Late Arcade

by Nathaniel Mackey

  We’d been talking about rumba earlier in the day, listening to and talking about an album by Totico y Sus Rumberos that came out a couple of years ago, so the turn Drennette initiated didn’t entirely come as a surprise. Their rendition of “What’s Your Name?,” the old doo-wop hit by Don and Juan, had especially caught our attention, getting us going on the mesh between doo-wop’s mellifluous come-on and rumba’s courtship mimetics. Exactly how apt or effective a mesh it is was what we discussed, opinions ranging from endorsement, even outright rave, a claim that the merger isn’t only beautiful but long overdue and that the piece is the best on the album by far (Penguin), to reservations regarding the advisedness of literalizing what’s otherwise more subtle, productively so, otherwise more dynamically understated (Drennette).

  It wasn’t entirely a surprise, then, as I’ve said, when Penguin came to the end of his recitation and Drennette began to beat out a guaguancó rhythm on the conga, not only beating out the guaguancó but singing a lalaleo or diana, the introductory song-syllables “ana na na ana, ana na na ana,” which in fact made the detour less jarring, contributing to and thereby continuing Lambert and Penguin’s theme or thread of universal patois. Soon after finishing the lalaleo, however, she sped things up, switching from guaguancó to giribilla, a more strictly musical, nonmimetic form that has been called the bebop of rumba variations.

  Aunt Nancy was the first to respond to Drennette’s detour, letting the bounding figure go and imitating, in the bass’s upper register, a segundo’s giribilla pattern. Djamilaa’s synthesizer turned its interred oratorio into a chorus answering Drennette’s lalaleo, a bank of antiphonal echoes Djamilaa granted galactic reverb, intergalactic reach. I temporized for a few measures before letting my sputters give way to a golden run worthy of Chocolate Armenteros, but it was Lambert who most decisively responded to Drennette’s detour. Removing the clothespins from his lips and putting them in his coat pocket (the clothespins, by the way, had drawn laughter from several people in the audience when the piece began but they’d gotten used to them and quieted down), he picked up his tenor, put it to his mouth and motioned for me to pull back.

  Lambert began by going back to the sputter my golden run had come out of, blowing a barrage of expectorant bleats and pops not unlike an attack of hiccups. Beginning there, he indeed never left, thriving on what sounded like obstruction even as he ran the gamut from belly laughs at the horn’s low end to a wistful quizzicality in the upper register that at times took him to the spoons. More than Totico’s “What’s Your Name?” he appeared to have Frank Lowe’s “Broadway Rhumba” in mind, rummaging around the horn as though it were a hot potato or a goose’s neck or as though it were a clothespin pinching his tongue. He sustained a blustery tone, bursting, it seemed, with things to say, albeit more things than could be said it seemed. It was during this solo that the balloons emerged, the first of them lifting heavily up out of the bell of the horn bearing these words: An Egyptian rumba she said it would be, abstract, angular, undulant, pulse beaten out on a salted cod box, an Egyptian giribilla she said it would be. No BaKongo cloth kicked in a circle, no guaguancó, no lifted skirt edge, no not being caught by the vacunao. A giribilla, no euphemistic vaccine, she said it would be, an Egyptian rumba, ardent, austere.

  Following the first balloon’s emergence Lambert took a more confidential tack, sputtering as before but as if under his breath, resorting to the sotto voce forage he pursues to such resounding effect. It was a more gauzy sound but one with which he parsed not a whit less, having no less recourse to angles, inversions and reversals, breaking rumba apart, it seemed at points, and by turns putting ba before rum and putting rum before ba, an Egypto-Caribbean conjugation having to do with soul (spirits’ bearing on soul, soul’s bearing on spirits). It was at one such point that the second balloon came out of the horn bearing these words: “Isis to his Osiris, I dreamt he stayed inside me all night, forever, stiff, unyielding,” she said. “Damsel in distress, dread virgin, I lay scared stiff. Isisn’t to my own Isis, stiff but not unyielding, I lay afraid, flat as a board beneath his weight.” The balloon disappeared when Lambert, put upon by a strain of quizzicality stronger than any that had come before, paused ever so slightly. When he resumed playing the third balloon floated up from the bell of the horn bearing these words: “I lay afraid but unafraid, feigning frailty,” she said, “stiffness answering stiffness, yielding even so, faux fragility stiffening him throughout all eternity. Stiff intruder I welcomed in and regaled with my own stiffness, he likes it when I start off stiff and begin to loosen.”

