Literary
/ Satire
Date
Published: October
2016
Publisher: JAM Publishing
Ruth
Askew, a minor celebrity, is spouting some highly incompetent philosophy about
the end of virtue. Con Manos, a journalist, is attempting to uncover a
political scandal or two. Add some undistinguished members of City Council, an
easy listening radio station, a disorganized charity, a prestigious
Philadelphia newspaper, and any number of lawyers and other professional
criminals. In Worthy Of This Great City the compelling stories
of two stubborn individualists intertwine in a brisk, scathing satire that
invites you to question everything you think you think about today's most
discussed issues: populism and elitism, the possibility of truth, the reach of
profound stupidity, and the limits of personal responsibility in these
post-truth, morally uncertain times.
Excerpt:
Earlier that day, I lay in the shade with
only my bare toes exposed to the vicious sun, part of a modest audience
similarly disposed beneath the modest fringe of trees surrounding the field.
Light fell down through the foliage, thick victorious beams that described
powerful angles in their descent inside the usual breathtaking green cathedral.
Around me the grass was withered and compressed into a flattened mat over
ground still saturated from the previous night’s thunderstorms; everything smelled
of baking wet earth, sunscreen, and greasy event food. I don’t remember any
intrusive insects or even visible birds except for a couple of extremely
distant hawks, dull specks in the otherwise empty sky.
Another respectable
scattering of spectators occupied the baking field, most sprawled directly in
front of the small Camp Stage, true fans eagerly upright despite the merciless
heat. So just as expected, one of those perfectly innocent afternoons you buy
with the ticket, monotonous while deeply nourishing, readily absorbed through
the whole skin like childhood summers.
didn’t know about the witches yet, but they
were out in force. Yeah, it’s a silly description but I don’t know how else to
capture the awful effect of those damn women. So they were witches who’d been
summoned by a highly demanding assembly of affluent suburbanites, people
accustomed to commanding natural forces. And while arguably these were all
benevolent females who only meant well, with witches you never know how it’s
going to turn out.
Every August for more
than a decade I’ve headed out to Schwenksville for this dependable throwback
party. And not precisely to enjoy the music, because although it commands my
absolute respect I find it too intense for everyday entertainment. It’s a kind
of church music, an unashamed church of humanity: pure sound, plaintive and
honest, twanging and rambunctious, dulcimer gentle. Fitting, then, for this
late-summer pagan rite in honor of righteousness, and I immerse myself in it to
perform a spiritual cleansing of sorts, processing across the fields from one
rustic venue to another, affirming a succession of bluegrass pickers and ballad
wailers and theatrical tellers of old tales. And it’s a mildly uncomfortable
ritual in another sense, but that’s because of the mostly undamaged people, the
one’s who wholeheartedly enjoy everything and applaud too often.
As with anything
religious, there are incredibly subversive undercurrents longing to manifest,
easy to exploit by those portending witches. Two of them performed that day,
one with such tragic skill and clarity it unintentionally aroused huge amounts
of self-loathing and subsequently resentment, at least in me. The second
inspired a joy vigorous enough to move the plot. And the third exerted an
indirect but equally damning influence courtesy of her own celebrity, her mere
idea inciting a shaming nostalgia. In fact it was dangerously stupid to speak
her name aloud. All three arrived wearing absolute certainty.
This current festival
setting, the Old Pool Farm, is perfectly suited to the occasion. There are wide
fields to accommodate the generous crowds, a nicely crisp and sparkly creek,
and the requisite gates and groves, all at a situation remote enough to evoke a
wholly separate culture despite easy proximity to the city. Although that’s not
difficult, because even today you only have to poke your nose outside the
nearer suburbs to spot a rusty silo on some decrepit farm with another of those
filthy black-and-white, diarrhea-spewing dairy cows leaning against a sagging
wire fence, its pelvis practically poking through its muddy hide. Peeling paint
and hay bales directly across the road from another mushrooming pretentious
development, a slum of dull, identical cheapjack townhouses. So despite the
fervent country claptrap the festival is essentially a metropolitan scene,
drawing a sophisticated crowd, and therefore in one sense condescending, an
insult.
Murmurs of
anticipation brought me up on my elbows to discover Hannah Lynch already
onstage, a typically modest entrance. I sat up and paid attention, catching
sight of her inside an amiable circle of probable musicians, a glimpse of her
face and one thin shoulder between competent-looking backs in cowboy or cotton
work shirts, all of them endlessly conversing there in surprisingly gentle
voices.
