Ishmael Reed: "But Nobody Was There"

Ishmael Reed
Google Images

I was thinking about Ishmael Reed the other day while cleaning up after dinner, though I don't know why, precisely, I was thinking of him since I've read only a few of his novels and essays, though maybe because I sing to myself as I wash the dishes, for I was suddenly struck by the beauty and truth contained in the lines, "I heard a spider crawl across the silverware . . . but nobody was there," from one of Reed's poems set to music by Olu Dara, which I first heard on a CD given to me in Tuebingen by a German man who directed the German-American Institute while I was teaching there in the early nineties, and as I washed the silverware the other evening, I tried to sing that lovely line expressing loss of a loved one, for what more perfect image of loss can there be than that of a man so at loss for love that he sits in his silent home, so quiet that even the faint sound of a spider crawling across the silverware is audible enough to make him imagine that his lost loved one might be there, though it's only a spider finding a place for spinning her web among the now-unused utensils, useless now that nobody was there:

I heard a crying child in the other room
I entered the room, but nobody was there
I heard a spider crawl across the silverware
I opened the drawer, but nobody was there
I heard your steps creeping up the stairs
I opened the door, but nobody was there
But nobody was there, but nobody, but nobody
But nobody was there

I saw your spirit sitting in a chair
I turned my head, but nobody was there
I heard a knock and the doorknob turned
I answered the door, but nobody was there
I saw my love in her funeral bier
I turned on the lights, but nobody was there
But nobody was there, but nobody, but nobody
But nobody was there

I heard your laughter on the summer’s air
I called your name, but nobody was there
I saw you bare, riding your favorite black mare
I ran to the woods, but nobody was there
I saw you by the moon, you were combing your hair
I rushed outside, but nobody was there
But nobody was there, but nobody, but nobody
But nobody was there

I searched for the lines I'd remembered -- after finishing the dishes -- and finally found them in the above poem, "But Nobody Was There," on page 416 of Ishmael Reed's The Reed Reader (Basic Books, 2000), though I wonder if "stairs" should rather be "stair" (and what's with this "turned"?). While searching, I'd also learned of the man who wrote the music:

"Nobody was There," with music by [Olu] Dara, is the first really successful track of this second album. Dara scats over washes of organ and twitting guitar, then sings the poem with the feeling for and involvement with the words that the earlier tracks lack -- "I saw your spirit sitting in a chair / I turned my head, but nobody was there." His trumpet solo is again a diamond formed under great pressure. (W. C. Bamberger, "'Ishmael Reed: Neo-HooDoo,' in Words and Music," Perfect Sound Forever, April 2010)

I now know the words and who wrote the music, but I can't quite match the song to my voice like Dara did to his. As for Reed himself, who taught many years at Berkeley, my only actual contact with him there came when I was in a local coffee shop near campus, the famous Sufficient Grounds, standing at the counter and about to order a cappuccino, when the man himself stepped right in front of me -- perhaps thinking nobody was there -- and ordered before I could. The barista looked embarrassed, but served Reed first, and I said nothing, figuring the slight delay was a price worth paying for such a brush with fame.

I've long wondered if I should've at least asked for an autograph, but a mere brush with fame is a slender reed indeed on which to ask a man to sign his name . . .