At the Mercy of Inspiration

Leroy Anderson: Child of immigrants, Harvard Grad, Swedish Scholar, Speaker of 8 languages, a Swede in Catholic Boston, Intelligence Agent in World War II.  Composer of Bugler's Holiday.  Fevered nights he would lie awake remembering the war.  Swedish conjugation.  Taunting by Irish and Italian kids about his colorless hair.  Tossing and turning, sweat pouring from his brow, he would rise, go to the piano and sit and let the notes come to him.

Baaa-rrrrut dut dut dut
deedleedleet deet deeditt deeditt
Brup brup brup brup
deedleedleet deet dee...

It is good, he would think. His mind would drift to his service in the war.  Sure his northern looks gave him an advantage in the cat and mouse game of penetrating the echelons of the Third Reich, but he paid the price for it stateside.  The sideways looks he'd get before boarding trains.  "Mr Anderson, could we please talk to you, over here?"  The interviews in windowless rooms, where he would sit waiting for the proper official to arrive to peruse the papers.  Seconds turned to minutes, minutes to hours.   As his memories of it made him bob once again like a cork in the sea of time -- like Einstein, a passenger through cosmic dimensions,  a time traveller-- his mind would whorl in a maelstrom of memory and recrimination. From peaks to troughs, past drunken revelries, the lows, the highs, the lovers.  Through the haze he would find himself once again in the now, on his piano bench in the dark, suddenly aware of a steady beat, like a metronome.  The ticking of the clock on the wall.  Tick, tock, tick tock... And just like that it was happening again.  Back to the piano he would turn and let his fingers speak for him:

A glimpse of his hands poised on the keys put him back at HQ, back from a mission behind enemy lines, typing reports on the old Underwood.  Hands on keys, keys unlocking the mind and organizing thought.  Nothing important at stake. Only the future of Western Civilization.  Western Civ, like that class he took at Harvard.  The all-nighters cramming Scandinavian grammar into his brain.  Post-positive definite articles. Supine forms of verbs. The sing songy tonality on the language tapes that tortured him in his sleep. Jag längtar, du längtar, han / hon / det längtar.  Many a night there was no sleep.  Reading, thinking, digesting, synthesizing.  The void of white paper filling up with black ink from the ribbon, words coming like a trail of ants pouring out of the Id, out of his fingers in search of a signal, some morsel of cake to claim for the colony.  Ribbon after ribbon, word after word, letter after letter. Like a perverse piece of art from Dali.  Or a music.  Tack tack tack... Ding!

Ding!  Time for school in North Boston.  His 10 year old self races toward the entrance trying not to be spotted by his usual antagonists.  Too late!  O'Reilly and Fonzini come bearing down on him.  Sure he brought meatballs, herring and bullar in his lunch.  Even Swedes had to eat.  Did that excuse the kids who tried to shove his face in it?  Why couldn't there be Peace and Brotherhood?  This was the season of it, was it not?  And as he lay on the cold Boston street, his face still moist from snow and from the herring that had been rubbed into it, sweet music rescued him.   As it would all his life.  Music from Grieg, Bartók, Stravinski. Was anything more spiritual than a Bach cantata?  He could never equal it but someday, he could try.