Tag Archives: Music

Friends in All Places

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“The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable.” — Kurt Vonnegut (1922–2007). Acclaimed American novelist and satirist whose works blended humor, humanity, and sharp social insight.

“Wouldn’t it be funny if you bumped into someone you know!”

I knew it was a longshot. Gary was born in Minnesota, moved on to Illinois, then to Tennessee, and then to Virginia where we live now.

“I doubt it,” he whispered. “But you might. You taught here”

He was right.

“But that was ages ago.“

It had been many years, in fact, since I had taught at the Fauquier Campus of Laurel Ridge Community College. Besides, we were at St. James Episcopal Church in downtown Warrenton.

We softened our laughter.

Shortly thereafter I glanced at the row ahead and sitting there was someone I knew.

“You’ll never believe it, but right in front of us is Eileen Rexrode, the former administrative assistant to the Humanities division at the college. I’d recognize the back of her head anywhere.”

A shoulder tap brought a gasp of joyful recognition, introductions–Eileen and Gary–and the news that another colleague from years gone by–Mary Ellen Welch who ran our bookstore–was sitting at the end of the row.

After a short chat with her, I settled down and began to focus on the printed program. I was hoping to see a familiar name–maybe another friend–among the singers, but I didn’t. However, I recognized Kristina Sheppard, artistic director of The Valley Chorale, whose name I remembered from a holiday concert last year.

Around us, the sanctuary slowly filled with sound. A piano tested a chord. Someone behind us turned a program page. Voices drifted out from somewhere unseen—scales, fragments, breaths finding pitch. Instruments tuned in brief uncertain bursts before settling into harmony. The room seemed to hover in that familiar moment between arrival and beginning.

I looked down again at the printed program.

ACT ONE, PART ONE: AMERICAN DREAMERS

“Every great dream begins with a dreamer.” — Harriet Tubman

Even before the first note was sung, I found myself smiling at the program in my hands. There was Harriet Tubman leading off the evening, still showing people the way after all these years.

Then another familiar friend appeared. Langston Hughes with his “Hold Fast to Dreams.” I have carried him with me for much of my adult life. Long after classrooms ended and lectures faded, his voice remained—wise, lyrical, hopeful, wounded, observant. Some writers stay on the page. Others take up residence within us.

And then came “No Time,” that haunting old camp meeting spiritual whose echoes linger somewhere as deep in my memory as in the American memory. The title alone summoned distant revivals, worn hymnals, wooden benches, and voices rising together into the night air. Some music entertains. Some music remembers.

Later came “Will the Circle Be Unbroken.” By then the pattern had become unmistakable. Everywhere I looked, I was running into old friends.

ACT ONE, PART TWO: FROM SEA TO SHINING SEA

Where we love is home—home that our feet may leave, but not our hearts.” — Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

Another old friend was waiting for me at the opening of the second section: Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

For years, Holmes has occupied a distinguished corner of my mental world—not merely as one of the most cited Supreme Court justices in American history, but as a powerful voice for civil liberties and the free exchange of ideas. Even now, his words still carry the calm authority of someone who understood that democracy depends upon allowing differing voices to be heard.

And then, just below him, another name stirred immediate recognition: Harriet Monroe.

My heart lifted when I saw her “The Blue Ridge.” The title alone felt close to home here in Virginia. But it was Monroe herself who truly drew me in. Long before most readers recognized them, she had opened the doors of Poetry Magazine to emerging writers like Ezra Pound and Robert Frost, helping shape the course of modern American poetry almost single-handedly. More than a founder, she became a quiet midwife to literary possibility, offering countless poets their first gentle nudge toward recognition.

By now, the afternoon had become something more than a concert. Everywhere I looked, old voices were rising again.

ACT ONE, PART THREE: WE GATHER TOGETHER

“Not until I went into the churches of America and heard her pulpits flame with righteousness did I understand the secret of her genius and power.” — Alexis de Tocqueville

By the third section, another deeply familiar voice appeared: Alexis de Tocqueville.