  After the third balloon’s emergence Lambert stepped back from the mike, let the balloon vanish and put his tenor back in its stand, the audience applauding loudly. Drennette ever so subtly blushed, as though the balloons had peeped her heart of hearts, but she held her head higher than before, her back straighter than before. She let go of the giribilla pattern, Aunt Nancy returned to the bounding figure, I came back in on trumpet and we took the piece out, the audience applauding loudly still.

  As ever,

  N.

  [Dateless]

  Dear Angel of Dust,

  Hotel Didjeridoo would have none of it. Hotel Didjeridoo, the once towering, long since fallen cathouse of wide repute I dreamt ages ago, reluctant object of the Resurrection Project’s announced intentions, would have none of it. Strain as I might, it refused resurrection. The news the Hotel had fallen flew like bullets overhead, insisting I lay low, insisting I stay down. The news the Hotel had fallen continued to be news. My low reconnoiter had barely begun, the bullets cried out. No way was it to be risen up from in a hurry, no way hurried out of, no way made an edifice of. All such architectural conceit had long since been made moot. Limit-case dispatch à la Braxton’s contrabass clarinet, low reconnoiter knew nothing if not crawl space, crablike sashay (if it could be said to be sashay) tending toward and touching on collapse. It knew nothing if not limbo’s antithetic arc.

  Bullets indeed flew, announcing and reannouncing the Hotel had fallen, insisting and again insisting I stay down. “Lay low” it seemed I heard and indeed I did. Hotel Jíbaro the Hotel appeared to have become in its demise. “Aylelolaylelolay” chimed inside my head. A glossolalic launch long the custom in Puerto Rico, it was an odd scrap, a bit of caroling debris, a curious run or recourse to non-, post- or pre-sense lyrics I was nothing if not taken aback to hear inside my head. “Aylelolaylelolay/lolaylelolelolela,” it ran and repeated, a talismanic loop whose repeated “lay low” I could no way ignore. It threaded its way thru the fabric the bullet barrage apprised me of, the accompanying quatro’s wincing ping as piercing as a Portuguese guitar, needlepoint address I drew back from but welcomed (bittersweet pinprick, bittersweet vaccine).

  It was an odd bit of music to be visited by while under fire, but on a certain level, the social fabric one heard so much about shown to be what it was, Puerto Rican scat’s admonitory “lay low” made perfect sense, an involuntary reflex insisting stay down if one were already down, duck if not. Admonitory duck, moreover, bordered on earth-diver duck, a foundational drop or a compensatory plunge rendering save-oneself and save-the-world one and the same, bite of dust and beakful of mud one and the same. One lay on one’s belly, having hit the dirt, bullets whistling overhead, one’s jíbaro serenade woven into the guns’ ongoing report. It all made perfect sense.

  Hotel Didjeridoo, I had to accept, would have no rebuilding, no rebirth. A thread running thru the proverbial social fabric, “lay low” said let the proverbial dogs lie, what was done was done. Even so, as I lay I stood ready to ring changes on syllabic largesse, “aylelolay’s” unraveling rope a noose I sang or sought to sing my way out of, the fait accompli Hotel Didjeridoo resigned itself to. Or was it syllabic duress, a rope I ran the risk of choking up on if not dangling from? I rolled over and lay on my back baying at the moon, “aylelolay” my coyote howl. Caught feeling, fraught sonance, “aylelolay” culled a rapport harking back to
what some said were Muslim roots, a derivation (or so, at least, I had heard) from ilaha illallah, not unlike bullfighting’s olé (I had also heard) harking back to Allah.

  Hotel Moro it might well have been and was, “lay low’s” metathetic remit a reminder of Lole Montoya’s voice. Husky, full-throated, the hull of a boat I lay on my back looking up at, it bore tidings from Egypt, Mohamed Abdelwahad’s “Anta Oumri” and “Wdaret el Ayan” segued into out of “Sangre Gitana y Mora,” an incendiary sunship scorching the water I lay under.

