It was a mood I was treating in the usual fashion, with warm caffeine, when a bearded man sat down at the nearby piano and started playing.
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I expected further distraction like the one that had been poking its finger in my eye rendering me unable to write.
But I was wrong. Although I didn’t recognize the first song he played, it was pleasant, and its peaceful tones blended in like the fake sugar and half-and-half in my coffee, leading me into full consciousness, or at least as near as I can come to it.
So my mind turned back to that finger that had been poking in my eye — the day-old news of another shooting, this one on a baseball field by a soon deceased man who had been living out of his van and had asked after the political party of the players before taking aim.
I found the news refreshing in a way — not refreshing in any relation to the violence at hand, of course.
Refreshing, instead, because the story seemed straightforward, and, as additional witnesses were found, their statements seemed to contribute to a story that added up.
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This story reported the reactions of real people to real violence that had come to a peaceful neighborhood in Virginia, if not out of left field, at least from the third base line.
It showed the faces of people who knew they were lucky that the second baseman, who had been shot, was being guarded because of his leadership position in the U.S. House of Representatives.
The presence of those guards, of course, allowed the dugout many had sought safety in to remain a refuge and not be transformed into a place in which people were shot like fish in a barrel.
Although it was mentioned, I’m not sure anybody really believed that the shooting would turn into a cautionary tale that would reduce the pitched level of partisanship and streams of tweets that have contributed to the global warming of politics.
But at least it wasn’t a story about political intrigue, into which talking heads on a screen tossed a series of comments like so many marbles that began rattling around in what seemed a roulette wheel of murky truth that never stops spinning.
It was while this was on my mind that I noticed the bearded man at the piano had switched songs. He was playing a slightly mournful tune. But even in my rattled state, it took me a few moments to realize he was using his keyboard to make a point I was leading to while seated at mine.
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Those of a certain age know the tune from the 1973 album “There Goes Rhymin’ Simon.” The song also was performed by Paul Simon in the Concert in Central Park, which still is rebroadcast from time to time, largely, I think, on PBS fundraisers.
Many more of a past age would recognize the tune’s origin from a chorus of the Johann Sebastian Bach composition “St. Matthew’s Passion,” a piece about the passion of Christ.
The melody had been popularized long before Simon’s birth by a German composer who added lyrics that translate to “O Sacred Head, Now Wounded.”
I still remember when Simon’s version came out, my brother’s mother-in-law, a church organist, was both excited and disappointed by it.
She was excited about Simon’s borrowing of the tune and disappointed about the place in the progression Simon had wandered off the straight and narrow path of Bach’s progression.
To me, the music and what Simon says with his lyrics bring to mind the moments after you’ve had a good cry — the moments after the pitched wave of emotion has already crashed over you and slid back into the ocean — the moments when you catch your breath and feel a weary, if resigned, peace that’s the prelude to a nap.
You can look up all the lyrics to “American Tune” online, if you’d like. In all, it serves almost like a blues musician’s response to our National Anthem.
Today — with the help of the guy at the nearby piano — I’ll end with the final chorus.
“Oh but it’s all right it’s all right
You can’t be forever blessed
And when I think of another working day
I’ve just got to get some rest
I’ve got to get some rest.”
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