"Their heads and their glances collected toward a common center, and restored, and they sang us another, a slow one this time; I had a feeling, through their silence before entering it, that it was their favorite and their particular pride; the tenor lifted out his voice alone in a long, plorative line that hung like fire on heaven, or whistle's echo, sinking, sunken, along descents of a modality I had not heard before, and sank along the arms and breast of the bass as might a body sunken from a cross; and the baritone lifted a long black line of comment; and they ran in a long and slow motion and convolution of rolling as at the bottom of a stormy sea, voice meeting voice as ships in dream, retreated, met once more, much woven, digressions and returns of time, quite tuneless, the bass, over and over, approaching, drooping, the same declivity, the baritone taking over, a sort of metacenter, murmuring along monotones between major and minor, nor in any determinable key, the tenor winding upward like a horn, a wire, the flight of a bird, almost into full declamation, then failing it, silencing; at length enlarging, the others lifting, now, alone, lone, and largely, questioning, alone and not sustained, in the middle of space, stopped; and now resumed, sunken upon the bosom of the bass, the head declined; both muted, droned; the baritone makes his comment, unresolved, that is a question, all on one note; and they are quiet, and do not look at us nor at anything."

James Agee, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men

A Visit

A living room piled high with clean laundry and magazines. A couch in the center, flanked by two chairs with side tables in between. A coffee table in the middle. A table behind the couch, running its length. A door stage right, to the driveway. A door stage left to the hallway. The windows are shuttered. It's evening.

A WOMAN in her mid fifties, though she looks like she's in her mid sixties. She's wearing sweats. Her hair is in a bun. Her cheeks are naturally rosy, enhanced by an adulthood spent drinking. She drinks her wine out of a standard kitchen glass with ice cubes. When she drinks, she closes her eyes. Every time the glass comes to her lips, she puts out her hand and hums a short, urgent note into the wine, as if to say "don't talk yet, I have something else to say, I'm just pausing."

A BOY, almost thirty. He sits in a chair close to the door and fiddles with everything he can reach while he talks.

The WOMAN paces, busying herself, moving one stack of magazines off of a table and onto the couch, moving a half pile of laundry to a table etc.

WOMAN: (crying, trying to hold it together) I'm really glad you came by. It was really good to spend time with you last week. I'm really glad you stopped by.
BOY: Me too.
WOMAN: It's just, you know, it's just... It's been a really shitty week.
BOY: Yeah.
WOMAN: (to herself, like a mantra) But you know, sometimes, you just need to lock yourself up in a room and lay around and sleep and try to get your mind off of things. (sits, on couch near BOY) I was watching this thing on 60 Minutes. I saw something on there yesterday and immediately thought of you. Mmm, (into wine glass) do you ever watch 60 Minutes? You should see this one I saw yesterday.
BOY: Not really.
WOMAN: Oh, well, I know you're busy. I'm so glad to see you. I'm glad you stopped by.
BOY: I got a promotion. Wilson quit. They bumped me up to his office.
WOMAN: Oh! That's wonderful! You've got what it takes. I've always said that. You're such a good-looking boy. And you're so smart. The way you remember things. It's just amazing.
BOY: Thanks.
WOMAN: Yeah, I just went down this week and I told the woman, Peggy, that's her name, (drinks) I told Peggy I would, even though it's just grunt work, I told her I would come in every day. I'd come in every day if she needed me to.
BOY: That's great.
WOMAN: I almost got my typing skills back to where they were when I could, back when I used to be able to type right along with someone as they were talking. So that's good. That was back when I worked in the city. Downtown.
BOY: Good.
WOMAN: (starting to cry again) You know and it's just, it's keeping yourself busy. Just keeping your mind off of things. (she sobs silently for a minute)
BOY: Ok, so, why are you crying? Why are you sad?
WOMAN: (talking through tears, slurring words) Oh, you know, it's just, it's been a year. It's been a year since she died. Since we lost her. It's been a year.
BOY: Yeah.
WOMAN: (drinks) And you know, sometimes you just lock yourself up in a room and you just turn on the TV and you try to keep your mind off of it. You know, you just need to. That's what I've been doing today, just keeping busy.
BOY: Well. Yeah, that's sad.
WOMAN: (drying up again) So. Well. How's Emily?  How is it with Emily?
BOY: Oh, you know... it's fine. We're fine.
WOMAN: That's good. You've met a lot of real nice girls, women in your life. You have a lot of good experiences. (drinks) Do you remember Marissa? Of course you do. Hah! Do you ever talk to Marissa anymore?
BOY: You mean Melissa?
WOMAN: Yes! Melissa. Aww, Melissa. Do you ever talk to her anymore?
BOY: Nope.
WOMAN: She was so sweet.
BOY: Yup.
WOMAN: Well...
BOY: Welp. I've got to head on. It was really good seeing you.
WOMAN: Oh! It was good seeing you too, sweetheart. Give me a hug.
(They stand. They hug. She squeezes, he pats.)
WOMAN: Tell Emily I said hello!
BOY: Yup. I will.
WOMAN: I love you. I'm really glad you came by. Thanks for stopping by. It's always so good to see you and hear your voice.
BOY: Love you too.
WOMAN: Now, drive safe. If you get tired, just pull over. I saw something on 60 minutes. They said just pull over.
BOY: I will.
WOMAN: Here, take this. (picking up a dress shirt) It would look so good on you.
BOY: I don't need it. Thanks.
WOMAN: Oh! Well, you never know. You might. (Throws it over his shoulder.)
BOY: (opens door) Ok, well, it was good seeing you.
WOMAN: Oh, you too. I love you. Drive safe. Call me, let me know you get there. Just call me. I love you.
BOY: Ok. I will. (leaves, leaving door open.)
WOMAN: Ok, love you. I love you.
(WOMAN stands at the open door, smiling and waving. She stands there until his car leaves the driveway and goes down the street, watching it the whole way. She closes the door, sits down on the couch and sips her wine, smiling. She picks up a magazine, turns a few pages. She can't read it. She doesn't have her reading glasses. She sighs and tosses the magazine onto the chair he was sitting in. She picks up a picture frame off of the side table and mutters something to it. She cries. She drops her shoulders and looks to heaven, as if to say "Oh, my God!" She drops the picture on the couch as she stands up with her wine glass, tries to gather herself, fails, crosses to the hallway door quietly crying, walks through, and then closes it gently behind her.)

