So, I’m sixteen and my parents have hired this kid named Jeff Masso, a known genius at my high school, to tutor me in algebra. I can intuit that he is frustrated with me, not learning and not wanting to learn math, but he persists.
One day, he struts into my house, full of himself (curly black hair, black eyes, freckles,) and stops at the piano. He plays a few chords, looks up and says, “Dave Brubeck.”
Stars swirl on the ceiling.
The sky opens up, spewing fireworks of sound and I know there is a world I have never imagined and somehow, I must open myself up and learn it. 
He might as well have said, “There are more things in heaven and Earth, Horatio…”

my first epiphany…
he touched the
keys and said, “Dave Brubeck”
changing my world in
one second of dissonance