The Uncarved Block: Marlowe Sigal

Showing posts with label Marlowe Sigal. Show all posts

Elise Sigal holds Erica Sigal 1959
Photo by Marlowe Sigal
(c) The Estate of Marlowe A. Sigal

My father was a hell of a photographer.

I found this photo among my father's things yesterday. Ever since I rescued it from a pile of papers, I have not been able to stop staring at it.

For one thing, I personally think it is a great photograph. The lighting, the depth of field that puts the main subject in focus with the rest of the image fading away. The pose of my mother looking away while my sister stares at the viewer. The texture of the image. I think it is a beautiful photo and it gives me a certain pride that my father created it.

It also blows my mind that it has lain hidden for 61 years. I had never seen it before. My sister says she's never seen it. My mother vaguely recalls seeing it a long time ago.

And then there are the personal aspects. The woman in the photo is my mother too. That is approximately what she looked like when I was born 3 years later. And, of course, I never knew the infant in the picture. She was a toddler by the time I came along.

I am also deeply struck by the passage of time. Sixty years is forever. The photo might as well be from the 16th century, or 10,000 years ago on the Anatolian plain, or from a period before the evolution of homo-sapiens. I wasn't even born when my father took this photo. Who are these people? My mother and sister are still alive, but the people in this image are long, long gone.

And then there is my sister's face. I don't mean any insult, but you can see the chimpanzee in her face. And those eyes - huge black pupils. The way her tiny hand grabs my mothers sleeve, and the look on her face, make me think that she knows that this is not going to be easy. I see an uncertainty as to whether or not she wants to face what's coming; whether or not she believes that she will make it through it all.

My father had an extraordinary avocation; he collected and restored antique musical instruments. Over roughly 50 years of collecting, he amassed an astonishing number of pieces, a remarkable expertise, and worldwide recognition as an authority on early instruments and music.

His collecting began with keyboards, starting with a broken pedal organ that his father got somewhere and gave to him with the instruction, “if you can fix it, you can have it.” It turns out that he could fix it, and so began this lifelong interest.

Eventually his collection drove us out of my childhood home and into a much larger house with what seemed like plenty of room. But as the space increased, so did his appetite. It took a couple of decades, but he managed to fill the house. There were keyboard instruments in bedrooms, in the dining room, in his study, in the family room, in the “music room”, in the front hall, stacked coffin-like in the basement, and eventually unceremoniously filling the back recesses of the warehouse at his factory.

It was around this time that he began collecting blessedly smaller woodwind instruments. Yet over the ensuing years, it was beginning to become hard to find places to put even one more piccolo, with all manner of antique woodwinds not only in display cabinets and specially made drawers, but also stacked on top of the ubiquitous pianos.

Eventually, at the request of many in the early music world, he produced a beautiful catalog:

One thing he didn’t do was to make any real plan for what he wanted to have happen to the collection after his death. He had left letters, unsigned wills, and varying codicils to his one official will. He also told me at the hospital, a few days before he died, what he would like to have happen to all these instruments. After he passed and I read through his papers, I found none of these documents, formal or informal, agreed with each other, nor did they agree with his verbal instructions to me. But there was one thread that remained constant; if possible, he would like the collection to stay together, and to be made available to the public for education, appreciation, and research.

It turns out that giving away hundreds of antique instruments is not as easy as it sounds. Keyboards in particular take up a lot of space – something of which the family was painfully aware. Moreover, many of the instruments were made of wood, with bits of leather and other temperamental materials thrown in. These ancient ingredients require a lot of care and feeding to make sure they don’t degrade. As if that weren’t enough, many of them contain ivory (for example, the keys of the pianos). Though it was 100% clear that the animals had died hundreds of years in the past, the current regulations from the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) make any transportation or sale of ivory of any vintage difficult, if not impossible. If that wasn't enough, some of the instruments contained bone, or other material that looks like ivory, and thus would require DNA testing to prove that it is not ivory before being transported in or out of the country.

I won’t bore you with the details of the search for a home for the collection, except to say that we spent months talking to representatives of various museums and universities, had them come and visit the collection, and listened to their proposals. The family had endless conversations, wrung our hands, and bit our nails. I went so far as to research the elevations and distance inland for the various institutions in consideration of how climate change and rising sea levels might impact the housing of the collection into the unknowable future.