THE END

The Time I Fell In Love With Three People, A Calf, A Horse, and A Flock of Pigs on the Same Afternoon in Texas in the Summer of 2011

I spent three summers as a door to door salesman.

Those three summers, split between Southeastern Texas and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, provided me with a lot of great things, not the least of which is a virtually endless supply of great stories to tell myself and other people for the rest of my life. 

This story was recently adapted and performed in a Directing class I took. As part of the class, I had to promise that I would let my authorship of the story remain anonymous. But that's ridiculous. This is my story. I earned it.

I let the story be bastardized in the class. A lot of it wasn't true. I owe it an apology.

Here is the story in it's true form. The title for it in the class was "Count 'em out, ride 'em in," but that name is also ridiculous. The real title of the story is

"The Time I Fell In Love With Three People, A Calf, A Horse, and A Flock of Pigs on the Same Afternoon in Texas in the Summer of 2011"

by Joseph W. Rebrovick

(I always include my middle initial to distinguish me from other Joseph Rebrovicks, which abound.)

This story, technically, takes place in the very small town of Hockley, Texas. That is to say, these people write Hockley, Texas on their mail. There should be no misconception, though, that this takes place in any sort of town. That would ruin the story. This takes place on a prairie in Middleofnowhere, Texas to be precise.

I don't remember how the rest of the day had gone up until this point. I remember that it was very hot. This house has a cluster of big trees in the front yard and green grass growing underneath them.

During the summer of 2011, the greater Houston area experienced one of the worst droughts in its history, going months without any rain.

This little patch of green underneath the trees, immaculately watered and maintained, rose like an oasis from the miles upon miles of dead grass and dust in any direction.
Also there was a big spider on her door. I think it took me a minute to muster up the dash to even knock, but I did. I treated her house like any of the other thousands I had knocked on before.

At the door was Oleta. That was the first time I fell in love that day. Oleta was fierce, as fierce as the best of Texas women. There were storms in her eyes. She was beautiful. She was wearing scrubs, plain hospital green. None of that cutesy dentist office stuff for her. Her hair was piled on top of her head so that it would would stay out of her way. Her arms were crossed, and she wasn't listening to a word I was saying. I rambled on, trying to get her in to a conversation. I wanted to sit down with her and give her a sales pitch. It was my job.

