Joe Jackson
Steppin' Out

The profiles of skyscrapers repeat infinitely in the city that never sleeps, overshadowing the fast and distracted figures moving through the city’s grid. From up here, the taxis look like many yellow twinkling fireflies, carrying their human loads of hopes and disillusions; each with their own stories to confide in a perfect stranger who mechanically moves their arms on the steering wheel worn out from heat, cold, and the miles separating them from retirement. Tonight, the dial is hot and spins eagerly from left to right, right to left, in search of the tune that will soothe the soul.

[89.3 FM] zzzzzzzzzzffffffrrrrrrrrr zzzzzzz... [91.7 FM]... the twilight is near and thousands of nightflyers from Queens to Staten Island enter the homes, the offices close to closing, soar over the vast green spaces of Central Park, through the lives of the homeless stretched out under the soaked shelter of the Woodside Railway Station to the luxurious five-star lobby of the St. Regis, number 2 East 55th Street, just a stone's throw from Fifth Avenue. Joe lost his gaze in the phosphorescence of the neon signs, down on the street. He comes to life, abandons the window and the scotch with ice on the windowsill, and heads to the piano. He gets comfortable, presses his skilled fingers on the keys, and starts the magic. The thousand faces of New York materialize, colored by the notes that chase and follow each other through the bistro fumes.

"We are young but getting old before our time
We'll leave the tv and the radio behind
Don't you wonder what we'll find steppin' out tonight"

Tonight we go out to give meaning to our time, to feel once more what we will no longer be one day. We still have the right to dream, the duty to escape. A pirouette and the blonde waitress’s apron becomes a sequined evening dress, the hotel room a ballroom from another era. And Tolfree is like the stars, even if you can't see him, he is always there, with his steady bass routine and cyclical paths always the same yet different. Joe sings the redemption of life and does so with style, like a warm breeze that tears through the darkness in the sky of the "Big Apple."

"Me babe, steppin' out
Into the night, into the light
You babe, steppin' out
Into the night, into the light"

He passes the last button through the buttonhole, ties his tie, and heads down to the street. He remembers the scotch left on the windowsill and gives up. The night is sweet in New York; it glistens with a thousand lights, and the doors of the day are still on the other side of the world. He loses himself again with his gaze in the inviting colors that point to a nightclub. He enters the door and vanishes behind it, inside another glass, at the bottom of another scotch.