I had two fairly magical musical experiences with old guys during my college days.
One happened during my junior year. I lived in a house with two other guys, who were out of town for the night, so I was home alone. I was short on cash so decided to just stay home, and I was playing guitar out on the stoop of my house drinking from a bottle of cheap wine that was left over in the fridge. I was pretty delighted when two drunk guys threw a fiver on my porch as they passed by - I was definitely not playing to any level that deserved money, but it felt pretty awesome.
An older hippie looking guy came stumbling down the walk. He stopped and asked me if he could play something on my guitar. I was immediately nervous that the guy might run off with the guitar, but I hesitantly handed it over to him, and he strummed out a song which I had never heard before (Bob Dylan's She Belongs to Me). He was no rock star - his chord changes were sloppy, his voice was raspy and maybe a little off key. But he shared a wonderful song that I love to this day, then thanked me for letting him play and continued on his way. What a cool little moment, to meet this random stranger and be able to share that music.
The other moment was even more strange and magical, and happened about a year before. A buddy and I had been holed up in the house watching TV and smoking pot for a while, and we stepped out onto the stoop to have a cigarette. It was a beautiful spring afternoon, and we were just chatting, goofing around with accents and silly jokes, enjoying the fresh air and the leftovers of our weed high. All of sudden we heard this strange, ethereal music coming from down the street, and went silent as we strained to hear the sound. From the street corner emerged a man in a forest green suit, with a long white beard, carrying some sort of harp, and playing it beautifully as he walked by. The guy didn't acknowledge us in any way, and we were far too shocked to think of anything to say as he passed. We watched him walk away, still playing this almost angelic music, and the music faded as he got out of hearing distance. My friend and I stood there in stunned silence, until one of us asked, unbelievingly "did you see that too?" I never saw this guy on campus again after that day, but my friend and I still joke about the time we saw an actual wizard on campus. If I hadn't had a friend with me, I'm not sure I would believe that it was real, I'd chalk it up to some vivid dream or hallucination or something. But again, what a magical thing to have happen.
I just listened to a section in the audiobook We Should Hang Out in which the author describes how people in a Blue Zone in Costa Rica hang out in groups outside every evening and have bbq together. Families with neighbors we etc.. It seems so healthy and I want something like that. In the Portland, OR area houses are required to have porches to foster community, but still most of them are to small to be attractive to hang out on. My house has one, but it's smaller than my other outdoor spaces. I was thinking after I listened to it, how to create a front for a potential future home that fosters community like this. We all seem to long for something liked describes here or in the part in Costa Rica, but nobody does it. How much is architecture/city design vs smaller families vs everyone being busy vs other, isolating entertainment?
I'm fortunate enough to live in a 100-year-old home in Phoenix, which is a rarity. It happens to be a large neo-classical style (think: colonial) that has a porch that spans the entire front facade. Some times, we'll sit out there, and the number of neighbors we've met on walks and such has been really delightful. You don't have community if you don't have any place to commune, it turns out.
I think we had more of an actual civic life when they did. But two things changed: Television and air conditioning. Television meant that there was something to do inside. Air conditioning made it possible to go inside, at least in the summer. Now nobody hangs out on stoops.
I had some miraculous wizard encounters too, with Jesus Mouse!
There was a nice bohemian coffee shop on Haight Street in San Francisco that I used to hang out at in the early 90's, and one of the regulars who called himself "Jesus Mouse" was an old freaky looking hippie dude in a costume of a Mickey Mouse hat, and long tail, and Jesus-like long beard and hair.
He also carried a wizardly walking stick topped with an ornate purple court jester's head with a curling tongue sticking out with a small key at the tip, and a thick worn spell book covered in fabric and sequins and runes that he'd sit and write in all the time.
(He made such an strong impression both visually and mentally, that I remember him in high definition!)
Occasionally tourists would walk in, look at him, do a double take, chat him up, and ask to take selfies with him, for which he would charge $5 a shot.
We talked occasionally, and over time he told me his backstory about how he represented the combination of the most prominent icons of American mythology, and he just happened to know how to pass the official test that the Vatican used to determine whether or not somebody who thought he was Jesus actually WAS the Second Coming of Jesus H Christ, Our Lord.