Peeking out from behind her knees was Maci. I fell in love again. This blue-eyed, towheaded little firecracker was no more interested in what I had to say than her mother; her sights were set on freedom. My knocking had gotten her mom to open the door to her prison cell, and like a shot she was off to play in the sprinkler maintaining the oasis of their front yard. Oleta was even more upset; not only had her work been disrupted, but now she had a muddy 5 year old to capture and wash off. She walked past me mid-sentence to try to catch her daughter, but stopped only a few steps into the yard. In the field next to the house was a year-old dairy calf running and bucking like mad. Oleta muttered a curse word. She yelled for her husband. "JEFF! THE CALF IS OUT!"

If you know me, you've probably heard me talk about Texans. I am mystified by them. There is a certain set of properties that comes with being a Texan unlike any other people I've ever met. And I'm not talking about people born and raised in a subdivision in a suburb of Houston or Dallas. (From my experience, subdivision stock are the same world over. They get a certain conflicted mind set from living in such close quarters with other people, yet trying subconsciously to pretend that since they live in a stand-alone structure that they are somehow not associated with their neighbors.) I'm talking about people who live in the great romantic openness of the Texas country. There's a storybook quality to them.

Like lightning, out of the gate from the pasture behind their house came Jeff. I fell in love again. Jeff was a real deal cowboy, the kind you find in books about the Old West. His boots had spurs, his gun carried six bullets, his shirt was flannel, and he was carrying a lasso. A real lasso. A real lasso he intended to rope a calf with.


Jeff and Oleta were professionals. Oleta ran towards the road to the far side of the calf, while Jeff spun his lasso and repeatedly jumped in toward it trying to catch it around the neck. I was completely at a loss for what to do. After staring in amazement at the situation for a few minutes, I figured it couldn't hurt if I joined in. I dropped my bag and my notebook, and started to half-run over to the other end of yard, the idea being that I would create a triangle with the other two and slowly close in on the calf, finally capture it, then maybe all give high-fives to each other, lean on a fence and watch the sun go down. 

I didn't make it very far into my triangle plan, though, because before I even got out of the oasis I felt two little hands attach themselves to the tail of my shirt. I looked down and there was Maci, terrified. Jeff and Oleta were yelling at the calf, scaring it toward the lasso and the fence, yelling at each other about who the hell left the gate open, and the calf was shrieking in its deep bovine baritone, its hooves making thunder as it bounded around the yard. I looked back up at this scene, then back to Maci. She was about to cry. My dreams of being a cowboy were out in that field, but Maci needed a friend. I knelt down and held her hand. I told her everything was going to be fine. She smiled.

Jeff finally roped the calf. (In all honesty, I can at least take some credit. When the calf would gallop itself in the direction of me and Maci, I'd yell at it. Sometimes Maci would yell with me.) He wrangled the defeated animal back through the gate and into the pasture, smacking it on the butt on the way in. He wiped his hands on his jeans, shook his head and cursed under his heavy breath, and walked back behind the house to continue whatever it was he was doing. (That's very Texan. He didn't ask who I was or what I was doing. He had work to do.)

Oleta, also cursing, walked back over and invited me in the house. "Ok, so, what are you doing?"

I told her what I was selling, which happened to be books for my friend Maci. She bought some. Oleta had been cooking dinner when I knocked, and she offered for me to stay and eat. We had tomato and onion salad, fried squash and zucchini, and fried ham. The tomatoes, onions, squash, and zucchinis had all come out of the garden behind their house shortly before dinner. The pig had been raised in their barn.

Jeff came in while I was eating and I introduced myself. We talked for a while, and I told him I was going to school to be an actor. He loved that. Jeff loved watching Westerns, and said that he had always wanted to be an extra in one as a cowboy. (He had the chops. Trust me, I saw firsthand.) He made me promise him that if I ever got cast in a big Hollywood cowboy movie I had to call him up and put him in it. I promised I would.

After dinner, Oleta took me out back to show me their barn. I met their horse, who their oldest son rode for calf-roping tournaments in the rodeo. (He must take after his father.) Then she introduced me to the pigs, all of them sleeping in the hay. I reached in, at Oleta's insistence, and petted one of them on the belly. He oinked. Or grunted. I don't know, I'm not a farmer.

