I am sitting in the balcony of The Lighthouse facing the river which today is sparkling blue-gray, reflecting the springtime Sunday sun in our little river hamlet of Milestone. Here, from the top floor of The Lighthouse, the gray tower on the bluff, I am reclined in my green sofa watching how the sunlight makes patterns on the gray, weathered wood of the balcony. Through the white slats of wood I can see the river ferry Chicomacomico returning for its fifth journey today for its 10 A.M. discharge of cars and trucks at the Milestone station. The regularity of the ferry and the slow, purposeful movements of its crew calm me, and give me a window into the practical, unhurried daily life of the river and its people. Just watching, I feel relieved for a brief moment from the existential thoughts that have been tormenting me since the blasts at the Boston marathon a week ago.
The awful business in Boston has left me very conflicted. I am relieved because no one I know got blown up. My friend from childhood, Amy, lives four blocks from where they finally arrested the younger bomber, bleeding in a boat. I figured that out on my smart phone in the dark, empty parking lot of Food Lion outside of Bethany Crossroads. I sms'ed her, but got no response. Less than an hour later, after the capture, the streets of Boston erupted in chants of “USA, USA” and “Boston, Boston”, shirtless young men grinning and flexing their muscles for the news cameras to film. It was unseemly, uncomfortable, and completely unworthy of the suffering of the victims. It was too loud, too proud, too like a sporting event. It was as if this life of ours in America were one continental Super Bowl and that our team had won. There was no winning in Boston. There never is when reason is abandoned to violence. There was only the panicked applying of tourniquets to blasted bodies and ruined lives and the professional, self-sacrificing work of public servants who speedily brought this incident to a bloody close. There are no winners at such “events”. So why all the cheering? What's it about, and how is related to why this happened in the first place?
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| Boston men chanting "USA, USA" after capture of Bomber (photo: dailyfreepress.com) |
So when I left New York, safe in my husband's black truck with the last cardboard boxes and having turned the key in the lock of apartment 41 of 464 W. 152 Street Harlem for the last time, having smelled for the last time the dusty, gray perfume of those mud-colored mosaic floors and those humid plaster walls, having felt for the last time the smooth surface of the pink marble risers worn down from a century of tired, black people trudging up the stairs with their sorrow and their bags of groceries, I knew that the door that would allow me to escape from New York was closing. Quickly. And I wanted out. Badly. We now know that after Boston, the bombers next stop was to be New York City. I am glad they didn't make, but I am equally glad that I removed myself from the natural path of their homicidal hurricane. I worry sometimes that my sister is still there.
Years ago, a young redheaded man, a student of mine said, “I have been in New York City for three years and I'm leaving before I make it to seven. If you don't leave New York before 7 years is up," he said, "you never leave, and there's so much of the world I still want to see.” Then and now, I found his words astonishingly mature for a 26 year old. Perhaps having cancer at 15, as he had, grows you up fast. But he was right. The city takes you like an alligator, and once you're in its grip for enough time to get used to its bite, its filth, the agitation and daily insults, you have already lost your senses and it has become impossible for you to believe that a life outside of its limits is possible, just as for a prisoner it becomes eventually unbearable to live outside the walls of his cell.
I saved myself by deciding to take the risk of leaving my home and my work to travel abroad. Becoming a troubadour, I went to sing in the bars and cruise lines of Europe. And there, in the cold clean air of Germany, Finland, Switzerland, Sweden and in the smoky, wine stained venues of France, I woke up a little, and cured myself of the illusion that New York was the center of the world. I learned that I could enjoy making music without real hope for....what? Becoming famous? Become rich? Scaling the heights to live in the clouds with the beautiful people as an accepted member of high society and People magazine? Yes, all of that and more. Traveling through Europe, I got over the sickness of cultural egotism and enjoying life for the details and the experience of living it. I achieved the prize-winning feeling of a perfect cup of coffee in a cobble stoned side street, the irreplaceable feeling of being free.
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| The author with bandmates onstage in Berlin, Germany |
I remember how especially in the smallest towns there were men who gazed at me from their bar stools in silence for hours on end as I sang them the songs of Carol King, Paul Simon and Iron and Wine, and as they tried to resolve their own internal conflict between their attraction to these songs and us, and their general disapproval of the American Way. They asked us about our lives in New York which was like Oz to them, a destination they considered beyond their ability to visit, even for a short time. Oh New York! What a dream! But it also happened sometimes after passing the hat for the last time, a man with a heavy gaze and a few too many pints in him would buy a 20 Euro CD from me, add 5 Euros to the tip jar and then say to me in the slow, strong-accented tone of a German working man, “You like Bush. Bush ist murderer.” And in those moments, when I wanted to argue, to defend, to cheer for my team, I practiced silence and learned something important: That there is a universe of people who don't share my country's beliefs, values, or its feeling of "exceptionalism". Singing for my supper, I achieved a bit of humility that I had not realized that I had been sorely lacking all my life.