Until finally they
broke apart and here she came gliding towards the front of the tiny platform,
moving within a reputation so illustrious it made her physical presence
unlikely and you had to struggle for it. A tiny bird of a woman, an elderly,
fragile sparrow with fine gray hair and hazel eyes and translucent skin,
nodding to us and smiling nicely with small unremarkable teeth while seating
herself on a wooden folding chair. She was dressed like good people, like a decent
Christian farmwife in a faded print skirt and cotton blouse of mixed pastels,
pink and beige and blue. Only with dangling silver jewelry to be noticed, since
after all she was a major star.
With this one
unshakable article of faith: that her famously quavering soprano was entirely
unrelated to her own ordinary self, more of an imposition or a trust, an
undeserved gift from God that in no way merited personal praise. So she has
stated. And accordingly she exuded genuine empathy with all of us waiting out there
for her, straining forward to better capture the spirit and stamina investing
each word. A curve of laughter lit her face, and there was grief there too, but
nothing to diminish that serene spirit.
Beside me Crystal,
blatantly artificial trendoid in that audience of cosmopolitan pseudo-naturals,
for once had the good sense to keep her mouth shut. Crystal, please note, was
present only because she suspected this event mattered to me and meant to chain
herself to it in my memory. She was an unashamed criminal, and really sweet,
and I admired her.
Lynch sat there looking at us and hugging her
guitar, once giving it a surreptitious pat like a favorite pet before launching
into one of those unexpectedly piercing old songs, a rather shocking rush of
raw bitterness and despair - nothing silvered there - railing rather than
mourning yet cleanly tragic because without any confusion of entitlement or
excuse, in fact totally untainted by melodrama, an expression of rightful fury
to upend your sensibilities and make you cringe inside your pampered,
complacent soul.
And onward,
commanding that summer hour with a repertoire of futile longing, black misery,
true love, unalloyed injustice, and journeying away as only the truly
dispossessed can journey. How inadequate we were by comparison, what undeserved
good fortune to be sitting there vicariously sharing the infinite human
endurance of those former generations, thus beatified now. Sharing a deep pride
in our good taste and our faultless fundamental values.
And that’s how this
festival always goes for me: a fusion of rapture and fleeting realization, of
purging and rebirth I suppose. We avid celebrants being served by true vicars,
unassuming conduits of grace because essentially craftspeople evincing the
unquestioning self-respect of their kind, therefore automatically accepting us
as equals and worthy of their respect, refusing to cater. That’s how Lynch and
her ilk deliver their deadly blows, how they incite our reckless,
self-destructive impulses.
Because the problem is,
nothing is enough and never can be, not in any case. And in addition to that,
this particular event carries an impossible burden of triumphant civil rights
baggage. A weight of expectation, purest gold and just as heavy, presses down
on those fields like an approaching storm, flattening the trees, placing an
unbearable strain on our moral muscles, making even the most authentic and
engaged participant stagger for reasons most often never identified.
You see there’s no
battle here anymore, a situation as frustrating as it is pathetic. I mean,
what’s so pitiable as striving mightily to wage a war already won, or achieve a
moral victory already popularly embraced? Like you’re on some lone and
dangerous crusade instead of enjoying a mere reenactment, an amusement park
ride. As if any real social hazard or physical extremity ever threatened most
of these initiates. As if they could face the real front line today. Come to
that, what in the world ever sprang from this placid piece of Pennsylvania
countryside anyway, or even its nearby metropolis, so far from the bloody front
lines of decades past? What justifies this hallowed ambience? Everyone knows
the real struggle was over in another state, in the deep South or New York or
California, all that televised passion and pain. Yet here’s a similar legacy,
an undeserved renown.
Seriously, you have
to consider this heritage of the sixties, that era of righteousness and
innocence and victory, you have to ponder the connection to the contemporary
lives and events I’m describing here. Resurrect that intoxicating scent of
possibility. Realize how strong it is, what it can do. Watch any old news film
and it’s literally like viewing creatures from another planet, those young
people are so alien, their gestures and expressions so certain and strident, an
entire new world in their angry, accusatory eyes. What can any of that mean in
this age of spent possibility?
So today the Folk Fest is largely a
masturbatory farce of self-congratulation, courtesy of this pushy, upscale
audience basking in its accustomed sunshine, displaying that forceful
amiability that means money, smiling too brightly over bare freckled shoulders.
