Jazz, Latin, Rhythm, and Blues: Part One

It's June 23rd. Summer has struck Northern Ireland (probably with all the force it can muster). It's a balmy 18 C (64 F), but most people here are in short sleeves and short trousers, while I'm still wearing denim and a sweater. Rob said it well - choosing to move back to hot, sticky Virginia in August is not the smartest decision we've ever made. A little humidity might do us both a bit of good, though - it'll be a constant reminder that we're home.

Speaking of home - I fly from Belfast on July 26th, arriving (via Newark) at Richmond International at 6:24pm. That puts me just two days past the 5-week mark - I'm sad, thrilled, excited, scared - the normal range of emotions that can be expected of a person about to head home after a year away - but mostly, I'm shocked that I'm already at this place in the year.

So, in celebration of the number five (no, it's nothing Sesame Street, sadly), I give you today's reading music - a 1966 performance of Dave Brubeck's "Take Five."

And now, for the good stuff - actual information about my life in Northern Ireland! Lots has happened since the last time I wrote here (obviously, it's been three months), so this is just part one of a four-part series of posts.

Part One: Jazz

Since thirteen, music has been a very important part of my life. It's pretty obvious to most who know me, particularly through college - I started a couple of bands (with fantastic names), sang in a most excellent a cappella group, and went so far as joining a musician's fraternity.

However, in what I can only assume was an effort to not be "that white college kid," I kept one important part of my musical heritage under wraps - jazz. I've never been an excellent jazz musician (I've certainly tried), but even before I understood anything about minor sixths, paradiddles, and syncopation, I knew that putting Miles Davis' version of "Embraceable You" on near-endless repeat was as close to a mantra as I could get. So bear with me for a while, even if I start to sound like a pretentious American that drinks wine and listens to Gershwin on Saturdays - this story goes further than that.

Perhaps this story goes back just a week, to the city of London, to a small enclave of like-minded people called The 606 Club. I made the (Underground-assisted) hike to Chelsea with a good friend (thanks, Kate!), poured freshly-pressed coffee, and settled down to the sounds of Charlie Wood, a Memphis singer-songwriter. Maybe it was the thrill of the first live music I'd seen since August 2009, maybe it was the excitement of spending the day with a good friend, or maybe there was something in the coffee - for two hours, I was in a different world - completely indescribable, but entirely blissful. I'll even dare to call it a spiritual experience. There is something wonderful about watching five musicians take a stage, play tunes everyone knows, and convince everyone gathered that these tunes are their own, though, this is not the entire story.

Maybe the story goes still further back - to my first experience leading a service at Dunmurry Presbyterian Church (for those of you looking for a transcript/recording of my first sermon (!), it should be around soon). As far as the church year is concerned, it was no special Sunday - the Fourth Sunday of Easter - but at this church, the last Sunday of every month is an all-age service, involving everyone from the "wee tinies" to the "distinguished" members of the congregation, and this all-age Sunday was no exception. Several members of the Kilmakee Presbyterian Drama Team (appropriately known as KeeStage) joined me in a dramatic representation of an Iona Community Easter liturgy called "Voices from the Crowd," a portion of which is reprinted below:

Simon of Cyrene:

I am Simon, I come from Cyrene
and I would not have been in Jerusalem today
if it had not been for my business.
I’m a traveller.

And perhaps I would not have been asked to carry the cross
if my colour was not so obvious.

“You..nigger..come here.” they shouted.
And what can a black man say
in a crowd of white people?

(Stepping toward the cross)

Jesus,
I don’t know what this is all about
I’ve never seen such degrading cruelty
and the reason is beyond my understanding.

What did you do
to make people hate you?
What did you do
to get strung on a cross?

You never robbed a bank
You never mugged innocent people,
swindled money,
planned an armed struggle,
or committed treason.

Most people say you were a holy man,
some say you were God’s son.

If this is the case,
why are religious people persecuting you?

From Stages on the Way by The Wild Goose Worship Group, Wild Goose Resource Group, 1998, ISBN 1876357363, page 144

This is one of six readings, each spoken eloquently by a KeeStage member seated within the congregation, one of six "artist's perspectives" of the crucifixion of Jesus, and one of six interpretations of our responsibility to building the Kingdom of God. The entire drama/meditation preceded my sermon, which, in comparison, was of very little consequence - the gravity of the liturgy and the extraordinary cooperation among the Kilmakee and Dunmurry young people were testament enough to the message of the day - "What Can I Say/Do Now?" Watching those youth work to create something of such emotional force was like listening to Charlie at The 606 - an incredible, inspirational, indescribable moment - but this is still not all of the story of the day.

