Art Is Immortality

Editor s Note The following is excerpted with permission from Art Above Everything One Woman s Global Exploration of the Joys and Torments of a Creative Life Beacon Press June My dad drummed for presidents once He drummed for admirals and ambassadors movie stars and ministers He drummed in halftime showcases of the NFL and Mardi Gras parades in New Orleans He drummed in nightclubs from Amsterdam to Yokosuka Long retired from the U S Navy jazz band that sailed him around the globe Dad mostly drums in the garage now His audience consists of Mom and me as we carry groceries from the car Every time I pass him during my brief visits home to Corpus I think I really should sit with him Sit with him listen to him maybe even sing along when he switches to the keyboard like I did when I was little We especially loved the chorus of The th Street Bridge Song by Simon and Garfunkel All is groooo-vy But there are constantly meals to prepare errands to run t as to greet Before I know it Dad is driving me back to the airport In current times however I set down the groceries and pull up a chair Dad is practicing the rudiments but sensing my interest he starts striking the snare again and again revving it like an engine before volleying from tom to tom so that the sound swells and drops swells and drops His sticks move so fast they blur A thunderclap of cymbals detonates a kick pedal boom that blasts me through the cosmos Do you ever miss performing I blurt out once I ve recovered Well sure Sure I do Dad says His beard once thick and red has thinned and whitened Sunspots speckle his hands But I did it he says then flashes his million-watt grin With that he returns to his sticks In his ninth year of Alzheimer s Dad loses the ability to walk We decide as a family to move him into a neighborhood facility Once a month I fly to Corpus to discover something new he cannot do How to brush his teeth How to slip on his shoes How to feed himself How to talk This month it s eye contact His indigo eyes cannot find mine Desperate to connect I notice that while his hands have long since curled into fists there is still enough room for a drumstick I slide one in until it feels secure then raise up a book to meet it Nothing happens I tap the book against the drumstick for encouragement Still nothing Dad stares off into space for a moment before closing his eyes Mind racing I remember the chant he once sang to his students to teach a particular groove BOOM get a rat-trap bigger than a cat-trap BOOM I call out Dad s eyes flutter open A long moment passes He taps out the groove faintly but perfectly Drumming is no longer his livelihood It is his lifeline The night Mom texts me to come home I am at a dinner party miles away Another guest takes one look at my shaking shoulders and insists on driving It is nearly p m by the time I ve thrown mismatched clothes into a suitcase and locked up the house where I ve been writing for the past two weeks As we peel out of Marfa the night air fills with skunk I breathe in the musk like Dad would do Once when he was little his dog got sprayed while they were romping around the park He has claimed to love the stench ever since as it induced his favorite childhood memories Riding sleighs with his brother Reed at Christmas Pounding the beat in the high school marching band The Mexican in me knows this skunk is a sign then I spend the next miles trying not to interpret it We pull up to the care facility just after sunrise Daddy I m here I call out as I enter his room Dad s expression does not change but there is movement beneath the blanket I lift up a corner His fist rises as if in greeting I wrap one hand around it and caress his face with the other His indigo eyes are wide open Peering into them I chant words of love and gratitude He moans in response At a few point in the hours that ensue Mom drives home for a shower Holding our dad in our arms my sister Barbara and I play his favorite songs John Denver s Rocky Mountain High Judy Garland s Somewhere Over the Rainbow Frank Sinatra Then I cue up Simon Garfunkel s th Street Bridge Song Moments after the chorus ends All is groooo-vy a nurse walks in I peel my eyes away from Dad s to ask how much time we have left A couple of days she says His skin isn t mottling yet His legs are warm His vitals have stabilized There is still Barbara gasps I look down Dad is gone It is still dark the next morning when Alex my sister s husband knocks on the door of my childhood bedroom I roll out of bed and join him in the garage He is emerging down the drum kit Grandma Madge bought Dad various sixty-five years ago Prior to entering the care facility Dad played it every day I grab the throne turn it upside down and stare at the wingnuts When I was little I prided myself on knowing how to collapse every tripod in the kit The muscle of that memory has since atrophied I serve instead as the roadie grabbing