Uniformly pale people displaying their ease on this bucolic faux battlefield,
all aggressively self-aware. And meanwhile a barely perceptible, slightly
demented energy flutters along at grass level, an intrepid narcissism bent on
having a significant experience and more than a little desperate to measure up
to itself.
I’m as progressive as
anyone, I secretly gloat over my superiority, so for me all this underlying
energy eventually manifests as low-grade irritation, and the fact that bad
temper is implicitly verboten at this event only makes it that much worse. And
then here comes Lynch to further emphasize everyone’s obvious unworthiness and
what can you do but silently seethe with frustrated moral ambition. This is the
one Folk Fest constant I always dismiss until it’s too late and I’m climbing
aboard one of the yellow school buses that shuttle people in from the parking
fields, listening to all the boisterous but balanced chatter. Probably a
deliberate amnesia, because as I say, for me it’s a religious event.
So by later that
Saturday afternoon I was largely disgusted with myself and as you can imagine,
wonderful company. Once again stretched out on my back but this time my whole
body obstinately exposed to the brutal heat, and while I had a bucket hat
shielding my face I’d raised my knees to better facilitate the burn penetrating
my jeans. I reached my left hand out past the edge of Crystal’s spongy blue
blanket, feeling for the heart of the earth deep underneath the dispirited
vegetation, Edna Millay style.
There we greeted the
second witch, and for an interlude of spontaneous revelry the whole phony
carnival dissolved, wiping away our precious fictions to reveal the one face
behind the infinitely varied masks. Rather commonplace moments to underline the
supertext, a brief but blessed release from introspective angst, an intoxicated
dance that anyway began wholeheartedly but inevitably dwindled into posturing
before ultimately discarding us back into isolated, shattered pieces of
humanity scattered over a sunlit field.
We were in front of
the main stage, the Martin Guitar Stage, a venue that backs into some tame leftover
woods. The smaller Tank Stage was to my right, with behind it a private area
for performers, and to my left the equally small Craft Stage. Further left was
all the familiar festival retail, folkie variety, striped tents selling hippie
throwback goods like handcrafted ceramics, carved wooden bowls, tie-dye skirts,
hand-strung glass beads, and bad art. In between the main and Craft Stages a
tiny dirt path paralleled a shallow creek of sparkling mica and soft mud; both
disappeared into the dim coolness of the Dulcimer Grove, a rather precious
habitat of jugglers and magicians and others of that Renaissance Faire ilk, a
determinedly magical place more or less reserved to scantily clad or frankly
naked children, their cheeks painted with stars and moons in indigo and
crimson. Either they’re truly mesmerized by these archaic amusements or they’re
convinced they should be by the adults and the daycare atmosphere, because they
all sit there expending fierce concentration on colored sand and sparkly fairy
dust, their little pink tongues extended in effort. I mean, all the world is
fake, even the kids. Around them circles a protective hillside of slender trees
roped together by string hammocks in bright primary colors, a haphazard effect
of beggars’ rags pegged out to dry.
If you follow that
same path straight on you come out on field with more dry grass, more distant
trees, and another vacant horizon. On the right is the Camp Stage, site of
Lynch’s morning concert; on the left an unremarkable gate gives onto the campers’
settlement, one of those ephemeral constructions of funky tent-and-RV
fantasies, castles and pyramids and suburban estates complete with lawn
furniture and barbeques and anything else you need for rustic comfort. The
affable professional performers come here after the regular shows to sit and
drink and play their music well into the summer nights, just for these special
stalwarts. Notice how everyone’s personal effects are carefully positioned to
define private family spaces but without absolutely excluding the requisite
hobnobbing community, because that would repudiate the spirit of the thing.
And anywhere you care
to look there are all these exceptionally pleasant people, a seasonal
confluence of the enlightened: middle-aged, nattily-bearded men with thick
hairy ankles showing beneath those long gauzy skirts; visibly well-educated
younger couples falling all over each other in reassuring mutual recognition;
friendly teens aglow with their own laudable social spirit or familiarity with
meaningful music or both; and grimy toddlers in T-shirts and shimmering plastic
haloes with their baby curls shining and their fingers to their mouths and
their tiny feet covered with dirt. Skimpy tank tops and glittery backpacks,
idiosyncratic witches cones and sombreros and straw cowboy hats covered in
button collections, pale muscled calves and freckled backs red with sun and
damp with perspiration.
All these regulation
types navigate cordially across the fields, buying and eating and exercising
their approval, until later in the afternoon when the heat is truly intolerable
and it’s a matter of claiming a place for the folding chairs and coolers and
settling in for the afternoon concert. When for a couple of hours all these
enervated devotees create for themselves an enormous patchwork quilt of
blankets and tarps, an American prayer rug rolled out beneath the glare.
