Surprised by Joy: Calder, Beethoven, and August Wilson
How a chance encounter with the familiar led to a powerful epiphany.
Today’s post is about something that happened to me—but in order to describe it I need to tell what happened when Mattie Campbell first walked through that door.
As soon as I laid eyes on her, two thoughts popped into my mind. The first had to do with how young and pretty she was. The second thought said, “Oh-oh, here comes trouble.”
I would soon learn that Mattie Campbell had already seen trouble. She’d given birth to two babies that died a couple of months after they were born. Believing she was cursed, her husband left home and never came back.
By the time she reached the boarding house that day, she was a wounded pigeon with only one thing on her mind. How to make her husband come back. And she was willing to pay somebody to find him.
But while she was waiting
Mattie got distracted by a sweet-talking guitar-man living in that same boarding house. He told her he had a “12-pound hammer —and knew how to drive a nail.”
Mattie understood that this was not the real thing because the guitar-man told her up front that all he wanted to do was keep her company till she got her husband back.
Turns out, he was telling the truth—up to a point.
The next day, another pretty woman moved into that same boarding house. If Mattie was a home girl, this new tenant was a fancy woman. Red hat, red dress, red shoes, red lipstick. If Mattie was trouble with a small T, this new woman was trouble with a capital D—as in Damn!
Next thing you know, the guitar-man dumped Mattie. Dumped her like a proverbial hot potato. Ran off with that fancy woman without so much as goodbye, nice to know you, and thanks for your interest in my 12-pound hammer. Poor little Mattie woke up the next morning, and he was gone.
Naturally, a thing like that puts a hurt on you.
And Mattie was already carrying a lot of hurt. So when she realized what happened and went down to breakfast that morning, she didn’t have a thing to say. She just sat there looking pitiful. After everyone else ate their food and left, poor Mattie was still sitting there. All by herself.
That’s when Bertha, an older married woman whose husband inherited and ran the boarding house, stopped washing dishes and tried to talk sense to her.
“You tries too hard,” she said. “And you can’t understand why it don’t work for you. Trying to figure it out don’t do nothing but give you a troubled mind. Don’t no man want a woman with a troubled mind. You get all that trouble off your mind, and just when it look like you ain’t never gonna find what you want, you look up and it’s standing right there.”
“How will I know it’s the right person?” Mattie asked.
“When there’s a lot of laughter and a lot of love,” said the wise old Bertha.
If any of this sounds familiar
that’s because these people are characters in Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, by the late great African American playwright August Wilson.
This powerful and cathartic play is about infinitely more than a younger woman being counseled in matters of love by an older one. But today, I’m relying on that scene between Bertha and Mattie to help me describe what I really want to say today.
Sometimes I also “tries too hard” in life as well as love. And my own personal experience tells me Bertha was telling the truth about love. For me, the most rewarding relationships came unsought and unexpected into my life. In my case, this knowledge was mostly the result of trial and error. I probably could have saved a lot of time—and a lot of heartache—if I’d just listened more carefully to The Supremes.
You can’t hurry love.
You just have to wait.
Love don’t come easy.
It’s a game of give and take.
But it’s not my romantic experience I want to talk about here. It’s my inner one.
You see, I like to wander about with a camera hanging around my neck. It’s a hobby I picked up after years spent working with photojournalists and TV cameramen. Photography gets me out of my head, where I have so many words swirling around—and into life, where all the images are. For me, it’s a more relaxing form of creativity than writing sentences, which I also love to do.
Since the pandemic, though, I have felt confined by the sameness of suburban life. The peace and quiet are good for writing, but the predictable sameness of life outside the city fails to inspire me. Thanks to the two- and three-hour rush hour where I live, driving to the city and back requires a huge chunk of writing time. So, I rarely do that unless I really need to.
Sadly, my Nikon sometimes sits for days
without so much as a glance from me. I’ve even thought about selling it to someone who might put it to better use. But I know I’d miss it terribly if I did. I’d be giving up the potential to take a photograph with something other than my phone.
Fortunately, I do grab the Nikon when I travel. When I was in Chicago for my uncle’s 100th birthday in December, I took it with me everywhere. A big wide-open city like Chicago is a creative aphrodisiac. Suddenly, my dormant hobby was alive and kicking again. I saw photographs everywhere. And I took a lot, especially at night. It felt good to know my lens could not only handle the limited light—it could also do some really cool things with it.
I once heard Kurt Vonnegut say
it’s good to take pictures, draw, and practice other forms of creativity. It doesn’t matter if you’re any good at it, he said. Doing it is enough. Because creativity is soul-growing work. That’s a very inspirational thought. And though he didn’t say it, I have found that the more you put your creativity to work, the more your creativity works for you. Over time, you get better at it.
Anyway, at the end of my trip
after I had my fill of photographing Chicago’s people and architecture, I realized I didn’t have enough cash to leave a tip for the housekeeping staff at my hotel. So before checking out, I dashed over to the nearest ATM, which happened to be at the Chase Banking Tower on Dearborn.
By this time, I was in “get-her-done” mode. Finish packing, call the Uber, catch the plane. But I really didn’t want to check out without leaving a tip for housekeeping. So I was really hoofing it down Dearborn that morning.
