The Music of Voices

7:36 am, PDT. The iPhone Rings with the selected strum tone. It is to be a day of music and voices.

St. Mary of New York: “I don’t expect you to answer the phone this early.”
Aristaeus: “I always answer when a saint is calling.”
St. Mary: “Did I wake you?”
Aristaeus: “Yes, you always do.”

And she does, but I love it. Waking up to a friend’s voice makes for a great day. St. Mary’s voice is sonorous and smooth, but that’s not the only voice I hear. In the background is the few-months-old Noah, who punctuates our conversation with shrieks of delight and long wails of wonder at this world. It is his “barbaric yawp,” as Walt would put it, over the rooftops of Manhattan. Mary and I talk for a while about writing and learning, about confidence and fear, about the universe as a road and souls traveling it. I am reminded of the poet Robert Pinsky’s little book on the sounds of poetry where he talks about rhythm and meter and notes that when we talk, we are really singing to each other because each sentence has its own meter and rhythm. Mary and I have a kind of duet that we have been doing for nearly fifteen years, and it’s almost to the point where we don’t have to say too much of substance to enjoy the conversation. Just entering that rhythm reminds me of our friendship, which actually began over poetry read aloud in a decrepit college office in the South. She was the brilliant but uncertain senior in love with words and the music of them, and I was the brand new college professor trying to find his way in academe. I suppose we became friends because we were both a bit lost but also because we found some common paths in the poetry. And on a recent Wednesday morning, we connect again, and it is good, the old songs and rhythms still there.

By now it’s after 8:30, and I should get ready for work. I put the phone down and begin to move around a bit, come back and pick it up, then put it back down again. I do this a couple more times. Something tells me to call Jerry, but I’m torn between getting ready and making the call. With the annas horribilis that we’ve gone through, I know that any phone call can become a long one because something new may have happened or we need to process something that already has happened. I decide to call. “I can’t believe you just called me,” he says. “Why?” I ask, now worried that something else has happened. “Well, you won’t believe where I am.” He doesn’t sound upset, just kind of pleasantly amused. His voice is almost whimsical, but in a knowing way, not a dirge but perhaps a slow hymn. In fact he is on the road back to his house from a job interview, and he is happy with how it has gone. I hadn’t heard about this, so I ask where it is. “That’s what’s interesting,” he says, “it’s at your alma mater.” It turns out that they gave him a tough interview for an interesting position, and he dropped my name a few times (really the fact that I am an alumnus; they don’t know my name). He was upbeat, optimistic, but also realistic. There would be a certain symmetry to my brother working at my alma mater, more than the fact that I am a graduate. And I hope it works out for him. He would enjoy, as I do, being around college students, and I think the work would be meaningful. All the same, if this doesn’t work out, I know something else will. For now, I am happy to hear this song from my brother, and our conversation is in a major key with lots of bright notes.

My day is slower than usual in terms of appointments, so I actually have a couple of hours in the afternoon before my 4:00 pm presentation on the Buffalo Center to a group of high school guidance counselors who are at Cool University as part of a tour of So Cal colleges. I plan on getting a number of things done, but there are too many voices in Sancho’s office and the hallway. I love it when people congregate and harmonize their happiness in loud voices, and this occurs on this lovely afternoon outside my office. Sancho is at the center, as she should be, but students spill into my office through the open door, laughing and pretending to be there for official reasons having to do with signatures and such, but they are really just there to sing and laugh together. No work is more important than this moment, so I ditch my plans and wander out into the hall and onto the porch to celebrate the buffalo mood and music. Marvin is sitting on the steps with the community guitar looking happy and content. I love Marvin. He’s a large, imposing man completely punked out with blue hair, tatoos, and piercings, and is also an evangelical Christian. He begins a fast strum in D Major, and I think I recognize the rhythm. Before the end of the first line, I am singing with him:

I hear the train a comin’
It’s rollin’ round the bend
And I ain’t seen the sunshine since
I don’t know when

When we come to the best line of the song, we sound our barbaric yawp over the campus of Cool University: “I shot a man in Reno, just to watch him die.” So two people who have nothing in common, other than being in a particular place at a particular time, come together over music for a duet of Folsom Prison Blues on the steps of the Buffalo Center, where such things occur all the time.

My presentation to the assembled counselors begins with Whitman of course. I tell them that Walt wrote about the Buffalo center in the nineteenth century when he described it this way:

From this hour, freedom!
From this hour I ordain myself loos’d of limits and imaginary lines,
Going where I list, my own master, total and absolute,
Listening to others, and considering well what they say,
Pausing, searching, receiving, contemplating,
Gently, but with undeniable will, divesting myself of the holds that would hold me.

