In December 1985, Uncle Buddy called me while I was home for the holidays from college. “Why don’t you and I have a little chat?” he said in a voice that was amiable but filled with purpose.
The “Buddy chat” was a consistent element of my return visits to Winter Park. They carried a certain element of the unexpected — I never could guess what might be on his mind. I felt an air of mystery surrounding my uncle, the artist whose life was so different from that of anyone else I knew. He was an unlikely father figure to me, one of three patriarchs in my life. While my father gave me a love steeped in the kindness and selflessness more closely akin to a proud grandfather, and while Uncle Don strove to equip me with important life tools, Buddy’s role in my life seemed to be tending to my respect for family and its history.
For instance, the earliest Buddy chat that I can remember occurred at the original Ark, Dean B.’s house. Buddy called me to an upstairs room and pointed out some weaponry displayed on a wall — I believe it was a pistol — and told me what he knew of its history, how it had belonged to an ancestor in the Civil War who fought for the Union, and how he was shot through the wrist of an arm while holding the sword that directed his regiment into battle. A memorable story for a 9-year-old boy.
“Someday,” Buddy promised in conclusion, “when you’re old enough to take care of these things, this will be yours.” I think I understood even then that my uncle wasn’t giving me a gun or some family possession; he was entrusting me with an important piece of Gregg oral history.
There was a ritual to my visits with Buddy: the tea and cookies, of course, prepared and served lovingly by Leo. During this time I would catch them up on my life. And then Buddy would inevitably say: “Let’s take a little walk,” and out the door we would go, walking the quiet brick streets of the neighborhood, or heading down to the edge of the tiny lake in his back yard, his quiet, sonorous tones sharing a concern that had been on his mind, perhaps about me, perhaps about him, perhaps about Mom or Dad.
Like many artists, Buddy was concerned with what legacy he would leave behind, but more than that he was thinking about the Gregg, Ogilvie and Bailey legacies. He was aware that, on paper at least, this branch of the Gregg surname would die with him, and it was important that some of us in a younger generation understand what we could of its history.
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As it turned out, the visit in ‘85 had a different purpose. After the usual tea and cookies, Jess directed me me to sit on the edge of the bed in his and Leo’s bedroom. He presented me with a small manila envelope with the words “The Underground Kite” written in black Sharpie. It contained what appeared to be three poems. Buddy explained that a dramatic reading of a new play of his was to be produced in Orlando, and that the production needed three songs. He wanted me to write the music to his lyrics. He read them out loud to me, not singing but imbuing his voice with a musical rhythm. He talked about Leadbelly, the folk blues musician, whose style these songs should most closely resemble.
I accepted the task with some trepidation, mostly pride. I walked on air for the next few days, feeling like all of a sudden, rather than simply being a mentor he was inviting me to collaborate with him. Some of that fog of “mystery” surrounding him seemed to dissipate. This was an acknowledgement from my clearest pardigm of an artist that I too was an artist, that I deserved that respect.
I never got to see the production, but I did get a copy of the program with my songwriting credit. I’m pretty sure my music was not exactly what he was looking for: as much as I, a white, middle-class boy at a private midwestern college, tried, I was not going to capture the passion and craft of an early 20th-century black musician who spent years on chain gangs in the Deep South. But the experience served to mature my relationship with Jess, and it helped me carry my artistic self with more conviction.
And that conviction is perhaps the most important gift that Jess and Leo have both given me. My parents, of course, spent a great part of their lives in the arts, but for me they were “stuck” always being parents first. With the little bit of distance Jess and Leo had, they became for me the purest examples in this family of a life guided by art. Jess’s commitment to his writing has been a constant source of inspiration in my own artistic pursuits, most recently my writing. He’s shown me that it can be done. He has given me license to think of myself as a writer, an artist. I can’t think of a better legacy.
A couple of days ago, I was listening to an interview with the writer Dennis Palumbo. He spoke of the value of committing to a life of writing, and in his words I recognized Jess, hunched over his typewriter — or later, his laptop — summoning the muse.
Dennis said:
Writing is a lifelong pursuit. It’s very hard for writers to do this, but they have to take the long view — they have to take the view that they’re going to be doing this, year after year, for most of their life. And that fads and genres come and go, and overnight successes come and go, but the real beauty and sublime joy in writing is the day-to-day engagement with your creative self. To do that every day, you accumulate over the long haul a real sense of connection with yourself, and with what makes you human and makes everyone else a human.
I hope that Jess and I will continue our chats on a regular basis.
