Witness to the Joy of Strangers
A story for the True Fiction Project podcast by Ellen McLaughlin
Years ago, my husband and I were visiting his beloved mentor, Phyllis Curtain, an opera singer and distinguished teacher for many years in the voice program at Tanglewood in the Berkshires. As we drove with her to her last class of the year, she talked about how the summer of teaching had gone, her successes and one perplexing failure, a young woman who had studied with her for four summers, gifted, as all the singers had to be to get in the door, but not quite the singer she had the potential to be. Phyllis hated to think that she had reached the end of what she could give her as a teacher, but said that though the woman’s voice remained pretty, it had never attained the depth and power she sensed was there.
There was a small audience of friends and admirers in the classroom, which was open to the late summer day. One young singer after another got up to sing an aria, receive a critique and some suggestions from Phyllis, then sing again, each time with a better understanding of the music. Finally a young woman got up to sing. There was nothing wrong with what she was doing, but it just wasn’t all that compelling. Phyllis spoke to her afterward about opening up the sound, using metaphor, as she had with all the students — images of water flowing, birds soaring. The young woman nodded — these were familiar tips — and began again. The aria went much as it had until for no apparent reason the voice suddenly seemed to release, unfurling into a spreading richness, a wave of sound that passed through us in the audience, tipping us back in our seats with its force. The singer’s eyebrows raised in astonishment at the sound that was coming out of her, and then she began to cry as she continued to sing, looking over at Phyllis, who nodded, laughing. At the end, the singer was bathed in a kind of radiance, the glazed look of someone who had, in a matter of moments, become the singer she had always dreamed of becoming. We who were there to see that will never forget.
Listen to Witness to the Joy of Strangers on the True Fiction Project podcast:
Or there was what we happened to witness one summer afternoon up on the grounds of the castle at the summit of the city of Prague. A chess master was playing a match against about twenty-five amateurs. A long line of tables was set up for a string of players seated at a series of chess boards, and the master strolled down the length of them, stopping before each player to assess the evolving game and make his move. Other than birdsong, the only sound one could hear was the clicking of the pieces. As the time passed, one by one, challengers tipped their kings on their sides then offered their hands to the master for a handshake. Then they would quietly pack up their chess sets and go, leaving the tables increasingly bare. The afternoon shadows lengthened as the players dwindled until it was down to two players, a middle-aged man and a teenager, both hunched in concentration over their boards and the spare groupings of final pieces. The middle-aged player, unflappable for so long, began to rake his fingers through his hair, rocking in his seat between moves. While the teenager, perhaps fifteen, settled into a deeper concentration, his mouth a little open, staring at his board. The church bells of the city were all chiming the hour when the middle-aged man finally tipped his king on its side and offered his hand to the chess master. Then it was just the master and the boy, the moves going quickly but deliberately, one by one, until the boy made a move that caused the master to take a step back. He stood still in silence, a slow smile finally rising. He shook his head and then, with a kind of elegance, he stepped in to tip his king on its side and offer his hand to the boy, who looked up in astonishment. They shook hands warmly and talked for a few moments. Then the crowd quietly dispersed while the boy packed up his chessboard. The master, in his shirtsleeves, his jacket slung over his shoulder, walked down the hill, away from the castle grounds. Now alone, the boy stood and looked out on the evening. The lights were just starting to come on in the ancient city below, windows glinting pink as the sunset began. His expression of private exaltation reminded me of the singer’s face — that look of awe in the knowledge that nothing would ever be the same after what had just happened. For each, the world they looked at now was utterly new.
I don’t know the names of either of the people whose stories I am telling, and they were never aware of me. Yet what I was privileged to share with them was more intimate than what I’ve shared with people I know well. And somehow, as the years go on, these hinge moments in the lives of strangers have become some of the most important in my own. So I find that I have thought countless times about both of them — the woman weeping in surprise as she heard her freed voice for the first time, or that boy, who must be a man now well into his life, but who surely remembers that summer evening when, in quiet sublimity, he walked alone down from the heights into his city, smiling all the way.
Read more about Ellen McLaughlin here: ellenmmclaughlin.com
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