After months of conversations and negotiations, we chose to give the collection as a whole to The Carolina Music Museum, in Greenville, South Carolina, along with a gift to help with the care and maintenance of this trove of material. In recognition of this, and my father’s contributions to the world of musical instrument preservation, the museum changed its name to the Sigal Music Museum.

The name was officially changed in mid-2019. However, due to the installation and removal of existing exhibits, the effort in moving the collection from Boston to Greenville, COVID-19, and other things, the name change wasn’t publicized until now. The new signage is up on the building, labeling is changed, t-shirts are printed, and the new website is ready… and it looks wonderful.

The Sigal Music Museum website is beautiful (and I'm not just sayin' that.) Check it out at https://sigalmusicmuseum.org. Plans for the "Sensational Sigal" exhibit are going full speed ahead. None of us can wait until my father’s collection is unveiled to the world in its new home - which, pandemic willing, will occur later this year.

Please do check out the web site, and if you are in the Greenville area, go to the museum itself. Online you will find a terrific series of videos that have been done by the curators, showing off the several collections that are in the museum’s charge. These can be found on SigalMusicMuseum.org, YouTube, and Instagram.

My whole family is exceedingly proud of the collection and the work done by the Sigal Music Museum to preserve and display it. We are thrilled that our hand wringing and brow furrowing decision making process paid off in the selection of a most excellent new home for my father’s legacy. I'm sure he would be pleased.

“I’ll make you a bet,” he said. “I’ll bet you that if we come back here in 20 years we’ll find the world indistinguishable from today. The loser buys dinner.”

“Wait, Dad.” I said. “What’s the bet? If I’m right the world is laid to waste and I win. If I lose, I have to buy dinner. I’m not sure I like that bet.”

“OK, I tell you what.” My father arched an eyebrow. “We’ll come back to this restaurant on March 21, 2000, and flip a coin. The loser pays.”

At 18 years of age, twenty years seemed like more than forever. If it amused my dad to make a bet for twenty years in the future, it was fine with me.

We had arrived at that dinner table during my senior year in high school. It seems that my parents had become increasingly concerned with what they considered to be my overwhelming case of adolescent angst. Apparently, I had become insolent, lazy, and sloppy. As far as I could tell, I had become a typical teenager. They were convinced that something had to be done to snap me out of this rut. So, in March of 1980 my father let me skip a week of school and took me with him on a business trip to London.

Our final night in London he had taken me to dinner at Simpson’s-in-the-Strand, one of London’s fine old restaurants. As our plates of prime rib with Yorkshire pudding worked their way down to rinds of fat and crumbs, our conversation had turned to the future. From my arrogant, nihilistic, “child-of-the-bomb” point of view I opined that either the flower-children of the ‘60s would assume power in the government, resulting in a world of peace, love, and free drugs for all, or we would destroy ourselves, leaving the planet in a state of ruin. Furthermore, my money was on the latter. My conservative father, perhaps goaded on by my extreme position, asserted with Ivy-League certitude that in the year 2000, the world would be virtually indistinguishable from the place we knew and loved in 1980.

“All right, Dad,” I said, “you’re on. March 21, 2000.”

Over the years, from time to time my father would remind me of our appointment. Of course, I was busy growing up, going to college, getting jobs and building a career. The year 2000 was still infinitely far away. I didn’t think much of it.

In January 2000 I was arranging a round-the-world trip as part of my new career as a travel writer. The planning was not going well. I decided that to get a handle on things I needed to map it out on a calendar. I went to my computer, launched my schedule program, and had it spit out monthly calendars through June. There it was, smack dab in the middle of my trek through the Australian outback: “March 21: Dinner with Dad in London.” I couldn’t recall when I had put it into my computer - it must have been years prior. Frantically I picked up the phone and punched the digits for my father’s office. “Uh, hi Dad. Do you remember that bet we made to meet in London?”

“Sure do. March 21st, wouldn’t miss it for the world,” came his reply.