I thanked Oleta and Jeff again and again for such a great dinner, and headed out. Oleta hooked me up with an armful of zucchini, squash and ham. Maci gave me a big hug, and I've never been happier.

A few months later I returned to deliver the books she had bought. They weren't at home the first day, nor the second. The third day a neighbor told me they might be out of town. I was bummed, because I didn't think I would get to see them again. The last day I was delivering, on my way home that night I turned off the highway and drove out toward their house at about 10:00, just hoping that by some chance I might be able to catch them. As I pulled up, I saw Oleta's car parked in the driveway, right by the Oasis. I knocked, and Oleta, who was only maybe 1/3 as excited as I was, let me in. I sat down on the couch and started to unpack their books. A very sleepy Maci came out from the hallway and smiled at me in between yawns. I told her I had brought her all the cool books her mom had bought for her. She lit up and ran right over, unable to take her eyes off of all the colorful pictures strewn throughout the books.

Oleta wrote me a check, and I thanked her again for the food and hospitality earlier in the summer. I told Maci goodbye and to enjoy her books, but her senses were all pointed toward her books. I started to leave. Oleta said "Maci, tell him thank you." Maci looked back, finally aware of her surroundings, and saw me standing by the door. She jumped up from the couch and ran around toward me with her arms wide. I knelt down and she gave me one of the biggest hugs I've ever gotten right around my neck. I patted her on the back and stood up, thanked Oleta again, and walked out.

I had tears in my eyes all the way back to my car.

A Case for Books

(Print this out)

A lot of people read e-books now.
It makes a lot of sense.
I don't have any sort of tablet computer, but I have a smart phone and I do everything else on it.
I call and text my friends, I keep my calendar, I check my bank account (read: get depressed), I receive and compose emails, I facebook, I tweet, I play games, I do crossword puzzles. It helps me keep my mandolin in tune, it let's me know what the weather is going to be, it gives me directions. I can buy music and listen to that music on it. I can listen to the radio. I can watch movies. I can study for school. (Can, don't.) I can google things, learn how to play the banjo, listen to a police scanner, find local African cuisine, check the price of cereal, launch birds at pigs, record a song, orient myself in the wild, add, subtract, divide, be fruitful and multiply.

A friend told me recently that my phone has more computing power than all of Mission Control that shot Apollo 13 into space (and subsequently brought it back.)

"Houston, we have a problem."
"Don't worry. There's an app for that."

That wouldn't have won an Academy Award.

This little machine, smaller than my hand, has put almost every machine I own out of commission. I don't know if the alarm on my alarm clock even works anymore. I don't even know why I have an alarm clock.
But I still have a ton of books.
I tried to read an e-book version of Chekhov's The Three Sisters one time. I couldn't get past the first act. I don't blame Chekhov.
It seems impersonal to me.
I can't read the work of one of the greatest artists in history on a device that shares so much in common with my toaster oven.
What seems personal to me, though is words printed on actual paper. There's no electricity involved. If something strikes me as unique, or fun, or beautiful, I can underline it, circle it, draw a smiley face next to it with my pencil. If I'm reading one book, and I'm reminded of something in another book I can lay them open right next to each other. Inevitably this reminds me of something in another book so I grab that one, then I grab another, and then suddenly I'm laying in my manger wrapped in swaddling books. It's like getting a hug from Joseph Heller, James Joyce, O. Henry, Henrik Ibsen and the Williams Shakespeare and Faulkner.
These books, stitched or glued into cardboard, feel like living things. They each have a soul, so they each need their own body.
Remember Being John Malkovich? All those old people want to move in to John Malkovich's brain, like they've done with so many people before. They can each be John Malkovich, one at a time, for as long as he lives. That's how they gain eternal life.
This is what e-books feel like to me. E-books certainly have merit. Books are, after all, made of paper and glue. They are vulnerable to all the elements. We've all experienced the funeral-for-a-friend feeling of leaving a book in the rain or dropping one in the pool. E-books can be saved in the great unknown that is the Internet, and can float around in space until the end of time. In one million years, an alien retiree with a Data-Detector 9000 will be walking along the banks of an ocean on Mars and dig a Harry Potter book out of the sand. E-books make sure that the hard work of the literary sector of the human race will remain forever.
That still doesn't make me want to read them.
In the late 1920s the Library of Congress started transcribing great works of literature onto microfilms, and people certainly weren't camping out in front of Best Buy to get a new microfilm reader the day after Thanksgiving 1930. (Of course, the economy wasn't stellar that year either.)