Few outsiders have ever understood America—or Americans—more perceptively than Tocqueville. Nearly two centuries ago, he looked past our politics and possessions and saw something more enduring: our restless idealism, our fierce independence, our faith communities, our belief that ordinary people could gather together and shape the moral character of a nation. Even now, his observations feel less like history than diagnosis.

Then came “I’m Going Home,” and my heart responded immediately.

I have long loved the old Sacred Harp tradition with its rawness, gravity, and communal force. The music does not perform itself delicately for an audience. It rises. It calls. It remembers. Even the title alone seemed to carry generations within it—voices lifted in wooden churches, harmonies swelling without ornament, faith carried not by perfection but by conviction.

Another old companion appeared: the African American spiritual “I Know I’ve Been Changed.”

No matter how many times I encounter these spirituals, they still move through me with unusual force. They are sorrow and endurance braided together. Survival transformed into music. Hope refusing to disappear. Some melodies entertain the ear. These seem to travel straight to the soul.

I was no longer merely reading a concert program. I was moving through a lifetime of voices that had shaped the way I understood literature, history, faith, music, and America itself.

ACT TWO, PART FOUR: THAT’S ENTERTAINMENT!

“Music must reflect the thoughts and aspirations of the people and the time. My people are American. My time is today.” — George Gershwin

Another familiar presence greeted me as the second act began: George Gershwin.

Who among Americans does not know Gershwin? More than any other American composer, he resides not merely in our musical history, but deep within our collective emotional memory. His melodies drift through concert halls, films, jazz clubs, television commercials, elevators, and childhood piano lessons alike. Even people who think they do not know Gershwin often do.

And what a marvelous quote to introduce this section. Music, Gershwin insisted, must reflect “the thoughts and aspirations of the people and the time.” Sitting there in that church in Warrenton, Virginia, listening to a concert that moved from spirituals to Sacred Harp to Broadway to jazz, it struck me that the entire afternoon had been built around that very idea.

But the title that reached out and grabbed me most forcefully was “It Don’t Mean a Thing (If It Ain’t Got That Swing).”

Oddly enough, my mind traveled immediately back to 2011 and an Evening of Poetry at the White House hosted by Barack Obama. Introducing Rita Dove, Obama remarked:

“As Rita Dove says, ‘If poetry doesn’t affect you on some level that cannot be explained in words, then the poem has not done its thing.’ Also known as: it don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing.”

I can still hear the unified laughter that followed his aside.

The section closed with “Somewhere” from West Side Story, perhaps Stephen Sondheim’s most enduring song, and perhaps more poignant now than ever. Its longing for a place “for us” has lost none of its ache or urgency in an America still struggling toward tolerance, understanding, and peace.

ACT TWO, PART FIVE: LAND OF THE FREE, HOME OF THE BRAVE

“This great nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper.” — Franklin D. Roosevelt

The final section of the concert opened with the steady, reassuring voice of Franklin D. Roosevelt.

No American president ever spoke to the fears and hopes of ordinary citizens more directly than Roosevelt. Through depression and war, he reminded Americans not only that democracy could survive hardship, but that courage, resilience, and shared sacrifice still mattered. Reading his words, I could not help thinking how deeply they still resonate in our own uncertain moment. “This great nation will endure,” he insisted. The sentence reached across time itself.

Then came “America the Beautiful.” And truly—whose heart does not swell upon hearing it? Katharine Lee Bates managed to capture something rare in American life: patriotism without boasting and affection without blindness. Her lyrics celebrate not conquest, but aspiration—grace, brotherhood, generosity, and the hope that America might continue becoming worthy of its own ideals. Even now, the song carries enormous emotional force, especially when sung by many voices gathered together.

The section closed with “Homeland,” its title alone quietly gathering together everything the afternoon had been exploring all along: memory, belonging, community, endurance, and love of place. The concert no longer felt merely performative. It felt communal—almost liturgical in its affirmation of what Americans, at their best, still share.

