The sun is just coming
up. Outside there is one bird
singing. I know its call, which is
odd. If I was Gershwin, whom I wrote
about yesterday, I could probably write down the notes and the timing. There are three steady notes, a dip and then
a staccato repetition of six notes, much faster that follow. It’s odd because I’ve never been in San Diego
before and have no affinity whatsoever for local birds. This is a bird or the
cousin of a bird that I’ve heard all the time as a kid. It stands out because I never hear this bird,
in Beijing. Perhaps it is a some robin
or oriel or family of such that spans the whole of North America, but never
made it to Eurasia. I must ask my stepfather. He will know.
The other sound in the distance is also very familiar to my
American ears and, at least where I live in Beijing, not as pronounced: the
sound of the highway. The steady drone,
of the freeway. Far enough away so as
not to dominate, if you’re not paying attention. But impossible to ignore if you are quite and
concentrate. It hums steadily like some
churning in your arteries that carries on all the time and is such a constant
that one is oblivious. But I think that
sound is working on me and all of us, within earshot of the freeway, fastening
us to modernity.
My sister has published a wonderful book that I finished on
the flight over. “Revolutionary” by Alex
Myers traces the story of a Revolutionary War era servant who flees from her
home when attacked and manages to successfully disguise herself as a man and
join the Revolutionary Army. It is a
fictional account of the a real revolutionary war figure, Deborah Samson to
whom the author, who is himself transgender, is a distant relative, a descendent of this fascinating woman. He
renders her as smart, plausible and astutely 随机应变[1].
Writing earlier in the year I mentioned how readily I
dismiss the eighteenth century period as comparatively dull to what proceeded
and followed. And that I thought this
had something to do with the way in which we were over-taught the Revolutionary
War back at the bicentennial back when I was ten, in 1976. Well- intentioned teachers brought us to mock
farms that showed us what life was like and it all seemed rather cloistered and
unfortunate. Movies like Barry Lyndon
didn’t do anything to help that perception.
But Mr. Myers book, set as it is in my beloved Hudson
Valley, does wonders to reclaim the period for me. So Westchester was a hot bed of
loyalism. And the Hudson struck people
coming down from Massachusetts and Connecticut as mighty. And, surprise, beneath the Puritan rhetoric
people were lusty and confused and opportunistic. The Revolutionary War is probably as exotic
for my daughters as the Qing Dynasty was when I grew up. I can’t assume that it is more or less dull
or exciting than any other historical epoch.
But I think I will have my older one read this tale and see what she
thinks. It will be easy enough to visit
West Point or Yorktown, after the fact.
The post-free jazz trumpet player Roy Campbell was born two
hours up that freeway from where I am just now, in LA in 1952. And he passed, just this January, I’ve learned,
back not far from where Deborah Samson fought her battles, below Westchester,
in The Bronx. I’ve got a feisty 1994
recording on just now called “La Tierra Del Fuego Suite” from an album of the
same name. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/19/arts/music/roy-campbell-jr-avant-garde-jazz-trumpeter-dies-at-61.html
Just last January.
What a shame to have missed this gentleman. I’ll be in San Francisco
this weekend. It reminds me to go and
see who I can catch, the in the Bay where live jazz still happens.
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