Early in the beautiful Céline Sciamma film Portrait of a Lady on Fireyou notice the silences. They are as much a part of this wondrous work of art as the rough terrain, crashing waves, and gorgeous landscape. Set on a remote island off the coast of Brittany in 1760, the film begins as Marianne, a painter, arrives via a small ship tender after jumping into the sea to save the box holding the canvas for her work.
Marianne has been commissioned to do the wedding portrait of Héloïse, a young lady who has just left the convent and is to be married to a nobleman in Milan. Deposited on the rocky shore by the last man we see for a couple of hours, she finds her way to the mansion where Héloïse, a reluctant bride to be, lives with her mother and a young maid, Sophie. Marianne is told that she must paint Héloïse without her knowing, so they spend their days on long walks, with Marianne stealing glances at face and hands whenever possible. The silences have been there all along, but it is on those walks that the quiet between the conversation, the focus on gaze and view, along with the lack of a traditional musical soundtrack, becomes a key to the beauty of this film.
Told as a flashback, Portrait is a remarkable achievement on multiple levels. Hands shown in the cycle of paint applied and removed bring the viewer into Marianne’s worldview. The arresting cinematography captures the candlelit darkness of the mansion, where faces often are the only feature in the light, as well as the stark sun and rugged beauty of the coastline. We watch the love that grows between Marianne and Héloïse develop at a deliberate pace that somehow manages to convey both the urgency of the precious few days available to them when the mother goes to Italy and a romance outside time and space. The attraction of the lovers is sensual and real. There is a bond built between the two women of privilege and Sophie that is genuine and affecting. The movie is a triumph of love told from the woman’s viewpoint, yet the specter of the unwanted marriage to a man she’s never met is just one of several references to the stilting nature of patriarchy that is critical to understanding the exceptional storytelling that undergirds the film.
One of the most incredible musical moments I can recall seeing in any movie in recent history takes place just a little past the halfway point. Writing in IndieWire, Chris O’Falt describes the scene: “Marianne (Noémie Merlant) and Héloïse (Adèle Haenel) have yet to acknowledge their growing desire when they are brought to an evening gathering of the women who live on the isolated island in Brittany. As the two soon-to-be-lovers exchange glances across the bonfire, a low, slow chant starts to rise as the rest of the women gather to sing.”
Here the song grows as does the obvious feeling between Marianne and Héloïse, the women of the island begin clapping in groups of twos, and they begin to repeat a lyric. O’Falt continues.
In an effort to get a song that had the beats per minute, polyphonic, and polyrhythmic qualities she needed, Sciamma decided to write the lyrics herself.
“I wrote the lyrics in Latin. They’re saying, ‘fugere non possum,’ which means ‘they come fly,’” said Sciamma. “It’s an adaptation of a sentence by [Friedrich] Nietzsche, who says basically, ‘The higher we soar, the smaller we appear to those who cannot fly.’”
You can hear the song halfway through the official trailer, beginning around the 1:00 mark.
The musical feast is central to a larger group of scenes after Héloïse’s mother has left the island. The remaining three women — in very utilitarian fashion — eat, drink wine, and debate Ovid’s version of the “Orpheus and Eurydice” myth. Orpheus, in looking backward on his way out of Hades, dooms Eurydice, his lover, to remain in the underworld. Héloïse suggests that Eurydice told Orpheus to turn back to look at her. Marianne has a different interpretation, suggesting that, “He doesn’t make the lover’s choice, but the poet’s. He chooses the memory of her.” Soon thereafter the bonfire lights not only Héloïse’s dress, but also the love between Marianne and Héloïse, and the passion soon follows. The “turning back” at the end of the myth, returns to full force late in the film.
This is a wonderful story of love and remembrance. The powerful ending features the movie’s only other musical connection, with an orchestral performance of Vivaldi that is another memory for Marianne and Héloïse.
Portrait of a Lady on Fire is a stunning movie, created by artists who bring craft and vision to their work. It is well worth your time and emotional investment. In French with subtitles.
Birthdays that end in 0 are much easier for me to handle than the ones that end in 5.
I came to that rather trivial realization sometime over the past year. Approaching 30, 40, 50, or 60? No big deal. In fact, for that last one I used the occasion to gather 60 lessons I’ve learned over six decades. It was great fun.
The ones that end in 5, however? Umm…they seem to be more problematic. Perhaps it is because I’m suddenly closer to the next 0 and the next decade than to the one in my rear view mirror. At 35 most of us finally realize, if we haven’t already, that we are no longer a kid. At 45 you can claim with some degree of persuasiveness to fall in the middle age bracket, but that has its own set of challenges. (Mortgages, anyone?) By the time you hit 55 you are conscious of the fact that few people live to be 110, and you are face-to-face with all that implies. And at 65? Well, no one makes it to 130 so you have no claim to that middle age moniker. Of course, as if to drive that point home, at age 65 all the senior discounts, Medicare, and Social Security benefits kick in across the board. Not to mention aches in places you didn’t know existed.
