White light

It was only after I saw my shrink, today, that I fully understood what I had done.

Resolved the defining challenge of my life.

Defining because, yes, it had ruled me since I can remember. I couldn’t get the sounds in my head out of the cello. I raged, I bit myself—never puncturing the skin, but leaving the indentations of teeth marks for hours. I once broke a bow, slamming it on the strings of the instrument.

I knew it was in there; I couldn’t get it out. And with the rage came the depression. Black days, awful days when the minutes dragged, when no amount of will could banish the demon that lurked in the corner, always crouched, always ready to pounce.

Things I didn’t care about I did well. Teaching, never a problem.

The cello?

An agony that I couldn’t do, and couldn’t not do. I couldn’t breath at the cello, I held my breath until I had to gasp. My shoulders cramped, so tight was I.

I was practicing for hours at a time. There were days it went well. I floated down the street, beaming at strangers.

Most days it didn’t.

Late at night, in Chicago. Raf asleep, Marc alone in an empty apartment. I would be meditating, and almost get through.

I called it the breakthrough. The music would get out, I would get out, the struggle would be over.

I’d win.

Or be free.

I’d masturbate, hoping to use the energy of orgasm to push me through that door. And use Rush, amyl nitrite. I’d see a white light, I’d move closer, the orgasm would stun me. But I never got through.

Last March, I relived the moment I lost my mind, back in December. Had two weeks of struggle, of fierce concentration and mindfulness. It took five minutes to save a document. I washed dishes as if the process were a koan. I retrained myself to do everything.

At the end of the day, I would be exhausted. I’d sit and read what someone else had written.

I’d laugh out loud.

“He’s so funny,” I’d say.

“He makes the most amazing leaps,” I’d say.

I was reading that day’s post in a blog called Life, Death and Iguanas.

“I’m taking the writer to get his teeth fixed,” I told Taí. She was in a storm of worry ten islands down the Caribbean. I made sure he ate. I obsessed about his having water at all times. I needed to take care of him, this gifted guy whom I have nothing to do with.

And everything….

“He didn’t go away, I could have lost him,” I’m telling the shrink. And then, “hey, aren’t you guys supposedly to have Kleenex?”

He gestured to the side table.

Well, they are our confessors, these shrinks. And at one moment, retelling the story, I jumped back, back to a dark apartment, back to a man in agony, back to a man with his brain flooded with chemicals, and a light, a light, a light I could not get to. A light that would recede and leave me so stabbed with alone.

I’m gasping, now, as I was gasping in that red velvet chair, as I was gasping at the cello.

I have just had an orgasm I have never had. Nothing physical, no hands to wash, or floor to wipe. And no, I saw no white light.

I see that white light when I sit in my chair, at five in the afternoon and read the absurd, the tortured, most—the gifted—words he’s written.

He’s filled with that light, and I tell him, “fuck, you’re amazing.”

Romney and FEMA

Well, there I was, last evening, enjoying my fleeting fifteen minutes of fame, when Mitt strode into the room.

OK—it just felt that way. Is it just I, or does anyone else hear the repressed petulance of a guy wishing for the 1950’s who knows in his heart they’ll never come again?

Mitt, as you can hear, wants to send the responsibility of cleaning up after disasters back to the states, and preferably the private sector.

My first question—what do the experts say? Is there anybody out there that thinks that’s a good idea? Are all disasters alike or can some be dealt with at the state level while others require a centralized / national organization? Would we really save money, or would we just be sticking the tab on the states?

Well, in an effort to be fair—that father of mine is still lingering around somewhere—I did a brief google on the topic. And guess what?

Still don’t have the answer!

There is a guy, however, who makes a case for privatization in the case of disaster response. And he adduces a little company I know something about.

Wal-Mart!

Right—Wal-Mart’s finest hour was in response to Hurricane Katrina.

Anybody remember FEMA’s response to hurricane Katrina?

Or that “heck of a job” that “Brownie” was doing?

Well, while Brownie was answering emails or shopping for shirts, Wal-Mart was giving away ice-cold water to people who needed it.

Good business strategy, really. Lady in the shop across the street did the same for me, after one of our hurricanes, and am I gonna buy cigars anywhere else?

Nope!

Right, and I’ve had a little experience with FEMA, too. Well, actually, I’ve not. But my students have, and the reports were hardly raves.