Books use a lot of paper, they are products of cut-down trees. It takes a lot of power to run the presses that print them. Many books go unsold, unread, unappreciated for their entire lifetimes. They weigh down backpacks, they get dog-eared and fall apart. You don't stop reading to eat, and then you spill spaghetti sauce all over Billy Pilgrim. But, damn it, I like them.

"I hope I am always walled in by the very weight and breadth and clumsy, inefficient, antiquated bulk of them, hope that I spend my last days on this earth arranging and rearranging them on thrones of good, honest pine, oak, and mahogany, because they just feel good in my hands, because I just like to look at their covers, and dream of the promise of the great stories inside."- Rick Bragg

I love the rough feel of the paper between my fingers, the musky smell when you open a book that hasn't breathed in a few years, the fingerprints, notes and doodles left by previous readers, the sound they make when you close them, and the way they look on a shelf.
But when you tell somebody you love them, you don't have to say "because."
I just love them.
That's my case for books.
I love them.




(You read this on the computer, didn't you.)

Assilban

The title of this blog comes from one of my favorite characters in all of literature. The character, Paul Assilban, is a little known character in a little known short play in a little known collection of works by the Lebanese poet Kahlil Gibran. The fact that this character, his play, and the collection (Spiritual Sayings of Kahlil Gibran) are so little known is a wonder to me. According to the Internet (that paragon of truth and infallibility), Gibran is the third best selling poet of all time (behind only Lao-Tzu and Shakespeare.) His prose is always beautiful, and always simple, which I find endearing in a poet. His most popular work, The Prophet, is one of the best selling books of all time. To be fair, it had a 30 year head start in publication over Spiritual Sayings, but in terms of beauty (which is the only stick I can measure his work by) The Prophet is far surpassed by it's younger brother. 

(That reminds me, Madman Across the Water is Elton John's best album. If you say Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, we can fight.)

Assilban takes place in the Beirut home of Yousif Mussirrah on an evening in the spring of 1901. Yousif (a scholar), Helen Mussirrah (his sister), and Khalil Bey Tamer (a government official) sit about discussing the effects of Western culture on their own Lebanese culture. Khalil is an isolationist and "foresees evil in the influence of Western culture," but Yousif argues that "Old cultures that fail to revitalize themselves by the production of modern culture are doomed to intellectual death." In the middle of their conversation, Salem Moward (a lute player) and Paul Assilban (a well-known singer) enter the room. Salem is intent to tell the story of what happened the night before, a story Paul does not want him to tell. At the insistence of Salem and the comforting of Helen, Paul (sort of) concedes to let the story be told.

According to Salem, the previous night both he and Paul attended a party at the house of a dignitary, and were  treated as very special guests. Paul, having a certain amount of celebrity attained from the beauty of his singing voice, and Salem for being his only choice for accompaniment. Salem began to play, and Paul began to sing. After singing only one verse of Al Farid's poem, though, he stopped and refused to sing another word, insisting that he had a sore throat. The "beautiful ladies" came and begged him to continue, then the dignitaries, but he refused. Jalal Pasha, the host, resorted to giving him "a heap of dinars" as a last resort to coax him into singing, but Paul responded by throwing down the dinars and "said in the tone of a conquering king, 'You insult me. I did not come here to sell myself; I came here as a well-wisher.'" and stormed from the house. 

From leaving the party, Paul went across to the house of Habeeb Saadi, a man who "likes to drink, sing, and dream" and who is a great admirer of Paul's art. After a few drinks, Paul opened all of the windows in Habeeb's house facing Jalal Pasha's house, handed Salem his lute, and proceeded to sing toward the house "in the full range of his voice."

(This next part has to come directly from the text. If I try to paraphrase it, I'll ruin it.)

SALEM: I have known Paul for fifteen years. We went to school together. I have heard him sing when he was in a happy mood and in sadness. I have heard him wail like a widow bereft of her only child; I have heard him sing like a lover and chant like a victor. I have heard him in the silence of the night voicing whispers that enchanted the sleepers. I have heard him sing in the valleys of Lebanon in unison with the distant church bells and filling space with magic and reverence. I have heard him sing a thousand times and thought that I knew all his powers. But last night, when he faced the Pasha's home and sang, I said to myself, "How little I knew about this man's life!" Now I begun to understand him. In the past I only heard his tongue sing, but last night I heard his heart and soul...