He never explicitly stated it, but it became evident that he wasn't a lunatic, he didn't actually BELIEVE he was Jesus, or believed IN Jesus, but he did believe the Catholic Church was totally full of shit, and he just somehow happened to know how to prove he was Jesus according to the Vatican's own rules.
(However he never told me the actual secret answer to prove you're Jesus, so don't ask, since I would have long since proven I was Jesus had I known.)
His lifelong mission was to prove to the Vatican on their own terms that he really was Jesus H Christ incarnate, and then once established, he would insist that they liquidate all of their hoards of precious artwork, and give away the money to the poor.
He told me about how in his past glory days he'd led parades of hippies down Haight Street to Golden Gate Park, where he publicly declared himself Jesus and demanded the Catholic Church liquidate and distribute all of their treasures to the poor.
And another story about how he had once ran into a sympathetic rich lady from a royal family in Europe who was intrigued by his story (by God, who wouldn't be???), and she had some connections who knew how to get him into the Vatican to meet the Pope and take the test.
So she arranged to fly him out to Europe, and he got into the Vatican, then he told them his story and gave them his proof, and they beat the shit out of him and dumped him outside onto the street, so he never got to meet the Pope.
He also related how he'd smuggled LSD into Europe by cutting blotter paper up into little colored pieces of paper and gluing them all over his scepter as decoration, and nobody in customs or airport security was remotely suspicious about it.
So apparently this guy really did get around, possibly by using an Infinite Improbability Drive:
The last time I saw him was when I was in Amsterdam for the InterCHI '93 conference, and a bunch of us went out to the Homegrown Fantasy Coffeeshop on Nieuwezijds Voorburgwal, and we're all sitting inside doing what you do inside a coffeeshop, and I happened to glance up and look out the window, and there was Jesus Mouse, ambling down the sidewalk!!!
He's kind of hard not to miss, and easy to recognize, so I pointed and shouted "IT'S JESUS MOUSE!!!", ran outside, flagged him down, invited him in, and he joined us, introduced himself, hung out for a while, and told us his stories.
I don't know what I would have done if it hadn't really been him, since the other people I was with might have thought I was crazy! Instead, it was one of those magical moments, seared into my memory.
Later on I found out a lady friend of mine and he had been lovers, and she said he was a kind and interesting dude, he was pretty well known around the Haight/Ashbury scene, and did like to travel around the world, but that he'd since passed away.
One happened during my junior year. I lived in a house with two other guys, who were out of town for the night, so I was home alone. I was short on cash so decided to just stay home, and I was playing guitar out on the stoop of my house drinking from a bottle of cheap wine that was left over in the fridge. I was pretty delighted when two drunk guys threw a fiver on my porch as they passed by - I was definitely not playing to any level that deserved money, but it felt pretty awesome.
An older hippie looking guy came stumbling down the walk. He stopped and asked me if he could play something on my guitar. I was immediately nervous that the guy might run off with the guitar, but I hesitantly handed it over to him, and he strummed out a song which I had never heard before (Bob Dylan's She Belongs to Me). He was no rock star - his chord changes were sloppy, his voice was raspy and maybe a little off key. But he shared a wonderful song that I love to this day, then thanked me for letting him play and continued on his way. What a cool little moment, to meet this random stranger and be able to share that music.
The other moment was even more strange and magical, and happened about a year before. A buddy and I had been holed up in the house watching TV and smoking pot for a while, and we stepped out onto the stoop to have a cigarette. It was a beautiful spring afternoon, and we were just chatting, goofing around with accents and silly jokes, enjoying the fresh air and the leftovers of our weed high. All of sudden we heard this strange, ethereal music coming from down the street, and went silent as we strained to hear the sound. From the street corner emerged a man in a forest green suit, with a long white beard, carrying some sort of harp, and playing it beautifully as he walked by. The guy didn't acknowledge us in any way, and we were far too shocked to think of anything to say as he passed. We watched him walk away, still playing this almost angelic music, and the music faded as he got out of hearing distance. My friend and I stood there in stunned silence, until one of us asked, unbelievingly "did you see that too?" I never saw this guy on campus again after that day, but my friend and I still joke about the time we saw an actual wizard on campus. If I hadn't had a friend with me, I'm not sure I would believe that it was real, I'd chalk it up to some vivid dream or hallucination or something. But again, what a magical thing to have happen.