  Still, I stepped forward and blew—stood up, stepped forward, took horn to mouth and blew, “lay low” notwithstanding. A bugling flutter and flex it was, the feather I could be knocked over by rousing me even so, requiem and reveille rolled into one. Brass but ever so inward (so cracked a wrinkle of sound as to risk erasure), it raised a hand, it seemed, all the same, hailing the ship’s hull in the water above. Incendiary boat all the more inveterate rebuff, Lole’s voice I would chase forever, its brass equivalent not quite to be arrived at. I would chase and be forever outrun.

  I resisted making much of “low lay,” the obvious play on jazz’s reputed bordello roots. Lole’s voice was a bit of husk in my throat, tightening it, constricting my airflow, choked-up endowment could it be said to be an endowment, poignant, unappeasable, possessed. I blew to be its equal or, short of that, to etherealize it, bodily husk an abidance never to be gotten free from, blow though I did as though I could. Brass, that is, was a way of getting by or going on. It afforded what solace it could, its by no means moot condolences. I had recourse to a coyness recalling Miles, the face-behind-a-fan retreat or seeming retreat heard on “Circle,” demure but not without design (“See how that sounds, Teo”). It turned away from the ship’s hull overhead, a blush or the beginnings of a blush burgeoning inward, a breathy spread of guile and regret. It was anything but “aylelolay” but not unrelated, nothing if not its compunction or its qualm.

  It occurred to me it might also be Hotel Mita, “aylelolay’s” Puerto Rican provenance bearing again but in a slant manner. The ship’s hull was a message on high, “el mensaje de alto” sung about by the Rondalla del Templo de Mita in San Juan, the song’s mention of Noah no doubt the connection, its “Como los tiempos de Noë vino el espíritu/anunciando que viene destrucción” resonating with Hotel Didjeridoo’s fall. I brought this to bear upon the horn, put it into the horn as though the horn were the proverbial pipe, my blush or my beginnings of a blush combusted, nothing if not the Rondalla’s heartrending chorus. “Amigo, ven y oyes la vóz de Dios,” I said with my breath as well as under my breath, a smoked insistence I parried against the boat’s unreachability, smudge and buff’s newly made amends.

  Husky, haggard, Lole’s voice I already knew I would chase forever. The Rondalla’s call I now knew I would chase forever, equal parts cry and confection, sweet smoke circling skyward. The sea I saw myself laid low in held me up, the ship’s hull caulked as if coaxed into the water, insisting I blow my horn. I felt a salty-sweet buttress or brace whose rough accompaniment said, not outright saying it, stand tall.

  I stood underwater blowing my horn, an Aquarian undulance inflecting each note. I blew as though aided by synthetic strings, a synthesizer’s air of impendence, a watery element all its own. Urge and emanation rolled into one, doused alterity of an astral sort informed each note, a star having fallen into the sea and set it boiling, each new insinuation bugling no end. That star was none other than the sun, warily ensconced in Lole’s Atet boat, the ship whose hull her voice was. The morning boat’s fall or its failure to lift (if either, against all odds, was what it was) stirred the bottom of the sea and sent waves everywhere, roiling with insinuation, the very blush or beginnings of a blush I blew like smoke out the bell of the horn.

  The mixed-metaphorical premises on which I stood—smoking water, undersea buttress, “lay low” vantage—turned my legs to rubber, propping me up even so. Bubbles came out of the bell of the horn, smoke bubbles, bubbles that were in fact balloons. Each balloon bore a message as it rose toward Lole’s boat but burst when it got there, raining down bits of script, the words that had been inside. Gone up in smoke, such bits as I caught myself came floating down, water more like air than water, such bits as letting myself lean back before catching myself. A note-bearing bottle as well as a comic-strip balloon, each bubble as it burst blessed my undersea launch with incongruous ash, burnt bits of script consecrating my intonation, the words or the would-be words I bruited on high. “All this in the wake of Lole’s boat,” I said to myself, “the merging of hull and husk I’ll forever be outrun by.” It was a vow, a benediction even, a mandate I afforded myself. “Lay low” auspices notwithstanding, running after would never stop.