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I met my father on the morning of the 19th at the Oxford & Cambridge Club of London, a place chosen not because of its unique charms but for nostalgia: it was where we had stayed in 1980. Desperately I searched for signs of change to feed my argument that the world was indeed different, but few institutions change more slowly than the O & C Club. The deskman still looked down his nose at me for wearing jeans and sneakers; the lobby still had a tomblike silence in which every whisper echoed; the elevator still ran at geriatric speed. The only distinct difference was that on our prior visit my father and I had shared a double. This time I was able to afford my own private room to avoid his snoring.

We had arrived in London two days early for a little father/son re-acquaintance time. He had flown in from Boston, I from Prague, he from the 19th century, I from the 21st. I was both excited and nervous; three days as an adult with my father – a man I barely knew. Because of his workaholic bent we had spent very little time together as I was growing up. My deepest insights into his personality seemed to come from examining myself. When I was furiously impatient waiting for a table at a restaurant, I would recognize my father in myself, nodding silently at the new understanding. When girlfriends complained that my face was an impenetrable mask of stony silence while I felt cheerful and connected, I realized that maybe my dad was not the cold gargoyle I imagined as a child. At times I have said or done things that have given me the strange sensation that he is inside me, looking out through my eyes. How many of my personality traits were his? How many of my beliefs about him were wrong?

That first day we went for a bit of culture at the Tate Gallery. We compared our tastes in art and I was shocked to find that mine had become quite stodgy - preferring Flemish and Dutch masters - while my father regaled me with praise for impressionism. Go figure. Following the museum with a leisurely stroll through London, we managed to carefully avoid any talk of how the world may have changed, favoring instead light conversation about the family, the town, and issues of the day. With two days until our dinner, we had to pace ourselves.

That night’s dinner was my opportunity to push us outside the stream of our former visit. If there’s anything that had changed in London in the past 20 years, it was the quality of the food. I had chosen a restaurant called Quaglino's, a stylish, see-and-be-seen place full of handsome people of all ages with a very chic attached bar. We both agreed that the food was excellent – certainly the match of restaurants in any metropolitan center of gastronomy. Further father-son bonding occurred as we realized that we were each ogling the same buxom woman at a nearby table. I had ceded my father the seat with the better view, which he seemed to fully appreciate.

The next day my father took me on my first trip into the English countryside. We took the train out of London to visit a friend of his in Kent, where we spent a pleasant afternoon. Riding back to London, regarding this man snoozing in the seat next to me, I couldn’t help recalling how difficult our relationship had been when I was growing up. Long days at the office left him short tempered and craving only peace and quiet. Time with children was not big on his calendar. I was a grownup before I began to understand. I have never known how to deal with kids. I’m sure he was the same way with me. The day I comprehended this it was like a curtain being pulled aside, affording me a new insight into my youth. Although it was illuminating, this recognition had provided little comfort. Now that we were both adults, a meeting of the minds was finally possible.

For our final day, what better way to gain perspective on the way things had changed than a visit to the British Museum - full of antiquities that even my father must declare “old.” Along the way I pulled us into a coin shop. This evening would be the big dinner. I felt sure no ordinary quarter would do for our bet. I asked the dealer for a coin from 1980, one with heft, weight, and significance. They had the perfect thing: a one-pound coin commemorating the birthday of the Queen Mother. Full of pomp and history, the coin showed a bust of the Queen Mother surrounded by bows, arrows, and stylized lions.

That night we took a taxi to Simpson's-in-the-Strand. My father had alerted them to the historic nature of our dinner, a fact that was not lost on this august edifice. On our arrival the maitre d’ welcomed us, shook our hands, and presented us with complimentary glasses of champagne as we were seated. The restaurant hadn’t changed a bit. Our booth in the back corner was dark oak padded with leather. The dark paneled walls, cream colored ceiling, and subdued lighting only added to the elegance of the place. Though the restaurant was full, I hardly noticed – my concentration was absorbed by our conversation. From our exclusive corner we ordered a meal from our past: prime rib with Yorkshire pudding, steamed vegetables, and a bottle of wine.