I among them, hiding
under my hat, squinting up from under the brim, intending not so much to watch
the performances as to absorb them from a neutral distance. Meanwhile I was
relishing the sense of Crystal beside me, resentful at having to endure all
this legitimate music.
When here came a
second celebrated woman into this extraordinary and disorganized day, an
ineffably cosmopolitan presence in a white silk shirt that billowed out over
notably slim hips and tight black jeans tucked into cowboy boots. The costume
only emphasized the unmistakable sophistication in the sharp angle of her jaw
and the sleek black bob swinging at her shoulder. That taut body edged itself
onto the stage and into our attention, anticipation suffusing her narrow face,
her whole person radiating the intrinsically cool self-content of a magician
about to pull off the big illusion and astonish us all.
Lifting fiddle and
bow, lowering them to call a comment offstage, bringing them back up to her
pointed chin experimentally while a guitarist, drummer, and another violinist
fooled with getting into position, and around me an expectant rustle shook off
the afternoon lethargy, and once again I sat up and wiped the sweat and
sunscreen from my forehead.
She leaned forward a
fraction to acknowledge us.
“Hello all you very
special people.” Now decisively raising her instrument. “Three jigs.”
Well, you know that
kind of tritely manipulative music, but then her exceptional skill, that energy
climbing into a frenzy, the first notes reaching us with the adolescent
enthusiasm of uncurling spring leaves. Music so familiar and yet astonishingly
fresh, something behind the insistence of it transcending its own rather
sentimental imagining. Passages as fleet but powerful as pure energy, and you’d
actually have to defend against the physical impact but why would you bother to
fight off such delirious joy?
They have a reserved
seating section in front of the main stage, a modest pen containing rows of
wooden folding chairs surrounded by a fence of deliberately rickety palings. It
was largely unpopulated for the afternoon performance. A dirt lane about ten
feet wide separated this area from the field of common folk. Crystal and I were
up front, right near the dusty edge of this path, and close to us, in the lane
itself and with one tiny hand firmly grasping the enclosure fence, stood a
fairy-slim blonde girl of five or six. Just as I fully noticed her she launched
into the familiar steps of an Irish jig, lifting first one exquisite bare foot
and then the other into tentative arcs, curving each arm alternately above her
head. From her shoulders a pastel summer dress floated out in the shape of a
loose triangle, and her movements caused her hair to caress her perfect little
back.
With the increasing
confidence of the music her delicate feet, fragile pale-pink petals, rose and
crossed each other in an assured sequence that bespoke formal lessons, and
meanwhile her eyes never lifted from her toes and her pallid face was tense in
concentration. Only once did she manage a quick glance up to a middle-aged
scholarly type, probably her father, who nodded mild encouragement but
displayed, I thought, some slight annoyance.
Now complex
annotations around the tune turned tight elegant spirals; it was all
self-interest now, you understand, nothing to do with us but instead its own
internal voyage. In the path the child reworked her steps, her frown expressing
frustration with her own limited expertise.
When suddenly
appeared two barefoot, competent-looking women in their early thirties skipping
down the lane, then widely twirling, then skipping again, their hands clasped
and arms outstretched to form a traveling arrow. Both flaunting gauzy pastel
skirts and silvery tank tops that exposed perspiring firm flesh, both draped
with multiple glittering strands of Mardi Gras beads flashing purple and green
and mauve. They acknowledged the blond child with an upward swing of their
joined hands high over her head, a bridal arch speeding by on either side. It
made her giggle but move closer to the fence.
The fiddler was
bending practically in half over her bow and the second fiddler not being any
slouch either, their hands and arms pushing towards the absolute limits of
muscular possibility, straining against themselves to maintain their momentum.
Then four ethereally
lithe teenage girls forming two pairs, and they were in regulation T-shirts and
shorts except all bore silvery translucent wings that flapped at their slim
shoulders; they went whirling around and around each other and simultaneously
forward, delightful gyroscopes with their feet stomping hard on the infectious
strain yet for all that maintaining the ludicrously disinterested expressions
of runway models.
Promptly followed by
a young couple charging along in an outright polka, aggressive but a tiny bit
shamefaced, too: he was slim and wore a neatly-trimmed dark beard; she was
sturdy and short with a pixie haircut and a refined air, like an educator. The
little dancer flattened herself against the fence but continued a rhythmic
bopping, presenting no less enchanting an image. And she was proved wise,
because here came the same young couple back again, being the kind of people
who need to underline the obvious.
