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We See Things Differently:
A Coconut Grove Christmas Story of Music, Perspective, and Community.
The Small Business Challenge in Coconut Grove
It was almost the Christmas shopping season, and my friends on the Coconut Grove Business Council were worried about getting people to shop with the community’s small local retailers instead of going to the mall.
Music Could Transform the Christmas Shopping Experience
I suggested having local musicians entertain on street corners. After all, David Crosby, Jimmy Buffet, Joni Mitchell, Stephen Stills, John Sebastian, Richie Havens, Jose Feliciano, and local stars Bobby Ingram, Vince Martin, and John Brown all lived or played here in the sixties and seventies.
Remember the lyric, “I’m going where the sun keeps shining, through the pouring rain”? That’s Harry Nilsson singing about Coconut Grove in Fred Neil’s “Everybody’s Talkin’” from Midnight Cowboy.
The group greenlit my idea and gave me a small budget to recruit musicians. Their only concern was Christmas Eve. Believe it or not, that’s an important shopping day (I’m looking at you, procrastinators), and they were worried about how we’d fill that slot.
A Different Perspective: Seeing Things Through Others’ Eyes
I reached out to some friends and arranged for different musicians to be strategically positioned on various street corners during the week before Christmas. For the 24th, I called on my buddies who celebrate Chanukah and arranged for them to play on Christmas Eve.
So there we were on the night before Christmas, two friends on guitar and me on harmonica at the corner of Main Highway and Fuller Street in the heart of the Grove.
We tuned up and played a few songs, and before too long we had attracted a bit of a crowd. After about 20 more minutes, a tuxedoed waiter showed up balancing champagne and crystal flutes on a silver tray. Apparently my friend Jorge, who ran the French bistro up the street, saw us playing and wanted to thank us for entertaining the diners at his restaurant.
So there we were, playing music, sipping champagne, and sharing the spare change shoppers threw into the open guitar case with the street people on our little party’s periphery.
A bit later, I saw a friend’s wife walk by with a woman I assumed was her mom. They were both well-dressed, and their arms were overloaded with packages and shopping bags.
“Hey Rochelle,” I said, “Why don’t you come over and enjoy a song or two?”
She looked at me, looked at her mom, looked at me again, and then they nervously scurried away. But I was too busy to give it much thought; I just returned to performing.
A day or two later, my phone rang.
“Hello. This is Bruce.”
“How you doing, pal?” It was Rochelle’s husband.
“Fine,” I answered. “Getting all my ducks in a row before New Year’s. How’re you?”
“I’m good.” He paused. “Are you sure you’re okay?” he asked again.
“Yeah, I’m fine. Why?”
“Well…” he hesitated. “Rochelle said she saw you begging for change in the Grove the other night.”
“She what…?” I was suddenly overcome by a bad case of giggles. When I could speak again, I thanked him for his concern, told him I was just fine, and hung up.
The song “One Man’s Ceiling Is Another Man’s Floor” is from Paul Simon’s 1973 album There Goes Rhymin’ Simon. In it, Simon employs a New Yorker’s urban experience to reflect on people’s differing perspectives on life. The title explains how one’s advantages or comforts might create challenges or discomforts for someone else, such as in an apartment building where people live above and below each other.
Since that day, I often try to look at things from others’ perspectives, wondering how various people see things differently from how I do.
Lessons for a New Year: Embracing Chaos and Order
As we enter a new year that promises to be full of challenges and opportunities, I encourage you to do the same.
After all, one person’s chaos is another’s order.