Hungry Heart

Dear friends,

In the wake of my brother’s death on June 3, I need to stray a bit from my usual style of park stories. I hope you’ll bear with me.

On Sunset Dunes Park, there’s a sky-blue phone booth with a sign that says “Ocean Calling.” Inside is an old-style black rotary phone that’s not connected to anything, a box of pebbles and a length of metal pipe. Visitors are invited to use the phone to call a loved one who has died.

The piece was created by artists Jamae Tasker and Sarah McCarthy Grimm, who were both grieving the loss of younger siblings. They were inspired by the Wind Phone in Japan, which was installed by Itaru Sasaki for mourners after the devastating 2011 tsunami. “At the Wind Phone, the line may be disconnected, but the connection of love never is,” says its website.

I’ve passed the little booth many times without stopping, but the other day I did. Following the instructions, I took a pebble from the box and dropped it down the pipe where it made a sound like coins clinking in pay phones of yore. I picked up the heavy black receiver, pressed it to my ear and looked out at the choppy dark waves and distant horizon. “Hello, Andy,” I said and then it came – a clobbering sneaker wave of grief. I began crying harder than I had since the day my brother died. “I miss you. I love you. I should have told you that more,” I sobbed and told the phone, the wind, the ocean about all the feelings I’d been having – the sadness, the guilt, the anger, the remorse. Who knows? Maybe my brother heard me.

For much of the last month, I’ve felt disconnected from the world, at once numb but also as rawly vulnerable as a snail without a shell. In that state I’ve not trusted myself to talk much to strangers. After visiting Ocean Calling, I decided to ride back home through the park. I told myself to look for things that might unmuffle my senses, sparks of joy that might help reel me back into life. Like the fluffy pair of ducklings I spotted paddling near the shore of Metson Lake last week.

At one of the pianos stationed on JFK Promenade, a man was playing “Everybody ‘s Got a Hungry Heart.” My mind filled in the lyrics. And though I didn’t think of it at the time, maybe those words were what snagged my attention – my hungry heart beckoning me to stop and listen to him play and then talk to him.

Drew said he rides the bus from North Beach a couple of times a week to play the piano. Always in the morning – “It’s quiet, there’s more mist in the air, so the notes carry well” – and always this Baldwin upright – a “fantastic instrument.”

He’ll play for two hours or so. “If another piano player shows up, I automatically relinquish it, especially if I’ve had enough time on it. But I don’t find a lot of people show up at this time.”

His repertoire is mainly classic rock. “Growing up I never had any musical training but I heard all these songs very clearly on my car radio.”

He’ll play pieces that “have a San Francisco vibe,” tunes by San Francisco bands like Jefferson Airplane, Santana or Grateful Dead. But he also likes to play songs people don’t expect to hear on a piano: a moody Pink Floyd tune or something from the Beastie Boys. “I love to play Iron Maiden on the piano, but at 8:30 in the morning, it might be a bit much.”

It’s great when passers by give him a thumbs up or a smile, but that’s not why he plays. Drew’s playing for his own pleasure.

He decided to take part in Flower Piano this year, his first time. He waited until the final hour of the final day. “I didn’t even give myself the opportunity to get stage fright or anxiety. I just jumped right into the song.” It was, he admits, an unusual choice: Free Bird by Lynard Skynard. “And people loved it. I got a lot of applause.”

Drew worked for 28 years as a software developer until being laid off two years ago. “Quite honestly I’m at a phase of my life when I’m in a new phase of my career. I have discovered that I don’t give a shit about software…That may change one day,” he said, “but for now I’m pleased to have this opportunity to make a pivot cuz my heart’s not in software anymore.”

So he’s filling his time playing music, learning to knit, taking chess lessons from a grandmaster. He’s enjoying life as he should.

As we all should.