Passing midway an
approaching male pair, seeming now a little more obliged than inspired, their
muscular calves flashing below their khaki kilts: one was broad in the
shoulders and chest with a thin ass and spindly legs; his partner was entirely
slim, remarkably tall, and balding. Presenting the impression although little
of the force of a strong wind, they nevertheless managed to turn the little
dancer halfway round, her moist mouth open in wonder. She paused there, staring
after them.
Now the dancing was
everywhere. I stood up to confirm a modest sea of erratically bobbing heads at
every side but especially to the right, past the Tank Stage: enlightened
middlebrows and emotionally stranded hippies and likeable healthy teens and self-disciplined
mandolin players and confident cultural elitists and miscellaneous
commonsensical types engaged in a nearly impromptu production number, for one
bright second emerged from behind the mask of individualism, openly expressing
one joyously creative soul.
Well, we were dancing
out in the field as well, all of us to some extent, the more exhibitionist
characters gyrating on their bright blue tarps and lifting their hands in the
air, and some efficient types illegally occupying the marked-off aisles,
prancing with impudent liberty up and back. Patrons excessively enthusiastic or
self-consciously hesitant but almost everyone involving themselves in the
music. I was dancing too, not to make a spectacle of myself or anything but
feeling myself a part of the gala. And about then I realized it was already
ending because that’s how these things always go.
Frenzied vibrations,
faster than you could believe, and we listeners attended first with our ears
and then with our bodies, stilling them now, desperate to capture every last
second until inevitably all of it was swiftly and immaculately recalled into
one compact point of silence and we found ourselves abandoned to our accustomed
exile, returned to the pretense of our separate selves.
She played two more sets,
we in her audience dutifully imitating our initial enthusiasm, grateful for the
continuing reprieve. I’ve said it before: reality moves so fast anymore, we’ve
all become experts at polite deceit.
Folk Fest protocol is
to kick everyone out around six, sweep the grounds, then ticket everyone back
in for the evening concert. You wait in a cattle shoot, at least if you’re
fairly close to the gate, or anywhere nearby if you’re not, until finally the
loudspeakers blare a Sousa march and you grab your chairs and blankets and
coolers and run like hell to beat the other folkies to a premium patch of
grass. Therefore it’s prudent to leave early enough to ensure you’re at the
front of the return pack, and that afternoon, as usual, the knowledgeable
attendees ignored the high, unrelenting sun, ignored even the name performer
just introducing himself, and started unobtrusively filtering out.
I was making my own
preliminary moves when I recognized Ruth off to the right, by herself and
slightly beyond the audience proper. She was rather elaborately brushing grass
off her shirt, and her hair was drifting into her face as usual; her entire
aspect projected excruciating self-consciousness. It was the intricate
performance of a woman uncoordinated at life yet used to being watched. She was
in a lacy peasant blouse that didn’t suit her big-boned frame - it was
lavender, too, which didn’t help - and loose black jeans over black cowboy
boots. Her attention shifted to getting the blouse centered correctly; when
finally she noticed me, that man standing perfectly still and staring at her, I
waved a hand over my head in greeting. I have no idea why I didn’t just avoid
her.
She assumed an
automatic grin but then recognized me back and her smile turned beaming, and
with it she transformed herself into a reasonably attractive woman, an odd but
intriguing combination of big straight white teeth, thick dirty-blond hair, low
forehead, pale freckles, and a long, arched nose that enlivened her profile
with an aquiline swiftness.
Behind me Crystal was
standing with our blanket gathered up in a big, baby blue synthetic wad; we
watched Ruth maneuver through the half-seated, half-moving spectators, visibly
enduring our inspection. When she got closer you noticed the deep frown lines
between her brows and realized how much older she was than you’d assumed from
the juvenile posturing.
A forthright greeting
to Crystal and a frankly offered hand, all fraught with the deep disdain of the
intelligent, accomplished woman encountering the undeserved self-esteem of the
merely lovely. To which assault Crystal responded with her typical flaccid grip
and a near shrug, an implied refusal to expend any more of her precious
personal energy on uninteresting shit. Ruth turned away from us, towards the
stage, where an athletic-looking but otherwise unassuming man of about forty in
a tired cowboy hat was inaudibly explaining a song. That duty done, she faced
us again.
“This is all new to
me. It’s wonderful! That dancing.” She opened her arms wide to encompass the
stage, the field, and the discreetly dispersing audience. “Very Caucasian.”