the pieces Alex disassembles and packing them into the trunk From Weber Road we hang a left on Ocean Drive The bay stretches out before us black ink with white swells We pull into Cole Park and set up Dad s kit at the water s edge Alex a professional photographer grabs his Nikon and lenses We kneel before the kit waiting Completely the sun breaks the horizon Its fire illuminates the bay shimmering the cymbals Alex photographs the kit from every angle crouching tiptoeing lying flat on the damp grass before turning to me and nodding I have neither dressed nor groomed for this occasion but do as requested stepping into the camera frame Dad s last sticks crisscross the floor tom I take them into my hands The blond wood is splintered from years of grazing rims This is the closest I will ever come to holding his hands again A pair of early morning walkers pause and smile They expect a concert to spring from my hands A man on a bike stops to listen too I look down at the kit In a parallel universe I would rub these sticks together and thunder would follow Yet somehow in our forty-five years of co-existence I never took one lesson from Dad I don t even know the proper way to hold the sticks After an anxious moment I raise them above my head and smash them atop the high tom with enthusiasm with love but with nothing resembling skill My audience turns on their heels and walks away Nine days later we place the cherrywood box of Dad s ashes on the altar of a funeral home Seventy of his closest friends family and former students file into the pews behind us I give the eulogy Barbara and Alex light the candles My nephew Jordan gives the reading We pass around baskets of CDs from Dad s vast collection An hour from now Dad will receive a military sendoff at the Coastal Bend State Veterans Cemetery via a seven-gun salute But first we must give him his artist sendoff Art Above Everything One Woman s Global Exploration of the Joys and Torments of a Creative Life I play over the loudspeakers an excerpt from a jazz concert Dad played in Japan in Called Skin and Bones the song features a two-minute drum solo Dad utilizes the entire kit unbelievably fast but with total control manipulating the dynamics so that the sound swells and subsides swells and subsides Not even the saxophonists can keep up His long-ago audience cheers him on and soon enough the attendees at his funeral do too Next I screen a video of Dad playing a military march against the breakfast table He is wearing his navy cap and windbreaker It is our last Thanksgiving together After zooming in on his hands the camera pans over to those of his granddaughter Analina accompanying on doumbek Dad started teaching her on a practice pad when she was five years old When she definitively graduated to his kit the power transfixed her as did the pleasure By eleven she had a sparkly gold kit of her own which she played for hours each day Upon graduating from St Mary s she will take her sticks to the sea as Dad once did only aboard a Carnival cruise ship instead of a naval aircraft carrier In the video Analina never takes her eyes off her coach Though capable of thunder she abides by his slow steady pulse When the video ends she squeezes the hand of her girlfriend before rising from the pew Standing beneath the cherrywood box is Dad s longtime throne Analina takes her seat upon it Before her is a snare drum and a pair of sticks She slowly drops one stroke then another again and again until she has created an opening roll She segues into a sampling of the rudiments Dad taught her Paradiddles Flams Single and double stroke rolls that predate the American Revolution that signal to soldiers when to rise when to fire when to retreat And decisively the Downfall of Paris It is riveting especially when Analina incorporates Dad s signature move slipping a drumstick under her right armpit after striking the left stick on striking left again on before transferring the stick to her right hand for the strike on then removing the pit-stick with her left hand and slamming both sticks down on From there she transitions into her own improvisation Something like jazz but at a speed metal pace Her skill is atavistic Suddenly Analina dips her head Grief seems on the verge of overwhelming her until something visibly intervenes It straightens her spine steadying her gaze I don t believe in god or the afterlife I am not spiritual Analina will explain later But at the funeral when I was closing it out over my right shoulder where his ashes were he disclosed Bring it back now bring it back It was so insane I had never felt anything like that before in my life But I felt it Everyone in the funeral home feels it too My father is actively channeling his art through his granddaughter By and by their double strokes start slowing closing the roll But their final beat lands like a roar The post Art Is Immortality appeared first on The Texas Observer