Five Little PIeces

1.
What would you like to dance to today? Grisha always asks.
You pick, I always say.


2.
One day, something changes.

May I bring some music I like to our next lesson? I ask.
“Yes, sure. I can dance to anything,” Grisha says. “Challenge me.”

I bring In Loving Memory, a simple Celtic song.

California Dreaming by The Duo-Tones

Elvis’s Blue Christmas, Eartha Kitt’s Santa Baby

Fibre de Verre, which I like because it is in French, which, as everyone knows, is the language of music. Also, it is tres chic.

Grisha is tres chic, too. He fiddles with his computer and suddenly we are dancing to City of New Orleans—in French!

In the ongoing quest to spring a surprise, I scour my music collection. There is an ancient cassette tape labeled Folk Christmas, which Michigan recorded from the radio, and a Native American opera, also from the radio, also from Michigan. Alfred Apaka. Tret Fure. Greg Brown. Bonnie Raitt. Judy Collins. Charlotte Church. Frank Sinatra.

There is Raising Sand, a present from Keith featuring an old rocker he likes. Mussorgksy, Tchaikovsky, Dvorak, all pirated, all labeled in Keith’s hand, which is really something when you consider he can’t stand those guys. Pink Floyd, Keith’s old favorite, is notably absent.

When I tell Keith about the game, he makes a CD with both the Van Morrison and Greg Brown versions of Moondance, plus Traffic’s Low Spark of High-Heeled Boys. For good measure he tacks on “our” song, which is not a romantic footnote but a reminder of the worldview that has always defined us, first separately, then as a couple, and still.

I go to the library, paw through the CD collection, find:

--Yo-Yo Ma playing Vivaldi on a Stradivarius cello made in 1712
--Nina Simone
--Spike Jones (sure, why not?)
--Swan Lake
--Janis Joplin
--Girl Groups Scrapbook, a compilation from the ’50s and ’60s, mostly African-American. (Motown is my town!)
--Japan for Sale, a compilation of J. Pop, rock, punk and hip-hop by Japanese artists

What’s that you say, Grisha, “Challenge me”?

Game on, boy-o.

* * *

I am kidding around, but also am learning. I can’t say what I’m learning, but I’m getting a feel for what makes some music be for listening, some for dancing.

3.
You should make a video, Grisha says.

He means that he should make a video of us dancing during our lesson. He has said this before. My answer is No.

Anna is doing it, he says. I shrug.

Sooner or later, I say.


4.
My father used to love Janis Joplin. He liked her mastery and freedom, and how she veered and lurched between them.

Not me. Her harsh voice frightened me. It sounded like knives in her throat.

My father used to love Paul Robeson. He loved the old Negro spirituals, mournful and low, and the songs that rose from the tradition. In the 1930s Robeson recorded Old Black Joe, and if you twitch at the racist overtones you don’t know anything about the lyrics, or Paul Robeson, or the 1930s, or the centuries-long, pre-MLK history of African-American resistance.

When you investigate, you will see: Old Black Joe is not a racist song; it is a crepuscular one.

My dad sang the song like Robeson, slow and deep. As a workingman with socialist leanings, he and Robeson occupied a scrap of common ground. By station and temperament, my father found common ground with Old Black Joe. At night in the dark, lying along the edge of somebody’s bed, my father would sing Old Black Joe to put his little girls to sleep. In the dark he would make the rounds of three bedrooms tucked under the eaves. His voice was dark and smooth, and you could drift on it like a river into your dreams.

Before he was blacklisted, Robeson appeared in the Gershwin musical, Porgy and Bess. The smash hit song from that show was a mother’s song, Summertime. It is not unlike Old Black Joe, though the source of the twilight is different.

Both songs have this in common: Hope. Twilight is not without light.

My father never sang Summertime. I did. I sang it high and sweet, my voice rippling over the notes like a river sparkling in sunshine. Little One Heart sang the song as she heard it, her mammy promising all is well forever.


5.
Your father is going in for more biopsies, my mother says in an offhand way that tells me she’s scared to death. We are starting to catch on.


4.
The second song on the greatest hits CD starts with a long instrumental. It’s slow and gentle, like a river in sunshine. It lulls you. And then Janis cries: Summertime…

Her cry starts soft. Then the knives come out.

Clouds like children tattered and starving snatch at the sun in a torment of wind. The river hurls and shouts: A man can’t catch a break! The song tears at her throat, tears free.

3.
Better sooner than later, I think.

2.
All kidding aside.

1.
Janis Joplin’s Summertime.