Takeshi Shibuya: Dream

I once had an absolutely horrible boss. Many years ago; I was young, but I wasn’t an ingenue by any means. I had lived a fair bit of ‘life’, if you will, and had already begun to use that word to mean something larger than living. My understanding of that word still fit within the confines of my own being. I hadn’t yet begun to recognise that it’s infinitely larger than me. That realisation came later, probably helped along by this absolutely horrible boss.

This monstrous professional had several characteristics that disqualified her from sharing a workplace with her fellow human beings. The arrogance that comes with middling competence rewarded with outsized success, a propensity to raise her voice, sycophancy, the greatest hits. She made my short tenure in her team miserable; emerging from that misery made me the person I am today. Irrespective of how rewarding the journey out of that workplace ended up being, I can see no redeeming qualities in my experience of working with my horrible boss.

Except the one…

When she perceived herself to be under performance pressure, which was often, she would listen to piano jazz. Some of it good, some of it two-hour-long videos by faceless uploaders on YouTube. As you might imagine, there was no worse time to be reporting to this horrible boss than when she perceived herself to be under performance pressure, so I began to associate piano jazz not with a relaxing evening at home or at a club, but with verbal takedowns. It made it difficult for me to enjoy piano jazz for years.

Thankfully, that’s a thing of the past now. So when I read this post on Substack, and read about Takeshi Shibuya’s Dream, I could just enjoy what the article describes as “one of the greatest live albums of all time, right up there with Waltz for Debby.” The article goes on to say: “It’s just the most beautiful and delicate of recordings, and I would have given anything to have been there in the room when it was recorded.” 

I agree.