Category Archives: Self-Discovery

Melancholy, Maybe. Part I

Blue, here is a shell for you.

Inside, you’ll hear a sigh

A foggy lullaby

There is your song from me – Joni Mitchell, “Blue”

 Ever feel a little blue, a little melancholy sometimes? Pensive, perhaps? We all do. This is not depression, just being a bit wistful. It is a sweet sadness on a gloriously cool and overcast day.

 I like a good melancholy song. I don’t want a sad song, a song about the loss of a child (Eric Clapton’s “Tears in Heaven”) or a song about pain and suffering (Midnight Oil’s “Beds are Burning”). Nor am I looking for labored sentimentality, songs that determinedly play on the emotions (anything by Toby Keith). No, sometimes I want a pensive song about life’s bittersweet moments.

There are some great ones out there, of course. The trouble is, some of the best melancholy songs lose some of their power when they’re heard too often. To wit:

 Dan Fogelberg, “Same Old Lang Syne,” REM, “Losing My Religion,” U2 “New Years Day,” Jerry Jeff Walker, “Mr. Bojangles,” Gilbert O’Sullivan, “Alone Again, Naturally,” The Who, “Behind Blue Eyes,” Al Stewart, “Year of the Cat,” Janis Ian, “17” and “Luka, ” B.B. King, “The Thrill is Gone,” Harry Chapin, “Cats in the Cradle,” the Beatles, “Yesterday” and many, many others.

 A few more just on the cusp of being overly familiar: Pearl Jam’s “Jeremy” and Dire Straits’ “Brothers in Arms” (both suggested by Alan Nelson), Don Henley’s “Heart of the Matter,” John Lennon’s “Mother,” Moby’s “Natural Blues” and Ray LaMontagne’s “Beg, Steal or Borrow.”

And there are other artists who have recorded so many melancholy songs that it would be hard to pick just one: Bob Dylan, the Band, the Civil Wars, Kate Bush, Elliott Smith, Nick Drake, Big Star and, of course, many more.

Since I’m making the rules here, I get to pick what goes on the list. For instance, in my mind, Neil Young has recorded his share of these kinds of songs, but two of the most famous/notorious, “Needle and the Damage Done” and “Tonight’s the Night,” (both about losing a friend) are more harrowing than melancholy. Bruce Springsteen’s entire Nebraska album is lonesome and desolately beautiful – but not necessarily melancholy.

When I mentioned this idea to Van (in hopes of getting a song from the metal side of music), he immediately suggested two CDs by the Norwegian group Ulver, Kveldssanger and Shadows of the Sun. I listened to both over a period of several days and fell in love with their glorious, mournful waves of sound.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3PRUmS012I

The other music he mentioned was a song that was already on my list, Jimmy Cliff’s “Many Rivers to Cross,” which Van said he wanted played at his funeral … 70 years from now. I promised I’d do my best.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGeCeK85sUg

 Mary’s first choice was Joni Mitchell’s aptly named “Blue.” Like some of the artists listed above, you could create an entire blog around her best, most introspective songs.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5782PQO5is

I also drew from the vast repertoire of classical music. Some of the world’s greatest symphonies have melancholic movements. I eventually narrowed it down to two. The first is Erik Satie’s moody and memorable tone poem, “Gymnopedie #1”. I love the version by Sky, but I first heard it by, of all people, Blood, Sweat and Tears as “Variations on a Theme by Erik Satie.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-Xm7s9eGxU

The second is a song cycle I was first introduced to in Peter Weir’s moving The Year of Living Dangerously, Strauss’ “Four Last Songs,” as performed by Kirsten Flagstad. This is the music Linda Hunt’s character listens to as Indonesia lurches inevitably towards chaos. I couldn’t find a performance by Flagstad on YouTube, but here is a nice version by Renee Fleming.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ppoqUVlKkBU

Part II is the rest of my list and it includes a LOT of Texas singer/songwriters. Maybe it is the weather, maybe it is the politics, maybe it is the land, but Texans dominate the list. See you then.

