A renowned musician in his 85th year explores the nature of wisdom,
how we learn to recognize it, and how we pass it forward.
In this entrancing memoir, timeless questions about music and life are
explored by a master musician in his 85th year. The stern father who
built an empire of words; the solipsistic uncle whose hypnotic voice
calmed millions: these are just early glimpses of Mathieu's memory. Soon
he is crimped into an overhead baggage rack in Stan Kenton's tour bus as
scenes of scotch-soaked melancholy play out below; he is sharing
late-night quarts of ice cream with Duke Ellington in his hotel room; he
is co-inventing improvisational theater at Chicago's Second City with
Alan Arkin and Mike Nichols; he is receiving the title of Sufi sheikh
from an heir of Inayat Khan; and he is gleaning wisdom from a woman
bundling firewood in Bali.
In prose at once wry and lyrical, Mathieu carries the reader through the
adventures and misadventures of a scintillating and deeply examined
life.