Also true, of course, that NOBODY is happy after a disaster. There’s something about not showering for two weeks, sweating bullets as the mosquitoes dive-buzz your ear at 2AM, and not having a hot meal for a fortnight that sours the mood.

But hey—wait a sec. Before we privatize our disaster response, there’s something we ought to consider.

Wal-Mart is perhaps the most centralized company in the world.

Want an example? When a freezer in the Bayamón store goes above a set temperature, an alarm is activated in Bentonville, Arkansas, and a technician there calls the store—as he or she will call ANY store, anywhere in the world. At this moment, Bentonville is monitoring freezers in China.

Bentonville, as well, is monitoring the weather. It’s got its own meteorologist—nice guy, we exchanged emails once—who said metaphorically to New Orleans what I said actually to my brother John.

“You’re fucked….” 

So since they have a very efficient (and very centralized) logistics system, it was no problem to put the trucks with that cold water in a nice high-and-dry spot.

OK—so we’re at the point of asking: which is better, the (probably centralized) private sector or the public sector? Does business do it better? Does the profit motive increase efficiency to the point that we save money AND get better results?

Well, Mitt, I grew up in the fifties and sixties in a little town that worked. Nobody except the Catholics paid for private schools, nobody had gated communities, you could drink the water. And government did all that, or regulated the industries that did. And everybody grumbled about their taxes, but assumed automatically that if you called an ambulance, one would come.

It was efficient, it was clean, and the press kept an eye on things, as did an educated populace.

Well, maybe those halcyon days weren’t quite as lustrous as remembered. But I got a question.

Why am I suspicious of rich guys who want to privatize everything? I bashed FEMA, a few paragraphs up.

Anybody remember Halliburton?

Hooching the Homeless

Well, well—today on the morning trot I was absolutely convinced I could combat global warming, solve once and for all the problem of the homeless, and provide visual delight to an island in need of it.

Hey, pretty good for a morning’s walk, right?

Well, I was informed over the dinner table that no, it’s not such a great idea.

Readers of this blog will know of my interest, actually my passion, for tree houses. It’s like Mom and apple pie—who could be indifferent, much less averse, to a tree house?

Readers may not know that Puerto Rico has a lot of bamboo, which Mr. Fernández avers was brought in to keep the roads from eroding in the earlier part of the last century. And like the iguanas, that bamboo has done well. About the only thing that can stop it is the road itself.

Readers of the blook—and by the way, sales are terrible, buy it please—will know that I am not a fan of contemporary Puerto Rican architecture. Right, when the population was exploding in the 50’s, nobody had any time for aesthetics (except, of course, for hair…). And yes, there are exceptions. But face it: the average Puerto Rican house is a cement box with windows punched into it. Hot, airless, and dark.

“But what about the hurricanes,” cried the students, when I suggested—very delicately—that there might be other materials than concrete to use in construction.

“When was the last hurricane?” I’d ask.

…’bout a decade ago.

And when was the last time you sat outside, enjoyed the night breezes, shared a chat with your friends?

They go to the Hilton for that….

It was no use.

Why not work with nature, not against it? Why not build a series of bohíos—little Puerto Rican huts—and link them in with thatched-roofed pathways and make it all very simple and rustic and then, when the hurricane comes, put all the stuff that’s truly important (electronics does come to mind) in a concrete room, where you’ve stockpiled the salchichas and the beer. Then, when you come out, well, you just rebuild! And look, you always get stuff wrong the first try or two, so on the third or fourth rendition, you’ll have the morning bohío perfectly sited to catch the breezes, and the evening bohío perfectly placed to see the stars.

Well, one person in the room liked the idea….

“Crime,” they chorused.

Bougainvillea, I cried. Nobody can get through the stuff—nature’s barbed wire!

“What, and have the baby run into it and poke her eye out!!?”

It’s deeply ingrained, this phobia of nature. And it may be —hold onto your seat here—a class thing as well. Mr. Fernández suspects that the majority of Puerto Ricans are a little too close to their jíbaro (peasant) past. Abuela may have grown up with the chickens roosting under the stilted-wooden house. We have concrete!

Well, it turns out I’m not alone. Some guy in the western part of the island felt the same way, and guess what!

He’s a gringo!

