Jeffery Allen - Song of the Shank

Soon the lights come up, startling, each person like a puzzle piece in her/his seat collectively holding the light together. Applaud with everyone else. Impossible not to.

Light burning Tom into fame, into history.

The audience huddles near the orchestra pit, talking greedily, forming a tight arc around Tom, even as the navigator leads him backstage. Tom has no choice but to give himself up to the melee of greeting and compliments and handshaking. The needy who flock to Tom’s dressing room like sick pilgrims, in a terrible hurry to touch or kiss Blind Tom’s hands, forehead, neck, or cheek, to lay hands on his woolly scalp. Seated in a chair and moving as little as possible, Tom tucks his hands safely away into his lap and so doing keeps them out of view, hidden. For the most part, he remains silent in the face of their praise and pronouncements, their inquiries and entreaties, wincing at the smells of these strangers’ colognes. Then the surgeons, doctors, and physicians, who politely or hurriedly wish to examine Tom and supply him the latest remedies and research. (No illness can be concealed from trained sight.) He barks out at those few who seem to agitate (annoy) him — the poking, probing, and prodding, medical fingers sounding his chest, tugging at his nose and ears, tapping his eyes as if testing an eggshell’s firmness, prying his teeth apart; what it means to live in a body: maximum anatomical tension — but by and large he remains quiet and still. Nor does he perk up when the musical professionals inquire about some chord voicing or the tempo of a particular movement, or his feelings about the Moonlight Sonata , his own “The Battle of Manassas,” or why such and such a composition is not in his program, or what songs did he love that he never sang? All those fussy unseen hands, all those heard or ignored or not understood voices. Tom in need of a good night’s rest, two or three good nights, and something to fill his stomach and cool his mouth and tongue (hunkered at the table). Lait.

He sat on his stool a full half-yard distant from the piano, this awkward position making it necessary for him to stretch out his arms to their full negro length, like an ape clawing his food. His feet showed no better understanding of proper, keyboard posture; when not on the pedals, they twisted incessantly, rubbing into the stage floor like a boar snorting up a well-buried black truffle. When given a theme for improvisation, he would take some ludicrous posture, expressive of listening, but soon lowering the body and rising on one leg, spinning round and round, moving upon that improvised axis like a pirouette dancer, but indefinitely. The muddled notes went stumbling into dots. When he finished playing, he would applaud himself violently, kicking, pounding his hands together, and turning away to his master, the self-named “Manager of the Performance,” for an approving pat on the head. All in all, his music was a conventional affair, uncomplicated in melody, rudimentary in harmony, exact in rhythm and pace, and basic in structure and form. Still, many carry on with the belief that this was the most remarkable performance ever witnessed in our city. A vaguely perceived hare is nevertheless a hare. Indeed, to the amateur ear, Blind Tom’s “exhibition” would put to blush and shame many of our so-called “professors” of music.

— The Columbus Observer

The ship bellies into the harbor, faint birdsong sounding above. At last. He steps free of the deck, down the slanted plank, a sea-bleached wreck, a string of stirring bodies (passengers) behind him. (Pied Piper.) Always on the go, chasing an audience for Tom. Maps make the getting there look easy, foreshortening distance, the world small, flat, and manageable, a constellation of names — Chicago, Berlin, London, Boston, Memphis, Paris — laid out before him as prodigious as stars in the sky, names that bring together an elemental union between earth and flesh, ground and Blind Tom. So he draws up plans, his ideas bright forces quite apart from himself. He sees them rise, turn, spin, fall, as light as golden birds.

The taxis, hotels, and inns, the luggage damaged or lost, the saloons and restaurants. So much that can go wrong. Acts of man and God. Only when he sees multitudes rush in to take their seats inside a concert hall or auditorium does he unwind, thankful for the perfect alignment of events.

Days glide by like birds. Weeks ocean-wide. So much sky. (What is here must also be there.) Time measured by the number of seats filled, the number of tickets sold, his thoughts and speech full of facts. Like unnumbered pages the repetitions prevent him from counting the hours and the steps. Repetition. When the word is the same day after day, words like travel, tour, recital, concert, performance. Time does not change, it does not move, nor does his mind or his feet, even if they bear the illusion of coming and going, of getting to somewhere — perhaps not a place — important.

In Little Vicksburg, he sees a road adorned with the most magnificent carriages ever constructed. In Macon, he expresses his admiration for the brilliant uniforms of militiamen who pass before him. In Augustus — another city another recital. He flies through the minutes, feeling the draw of some vast venue opening up, all river, all ocean, all sky. Even before leaving one town or city for the next, he senses he has lost something he might have gained had he stayed longer. He steps on boat or train already thinking of home, the tour’s end, and thinking beyond that to the next season. In his sleep he has to shake off thoughts of leave-taking, and when he is awake he feels firmly reassured at the sight of his locked suitcases, proof of future engagements. Nothing is as it used to be. His sense of the world is thrown off. Experience has set him in the firm belief that travel is a way of measuring where he is in his life. If things go smoothly his life is running as it should. However, if things go badly — trains off schedule, luggage lost, reckless or route-altering taxi drivers — his life is off course. But a tour throws even this sense of judgment out of whack. What he comes to desire is rest.

Tom, how do you like New York?

I don’t like it one bit. Too many fellow beings.

Like a line of ants, the would-be pianists and professors of music climb up to the stage and gather around the unguarded post-concert piano. The floorboards beneath them sponge sound back. First they examine the ivory keys with their eyes, the magic there. Now put their fingers where Blind Tom had put his hands, his warmth still there. Close their eyes, seeing and feeling the ghost of this man, handprints. Touching keys. Arguing from the man to the music.

Tom, do you like talking to us? the journalist asks.

I am surrounded by friends, Tom says.

Are you looking forward to your concert tonight?

It will be better tomorrow. Tomorrow we will really begin.

And why is that?

It is the design of my head.

Will you play “Moses in Egypt” tonight?

I don’t know what I can do. I promise nothing complete.

Tom, how does a person stand up under all of the traveling you do?

I am standing now.

Do you ever suffer from fatigue?

I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself king of infinite space.

Hurry up. He coming.

Voice that brings faces to the windows.

Yall better hurry up.

Doors opening, pouring Negroes out into the afternoon, so many faces brown and beaming bright, cheeks swollen with pride. Oh happy day! Tom puts words into their mouths and movements into their bodies. In parade formation, they cross a Japanese bridge above a dark yellowish brown stream of open sewage into a field of flowers — gladioluses, petunias, tulips, chrysanthemums, and sunflowers — on the other side, and march on into the grove of Japanese cherry blossom trees in full bloom on the White House lawn.