One Way That Conviction Works

July 1, 2017 By David Griesing Leave a Comment

As a kid, I loved Otis Redding’s songs, especially “I’ve Got Dreams to Remember” and “I’ve Been Loving You Too Long.” I still can’t say too much about that voice, those arrangements. Listen for yourself. Silk degrees.

After his groundbreaking performance at the 1967 Monterrey Pop Festival (“resplendent in a teal-green silk suit”), Redding hosted a bash at his Big O Ranch in Georgia. The local newspapers crowed: “Otis is having a royal barbeque.” He was all of 25.

But it was less upbeat for some in his guests. The Black Power movement was on the rise and many of Redding’s inner music circle were white, like R&B producer Jerry Wexler. “People were talking a lot of trash,” Wexler recalled. “What is whitey doing here?” For his part, Redding wanted everyone he loved to be around him as he moved from his mostly African American fan base and into pop’s mainstream. Redding did what he could to un-ruffle feathers across the divide he was straddling, but his guests could still recall the tensions decades later (from a new book about Redding by Jonathan Gould).

I grew up at a time when you could hear what people were calling “soul music” on the same radio station (WAVZ) as the Beatles and Glen Campbell. (Today, it’s hard to imagine that kind of musical or audience diversity at any point “on the dial.”) But back then it was possible to think that the venues where you could see these performers would have the radio’s audience. That wasn’t even close to being true.

As the Sixties wound down and the Seventies got started, I went with a friend to see the Temptations at the Oakdale Theater. It had gently elevated seating-in-the-round, with a tent overhead and open to the summer breezes down below. Sitting almost anywhere gave you an immediate 360, so it took no time at all to discover that we were the only white boys in the house. As the Temps got going—“Ain’t Too Proud to Beg,” “I Wish It Would Rain”—maybe the audience was just as surprised to see us, but before long it seemed that everyone had switched to pretending that we just weren’t there. I’d never been a minority before, and it almost felt like I was crashing somebody else’s party. But the next couple of times, there was no doubt about that at all.

Five or so years later, a college friend went with me to see Patti Labelle (and her group Labelle) at Assumption College. I was thinking a good-girls-from-parochial-schools kind of environment. Moreover, Labelle had Top 40 hits with lyrics like “Gichie, Gichie, ya ya dada/Gichie, Gichie, ya ya here…” that they sang in costumes straight out of “Star Trek.” It would be fun, but hardly high-risk entertainment. Still as I settled in, it gradually dawned that once again I was one of only two white boys in the house.

But who cared? Patti was on fire as the set got going, and my second memory of the night was her telling us that fans always brought her drugs after a performance (figuring she had to be “on something” to deliver like that), but what she wished they’d bring her was a good hamburger, “because working this hard makes you so damn hungry.”

Everyone laughed, and the girls slid into a Gil Scott-Heron number called “The Revolution Will Not be Televised.” It’s an angry song, with some spoken word delivery that foreshadows rap. It’s also long, building in momentum and rage as it goes along. A minute or so in, Patti had the room in her hand. But just then, people starting turning around and looking our way, talking loud, leaning over—what are you doing here?—as we clutched our armrests in the middle of a long row. This’ll be just like shooting fish in a barrel, I thought.

And Patti thought so too because she put “Everybody settle down” into the song’s narrative a couple of times, and when no one did, she stopped the music altogether, which left some of the outcries hanging in the air above us. I don’t remember what she said next—maybe “we’re all in this fight together”—and tempers began to cool as the house lights came up. With all eyes looking from Patti to us she said: “Everyone is welcome here,” and that was the heartpounding end of it.

More than a decade later and this time in Philly, I either hadn’t learned or didn’t want to because I was making a beeline for The Rib Crib, a take-out joint one neighborhood away. It was a Friday night, the middle of summer, there’d be a big crowd on a main street, the place was practically “an institution,” and Fran would be with me: what could go wrong?