As the final applause faded inside St. James Episcopal Church, I found myself thinking again about the title of the program: Of Thee I Sing: A Choral Love Letter to America.

It seemed to me that Kristina Sheppard and The Valley Chorale had quietly created something larger than a concert. Through spirituals, Broadway, folk traditions, poetry, jazz, and the voices of dreamers, reformers, composers, and presidents, the afternoon became a reminder of the many voices that continue to shape American life.

Not always in agreement. Not always in harmony. But still in conversation.

In these politically turbulent times, when democratic principles can sometimes feel fragile, the program struck me as a gentle and much-needed reminder of who we have been at our best for the 250 years of independence we’re celebrating this year as Americans—and who we still might become.

The afternoon reminded me that a lifetime spent reading, listening, teaching, and simply paying attention slowly fills the world with familiar voices. Some belong to the people we know personally. Others arrive through literature, music, history, faith, and art. Yet over time the distinction begins to blur. The writers, composers, poets, teachers, and dreamers who move us deeply enough eventually become part of our ongoing conversation with life itself.

At the beginning of the concert, Gary had whispered, “I doubt it. But you might.” As it turned out, he was right. I did bump into people I knew.

And I suspect nearly everyone there encountered an old friend somewhere along the way.

Show Me What You Wrote

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“The act of writing is the act of discovering what you believe.”

— David Hare (b. 1947.) British playwright and screenwriter, whose works probe truth, belief, and the human condition.

Sometimes in the hush of evening, when the lamp spills its amber light and the world grows gentle, I watch. His head tilts slightly, caught by the glow, and suddenly, the years loosen their grip. The lines that life has written across his face soften; the jaw loosens, light as breath; the mouth, so often set in quiet thought, curves with the ease of youth. His eyes, clear and steady, seem to brighten from within, carrying a spark that belonged first to a boy and then to a young man. Slowly, the present thins. I see him slipping into his past. Fifty. Thirty. Twenty. And then, for the briefest moment, the man beside me becomes the eighteen-year-old he once was—time erasing each layer, revealing what was always there: the young man, quietly returning.

As I glance elsewhere in the room, I see an artifact from his past—one that has crossed time and threshold to find its place in ours: the grand piano. Massive and unyielding, it took four men to wrestle it off the truck and ease it through the doorway. Yet here it rests, polished wood catching the lamplight, waiting.

At this moment, I still hear the sound as his hands moved across the piano earlier in the day—measured, assured, easy. And I heard “For All We Know” rise into the room, each note carrying a hush that reached backward in time. The melody was not just music; it was memory, and it wrapped itself around him, around me, around the room itself. Ruby retreated to the bed, but not fully at rest. She leaned forward, her body stretched long, her head angled as far as she dared—as though even she knew the swell of sound carried us into places layered and deep. She held herself at the edge, cautious not to tumble into the wandering past, into the chasms of memory, beckoning us toward knowing and truth.

Elsewhere in the room, near the piano, another layer from the past peels back. Hanging on the wall is a sepia-toned etching—Salena Gazebo, number 8 of only 200, signed by the artist Carl Johnson. The lines are delicate, deliberate: the curving path, the quiet trees, the pavilion standing open like an invitation. It feels less like a structure than a memory, as if the paper itself breathed it into being. When I look at it, I sense not just the gazebo, but the moments once lived beneath it—the warmth of gatherings, the hush of twilight, the whispered vows of past lovers who lingered there. Dream and truth blur, as though the etching had captured not a place at all but a pulse of longing and a flicker of knowledge, carrying us softly toward knowing and truth.

In another room, on top of the chest of drawers, rest family photographs. Portraits, a chorus of faces gathered through years, smiling, standing, caught in stillness. They look out across the room with a quiet weight, less about who they are than the collective feel they give: belonging, continuity, the insistence that life moves forward even as it circles back. They do not need names to speak; their presence alone is enough.

