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ARABSONG: Celebrations of Life

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The Best Story I Ever Wrote

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Three Autobiographies

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My Father's Voice   

 a story by           

 Ron David

My father was a singer.  The story we heard when we were kids was that he was on the verge of becoming a successful big band crooner when he faced the hard fact that, in order to sing in public, he had to get slightly drunk.  His own father was a boozer who had neglected his children but my father thought a man should put his family above everything so he quit the band and never looked back.  By the time he was my father, the only singing he did was in the shower.  It was the damnedest thing: he would lift his arm, crook his elbow, tuck his face into his wing, and he would sing...and listen.  Sing...and listen. 

        I loved to watch him sing but, to be honest, I never loved my father's voice.  We argued a lot but that had nothing to do with it.  It was just that I preferred jazz.  I loved jazz.  Especially the bass clarinet of Eric Dolphy.

After one of our worst arguments (he wanted me to be a dentist, I wanted to be Jean Paul Sartre) I joined the Army, where I lived in places I hated and became friends with people I didn't like.  One of my Army friends, an actor with talent but no looks, was the last person I expected to have an impact on my life.  To me, life was about going to any length to form the truest and most beautiful ideas, then defending them.  But this actor—he never stood his ground on anything.  He'd start arguing one way then, when someone new came into the room, he'd change not only his opinion, but his entire personality.  The only time he seemed to be made of something solid was the night he got very drunk, whispered me over to a dark corner, looked around to make sure no one was within earshot, and confessed sheepishly, as if he were owning up to molesting nuns, "I am studying....to be...an opera singer."

        I don't believe people should repress things, even, God forbid, the impulse to sing opera, so I didn't say that I hated opera and considered it a moth-eaten old art form that kept decorating the same corpses.  He asked if I would listen to an opera record with him.

        I didn't say No.  I could endure a few minutes of agony to help a friend, even if I didn't particularly like him.    He put on his record.  I sat in a dark corner so he couldn't read my face.

        That was the first time I had ever heard the voice of Jussi Bjorling.    

I was home on leave from the Army, sitting on my father's floor, arguing with my sisters about how useless religion was.  (Some families pray or go on picnics; our family argued.)  Dad usually joined in family arguments—he was the only one who ever got genuinely angry —but he wasn't in the mood.  "There are times," my father said, "when I feel so sad that I can't pull myself out of it.  The only thing that works for me when I feel that bad is talking to God."  I asked him if that was part of the argument. 

        "I'm not trying to win an argument, son," he said, "I'm offering you a gift."

        I thanked him and told him that, in that sense, if I had any religion it was music. 

A few days later, depressed about having to return to the  Army, I lay on my father's floor listening to Jussi Bjorling.  When my dad came home from work he turned the volume down so low that I couldn't feel the healing force in the music.  He obviously had no more respect for my religion than I had for his.  I told him that I needed my music and turned the volume back up.  "Nobody in his right mind," my father said, "would call that shit music."   

Two months ago my father died.  I am an atheist so I wondered if that meant that I would never in any way see my father again..?

l l l

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF JUSSI BJORLING

Prologue: Jussi Bjorling was born in Sweden in 1907.  He was shy and portly, even as a child.  At the age of 13, he made miraculous recordings with his father and two brothers.  He sang his first real opera in 1930, ten years after Caruso died. You can still buy the records he made in 1931, that's how good they are. 

Caruso's widow wept when she heard Bjorling's voice.  She said it was the only voice on earth that could stand next to Caruso's. 

In 1938, after singing up Europe, Bjorling made his debut at New York's Metropolitan Opera.  Everything was fine until 1952, when Rudolph Bing became General Manager of the Met. 

That's when Bjorling's troubles started. . .

"I am afraid, Mister Bjorling," Rudolph Bing said during a 1953 Metropolitan Opera rehearsal, "that you are not a great actor."

    I did not reply.

    "In fact, Mister Bjorling," Rudolph Bing elaborated, "you are a terrible actor."

    I did not disagree.

    "To be precise, Mister Bjorling," Rudolph Bing hissed, "you may be the worst actor in the history of the universe!"

    I did not argue.

    "Or am I perhaps wrong, Mister Bjorling," Rudolph Bing said,  trying a side door, "Perhaps you are a fine actor.  What do you think?  What is your opinion?"

    "I have," I said, "no opinion in the matter."

Question: Have you ever had the feeling that your thoughts:

        (  ) did not precisely come from you?

        (  ) did not exactly belong to you? 

        (  ) seemed to have almost nothing to do with the way you acted?

     I am at a loss: I try to evaluate what to do about Mister Bing, but the same thing happens that has happened all of my life: the mind does not go where I send it.  It goes where it wants to go. 

My mind has a mind of its own.

            Was the man right about me?

            I have no opinion. 

            (It is not that I have no opinions.)