Imagine, I say, what an undergraduate education based on those notions would look like, and you have the Buffalo Center. They are kind and patient as I explain the basic elements to them. My friend, Fyodor, tells them at the end that while I have my Whitman, he has another quotation from an artist that is equally true of the Buffalo Center: “If you’re still in control, you’re not driving fast enough,” Mario Andretti. It is a nice moment, and we all smile and head out toward a cocktail reception before dinner. I dread the cocktail reception. The forced smiles and small talk, the repetitive questions and answers, the effort to mingle and meet everyone out of duty. I begin to calculate how long I have to stay and how quickly I can exit the dinner. But I arrive at the reception and see the room packed with counselors, colleagues, and Buffalo Center students! It’s a real party. Everyone greets me with “Slayer!” and the counselors turn to look for Buffy but see only me.Vivien and Monique are right by the door and give me coyote grins. Tyler, Abigail, Otis, Dante, and a host of other Buffaloes give me the nod. Everyone is happy and drinking. I grab a scotch and see what’s up.

I talk to a couple of counselors from New York, and we do the get-to-know-each-other thing. They tell where their schools are, and I say my dear friend St. Mary is at Bright and Shining Light School in Manhattan. “Oh,” one of them says, “you should meet Sarah; she’s from that school.” “Where is she?” I ask, eager to tell her that I know St. Mary. They point her out across the room, but there is no way I can get to her at that moment. A man from another high school walks quickly up to me, apologizes for intruding on the conversation, and tells me he has to ask me something. “Sure,” I say, “what’s up?” “This Buffalo Center thing,” he says, gesturing seriously with his hands, “it sounds too good to be true. Can I meet some of your students and talk to them?” I smile and tell him, “Wait right here; I’ll be right back.” I go into the next room and see Dante and Otis talking to someone. I steal them away and introduce them to the man who wants to know if this is all too good to be true. Dante and Otis say to me “Did you meet Sarah from Bright and Shining Light School?” You two would probably enjoy talking to each other.”  Interesting. They don’t know about the St. Mary connection, only that Sarah and I should meet. Immediately, another counselor nabs me to ask me about how the Buffalo Center really works. We talk for a while before Fyodor comes by and takes me away. “Where are we going?” I ask. “You need to meet Sarah from Bright and Shining Light School in Manhattan.” “I know,” I say, “I was working my way over there.” I try to tell him that I already have a connection with Sarah through Mary, but there are too many voices, and he is pulling me behind him to yet another room. We finally reach an open space, and I ask Fyodor why he wants me to meet Sarah. “She’s been talking to Vivien and Monique since she got here, and they’re telling her that you two should meet.” I smile at the connections being formed from New York to California and go up to meet Sarah, who is engaged in conversation with Vivien and Monique. They give me coyote smiles and introduce me. Sarah says “Vivien and Monique have been telling me all about you.” “Oh, God,” I say, “what did they tell you?” “That Whitman is the only game you’ve got,” Sarah says, smiling. I look over at my friends, and they are smiling too. Then they begin cracking up with laughter. I say to Vivien, “I’m Nobody, who are you?” quoting Dickinson. Vivien tells me she hasn’t seen that movie. We all crack up again.

I walk with Jackie, another Cool University student, to dinner and talk with a nice man from New York who works for a non-profit who tries to help students prepare for college who otherwise would not go. He tells of his travels in Germany playing baseball and writing a memoir about it. He writes every day. I like him immensely and tell him to keep writing. He smiles and says he will. There is good will all around, and Jackie takes my arm as we walk into the banquet hall. Buffaloes are congregated at the front, and I tell them all to scatter and mingle. They ignore me. I walk away from them and find a table where there is someone I don’t know, a counselor from Texas who looks content and sounds like he’s from New England instead of Fort Worth. We talk easily and freely before Jackie, Vivien, and Monique come and sit at the table. They’ve brought Sarah from Bright and Shining Light School. I give up trying to get them to mingle and decide we’ll just have fun. Sarah and I begin singing the song of St. Mary, and I tell her that I was just on the phone with her this morning. We sing of Bayard and Noah and of all good things. I say, “Let’s call her.” Sarah says, “Do you think she’ll be up?” “I don’t care,” I say, “she woke me up this morning; she can be awakened now, especially if we are going to sing the song of St. Mary.” I tell Mary I am at dinner with someone I want her to speak with, then I hand the phone to Sarah. I watch and listen as Sarah explains this amazing confluence of people, places, and voices, and we sing the song of St. Mary. My first student who became my friend merging her voice with the voices of my new friends in lovely harmony. I am blessed.

NOW I make a leaf of Voices—for I have found nothing mightier than they are,
And I have found that no word spoken, but is beautiful, in its place.

O what is it in me that makes me tremble so at voices?
Surely, whoever speaks to me in the right voice, him or her I shall follow,
As the water follows the moon, silently, with fluid steps, anywhere around the globe.

All waits for the right voices;
Where is the practis’d and perfect organ? Where is the develop’d Soul?
For I see every word utter’d thence, has deeper, sweeter, new sounds, impossible on less terms.

Walt Whitman