I have been studying Keith Jarrett with the unhealthy concentration normally associated with people that believe the government hid something underneath the Gimli Airport. I am not particularly interested in the magnificent parts. Everybody understands those. He finds a groove, the heavens open, the right hand throws diamonds around the room and three thousand Europeans in a concert hall collectively realize they have souls. Fine. What interests me is the wreckage, the little stretches where one musical country ends and the next one hasn’t opened its border yet.

Jarrett abandons the rhythm. A bass note hangs around after everybody else left. The right hand begins exploratory noises. For maybe fifteen seconds I cannot tell what the governing authority is. No groove, no obvious destination, no reassuring sign that the chorus in 3 kilometers. And then, impossibly, he’s somewhere else. I want to know exactly how the rabbit entered the hat. The more closely I listen, sometimes another possibility emerges. It could be that Jarrett doesn’t know where he’s going either. If Keith Jarrett gets lost, there is hope for the rest of us. I know this territory. I arrive there almost every time I improvise. The difference is when I realize I don’t know where I am, paramedics, firefighters and a swat teams arrive in my brain with their red lights flashing. But Jarrett wanders deeper into the swamp. I try again.