The best moments in memorial services are the short talks when someone captures a telling detail that brings a lifetime to life. These gatherings pull together people who haven’t seen each other in years, but that doesn’t mean they leave any closer. And that’s fine—rituals stage a performance that lets us believe we’ll reconnect, if only by showing up in front of everyone.
The drive to and from the memorial service with Carl, an elderly longtime building resident, in his curvy, beautiful red Mercedes had a refreshing openness and honesty. He’s new to me, though we are familiar with each other. In the car, we connected over literature. He was a professor in Canada, became a TV producer working with Alex Trebek, and is now a sommelier in Sonoma for Whole Foods.
We agreed that the best speeches at the service were by the late doorman’s current neighbors in Oakland, not the residents in our San Francisco building who spuriously claimed we are one big family. We gossiped viciously about them, especially the residents who were bitter divorcées, whom I dislike for their material covetousness and tawdry ostentation. We laughed at our snarky put-downs, but agreed that Jack, my favorite neighbor, is a man of class. Today, I formed a second friendship in my own building while paying respects to a doorman friend I’d lost.
Back home from the service, I struggled to stay awake while trying to read for class. Fortunately, I had an early evening volunteer shift at SFJAZZ. The guitarist Julian Lage, with his tall, wiry frame, is a striking performer. He grunts and gasps when reaching for difficult passages—not unlike tennis players scrambling to land tough shots. Lage’s solo act demands that a listener retain a musical thought for about ten minutes to discern its direction. No wonder the three-minute pop song is the most popular format in the world.
After the concert, I ran into Josh, a fellow usher, at the venue’s “B-Side” bar. This used to be a lounge that felt like a salon where you could park yourself with your companion on cushy sofas, converse about home and world, likes and dislikes, and cast appreciative glances at the city as it sashayed past your window. But after the makeover, it’s just like any other bar—transactional. I hear their Coca-Cola is very good!
Josh and I agreed on the challenges of tonight’s concert format. He’s right that solo piano works better for extended performances. Then he wanted to address politics, and I sensed his frustration at his inability to make sense of the flurry of edicts from the new administration. I brought up political analyst Ezra Klein, whose voice Josh dislikes even as he agrees with his points. I wondered if he could turn down Klein’s volume and watch him with subtitles instead.
As a former philosophy major, Josh has always been curious about my schoolwork. I told him my final essay this quarter will compare Michel de Montaigne to Spanish explorer Cabeza de Vaca, analyzing their different approaches to finding humanism in friendships, with cameo roles for essayist Joseph Epstein and Spanish-American philosopher George Santayana, whose views on friendship I deeply appreciated in an earlier life. The professor likes the idea but wants me to stay focused.
I’m happy I have my essay outline ready, having worked on it all morning before the memorial service. I need to start putting words to paper, but I can’t stop writing these personal essays, which consume time daily. Perhaps that’s the point—these daily attempts to make sense of experience, to find the thread connecting a memorial service, a jazz concert, and a conversation about Montaigne. Some days offer their own essay structure, complete with acts and intermissions.
Very enjoyable.