A Yankee Jazz Singer in Cuzco

By John P. Calu

Yankee Jazz is a collection of essays and reflections based upon personal experience.

My first career was in Arts and Entertainment. I was in Southern California, in my early twenties and it was amazing. I met world famous celebrities, traveled in style and devoured life in oversized bites. I left that behind for a South American sojourn that led to even greater adventures including the chance to find the love of my life.

When our daughter was born in Miami Beach, I entered a second career as a salesman in Corporate America. Watching her grow into the incredible young woman I see going off to college this fall has been worth every moment spent in this strange and challenging occupation.

The ideas expressed within these pages mark the opening of my Third Act. I hope you enjoy the show.

John P. Calu

Lawrenceville, NJ

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Oct 18, 2013
• ISBN: 9781491710715

John P. Calu

John Calu has worked in Entertainment, Education and Corporate America. His writing combines the lessons he's learned in each of those endeavors and he appreciates the opportunity to share his insights with a growing audience.

Book preview

Contents

Acknowledgments

The Art of Conversation

Hairless Tongue

My Friend the Shaman

I Often Dream in Spanish…

Clothes Horse

A Reasonable Life

Sunday Dinner

Candy Hearts & Flowers

Bon Vivant

A World Away…

In Memory of ATC

Grace

A Yankee Jazz Singer in Cuzco

Tuesday Night Jazz

Reunion

The Heart of the Matter

R.I.P. ETTA

Momentarily Vegetarian

The Third Act

Accounting versus Reckoning

Brother, can you spare a dime?

All in…

The Peacemakers

The Grand Bazaar

Hurricane Season

The Next Frontier

SongFactory

Archetypes

Only in America

Univision

To Have & Have Not

Joseph Campbell said to Jump!

Bonfire

First, Do No Harm…

Barnyard Battles

A Summer Camp in Maine

Here’s To Tomorrow

Feliz Cinco

Concert for the Moons

The Seventies

Made In Bangalore?

Spanish Guitar

Gato Negro

All Kinds of Barbecue

DNA

Backstage

The Sounds of Silence

Femme Phrenale

BYOB

SongMaker

Home is where the art is…

Abundant Lives

Author Biography

For Vanessa

Go Out & Find Your Passion, Honey

Herein Lies Mine

Acknowledgments

First and Foremost, my unending gratitude goes to Zully & Vanessa Calu for their love, laughter and devotion to all that is good in this world. Many thanks to Dave Hart for sharing a vision and the work ethic needed to get there. Thanks also to Michelle Hart for following in her father’s footsteps and writing so brilliantly that she inspires us both. I don’t know what I’d do without Rich Klupp, Daniel McAuliffe & Paul Garvin, my bonfire brethren who know how to share life’s generous bounty. To Randy, Chic, Marcelo, Andres & Luis—the distance is gone in an instant and the connections remain true. To Bob Stives, Tim Bullock, Jack Warwick & John Swatkoski—your friendship is a source of strength, filled with wonderful memories. To John Bryans, Mike Pippin, Linda Stanton, Rob Colding, Nancy Ellor, Dick Gratton, Chris Stopero, Jim Carlucci, Janie Hermann, Krystal Knapp & Leila Nogueira your encouragement and support have meant more to me than I could ever express. To Bob Lewis, thank you for helping me find my voice.

The Art of Conversation

There’s nothing wrong with small talk. In fact, sometimes I prefer it. When you’re in a crowd of people or meeting someone for the first time, it’s tough to discuss the most intimate details of your life or challenge someone to define a philosophy that guides their every move.

Small talk takes on different contexts in different settings. In a suburban house party, it could be lawn care, property taxes and pre-packaged hors d’oeuvres. In a hip mid town soiree it could be Magritte, method acting in Swiss minimalist cinema and baked brie. On a Texas ranch, it could be pork futures, raising cattle, barbecue recipes and the price of gold. At an upscale old money country club it could be finding good help, hedging one’s bets and thriving on the back nine.