Thankfully, I now have a very different outlook than when I reached 35, or 45, or 55. I am approaching my 65th birthday this week with a great deal more excitement for whatever lies ahead and what I’ve yet to learn, in whatever time is left. My gap year exploration of what’s next has certainly helped. Watching my father successfully navigate the final third of his life changed my perspective on the possibilities. But the primary reason that I’m optimistic is my recent work to look at personal experiences through a lens of remembrance without regret.
It hasn’t always been this way.
Regrets tend to lock us in a past where we constantly relitigate our actions. Truth be told, I’ve not always handled the “no regret” part of remembrance very well. From an early age I was a first-class worrier, and I still hold on to a part of that history. They may not matter to anyone else, but regrets matter to those who hold on to them. Regrets stop us from moving beyond past experiences in order to revel in fresh challenges. Yet we don’t realize that those past experiences, when ultimately faced, can turn out to be much less of an issue than they appear in our clouded memories.
I doubt there’s a person alive who remembers that at age 9, as I was playing in a piano competition in front of a room full of people, my memory suddenly went blank.
But I remember.
I stopped playing piano that day and suddenly found it took a great deal of effort to play any music in public, no matter how much I might love it. The regret of failure was too present. Knowing I wanted to move past this, I challenged myself at age 40, took a year of piano lessons, and then sat down in front of my teacher — and her group of elementary school students with all their parents — to play in a recital. And I aced it!
It was a step past regret to build new memories, new remembrances, of joy.
It is so tempting to sleepwalk through many phases of life, avoiding the places, literal and figurative, where we might have to face our regrets in order to learn anew. While these places appear countless times throughout our lives, major milestones often amplify their significance. The culmination of a career or the ending of a job, voluntary or otherwise, can be an occasion when regrets arise for work undone. The end of a relationship can push us to forget the wonder of a love once held outside time and space. Instead we focus on regrets and recriminations. When family and dear friends get ill and die, we struggle with regret instead of remembrance and, where possible, celebration. We forget the notes, and in the process overlook what brought us to love music in the first place.
The challenge to cut through the knot in the stomach is one I still face on occasion, more than fifty years after sitting all alone on that piano stool. But traveling through that challenge is necessary to reach these places where affirming memories are formed, connecting over time, to create our true identities. And the travel may very well be symbolic. “The real voyage of discovery,” as Marcel Proust once said, “consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.”
Thankfully, I realize there is so much yet to do. Musicians and actors I’ve admired have been incredibly productive later in life. Many of my favorite writers are still turning out meaningful work well into their seventh and eighth decades. I’ve always been fond of Madeleine L’Engle’s observation that “I am still every age that I have been.” It reminds me that simply because I am now well into the sixth decade, I don’t have to forget the astonishment that came so easily during the first ten years. We’ve all seen examples of people who, as they move through life, fear what’s next and want to hang on to what they have and what they wish to be true. As the writer Ursula K. Le Guin notes in No Time to Spare, these are the ones who have “given up on the long-range view.” I keep reminding myself: don’t be that person!
Fortunately, there are also those who, in her words, realize the incredible amount we learn “between our birthday and our last day.” If we are flexible enough in mind and spirit to recognize “how rich we are in knowledge, and in all that lies around us yet to learn,” we can maintain the seeking, trusting capacity for learning and life that we had as a two-year-old. We can build hope for the future grounded in memory.
Observing and listening to make sense of life leads to interior places not normally visited in our daily routines. But looking at this voyage of almost 65 years through new eyes helps me remember the basic things that make us human. It helps me find ways to get to the heartbeat.
I want to say thank you to the many family, friends, colleagues, and even strangers who have been there for me over 65 years. Your support has led me to a place where I now move quickly past feelings of regret to memories that provide a solid foundation for whatever is next.
You may, or may not, remember what you did to lift me up. But I remember.
New York-born Haitian-American multi-instrumentalist Leyla McCalla is the fifth and final featured artist in our Black History Month tribute to musicians at the forefront of the work to reclaim the African American contributions to folk, old-time, country and roots music. I kicked off the Saturday Soundtrack series with my January tribute to Amythyst Kiah and then celebrated throughout February the music of Rhiannon Giddens, followed by Dom Flemons, Otis Taylor, and last week’s artist, Keb’ Mo’.
McCalla grew up in the cultural mix of New York City but relocated to Accra, Ghana for two years while a teenager. She returned to the States to study cello performance and chamber music at NYU. Taking that knowledge—and “armed with Bach’s Cello Suites”—she left to play cello on the streets of the French Quarter in New Orleans. There she sang in French, Haitian Creole, and English, and played cello, tenor banjo and guitar. McCalla spent two years and gained greater fame as cellist of the Grammy award-winning African-American string band, the Carolina Chocolate Drops, alongside bandmates Giddens and Flemons. She left the group in 2013 to pursue her solo career.
I’ll begin this look at a small sample of McCalla’s music with the Haitian love song Rose-Marie, which she sings in this video from Delfest with the Chocolate Drops. Little Sparrowis a beautiful and sorrowful tune from the 2016 solo album A Day for the Hunter, A Day for the Prey. “Through deeply felt originals and interpretations of traditional songs,” her website notes, “the album depicts a diverse American experience and Leyla’s struggles with and acceptance of her own cultural identity.”