Paul sang one verse after the other. I felt that lovers' souls were hovering over our heads, whispering, recalling the distant past, unfolding what the night had covered, of humanities hopes and dreams. Yes, gentlemen, this man (pointing to PAUL) scaled the ladder of art to its highest rungs last night, and reached the stars, and did not come down to Earth until dawn.

After this, Salem tells of how all of the party guests came out of Jalal Pasha's house and received his music with mixed emotions; some praising him, others cursing him.

When Salem finishes the story Yousif passes his judgment, presenting his scholarly definition of the "artist," and his poetic metaphors describing the enigma of the life of an artist. Khalil condemns Paul's behavior, and attributes "this freedom" to the European influence he mistrusts so much. In his opinion, the Lebanese "inclinations, customs, and traditions" don't allow for that kind of freedom. Helen, keeping her opinions close, asks Paul to speak and give his own defense for his actions.

Paul again asserts his reluctance and unwillingness to dwell on the story, but decides to speak his mind since he is "now under criticism." According to Paul, it is in his character to act the way he did. It is his "independence which refuses to be sold or seduced by flattery." He rags on the other artists, professional men, religious men, and beggars for all foregoing their independence and "selling their voices" for money, only to be displayed by the rich like signs of wealth. To Paul, these people are no more than slaves, or "talking machines of sorrow and joy." He blames the artists themselves for letting themselves be taken advantage of, and for "not preferring death to humiliation."

Paul explains that he was unable to perform for all of the rich people at the party because they were simply incapable of actually hearing his music. 

(Again, from the text.)

PAUL: Music is the language of the spirit. Its hidden current vibrates between the heart of the singer and the soul of the listener. To those who cannot hear or understand, the singer cannot offer the contents of his heart. Music is a violin with taut and sensitive strings. If the strings loosen, they cannot function. The strings of my soul became loose last night when I looked at the guests in the Pasha's home. I saw naught but the false and the shallow, the stupid and the barren, the pretentious and the arrogant. They besought me to sing because I turned from them. Had I acted like the paid frog-singers, no one would have listened.

Paul says that he went over to Habeeb's house to "pour out his heart's content and to blame the night, Life, and Time." He asserts the nature of art as a spirit, unchangeable by man, and that the artist should respect himself for the precious gift he holds. Yousif praises Paul as an artist and resigns himself as no more than an admirer, and Khalil refuses to be convinced. The maid calls them to eat, and all leave excepting Helen and Paul.

(The final scene, from the text again)

HELEN: 

(Whispering) 

Did you know that I heard you sing last night?

PAUL: 

(Surprised) 

What do you mean, Helen dear?

HELEN: 

(Bashful) 

 I was at my sister Mary's home when I heard you. I spent the night there because her husband had left town and she was afraid to stay by herself.

PAUL: 

Does your sister live at Pine Park?

HELEN: 

No, she lives across the street from Habeeb's home.

PAUL: 

And did you really hear me sing?

HELEN: 

Yes, I heard your soul's call from midnight until dawn. I heard God speaking through your voice.

YOUSIF: 

(Calls from the other room) 

The kanafe is getting cold.

(HELEN and PAUL leave the hall.)

CURTAIN

...

So there's that. It doesn't hold a candle to actually reading the script (which is only 15 pages so, come on), but it at least puts in context what I'll say about it.

How I Feel About Art Right Now, Today 

(With Special Regard Given to the Above Text, along with Some Other Things I've Read)

by Joseph W. Rebrovick

The following no doubt contains fallacies in reasoning, gross generalizations, contradictory statements, and lies.

Do I contradict myself?

Very well then.... I contradict myself;

I am large.... I contain multitudes.

 -Walt Whitman

The central theme of Assilban, no doubt, is the nature of art. 

At the center of the play there is Paul, the subject of most of the first half of the play, and the speaker of most of the second half. Paul is art in its pure form. Paul's art simply cannot exist in the company of those without the ability to hear it. 

"I will not make images to show to the blind, or utter the sounds of my soul to the deaf."

In a preface to his book Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, James Agee spends a solid page and a half demanding his reader not to classify what he has written as "art." To Agee, what often gets classified as art is simply raw fury, and "The deadliest blow the enemy of the human soul can strike is to do fury honor."

