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On June 30th, 2018 I attended the final evening of what I strongly assumed was the end of my regular, nearly rabid attendance at the annual Ottawa Jazz Festival. The headliner was the great Herbie Hancock and let me say right now, he was certainly worth way more of my attention than I gave him.
Unfortunately, I was much too distracted by my looming house purchase, and the resulting fact that I would be moving far, far away from Ottawa – my home for nearly three decades – and bidding farewell not only to entertainment mainstays like the jazz festival, but also to the awesome group of friends I had collected over the years.
Many of which were, of course, at the festival that night.
And so I spent the evening chatting away with one friend after another, actively supporting the nearest beer tent and paying almost no attention to the legendary performer onstage. Like, sure I’ve seen Herbie many times before, but it’s not like I’d be seeing him too many times again once I moved to rural Newfoundland, and I really should have been giving him the time of day. Okay, when he launched into his groovy, jammy hit Chameleon at the end of the set I interrupted a blurry conversation with my friend and former mentor Wayne and turned to the stage for a few moments of sway-dance attention, but my appreciation for the potency of the music that was undoubtedly swirling around me was fleeting at best.
Heck, I had treated a set by the brilliant Herbie Hancock like it had been Journey or Foreigner up there; blahblahblah, who cares, give me the hits. Shameful.
And then two weeks later our house deal fell through, on the closing date no less. Gone were my dreams of waking up every morning in a gorgeous wood-lined dream home hanging over the Atlantic Ocean, surrounded by the world’s finest people and feeling like a blessed millionaire. But in retrospect I had lost something else.
I had genuinely lost out on truly enjoying and appreciating what very well could have been (and might still be) my last Herbie Hancock concert, flittered away in exchange for the distraction of unfulfilled dreams. Like most of life, I suppose.
I really must learn to live in the moment.
Todd Man Out 