The witty official video of the tune Money Is Kingis from her 2018 album Capitalist Blues. The song highlights McCalla’s incorporation of traditional Creole, Cajun and Haitian music into her contemporary work. With this record, it has been suggested that McCalla is processing the current political environment in her own way. NPR noted that the album
“…imaginatively maps her vision of the Afro-Caribbean diaspora while gently taking Anglocentricism (and capitalism) down a notch. She’s partly in the moment and partly looking beyond it, and seeing truths that we’ve missed.”
Singing with Our Native Daughters, McCalla’s tune I Knew I Could Flyis based on an Etta Baker-style Piedmont Blues. I love this video because it has short explanations from McCalla on her the creative process interspersed with the music.
To close out this Black History Month special series, I’ll quote NPR again, to remind us of the importance of this work.
“The roots-music scene can display assimilationist tendencies, too, but it’s also home to a small but growing number of artists — including Leyla McCalla and her sometime bandmate Rhiannon Giddens, Hurray for the Riff Raff’s Alynda Segarra, Dom Flemons and Kaia Kater — who don’t stand by and accept the whitewashing of culturally distinct origins. Instead, their work does the intellectual labor of clarifying; of reconnecting the dots, reconstructing context, retelling and sometimes personalizing neglected stories.”
If I had just one piece of advice to give to colleagues, friends, and family, it would be pretty simple. Say “Thank you.” Say it early and often.
Two recent conversations raised this in my consciousness. First, a senior professional and former colleague was assisting an emerging professional with a networking and outreach discussion. They met, and because she was impressed, the former colleague offered up additional assistance. While a verbal thank you may have been given at the end of lunch, there was no follow-up communication after the initial meeting to acknowledge the gift of time and offer of additional assistance.
In a second instance, a friend mentioned that a member of her family found it difficult, if not impossible, to say thank you, even when she was the recipient of an extraordinary gift. These family members have had their differences through the years. But despite that, my friend expected an acknowledgement of minimal gratefulness. It never came.
Connecting to say thank you is, from my perspective, extraordinarily important. Saying thank you, as my Grandmother Brown was fond of noting, is just common courtesy.
But there is much more to gratefulness than meeting basic societal norms.
Saying thank you is a recognition that an interaction — from a minor courtesy to an extraordinary effort — has taken place and that you recognize and acknowledge the connection. The level of benefit you’ve received is immaterial in my book.*
People enjoy being thanked. They may shuffle, say “aw shucks,” and deflect the gratitude. But your effort to recognize someone else’s presence, their work, and the gift(s) they have given is (almost) always appreciated. Great leaders are very good at saying thank you. They do it early and often. In those few instances where people don’t appreciate being thanked, then recognize that saying thank you is good for you and your personal well-being.
Gratefulness is a recognition that we all count on the kindness of others: friends and strangers alike. No one got to where they are by themselves. Recognizing this basic fact of life is key to building circles of friends, networks of support, and real self-esteem. It is also key to a deeper understanding of grace.
A number of years ago I became intentional about saying “thank you” to someone every day. It is one of the smartest things I ever did.
Try it. You’ll (perhaps) thank me for it someday.
More to come…
DJB
*Oftentimes a thank you note or email does, however, acknowledge receipt of a gift. I don’t want to even think of the number of wedding and shower gifts we’ve sent over the years where we had to — after a long period of radio silence — reach out to the parents or even the recipients to ask if the gift was received. Don’t be that person.
What do the Houston Astros have to do with the state of our democracy? Let’s see.
Baseball—rightly or wrongly—has long been compared to life, or vice-versa. Washington sportswriter Thomas Boswell’s first book was a 1982 collection of essays entitled How Life Imitates the World Series.* In the essay that gave the book its title, Boswell makes the observation that the pressures in baseball differ from those of other sports. It is a pressure that ebbs and flows, day-by-day, over the length of a long season played out every day as opposed to the once a week or twice a week rhythm of the games in football, basketball, or hockey. Yet baseball pressures are heightened at key tipping points, such as during a pennant race, when one’s true character and strength comes through. Just like in real life.
What’s more pressure-packed than a World Series? Or an impeachment trial? Recently, it struck me that Boswell’s premise was perfect when the subject—as it often does these days—turns to the future of our democracy. To see how baseball and life overlap, let’s begin in Houston.
For those not immersed in baseball, the sports world is currently up-in-arms over the sign-stealing scandal by the 2017, 2018, and—perhaps—2019 Astros. In 2017, when Houston captured the World Series title, the Astros developed an elaborate and effective way to use a complicated computer program to decode the signs that the catcher was giving to the opposing pitcher coupled with center field cameras positioned to capture those signs in real time. Then—by the rather primitive method of checking a video monitor and banging on a trash can—they would relay those signs to their batter who was standing at the plate waiting for the pitch.