Nearby, on a table, sits something smaller, more ordinary yet no less enduring: an iron toast holder. His grandmother’s. On his mother’s side? Or, maybe, his father’s? The lineage matters less than the fact that he kept it, carried it through moves and years, never discarding, never forgetting. The metal holds more than memories of bread he may never have seen toasted. It holds a thread of persistence, a reason to keep even the smallest objects close.

In the dining room, on a side table, another artifact gleams in silver relief: The Last Supper, framed, gifted to his maternal grandparents on their fiftieth wedding anniversary. Sacred and commemorative at once, it shimmers with devotion, not only to faith but also to family. The silver has traveled down through generations, carried into his keeping, held as though letting go would diminish more than memory. It is a marker of continuity, of reverence, of love that lasted long enough to be honored.

And then there is the little boy riding a dog—a keepsake that belonged first to his father when his father was a child, before his life was cut tragically short. A small porcelain figure, a child astride a loyal companion, frozen in time. Yet in that figure is more than innocence; it is a bridge across absence, a way of knowing a father he never met. It survived when the man did not, passed on to him as both wound and inheritance, loss and gift. That little boy on the dog rides still through the years, carrying ache and legacy.

Through these artifacts, I glimpse the man I already know and love, his story unfolding in fragments that matter. In the little boy riding the dog, I see both wound and inheritance, a bridge across absence. In the Last Supper, I see reverence, devotion, love honored and passed along. In the iron toast holder, I see endurance, the instinct to keep and carry even what is small. In the family photographs, I see continuity, lives pressed together across generations. In the drawing of the gazebo, I see invitation and hush—the twilight blur where dreams fade into memory and truth. And in the grand piano, I hear the melody that threads them all together—still rising, still echoing, ever playing in the quiet of his soul.

These artifacts matter to him and, now, to me. I could point to others. But I won’t. Yet one more remains, quiet and insistent, the truest of them all—not carved in silver or pressed into porcelain, but carried in ink and idea. His 1965 high-school graduation essay. He was co-valedictorian. He was eighteen.

It rests inside his high-school yearbook, the Bluejay, its cover deep blue and gilt, its pages a mosaic of faces, cheers, and world events already turning into history. And there, slipped carefully between those pages, lies his speech—typed, carried through six decades of moves and seasons. The paper holds its shape, and the words stand sure, preserved as though waiting for their moment to be read again. In its keeping, I see more than memory; I see devotion—the instinct to preserve not only what he did but who he was becoming. It is an artifact, yes, but it is also a testament, held safe in the place that marked his youth and carried forward into the man he is now.

I smiled and whispered:

“Show me what you wrote.”

He lifted the page, holding it in his hands, just as he held it onstage sixty years ago. Soft at first, his voice grew firmer as he returned to the beliefs that had steadied him even then: that learning gives life its shape, that responsibility gives it weight, that hope gives it breath, and that perseverance gives it endurance. Sixty years have passed, yet as he read, I heard not only the boy addressing his classmates but the man beside me—the same convictions intact, the same spirit enduring.

In those moments, as his voice stretched back and returned to me across the decades, I realized that of all his artifacts, this was the richest. My partner, Gary T. Knutson, wrote those words in youth. They carried him into a future he could not yet imagine. And they anchor him still—steadying him in the present, guiding him toward tomorrow. The piano may sing, the photographs may remember, the silver may gleam, the porcelain boy may still ride—but they can only point, only hint. His own words, fragile on paper yet alive in spirit, opened the door wider. They revealed not just what he kept but who he was becoming, and who he still is.

That is the power of words—not just Gary’s words, but all our words. They outlast objects, outshine heirlooms, outlive even memory. In them can be found who we are when all else has been stripped away—values, beliefs, longings, the essence of self, laid bare. And more than that, words do not simply keep; they move. They persuade and console, ignite and endure. They reveal who we were, and they shape who we might yet become. That is their gift, and their power—becoming, in a way, stronger than stone.

Show me what you wrote, and I’ll see who you are—then, now, and still becoming. For words outlast memory and outshine the heirlooms we keep. They carry the essence. They carry the longing. And they proclaim the truths we’ve always held.