He whirled his fingers up and down the guitar with his eyes closed in almost uncomfortable ecstasy. In front of me a New Yorker bucked his head in melodramatic surprise whenever a feat of uncomprehending mastery was performed. Spontaneous applause would break out at these moments from the darkness of the basement room, only eyes illuminated by the stage lights. There wasn’t a tourist in sight, except for Dylan and I of course, and the obligatory Australian we met in line. Before the show started we listened to this New Yorker who was a singer chat to that New Yorker who was a starving writer, there was a lot of intellectual posing involved, it was fun to watch. Dylan caught a strange dynamic, perhaps the wife meeting her husbands undisclosed mistress. I tried a Manhattan cocktail to get in the new York mood, but in an ironic twist preferred Dylan’s Black Russian.

Earlier day we had ticked off some touristy things on our list: stand in line for half an hour in Magnolia’s bakery, a picnic in Central Park with a fresh cream cheese bagel made by a grumpy old lady. It was nice, but we was a superficial skimming of the surface of New York, we saw more foreigners than locals, we wanted to find the creative heart. Of course we did see a bedazzled preacher on a bedazzled bike spreading the word by the pond and some kids trying to steal turtles from the pond (I hope their mum stopped their antics), and dozens of young dog walkers with a brace of 6 dogs a piece, it was fun.

Another round of claps, this time for the pianist. He had his back to me the whole time and the way he was bobbing up and down like a muppet, I started to feel in an absurd surrealist moment that he might not actually have a face, he would turn around and I;d just see the back of his head for eternity. I felt bad for the bass player, strumming his heart out, the like of a bass is to be in the shadows, no applause for him this night. The drummer earned his claps in “Star of Jupiter”, where he made out of this world sounds with his cymbals, spinning them and running his drumstick up them to produce and eerie whine, then arms rose in the blur of a card shark across the skins. Waves of sound, jazz with such technical skill behind it we realised everything else we’d seen of the genre was pale and simplistic in comparison. We felt a closer connection to New York than in any subway carriage, neon street or tourist trap. Music ended, lights went up and to applause the pianist turned around.