  My horn wanted nothing if not to announce liquidity’s advance beyond rectilinear form, the stiff amenities undulance and curvature so luxuriously annulled. Such amenities bend and slur would have nothing to do with (or would, were they to, only by way of contrast), just as Hotel Didjeridoo, root brass or root embouchure, would have nothing anymore to do with architectural conceit’s dream of rise and rebirth. Hotel Didjeridoo, I reminded oneself, would have none of it, nor would Lole’s metathetic morning boat, mixed-metaphorical ash ran in whose wake, burn and rescinded script rolled into one.

  The morning boat’s fall or its failure to lift was in fact a refusal. Lole’s voice would allow no likeness. Stout reluctance I thought to call it, willed unwillingness, husk none else than a containment, heartfelt holding back. The boat sat taunting me, teasing me, flat on the water it seemed—flat but holding all there was of arc or ascendency, hold and hull nothing if not the same.

  Water wet the horn I blew underwater. Wooing the boat’s hull overhead, I imagined myself aboard ship, stowed away in the hold but aboard it even so, none other than the smoldering sun. It was a doused Osirian sun I saw myself as, adamantly of a piece with the smoldering horn I blew, the wet trumpet’s blare an upsurge of bubbles ascending the sky the sea whose floor I stood on had become. Still, the boat stood me up in more senses than one. Each bubble, before it burst, gave me something to reach for, a note-bearing boat inside a boat-bearing bottle, the rendezvous of seed with husk Lole’s boat’s hull promised, destiny’s proverbial date. Each bubble, having burst, left me dateless.

  Datelessness notwithstanding, burst bubbles notwithstanding, I rallied, a hip variation on first call coming out of the horn, a bugling whose call was to carry on. Stingy-brim strut woven into a mustering charge, it was nothing less than a gauntlet hitting the ground.

  What it was was that one horn wasn’t enough, one voice not enough. There was something crowded about Lole’s voice, precisely what one meant by husky. It was as though, no matter how subdued a turn her voice took, some indefinable something or a multitude of such were jostling for space. It was all she could do to contain strains that would otherwise undo the tenuous-accord-cum-strenuous-contention husk held in check.

  Even from below I could see the boat bulged with voices, some stowaway, some aboveboard. It bore more than one voice, however much Lole’s voice might’ve been the voice that fueled and kept it afloat, much as the smoldering sun it bore might’ve been no more than a smoke-filled bubble, burning-boat-bearing bottle inside an incendiary ship. To see it so cried out for a larger conception, a new perspective, Donald Byrd’s recording of that name coming quickly to mind, only to have its eight-voice choir rejected as too pat or predictable for what was called for here. Voice (“chorality” or “choricity”) needed to be more diffuse or more dispersed, more constituent strain or pervasive surge as in the sort of emic or seemingly emic effusion, aqueous or atmospheric, a synthesizer might provide.

  I stood ready to acknowledge this need and, indeed, almost before one knew it, I already had. The bulging boat swollen with voices would be ratified beforehand, if the performance now underway became part of the antithetic opera (theoretic opera some called it) of which for a while there’d been so much
talk. A quote I had not only long savored but knew might one day prove useful popped into my head as I continued to blow bubble after smoke-filled bubble. Should the underwater, boat-wooing performance come to be included in the opera, the quote would serve as Aquatico-Solar Epigraph #1:

  Osiris represents the Nile and the Sun: Sun and Nile are, on the other hand, symbols of human life—each one is signification and symbol at the same time; the symbol is changed into signification, and this latter becomes symbol of that symbol, which itself then becomes signification. None of these phases of existence is a Type without being at the same time a Signification; each is both; the one is explained by the other. Thus there arises one pregnant conception, composed of many conceptions.

  Isis to the epigraph’s Osirian mise en abîme, I quickly resorted to circular breathing, a tack whose underscoring of reciprocity verged ever so lightly on rotundity as well (swollen belly and swollen boat rolled into one).