end a night I wasn’t entirely sure had transpired. It was something I would have to make peace with. There was a bittersweet calm in leaving Amsterdam. Though we can’t fully retrieve the people we once were in specific places and times, part of my soul forever lingers in café Alto. The night I developed a fierce and insistent love of jazz.
