Spirit of Odetta

I’m back at Lincoln Center, back in the south plaza. It’s another hot night, and the rain from this afternoon has made the air as thick as a New Orleans stew. The faces of the crowd collected here are sweaty, expectant. I have my 7-year-old by the hand, and we make our way to the front and find, like an offering, empty seats in the second row. We settle in with our drinks and our snacks—and I explain to my son that this will be a magical night, a night he'll remember. Why, he asks. And I tell him, because we are here.

When Lizz Wright takes the stage, I am not prepared. It is still light outside, a sequestered sun still trying to bully us. The lights on the stage shine pink, shine blindingly white as the band enters and takes up position behind drums, keyboard, the bass and guitar. And then she appears from the deepest recess of the stage—a graceful young woman in a long sequined skirt that she will clutch and squeeze when she’s inspired. She wears a beaded gold necklace that catches the lights of the stage and reflects them out to us like confetti on this breathless night. Later she will remove the necklace because of the heat of the night, because of the hot lights that bear down on her. Before she takes the stage, they tell us that she has been raised in the church, the daughter of a minister father and a mother who sang—so you’d think I'd be ready. But I'm not. Just a few lazy notes in, she steps to the mic and quiets us all. My son watches her with an intensity, listening, his sneakers stilled, his hands unemployed. In the first row, a blind woman holds her walking stick like a staff, and leans her head back in rapture to an unseen sky...

Behind a drowsy rhythm, she tells us in her smoky, sovereign voice about an easy rider; about giving the con man her all; about a man being there that she doesn’t remember letting in. As she sings, I feel emotion building from some unknown place in my belly, in the heaviness behind my eyes. I take in the smoldering sky—the sun having finally given up and yanked the night time over it like a blanket. On stage, she lifts two sculpted arms, and by the time she sings, What if I fall, and the water is cold?, I am sobbing, my chest heaving—a Roy Orbison cry tonight. Because I did fall, and the water is cold. Very cold…

And then the unexpected man appears just as I am wiping my tears and struggling to gain a quieter footing. He slips into the only empty seat beside me, here on the plaza, and I turn my mascara smudged face to look at him. He studies me for a moment and says, quietly: he does not deserve your passion. I know this, of course, but the heart is an unruly, intemperate thing that doesn’t listen, that won’t behave. I shake my head, knowing the truth, knowing that I have fallen in love with cold. That my heat and fire are not enough to warm him, not enough for him to stay.

I’m sorry, I say. To the unexpected man, who I wish was someone else beside me tonight. I introduce him to my son, who quickly peeks around me, and settles right back into his chair. The unexpected man pats my hand and says, I’ll be back—but I’m not sure he will. Yet as she reappears on the stage for her encore, there he is, carrying drinks for us all. She sings Amazing Grace a accapella, her voice thicker than this murky night. Fighting back tears, I lift the cup to my lips and swallow one small, muted sip.

Intermission.... and the stage bustles with roadies taking things down and setting things up. The crowd makes its way to the bathroom, to the concession booths scattered like children’s blocks in this open plaza. The unexpected man asks me if I’m okay—which I don’t think I am, but I nod anyway…

When Allen Toussaint takes the stage, there is a surge to the front. They are ready for New Orleans, ready to dance. Mr. Toussaint still has flecks of dark in his white hair, and he wears a suit on this hot summer night, as he sits behind the piano. Even in my sadness, I wonder how they keep the keyboards tuned on such a night as this. He strikes the opening chord, and the crowd moves, and jubilance is unleashed into a muscular sky. No dancing for me—at least not yet—because my knees ache and my heart is too heavy. I watch as people are pulled like magnets toward the source, to the open area in front of the stage. They go in pairs, by themselves, pulled by the seductive, thumping beat of that faraway city. I watch a man in a short-sleeved red shirt with seagulls on it dance with his woman. He is my age, with white in his closely cropped beard. Beside them, two older women dance together... when suddenly the man in the seagull shirt grabs the waist of one of the women, and they spin off together. She matches his step--they are aligned... She wears a black dress and pearls, and her smile is pure memory as she and the seagull man glide and spin. And with one fluid motion, she slips her purse from her shoulder and hands it off to a young man—a stranger—sitting in the front row, so she can move unencumbered. Because nothing bad could happen as she dances with a man in the plaza tonight…

And finally I, too, want to dance. Want to let my pain go. And so my son and I step out from the row of chairs and into the crowded space with so many other lost souls, and we dance together, my boy and me, on the south plaza, at Lincoln Center—the unexpected man watching us, as I think only of him…
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