This time it was Charlie Gray who came to our rescue. Once inside, we were packed like sardines, the only “out-of-towners,” and the crowd in front of and behind us started getting rowdy about whether we belonged. “What are you doing here?” “Go back where you came from.” It was already loud in The Crib but our being there took everything up a notch and Charlie noticed.

Technically, we weren’t the only white people this time. Our shoulders were touching autographed pictures on the wall: Charlie with Al Martino, Charlie with Frank Rizzo, Charlie with Sylvester Stallone, so we recognized Charlie as he tried to break through the crowd towards us. A booming voice preceded his big heart, telling everybody just how welcome we were, how honored he was to have us, what could he do to make us more comfortable, maybe some sweet potato pie on the house, and just like that everyone went back to looking forward to their ribs.

Otis, Patti and Charlie tapped into their power and declared what they stood for when something important to them was at stake. They already knew what to say and how to act because surely they also knew already what it was like to be “different” in a suddenly hostile place.

Your experiences clarify what you value most; how you’ve lived and worked determines your priorities. And it’s with both in mind that you’re able to care for yourself and others the next time around. That’s why Patti and Charlie never hesitated when it came to standing up for me.

I loved great food and music enough to put my pride (and maybe my safety) in the hands of strangers. But it was always about more than the risk. By stepping outside my lines, maybe, hopefully, I would gain enough clarity and power to find my generosity too.

Habits of Living

April 21, 2013 By David Griesing Leave a Comment

To have been thrust, as we’ve been over the past seven days, onto the streets and into the neighborhoods of Boston, is to be reminded of the web of interconnections that make up a community. We all have that web, which we’ve taken from our earliest memories and experiences into the work we do and the lives we live. It’s the web we find ourselves leaning back into and relying upon during a week like this.

These “ways of seeing the world” or “habits of living” put startling events into a meaningful context so that we can begin to understand them. They tell us when we can count on the authorities trying to protect us. They bring us out to the street to applaud and cheer them because of our relief and their success.

These ways of seeing the world shaped our initial reactions to the carnage that turned a finish line into a triage unit. “Repugnance” a word that Leon Kass has used to describe this kind of disregard for life and community, springs from “a sort of deep moral intuition.” What is acceptable as well as what offends us at the most basic levels, comes from how we saw our parents and cousins, neighbors and teachers respond to what they thought the world should and shouldn’t look like all those years ago. We learned from what we saw them do.

It is where conscience and character first come alive.

So I paid attention to novelist Denis Lehane (who wrote so beautifully about Boston in Mystic River and Gone Baby Gone) when he spoke about how he was trapped at home while the streets outside his home were a blur of sirens and mobilzations. He talked about trying to protect his 4-year old daughter who was alarmed every time she heard the “pop, pop, pop” from that endlessly replayed gun battle from the night before. So while the storyteller in Lehane needed to know what was happening, he kept turning off the screens and squawk boxes to protect her. One of his habits of living was to guard his child from the realities of the world while he still could, despite all the things he so desperately needed to know.

These habits were evident in those who went from on-lookers of the Boston Marathon to rushing towards the explosions to see if they could help. They were evident in the cups of coffee and peanut butter & jelly sandwiches thrust into the hands of responders who hadn’t taken a minute to think about how tired and hungry they were.

These habits were evident in the capabilities that were shared at the most critical moments (“he needs a tourniquet”) or from the journalism teacher who found himself tweeting in the middle of the Watertown shootout and later said “I kept stopping myself, because the world just didn’t need to know about that.” These habits are about discretion and propriety too.

All of us are embarrassed by the smallness of the towns where we grew up, of the communities that looked out for us, or over our shoulders, back then. When we leave our nests thinking we’ve escaped, we bring the ways of making sense of the world and the role we need to play in it along with us. They help us to reach back to our most basic decencies in times that are troubling as well as in all those other times. These habits of living give rise to the responsibilities we all share for the world we inhabit.

