For those in peril on the sea

There's a man living across the water from my office in a run-down ranch tucked between mansions. I stopped to do some business with him--I didn't realize when he gave me the address that he worked out of his house. I pulled in and sat for a minute, a little weirded out by the scene. The grass was long and the bushes were overgrown, and the house looked almost abandoned--things covering the windows from the inside, etc. He opened the door and I smelled moth balls, and had a Silence-of-the-Lambs moment. I stayed outside and chatted at him through the doorway for a few minutes just to decide whether or not I was going in. But he had such a big grin and such nice manners.

For the past 50 years this guy has recorded live performances of military bands and choirs. He's been doing it since before the groups even thought to tape themselves. His father was an admiral; he grew up listening to the stuff. About ten years ago he started cutting disks and selling them, though his distribution and marketing mechanisms are pretty thin. The disks represent the smallest fraction of the material in his archives. His archives occupy three rooms of his house. His recording equipment takes up two more plus the garage. "Where do you eat?" I laugh, looking at the equipment in his dining room. "Oh, in the kitchen," he says.

"I've been unwell this year," he tells me, "and I'm worried about who's going to take care of all of this when I'm gone." My instinct--the one that always gets me in trouble--is to leap in and take on the problem as my own. But I'm tired, and I have a 5-hr drive ahead of me, and Liam got sick yesterday and I'm worried about him, and I want to get out of there as quickly as I can without being rude.

I'm interested in selling some of his CDs in a holiday catalog, and he's pulled a few dozen disks and put them on the coffee table, and he's already cued up six of his favorites on his CD player. "You've got to hear some of this stuff," he says, and heaves down into a chair across from me. I don't need to hear it to buy it, but I can't say that. He pushes a button on the remote and I realize he's got 6 speakers in this tiny room and the volume is up, and it's like the sousaphone is two chairs over pointing my way. I try not to grab my ears--try not to wince. I don't particularly care for this kind of music; it feels unemotional to me: it feels like a lot of noise. Brass: bleuch.

It's not that at all to him: he's gazing off into space, mouthing the words being sung, and his eyes have gone soft. It's like a photo album for him. 20 seconds of that, then he clicks forward to the next tune, and the next, and so on, though multiple disks for 45 minutes. For every tune he's got a story: he remembers where he put the microphones. He remembers conversations with the conductors. He gossips a bit--giggles at himself. By about the halfway mark the music became a little more interesting--a little more vocal. And then the final disk: a brand new item that arrived at his door from the manufacturer half an hour after I did--the result of 30 years of his labor: a 2-CD, 150-year anniversary celebration of one of the service bands. He skimmed through disk #1. But disk #2 wouldn't play. He tried and tried--he opened two new packages to try others, and sank onto the floor pushing different buttons--opening the carousel and repositioning the disk and closing the carousel again. I thought he was going to cry. "Oh no," he kept whispering. "Oh no..."

And then, for whatever reason, the music started, and it was the Navy Hymn--that mournful, prayerful piece that chokes me up every time I hear it.

I bought a bunch of stuff. We may buy more. He walked me out to my car--all the way out, to the car door, and then stood at the end of his driveway to make sure nobody was coming to blindside me when I pulled out. I felt a little bad leaving him alone, though also I don't really think he's ever lonely. Not even for a minute.

And so I add Charlie to the list of people that make me wonder about this place and this culture. It's not what Charlie chose for his life obsession: it's that he chose. There's a lot of that around here: intensity, dedication. It's a little strange to encounter; it takes me a while, every time, to slip into the language and to find the level. But Charlie's archives are his children. They're his family connection--his life memories. His purpose. And I can relate to that brand of mad love.