Category Archives: George Gershwin

My last phone call with my father

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In the last few weeks of my father’s life, my stepsister Sandra held the phone near his ear when one of us called. He lay in a bed set up in the living room, slipping in and out of consciousness. We’d given up on FaceTime; he could no longer see us. But perhaps he could hear my voice. You never know.

That day, perhaps two weeks before he died—I don’t remember—I felt desperate. I was frenzied in my wish to connect, to penetrate the veil, to make him hear me. But I had nothing to say other than I love you, you were a good father. He’d heard it all before. 

So I sang. First, Summertime, from Porgy and Bess, my voice catching and scratching like an old record. Then, I pushed on with the next song that entered my head: Mac the Knife. I scrambled around the world wide web until I found the lyrics. Oh, the shark, babe, has such teeth, dear / And it shows them pearly white. Somehow, I thought he’d remember that song, but I don’t really know the melody beyond the first two lines. I faked it, trying too hard, straining, improvising, hoping. Hoping for what? For his sweet voice to say, “Madeline, that was wonderful”? Nothing.

So, then, a poem. I’ll read a poem. Robert Frost is a good safe bet. 

I wanted to find Nothing Gold can Stay, a poem about impermanence. But my memory failed me. I couldn’t recall the title, so I accepted instead the first poem that popped up when I searched for Frost: Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening. I pressed on, putting as much feeling into my voice as I could, wishing I’d chosen a more dramatic poem, a poem I could really emote. Instead, just the simplicity of an Alex Colville painting. A man and his horse on the darkest evening of the year, stopping.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,   
But I have promises to keep,   
And miles to go before I sleep,   
And miles to go before I sleep.

When I finished the last lines, my stepsister’s voice entered. She’d been there all along, holding the phone. She said kindly that she could listen to me all day, my voice was lovely. But Dad was asleep; he’d been asleep the whole time. She thought perhaps he could still hear me. Did he move an eyebrow? 

But really, I know she didn’t have the heart to interrupt me. We said good-bye. A week later, I used the voice memo app on my iPhone to record myself singing “Blackbird” by the Beatles, Dad’s favourite song, and I texted it to Sandra, with a note, can I talk to Dad on Wednesday? But Tuesday was his last day here. 

A frantic energy inhabited me during those final one-sided calls. Helpless, I worked overtime to get through, to make a mark. Hey you, this is your daughter. Papa! You there? Remember me? Your youngest daughter? Remember how you and I used to joke about you being King Lear, and I was your Cordelia? Sir, do you know me? Surely you do. Just give me a sign. 

Father

In this wine-dark place
a tiny voice
a whisper:
hush, little baby, don’t you cry

From long ago
from far away
a thread
of red travels along
my bloodline

when that shark bites with his teeth, 
babe
scarlet billows start to spread

and meets a tributary.
I know your voice. 
You are mine.

I want you close
daughter,
but this trip
is made alone.

The woods in here
are dark and deep

I want to sleep, 
dear, but
a worry burns:

Tell me, do I have 
promises still to keep?

No, I hear you say, 
no more promises to keep.

Spread your wings,
I hear you whisper

Take to the sky papa,
Take to the 
red-blood sky.

Inter-art and music

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Today I am writing about Charles Baxter’s short story, “Gershwin’s Second Prelude,” a beautiful example of inter-art in the form of a short story wrapped around a piece of music. Baxter, like Ann Beattie from the last post, is an American writer born in 1947.

In this story, Kate, the protagonist, is in a tenuous relationship with Wiley. Wiley borrows money from Kate and can’t keep a job. He’s unpredictable and irritating. But he’s also a brilliant, charismatic guy—a great lover and a very funny man who keeps Kate amused with his clown antics. Kate is taking piano lessons from Mme. Gutowski, an ancient Polish pianist who lived in Paris in the 1920s and 1930s, and knew Ravel, Bartók, and Cocteau. The story runs like two trains on parallel tracks. We switch from Kate and Wiley to Kate and Mme. and then back to Wiley again. When Kate finds a needle in the bathroom cabinet, Wiley admits he likes doing heroin. Kate asks why he does it. “I like to feel like God,” Wiley said. “I like to have the sun explode and then spray over my face” (p. 9).

Meanwhile over on the piano train, Kate is failing miserably at Shubert and Mme. instructs her to cease: “’No more Schubert,’ she repeated irritably. ‘You play like an American. You speed up the tempo to make a climax. This is Schubert, not Las Vegas’” (p. 2). She orders her pupil to play Gershwin’s Second Prelude instead. “’Gershwin?’ Kate frowned. ‘That’s trash’” (p. 3). But Mme. disagrees. Gershwin, she argues “’requires wizard, but teaches tenderness from first bar to end. You Americans have such trouble learning tenderness, I don’t understand. Learn to relax into calm’” (p. 3). Mme. talks about dead musicians as if they were alive and accessible. She encourages Kate to get to know Gershwin, “a nice boy. You two will adore each other” (p. 3).

Here’s where you stop to listen to Gershwin’s second prelude. This is Michel Legrande’s 1994 recording of all three preludes; you can skip to number two from 1:25-3:56. 

After Wiley leaves her, Kate shows up to her piano lesson drunk, and Mme. tells her a story about her lover in Paris many years ago who succumbed to opium and the delusion that you can be happy all of the time. That lover ended up committing suicide by leaping from the top of a cathedral.

Mme. describes those artists who grab at joy and happiness: “’Joy is infected. Joy for too long is infection. Cannot last’” (p. 14). Rather, it’s what appears to be mundane that has value: “’Boredom has its own tenderness, its own mercy’” (p. 15).

I cannot reduce Baxter’s complex story to one takeaway, but perhaps Madame has it right—what may seem boring, the day-to-day sitting at the piano bench (or writing desk) and working at making a connection with the composer/reader, is the key. Grabbing at happiness and trying to make joy last will make you crazy and sick.

At the end of the story, Mme. extracts a promise from Kate that she won’t keep striving to be happy and insists on a toast with imaginary champagne: “’You will become a hero. You will learn to face losses of giant size’” (p. 15). And they raise their invisible glasses to celebrate loss, boredom, and hard work.

I listened to Gershwin’s piece a few times, trying to understand what its presence meant in the story. I felt the melancholy of the persistent refrain. The minor notes seem to undercut the jaunty rhythm, and five notes repeated throughout the prelude seem to illustrate the boredom tinged with tenderness that Mme. spoke of.

This story reminded me of Elizabeth Gilbert’s message about stubborn gladness. She writes that her “ultimate choice, then, is to always approach my work from a place of stubborn gladness” (p. 219). She just plugs away, trusting throughout losses and wins, ups and downs. Note she does not use the word happiness or the word joy; she uses gladness.

Stubborn gladness. Tender boredom.

 Works cited

Baxter, C. (1984). Gershwin’s second prelude. Harmony of the world. Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press.

Gilbert, E. (2015). Big magic: Creative living beyond fear. New York, NY: Riverhead Books.