And quite an interesting guy. Where did he get the idea of the hooch? Well, he never says, and to a not-very-engineerical (lump it, computer!) person, I’m a little unclear as to the mechanics of it all. Better to let him explain it:

The hooch is an evolutionary, revolutionary building system that turns architectural conventions on its head. It stands on a single point, and maintains its balance by a web of cables to the surrounding trees. The foundation is minimal. In fact, the hooch holds the record for the smallest foundation of any land based building. The advantage? Minimal disruption of the site, and environment; quick and economical construction (no foundation); and easy dismantling, in the event that the hooch is moved. The hooch is an ideal structure for a place of respite in an environmentally sensitive area. I built a 10' by 10' version for a friend along a riverbank. The site did not lose one fern, a species abundant in the understory of the forest.

The treehouse requires no special engineering, or architectural design to fit in a particular tree. It stands among the trees, and relies on them for support. It is intimately entwined with the trees, and yet does no damage or requires any alteration of the site. The design has been worked out for quick and accurate pre-fabrication of the components- away from the site. Quickly assembled and situated at the site, the hooch is raised up by a pulley system and secured -perfectly level.
An architectural gem, the triangular shape maintains rigidity, yet is free to move about its foundation, flexing as a unit.

The redundant cable system is self correcting—any stress or distortion is quickly relieved back to the original position.
As a place of respite, the hooch served its purpose well—whether in the backyard, or along a mountain stream. It is safe, secure, and above it all.
After a warm reception of every hooch I've built, I now offer plans, kits, and complete construction services for everyone. I have plans and specs for a 6' by 6 , 8' by 8', and 10' by 10' version (floor area). Our 6' by 6' backyard hooch served well in our backyard of a rental house. Last year, we moved to our new mortgaged house. The hooch proved itself as a ephemeral architectural gem. It was dismantled, and moved in a few days. It now has its place among a grove of douglas fir trees, with a killer view of Mt. Ashland. Check out these other sites for even more perspective on the hooch. 

Right, maybe a picture would help….

What a tremendously cool idea! Wow—what a stunner! My palms are sweating, so eager am I to get my hands on that ladder and start climbing.

Mr. Fernández was less impressed.

“I’m not sleeping in any bamboo grove—rats!”

I dispute that, and point out that we can sprinkle some warfarin here and there.

Well, he also wasn’t too excited about my brilliant idea to home the homeless.

Build ‘em hooches!

Maybe it was excess oxygenation of the brain brought on the morning trot, but it seemed logical at the time. We have the bamboo, we have the homeless, why not get ‘em to build their own hooches? Or get the Evangelicals (whose numbers roughly equal the iguanas…) to build them. If you’re homeless, and the rope ladder is down, then you climb up it, pull up the ladder, and bingo! You’re safe! No more sleeping in doorways!

“Fire,” said Mr. Fernández.

“Extinguisher,” I completed.

“What if they trashed it,” he complained.

“Build another!”

“People using ‘em for drugs or rapes,” he said.

“Anyway,” he added, ”I read somewhere that most homeless don’t like shelters. They don’t like rules. You can’t show up drunk or high….”

Well, I understand that. We were on our second bottle of wine—who are we to talk? 

“It’s a good idea,” he said, “just needs more work….” 

I think it’s brilliant, of course…..

Individual and Mass Madness

We heard it with annoying regularity, the bromide about “thinking outside the box,” so we did what any sensible person would do.

The Puerto Rican “no.”

“Well, I’ve lived in England, Spain, Cuba, and Puerto Rico, so I know at least four ‘noes.’ But the Puerto Rican ‘no’ is the only one I can’t do anything about.” Words a friend said to me, years ago.

And that would be?

“You ask for something, and it’s instantly agreed to. Absolutely! No problem! And then nothing happens. You protest, and the process repeats. You beg, you cajole, you cry, you scream, you threaten. All to no effect. Nothing happens…. And you can’t have a rational discussion because they keep agreeing!”

An exaggeration, of course, but there is some truth to it.

Maybe it was that just some Puerto Ricans practiced the “no”—others didn’t.

But those who did, did it almost reflexively.

The multitudes of you who check your computers scores of times daily—awaiting a new post!—will know about the ten-foot rule, so beloved of Sam Walton. You had to smile, greet, and offer help (if in the stores) to EVERY customer within ten feet.

All part of that Wal-Mart culture!