Suddenly it was all very real, and in our own private way it was important. Like opening a time capsule buried in the town square of our family, we were here to inspect the passage of the years. In my case it spanned more than half of my life – from lost, confused adolescence to the independence of adulthood. For my father it had covered the no less significant transition from middle to old age. Though we discussed the changes in the world, it was the changes in ourselves that were noteworthy. He asked me why I had never married, and why he had no grandchildren. I asked him what it was like to be closer to the end of life than the beginning.

In a rare display of emotion, he tried to convince me to move back to the city of my youth. He said that my mother missed me and wanted me closer to home, but the crack in his voice told me that the request was his own. I tried to convince him to take more time off from work, to enjoy his life and relax. He reminded me that it was work he enjoyed; without it he couldn’t relax.

As beef and bread transitioned to crème caramel, we tossed the Queen Mother commemorative coin. When we had made the bet long before, paying for dinner would have wiped me out. Such a coin toss would have been met with clenched teeth and raw nerves. But now, as the coin landed heads up, it really didn’t matter. My Dad lost the toss and would pick up the bill, as he had twenty years before. The food, and who paid for it, was not the point.

“So, Dad, we’ll meet here again in twenty years?”

“Hah! I should live so long,” he replied.

“Oh, I think you’ve got a good twenty years left in you.” This time I was the optimist.

“All right,” he said, “you’re on. March 21, 2020.”

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Postscript: It turns out that my father was right twice. First he was right that in the year 2000, the world was remarkably similar to that of 1980. Second, he was right that we wouldn't have dinner at Simpson’s-in-the-Strand in 2020, as he passed away in 2018. Sitting here in "shelter-in-place" lock down during the Covid-19 crisis, I have to wonder, will I go to Simpson's-in-the-Strand in 2040? Will I be alive? Will there be a Simpson's-in-the-Strand in 2040? Will international travel be possible? Will prime rib be a foodstuff that people eat? And if I can go, who will I take with me, and who will pay? Perhaps I will live long enough to find out.

My father and I at the Space Needle, Seattle, WA, many years ago

Fathers and sons… need I say more?

Father son relationships can be complex, and ours was no exception.

Let’s face it, my dad could be a pain in the ass… But, he was always there to pick me up when it mattered.

I recall one night when I was very young, falling down a short flight of stairs landing on my face. My father was right there. He picked me up - literally - carried me down another flight of stairs and out to the car. He rushed me to the hospital. No questions asked.

Some of you might know of my, er, shall we say, “indiscretion”, when I was at Harvard. My father was right there. No questions asked. No, “What were you thinking?” No, “that was pretty stupid.” He was there to see me through and got me safely to the other side.

I could tell many more stories. But, I’m sure that many people in this room could tell of a time when my father was there for them. And I know for a fact that there are others here today who aren’t aware that he was there, behind the scenes, helping them.

Dad was a stubborn man. It took me years to convince him to get a computer, but, when he finally got one he readily admitted that he then couldn’t live without it. He refused to even try hearing aids until a decade or more after we all knew he was deaf. And he was stubborn when faced with a problem - he was damned well going to solve it.

He was a tough guy to love, but an easy guy to respect.

You have to respect his accomplishments. He was an eagle scout. He got into Harvard College from a small town in what was then rural Pennsylvania. He succeeded admirably at Harvard Business School. He got my mom to marry him – that in itself is worthy of respect. He bought a bankrupt chemical company and turned it into Solutek Corp – a venture that was a great success for decades. He helped to save the Shirley-Eustis house, now a national historical landmark. And he assembled one of the world’s foremost collections of antique musical instruments. He was internationally regarded as a major figure in the world of early music, its instruments, and its preservation.

He was a tough guy to love, but in the past year we learned to love each other. Some of you may know that 11 months ago I had a heart attack. Dad was in Europe at the time and hopped on the next available series of flights to get him to my bedside in California. The process of re-bonding and healing old wounds began in earnest in my hospital room. And it continued a few short weeks ago as I sat with him at the Brigham here in Boston. I am deeply grateful that my father and I began creating a relationship based on both love and respect. My only regret is that we didn’t have more time for this process.

Sometimes I feel my dad inside me. These hands are his hands. I feel him looking out through my eyes. As I look out at this room I - no, we - we are grateful that all of you are here today to demonstrate how many people he touched, and how important he was in all of our lives.

He will not soon be forgotten.