On Letting Go

On Letting Go

 Another milestone. Last week, I moved out of the 118 North 30th Street house that has been home since early 1980. The beautiful old 1920s Arts & Crafts house has seen all of the usual things that old homes see over the decades: parties and wakes, birthdays and anniversaries, promotions and demotions, tantrums and tea parties. Our kids and grandkids romped through the house. A couple of dogs and a couple of cats, too.

I had band practice there. Many times, in fact, thanks to the patient indulgence of our wonderful neighbors. I played catch with Dan and Van in the yard. I wrote a BUNCH of books there. Mary and I danced in the lovely wood-paneled den when no one else was around. I read books and comic books. Rachel got dressed for a prom or two in the middle bedroom.

It was safe and warm and big and sprawling. It had a few familiar creaks at night, when the old oaken floors would breathe and sigh.

The laundry room was once a library, with floor to ceiling bookshelves constructed with the able help of my dad and Jim Hudson. It was there that I learned – too late – the value of “measure twice, cut once.” The library once held thousands of books and LPs. Both boys moved their bedrooms there at different times, staying up WAY too late reading comics and listening to U2 or Type O Negative.

Mary and I dressed for our wedding there. Then, years later, dressed for Rachel’s wedding as well.

We held watching parties for the Lady Bears and elections in the big den. We celebrated Mary’s Masters and Ed.D. there, too. And, at different times, when mom and dad passed, the den was big enough to hold the family where we ate Mexican barbecued chicken from the rolling taco trucks and told stories on them long into the evening.

On a couple of occasions at night, I’ve thought I heard Naomi’s paws pad across the bedroom.

The previous owners, Lt. Gov. Ben Barnes’ parents, told us the 118 N. 30th house had a ghost. A sweet, benign little ghost, a young girl. We never saw or heard her. Once, in abject desperation, after an hour of frenzied searching and fearful of missing an important meeting or something, I asked for her help in finding my lost car keys. When turned around, the keys were sitting on the stove top behind me.

Van and I drew for hours on the dining room table.

Mary wrote her dissertation in the middle bedroom.

I wrote a couple novels and a bunch of other stuff in the breezeway.

One night, I encountered a large golden possum in the backyard. He opened his mouth, lined with sharp little teeth, and hissed at me. I jumped and let him waddle off. It was like encountering something from Jurassic Park… possums are incredibly old looking. I called a humane animal removal company the next morning.

The house note has long since been paid off.

Brad Bailey stayed with us while we wrote Madman in Waco in 60 days. He brought to the house a modest but slightly disturbed woman from Fool’s Hill at the Branch Davidian compound. She had agreed to give him some information for the book in exchange for shower. Mary – bless her heart – forgave both Brad and I. Eventually.

It was in that house that Mary had the eerily prophetic dream the night before the FBI assault on the compound.

It was in that house that I stayed upon my return from my Rotary Fellowship in England. I was in the middle of a divorce and had lost my job. A great aunt loaned me the money to keep the house. And on the nights it was just Van and me, I was comforted by being there.

I was living in the 118 North 30th house when I met Mary, who lived just a couple of doors down.

There were nights when Mary and I prayed on our knees for one – and sometimes all – of our kids.

When Mary took the job in San Antonio, we moved most of the furniture out, and I stayed there during the school year. It’s a lot noisier when you’re by yourself.

It took two years to sell. We repeatedly dropped the price.

And last week, I packed up the last box. After the Guerra Brothers came and loaded up, the cleaning lady came. And when she was done, I walked out.

I’m an old military brat. We moved every two years. A house is a house. Home is where the Air Force sends us … and all of that. But I paused at the front door on the way out.

I patted the doorframe. “You’ve been a good house, old girl,” I said aloud. I don’t know why I’ve always thought of the 118 North 30th house as a “she,” but I do. I don’t know if I was speaking to the house, the little girl ghost, or the “angel” of the house.

“You’ve been a good old house,” I said again, and left.

And she was.

She Waved at a Japanese Pilot

It was in an obituary in The San Antonio Express-News on July 9. Her name was Gloria Chisholm and, according to the obit, she was a “breathtaking beauty” and a big band singer in San Antonio in the years before World War II. But then Gloria (then Swanson) met air cadet Lt. Henry “Hank” Chisholm on their first and only date. They married shortly thereafter. The young couple’s first posting was Hickam Field, Hawai’i, near Pearl Harbor. They lived in a residential area near the base. Shortly after arrival, on that fateful Sunday morning, when Japanese Zeroes roared out of the sky, the air was filled with explosions and the bitter smell of acid smoke. Like the other dependents in the neighborhood, Gloria ran to their front porch – trying to comprehend what was happening.

