Ten years ago, I couldn’t stand either.
Jazz sounded like a dissonant chaos. Whisky burned on the way down. Both felt like they belonged to someone older, wiser… someone else entirely, but not mine.
I discovered the wonders of traditional wet shaving in 2017.
This was how my grandfather used to shave. A double-edged blade, shaving soap lathered by hand into a rich foam. No more skin rashes, no more infected follicles, no redness on my pale face. Shaving became a ritual, almost ceremonial. But something was missing.
“Why not listen to some music?” I thought.
The usual rock wasn’t cutting it (no pun intended), so I put on some jazz, a genre I never liked much. But hey, I hadn’t shaved like this before either. Why not keep stepping outside my comfort zone?
Spotify, by some stroke of kismet, recommended Kind of Blue by Miles Davis.
I recognized the name. A jazz legend. But I had no idea what his music sounded like. Same with John Coltrane. “Cannonball” Adderley, Paul Chambers, Jimmy Cobb, Bill Evans, and Wynton Kelly were complete strangers to me.
Hot water. Lather. Blade. And then So What.
I literally stopped shaving when Miles’ trumpet came in. I was hooked.
It didn’t sound like the typical chaotic jazz I remembered. It felt both old and new. The improvisation wasn’t dissonant. Every instrument had a voice, a role, a place in the tune. It flowed.
I had no idea I was listening to one of the greatest jazz masterpieces ever created.
And then Coltrane’s tenor saxophone joined in.
There I was, having a religious experience — with a razor blade in my hand. Almost ten minutes of pure bliss.
In time, my taste for jazz deepened.
Miles. Coltrane. Parker. Brubeck. Evans.
They weren’t just playing music. They were having conversations, full of pauses, detours, contradictions. The kind I understood better as I got older.
Jazz taught me that beauty doesn’t always follow a straight line.
That it’s okay to feel a little lost inside a song as long as you keep listening.
(Though I still struggle with modern jazz. I’m stuck in the classics. And honestly? I don’t care.)
I had my beer phase. Then a wine phase.
But none of it ever felt truly mine.
Whisky came later, like a punctuation mark at the end of long days.
At first, it was about the ritual.
The quiet of pouring a dram. The weight of the glass.
The warmth that spreads not just through the body, but the mood.
The comfort it gifts to the soul.
I started noticing differences:
Peat smoke. Sherry casks. The sweetness of a bourbon versus the sharp clarity of a Japanese blend.
It stopped being about the alcohol. It became about the taste. The story.
About how jazz sounded with a side of whisky.
I fell in love with the Japanese brands. Suntory, Nikka…
There’s something in Japanese whisky that flows over your tastebuds like a wave of heat and flavour.
You can taste every decision the Master Blender made. It’s craftsmanship in a glass.
What jazz and whisky have in common is patience.
They don’t demand your attention.
They wait for you to come to them.
They reward slowing down, leaning in, letting go of certainty.
In a world that worships speed, they taught me the pleasure of drifting.
Of shutting down… just a little. Enough to feel something again.
I’m no connoisseur. Not in jazz. Not in whisky. But I know what I like.
A moody Bill Evans track on a rainy night.
A smoky Monkey Shoulder in a quiet room.
They remind me I’ve grown. Not just older, but deeper.
More comfortable in my own silences.
More curious than certain.
So here’s to the long road of acquired tastes.
To music you once found confusing.
To drinks you once found harsh.
To the surprising ways we evolve… without even noticing.
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