This passion, this raw fury that Agee surely felt in his work, is often lamentably titled as art. I tend to agree with him. It seems to me a sort of sin to in any way confine something that, by its very nature, can not be confined. 

Paul Assilban cannot be confined in that room full of rich people.
Imagine that scene.
Here is Paul, minding his own business, at a party to enjoy himself (as much as someone of his melancholy is able to), when suddenly he is implored to sing. Being a singer, and a well known one at that, his first reaction is simple. "Of course I'll sing. Why not? I'm a singer after all." His friend, Salem, begins to play the tune of an old standard, and Paul begins to sing. As Paul begins to sing, he feels his art beginning to undress him.
His soul is leaving his body, and he's giving it to these people. 

Paul is an artist. He can't fake it. 

Suddenly he is overcome with emotion, so much emotion, in fact, that it affects him physically and makes his throat sore rendering him unable to sing. These people listening to his music, they're only halfway there. There's no doubt these people enjoy the sounds he's making. They've heard the poem. It's a good one. But they aren't able to take all he's giving them. Their eyes are shifting to the woman across the room with the diamond necklace, the man nonchalantly flaunting his new European coat, all posturing, all posing, all watching, all calculating, all fidgeting, all trying. 

Shortly after Shakespeare's death, a riot broke out at the Blackfriars Theatre in London during a performance of Macbeth. A nobleman, having paid the extra few pennies to get a seat right on the stage and become a part of the spectacle, saw a friend of his enter and walked right across the stage directly in front of the action to greet him. An actor called him out, the nobleman slapped him, and it was all downstage from there.

Can you imagine?
There's Richard Burbage on the stage playing Macbeth. It's the end of Act II Scene ii. He's just murdered Duncan in his sleep. A ghostly knocking is sounding through the hall.

"To know my deed,
Knock.

 'Twere best to know myself.

Wake Duncan with thy---"

"Is that you, Sir Henry? 'Ello chap! How the devil are you?!"

(They fight)

Paul Assilban's soul was leaving his body and, once gone, found that it had nowhere to go. Paul felt this. A person knows when his soul is lost.

Agee instructs his readers on how to enjoy art. He tells them to get the loudest sound system they can find, get a copy of Beethoven's Seventh symphony, get down on the floor as close as possible, turn it up as loud as it goes and listen. No eating, no drinking, no smoking, no moving. "You won't hear it nicely. If it hurts you, be glad of it." 

Agee got it.

When someone gives you a gift, you take it. If the gift is a chocolate bar, you look them in the eye, you put out your hand, palm up, and give them a place to put the gift they got for you. You say thank you.
And mean it.
Don't you?

Why wouldn't you? 

You wouldn't say "Ok. Put it over there. Maybe I'll eat it later." and continue on your business? Would you?

Why would you?

Paul Assilban was giving these people a gift. They said "Maybe later." and continued to posture, pose, watch, calculate, fidget, try. They didn't deserve the gift.

Paul went across the street to Habeeb's house. Habeeb, this man who likes to "drink, sing, and dream" no doubt had his ear to the speaker, motionless on the floor, as loud as it would go. 

Habeeb got it.


The nature of art.


Khalil Bey Tamer, the government official, remains unconvinced. Khalil is a nationalist, a law-enforcer, a good old boy. Khalil, no doubt, has a "God Bless Lebanon" sticker on the back of his  pickup. He dislikes European culture for no other reason than because it's European. Yousif points out that Khalil's clothes, his kitchen utensils, and his chairs are all European, and he in fact reads more Western literature than he does Arabic books. Khalil (a fine representative of redneck pride) throws this to the wayside as if it doesn't matter. What matters is custom, tradition.

YOUSIF:

 Old cultures that fail to revitalize themselves by the production of modern culture are doomed to intellectual death.

Near the end of the play, Yousif kindly steps out and explains exactly what purpose he serves: 

(to PAUL) 

"You are a real artist, but I am a seeker and admirer of the arts. The difference between us is like the difference between old wine and sour grapes."