And this is where the obituary takes a fascinating turn. As she stood there, the waves of Japanese planes wheeled to make another base on the burning battleships. One pilot flew so low that he was barely above the treetops. And, according to the obituary, the American housewife and the Japanese pilot locked eyes for a long moment and Gloria – perhaps still in shock — waved. Then the pilot abruptly pulled upward, heading again for the carnage at Pearl Harbor.

The obituary doesn’t say anything else about the incident and Hank and Gloria lived a long and happy life together. The obituary doesn’t add what she thought when her eyes met the gaze of the pilot, what she felt. Perhaps Gloria told those things to her friends and family in the years and decades that followed, perhaps not.

I don’t know the Chisholm family. But Gloria’s spontaneous reaction to the eye contact with her unnamed, unknown Japanese pilot fascinates me. The story must have intrigued her family as well, since it was included in her obituary amid all of the other important facts of her life.

Regardless, in her surprise at that moment, Gloria did the human thing. She waved at a fellow human being. Perhaps later, when she discovered the horrors of the surprise attack, she wished she’d given him some other universal symbol of defiance or anger. Perhaps not.

As for the pilot, here was someone who had doubtless just contributed to the deaths of thousands of people, many of them dying horribly from the flames or drowning. I’d like to think that there is a chance that Gloria’s simple wave impacted him somehow. Suddenly, he wasn’t bombing and strafing faceless foreign devils. He was murdering human beings. People like Gloria, the “breathtaking beauty” who impulsively acknowledged their shared humanity.

And perhaps … just perhaps … that gesture and that eye-contact shook him. And on his next pass, he purposefully kept his finger off the trigger of his machine gun. Or perhaps he dropped his last remaining bomb too soon, away from the hundreds of helpless human beings beneath his bombsight.

It’s probably wishful thinking on my part.

But then, that’s part of what obituaries are for. Yes, they’re written to celebrate a life. Yes, they provide closure to those who have been left behind. But sometimes they also generate “What if?” and “Why not?” stories. Everybody has a story. Sometimes lots of stories. As writers, it is our job to recognize and write those stories.

Wherever they are found…

Thanks to Gloria’s family, the first two acts of a great story were saved. It’s now up to the artists and musicians and writers to create that great third act.

 

The Melancholia of Completion. Maybe.

“Writing is easy: All you do is sit staring at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead.” — Gene Fowler (credited, but I think the quote is older still)

I have (virtually) finished my book. Six-seven years in the making, I’m (virtually) finished with Nothing But Love in God’s Water: The Influence of Black Sacred Music on the Civil Rights Movement, Volume 1. Oh, there is still the odd nit to pick. And, once I send it to the publisher (Penn State University Press), there will likely be lots of email flurries between my computer and their editors. It ended up at 83,000 words, for those of you who are interested in such things. More than a thousand footnotes. And only one or two snarky comments.

That means I am free to resume blogging, which I’ve missed. Once I started the actual writing, I put almost all of my other writing aside. Thanks to Gardner Campbell, I’d found blogging to be a helpful tool, emotionally and creatively.

As those of you who have written books, dissertations, theses, screenplays, songs, symphonies, and very, very long letters home may know, it is a curious feeling to complete something this large, something that has been a this big of a part of your life for such a long time. I’ve moved (twice!), kids have gotten married, dictatorships have (hopefully) fallen, Baylor’s athletic programs have flourished, my knees have failed me. The feeling of finishing is not really sadness, it’s not really relief. It’s just … curious. As Robert Haas once said: “It’s hell writing and it’s hell not writing. The only tolerable state is having just written.”

I’m not so sure about that. The research (for the most part) was exciting. The writing (for the most part) was exhilarating. The rewriting (for the most part) was rewarding. The finishing? Slightly melancholy.

