by John Lurie
But if they are not with me, if they are restless or noisy, then I tend to push and I am lost. I play too hard and too much and am exhausted after fifteen minutes.
This, on New Year’s Eve, where they have paid quite a bit of money for their ticket, is a guaranteed way to make people feel ripped off, when the concert is only forty minutes long.
* * *
—
Before the show, Ari, Larry, Natalia, and I go out for New Year’s Eve dinner. Larry couldn’t be much more than five feet tall and he has one eye that is horribly crossed. In general, his behavior is perfect, polite, and not rambunctious at all. But he is a tough kid from Harlem, and if a six-foot-four German guy looks at him the wrong way, Larry is in his face and ready. This happens a bunch. There is something about this tough little black kid with crossed eyes that the German men find very entertaining and want to poke at. I think that someone is going to get killed.
We are at the restaurant and Larry orders fish. The restaurant is really good. I have to hand it to Natalia because this is just about the best food that I have ever eaten in Germany. She is also great with Larry.
Larry’s fish comes and he looks at it. Takes his fork and plays with it for a minute.
Natalia says, “What’s wrong, Larry? Don’t you like your fish?”
“This ain’t fish.”
“Yes, Larry, of course it’s fish.”
“No it ain’t.”
“Taste it.”
Larry takes a little bite of this beautiful piece of fish and spits it out.
“That ain’t fish. Let’s go.”
Ari explains to Natalia that Larry has only had McDonald’s Filet-O-Fish sandwiches and this is very unfamiliar to him.
Larry gets out there and plays on his compound bucket, which we have brought from New York. He is great.
Natalia and I went out to every toy store in Frankfurt and bought up all the tiny noisemakers for children, little plastic saxophones and clickers and tiny whistles, which were thrown out to the audience before the concert.
I go on at midnight, and as I approach the mic, I hear champagne corks popping. At that moment I know the music and energy of what I am about to do is not going to match the expectation or energy of the crowd. I don’t know what I was thinking, playing a saxophone solo on New Year’s Eve. Clearly what I am about to do is not going to be festive enough for the occasion. As I’ve said, I remember every bad concert that I ever did and this was one of them.
There are bits of that concert in the Ulli Pfau film John Lurie: A Lounge Lizard Alone. There are moments that show what the solo concerts could be. There is also footage of Natalia and me going around and buying the toy noisemakers.
I was kind of bummed out, but only for a minute, because the next day, Natalia and I went to Africa. I had gotten all my shots. We were flying from Stuttgart to Frankfurt and then on to Nairobi.
When we switched planes in Frankfurt, everyone’s bag was out on the tarmac. You pointed at your bag and then they loaded it onto the plane. Except my bag wasn’t there.
The man from Lufthansa said that was fine, that it would be on the next flight. I was a little worried because my anti-malaria medicine was in my bag and I had no idea if it was a real danger or not to not take it.
Natalia and I had decided to stay one night in Nairobi and then drive east, to the ocean, ending up somewhere near Mombasa.
When we arrived in Nairobi, I called Lufthansa to find that there was no next flight, that in two days there was a flight and that I could arrange to have my bag sent on to Mombasa.
How shocking to find out the airline employee on the tarmac had lied to me to speed things along.
We didn’t know what we were doing. I found out later that there were forty-three different ways we could have been killed traveling unguided through the African jungle from Nairobi to Mombasa. I had assumed that Natalia knew the ins and outs of Africa, and she had assumed the same about me.
Kenya is amazing. One isn’t fifteen minutes outside of the city before being hit with the primordial landscape. The vegetation stretches out against plains under a low sky, and it creates an atmosphere that can only be described as Africa. There is that thing—you can feel that life started there. And everywhere you look, there are animals.
Fifteen minutes outside of Nairobi there are giraffes and zebras, off a hundred yards to my left.
When we are almost there, maybe five miles outside of Mombasa, we get a flat tire. Natalia is impressed that I know how to change a tire. Well, not really impressed. She is surprised.
But we are in this little village that the road runs through, and the sun is going down. It is in that perfectly relaxed moment of the day when the sky spreads a kind warmth over everything. I lived for years in Grenada at the top of a very steep hill, and at sunset, you could see people’s walks, particularly women’s walks, change into something different. A saunter.
I think the time of day saves us. Because the people who walk by stare at us with open hostility.
And I am thinking, Fuck, these people used to live right on the ocean, where life was good and food was plentiful, and then the white people pushed them out. Of course they hate us.
When we get to Mombasa, there is a message that I can pick up my suitcase at the Mombasa airport.
We go over to the airport the next morning.
It is chaos.
There are crazy looking guys in makeshift uniforms with machine guns. They walk around and point their guns at people and yell. Like they are keeping order. But they are doing the opposite of that.
There are all kinds of animals. Everywhere. And lots and lots of chickens.
It is packed to the gills and there is no one anywhere to ask where I might be able to get my suitcase.
There is no Lufthansa counter. There is no information booth.
People are screaming at each other in Swahili.
A Muslim guy in a robe is walking five goats on leashes and is blocked by a Kenyan guy in shorts with no shirt with three goats. They yell at each other.
I turn to Natalia and ask, “Why do people bring their goats to the airport?”
She laughs pretty hard but doesn’t answer. Any woman who laughs with a deep openness at the absurdity of life makes me love her immediately.
We push our way through the crowd looking for an information booth, or even just an airline counter, but there is nothing, only mayhem. Then, unguarded, just leaning against a post, is my suitcase, all by itself in the middle of the airport.
* * *
—
On the way back from Mombasa we zigzagged through the game parks. We saw a ten-foot snake and Natalia wanted to get out to catch it. I had to explain to her that it was a cobra.
She decided to take a shortcut, but it didn’t look like a shortcut on the map to me. Really it was because we hadn’t seen an elephant yet and she thought that this might be the way to find one.
That drive was magical.
I had been depressed for a long, long time. I couldn’t get out of it.
Africa saved me. You can feel that life started there.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Ben Greenberg
Nesrin Wolf
Loring Kemp
About the Author
John Lurie is a musician, painter, actor, director, and producer. He co-founded The Lounge Lizards in 1979. In the decades since, he has released albums (including those by his alter ego Marvin Pontiac), acted in films, composed and performed music for television and film, exhibited his paintings throughout the world, and produced, directed, and starred in the Fishing with John television series. His most recent series, Painting with John, debuted on HBO in 2021.
johnlurieart.com
Twitter: @lurie_john
Instagram: @john.lurie.art
What’s
next on
your reading list?
Discover your next
great read!
Get personalized book picks and up-to-date news about this author.
Sign up now.
