Watchman, what of the night?

On Memorial Day morning, which was cloudier and colder than expected, I stood in my living room trying to figure out which of the many things I had left undone I should try to do. I was in one of those moods where there was so much I should be doing that I couldn’t do any of it, so I was pretty much just wandering from room to room looking more or less helplessly from here to there. I couldn’t even decide when I should take my shower, so I was unshaven with my hair all askew, but I had at least managed to change from my nighttime shorts to jeans and a wifebeater. I looked out the window and saw two very nicely dressed black women, probably in their late 50s, coming up the walk, and since I had at least managed to get semi-dressed I decided that I would be courteous and take the copy of the Watchtower they were going to offer me, because I could tell immediately that they were Jehovah’s Witnesses.

Some people get venomous about the Witnesses, but I don’t. In my experience, they’re quiet, polite, and well-dressed, and all they want to do is offer you a pamphlet. There are worse visitors in a neighborhood. It’s not as if I need more things to irritate me, so if I can be easy-going about the Witnesses, I’m going to seize the opportunity.

Anyway I went to open the door after the two women rang the bell, and since I figured it would be an extremely short visit I didn’t bother to pause my CD player. I had at least managed to decide what CD to put on that morning: the first disc of one of my new Marston sets, the Complete Recordings of Marie Delna.

So I opened the door and one of the women was about to give her talk when she stopped and said, “Oh! What lovely music!” “Oh my, yes!” said the other. “Yes, it is,” I agreed. It was Disc 1, track 16, Printemps qui commence from Samson et Dalila, and as I stood there on my porch with the two Witnesses that piece gave way to the next track, another selection from Samson, Mon coeur s’ouvre a ta voix. The three of us stood there for a few moments listening to the swelling beauty of a voice captured on disc in Paris in 1907.

After a pause the women roused themselves to offer their literature, but one burst out, “Oh, it’s just so beautiful! I would love to have a massage to that music!” I found that totally charming, since at some point in the past few years “having a massage”/“going to a spa” apparently became the absolute pinnacle of whatever serenity and beauty is possible in life. So the two ladies, Anna and Anna Maria, offered me the Watchtower, which I took, and since they had also commented (“You should sell those!”) on the many lemons on the tree in my backyard (and it’s true, that wonderful tree has a shining abundance of fruit year-round, especially in the branches visible from the sidewalk, which get a lot of late afternoon sun) I offered to give them as many lemons as they’d like. They politely declined, since they were on their way to services, and so they went off down the street, and I went back to Marie Delna, and to wondering what I should be doing with my day. And thus endeth the lesson: another true operatic encounter.