I left my cello in the room, sneaked past the clerk to the street, and took a taxi for Harlem, alone. Soon I found myself in a different world, exotic and strange. I heard jazz from a bar in a cellar and walked into a dark street toward it. The place was jammed. The only white, I watched the dancing crowd. There were two woodwind instruments I had never seen before, a piano, a drum, a bass, and a fat trumpeter standing in front. The band calmly played a tune. As it progressed, the sound increased and the tune shortened, until one heard the trumpet blowing only one note. The throbbing beat of the plucking double bass encouraged the trumpet, and the short exciting cries from the dance floor made the note more intense and insistent. Like an irresistible call to a weird ritual, the fanatical band drew more heated cries from the possessed crowd. The waiters dropped their trays and joined the piercing trumpet in a wild, frenzied dance. / Unable to resist the passionate climate, I saw myself suddenly moving on the floor, and as if mesmerized I became part of the bewitched ritual. I kicked my feet and shock my body in the strangest gyrations, as if from a savage tribe. An incredible stranger to self, I was lost in my own jungles. Encircled by convulsively moving bodies and deafened by the trumpet, I danced until I found myself painting on the street. Ashamed and puzzled by my behaviour, I returned exhausted to my hotel. << less