When all of a sudden I ran into an old friend
—Alexander Calder. There he was in front of the Kluczynski Federal Building disguised as a gigantic flamingo. Seeing him stopped me cold. The sun was shining, but The Hawk was flying, and I was shivering without a jacket. But I just stood there filled with joy. Because Calder’s Flamingo is majestic. It’s 53-feet tall, weighs 50 tons, and it’s not just painted red—it’s painted vermillion.
During my many visits to Chicago over the years, I must have passed this beauty a few dozen times. But I had never really seen it until then.
In that moment, I experienced a euphoria I can only compare to falling in love. It was better than drugs or alcohol, a Mercedes Benz, or anything else I might buy or try for the sake of feeling good.
This was different from all that. Because it arrived unsought and unexpected. The way wise old Bertha told young Mattie Campbell love would come if she just stopped trying so hard. I didn’t have my Nikon with me in that moment, but all the shooting I’d done during the previous days had apparently primed me for seeing.
One door opens another
and that door sometimes opens into another world. Seeing the Chicago skyline framed through the wide vermillion arcs of Calder’s giant flamingo, I thought of Beethoven’s five piano concertos. Could almost hear them in my head.
A big-city skyline is dominant. All that glass and steel and concrete. All those high-rising stories reaching into the sky. It’s not only dominant, it’s domineering. Like organized society can be with its rules and conventions, its why’s and wherefores, its HR offices, its tiny cubicles and sardine-can people-movers. All of which may or may not be necessary.
But when you look at those skyscrapers
while standing under the Flamingo —instead of rushing past it, as I must have done so often—the power of the collective no longer feels quite so domineering. Because now the view is framed by the individual. Not just the individual artist, Alexander Calder. But by you yourself while you’re standing there looking up and experiencing this magical release.
The tension between the individual and the collective
really shows up in Beethoven’s five piano concertos. That’s why I could practically hear the music as I stood there. In the first three concertos, the orchestra begins the music, and the soloist comes in with his part down the road. But in the fourth concerto, the music begins with the piano, and the orchestra joins in later. Thus, the individual asserts himself over the collective from the very beginning.
And by Beethoven’s fifth piano concerto, the orchestra makes the first sound. But it’s a single note only, which serves to introduce the emperor-like soloist who is clearly and powerfully in charge. No question. (Watch the first five minutes of Lang Lang playing the piece below, and you’ll see what I mean.)
Rushing past Calder’s Flamingo in the past, I was a captive of the collective, another faceless gray man in the crowd, hardly seeing the gift the artist had left for me. But standing under it, I finally accepted the treasure he wanted me to have. Freedom from the collective, the freedom to be myself—and a lasting memory of what it feels like to be surprised by joy.
But does that matter?
I think it does. It matters because in 1938 Emily Webb came back from the dead and was allowed to relive just one day. A day she could see exactly as it happened. But no one could see her. She chose her 12th birthday, which occurred 14 years before her death. Do you remember what she said when she returned to Grovers Corners in Our Town? Of course you do. It’s famous.
Oh, Mama, just look at me one minute as though you really saw me…It goes so fast. We don’t have time to look at one another. I didn’t realize. All that was going on in life, and we never noticed…Good-bye, Grover’s Corners. Mama and Papa. Good-bye to clocks ticking. And Mama’s sunflowers. And food and coffee. And new-ironed dresses and hot baths. And sleeping and waking up. Oh, earth, you’re too wonderful for anybody to realize you.
Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it? – every, every minute?
The answer she received was No. And upon hearing it, she concluded that all human beings are just blind people.
To be able to see, really see, for just one moment while we still have the chance. And to have that happen when you least expect it. I’d say that matters. Which is why I had to write about it. Had to tell you these unearned encounters with the sublime really do happen. I know how it feels because it happened to me. Do you know that feeling too?
©2024 Andrew Jazprose Hill
Thanks for reading/listening.
The day after I wrote this piece, I looked out the window and noticed a young woman walking her dog. It was a gloriously beautiful day with the just-washed look that follows recent rain. She wore denim cut-offs, sneakers, and a polo shirt. Her shiny black hair cascaded down her back like an obsidian waterfall. The dog scampered about at the end of her leash, and she tripped several times as she passed my home. But it wasn't the dog that tripped her. She was looking at her phone the entire time. I realized then that I had written this piece for her though I have no idea who she is.
Wow! This hit so many shiny buttons for me. Loved the story of Mattie and now I want to read that play. Loved the part about she "tries too hard." Don't we all at different times of our lives. In one way it shows how earnest and eager we are, and that's a good thing. But it's like you said when we aren't trying so hard that things will drop unbidden like grace into our laps. And then the part about creativity being soul-growing work. Whether we're good at it or not, it's good for us. So true.
And that quote from Our Town. I played a small part in that during a high school, but that sense of not wanting to let all these small ordinary happenings in my life to slip by me unnoticed that has been so important in my life, it may have been spurred by that play.
Finally, Beethoven's concerto and that piano piece--priceless. I have a baby grand, a present to myself because I loved playing the piano as a child and always wanted to play again. But I kept putting it off until I watched Margaret Argerich playing piano with her whole body on You-tube and all that wild gray hair flowing around her. That's when I decided it's not too late for me. I'll never be able to play like her. But I can play. And I can sway. And I do.