Tell me, tell me, tell me
in loving memory of Dennis and Keyona
1975
When I was between sixth and seventh grade, the rock stations in Minneapolis transitioned to FM and became suddenly accessible in our little town fifty miles south. My sister and I paused from trips to the local pool or leaps through our family’s sprinkler to lay out. Our lawn chairs’ plastic mesh dug squares into our flesh as we spread baby oil on our pale northern skin and settled in for hours under the sun, fearless and unprotected, as the transistor radio introduced us to the eclectic soundscape city kids already knew. ABBA, 10cc, Led Zeppelin, Stevie Wonder, Queen, John Denver, Heart, the Piña Colada song, “Patches” - that was the soundtrack of our seatbeltless summers. One year, we found a grasshopper in a bottle of Pepsi, and they sent us a whole crate, which we rationed out like Halloween candy on All Souls’ Day.
Annie and I sprayed Sun In into each other’s hair as she sang along effortlessly with Rufus and Chaka Khan:
You ain't got no kind of feeling inside
I got something that'll sho nuff set yo' stuff on fire
Right before the refrain
Tell me something good
there was this crazy little bump, an extra half a beat. Annie didn’t worry about it, she just took it in, knew it, and sang
Tell me that you like it, yeah
As for me, newly chosen for the back of the big city youth orchestra’s second violin section and just beginning to tackle my first Schoenberg on the piano, I was an aspirational music dork even while trying to be bikini cool in my yard. I lay there baking in the sun, silently counting, on the trail of that extra half a beat, unable to let it be.
2021
“I FEEL!”
“I WANT!”
“I NEED!”
It’s the first day of rehearsal for La bohème at Opera Columbus. I’m excited about this production - great cast and director, cool designers, set in a local warehouse - and I’m worried, too. We were scheduled to do this last summer, but the pandemic wiped those performances off the map. Now, one year later, we’re on, but infections rise precipitously right before our rehearsal period begins. We come to Ohio in masks, and a Covid officer is there to monitor our staging for dangerous close contact. All that will slow down our already short timetable, just ten days of rehearsal before we cram ourselves into costumes and headsets for just a few tech rehearsals in the warehouse.
The new director, Dennis, is a complete sweetheart, but when he begins our first day with theater games, my heart sinks: every minute is precious.
Got no time is what you’re known to say
Dennis gets the group to energetically extend their arms toward each cast member in turn, prompting them with a couple of short phrases. John is up first.
“I FEEL!” we all shout at John, arms thrusting. He’s game, sort of: “I feel tired!”
Eyes smile above masks. “I want,” prompts Dennis, and we respond “I WANT!”
“I want coffee,” says John (smartass).
Amen, says Keyona, and people laugh. Keyona and John were Lauretta and Rinuccio last year in Gianni Schicchi. I still dream about conducting that orchestra, one of the last big nights before everything changed.
“I NEED!” Group energy would flag, except Dennis won’t let it. He thrusts his arms forward with hands outstretched, taking a step as he does, like a young, Black Jimmy Durante (ha-tcha!!). We all involuntarily shadow him.
“I need to sing without this damn mask.”
AMEN!! says Eric - Marcello this time, Simone in Schicchi, it’s basically a family. Everybody’s laughing now, heartily.
Next person, the same ritual begins again. It isn’t fast; almost fifteen minutes of our first session goes to this activity, and I have my eye on the clock the whole time. This is all fun, but there are staging goals to be met.
We meet them.
Next morning: “I FEEL!”
I think: dude. It’s not like there are
48 hours to each day
and yet, Dennis will not give up checking in on us.
What do you feel? want? need?
We tell each other, and we don’t. We joke, we’re taciturn, we’re unexpectedly vulnerable depending on the day. We meet the game with energy, we’re a little embarrassed by it. At first I think this is about breaking down people’s barriers, a kind of bullshitty theater exercise, but it’s almost immediately plain that Dennis just wants to know how people are that day, and to act accordingly in rehearsal from a place of respect and love. It’s my first time seeing that kind of leadership in person, and it comes at a time when we all need it so very much.
Dennis calls us in, gets us calling to each other, arms outstretched, thrusting energy out and taking the answers in, ready to catch and to hold whatever comes back from our call. With loss and uncertainty on all sides, he encourages us everyday to use our bodies and our voices to build a surrounding fortress.
We get ready to perform a story of young people moving fast, loving each other, seizing pleasure. They’re trying to make it out alive, and stopping to hold the one who will not.
2024
Eric reaches out to let me know that Keyona is in her final days. The cancer she had beaten between Schicchi and Bohème came back a few years ago while she and I were teaching at the same school in Ohio. Now, from faraway Texas, I post to her Facebook page so her family can read her the messages.
I don’t have a right to hurt like I do, but this news mixes with a recent major family loss and is amplified by what feels like most things sliding off the rails. Every time I hear another pre-election grifter talking about how following their program can prevent all disease, I want to scream.
What was the right thing my friend should have done?
Why am I stupidly alive after all those unprotected summers?
What I got will knock your pride aside
2025
My husband is practicing “Tell Me Something Good” for a gig in San Antonio.
“I love that song”, I tell him.
“It’s so hard to count, though,” he says. Aha!!
It feels good to laugh with him about music, and I always love comparing notes about our very different childhood experiences with it. He grew up in Detroit, surrounded by rock radio, aware of musical trends years before me. But it’s precious to connect our young memories of trying to un-puzzle musical structures and find our way inside. We’re two aging white people dorkily conducting and placing Stevie Wonder’s tune on the “and,” remembering a time when music was a path forward, when bands played live and recordings made money, and we believed that sung protest had changed the world.
Today
Eric reached out again. Dennis is gone: an accident with an electric scooter, unexpected, fast, and cruel. It’s another hard loss in a year full of them, but this year is also one of increasingly unimaginable suffering. It makes me hold my dead close and count my lucky stars.
I think of the transistor radio and the lawn chair, my reckless pursuit of a tan and days stretching out like they could never be counted. In this doomscrolling present, I head into the practice room to find the moment when time expands again. That’s where I can reconnect with the magic spilled out by sorcerers like Dennis who could wield minutes like loaves and fishes, multiplying them over and over again in the act of caring for a crowd. That’s where I seek the courage of Keyona, opening her strong, vulnerable heart to tell a story she lived to a crowd who might have mistaken the beauty of her voice for mere skill.
It’s only four years since that Bohème in Columbus. The world grows more precarious and crueler, damaged by grief and fear that we refuse to collectively acknowledge. But just a moment ago, this group was together, and there was enough time, time to spare actually. And things were going to get better.
Tell me something good.
thanks for reading.
Thank you for sharing this. Coincidentally, you mentioned learning Schoenberg in this post, and Ethan Iverson posted this morning recommending jazz students practice Schoenberg piano music this summer, and I just reread Charles Rosen's short book on Schoenberg last week. I all all goes well for you and Paul.