As the cameras rolled past the row houses of Watertown, with all their green trash cans out and the trees beginning to bud, we found ourselves thrust into a web of mutual responsibilities. It is where what’s best and truest about life can usually be found.

Thinking About Lance Armstrong

October 14, 2012 By David Griesing 3 Comments

A month or so ago, we learned that the world’s most celebrated cyclist had decided not to contest charges that were being brought against him by the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency (USADA). This week, the Agency set out its case against him. The power of Lance Armstrong’s decision to stop fighting the USADA’s “witch hunt,” together with the startling indictment of his behavior that has now been presented, make it difficult to know what to think—or even how to start thinking—about what has happened here.

Before reaching the question of who is “right” and who is “wrong,” there are several related questions worth thinking about.

Heroes are inspiring. They teach us lessons about fortitude and sacrifice and making the most out of extraordinary gifts. An individual like Lance Armstrong, in the lead and pumping up that final incline, certainly seemed to be the distillation of all of those things. A true hero’s quest influences each of us in different ways, but the influence is almost entirely positive. We vicariously join him as he reaches up and touches the stars. No one ever thinks he should be doing the kinds of regular things the rest of us are doing.

On the other hand, our media driven culture is often as relentless in its drive to pull our heroes down as it was in elevating them in the first place. When Armstrong said in essence, “I won’t dignify these charges with one more minute of my defense,” some who rallied around him at the time also voiced their opposition to the reckless way that we create and destroy our heroes.

As a culture, we build these men and women up (often way too much) only to tear them down (sometimes way too far) when they begin to reveal that they were only human after all. It’s the modern version of ancient Greek tragedy. But as part of the entertainment cycle, to treat our heroes like this time and time again is just plain wrong. It would be far better to view them from start to finish as the mere morals that they are.

On the other hand, the rule enforcers who are front and center when our heroes are torn down often seem entirely too mortal. When lecturing giants about their ethical obligations, they tend to look small, and come off as a tad repressed. Moreover, it used to be common knowledge that monitors of virtue not only did their enforcement work in secret, but also had laundry that was as dirty, if not dirtier than those they passed judgment upon. Given these lingering doubts, what should we make of bodies like the USADA who are trying to maintain ethical standards by staying one step ahead of the cheaters?

What reduces our doubts is the largely transparent way in which the rule enforcers go about their business today. In the Armstrong investigation, the USADA’s findings were published in major newspapers, and most of the underlying “facts” were made available to the public. You and I get to review as much or as little of this record as we want before reaching our own conclusions.

The more transparent their decision-making, the more legitimate the moral judges become. Openness also makes it easier to argue for how essential their role can be. Even during the ritual murder of our heroes, we can all learn something about what is “right” and “wrong” when the ethics monitors invite us to think about issues of social consequence along with them. Transparency allows for a teachable moment, that is, as long as we are open to being taught.

I don’t know whether Lance Armstrong did what the USADA says he did. “The alleged facts” seemed overwhelming until I recalled Armstrong’s very public participation in marathons and Iron Man competitions over the past couple of months. If you really had done all the things he has been accused of, would you be able to make highly publicized appearances like this, while talking up your good work at the Live Strong Foundation? Can anyone really be so brazen—or so deluded? If Armstrong’s not the victim of trumped-up charges, what has our Hero Machine helped to produce here?

In a decade long factual record supported by the confessions of his teammates, the USADA accuses Armstrong not only of concocting an elaborate blood doping scheme to bolster his individual performances, but also of using his stature in the sport and the power of his personality to browbeat his teammates into cheating as well. Why? So they would be deterred from ever calling him out. According to the charges, the many ways that Armstrong doped his way to victory are almost swamped by how relentlessly he enforced his code of silence.

When the cheaters can (even allegedly) act like this, those charged with maintaining our moral standards need to be at least as resourceful and steadfast as those they are trying to deter.

Because we all deserve to have a fair shot—and because our true heroes require it.