You can either use small talk to get to know more about someone or to avoid talking about more important subjects. That’s your call and I respect it either way. I may not stick around very long if the conversation remains that limited, but I can play a patient enough social game to time my exit without offending anyone. I think of conversation as an artform and not everyone likes the same canvas, concerto or banquet fare.

When you get past the civilities, people tend to go into the biographies and that’s the step I like skipping the most. I’ve been to Spain. You’ve been to Paris. I went to grammar school. You went to Choate. I’ve got a Hyundai. You’ve got a pension fund. I sell shingles. You steal pearls. You like boys and I like girls. No offense, but I don’t really care much about where I’ve been let alone where you’ve been. I’m far more interested in where we’re at today and where we want to be tomorrow. We can reminisce about the way we spent our roaring twenties, the mountains we climbed in our thirties and forties and the things we conquered along the way. But doesn’t it make sense to accept that those adventures have already informed us and use the time we have today to make new and exciting discoveries?

There are two kinds of conversation I really enjoy the most. One is when I get the opportunity to talk with someone who has a passion for something. It doesn’t even matter what that passion is for—as long as they’re willing to share it. I’ve listened with great joy to a man describe a fishing trip in the great lakes and I probably wouldn’t be caught dead there no matter what the lure. I was thrilled to hear a painter friend detail the importance of arches in both energy and design and I haven’t got enough skill to draw a straight line. The other kind of conversation I enjoy is when two or more participants are willing to shed themselves entirely for the benefit of wherever the conversation might take them. It’s hard to do because it’s hard to get out of our own way let alone deny our own stubborn point of view in favor of whatever consensus develops organically. When we let a conversation grow from abstract concepts and share perspectives based upon both individual and universal experiences, it can get pretty heady and offer lots of fun and tender insights into the human condition. Nice talking with you.

Hairless Tongue

It is incredibly easy to stereotype, isn’t it? As I passed a service station this morning on my way to drop my daughter off at school, she mentioned that a kid from her high school had gotten a part time job there, and he’s white, she added with some surprise, explaining that she thought only people from India or Pakistan ever got hired there. A few weeks ago she went to a junior prom in another part of the state and noticed that everybody there was white compared to our multi-racial community.

People may find this hard to believe but I was one of those eyetalian kids who grew up in a white working class neighborhood and even though my mom was English and Irish with a smidgeon of Lenape Indian blood, having an eyetalian father ensured that we were regarded much like the Hispanics in those same neighborhoods are today. We were nice people as long as we didn’t throw too many ethnic house parties and took good care of our lawn. I guess my Peruvian wife and I along with our mixed race daughter could still be considered a novelty in some neighborhoods, but thankfully we live in a very diverse community where an economic democracy is hard at work. In other words, if you’ve got the money to live here we don’t care what race, color, creed or sexual identity you represent. We all know there are both upscale and low rent districts that have a decidedly different outlook on life and I wouldn’t want to live in either of those worlds.

I once naively asked a group of young basketball players from the Ivory Coast if everyone in their country was black. You should have heard the white folks around me gasp. The black guys laughed out loud at my ignorance and my lack of tact. In Spanish, they say el no tiene pelos en la lengua which translates into he’s got no hairs on his tongue. Creates an unpleasant image I know, but it actually means he’ll say whatever the hell he’s thinking, regardless of who might hear him.

If you could have locked my dad in a room with a Swiss gardener, a Japanese pastry chef, a Mexican scientist and an African economist, he would have found a common denominator and become their beloved leader within a couple hours. Just like most men growing up how and where he did, he had deeply engrained stereotypes and prejudices, but he never let that get in the way of developing a bond with a decent individual no matter what their race, religion or socio-political affiliation. I hope I’m half the man he was in that regard.

I knew a bartender in California years ago, who was a different type of sexual predator. He was an American guy married to a lovely British woman, but he prided himself on having had sex with men and women of every nationality on earth. He actually hit on me trying to score a Native American man, but luckily lost interest when he found out I was half eyetalian. Like I said, no hairs on my tongue, thank heaven!

My Friend the Shaman

Randy comes to town once or twice a year for pinelands