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STRATEGY FOR THE DAY: Reach out and touch someone.

I have a short article (and a song) titled "Sleeping In Byron's Bed" posted on my web site. The article has to do with the sense of inter-connectedness that exists within England's artistic community through direct personal contacts, circles of friends, and family relationships. I couldn't help comparing that with the disconnection and isolation felt by many writers, painters, and composers here in the U.S. Recently I received a wonderful email from Derrick Leigh with a great example that illustrates exactly what I describe in my article. With his permission, I'm including it here. My response follows.

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From Derrick Leigh: I always felt some vague affinity with the romantic poets and the pre-Raphaelites, but then my sister's genealogical research uncovered some things a couple of years ago that shook me. One branch of the family tree contained a guy called Chandos Leigh, who was at Harrow school with Byron. They became friends, and when Byron got married Chandos bought his old bachelor pad. They dined together the evening Byron left the country. Chandos's father was Henry James Leigh, who gave his name to Leigh Hunt, whose American father Isaac was his tutor. Chandos payed half the rent on Leigh Hunt's house when he ran into difficulties, the other half being paid by Mary Shelley. Chandos was a minor, rather poor poet, but a supporter, friend and patron of the romantic poets. He was also a cousin of Jane Austen, whose mother was Cassandra Leigh.

On the Butler side of my family (my grandmother's) we discovered a connection not only with Yeats, but it goes as far back as 13th century to Maud le Vavasour, who's life was one of the sources of Maid Marian's entry into the Robin Hood ballads in 16th century.

It's hard to describe how that knowledge has affected me, but it's strengthened my artistic understanding of their lives and work and somehow brought them closer to the present day. It's given me confidence and inspired me. My reason for writing is to wonder whether you've explored your own family roots. Although many Americans may feel a sense of disconnection, the reality is that the roots often lie in Europe, and the further back you go, the wider the roots spread. You never know what artistic and literary connections you may uncover!

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Derrick's email describes exactly what I meant by "sleeping in Byron's bed." There's a web of connections that link artists, thinkers, and poets of one generation to other generations, like a community across time. I believe, as he says, that it does change one's perspective, offering a sense of belonging, an artistic home or self-reference point.

So Derrick's question about my own roots got me to thinking. Could I find interconnections within the art community in my own family history? I spent some time interviewing my parents and grandparents while they were alive and I have an idea of my background as far back as the 1850's but no earlier. My mother once had a genealogist go back further and he came up with a silly looking "coat of arms" from a questionable relation who was said to be a court physician to Louis XIV. (Yeah, and I was Marie Antoinette in a former life.) I don't buy that one. So here's what I think...

My people were not poets or painters nor did they hobnob with literary or intellectual figures. There are no interesting stories to tell of meeting Oscar Wilde or sharing textbooks with Yeats. But when I read Yeats' "Crazy Jane" poems I recognized some of my people. They were not poets; they were the people in the poems. They were adventurers, highwaymen, itinerant musicians, gamblers, ball players. They were musicians and drinkers. Some became successful but they were never luminaries nor did they become friends with luminaries.

There was music in my family. My uncles played in dance bands in the 1920's and 30's. Not with Bix Beiderbecke or Paul Whiteman nor anyone you've heard of. They were the working musicians who traveled from small town to small town around the midwestern U.S. They were the white boys who pumped out the hopped-up rhythms and sweet, sentimental tunes of the day. They played for people who had only recently acquired radios through the Sears-Robuck catalogue. My uncles put away their guitars and banjo's to settle down and raise families in the 1940's. They went off to war, came back and didn't talk about it. After that, they only played occasionally, usually at family get-togethers for nephews and nieces like me who didn't appreciate their repertoire or musical skill.

Some of my forebears were miners; prospectors who looked for copper and tin and sometimes found a little gold or silver. When they did, it was usually stolen by some smarter guy. They were solitary figures with enough formal schooling in geology to know what they were doing but they mostly let their gut instinct tell them where to dig and their gut was generally wrong. They roamed throughout the vast territories of Canada and the U.S. looking for the Big Strike that never happened. Eventually they settled in places like Ladysmith and Denver to open the local General Store or boarding house. My grandmother remembers the dandified card-sharp Bat Masterson staggering, dead drunk, down the main street of Denver. That's about as close as my family came to hanging out with famous people. Forget artists.

My father was a prospector, too, before he met my mother and settled down to raise his own family. He chose the blank, dry flats of Los Angeles, the perfect place to build and fly the new form of mass transportation - airplanes. Lockheed and Douglas: they hired my father to work on the planes and keep them flying. He didn't know Howard Hughes. There is no web of interesting connections there. The men he worked with were just first names - Harry, Stu, Chip - overheard in quiet conversations with my mother.

My family spread out across the vast distances of the midwest, eventually settling on the coasts, Florida and California. I spent my childhood between the two. Three thousand miles distant, connections are stretched to the breaking point. People lose track of each other and forget where they came from and who they knew. It seems as if each generation is born without a past at all. Free to start fresh, unencumbered by expectations but cut off from their roots and forced to reinvent the comforting, defining web of family history. I'm not sure which I prefer but since it isn't a choice, I'll take what I have.

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Read A Brief History Of Love Songs by Robin Frederick at the Sound Experience Music web site.

Copyright 2006 Robin Frederick. All rights reserved.