It is important to note that attempting to steal the catcher’s signs, if you are a player and on base, is a time-honored tradition in baseball. If the catcher and pitcher are sloppy enough to let baserunners see their signs and gain an advantage, then that’s their fault. Why does it matter? Well, if the batter knows that the pitcher is getting ready to throw a 95-mile-an-hour fastball, then he doesn’t have to hold back slightly to see if he is going to get an 88-mile-an-hour curve or an 85-mile-an-hour change-up. In other words, he can go all-in for the fastball. Given that a 95-mile-an-hour fastball travels the distance from the release of the pitch until it gets to the plate in around 425-450 milliseconds and a major league batter takes 150 milliseconds, on average, to get his bat around, it helps to know what’s coming. Good hitting verses a swing-and-a-miss or a pop-up or foul ball comes down to a few milliseconds.
Where the Astros went (way) over the line was in using video equipment (clearly illegal) and relaying those pitches from the dugout (also illegal). There are unsubstantiated rumors that some Astros batters received their signals from the bench via a buzzer they wore on their bodies. And while it is certain that the scheme took place in 2017 and 2018, no one is certain about this past year, when the Astros were shocked by the underdog Washington Nationals in the 2019 World Series. The Nationals went to great lengths to ensure that Houston’s sign-stealing scheme would not give them an advantage. However, Nationals’ catcher Kurt Suzuki is adamant that the cheating continued through last year’s fall classic. Thanks to the caution of the Nationals, it just wasn’t successful.
Major league baseball undertook an investigation after a former Astro pitcher became a whistleblower and turned in the team. Found guilty, there were major penalties assessed to the ballclub and its leadership, and the top two baseball men—the general manager and the manager—were subsequently fired by the owner. While the Astros ballpark is no longer named Enron Field, the stench of the corrupt energy company apparently remains imbedded in the brick and mortar in what is now known as Minute Maid Park. The team was penalized, but the commissioner decided not to punish the players and he also decided not to rescind the 2017 World Series Championship. That’s when all hell really broke loose.
Players as mild-mannered and upstanding as the Angels Mike Trouthave called out the Astros for “cheating” and have criticized the commissioner’s actions towards the players. Many have noted that players on other teams lost their jobs or were penalized with lower-paying contracts or loss of incentives because of Houston’s actions. Even sportswriters who specialize in humor columns are outraged, and know the right thing to do.
So what does this have to do with democracy today? A great deal, I would suggest.
The Astros have been less than contrite in admitting their guilt, and have taken on the characteristics of a tribe that protects each member and has each member’s back. Some have said, “We should have spoken up when we saw the sign-stealing, but didn’t.” Virtually the entire team has refused to use the word “cheat” in describing what happened. The owner claims that the cheating had “no impact” on the games. Right. There have been suggestions that others have done similar things (including the World Champion 2018 Red Sox), so it is okay. Some in baseball have called out the whistleblower, with Red Sox legend David Ortiz going so far as to call him a “snitch.”
Sound familiar?
This is what happens when the tribe and the need to win becomes more important than living by a moral compass and being guided by a larger purpose in life. When we look at our country today, it is pretty obvious that the president is comfortable with breaking not only norms but laws, if it gets him what he wants. Donald Trump has taken actions his entire life that fall on the other side of the law. He has openly admitted, and even bragged about, the illegal actions for which he was impeached by the House of Representatives. He has invited foreign countries in to tamper with our elections. After the Republican members of the Senate let him off on impeachment, he began punishing his perceived enemies, including decorated veterans and individuals he appointed to office, while pardoning his political friends. He has called the whistleblower, whose complaint began the impeachment process, a snitch and a traitor.
Donald Trump is who he is, and he hasn’t changed just because he shocked the world and became president of the United States. If it talks like a duck and walks like a duck, chances are really good it is a duck. But like the Houston Astros players, those who enable him as elected officials or members of the media have turned a blind eye to the cheating and stealing that is taking place right under their noses. The lack of a moral compass has never been more obvious.
There are multiple reasons people cheat at sports and in politics. Most relate to gaining and retaining power and money. In our country at the moment, both are on vivid display. But those involved often strongly deny they are cheating because they fear being called out as a fraud. With both the Astros and with Donald Trump, their over-the-top responses to the charges of cheating are made in response to a fear of an asterisk. They fear someone saying their “wins” weren’t legitimate.
People with a strong moral compass see through this charade. Robert Glazer has written that “Great leaders encourage dissent, welcome whistleblowing and encourage contrasting points of view. Weak leaders demand blind obedience and threaten those who would dare point out any shortcomings or question their decisions. What has become clear,” he continues, “is that when leaders lower the ethical bar, followers are compelled to do the limbo, resulting in the lowering of their own standards. It’s a downward spiral for everyone.”
Boswell—still writing about baseball going into his fifth decade—called out the Astros and, by extension, today’s Republican party:
“Once we are reminded of the great damage that cheating does, we are forced to see the cheaters not as mere rascals and rule-benders but as profoundly selfish and destructive people whose lack of a moral compass cannot be shrugged off with rationalizations that make us feel comfortable. Such as ‘everybody does it’—when we know they don’t. Or ‘why punish only the ones who get caught?’— when that’s exactly what we do in every area of daily life, from murder to insider trading.”
Or it is what we use to do…when we had a fully functioning democracy.
It will be the citizens of this country who decide if we will abandon our experiment in self-governance. Lewis Lapham puts the case forward in the following way:
“It isn’t so much that liberty stands at bay but, rather, that it has fallen into disuse, regarded as insufficient by both its enemies and its nominal friends. What is the use of free expression to people so frightened of the future that they prefer the comforts of the authoritative lie?”