            (I have opinions about others.)

            (It is just myself that I take no firm position in regard to.)

"I must apologize," I said. "I am unable to sing this evening."     

      "Out of the question," Herr Bing said.  "Besides, we don't want to disappoint your three or four fans, do we, Mister Bjorling?"

     I examined the floor.

     "Let me give you something to think about," Rudolph Bing said. "Next year we open our new Opera House?"

    I nodded Yes.

    "Singing at the opening of the new house is the greatest honor the Metropolitan Opera can bestow upon any singer?"

    I nodded in agreement.

    "You know, I presume, that I tried to get DeStephano but he refused," Mister Bing said with a nice smile.  "Apparently his witchdoctor considers our new opera house bad medicine."

    I nodded.

    "Let me be partially honest with you, Mister Bjorling: to my utter astonishment, the Board of Directors wants you to open the new house but, to be candid, I don't.  Thus far, the Board prevails. . .but if you get a couple of bad reviews or cancel a few performances, I am sure that the Board could be persuaded to see it my way, capish?"  

    "Forgive me if I seem distracted," I said.  "I am expected in Sweden."  I looked at the floor.  "My father has passed away."

l l l

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ERIC DOLPHY

Prologue:  On October 4, 1958, the famous jazz saxophonist John Coltrane appeared at Detroit's Minor Key Coffee House in search of new music.  Immediately, with no talk, with politeness and a skinny necktie, the shy, charismatic Coltrane began to play.  They wondered at first if Trane was kidding but he smiled less than Jesus on Veronica's babushka so they took him as seriously as he took himself.  They were so confused that they applauded before Trane's solo was finished.  John Coltrane looked at them as if he felt very sorry for them, then tried to get back into his solo but they had made him lose his place on the way to a music no one had ever heard before. 

Trane looked for a way back in for another 15 minutes, then he didn't exactly finish his solo, he more or less abandoned it.  They applauded with such intensity that they embarrassed him. 

Humiliated, dignified, with an extremely skinny necktie, Coltrane looked like he was praying for them to the elegant hidden God of Music, then gave the nod to Eric Dolphy, his new bass clarinet.

Dolphy looked at Coltrane like Trane had looked at the audience when he had felt pity for them, then Dolphy restated Coltrane's premise (the one John had reeked of just before he got lost) and Dolphy magnified it, reexamined it, slapped it on its ass and turned it into living, breathing, screaming music.         

When Dolphy finished that gigantic solo, nobody applauded. 

The heroically generous Coltrane walked from behind the piano with his horn strap on his neck and put his arms around Dolphy. 

With tears on his skinny necktie, John Coltrane said, "Eric."

"Eric," Coltrane said, "this was the greatest jazz solo that anyone has ever heard.  You have found what I was seeking.  Together we will build a new priesthood."

Thereafter, Coltrane and I met two evenings a week to invent our own religion. 

         I did not believe in it.  (Coltrane did.  Coltrane believed in everything.)

When my telephone rang, I tried not to answer it.  I didn't want to talk, especially not about religion, but someone inside me compelled me to answer the phone. 

    Coltrane's voice did not follow from his body, mind, or music.

            Coltrane's voice sounded like a tomato. 

    "Eric?  Why won't you speak?"

    "Yaaaaaang," I said, confident for no particular reason that I was not going mad.

We had no fixed position on whether the old God was dead burned out blocked had never existed or simply lacked relevance, all that we insisted upon was that he be new and ours and not already used up by a million honkies in Budweiser hats so when Coltrane came to my house at 8:00 PM we both sat cross-legged on my judo mat with the radio between us and resumed looking for 'Trane's new God and since it was my turn to begin the confessions I said "Although I try not to be self-centered I tend to find myself fascinating and even when I'm not thinking about myself I frequently am." 

              (I may have failed to mention that we sat on the judo mat as if we were forming a knee-to-knee triangle with a third person, invisible, the figment God of Coltrane's genuflective imagination.)    I turned the radio on, it was Bing Crosby.

         "This is some stupid shit," I said.  "I don't believe in it."

      "Of course!" Coltrane said.  "If the old God required that you believe in Him, any truly new God must insist that you don't!”   Coltrane turned Bing Crosby louder because he hated it so much.  It made me think of my father, so I changed the station.

              (I do not love Coltrane enough to suffer in his presence.)

              I turned the dial, not looking for something, but to get away from something.   

              I heard the Voice. I stopped.  Coltrane said it was hideous.  "If that is hideous," I seem to recall saying before I was disconnected, "then I am hideous." 

"Hey, Vibrato, what's postulating?" is how Vaughn greeted me. 

              (Vaughn is a friend who hides his brains behind jive talk.)

      "Depressed as shit, Vonny," I said.  "All I want is to build one piece of music that is truly beautiful.  I know beauty the instant I hear it but I can't seem to construct any."

