the news of the day. If you order the same brew a few times, he will usually say something like, “Caramel chocolate skim macchiato, Ted? Two sugars, then?”
Sometimes the customers don’t have all that much in common, especially the PAHO people whose bureaucracy is a mystery to the State Department majority in the neighborhood. But they get in line mainly for the same reasons. The cravings seem to be our equalizer. Weird characters do shuffle along the sidewalk, some of them scary, hearing voices and talking back. They, too, are included if they want to be.
Many say Sami’s coffee is the best in Washington. That could be just pride of place. Anyway, we’d probably do the ritual even if it weren’t. People will act human if given the chance. It isn’t easy when we’ve over-organized ourselves. The organizations get the “they,” and the “we” mixed up.
Maybe I’ve overstated it: people love the wagon, the coffee, even the ten minutes they spend in line waiting. Sami’s wrists know when the pour reaches just above the brim of the paper cup, I don’t know how he always gets it right. People’s minutes there fortify them for the day, even as the cubicles suck the humanity out.
He works when he’s in the mood, and wraps up shop around lunch time or when supplies are down. People who park their cars underground sometimes start the day upstairs by asking around in the office, “Is Sami out there today?” If not, a momentary craving goes unattended and the mood gets soggy. Regardless, people know he’ll show up again in a day or two.
When bureaucratic disputes put out toxins in the air, one reliable conflict resolution device at 2100 Virginia Avenue is to say “Let’s see if Sami is out there.” Those whose style is to walk away from disputes rather than confront them (Type Whatever in the Myers-Briggs test) sneak off for a moment at the coffee wagon. They may just find their antagonists in line for the same reason. The previous harmonies, if any, get reset.
I asked Sami if he had long range plans or wishes. He nodded across the avenue to the D Street entrance of the State Department across the way. The D Street entrance was temporarily blocked for repairs in 2008, and should be reopened in 2012 or 2013. It’s really just a door.
Sami said, “I’d just like to serve coffee to everyone in that building over there. Actually, I like coffee.”
If Music Be the Food
June 5, 2011
Everyone needs music; no one knows exactly why. There’s nothing “universal” about any particular form of it, but people seem to need reminders of their own heartbeat. “Syncopation” of course comes from “syncope,” a single, irregular heartbeat sometimes resulting in fainting. Most music has syncopation sooner or later, the point being, I guess, that you can lose the heartbeat for a moment and then get it back. It’s reassuring.
In about 1972 I went to Apple Hill, in New Hampshire. I was only visiting. The youngsters there had extraordinary talent, and raised the rafters of a barn with some Haydn and Mendelssohn.
Apple Hill now draws more oldsters than youngsters. In fact, country-wide, there is something happening with sixty-somethings who attend summer music retreats to have another chance at playing well. If they’d been playing at Apple Hill in 1972, they wouldn’t be back again now. But there are thousands, maybe more, who show up in the summer, get their name tags, and go to work. They play hard and aim high. They’re forgiving of one another’s inadequacies, since that’s the social glue that makes the process possible.
An amateur is a musician in search of a miracle. Amateurs can achieve miracles for fleeting moments, but aren’t usually able to sustain them. If they did, they’d be called “professionals.” The fleeting moments are what amateurs live for, their motive for displacement, putting up with communal living and food, and getting corrective advice from maddeningly young and talented coaches. The coaches are heroes. I never met one who was sadistic, or revealed annoyance at hearing screw-ups on the instruments of their expansive souls’ yearnings.
I’ve been to summer music up and down the East Coast. At the end of each of them I say, “No more of this,” but then I go back for more. Triumph of hope over experience? It’s something we do almost clandestinely, since failure dogs us as the unwanted companion. The mind and heart have their music which the fingers know not.
Something happens as people get together with strangers with a common objective. Forgiveness, I’ve said, is a part of it. More compelling is the bridge spanning chasms of difference. You can find yourself in a quartet with people with almost nothing in common, but for the single overlapping interest of making music with others. Social phenomena happen, with conversations off the deep end of one’s own experience and interests, but with the link of the one interest everyone shares. A contractor, a physicist, a poet, a street person, a teacher can find surprising connections, and might all know the same Villa-Lobos quartet to their surprise. At a recent introductory session, the retired physicist said, “I have a PhD in mathematics but I never learned to count.” Good one.
It’s like sitting with a stranger on a bus or train. You might talk about things you’d never mention to someone you knew you’d see again for sure.
Now is summer migration season. The last retreat I attended was probably the best, set in idyllic surroundings, the innkeepers supportive and inquisitive. Even the food sustained. Usually the food is the first sacrifice one makes in going to these things, but not this last time.
People got along. A young man with marital issues received attention and free advice from people who’d been through these things themselves. The music itself – well let’s not dwell too much on that. The teachers know how to make things better without leading people off the cliff of unreasonable expectations.
A common theme at music retreats is reincarnation. “In my next lifetime I’ll just do violin.” “I’ll be a clarinetist next time.” “I’m coming back as a quartet.” These become commonplace.
Everyone wants a second chance, either to redo a fudged passage, or a life that could have been lived through different options. I don’t hear much discussion of this, but it’s a big societal event in a country with lengthening life spans and a belief—despite evidence—in better times ahead.
Coping with Opus
June 5, 2011
I was never exactly alarmed or frightened of Opus Dei, even after reading Dan Brown’s ramblings on the subject. I read his Code thing only because friends told me I should. I’m trying to remember who told me so. Those were hours I will never get back.
Opus may be a little creepy, but probably not lethal these days. It seems good at taking care of its members. Like most sects, its verbiage will make your eyes glaze over.
The Opus people in Pamplona run the best media training program by far in Spain, at the University of Navarra. As the media official at the U.S. Embassy in Madrid in the early 1990s, I was offered up as lunch partner for the Opus Dei spokesman, the day he decided to cultivate a friendship with the U.S. government. I said, “Do I have to?” The boss said, “Well you’re the media guy, and hell if I’m going.”
Duty called. Spokesmen speaking to spokesmen seems like a tautology, but that’s the way it works. We set a date for the restaurant at the lower level of the Hotel Galgos, on the calle Claudio Coello, two blocks from the embassy. One must make sacrifices for the homeland.
People in Washington made fun of us in Madrid, for never being available at 3:00 in our afternoon for phone calls or satellite video broadcasts. Most of the contact work in Madrid was done over lunch, and lunch happens from 3:00 to 5:00 there. This is real work. You shouldn’t envy us, a person can get sleepy to the point of pain over a meal at that hour in a hot climate. Circadian rhythms push a person to siesta at that hour, which of course is the reason for that ancient custom in