Baseball. Democracy. There is a wide gulf between what matters at the core of these two enterprises. Yet, in many ways Boswell was right. There are so many similarities. And we see that today in knowing that we all have to make our decisions, when we reach those tipping points of pressure, on where we will stand. It may be helpful to remember that in one of the most influential works about the journey of the soul, Dante wrote that there is a special place in infamy for those unwilling to choose between good and evil.
In the end, not making a decision is a decision.
More to come…
DJB
*The context behind that proposition could be seen in his very first essay, which has the feisty title: “This Ain’t a Football Game. We Do This Every Day.“
Keb’ Mo’ has been playing traditional blues and roots music for more than three decades. So he seemed a natural to be included in our Black History Month tribute to musicians at the forefront of the work to reclaim the African American contributions to folk, old-time, country and roots music. I kicked off the series with my January tribute to Amythyst Kiah and then began it in earnest the last three weeks; first with a celebration of the music of Rhiannon Giddens, followed by Dom Flemons and then Otis Taylor.
Kevin Roosevelt Moore (rechristened Keb’ Mo’ around 1994) has been at the work of reclaiming disappeared African American musical contributions for his entire career. His inaugural album included two Robert Johnson covers and he has a well-earned reputation for his mastery of multiple blues styles. But it is his ability to combine traditional approaches with a contemporary attitude, while working with a wide variety of artists, that generates such enthusiasm for his work.
The cover to Keb’ Mo’s Grammy winning album “Oklahoma”
Keb’ Mo’ is more than just a highly skilled retro act. As Nashville Scenemagazine writes, he
“…manages the tough task of hovering in and around the blues while not being confined to them. His music creatively incorporates strains of multiple styles, among them folk, pop, gospel, jazz, even at times a Caribbean feel that reflects his earlier time playing steel drums and bass in a calypso band. He’s also a gifted songwriter, able to creatively craft standard 12-bar sagas and tunes with complex, unpredictable scenarios and situations….
His impact has also extended into a curator’s role with his involvement in the 2003 Martin Scorsese documentary series The Blues. So his genre bona fides are unquestioned, even as he continually weaves other elements into his work.
The music does indeed cover a great deal of ground, and I’ll just whet your appetite. Let’s begin with Robert Johnson’s Kind Hearted Woman, which Moore presents in a simple and beautiful arrangement. You can compare it here with Johnson’s original version from 1936.
As James Taylor says in his introduction to Hank Williams’ I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry from a performance at the White House, “Appalachian hymns, Texas swing, and the blues came together in Nashville to become country.” Keb’ Mo’ opens this heartbreaker by showcasing the blues influence that often gets lost in commercial country.
Put a Woman in Charge, with Nashville royalty Rosanne Cash, came at a time when Moore’s mother had recently passed away at the age of 91. He remembers, “She was smart. She was strong. She was a leader.” He dedicated the video of the tune to his mother, along with “amazing women everywhere that are getting the job done.” His version of Rosanne’s father’s famous Folsom Prison Blueson the tribute to Johnny Cash show demonstrates his skill at taking music from one genre and reinterpreting it in a way that makes it his own.
After gigs in New England in the early spring, Keb’ Mo’ will play two nights at the City Winery in New York City on June 5th and 6th. He’ll be at the famous Birchmere in Alexandria, Virginia, for two shows on June 10th and 11th, followed by dates at the Avalonin Easton, Maryland on the 12th and the Rams Head in Annapolis on June 13th.
The February 10th newsletter of Chapter 16, a website celebrating Tennessee literature, was titled Paying Attention. Editor Maria Browning writes that, to her mind, February is “the most fickle month of the year in Tennessee,” with shifts between the stirrings of spring and days of snow (or, worse, ice).
She continues, “Wardrobe challenges notwithstanding, this is a wonderful time to pay attention to the ever-dynamic natural world.”
Her suggestion for some inspiration led me to read “Eleven Ways of Smelling a Tree” by Sewanee writer David George Haskell. As Browning notes, the piece at Emergence Magazine is a collaborative effort, with musician Katherine Lehman and art by Studio Airport.
I’ve recommended Haskell’s The Forest Unseen in the past as a delightful book written by a scientist with the soul of a poet. “Eleven Ways of Smelling a Tree” has the same observational mix and magic. Haskell opens his piece with an ode to the American Basswood.
“Harlem, New York City Vintage: 1908
We crack the windows on summer’s first warm days. I taste diesel smoke, acid and oily. The fumes rise from the bus stop directly under the fourth-floor apartment. The odor sinks to my gut, a thin sheen. The ice-cream truck across the street runs its generator all day, into the night. Its exhalations cling high in my nose, a bitter sinus-cloud. Then, one morning in June, honey and wild rose reach through the window. Combustion odors flee. A hint of lemon rind rolls close behind.
All week, the street air is drunk on basswood flowers. The knots inside us loosen.
