I see from the stats that my readership has fallen off. Perhaps I can get my numbers up by taking a breezier approach. Breezy is not my nature, so making it easy for you (out there) is hard for me. I'll try to move the dramatic action forward while bringing it to a close. Here comes a lot of scenes, bits and pieces, scraps from journals, things that hung on walls, blind alleys, false starts, and lessons not learned. It's like the ancient rubble masonry: you take a lot of stuff laying around underfoot and mash it up with whatever you can come up with by way of cement. I've seen an example in the granary and grave circle in Mycenae. The plan is still detectable, but much of the rubble masonry has devolved to out and out rubble. I have a feeling we'll be getting back to that sort of thing "ages and ages hence," on the other side of the interregnum sure to come. For the moment the government of the people, for the people, and by the people still exists, but it is leaning precariously away from the people. In casting about for the first stone, I find the following of some heft, left in memory in the general vicinity of government.
During the summer of 1976, the various Bicentennial celebrations produced a corker that Van Dyke and I witnessed at Government Center. Did we chance on it by accident? Perhaps Justin was tipped off by an add in the Globe. In any case, we found ourselves in the brick plaza that is oddly unconducive to what one might on the surface think of as its intended purpose. On any reasonable second thought, the idea that a public square should be designed to discourage gatherings makes sense when a government begins to fear the angry mob. Some celebrated the bicentennial by aping the tea party and tossing boxes labeled Exxon and Gulf Oil into Boston Harbor. (Pronounced 'hahbah.') We arrived at the Government Center to find quite the gathering. It was one of those gigs where there were more people in the show than in the audience. We were a good percentage of the audience, sad to say. It was a gathering of area bands, young musicians from all over New England, complete with their shiny brass, reed, and wind instruments, assorted batteries of drums, the cases for same, their worried or grinning conductors, their crisp band uniforms with feathered hats and epaulets, and their buses which blocked the streets and formed a sort of outer circle. The bands were assembled into their discreet ensembles and fingered their instruments idly as another parking job unfolded.
Into an opening of the circle of buses, a hook and ladder from the local fire brigade was backing in. It lumbered slowly, its driver taking care not to crush a single young performer. The youth mostly stood by giggling as did we. At length, a limousine pulled up behind the fire truck, and, surrounded by a knot of bodyguards, the white headed figure of the venerable Arthur Fiedler worked his way around to the back of the truck. With obvious difficulty due to his advanced age, the old man mounted the ladder meant for a more able bodied person, and got himself into the little fiberglass and steel basket we called a "cherry picker." The ladder was now deployed with the cherry picker atop its mast, lifting Arthur above the gathering. Now, every youthful eye, in the face of a person with something to blow or bang on looked attentive. They looked, as they had learned to, at their conductors. The conductors looked up at the old white head. For none of them was this easy. The bands were circled opposite the hook and ladder. The conductors stood before their ensembles, with their backs to Arthur. They had to crane their heads to see him. He fidgeted up there for a moment, and then raised his arms with one hand bearing his baton. Up went a sea of instruments to the many lips. This alone was spine tingling, as it created a rustle of fabric. Van Dyke poked me in the ribs.
"This is going to be interesting."
"Yeah, we're already into fur music."
Arthur was not a great conductor from the technique point of view. He was more of a personality. Even if he were Toscanini, this was Mission: Impossible. Toscanini he was not, of course. He drew up his baton in a preparation far too fast for the tempo he delivered. Having labored in conducting classes, I could see at a glance his mistake. It likely wouldn't have mattered. There is no way in hell that all of those conductors could have stayed together. We had no idea what the program was to be, but we could name that tune in three notes: they took off like horses in a steeplechase, a race to the double bar of "The Stars and Stripes Forever." It was out of sync at the outset and it went further astray as it went along. As this colossal train wreck unfolded, I was at first enchanted and then in stitches, howling with glee and jumping up and down. Van Dyke was more sober, as usual. Had he had a pipe, he'd be smoking it. But I could see he plainly enjoyed himself. We'd been studying Charles Ives, the American insurance executive who composed music on the train in from Danbury to New York, whose father had been a Civil War bandmaster with a bent for musical experimentation. Ives' Dad had deliberately marched two bands from opposite ends of town so that as they came towards each other and marched apart, the discords would mount and then abate into mists of distant sound. As he crafted his unheard pieces, Ives tried to uphold his father's spirit. The body of work turned out just great, thank you very much. We checked out scores from libraries, and purchased ones that we could try at home. We bought tickets to Symphony, expanded our minds, and sat in that hall enthralled. We also sat with score in lap at the afternoon open rehearsals. We were very serious about our studies. But here in the plaza was "found Ives!" As the bands winged towards the dogfight, the distance between them was a generous canonic interval. Anybody care for massive colliding counterpoint at the who the fuck knows what? The fuddy duddy Norden, who didn't trust his ears, wouldn't believe his eyes. The music also ricocheted off the walls of City Hall, the echos arriving back still later. At last it trickled to a halt to a smattering of applause. The old man was cranked back down and made his way taking stiff bows to his limo. We dispersed, still cackling and babbling about that incredible music lesson. The memory of it remains undimmed, and the story now writes itself.