It’s not so much that Volume 2 is left to do, either. I haven’t discussed a deadline with Penn State. (For you blessed few who have NOT heard me rattle on about the book, Volume 1 covers the use of black sacred music as a form of protest from the American Civil War through the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Volume 2 will cover from the earliest Sit-Ins and Freedom Rides through Albany, Birmingham, Selma, Chicago and Memphis through the Poor People’s March and Resurrection City. At least it will if I live that long.) For me, the act of completion the last couple of days has been something akin to … melancholy. It is bittersweet. I’m not sad or blue, just … reflective.

Part of that may be due to devoting so much of my life to a single topic, even something as far-reaching and complex as this one. You wonder, at least I do, did I miss something along the way? What did I give up over the many weeknights, weekends, and supposed vacations I worked? Yesterday, I heard Harry Chapin’s “Cats in the Cradle” on the radio and all but broke into tears. How many times did I tell the kids “No, I’ve got to work. You go on and play.”? Once is probably too much. Sorry guys.

But what has kept me from completely wallowing in morose introspection has been my unshakeable belief that this topic matters. The longer I got involved in the interviews and research, the more convinced I became that this vast, far-reaching subject is worthy of continued study. I suppose every writer, fiction or non-fiction, thinks the same way, ultimately.

But here’s why I believe that a better understanding of the Civil Rights Movement is important today: It’s an on-going process. WAY too many people in this country of all races and creeds, of all genders and ages, still do not enjoy the full fruits of democracy. Too many poor people, too many people with differing ideas about sexuality, too many people with various physical, mental and emotional challenges do not share equally in the guarantees built into our Constitution. And when one person is denied their civil rights, we all suffer…

Is the study of the power and influence of African-American sacred music of the past 150 years still relevant? I really, really think so.

Perhaps you saw this little story, tucked away in the margins of most news sources. An African-American couple – male and female, for those of you who care about such things – sought to get married in a Baptist church in Mississippi. The congregation denied them that privilege. Even the Tea Party Republican governor was appalled: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/aug/03/mississippi-governor-wedding-ban-unfortunate

Alas, this just as easily could have happened (and probably has, we just don’t know about it) in Texas or Alabama or Illinois. This topic will never go away. In a nation that was founded with a significant portion of the population considered to be inferior, this problem is likely to always be with us, in one form or another. It’s like racism (and the other –isms) are in our national DNA somehow.

So, I’ll take a little break. I’ll wait for the edits from the Penn State University Press editor. I’ll begin to leisurely organize yet again the mountains of research I’ve accumulated for Volume 2. I’ll vow to spend more time with Mary and the kids and grandkids and friends and family. I’ll read more. I’ll email you.

And I’ll out-wait this odd little feeling of … (virtual) completion.

Releasing the angels …

“Somewhere I heard a story about Michaelangelo’s pushing of a huge piece of rock down a street. A curious neighbor sitting lazily on the porch of his house called to him and inquired why he labored so over an old piece of stone. Michelangelo is reported to have answered, “Because there is an an angel in that rock that wants to come out.” This story comes to mind when I think about the gifts or talents given to each of us. Every person has the task of releasing angels by shaping and transfiguring the raw materials that lie about him so that they become houses and machinery and pictures and bridges. How we do this — how we ‘build the earth,’ to use Teilhard de Chardin’s phrase — is determined by the discovery and the use of our gifts.” — Elizabeth O’Connor, Eighth Day of Creation: Gifts and Creativity

The Book of Revelation talks about the angels of nations and churches. Walter Wink says that every individual church has an individual angel, one who is robust or frail, according to the faith of that particular congregation.

I don’t know anything about “guardian angels,” but I do know we all have a divine spark of creativity in us, one bestowed on us by the Great Creator. And I am grateful for that.

Teaching, then, is “releasing the angel” in each student … finding just the right combination of outside reading/experience, interaction, praise, guidance, encouragement, and — occasionally — correction for each student.

I am becoming increasingly convinced the “old” model of standing in front of the class and lecturing from my (relatively) vast storehouse (or outhouse) of knowledge may not be the best way to release their angels.

Studies have long shown that what students figure out for themselves they retain long after a standard lecture. I believe that.

Finding a better way to involve classes of 15 or more in that process of self-discovery — of self-teaching — is my dilemma.