The tree is a giant, rooted in a roadside park across four lanes of gunning engines from our window….Herbalists and biochemists agree: tinctures and teas made from the flowers or leaves of basswood and its sibling, linden, soothe our harried nerves. The tree lays a calming green hand on anxiety’s brow, tranquilizes the neural pathways of pain, and weaves its aromas into the fractures in our central nervous systems. We breathe the tree, no longer dis-eased….
Another favorite among the eleven is Haskell’s description of the Ginkgo* (Sewanee, Tennessee; Vintage: circa 1930):
“The tree, a giant ginkgo planted in the early twentieth century, holds up a middle finger to college quadrangle aesthetics. I love it for its defiance. Here is messy fecundity on full display, an affront to the mown, suppressed conformity of the tidy campus lawns….
As I walk under the tree, I think, too, of the melted stone and metal of Hiroshima. The first and often the only life to grow back after the nuclear blast were ginkgo trees at the temples. Deep roots and physiological resilience carried the trees through a calamity that killed all else. Ginkgo’s ability to withstand assault also accounts for the tree’s presence on polluted city streets. The tree weathers the chemical and physical assaults of urban life and is a favorite of urban horticulturalists. Ginkgo is now mostly a species of the street, its roots sunk into sidewalk openings in Tokyo, New York, and Beijing….”
This gift is full of wonderful surprises. (Have you ever thought about the tree you are smelling in your gin and tonic?) Do yourself a favor, and click through to experience Haskell’s work. And when you finish, take the time to click through to “The Aromas of Trees: Five Practices,” which, as Maria Browning notes, will help deepen your own observations.
Enjoy.
More to come…
DJB
*Also check out the blog post from the Sewanee Herbarium on “When a Ginkgo is No Longer a Ginkgo.” I believe you will enjoy the transformation seen on campus each year.
Installment #21 of The Gap Year Chronicles
Image of the Ginkgo tree after it sheds its leaves at the University of the South at Sewanee (photo credit: Sewanee Herbarium)
It is surprising that a field that has focused so much on the preservation of history has an unfortunate blind spot to its own history. Historic preservation is one of the longest-lasting examples of community development, land use reform, and public history in the United States. The stories of the past efforts of our fellow citizens to ensure that parts of our history are with us today and tomorrow are varied and fascinating. Yet many, both inside and outside preservation, tell themselves a simplistic and usually inaccurate story of how we came to value parts of our past in a country that too often only values the new and what’s over the horizon.
Giving Preservation a History
The recently released second edition of Giving Preservation a History, edited by Randall Mason and Max Page, is a strong attempt to reverse our trend at historical amnesia in the preservation field. Through seven essays retained from the first edition, six new essays prepared for the 2020 book, and two concluding chapters to wrap both works together, the editors have endeavored to put forward arguments that may rebut old myths around the elite nature of the movement’s founding while also challenging the field to consider how it has fallen short in the embrace of multi-culturalism and issues of social justice. Like much else in life, historic preservation has a mixed, layered history. But it is a history worth considering, for those who care about the future of the movement.
One of the best essays of those retained from the first edition is Mason’s own contribution, “Historic Preservation, Public Memory, and the Making of Modern New York City.” Mason begins by busting myths, such as the one which suggests that preservation in the city began with the 1963 destruction of Pennsylvania Station. Another myth holds that “preservation emerged in the nineteenth century as the marginal gesture of a dying elite, and has stayed that way.” In a contrary point of view, Mason shows that by the 1900s, “preservation was thoroughly embedded in broader economic, cultural, environmental, and other social processes driving urbanization.” He takes the reader through the efforts of those working to save the historic houses we traditionally associate with early preservation efforts, such as the Morris-Jumel Mansion that overlooks the Harlem River in Upper Manhattan. But he also examines the broad scope of the mission of early preservation groups dealing with “past, present, and future”— organizations such as the American Scenic and Historic Preservation Society—which projected a “holistic vision of a landscape in which towns and cities were enriched by the presence and preservation of historic landmarks and natural places.” In his study of New York City, Mason outlines these contrasting curatorial and urbanistic approaches to preservation, the latter including individuals who “saw preservation as one aspect of their larger project of transforming the city and its citizens,” work that put the field squarely in the midst of other early 20th century reform efforts.
From the essays new to the second edition, I found Stephanie Ryberg-Webster’s contrast of the varying degrees of success in integrating preservation into community development in Pittsburgh and Cincinnati to be enlightening and helpful to practitioners active today. Amber Wiley’s study of Washington’s Dunbar High School controversy digs deeply into issues of power and African American cultural heritage. Gail Dubrow’s overview of LGBTQ preservation initiatives is also a helpful scan of the growth of this important segment of preservation work in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Having been a part of some of the discussions and decisions she describes, I would quibble at the margins with her descriptions of the motives of the National Trust in a few instances. More importantly, I would also call out the Trust’s significant and ongoing role in the saving of the Pauli Murray Family Home in Durham, North Carolina, a fact which goes unmentioned in the essay.