Well, it was also part of the culture—the real one, that is—to pay lip-service and leave.

Well, the lips were pretty convincing, that 10-minute-really-half-hour weekly meeting of Human Resources. How that lady talked! The service those lips provided! She virtually role-played Sam W. challenging us to do the ten-foot rule!

She left to go visit the stores. I trailed behind her. I smiled and greeted.

Bet you know who didn’t!  

So I took it all seriously, sort of. And by chance or design, I thought outside the box in at least two ways.  First physically, when I could bear no more and had to leave the madness behind and look at iguanas. And second, creatively, when I had my spate of ten brilliant ideas daily and had to go tell someone about it.

I realize now what that slight but perceptible rise in shoulder level meant….

Well, I suppose if there is a Puerto Rican no, there may be a Wal-Mart no, as well. If so, it was generally postceded (well, look, what about preceded?) by the proper noun “Marc.”

Though some of my ideas were really very good.

Did you know that you should keep fruits strictly segregated from meats?

Logical, really—how many times have you picked up a package of meat, and gotten a sticky, bloody hand for the effort?

Right—and where is the produce department in most stores? Right by the entrance.

Which means that almost inevitably you’ll have to put the leaking meat packages over or near the fruits. (By the way, you probably should use the little baby seat for fruits and vegetables….)

Well, that came out at one of the monthly meetings, during which we were routinely peppered with the question ¿cómo se siente?—how you feeling!—to which we would mechanically roar “¡Super bien!, oooh, ahhh, ay, YES!”

That’s culture, you see!

(Get why I was out behind the building?)

Well, I got to work on that problem! Hey, don’t we have a responsibility to our customers? Aren’t we an industry leader? As Wal-Mart moves, so moves the country!

And it was gonna start right here, in Puerto Rico! Yeah, we were gonna be the pioneers in an adventure that would save millions of lives, and it was starting here, right here, not just in Puerto Rico, or in Caguas, but in the creatively explosive atmosphere of Marc Newhouse’s classroom!

Gentlemen—we gotta redesign the shopping cart!

“Look,” I was exclaiming to the head of Loss Prevention, “this is what we can do. Put a little basket with a picture of a banana—here, I drew it—on the right side of the cart. Now, we got another little basket—got a burger on that one—on the left side of the cart! See! Look, this is the redesigned shopping cart, called a SaftiCart, which is a very good name, if I do say so. Just look!”

He barely glanced.

Well, at least he didn’t tell me to throw the plans in the wastebasket as I left….

Still think it was a good idea, though.

It was the world of the corporate no. And to be fair, not all of my ideas were quite so good.

“Listen, I got this plan to absolutely ensure that we get the bonus EVERY year.”

Well, the bonus was quite a juicy plum, especially for the already well compensated. So it did get the CEO of Wal-Mart Puerto Rico, Inc.’s attention.

I had just finished telling him that I was legally married to a guy and Wal-Mart needed to put Raf on the medical plan.

Thought to lighten the air in the room….

“We build an extra Sam’s Club and an extra SuperCenter somewhere, but we don’t tell Bentonville! That way it’s pure gravy! They can’t expect us to make any money off a store they don’t know exists, can they? So all the profit goes straight to the bank! And bang into your pocket, at the end of the fiscal year!”

He was puzzled, but painfully earnest.

I kept trying.

“Well, the gringos are hardly gonna run around the island, actually counting the stores, are they? Come on!”

He was a very powerful, probably very rich guy.

From Colombia.

And so had no use for the Puerto Rican “no” (if it exists…).

No, Marc!

Gotta be photoshopped, but fun to think about, anyway….

Rain Walk

Well, the question of the moment is whether whoever controls the weather is also reading my blog.

Good reason to think so. I wrote about cold and wet yesterday, and what do we have?

Right.

So what to do? It certainly wasn’t torrential, nor was it a drizzle. Just a fairly respectable rain. So—do the trot and get wet or stay inside and funk….

Well, I decided to challenge the depression mindset—a fancy way of saying that I’ve been saying “I can’t do that because (insert excuse here)” 90, 000 times a day for the last forty years. What do I hate about rain?

Water on my face. Damp clothes are no problem—on sunny days, they’ll be drenched with sweat in seconds, anyway. And I don’t mind wet feet, as long as it’s not cold wet feet.