Well. The cowboy
strummed an acoustic guitar, meanwhile calmly examining his surroundings for
concealed gunslingers. And naturally I remembered our lunch but that was months
ago, so surely whatever she was babbling about then was probably old news and
anyway too vague to reference or be embarrassed over now.
She was brushing at
her jeans for no discernable reason. “Did I tell you about Leticia Rowan?”
Just typical. What
about Leticia Rowan? How aggravating when I hadn’t seen Ruth for months! I knew
Rowan was the night’s closing act. Meanwhile my brain was automatically playing
familiar media images backed by the old uplifting refrains: that bold soprano
keening from the Capitol steps, debunking the myth of American justice; the
slim, avid girl of the famous photograph where she’s perched on a stool in a
Greenwich Village coffee house, radiant with the novel excitement of causing
real change. Set on living a validated life, perfectly exemplifying those
decisive, glorious years, that age of energy and faith. Today still socially
engaged, as you would expect, and while no longer that wondrous sylph just as
lovely in the clean bone beneath the motherly padding. But most often appearing
during those public broadcasting fund-raisers, programs aimed at prosperous
boomers eager to relive a spurious past.
“I’m introducing her
tonight.”
“The hell you are.”
It was such a stupid lie, not even remotely sustainable. Especially outrageous
when you considered Ruth’s musical identity: her morning drive-time show
featured one of those feel-good formats: generic soft rock interspersed with
headlines, traffic, celebrity gossip, and a few carefully screened listener
calls. Media hypocrisy providing a safe harbor for the harried immature
listener, carefully friendly and slick and sympathetic and definitely never
politically or socially oriented when that might mean causing offense. Also
never mind that Gene Shay, comfortably stout folkie radio program host from a
very different station, legendary teller of truly horrendous jokes, always
introduced the performers here, world without end, amen. Come on.
“Right, you know
everything. I forgot. And you’re never wrong.” I suppose that was an ostensibly
genial poke at my renowned erudition. I happen to think if someone asks you a
question they should have the courtesy to listen to the answer.
“I’m speaking after
Gene.” Gene! And she was looking repulsively self-satisfied. “I asked Leticia
Rowan if I could say a few words and she agreed, for some strange reason.” Now
slipping into her professional mode, that rather arch blend of certainty and
faux intimacy delivered with an indelible Lina Lamont slur: cay-unt um-an-jin.
Fingering the silver holy medals at her throat, a crucifix and two others piled
up together on a single delicate silver chain: Jude of the impossible and the
Virgin Mary.
And she laughed at my
horrified expression and launched into what I assume was a fairly mendacious
account of a reception for Women in the Media at the lovely old Bellevue, where
at that sort of event there’s a rigid social hierarchy: the unfed proletariat
leaning forward from chairs up on the mezzanine to watch on monitors, and the
elite dining at tables down on the ballroom floor. Ruth skipped over who was
speaking on what and cut straight to dessert for the privileged few, she
naturally among them being her gracious public self, wandering around being
affable and networking with vibrant women in suits too bright for an office and
intelligent men with refined, open faces, clearly expensive slacks and jackets,
and beautifully cut hair.
And there was Leticia
Rowan already in town and seated comfortably in a corner behind a tortured
centerpiece of bamboo and tiny orange orchids, casually chatting with a couple
of intimates. So Ruth went up and offered another of those frank handshakes.
“I’m truly awed.” Basically insinuating herself into the party, making it clear
who was honoring whom.
Then went prattling
on in her practiced glib fashion about youthful idealism and her own fictitious
activist past, seasoning it with ingenuous regret over her current disengaged
state to smooth along the manipulation. Although this with a woman surely
inured to dubious approaches? There’s something unconvincing about this I
haven’t the time to investigate but the result must hinge on Ruth’s
accumulating nervous tension, the months if not years behind the coming
explosion. That kind of stress sets you performing impulsive actions, forcing
unaccountable outcomes.
In retrospect I think
Ruth once again mistook a fortuitous encounter for the hand of destiny and just
barged ahead. Either that, or else she fell victim to that common desire to
cleave to what one professes to despise.
I was dumbfounded.
“Why?”
“Oh, envy I guess. I
wanted to be part of it.” Charmingly stated, her forehead furrowed in
recollection. And what was I supposed to say to any of it?
Behind us the cowboy
mooed through a mild dirge, disrupting nothing; around us the field was nearly
empty, abandoned to the insistent sun. And Ruth was standing before me
explaining too much and nothing at all, once again too intense, setting off all
sorts of warning bells.
