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Chapter 9: A Simple Man
- Michigan State University Press
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CHAPTER 9 A Simple Man B ut Mel himself was gradually emerging as something both more and different from a “real man.” The “community” issue of the magazine included two articles under a joint headline, “There are a lot of illusions surrounding any truth.” In these articles, both Wayne Hansen and Brian Keating present Mel as the Christ. Wayne writes as “John Wayne the Baptist” describing the out-of-this-world perfection of his friend Mel: “And if you think me exquisitely eloquent in placing in your hearts these pictures of this perfectly united god and man, then your hearts would weep and your tongues melt into universes to tell of what passed when Mel Lyman spoke simply of himself.” Brian simply shares an adventure with Mel and Owen in midtown Manhattan, during which Owen buys for Mel a pair of Italian leather shoes. A picture of the shoes accompanies the article, which begins, “It took the passionate Latin soul to shoe Christ.” This is all an omen of things to come in the next issue of American Avatar a few months later. For now, the Mel who is offering the world his version of community-building presents himself as a simple person who followed his impulses step by step to wind up where he is. The first paragraph of his article on the community is printed in the sky of a two-page panoramic photograph of the tower and houses of Fort Hill against the backdrop of the rest of Roxbury and the hills beyond: “The largest community I am aware of is the universe but that is a very abstract kind of awareness. The community within that community that I am most familiar with is the United States, that is a much less abstract kind of awareness. The community within that community that I am most aware of is Fort Hill Community, I have to deal with that one every day. The community within that community is me, I have to deal with that one every moment. So I will start with myself and attempt to work back.” He describes his childhood and early life as a sequence of discoveries, first of his essential loneliness and then of his ability to fill his loneliness by reaching out and finding companions, beginning with his mother, then his schoolmates, then his wife and family and their friends. The text is punctuated by photographs of Mel’s early life and of life on Fort Hill. After six years of marriage, he sets out “into the wilderness again” because “I didn’t 78 | Chapter 9 know what I wanted but I did know that what I had wasn’t enough.” Through becoming a musician, he begins “to feel close to perfect strangers.” Thousands of people enjoyed my music, hundreds felt very close to me, and a handful wanted to be near me all the time. They loved me and I loved their loving me. Soon we were all living together in the same house. At first it was wonderful, I played and sang and everybody sang with me. But you can’t play music all the time. We had to learn to share other things. Some had to earn money, others had to cook. . . . We all had to give things up and that was a struggle. . . . We began to criticize each other. I found that often people were afraid to tell each other what was bothering them and would instead come to me with their problem and I encouraged them to work it out with the people involved. This brought us closer together. . . . Now we all know each other so well that we have become as one person. We have a block of houses and we all work together on whatever needs to be done at the time. We do not need a set of rules to guarantee that everyone does his part because we trust each other and we are able to trust each other because we have come to know each other. He goes on to tell about the expansion of the community through the publication of Avatar, and the way in which communities, either large or small, depend on people knowing each other and telling the truth to each other. “What we have evolved together is a family structure, an ideal example of the natural order inherent in the family of man,” and this is a microcosm of what is going on everywhere. “We are here to create a...