About two decades ago I got a new job, director of a large art production department in a storied New York advertising firm. I represented a demographic premiere (super young, and let’s just say: etc.) never before seen in a position like that.
Inside the ad industry, times were politically rife. Inside our building, the company was evolving as fast as mosquito blood in a Jurassic Park lab.
Thus this new job was a hornets’ nest on top of an active volcano, so with very little useable precedent, I just tried to do the best I could with who I was. In I walk, all One Good Suit and Speaks So Well, and I was The Boss.
My department was a collection of employees from different eras, over half of them nearly twice my age, and I was 35.
This wouldn’t have been a thing except many of them admitted, due to the math of when they’d been born, that they’d never really spoken to a black person.
So we talked. Progress was made. Bridges built. A few early retirements were immediately taken, but not that many.
One of my department managers cultivated an old Hollywood look, an elegant vampire; dapper and curiously alert. He and I treated each other like two head waiters from fancy restaurants meeting each other after work for a cocktail: I would ask something politely and he would answer even more politely and I would thank him even more politely than that, and then we would slowly nod in unison.
One day, I walked into his office and he was the only one there. It must have been near a holiday, not many folks were in. I had just gotten a first generation iPod, it was amazing, there must have been 200 songs on there, and I had it clipped on my belt with this fashionable leatherish case thing. He politely asked how I liked it, and I (more politely) said it was a miracle, a jukebox in my pocket.
He asked what music I was listening to.
I told him that I had just gotten a new album that was amazing, Judy Garland at Carnegie Hall, and her voice was so incredibly powerful and did he know how small she was for that huge voice to come out and the arrangements were so electric that I got goosebumps every time I heard “Come Rain or Come Shine”.
And he didn’t answer back. His face was frozen, and I MEAN frozen. One more millisecond and it would have been weird, like call an ambulance weird. He audibly inhaled.
“I was at that concert.”
I, was, starstruck. By proxy, or whatever, but wow.
“Wow! Seriously?”
“Yes.” Inhale. “I sat in the back of the balcony, at almost the very top, but you could hear every single note. I’ve heard that album many times, but if you think she sounds good there, you cannot imagine how incredible she sounded live. It was, impossible; she was this small, almost frail looking person on the stage, but when she sang…”
And for a breath or two, BOTH of us were there.
That gentleman left the agency a couple of years later: the aging parent he was caring for had passed, and so he at last retired and moved to Florida. His last words to me were, “Thank you. This has been an interesting adventure. Good luck to you.” I thanked him and we nodded, slowly, in unison.
Two years later I met with an acquaintance that knew my elegant employee, and asked after him.
“Oh, he loves Florida,” the man told me, “he’s always wanted to move there, he can really relax and let his hair down.”
“Really?” I said. “He always seemed a bit Downton Abbey for his hair to get any longer.”
“Yeah, it was really hard for him up here. But he said that you were the first supervisor who accepted that he was gay. I don’t even think his mother knew. But he felt very comfortable working for you.”
For the record, I actually didn’t know that. Our one deep conversation was when I barged into his office and went crazy about this concert that he had actually seen. I’m sure he knew I wasn’t faking all that emotion as we stood there, silent, he lost in memory and I in historical awe.
But maybe that’s when he thought I was letting him know that I knew.
It is the beginning of Black History Month here in the United States, and I write a column called Lower Black Pain, and this is the story I choose to lead with? Even given the statistical rarity of FIVE THURSDAYS THIS FEBRUARY (which won’t happen again until 2029) it does seem, on the surface, a bit of a zen arrow in terms of its subject matter.
This column is about being black, and I am not (clinically) delusional, and I do understand that all of my experiences are culturally weighted, but for me that weight is lifted through moments like the one I described with my co-worker.
In my experience, harmony has proven the key to everything, seeking it and seeking to create it. I’ve geeked out with people quite obviously culturally opposed to me about comic books, fishing with my Grandfather, dry turkey at Thanksgiving, old tv shows: each time creating a conversation that ended with two people with quote unquote nothing in common smiling and slowly nodding.
Nods mean yes. Yes is good. There is so much no. I understand the struggle from inside it, but I don’t have whatever’s necessary to be a cultural war correspondent. At best, this column attempts to chronicle peace, even on the battlefield.
Though, one of my employees did ask me to announce myself from outside of her office with three crisp knocks before entering. I did so, and by that Christmas, I got her to stop clutching her purse to her chest.
Harmonic Resonance.