Color: Essays on Race, Family, and History

Musicals

Musicals Don’t let it be forgot That there once was a spot For one brief, shining moment Called Camelot. —Camelot, lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner But it was only love which could accomplish the miracle of making a life bearable—only love, and love itself mostly failed. —James Baldwin, Another Country Although I do have a trace of the romantic about me, which, of course, is the poet’s stock-in-trade, I try not to succumb to the obvious attractions of sheer otherworldliness— that is, though I understand the obvious allure of believing in the shamanistic or the inherent integration of all things, I’m 68 not easily a passenger on the new wave express, or at least I like to assert that I am not. Part of this reservation stems, I guess, from my personality: I’m usually cautious, and I like to keep my enthusiasms close to my chest. And part of this, too, celebrates the fact that I am attracted to those who are realists —to those who make decisions, fight in the rough-andtumble , to those, that is, who act. My father was one of these people, and I will recall an incident that brilliantly encapsulates why he was so wondrous to me, and how he showed me—in word and action—why I am a bundle of two hopefully reconcilable strivings. When I was eight, after I had asked my father, for the umpteenth time, what he did for work, he took me to the hospital . After verbally trying to convey what a doctor does, and seeing that I was not getting it, he consented, with some trepidation , to show me, as a kind of practicum. That day, we both had to wear white scrubs, and mine was so long they had to cinch it with adhesive, a pretty nurse telling me, probably illadvisedly , that I looked so professional that I might get confused for the surgeon. This suggestion, of course, terrified me, since all I could imagine was my untutored hands in someone’s guts. As I recall, the operating room was sparkling, with newfangled instruments, all inviting a tangle of wires that seemed to disappear into a giant cylinder; near the wall, aslant from the blackened window, were machines that held bulbous globes, hosting what looked like cotton suspended in the air, pelting against the glass enclosure, like addled birds. Nurses were running to and fro; technicians—working dials—were intently listening to my father’s every syllable; here everything seemed to depend on him, as if he were the hospital’s Leonard Bernstein. For the first time in my life, I was not the center of his attention, and I felt unnecessary. After far too long, my father gently took my arm and ushered me into a side room, leaving all the busy people. He explained that he had to hack through a massive bit of bone to 69 m u s i c a l s repair an artery, “Ken,” my father said. “First, I want to make certain that you wish to see this—it may be ugly, and there will be some blood.” And then he said something I’ll never forget. “Ken, your mother is an artist, and I love her for that. She paints and writes; she sees things in a way I never can, but always want to. But this is what I do. I have to make a choice, I have to commit myself, and I can’t have any second thoughts. Do you understand me? I’m different from your mother. And you are both of us.” And then my father began the operation, cutting the bone with a short, hard-edged saw. The bone did not separate easily. I saw my father sweat; I saw him tug and yaw and attack. For some reason, I had thought that the operation would be less physical, that the bone would sever quickly, and that my father would swiftly be on to the next step, the intricate arterial mapping, the skilled work. But this part was willful: my father could have no qualms: he simply had to cut. So, mindful of my father’s life, and his generous parable , I feel great anguish at suggesting that I tend towards the dreamy, although I am also my mother’s child, as he so well celebrated. Still, I grew up on musicals in...