This is an important work in the growing understanding of the history of historic preservation. The book is not without its issues, however. On the minor side, several copy-editing errors popped up in ways that were annoying in a book of this caliber. The editors and authors deserved better from the publisher. Somewhat more significantly, of the city-specific case studies, the vast majority focus on communities and issues from the original thirteen colonies. (The best of those that break from the bonds of the east coast is Chris Wilson’s excellent look at Santa Fe from the original edition in “Place Over Time.”) The editors’ stated intent on promoting preservation as a force for broad social change led to certain decisions on the topics to be included. There is much to be learned, however, from study of the issues facing preservationists and communities beyond the east coast which would enrich any history of the movement.
Giving Preservation a History reminds us that understanding our own past is worth knowing as we envision the future. With the preservation movement adapting amid significant societal change, those who understand this past are best equipped to use preservation as an effective tool today and tomorrow.
Recommended.
More to come…
DJB
Image: New York City’s Morris-Jumel Mansion (photo credit: Library of Congress)
Depending on your age and where you lived, your childhood construction toys of choice may have been Tinkertoys (my favorite); Meccano (if you or your grandparents were European); an Erector Set (I may still have the scar from falling off the top bunk onto one of our construction sites); or Legos (our children’s favorite).
I started thinking about construction toys while standing on the top level of the Silver Spring transit center this afternoon, talking with an engineer, and looking down at the vast construction site that is now our front yard (of sorts). My mind wandered to, “These men and women on the site below may have started out on the family rug many years ago with the Erector Set.” Some of them may, in fact, be living their dream!
View from the Sarbanes Transit Center of the Purple Line construction site in Silver Spring
For the past twenty years, we have lived in downtown Silver Spring. We cross a relatively narrow residential street and a small plaza set in the center of an office complex to get to the Metro station, which houses the Red Line. I use to say that I rolled out of bed and onto the train to get to work. Five years ago the multi-modal Paul S. Sarbanes Transit Center opened next door to the station (after a host of embarrassing construction problems), to consolidate bus lines and other forms of transportation. And in 2022 or 2023 (depending on who you believe), we will have a new Purple Line light rail station as well as a downtown connection to the Capital Crescent Bike Trail which goes from Silver Spring to Georgetown (and connects with other bike trails on both ends). It is this Purple Line project that has me walking the edges of the construction site on a daily basis, taking pictures to send to my children, and—yes—thinking about Tinkertoys.
View from the corner of Second Avenue (our street) and Colesville Road toward the Metro station for the first of what promises to be a long line of weekend road closures)
We’ve watched for the past year as sites were cleared for the light rail; massive concrete and steel girders were constructed to support the elevated Purple Line and Capital Crescent Trail tracks; and cars, buses, pedestrians, and bicycles were rerouted on a regular basis. But beginning in early January, the first of what promises to be multiple weekend closings of Colesville Road took place. It was time, dear reader, to begin the process of flying the Purple Line tracks over the Red Line and a major four-lane highway in the heart of our city.
In January, the construction crews—working 24 hours from Friday evening until Monday morning—placed the bridge for the Capital Crescent trail across Colesville Road.
Capital Crescent bridge over Colesville Road under construction. The concrete girder in the center is to hold the Purple Line bridge.
As planned, the Purple Line will rise over the existing Red Line tracks, beside the Transit Center, before coming down to ground level near the intersection of Bonifant Street and Ramsey Avenue. We began to see the approach for this bridge show up in early February.
Purple Line bridge under construction as it begins to rise over the Silver Spring Metro Station and the red line. View from the Metro station platform, looking north.
The construction crews chose this weekend — President’s Day — to take advantage of the Monday holiday and begin to connect the light rail bridge over the metro tracks and up to the edge of Colesville Road.
Construction crews begin to connect the light rail bridge over the Metro tracks
Light rail bridge comes to the northern edge of Colesville Road
As I’ve talked about this project with friends and family, I’m often asked, “What’s it like?” My answer is always the same. Remember those great pictures from the 1900s showing an artist’s depiction of the city of the future? Well, here it is. We have your multi-modal transportation systems, with tracks flying over other roads and railways, and everything appears to be humming along without any problems.
Funny how the future didn’t quite turn out that way.
Grey’s “London of the Future”
Downtown Silver Spring has been a perpetual construction zone for much of the time we’ve lived here. We’ve seen changes for the good (such as the well-designed courthouse across the street from us, that replaced a gas station which doubled as a drug dealing hangout.) We’ve seen changes that aren’t to our taste (such as the proposed design for the downtown Silver Spring development). We’ve certainly seen construction delays, screw-ups, miscommunication, and more.
In two weeks time, Colesville Road will be closed again so that the bridge span across the highway can be completed.
But this is just one more stage to live through. As I was traveling by car to Bethesda several nights in a row a few weeks ago to catch the final six Best Picture films, I often had the thought: I wish I could just jump on the Purple Line train. Give it a couple of years. Until then, just watch your head as you come visit us.
More to come…
DJB
P.S. – For those who want to keep up with the project, visit the gallery pages for the Purple Line website.
Singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist Otis Taylor is the next featured artist in our Saturday Soundtrack Black History Month tribute to musicians at the forefront of the work to reclaim the African American contributions to folk, old-time, country and roots music. I kicked off the series with my January tribute to Amythyst Kiah and then began it in earnest the last two weeks; first with a celebration of the music of Rhiannon Giddens, followed last week by Dom Flemons.
