Where's Armand?

Listening

When it's time for me to write my weekly Armand piece, I take the diaries in my care and say, "Okay Armand, what shall we tell them this week?" Sometimes passages will jump out at me and I immediately get to it. At other times, it's a search and I begin to long for the phone conversations we had.

If there were transcriptions of our discussions, my lines would be a fraction (1/16 to be exact) of Armand's. I often wondered how he was able to speak in paragraphs with no commas or periods. This diary entry gave me a clue:

January 28, 1936. Last night I heard Dr. Goldschmidt of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute, an old school pal of Professor Loomis, lecture on "Materials of Evolution". Not very interesting, neither deep enough and technical enough for scientist nor popular enough for layman.

It was to be expected. It's almost an insult to ask a man to condense a subject in 1 1/2 hours that he has spent 30 or so years on. That is why I don't like most lectures: they attempt to telescope too great a subject into an hour or so.

How could I then, have expected a simple sentence or two to answer a question about a life that spanned over ninety years? Armand could answer me from multiple time zones and global positions, as well as offer three or four variations on the theme! I miss the man. Yet it is in the moments of yearning to hear his voice that I feel him so near, as in those few seconds before the ringing stops and the person on the other end says, "Hello."

Photo: Sparks68

Walking Through It

We must include all of the the miles that Armand walked, to the total thousands of miles accrued as he traversed the earth. He walked up mountains "because they were there", walked back and forth on trails to determine his limits and often walked, merely to find himself.

Armand never struggled academically, but often worried about money and companionship in his college years. In times of struggle, he would walk.

Sunday, December 15, 1935.

Took a walk this aft to rid myself of a mental, moral, and physical case of down in the dumps. Admirable success. It was a rainy, damp afternoon, but all the better.

People who seek sunshine for their jaunts don't know what they miss by not having occasional bad weather. It gives a delightful sense of aloneness.

I could look into windows of the houses and had great fun wondering what was going on inside. I wouldn't want to know, or be a peeping Tom, like Lesage's Asmodeus, for usually people aren't doing anything very interesting anyway.

People, in spite of the word of students of human nature to the contrary, are on the whole pretty stupid, and it is a rare man that holds me spellbound. But then, taste does differ so.

I wonder whether it does not depend largely on the sum of our experiences. Let us say, Alto likes summer cottages (maybe she doesn't, but an argument is an argument, so let us suppose she does). I don't. If Alto had lived my life or I hers, wouldn't she agree with me or vice versa?

Of course, this isn't all. The mind is not so mechanically developed as all that, but it seems to me to be a major or critical factor.

By the end of his walk, Armand's train of thought would be switched to another track and the next day friends and movies would fill his life once more.

Photo: Jay Allison

Looking for Halley's Comet

In 1985, tour companies and cruise lines capitalized on the next appearance of Halley's Comet, due the following year. Armand may have read something similar to this excerpt from the New York Times (April 1985):

"The Sun Line has announced that astronomers and other scientists will be on board as lecturers for eight sailings of the Stella Solaris and Stella Oceanis next January, March and April. March, the line says, ''is the optimum time for viewing Halley's comet in the southern latitudes,'' and among its cruises is one of 19 days leaving Fort Lauderdale, Fla., for Brazil on March 1. The fares, depending on cabin, range from $3,450 to $6,600 a person."

Armand and Mary signed up and sailed. In his 1986 Christmas letter to friends and family, Armand offered this wry recap:

Nominally, a cruise down the Amazon to view Halley's Comet under spectacular conditions, enriched with additions of our own devising to Cuzco and Machu Picchu, Peru, and Iguassu Falls in southeast Brazil. It proved to be spectacular enough, despite torrential rains at Machu Picchu and an eight-month drought that cut way down, water flow at the falls.

The Sun Line's Stella Solaris is a classy ship; aboard were scientists (including Fred Whipple, concocter of the presently held theory that comets are nothing more than big, dirty snowballs), a National Geographic writer, and media star Hugh Downs to set us straight on Halley's; enough rich food to sink the Titanic and entertainment to make us forget the sinking; and numerous great shore excursions.

But comets, travel brochure hype to the contrary notwithstanding, aren't well viewed from the moist, cloudy Amazon basin, as the ship management must have known and innocents such as we should have realized. We did get one fair look, later, on the Caribbean island of Trinidad...and a good one, on a bitter cold (20 degrees F, and high winds) predawn March morning, from a hill just outside Morgantown.

Comet aside, it was still a fabulous trip. But hey, let's face it: that there comet has sadly come down in the universe since its long-ago debut. We simply refuse to shell out for its next appearance in 2061.

Illustration: Maritime Matters

Armand's mention of the Titanic might have also been in reference to the 1986 movie, Secrets of the Titanic.

The Stella Solaris is today on the Gulf of Cambay, a cruiseliner graveyard.

Behind All That Jazz

Armand's father, Elvin Satori Singer, sang with the Emma Juch Opera company and later became a "teacher in voice" in Detroit and Toledo. I would imagine that the life and sounds of opera surrounded Armand from birth since the elder Singer's friends were quite influential in the music genre. They were what you might call...classic.

Friday, January 3, 1936. "Mother was just telling me about dad. He knew personally and played checkers with Brahms, knew Lizst, heard Wagner and Verdi conduct their own operas, Mascagni (now famous for "Cavalleria Rusticana", etc.) played his accompaniments for a cigarette or a quarter at the Villa D'Este. He saw Gounod at the 500th performance of Faust, knew Siegfried Wagner (son of Richard) very well."

Armand's father always treated him with deference. Armand would say that it was because "he knew I was the only child he'd ever have". But maybe Mr. Singer knew that his progeny moved to a beat all his own and decided to encourage it.

Last year, Armand told me about a song he wrote when he was seven years old in "Speaking of Jazz and Taxes". Many jazz musicians and fans have a music background that's based on the classics but few had a history as privileged as Armand's. He had reason to shout, cry and dance!

Photo: Opera of Old Colorado

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