Jeffery Allen - Song of the Shank

Let us consider the possibilities.

Though she would not be so bold as to describe herself as a technician, let alone an expert — an artist? not even; never that word for herself, something shameful even in pronouncing it — she has known music all of her life and considers herself well versed on the subject, both in mind and in heart. Understands a thing or two about the complex and complicated (murky) process of inspiration and composition. Start here: all sounds are not the same in value even if they share external similarities. So much in what lies behind the utterance, the hidden life, and we must seek to recognize and identify this spirit, learn to distinguish one motion from another lest we confuse conscious intention with simplistic assertion (reaction). Would we accord the same musical weight to a nursery rhyme as to a sonata?

Countrymen and foreigners alike have noted the Negro’s special gift for song. Melodies snap through their blood. Rhythms wholly specific to their skin ambulate their breath and limbs, animating their bodies in a perpetual eye-exhausting frenzy. These are facts we all agree on. But how little or how much does this really tell us? And how useful, she wonders, is it in helping us to understand this peculiar boy Tom, a full-blooded member of his race and also its singular contradiction? Tom’s playing and preferences pose the most urgent questions. Granted, he has God-given and blood-driven talent. No lesson he can’t master — she takes some credit for his achievements; she is a teacher, a director, fine at what she does — even when she applies the most advanced pedagogic methods. Surprised at the occasional error in his playing or singing. Has come to expect a flawless response; he seems to know what you want and gladly provides it. But can he do anything other than parrot what she does? Can any Negro be more than a parrot? True genius creates. A recital is more than a reproduction. The player must animate the preexisting piece with his own breath and in so doing put the idiosyncratic self on display, in all its glory but without hiding any of its imperfections. She has yet to witness — what she has been waiting for — the unexpected in Tom’s playing, that something more that would tell her that Tom is doubly conscious. For no mind can engender until it is divided into two. (She has given some thought to this matter.) Creation in either composing or playing involves the vital interaction between opposing forces to bring forth an even more vital third.

Knowing thus, she concludes that Tom is fully of a piece with his race. Shut eyes and bulging forehead, he lacks the needed spirit. (He does not have the spirit. He does not have spirit.) Yes, his details are exact, his description is accurate, but his interpretation and conclusions are random. Where is the conscious breath? (Easy to let your lungs operate on their own, under the unconscious rhythms of habit.) He plays others, never himself. What we have to consider, Tom does not survey the world with the eyes of an explorer, adventurer, or builder. No. He never stirs from the field of the possible, however much he might like to enlarge it. (Assuming that he possesses such a lofty desire. Assuming much.) Should not a song disturb the ear, the senses, even as it pleases? Deformations are not foreign to a composer. In Tom’s case the only thing disturbed is a certain order of whatever is already possible. If he has complex (divided) emotions, are they not entities he can neither locate nor name?

The name is a crucial point of entry. So much in the heading, the title of the composition, where a few words or numerals can convey an entire story. And the lack of a proper heading closes down the melody and brings a corresponding absence of involvement in the listener. Disregard at your own risk. I am playing the rain. On first hearing Tom you seem to detect the richness, the precision, and the balance of high classical manner, accomplished through an agreeable variety of techniques. Upon closer examination — have another listen; listen — you realize that a song, or composition (your call), is for Tom a mere means like any other. You hear the presence of imitation not far behind what at first strikes the ear as an original melody, the distillation of one or two eternal truths. The mundane veiled in a flourishing of riffs and rhythms. (After all, he is only a boy, only a nigger. And he suffers a malady, one or more.)

Art is expression, and for lowly forms expression is an impossible act. Would a sow show its love for mud and oats by means of a grunt, or a cow moo in appreciation of cud and grass?

His head sways on his shoulders, as if he has a hard time controlling it, is barely able to keep it upright.

An idiot and a nigger — lord have mercy — Tom is doubly short of self. (Perhaps triply short. She had not counted his blindness.) Though he cannot see and he hardly (rarely) speaks — or communicates at all for that matter; often he just sits or stands, doing nothing in particular, other than smiling or baring his teeth — his manner at the piano, his ambience, his bubbling over with happiness, suggests that his primary reason for playing is to please the family, especially the female sex, her and her daughters, and his mother and his sisters. But true expression is independent of occasion.

It seems impossible that he should ever do anything different from that which the best have done already. (The speed an accuracy of her reasoning. How logical she can be.) Would it not be impertinent to suggest that he wishes to? Can he wish, aspire, set goals? Other than in the bodily longing of a chicken desiring feed, a bird desiring a worm, a duck drawn to a pond? Other than in the set demands of Nature, essentials, such as the changing of the seasons or the earth’s need for rain?

The evening is drawing in, the dim lamps seeming to gain strength.

Your colors sing, Tom says.

You can imagine her surprise when Dr. Hollister, after yet another examination — they have not digested his previous few visits, let alone got him out of their system completely — tells them that Tom can actually see large bright objects held up right before his eyes.

All would like to believe they have saved Tom from serious harm or irrevocable death more than once. Belief along the lines of a confession, as in, I bit off more than I can chew , as the saying goes. Count him among these confessors. Granted, Tom is enough to break down the courage and resolve of even those well accustomed to the Negro’s frequent aggressions and outrages. (Imagine the dangerous consequences of all this seeing its way into print — a comic front-page headline: A Scentoriferous Fight with a Blind Musical Nigger. See p. 18. Containing Adventures, Melodies and Scrapes. ) So what should one do now, install him in his room (pantry) for all eternity? Or leave him to his own devices, come what may?

This is what I’ve been saying, his wife says.

Let him, he says. The dim light from the lamp outlines his bent shoulders and twisted legs. I’ve never met or seen a nigger who can’t get himself out of something he got himself into.

From then on she starts to leave Tom alone at the piano for hours at a time. Days and days of this. But what of those moments when no music comes? What does he do with himself? She can only assume.

Say what you want, his wanderings establish a routine, this element of habit that develops a muscular sense of place. He knows the land, this space called Hundred Gates. Breathes its air and absorbs its sun. Not that all of those invisible and silent hours are taken up with wandering. She learns as much when a neighbor, some planter, calls to inquire about their blind nigger. Only then does she discover that her daughters have been spending much of their free time secretly presenting Tom for impromptu performances for a handful of their neighbors, have been transporting him by foot to their parlors — ones with pianos — to demonstrate his peculiar talents. Of course, she is shocked, and the revelation causes her to question the why, what the girls stand to gain from these activities, holding out the possibility that they gain nothing at all, pride motivating them perhaps, vanity — showing off their possession — or some lesser transgression, such as pure childish indulgence. More than a bit of planning in all of this, for the next day, even before she has a chance to confront the girls, she unearths a new fact: her daughters — the oldest is behind it; she is sure of that much, proof not long in coming — had actually begun sending written notes, crude advertisements, to the other farms through the hands of the nigger girl, Antoinette — such insubordination; now they will need to purchase a new girl at the first opportunity; tell James — discovers this when she intercepts Antoinette, message in hand. But it doesn’t end there. She is even more surprised to see how the note expounds glowingly upon Tom’s abilities but also how it praises him far too lavishly, speaks of him in an almost reverent tone, like a superior being. His mouth speaketh great swelling words. His hands bringeth forth great swelling sounds. Her oldest had penned it, no doubt there: her language, her syntax, her wonderment, her high-sounding romanticism. She will outdo them. She will present Tom to the world.