Crystal lifted a
pastel spaghetti strap from a pink shoulder and raised her impudent big gray
eyes, looking at Ruth with that innocent expression women use to express
contempt. Her private opinion of Ruth: “Nobody has to be seen looking like
that.”
Crystal was another
communications major and model manqué hoping to become, of all things, a
personality. That ubiquitous blond hair, the pleasant features of no special
distinction just slightly out of proportion: another responsibly raised,
college-educated harpy bereft of individuality because nature abhors
individuality. Instead she emanates sex, it’s in her bones and baby face, her
short upper lip and outrageous ambition. Don’t expect her to evolve, because
she’ll never be other than she is right now. Fortunately she’s immune to
jealous criticism, not being that kind of stupid nor shy to succeed. She held some
kind of entry-level management job at the Center City Holiday Inn Express, an
occupation that never seemed to seriously impact her real life. Crystal is her
birth name.
“Thom here?” I asked.
Ruth’s husband, a
frequent guest on her program as either political insider or amiable comic
foil, was a local celebrity in his own right, a Philadelphia familiar, a
compendium of agreeable ugliness, frightening intelligence, crooked teeth in a
moist marshmallow grin, Ivy League polish, loud patterned shirts, genuine charm,
horrible posture, an unrepentant gift for outrageous flattery, and an impudent,
cutting wit. Outsiders considered him the epitome of Main Line class.
“He’s in Harrisburg.”
Acknowledging my disquiet, looking amused for my benefit, but her eyes were shading
into wariness. She pushed that uncontrollable hair from her damp forehead. “I’m
running around loose today.”
And she gave me a
minor, tight smile, raised a few fingers in a little goodbye salute, and strode
purposefully towards the gate.
“Hunh!” Crystal said
for both of us.
Festival security is
handled by costumed volunteers: polite, energetic young people impersonating
funky pirates or medieval wizards or just nameless creatures of purely
idiosyncratic design. This clean-cut constabulary was now shepherding we
stragglers to the main gate with cordial efficiency, their intricate hats,
adorned with oversized badges of authority, visibly bobbing over the heads of
the crowd. The cowboy singer had vanished.
I stood there in the
empty afternoon glare, again hunting around for a rational line of thought but
failing to find one. Finally, today, I have an insight: my being there that
afternoon helped determine the event.
I navigated us out of
the grounds and smuggled us under the rope to a decent spot not too far back in
the queue; none of the polite people already there objected. Crystal was
perking up now she could catch the scent of approaching evening, her posture
opening up to opportunity, her eyes brightly observant. I ducked back under the
ropes to get a couple of Cokes from a vending machine and together we waited
out the forced restorative lull, letting the afternoon settle down around us,
watching the families in lawn chairs eating their dinners, relaxing in public.
At length the loudspeakers sounded and we all pushed forward through the gates
and launched into the usual painfully hilarious sprint. I got us fairly far up
front on the center aisle and bent over gratefully, hands to knees, while from
the corner of my blurred vision I saw Crystal plop herself down with her mildly
victimized face.
Faint applause, which
had to be for the traditional bagpipe welcome; a moment later I could hear the
piper myself, and then came Gene Shay with his terrible jokes. By twilight we
were enduring a young bluegrass quartet of some nascent merit but an
unfortunate air of artsy superiority. Then an enjoyable mambo interlude evoking
romantic images out of fifties movies, and by full darkness the Jumbotron
screens displayed a close-up of a frail, dedicated Canadian singer-songwriter,
another of those admirable females. Insidious damp was seeping through my jeans
and sweatshirt, chilling my ass. Disembodied light-sticks moved at random,
children giggled, and the kindly scent of marijuana wafted by in sporadic
gusts.
Crystal and I
outlasted the Canadian over strawberry smoothies doctored with vodka while
around us the night coalesced into a blackness that seemed physical and bulky,
something you could push aside like drapes. Then there was that huge yellowed
moon illuminating the speeding brown clouds, making the entire universe feel
unusually sentient.
Gene Shay was back
with even more of those horrendous jokes, to be replaced by a middle-aged
dignitary in a blazer over jeans, quietly defiant.
“We are the light of truth, the truth the
capitalists and the banks and the conglomerates want forgotten. But we’re still
here, still burning bright through the darkness.” He actually said that, sure
of the personal politics of these many music lovers, all these people who could
afford to share his opinion. Declaiming thus in an understated but confident
bass, Main Line meets simple country boy to produce unfaltering self-respect.