So that led logically to the question—umbrella? Poncho? Hat. And we have two—an Australian sheep farmer’s affair and a genuine Panama hat made in Ecuador. In fact, it may be genuine—I remember reading some place that Panama hats are from Ecuador. You have to live in these parts to see the logic of it.

Well, I ask Mr. Fernández—which one to use. He’s yawning in front of the bathroom mirror, where he has stood for the last five minutes looking at his face. The Australian hat, he says. Seems you can’t get Panama / Ecuador hats wet.

It doesn’t rain in Ecuador?

Whatever. Now the question—which side is front? I’m still doing my mindfulness, so I study the hat. There’s a sort of jaunty prow at one end and a rounded bun at the other. I go off to ask Mr. Fernández.

Hah! I was right—it’s the prow (well, that at least is logical) and is there an umbrella.

“I hate umbrellas,” I tell him.

“No, for me.”

“I’ll leave it out.”

“Don’t forget,” he says.

“You know, there are some phrases that assist in the development of a relationship. Others do not. Let’s practice some of the former. Repeat after me.‘Darling, you’re wonderful’”

“Just don’t forget,” he says.

Well, I go off in a swivet and storm out the door and stride down the street and it hits.

OK—do I go back and put out the umbrella or do I let him find it himself.

Well, decide on that and reflect that it’s really very pleasant. Easy on the eyes, is a rainy day, and the colors are different, too. Partly, of course, because my sunglasses are red-tinted, which makes the reds redder and the blues bluer. (Can’t explain about the blues…). And the water on the rocks makes the rocks rockier.

Also fun to hear the little squish sounds when you go through puddles.

Nice, too, not to be hot. And, best, to be all alone—just the sea, the rocks and I, as well, of course, as the 40 foot walls the Spaniards put up to fortify the city. Everyone else has decided to forego exercise on this really lovely morning, since getting wet = monga = 5 days in bed = probable pneumonia = possible death.

Guys—ever hear of London? According to your logic, it should be a ghost town…

So that gives me time to think about what I really want to do—since I no longer have the distraction of seeing incredibly sculpted guys moving horribly-too-fast away from me. I begin to see why Bertrand Russell (or whoever it was) disliked sex so much—it really does limit time for serious thinking.

This blog, I think—it’s now over 100 posts, which is really quite respectacle (duh, computer—use your imagination! What happens when respectable meets a miracle?) I mean, I started it in February, and I have been doing other things—losing my mind, writing a book, ignoring the house, addressing the cats. And everybody gets weekends off. So it’s a body of work. 

Right, since absolutely NOBODY is buying my blook, what about a blear? Will that be the ticket to success? Yeah, gather all the posts thematically—which is to say stick all the Franny posts together, all the music posts together, you-get-the-idea. Put them all together into a blook-that-is-a-blear! A year’s worth of a blog!

Then it hits—just of course as I was getting excited about the idea.

The images that I have freely ripped off the Internet.

Ms. Taí is not gonna let me get away with sticking them in a blear—not without checking permissions. Remember the Blue-crowned motmot?

OK—back to Puerto Rico by Público. 

But what I really want to do, I think, is build a tree house in a bamboo grove. Using, of course, the bamboo to build the tree house. Think of the sound of the bamboo rustling gently, lulling you to sleep! Wow! And could you construct it so that the house itself swayed gently? Tremendous idea.

The Japanese would know, I reflect, and probably have done it. Not much they haven’t. So they’ll have written about it.

Though most likely in Japanese.

Well, it was a wonderful walk, and a delightful surprise, as most new things are. Get home, and discover that I may have three more days just like this. The eye of Hurricane Sandy is in the Bahamas.

The tail is in Puerto Rico.

You guys hear me up there?

Hey—guess what!  Someone HAS done it, and no—not the Japanese.  Check this out—google “bamboo tree house Rincón”….)

On the virtues of Cold

I grew up in a cold place, some of / felt like most of the year. I now live in a hot place. And for the most part, I don’t miss it. In fact, I do my best to avoid cold.

So why was I looking at this?

It’s Norway. And everything about it suggests cold—the brooding sky, the greys and ochres, the diffuse light, the shadows. Step into the water by mistake and your feet will be cold for days, seemingly.

Until you move to a radically different climate, you don’t realize the basic assumptions that you’ve made about your world. A couple of decades ago, I came on Raf standing at the sink, lost in thought, staring at—but not seeing—the water flow over his hands.