Otis Taylor was born in Chicago but moved to Denver early in life with his family. Taylor’s parents were jazz music fans. “My dad worked for the railroad and knew a lot of jazz people,” notes Taylor, while his mother “had a penchant for Etta James and Pat Boone.”
Their house in Colorado was near the Denver Folklore Center, where he bought his first instrument, a banjo. During a NPR Music Tiny Desk concert, Taylor tells how he broke a string on his mother’s ukulele and went to the Center to get it fixed. While there, he became entranced with the banjo, and “never left.” The staff at the folklore center saw this African-American kid from the poorer side of town and gave him free lessons. It wasn’t until much later—when he was, in fact, listening to NPR—that Taylor learned of the African roots of the instrument and became dedicated to bringing that part of the banjo’s past to life.
A music store, concert hall and instrument dealer, the Folklore Center was, “four blocks from my house, and every day after school I’d sit there and listen to records and play their instruments,” Taylor says in an interview in No Depression magazine. “It was a really wonderful experience, and my home away from home.”
As a teenager, Taylor use to play the banjo while riding his unicycle to high school, which melded his love of the instrument with his love of cycles. The Folklore Center was also the place where he first heard Mississippi John Hurt and country blues, and where he learned to play guitar and harmonica. By his mid-teens he had formed his first group and began to play around the country and overseas, including a stint in the T&O Short Line band with legendary Deep Purple singer/guitarist Tommy Bolin. Taylor took an almost two-decade hiatus from the music business in 1977, during which he established a successful career as an antiques dealer and also began coaching a professional bicycle team.
Taylor explains that his blues “is more closely related to African tribal rhythms, which don’t rely on chord changes.” The banjo’s droning fifth string also contributes sonically to his primal sound. The NPR Music Tiny Desk concert from 2011 highlights his mesmerizing banjo work, beginning with the haunting Ten Million Slaves.
The banjo’s history is even more complex than the one that has emerged in recent years through the exposure of millions of Americans to the music of groups like the Carolina Chocolate Drops. The instrument did come to America from Africa, via the Caribbean, brought here by enslaved Africans. Not only the instrument, but string band music itself was appropriated from enslaved communities and spread into the greater American popular culture through minstrel shows and blackface performances. And the banjo was used for a variety of styles, not simply old-time and bluegrass string music.
Otis Taylor’s “Recapturing the Banjo”
Otis Taylor’s work on the banjo showcases these different influences as he has played his style of blues throughout a varied career on stage and on record. In 2008 he released an album entitled Recapturing The Banjo, in which he layers the instrument on a variety of songs and styles. No Depression suggests that “retools” might be a better word. The writer notes, “Recapturing The Banjo allows him to jump-start the historical continuum while relaxing—if that’s the word—with material that stands ready for recontextualization.” The Archives of African American Music and Culture suggests that the album’s “roster of musicians and their diverse contributions render the idea of a uniform ‘black’ way to play the banjo dead on arrival.”
His most recent recording, Fantasizing About Being Black,
“…is a stark and poetic lesson on the historical trauma of the African American experience, from the voyages of slave ships to the Mississippi Delta. Taylor simultaneously travels back in time while moving forward as a musical artist. Blending his unique songwriting and the compelling musical approach that he calls “trance blues,” the recording—on Taylor’s Trance Blues Festival label—inspires with stories of the enduring human spirit, letting its hypnotic sound as well as Taylor’s lyrics tell a story of continuing struggle.
The artist explains that his 15th album is about ‘the different levels of racism in the African American experience that are unfortunately still with us today. The history of African Americans is the history of America,’ Taylor says.”
The Otis Taylor Santa Cruz signature model guitar
Taylor also has one of the most beautiful and unique signature guitars I’ve ever seen, the Santa Cruz Otis Taylor model. As the company’s web site notes, “As a fine arts professional, Otis Taylor’s vision is a combination of vintage retro and ultra sharp European styling; this guitar looks like an expensive Italian suit from the 1930s.” I couldn’t agree more. The fact that the guitar doesn’t have frets above the 14th fret is because Taylor said, “I never play up there.” Here on video he puts the guitar through its paces, showing the various strengths of this instrument. Otis Taylor’s father, Otis Taylor Sr., was an artist and he signed his paintings with the distinctive OT logo, found near the guitar’s soundhole. Otis has said that “using that signature made the guitar feel even more special, more linked to his family, yet the very modern look is a beautiful complement to the whole instrument.”
Nasty Letter, from the movie Shooter, showcases Taylor’s songwriting and his skills on his signature guitar. When the Wind Come Inis an example of trance blues, also played on acoustic guitar.
Taylor’s website bio has a good summation of what makes him such an interesting musician.
“Part of Taylor’s appeal is his contrasting character traits. But it is precisely this element of surprise that makes him one of the most compelling artists to emerge in recent years. In fact, Guitar Player magazine writes, ‘Otis Taylor is arguably the most relevant blues artist of our time.’ Whether it’s his unique instrumentation (he fancies banjo and cello), or it’s the sudden sound of a female vocal, or a seemingly upbeat optimistic song takes a turn for the forlorn, what remains consistent is poignant storytelling based in truth and history.”
MORE TO COME... 