Positions shuffled onstage and there was Gene Shay back, leaning sideways into
the standing mike to signal brevity.
“And now let’s talk
about one particular brilliant candle shining through the darkness, brighter
than almost any other, one of the iconic voices of an era of civil renaissance:
the inimitable Leticia Rowan.” Grinning back offstage as if to a good friend,
as maybe she was. “And just to underline how special this really is, we have an
additional guest, because Philly’s very own Ruth Askew is going to provide us a
more personal introduction.”
There was a kind of
group shrug but nothing worrisome.
A further positional
dance, the screens displaying indistinct blobs and random emptiness, and
finally there was Ruth behind the microphone. We observed her taking us in:
waving lights skittering over dull shapes, anticipatory shifting and murmurs, a
few people in motion pausing on their way somewhere to see if it was worth the
wait. Magnified, she looked brutally plain, with noticeable lines around her
mouth and those disproportionately large, disturbingly vulnerable blue eyes.
And she just stood
there, absolutely rigid, until we all paid complete attention. I think she was
overwhelmed by pure contempt, that it confounded her ability to speak, so
instead she spat at us
When everyone
instinctively recoiled, as you can imagine, but now she was past her initial
paralysis. More, she was beyond pretense, out in the wild ether, and you could
almost see the crazy. We instinctively coalesced into a tight defensive
silence.
“That’s for all you
virtue thieves.” She’d struck this theatrical posture of aggressive confidence,
all very square and speaking directly down to us.
“But unfortunately
for you, we’ve reached the end of righteousness. Not in this electronic age. No
more fleeing consequences and calling yourself good. Time itself is nothing but
our continual separating away from the primordial dead nothingness of absolute
truth and rightness.”
It’s almost over, but
I hope you see how excruciating it was. I’m sorry to have to assault your
sensibilities with this shit but we were all squirming in unforgivable
embarrassment and you should understand.
And to be fair, is
your religion less silly? Isn’t every great religion or even philosophy as
impossibly childish? And here’s something else: she was handing us a diagram of
her own psyche and circumstances, issuing a perfectly clear warning that went
ignored simply because it was way too obvious. Because this is, after all, a
story about stupidity where everything is fucking clear if you just pay
attention.
Ruth put a hand to
the mike, still keeping that confident posture.
“This is the next
great evolutionary leap. We will claim the future responsibly, and we will
become more like God.”
Just at that moment, the words flown, the
energy abating, I could sense her dawning comprehension of the enormity of her
situation. She looked to her side – for something, someone? And then she sent a
little nod out to us, to the compact, alert darkness.
“Then to the elements
be free, and fare thou well!”
That’s Prospero,
retiring his magic and releasing the slave-spirit Ariel at the end of The
Tempest.
But Ruth stayed out
there, holding that same strong, taut pose until a calm Gene Shay was suddenly
present and gently thanking her from the stage, sending us a tolerant nod while
herding her aside. And there at last was the great Leticia Rowan herself, that
vast, benign goddess in a golden caftan, smiling an unrestrained country smile,
exuding inexhaustible strength and kindness. Clearly decent people, both of
them.
Ruth was barely visible now, but I saw her
turn to take a final glance back at us, her face for one moment revealed to the
giant screens, then as abruptly absent. Terrified of course, because terror is
her resting state, and still insolent, and definitely smug.
Author Bio
If
you know my website and Twitter addresses (asmikemiller.com and asmikemiller,
respectively), you must realize Mike Miller is only an author name. It's not a
matter of privacy
or
secrecy; anybody can find me with minimal effort. It's about keeping things
separate. My writing is about what appears on the page. It's not about my
personal politics or religion or history.
Worthy
Of This Great City is a B-game book. I'm ambiguous about this, being interested
in money like most people, but I don't want to compete with a slick
professional cover or smooth editing so I've stuck to a sort of reasonable, human
middle ground. I value those things for what they are, of course, but I see
them as artifacts, part of a system of publishing that fought like hell for a
week's worth of shelf space, that fought to catch the eye, not the mind or
heart.
As
my character Con Manos says: "It's a revolution, isn't it?" I say:
Why fight on the side of the enemy? Why imitate and thus perpetuate a business
model that stifles originality? Just to show you can? Unless, of course, you're
fighting to attract the eye, not the mind or heart.
I've
played a joke with this novel - my first, incidentally. Played with the idea of
narration and who can be speaking after all. It's all very literary.
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