September 15, 2009
Tonight was the first night of auditions at the Lynchburg City Cemetery. Thirteen candidates from the local neighborhood arrived at the chapel at sundown this evening, while the westerly descending light illuminated the stained glass and cast a prismatic glow upon us all, sitting stiffly upright in the elderly dark wood pews.
The readings were truly exceptional – they all inhabited the roles seamlessly, and with a grace, beauty, and earnest sensitivity that made me feel quite honored to be in the room.
For two hours, we hung within a complete suspension of time, as the centuries conflated upon themselves, and I sat mesmerized as the neighborhood folks conjured the dead into the living, and brought real people back into being. These are not ghost stories, and it isn’t theme park kitsch – these roles are brought out from oral histories and public records, and are really quite resonant. The scripts themselves are written with a wry lyricism, and must be a joy for the actors to perform.
Already thrilled to be an honorary judge, I was held completely rapt for the entire two hours, and in fact would be there still had I been allowed full autonomy. Mostly, I wanted to wrap myself deep inside the voices and their stories.
After twelve years in California and even more years spent in exodus from the South of my childhood, I can go nearly a year without hearing what Ted so aptly and exquisitely calls natural language.
Others may know this through the term “southern accent.”
But what natural language does for words, oh, it’s enough to dissolve my full soul into sugar water and warm milk.
Although there are only twenty six letters in the English language, each time a letter is spoken or written, a new one is born.
Before they are called down, the baby vowels and the baby consonants talk amongst themselves, a little humbled, a little hushed – do you think we’ll be called down to the South?
They knit their crooks and wrinkles and swoops and loops and dips and dots. Their humps and bumps and cul de sacs and triggers.
They unfurl their bends and swings and furrows and come sit out on their verandahs.
When in deep concentration, a P looks more like an S.
They all sigh, especially the vowels. The a moans a little with longing – appearing suddenly rather similar to a k.
The South, they say, and then fall silent into dreaming.
When a vowel arrives in the mouth of a Southerner, it practically gains immortality.
It lasts so long on the lips, it becomes a celestial letter, the drawl of an angel, it lives not for a moment but for forever.
aaaaaaaah haaaaaaave beeeeeeeen miiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiissin’ yooooouuuuuuu.
That is what the vowels sang to me at the cemetery tonight, inside the chapel, below the setting sun.
But I had a judging job to do, and the spell worked its way into my work in the most charmingly disarming of ways. The beautiful voices of the actors. There should be roles for every one, so that more letters are caused to be born in this way.
And what am I judging? Well, I’m not so much judging as appreciating, savoring, and enjoying.
In October, a candlelight tour of the Cemetery will feature historically accurate performances of notable folks buried there, standing alongside their grave by lantern light and relating the remarkable experiences of their lives and deaths.
Tonight I will share a few of my absolute very favorite deceased Lynchburgians whose roles are to be cast within the next twenty-four hours (I will add their names later, as I can’t recall them right now):
(1) A midwife who lived right alongside the Cemetery was prosecuted by the State of Virginia for declaring a “mulatto” baby as “white” on the birth certificate – tormented and harassed, she had a nervous breakdown and was institutionalized. So far, every woman who auditioned brought different nuances to this part, and chills to the audience as she read the letter from the State condemning the woman, and unleashing criminal charges on the interracial couple who had broken Virginia’s anti-miscegenation laws.
(2) A prostitute who threw herself into the James River and drowned shortly after her younger sister – a prostitute at the same brothel – committed suicide by laudanum. Their father walked on foot sixty miles from Appomattox to attend the drowned daughter’s funeral. The next day, her body was found in a barrel at the train station – she had been dug up and sold to the University of Virginia for medical experiments. Again, the performances were phenomenal.
(3) A Reverend and the Baby’s Nurse. In a house on the corner near the Cemetery, a cradle would rock itself, and the Reverend charged Beelzebub with the activity. BEELZEBUB, BE GONE! rang through the chapel many times this evening, and upon one pronouncement, the doorknob came right off the door. We felt chastened, and elated, and chilled to the bone. Ted is charged with reattaching the knob, and I hope that it repeats its performance tomorrow night. Perhaps next year, other doorknobs will audition for the role of Beelzebub’s Doorknob.
(4) The Soda Shop Man, who mis-calibrated the pressure on the CO2 valve, and was killed when the cylinder propelled him into the plaster ceiling, and then smashed him down into the marble floor. He was a pioneer of recreational medicinal beverages, but his life was tragically cut short. There was a lot of variety and nuance in this evening’s monologues – it remains to be seen what new interpretations lie ahead.
I have previously introduced Arthur, the Wicker Coffin Cat.
Now Tele, the Cremation Ceremony Cat.
As we left the chapel in nearly complete darkness, we noticed Tele sitting perched on the windowsill. She had observed the entire evening’s auditions from outside. Sadly, I know not her opinion. I sense her intuition would be preternaturally skillful.
Tele faithfully attends every funeral at the Pond, where folks scatter ashes, since burials are no longer allowed. Tele sits with the grieving survivors for the duration of the funeral. Many bring photographs of the deceased, and set them on the ground so that she will curl up on the image. She has been doing this since she was a kitten.
After mewing with me for some time, and getting my signature Kitty Gum Rubbing, she went to the corner of the window and rubbed her head in some cobwebs. Sure enough, a spider comes tearing out and runs right onto the top of her head. Were that I were lying, but in truth I am not: it was a little baby black widow spider, and it perched itself there on the top of her, head, bouncing a little, enjoying the night air, the altitude, the softness of her fur, gazing up at the stars companionably, the red geometry of her back a little mellowed and relaxed in the darkness.
After a moment, the spider crawled down her head and rested for a moment along the roots of her whiskers before delicately picking its way past her fangs to her clever pointed chin, where upon it rappelled tidily down past her chest to dangle – so winsome – about two feet below the windowsill.
Suspended.
All their eyes looked at me, twinkling in the wee sliver of moon that barely illuminated the stained glass, the hourglass, and a few tombstones luminous in the distance.
Tonight’s portraits have been made possible by the cemetery goats, who can’t help but be marvelous in every way, even the unimaginable ways. I have come to the studied conclusion that everything in the Old City Cemetery is better than its equivalent elsewhere, which is particularly significant when you consider there is no equivalent elsewhere. So not only is everything here unique, it is also vastly superior, and nothing anywhere could possibly ever be as magnificent there as it would be here.
Including goats.
These goats have cleared several acres of ruined cemetery that humans and lawnmowers would have truly died trying.
I was in a somewhat rotten mood at my arrival at the cemetery this morning – prior to the three events that made today one of the best ever in my whole life: an invitation to guest judge the cemetery audition, a black widow spider riding on the head of the Scatter Garden Cat, and the goats, the blessed goats.
I goat-talked to them for quite some time, and they all gathered around in a circle and were quite startlingly present. They require a certain savvy, because they’re always poised to make mincemeat out of a chump. There is something about being around Goat Soul that just feels a bit like being with a Dickens-era street urchin, or Paul Newmann. Handsomer than you, a bit more savvy, and far, far more clever.
We spent some quiet time as well, as I scratched behind their ears, and along the top of their skulls.
They stuck out their tongues and seemed quite absorbed in licking my hand. I imagine they’re not accustomed to feeling flesh on a human bone.