“What are you doing?”

“Water,” he said. “This is how the water feels at home.”

I stuck my hand in it—it was tepid.

“Ridiculous,” I said. “Water is cold.”

Then I wondered—can I have a relationship with someone whose experience of the world is so fundamentally different that my own? 

Yes.

Although there are challenges.

It works the other way, too. Years ago, at the Conservatorio de Música I attended a master class—a young Puerto Rican singer was tackling Schubert’s Im Frühling (In Springtime). The voice was excellent, technique right in place, phrasing great.

So what was it that was just so slightly wrong?

The “master” got it right.

“Wonderful,” he said. “And tell me, what’s this song about.”

Well, of course she knew.

But also she didn’t.

“Have you ever experienced a northern winter?”

No.

So he described it, quite poetically. Your world becomes grey and black. You stand at the window and see the fine thin snow blowing like a ghost across the landscape.

Then he described spring. Equally poetically. The first time you see green after months of grey—you eyes are shocked, you stand and gape, wondering how you lived without that color. Taking your shirt off and feeling sunshine, on that first really warm day—how light you feel without that 10 pounds of parkas / sweaters / thick shirts.

“I think I understand,” said the soprano. “It’s sort of like going to the beach would be for us….”

The master smiled gently. There are things you have to experience.

And perhaps at a very young age. I live in a hot place, but my body doesn’t. Which is to say that every time I leave the house, I will be sweating before I’m out the door. I walk as one walks in a cold place, which is to say “get-the-hell-home-and-turn-on-the-furnace.”

Nor does my mind. I live in a large apartment. What did I think when I saw it first?

‘How in hell are we gonna heat this?’

In the mountains, I often wonder ‘how do they get up this road in winter?’

Cold tempers you, as the flame tempers steel. You have to prepare. You have to pit yourself against nature, which may overcome you.

I used to tell my students—those who didn’t know winter—that drunk guys coming home at night often dropped their keys. If they were really drunk, they made the mistake of searching too long for them…

…and died of exposure.

In the last three years of my mother’s life she broke two hips and had one open-heart surgery—all in the deepest depths of winter. Cursing, I would be sweating a storm in San Juan, barely able to believe that somewhere, ANYWHERE, it could be cold.

Then I stepped out of the El station in Chicago, and was hit with a blast of air mixed with sleet sandpapering my face. 

I hated it.

But I’m also glad I grew up with it….

(Im Frühling starts at 6" 10')

Two ladies, and one very much not....

OK—today’s post is a double feature.

Let’s get the ridiculous part over with first.

Readers of this blog will remember Ofelia, once a boss, always a friend. She operates an important language school (she bristled when I once wrote “a very good little language school”…) and has a quality that is fast disappearing.

Graciousness.

It used to be cultivated, aspired to, worked for. It now languishes with those other arts: needlework, playing the piano, writing thank-you notes.

That’s half of what you need to know about Ofelia.

She’s a whiz of a teacher.

Much better than I, actually. She’s una maestra de corazón (literally, a teacher of the heart—figuratively, a born teacher) unlike me. It’s just a thing I do.

Now then, enter the other character, La Comay. This would be the lady very much not-a-lady.

Not even a woman….

A drag queen, in fact, whose real name is “Kobbo” Santarrosa. And every day, he gets all gussied up in a dress and high heels and finally a cabezudo. That’s a big foam head.

Here the story get murky. There is something to like about La Comay. His show opens with a candle in front of little Lorenzo—the kid who saw too much, which cost him his life. La Comay isn’t gonna give up until that murderer is brought to justice.

The other hand?

Easier just to tell the story.

We were in the doctor’s office, Ofelia  and I, and the room was predictably crammed. Just as predictably, there was a television, on at the usual 900 decibels. The show came on.

This was during the hapless reign of our governor (or governess, as some called her) Sila María Calderón. She was our first and only female governor—we haven’t repeated the experiment.

And she entered into office a married lady, then became a divorcee, and then—feeling perhaps very gay (in its first meaning)—decided to date!

Well, the island was on its ears! Sila had a boyfriend! And not just any boyfriend, but one of her cabinet ministers, a guy named Ramón Cantero-Frau. (Mr. Fernández, who loathed him, immediately took to calling him Cantero Fraud….)

