“and when you get to see one of those shy smiles from a twenty year-old, well, you just might start believing in god.” (Rule 3, surrick)
In loving memory of Bob Bassett
The show is for NPR listeners and FOX NEWS viewers. These phantom limb songs, these moments from the mourner’s table, the bleeding veteran on the street in Washington, DC, perhaps most especially the story of Wasim. In a show where most veterans are nameless or at most nicknamed so that everyone can feel “I know that guy,” here is a name. He has an accent and a name. He also–
“holds degrees in math and physics
Speaks four languages
His father is a professor
All of his brothers and sisters have been to university.
He came to this country
And worked in a clothing store in New York City
Until he joined the army in 1998.
Infantry.”
Most academic theory about culture and language is going to insist on a center and an outside–the dominant group and the oppressed groups. Strata, privileges, hegemony–this notion that those on top will do anything to stay there, politics. Language is all about politics, translanguaging perhaps even more so.
How can this group insist that putting all of these voicings together, that elevating the tone and using the vernacular, calling on old melodies and using them in new ways–can speak to people of different political persuasions? Why give Wasim a name?
The performers insist that many in the audience have no idea what a veteran’s experience is like. Therefore one must assume that the audiences are full of people who only know war at a remove, perhaps through loved ones or perhaps even further out from that–news stories, histories.
On Christmas Day, when my daughter was two, my in-laws, my husband, my daughter and I gathered around a laptop screen to talk to my brother-in-law, serving his tour of duty as an emergency room doctor in Iraq. Our conversation was constantly interrupted by thunderous noise that shook the hospital: my brother-in-law had to go and tend to more wounded.
One of my grandfathers was impatient for the US to join World War II so he went to Canada and volunteered to drive a tank.
My other grandfather led a US military band in the same period.
My uncle was never quite the same after Vietnam.
My father-in-law was career military–when we said goodbye to him this January, guns fired, a flag was draped over his casket, his life-long friends from West Point sang old songs. He and my mother in law had been posted in Germany early in their marriage. Later he sat on the Korean border, hand hovering over the button, watching for disaster in the sky.
In the fall, long after he had outlived his doctor’s predictions and as he was approaching God’s timetable, we started gathering together as a family all of the time—he did talk about his days in training, and he talked about music. Played us his favorite songs (recordings, that is). He loved novelty songs, musical theater—a favorite of his was Bring Him Home from Les Miserables.
One of his favorite novelty songs was Muleskinner Blues—check out this article about a song that has meant almost everything and traveled almost everywhere before it reached Bob’s ears. There’s a cool article about it at: http://scriptoriumdaily.com/no-mules-were-skinned/
Neal voices Wasim in the show, feels a profound connection to the character. Makes his voice sound different, but without an attempt to do an accent that would have been Wasim’s. Neal says he borrows from accents he hears in Hawaii, where he now lives. Anne and Neal continue Carolyn’s story of Wasim:
His brother wheels him toward us.
There are six of us playing that day.
The week before Christmas in 2008.
His voice is low, hard to hear
With an accent, but with perfect grammar
He says, “I want to thank you for coming here.”
Under his dark glasses
A scar is barely visible
The blanket covers his legs
“I love your music. It is beautiful.”
He sits for a few minutes
Then they disappear.
My father-in-law was also a corporate attorney and, in his retirement, which coincided with his cancer diagnosis, addicted to Fox News. For ten years (2009-2019), we all spoke two different languages and had to work hard, at times, to speak to each other with love. Sometimes we settled for silences—no television or radio in each other’s houses. There were always other things to talk about, most of them more important.
My father-in-law would have loved this show and he would have said so, openly. His side of the family has some Scots-Irish, way back, but it would have been the stories and the way the music is played that would have moved him.
“I love your music. It is beautiful.”
It would have been something we could have loved together. He would have responded to the virtuosity, he would have empathized with the wounded, above all, he would have appreciated the sincerity of the performers.
I’ve not read about that yet in ethnographic studies—not anywhere—the language of commitment. It is different than “authenticity,” which everyone writes about. It is a blind faith and an active, time-oriented embodiment that functions far closer to the core of human experience, perhaps at the level of need as opposed to the higher-level thinking processes. Bob would have loved this show because the performers meant every word and every note. It is only through that intention that they can connect the “war” and the “here.” It’s how they connect to each other. It’s probably the only way to do it.
The second to last song is one of my favorites: Rie y Llora—one of Celia Cruz’s last songs. Laugh and Cry.
Openness to the possibility of laughter and tears, showing and inspiring confidence in each other, competent vulnerability these are all language elements in the community of choice that is the Between War and Here crew. Wasim spoke four languages.
It must have been hard
For our brother
When he had to leave you, I said.
There was a long pause—
He looked to the ground
It was hard for me, he said quietly.
This is our first Memorial Day without Bob. His favorite word was “hope.” He always appreciated when he saw anyone take care of a stranger. He said he didn’t see enough of it in the corporate world. This is our first Memorial Day with Bob—the first time that the day becomes his.
His voice is low, hard to hear.
He talked about his training, not about active duty. I don’t think he had a way to put it into words. So I know he would have loved this—because there are still no words for it, but now there is language.
The very last song is “The Celt”—one of my favorite songs from Ensemble Galilei. I head to Wales this Saturday to learn a bit more about writing and men who invented “Celtic tradition” for fun and profit across the Celtic diaspora in the eighteenth century. I’m not too worried about the “fraud” parts of their stories—I think we could all use a little Celtic music in our lives and it doesn’t much matter how it arrives—we do what we can.
Interruptions: Between War and Here 