Point and Counterpoint

When I was in college, one of my favorite assignments was in a history class in which my professor asked us to read a page from the journal of a midwife and then read a newspaper entry from the town she lived on from that same date. The midwife wrote about making preparations for a visitor to the town - making food, making sure the children were out of the road and not getting run over by horses, and her nerves over making her husband proud. The newspaper wrote all about General George Washington's arrival, a detailed description of a long, important parade, and a snippet of every speech given on that day.

I loved this assignment because it illustrated to me in a vivid way how history is written. Once it's written down, it's there. That book (A Midwife's Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785-1812) is one of my favorite books of all time because she wrote down the daily minutiae of her life, minutiae I would otherwise be unaware of. Minutiae I often wonder about when I learn about historical events. Imagine if history were told from the perspective of the caterers and cab drivers...it would certainly be more interesting to me. In addition, this one example is what makes me nervous whenever I hear about court cases where people are convicted of crimes based on eyewitness testimony since "the truth" is so complex.

My Bestest Friend and I recently went on a three day trip to New York City together. In her blog, she wrote two posts describing the trip from her perspective. I'm going to quote some of her posts and then write my own version of the events depicted.

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Bestest Friend writes: Another awesome thing about the New York subway (we'll just ignore the gross that is the bottom of the track, or that horrific greasy feeling on the handles on the stairs) is the people performing. D insists that I ignore everyone else in cities, for the most part, but I can't do that. One evening, there was a man singing opera. I mean, he was singing it WELL. He was this big, burly man, like all opera singers, and he was pretty young, and he was belting out some tunes. The next night, a girl played her guitar and sang, and she was as good if not better than many of the musicians that I listen to often.

So I had to clap for these people. They were awesome, and I know how it is to pour yourself out in music. Maybe I don't know how it is to make your living doing it, or needing to be discovered so badly it hurts, but I do understand music.

I write: The subway system is completely confusing. When are trains express trains? How can you tell? How come you get charged twice when you fuck up and make a mistake and have to leave the train station to get on the train you can only find on the other side of the street? Plus, the noise on the subway is insane. The trains themselves are squealing and loud and the tile mosaics mean every sound in the station is magnified and echoed.

And the buskers. Oh, the noise. They hurt my ears. The first night we were there, these Mexican guys, complete with sombreros, got on our train car, and sang La Bamba. Argh. As people placed money in the hats at the end of the song, I shuddered. Encouraging the noise is not something I would do. And there are buskers in the stations themselves. One day we heard this young woman screeching and as Bestest Friend stopped and clapped her hands (in approbation!) I found myself having to prevent myself from putting my hands over my ears. Noise. Noise. Noise. Stop the noise.

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Bestest Friend writes (discussing a tour we took in Harlem advertised as a walking tour on the Harlem Renaissance) : George grew up in Harlem. George managed a ballroom and knew Malcolm X personally. George started off giving us lots of awesome information in our small group. Soon, though, George got angry, spouting off distinctions between US and THEM. I went from nodding, laughing and smiling (Yes! A'Lelia Walker WAS an interesting businesswoman in the 20's!) to shrinking back from the group, embarrassed by my European ethnicity.

About an hour into the tour, D and I turned back to go to the subway. George was horrified that we were leaving the group, but we waved him off. I was so disappointed that I hadn't seen where Langston Hughes lived, or where Countee Cullen married W.E.B. Dubois's daughter. Still, I was just happy being in the atmosphere.

I write: Our tour guide, George, created an interesting problem for me. He clearly had lived through some exciting events in Harlem, but he was an awful tour guide. He rarely turned around to talk to us, rushed us through interesting things to make us stare at boring things for long periods of time, and was, I think, just an angry black man. Should I be angry that George was angry? Should I just ignore him and try and get out of the tour what I could? There were lots of unmodified pronouns (we/us/they/them). I spent the first five minutes listening to George wondering who "we" were (the people on the tour? black people? Harlem residents? old black men? Americans?). At about minute six, though, I realized that my white skin made me a target of George's anger and I stayed to the back of the tour, mildly offended, incredibly bored, and sweating half my body weight out.

About halfway through the tour, we just left. We were close to a subway station and I could tell Bestest Friend was nearly as fried as I was - we were both half a block behind everyone else, red-faced, and my bottle of water was nearly depleted - and we left George to his anger, enjoying our own time together in Harlem, walking slowly but purposefully back to our fun.

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I'd like to read that last scene from George's point of view.