Perhaps the story was best told by a man on a bus who cannot speak at all.

On the last Friday afternoon in March, after trekking in to Belfast for a haircut and a coffee with Madeline, I boarded the 9A bus toward Conway and settled in for the forty-five minute ride. I'm well used to transportation disasters this year - Doug (our site coordinator) has on several occasions told me I could fill a book with stories of bicycle, bus, train, and taxi mishaps - but I wasn't yet prepared for the fiasco to come - a three-hour trip of just six miles, during a bomb threat, with very little information filtering into our bus.

I'm very used to the crowd on the Friday late-afternoon 9A - several people just leaving work in the city, heading either home or to their local pub, several folks leaving Belfast to work a night shift in Finaghy or Dunmurry, and plenty of schoolkids seeking that sweet Friday afternoon release that only schoolkids truly enjoy. Naturally, I found myself surrounded by one person from each group - we'll call them Ben, Natalie, and Rebecca.

(I could make a great Law & Order joke here, but I won't. I'll just make you think about what it could have been.)

It happens that on this very peculiar bus ride, I was surrounded by three very peculiar people.

I'd met Ben on the Friday 9A several times before - our first meeting was the standard "Is that a free seat?" sort of meeting - no conversation, no talking at all, just awkwardly avoiding each others' eyes while trying to get as much information as possible about the other, all the while trying to pretend like you're completely immersed in whatever it was you were doing before meeting the other. That first day, we rode all the way from Belfast City Centre to the Dunmurry Halt - Ben left for the pub, I left for Tesco to pick up some groceries.

Several weeks later, I met Ben again - on exactly the opposite bus ride - a Monday morning 9A towards Belfast - we smiled, acknowledged each other, and rode on in silence.

This happened several more times until that Friday in March, when Ben finally decided to introduce himself. This process, of course, was motivated by sharing a seat yet again, and having finally come to the realisation that we would be sharing that seat for at least another hour, among frustrated commuters, shoppers laden with packages, and antsy children.

What I didn't expect was Ben's method of introducing himself - a hug, a fist-bump, and writing his name on a Starbuck's napkin.

Ben is the first Deaf person I've met in a long time - and thanks to the incompatibility of everything I know in American Sign Language with everything Ben knows in British Sign Language, our communication was reduced to crude hand gestures, writing on napkins, and pointing at things - which, naturally, attracts a lot of attention on a crowded bus.

This explains how another joined our conversation: Ben may or may not have gestured that the bus should sprout wings and fly away a bit too vigorously, in the immediate vicinity of Natalie's face.

Natalie was this new stranded-bus-passenger-community's informant: our connection to the outside world. She was receiving pretty constant news updates via text message from her boyfriend in Belfast, who had only twenty minutes joined her at the bus shelter to see her off to work. Thanks to her, we knew that we were in the middle of a bomb threat investigation, that all vehicles were being searched, and that all of our mobile phones were inferior - no one else had service for most of the ride.

She quickly forgave Ben for the incident and joined us in our very quiet abuse of the situation and the sticky heat of being surrounded by so many angry people. An excellent conversationalist, Natalie soon learned where I'd picked up the little ASL that I know (Jamaica), both of our occupations (factory worker and church worker), and, most importantly, our opinions of the strangely coloured uniforms of most of the schoolchildren on the bus (terrible and terrible).

Rebecca must have been terribly fond of the colour of her uniform, because she noticed us laughing, took off her headphones, and promptly realised that not one of us was actually speaking, just gesturing wildly and mouthing every other word or so. She recognised Natalie as a former student at her secondary school, and they were off to abuse and praise various shared teachers, leaving Ben and I to return to our not-at-all private conversation and muse about the strange ways girls talk about things.

Rebecca turned to me next, and asked where I'd learned to sign, asked what languages I knew, asked why I was dressed quite unlike other people from Belfast, asked just about every question I could think of (we had quite a bit of time). At some point, I think I was coerced into giving her a lesson in Spanish verb forms, and at another, I realised Ben and Natalie were taking their turn to laugh at the two of us. Soon, we became a strange thing among the company of angry commuters - four people, genuinely enjoying each others' company, learning from each other, getting to know each other, and making the most out of the situation we were so suddenly placed in.

A well-timed three-hour bus ride, a church service, and a dark jazz club can all do remarkable, if wildly different, things for the human spirit - at their core, the spirit of jazz, of Christianity, of community - cooperation and coexistence.