At age 14, I thought Dave Brubeck was the coolest musician ever. Like so many people, I discovered the Dave Brubeck Quartet through their 1959 album Time Out, the first jazz record to sell over a million copies. The album is a magnificent exploration of meter, and I still find it amazing that they could create a 5/4 song (Take Five, written by their sax player Paul Desmond) so catchy that it gets stuck in your head.

One day I was listening to Brubeck once again in my bedroom when my mom walked by, poked her head in and asked, “Is that Dave Brubeck?” I was shocked that she even knew who Dave Brubeck was, let alone recognized his music. My dad loved Johnny Cash, that I knew, but as far as I could recall my mom had never expressed a musical preference in my presence. Not that I paid much attention – she was my mom, after all. “You know Dave Brubeck?” I replied with some trepidation. “Oh yes,” she said. “I went to see him in concert when I was in college.”

There are only a few times in one’s life when one receives information so out of line with your worldview that to grasp it requires every ounce of intellectual and emotional fortitude that can be mustered. At such moments the carefully constructed edifice of your mental interior can come crashing down around you. If this, this thing I believed so strongly and without question, is wrong, what else about my life has deceived me? What else have I viewed through this distorted lens? Everything becomes open to question. Your foundational beliefs. Your conception of yourself. It is a mental state so venerable and fraught with danger that many people simply don’t allow themselves to experience it.

I experienced my first worldview collapse at that moment. David Brubeck was cool. People who listened to Dave Brubeck were cool. People who went to see Dave Brubeck in concert were super cool. But cool, that was just a word I never thought to use with my mom. Now, my mom was a great mom and even during my teenage years I had no problems with her. But to a 14-year-old boy, “mom” was on the opposite side of the spectrum from “cool”. As I listened to Brubeck on his piano, as I imagined myself blowing a Paul Desmond riff on the saxophone, as I hoped one day to see the Dave Brubeck Quartet perform “Blue Rondo a La Turk” live, was I trying to be like my mother?

Since that moment, I’ve had to make major realignments of my relationship with reality only a couple of times more. While every time was hard, I was always extremely happy with the result – a life a little more grounded, a little more authentic, a little easier to be proud of.

Dave Brubeck died a few days ago, and while he continued to give concerts into his 90s, I never saw him perform live. I guess my mom will always be a little more cool than me.