Whistler's Mother

I watched way too much television this weekend-- binged on Black History Month documentaries some of which I'd seen before but which seemed to have new currency.  The Central Park Five film was particularly upsetting... a different variety of police brutality and racism in the 1980's version of city.  As a runner, then, I remember identifying with the jogger;  as a runner, now... waking up morning after morning to a curtailed life, and as a mother... well, I wept for the young men whose lives were amputated and sabotaged.  I hope they've used their settlements well.  

Waking up these alarm-less mornings, I find myself in a half-state of self-identification-- calculating dates, days of the week... marking another strike on my virtual wall of days without a gig.   Unintentionally I often sift through sands of old mornings; the bottom of the proverbial hourglass is rich with these-- heavy-- and to isolate one or two-- well, it is a choice-- it is difficult and leads inevitably down a path of some autobiographical anecdote.  I can't imagine sitting in prison without tools to express and chronicle what one is forced to examine from the beach of one's own life... or driving down some road with brakes on-- no going forward, no U-turns.  The lives of those boys and countless incarcerated innocents-- well, they haunt me.

I searched tonight metaphorically for '29', feeling a bit cheated, but also as though in this limbo of late-February numbers compelled to sew a written memory into the warp and weft of time.  We have stopped becoming, many of us... and what we become matters.  Many of my peers complain or confess they have stopped using their fingers.  We practice, some of us-- but our people are missing.  Our wakings have less clarity; we are foggy and sad.  We know what we will lose today and it is painful.  

In the midst of difficult family reminiscence, as though I need to put a 'cap' on it, I remembered today having breakfast with my father.  He rarely spoke, on the way to work-- spread the Times in front of his face while he gulped his coffee and occasional sardines on toast.  Mostly he rushed out.  We were annoying in the morning.  My mother had a cigarette to keep her company... and the prospect of luxury hours alone with not much on her agenda, so I imagined, except preparing for the evening.  

But once a year I'd go to work with him... take the train, and somewhere near the Graybar building was a place called Il Trattoria, or something like that-- where they served good strong coffee and Italian breads sliced in half-- buttered and grilled.  It was so good, that toast-- no wonder my father shunned his breakfast often.  There he'd be, in this noisy, cluttered place, with his train-friends, all suited and hatted... with their Stetsons and their young-man handsome profiles-- the masters of the business universe which seemed to swarm the streets of midtown in those days.  I can still smell the vague smoky air-- the ghost fumes of train, the hint of after-shave-- the hustle.  I could almost paint it, like a Lester Johnson pack of Walking Men-- like an office-army without formation or rank.  

On a nostalgic website, below a vintage Manhattan photograph from the 1940's, someone recently commented...'except the hats, this could be today'.  But it was precisely the hats that defined the time-- the vague voluntary uniform that sheltered men like my father-- disguised them... protected them.  On that day that I'd accompany him, I'd see him as a completely different species-- a generic man-- strong, protective-- belonging, somehow, to a sort of mise-en-scène-- a plan.  I felt safe and normal.

Of course, at home-- nothing was really normal. My Dad was a bit miserable, disappointed, depressed-- whatever... the ex-soldier without any heroism in his domestic life, with only daughters who annoyed him and a wife who never seemed to tip his scale to happy.   Still, the silhouette he became every day-- was crucial to his purpose in life, the order of days-- to progress and Republicanism.  I noticed that black people wore similar hats, too... but there was a different rhythm to street populations.  Everyone moved slower in their neighborhoods-- with a sort of heavy deliberation, but also a kind of dance to their feet.  I couldn't quite put my finger on it.  

Watching the Ellis Haizlip documentary for the third time, Gladys Knight got me to open my mouth and sing-- it was like an alarm went off in my head.  I looked around the room-- I was alone, but something ignited there.  Through the past years I've walked the city and heard music in my head.  I've written lyrics, transcribed dialogue that was spoken to me, or that I spoke out loud, as though a voice used me as a muse. Lately the masks have muffled not just my voice but my spirit.  I can't imagine singing.  Or whistling.  Another thing that seems to date movies-- we don't have many scripts with people walking down the street whistling a tune.  

I've always loved whistlers... they do the most with what God gives them... the best of them have perfect pitch and bell-clear tone; they have facility-- vibrato and trill-skills.  A passing car silences them... no one hears, or sometimes fellow-passengers on buses resent their music.  There was a man I used to see uptown-- he had a limp but compensated for his heavy foot with a tune that rivaled birds.  I spoke to him once or twice-- he said the music just came to him... the melodies-- he was not responsible- they just came.  He'd rest on the benches on 110th Street and have a cigarette... in between smoke rings, he'd whistle... as though the tunes hitched a ride on the dissolving 'O's.  Most of the time he wore an old hat.  

The tragedies of the past year are about to come full circle with this shortened month.  I tried to postpone it by inventing a 29, but I can't slow time.  Then there are the small losses-- the ones which add up to a diminished life here, although the pile-up of empty days has been a blessing to some-- an opportunity to rest, to grieve, to invent.  Still, pandemic masks like a blight have stifled our expression, camouflaged our emotions, confused our natural facial recognition abilities... discouraged street-eating and drinking, whispering, tongue-sticking and kissing.  They have all but obliterated whistlers.