Cambridge, Massachusetts

Cambridge, Massachusetts is the setting for the narrator’s residence from 1993 to 1995, a period when he was a writer-in-residence at a college and worked on The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. The city’s jazz venues and record shops furnish the concrete settings for two coincidences that he recalls not as supernatural revelations but as striking interruptions of the everyday.

Residence and Work

The narrator lived in Cambridge from 1993 to 1995 while holding a writer-in-residence position at a college. During this stay he was writing The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. Cambridge is introduced through ordinary professional and cultural routines rather than as a broad city portrait: the account concentrates on a jazz club in Harvard Square and a used-record shop near the Berklee School of Music.

The Regattabar Performance

The Regattabar Jazz Club in Harvard Square is described as comfortable, relaxed, and cozy, with live performances by famous jazz musicians and a reasonable cover charge. One evening the narrator went alone to hear Tommy Flanagan, one of his favorite pianists, because his wife had another engagement. Expecting a memorable performance, he took a seat near the stage and ordered a glass of California Merlot.

At first, the set disappointed him. It was not bad, but seemed to lack the special quality that might carry a listener into another world; he wondered whether Flanagan was unwell or had not yet warmed up. As the set neared its end, the narrator grew anxious that he would leave with little more than a lukewarm memory. He privately considered which two songs he would request if given the chance, settling on Charlie Parker’s “Barbados” and Duke Ellington’s “Star-Crossed Lovers,” neither a typical choice.

Without speaking to him or even looking in his direction, Flanagan then played the two pieces. He began with “Star-Crossed Lovers,” followed by an up-tempo “Barbados.” The unexpected selection transformed the evening: the narrator was speechless, and judged both performances remarkable. The coincidence is sharpened by the gap between his private wish and the pianist’s unprompted choices, not by any claim that the musician had somehow heard his thoughts.

A Record-Shop Coincidence

A second incident took place in Cambridge around the same period, in a used-record shop near the Berklee School of Music. The narrator found a mint-condition first pressing of Pepper Adams’s 10 to 4 at the 5 Spot for only seven or eight dollars. He already owned the Japanese edition, worn from repeated listening, so finding the original in such good condition and at that price felt like a minor miracle.

As he left the shop with the record, a young man asked him the time. The narrator checked his watch and answered that it was ten to four, echoing the album’s title. The small exchange made the coincidence immediately legible: the record’s name and the actual time aligned at the very moment he had bought it. He wondered whether the god of jazz was winking at him, but framed this as a playful response to chance rather than evidence of occult intervention.

Narrative Significance

The Cambridge episodes are presented as modest coincidences, not events that redirected the narrator’s life. He explicitly distinguishes his interest in such occurrences from enthusiasm for fortune-telling or paranormal powers; what holds his attention is that unexpected correspondences can happen in an otherwise humdrum existence. The city therefore functions as a compact landscape of recollection, where a live set and a secondhand record give chance a particular, memorable form.