I viewed my country from a distance during the awkward years of Bush the Second, through the eyes of working class Europeans. I didn't always agree with what they said about the U.S. in those smoky, beery nights in Bordeaux, Cologne, Paris, Helsinki and Berlin and all the little towns in between where we stopped to sings some songs, pass our hat and sell a few Cd's of our music. But I understood that I had been living in a bubble that reflected only an distorted image of itself and of a life not shared by most other people in the world. Part of that distorted image was what it looks like to be a winner. Or a loser.
I viewed my country from a distance during the awkward years of Bush the Second, through the eyes of working class Europeans. I didn't always agree with what they said about the U.S. in those smoky, beery nights in Bordeaux, Cologne, Paris, Helsinki and Berlin and all the little towns in between where we stopped to sings some songs, pass our hat and sell a few Cd's of our music. But I understood that I had been living in a bubble that reflected only an distorted image of itself and of a life not shared by most other people in the world. Part of that distorted image was what it looks like to be a winner. Or a loser.
Returning to New York, I no longer fit it. Yes, of course I still fit into my little apartment with its view of the flat asphalt roof of the police station and the white towers of the City University a few blocks away. Indeed, I was overwhelmed by the space in my four rooms in Sugar Hill after four years of living from a suitcase with my guitar on my back! But I didn't fit any more into the illusion of New York, and I couldn't pledge allegiance to that silent agreement that is perhaps the only thing that binds rich and poor there, the belief that New York City is the greatest place on earth, the belly-button of the universe. I could no longer pledge daily allegiance to the words of Sinatra that “If I can make it there, I'll make it anywhere.” Rather, I saw a terrible death dance every day between the hunger for fame and the debilitating feeling of failure shared by all the many millions who hadn't “made it” and never would. For, at bottom, what winning was about was possession of hard cash and power and everything that flowed from them. I began to see that the City was eating people, and that it found its casual snacks in the weakest among us. I began to see that if I could not make myself see fame and money as goals in themselves, then I would always be a stranger there.
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| River ferry, NC. |
During the time I have been writing these lines, the shadows on the balcony have shortened and the day is ripening toward mid-morning. The ferry Cape Point has arrived in the station and as the day grows older, more vehicles get on and off the boat which will now head towards the military base that lies hidden in the pine forest on the other side of the Big River. What are these passengers doing today? Are they going to have lunch with friends? Are they returning from morning church at one of the many tiny churches that sit on their clapboard haunches in the forests? I make up stories about them in my head. I know that these do not live for recognition, but rather to go fishing with their friends early in the morning and to enjoy a cold beer and a plate of shrimp and grits. I know that the chances that some resentful youth who feels himself a loser will decide to blow up the ferry is nil. You can fish, for free on this waterfront and feel happy, complete, a winner.
And I also know that another young man lies in a hospital in Boston with a bullet hole in his neck having done something unimaginably awful, presumably mentored in his evil by his own brother. Does he think about his dead brother now? Does he realize that it could be that his brother, who wanted and failed to achieve the dream of becoming one of the most American of things, a Golden Gloves champion, may have done this awful thing not for Allah, not for jihad, but rather to take revenge on the society that promised that if he bulked up enough and hit hard enough he would be a winner, and then instead left him instead the worst of all American outcomes, loss and anonymity? Is it possible that this immigrant young man could not live with the bitter pill of having lost his American Dream and that's why he went abroad to learn how to kill us? How many deaths does it take to compensate for a failure to win? How many bombs does it take to erase the horror of discovering that you're a loser -- at 26? How many people's lives to do you have to destroy to prove you're a man?
And I also know that another young man lies in a hospital in Boston with a bullet hole in his neck having done something unimaginably awful, presumably mentored in his evil by his own brother. Does he think about his dead brother now? Does he realize that it could be that his brother, who wanted and failed to achieve the dream of becoming one of the most American of things, a Golden Gloves champion, may have done this awful thing not for Allah, not for jihad, but rather to take revenge on the society that promised that if he bulked up enough and hit hard enough he would be a winner, and then instead left him instead the worst of all American outcomes, loss and anonymity? Is it possible that this immigrant young man could not live with the bitter pill of having lost his American Dream and that's why he went abroad to learn how to kill us? How many deaths does it take to compensate for a failure to win? How many bombs does it take to erase the horror of discovering that you're a loser -- at 26? How many people's lives to do you have to destroy to prove you're a man?
The ferry pulls out and makes a quick 180 with its single propeller. It heads cross-current to the Point. And as the sound of the diesel engine fades, a calm falls on the Lighthouse. The tide, the birds, and the slight creaking of the old twisted oaks in the wind lull me and quiet my thoughts. In the love of this silence there is sense, there is peace, there is victory. In the exploding of bombs and the fist-pumping and shouting of the proud mob, there is none.