Yousif is one of the people that would have been at the party. (In fact, there's no reason he shouldn't have been invited. I suspect foul play.) He is an "admirer," admittedly, strictly on the outside of art. An academic, he does not have the eyes or the ears for art and he knows it. His approach is one which he is familiar with. In fact, in the first line of the play we learn that he has just recently published "an article on the Fine Arts." He is a scholar, and his approach to art is scholarly. His lines are wrought with definitions, theories, laws, and metaphors generally befitting a scholar. He probably wears a lot of tweed.


I like to imagine that Kahlil Gibran had a friend when he was a kid named Salem. Salem was probably a lovably precocious brat (think Eddie Haskell). Elsewhere in Spiritual Sayings he tells the story of Salem Effandy, who drops his Plato to proclaim himself the product of all of the great men to have walked the earth, before passing out drunk and snoring "upon his filthy bed." Although in Assilban Salem's last name is Mowad, I don't think it's a stretch to think of these two as the same person. In fact, his name could just as well be Autolycus. He is surely the type of artist that Paul is so fed up with. He will easily sell his soul for a bottle of wine, and fancies himself a sort of martyr deserving of thanks and praise for giving up the beautiful women and food and drink at the party to follow Paul when he left. Salem certainly enjoys himself, and is good at playing the lute, but he has lost touch with his art. He sees it, no doubt, in Paul's voice at Habeeb's house. His recalling of that part of the story seems to be the only time in the play that the fast-talking, proud, devil-may-care Salem slows down and actually appreciates beauty, only to be caught back up in a good story and continues to make fun of his friend. Like Autolycus in The Winter's Tale, Salem is a rogue, but will do no harm. He'll peddle his songs for any price and by any means.


Autolycus.

Come to the peddler:

Money's a meddler

That doth utter all men's ware-a.

(IV.iv 355-358)

In that same act (one of the longest in all of Shakespeare), Polixenes gives his opinion of creative botany, and if I were writing about creative botany I would expound on that. In the same speech, though, he gives credence to nature itself being the basis of art. That I can expound on. I'll let him tell you:

Say there be,

Yet nature is made better by no mean

But nature makes that mean:so, over that art,

Which you say adds to nature, is an art

That nature makes. You see, sweet maid, we marry

A gentler scion to the wildest stock,

And make conceive a bark of baser kind

By bud of nobler race. This is an art

Which does mend nature--change it rather--but

The art itself is nature.

(IV.iv 104-114)

Perhaps for Paul Assilban, this is the nature of his art. "The art itself is nature." In fact, Paul goes on to say that "Art is a bird that soars freely in the sky or roams happily on the ground. No one can change its behavior. Art is a spirit that cannot be bought or sold." In Harold Bloom's chapter on The Winter's Tale from his book Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human, he points out that "Perdita is not interested in an art that mends or changes nature, she cries out instead for an unfallen nature that would be its own art."

There is beauty in nature, and "art" that is a product of strictly human effort (for money) is swimming upstream against the supreme art that is nature, or nature, which is its own supreme art. Art exists on its own, and it is presumptuous to try to better what is already perfect, according to Perdita. Perhaps according to James Agee too. He does warn against classifying, enclosing, and stifling that natural fury that is labeled as art. Perhaps according to Paul Assilban too. He knows that his art is nature. His body is nothing but a steward. In his own words, an artist is a "vase filled with divine wine." A beauty as big and as perfect as nature can't fit inside a room, and certainly not in a room where it doesn't feel welcome.

I prefer the final scene of the play, though, between Helen and Paul.

Khalil has railed against the terrors of Western culture, the "foreign infection" that is the cause of Paul's insubordination, the European influence that is ruining Arabic culture.

Yousif has explained in learned detail all of the reasons that an artist does what an artist does, what makes an artist, where art fits, what purpose it serves, and liberal political views about how art must crossbreed to survive and thrive (similar to what Polixenes says about the flowers.)

Salem has gawked at his friend giving up all the beautiful women and wine in favor of something as base as simple art.

Even Paul, feeling like he doesn't need to explain himself, explains philosophically what art means to him and what he thinks the purpose of art is, if only to defend his actions.

Helen has hardly says a word the whole time, only ever assuring Paul that they are all on his side.

Finally, once everyone has left and taken all of their opinions and philosophies with them, Helen reveals that she heard him sing. She heard his "soul's call from midnight until dawn." She heard God in his voice.

Maybe that's the nature of art, for it's certainly the most persuasive argument in the whole play. There are no facts, there's no postulating.

Paul sang, and Helen thought it was beautiful.

It was beautiful.