     "Look here, my little postcard," Vonny said, "You prob'ly a genius in your own whacked‑out way but the beautifulest thing about you is your face, which is approximately as foxy as a policeman's armpit."

When I was six years old I was chasing a fly ball with a borrowed glove when I tripped onto a rusty angle iron.  I lay bleeding without crying while my Protestant friends prayed but kept their distance.  From the age of six, people seemed to think I was a genius.  (In my neighborhood that wasn’t exactly a compliment.)  Not many people liked me but they gave me plenty of room.  Even the white kids. 

       (What difference does it make what I look like?  Who cares that my skin is the color of dried blood or that my eyes are as black and as white as piano keys or that I am as thin as skin on bone?  Inside, I am so fearsomely beautiful that I would take your breath away!)

We played another session at Detroit's Minor Key.  The first night was a miracle.  On the second night, Coltrane finished his solo and gave the nod to me.  I started to play but nothing came out: my fingers didn't move and my thoughts were the thoughts of strangers.

            I stood there stupefied, confused, thinking of singing, although I couldn't sing a lick.  I slicked back my louvered hair, felt for the triggers on my bass clarinet and started to cry. 

    "Why are you crying," Coltrane asked.  "Is is because of your father?"

    "No," I said.  "I think I am crying over Simone DeBeauvior's account of the death of Jean Paul Sartre."

l l l

             MY FATHER'S VOICE...

            In my father's house, I listen to the phonograph records that I made with papa and my brothers.  

            There is a voice on one of those records that is unutterably beautiful. 

    Everyone in my family insists that the voice is mine.  Gosta and Olle, presuming that they are doing me a favor, say that I had the voice from birth.

    Mother, nodding, sews above her throbbing veins.         

    Father is gone, freshly gone, but his loss feels less momentous than a finished meal.    Although I cannot think, I feel an idea.  I go to the pantry.  I remove a paper bag.

    I open the paper bag.  I sing into it until I am hoarse.      

            I tie the bag closed.  I take the bag into the bathroom.

I run water into the bathtub.  I force the bag into the water.

    I feel the voice struggling to escape.

    I hold it beneath the water. 

The deed is almost finished, I feel his hand on my shoulder.      

            "Not that way, Son," my dead father says.

l l l

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF SIMONE DeBEAUVOIR

Prologue:  On the morning of July 13, 1981, Simone DeBeauvior let herself into Jean Paul Sartre's Paris apartment with her own key after having first knocked.  Madame DeBeauvior and Sartre had been friends and lovers for forty years.  She found the philosopher in his study, seated at his enormous untidy desk.

"Jean Paul," she said, "it is I, Madame DeBeauvier."

The man who had once invented freedom sat unmoving, staring at his liver-spotted hands.

"Monsieur?" said the fierce godmother of intellectual feminism, "one has no intention of invading your privacy but, would something be amiss?"

The discoverer of the void did not answer.

"If you would rather not discuss it," she said, "one understands."

He turned to face her but he was nearly blind and smiled well to the left of her.  "Today I came to my desk precisely as I have done for the last 50 years," Sartre said.  "Do you know what I found at my desk for the first time this morning?"

"Nothing," he said, answering his own question. "I found absolutely nothing."  Looking as if he were already dead, Jean Paul Sartre said, "For the first time in all of my life I have no ideas." 

I sit on the edge of my hard little bed and I think of Sartre. 

            I am considered one of the most rational women of this century. 

            I believe in neither superstition nor prayer. 

            I look through my window past the stars and, without sentimentality, I tell the void that I would give my life if Sartre could live. 

Although I do not pray, I am still thinking about him two hours after I go to sleep. 

            I do not believe in premonitions, therefore, I simply awaken for no particular reason at three in the morning and I freely choose to go to Sartre's house.  I cannot imagine myself overwrought, so the reason I enter Sartre's apartment without knocking can only be due to my utter exhaustion.  I find the greatest French mind of this century on his sofa, intoxicated, without clothing, in the embrace of two girls in their early twenties.  Jealousy is the furthest thing from my mind: Sartre and I have invented the modern couple, together past 40 years without legal sanction, without anything except our deep mutual respect and affection and without ever even mentioning the imprecise, sentimental word 'love' except in theoretical discussion.

     I look at the liquor bottles and at the girls without malice, without envy, without anything except cognizance of Sartre's doctor's warning: nothing will kill the great philosopher sooner than alcohol.  I do not enjoy being cast in the role of policewoman but one does what is necessary: I ask the others to leave and I myself take Sartre to hospital.

A few days later I find Jean Paul dead in his hospital bed.  Jean Paul Sartre was the most profoundly beautiful mind that I would ever encounter in the only life I would ever live.

     I lock the hospital door and I climb into bed with him.

Although I am an atheist and never use the word love except in theoretical discussion, I have thought about him every day since he died.