Well, this is an island where people have to know! This is the land of the presenta’o! (Literally, presented / figuratively, nosy) We take a generous interest in our neighbors, and look—ya gotta talk about something, right?

Cantero Frau’s car pulls up to the governor’s mansion. Instantly, swarms of journalists are waiting for hours. Will he spend the night? Are they doing it in the gubernatorial equivalent of the Oval Office? Oh, the delicious wickedness of it all. Don’t tell me!

Yes, do….

All right, so now you have all the elements. And you will have guessed that La Comay, seeing the entire island jump on this boat is not gonna be anywhere else.

And it’s the day after the First Couple goes to the movies! Yeah, there they were, Sila and Cantero Frau, right at the Fine Arts Cinema!

And La Comay that day was especially merciless. His parody of the scene—Sila was eating popcorn and spitting out the kernels; Cantero Frau, of course, was trying to get into her pants—had everybody in stitches.

But one.

She stood, that teacher, and immediately took charge of the classroom. She used a word I didn’t know but recognized immediately—vulgar. She stated that she had every confidence that NO ONE in the room was enjoying the show and so would take the liberty of turning off the television.

This she did, in a room with more silence than I’ve ever heard in Puerto Rico.

An awesome performance.

As was the performance this morning of the music the iPod chose to give me.

Marian Anderson singing the Alto Rhapsody.

It’s almost sad that the one thing people remember about her—if they know anything at all—is the famous concert at the Lincoln Memorial. It’s so compelling that it crowds out what was really a remarkable life.

Here’s how I remember her.

I know the story, but I don’t know who it was. Furtwängler? Toscanini? Von Karajan? It was, at any rate, one of the great conductors being hounded out of Germany by the nazis (no—no caps, computer! Not for them, and not in these  times…). Right, so what was his response?

He conducts his last performance for the music-loving Germans. And brings out Marian Anderson—as black as the keys on my keyboard—to sing for the Aryans. They conclude the concert with the Alto Rhaphsody, receive a standing ovation, and leave the stage, arm in arm.

This would be termed having the last word.

Oh, and one other thing about Anderson.

Two, actually…

She was a complete lady—once sweeping the stage before her concert, always gracious, always in control.

She had an amazing voice and sang with her brain.

Don’t think so?

Here’s Jessye Norman….

Marian Anderson was a woman of such quality, compassion and modesty that her humanitarian efforts alone would warrant our adulation. But she was also blessed with a matchless voice - a voice with so much warmth, richness and mobility that Arturo Toscanini was moved to call it a voice "heard once in a hundred years."

Marian Anderson, 1965.
Credit: The New York Times.

I became acquainted with this glorious sound at about age 10, through a recording of Brahms's Alto Rhapsody, and was so overwhelmed I wept, not really understanding why. When I was 16, in the early 1960's, I traveled by train from Augusta, Ga., to Philadelphia to participate in the Marian Anderson Voice Competition. I was so young and thrilled at being there that I was unaware that perhaps I should have been anxious as well. I did not win a prize, but the gentleness and warmth of that experience remain with me to this day.

It was in Constitution Hall in Washington that I first heard Miss Anderson in person, in 1965. Her voice filled the vast space easily, whether singing Schubert at full strength or "Deep River" with a profound hush. She was queenly in her every gesture. In 1939, the Daughters of the American Revolution refused to permit her to perform in this hall on racial grounds. Eleanor Roosevelt broke ranks with her fellow D.A.R. members and helped arrange a concert at the Lincoln Memorial, a historic event that has been called America's first civil rights rally.

Miss Anderson and I both attended a Metropolitan Opera performance of "Les Troyens" in 1973, when I was privileged to meet her for the first time. She recalled having sung in Augusta some 20 years before, and I was happy to tell her that the city still thought of her visit not only as a watershed but also as a blessing. On the occasions when we were able to sit and talk, I found her interest in me flattering, but I preferred listening to her speak about herself. How could she show the world such poise when she was faced with touring a segregated United States? How could she not take exception to her exclusion from the Met until late in her career? How could she be so deeply spiritual without being at all sanctimonious?

She wore the glorious crown of her voice with the grace of an empress and changed the lives of many through the subtle force of her spirit and demeanor. If the planet Earth could sing, I think it would sound something like Marian Anderson.


Jessye Norman is an opera and concert singer.