Deux Voix NYC

Music has charms to sooth a savage breast,

to soften rocks, or bend a knotted oak.

–William Congreve, The Mourning Bride, 1697

New York City, Aug. 21, 2016, this happened. I witnessed hearts opening.

NYC is famous for being a tough town. The gruff, take-no-bull attitude is evident in everything from Wall Street deal-makers to hot dog vendors: It’s all business here. People walk past one another without making eye contact. It’s practically a rule. Manhattan almost demands it.

This is a tough island, Manhattan. All paved and hard edges. The few green spaces seem swallowed in a sea of concrete and hustle. Even Central Park, the lush oasis surrounded by skyscrapers and a million yellow taxis, is completely manmade, an artifice to temporarily delude the visitor. Make no mistake, this borough is a blunt instrument, hammering its destiny out of the energy and imagination of especially driven people.

Perhaps a bit of statistical perspective is in order. Houston city limits hold something like 2.25 million people. Manhattan has 1.64 million. But Houston comprises almost 600 square miles; Manhattan only 22.8. 1.64 million people in less than 23 square miles. And that doesn’t count the many, many visitors who fill the 70,000 hotel rooms. This is a place of high density.

So, you wrap a tight cocoon of personal space around yourself, keep your eyes straight ahead and plow forward. Except when magic happens.

This past Sunday, I saw that magic. It was teased in, then developed into a wave of potential and finally broke over the walls of personal isolation by the charm of music.

Deux Voix. Two voices. Stephen Distad seated at the console in the balcony. Justin Langham standing beside him, looking over the vast nave of St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Beneath them are visitors who’ve come to the church for their own reasons. Some are penitent and prayerful, lighting candles at one of many side altars. Others are there simply to experience the architecture, like any other tourist spot in the city. Few seem to know what is about to happen in that vast space. Even fewer expect what will happen within the fist-sized heart beating in their own savage breast.

Thaxted, by Gustav Holst, arranged for organ and trumpet. Distad leans into the keys, heels slow dancing across the pedals. The massive banks of pipes that dominate the space above the balcony breathe out, stirring the air with harmonies and possibilities. Heads around the nave turn and incline faces toward the great open space above them. Conversations are cut off. Something new is being connected here. Langham brings up his trumpet.

And then the whole room stopped turning around the sun. For the next half-hour, there is a suspension of the rules. Music fills the space and the people within that space. Eyes that normally avoid contact with a stranger now look into the balcony intentionally seeking out the musicians. Electronic devices that often separate us behind screens and filters are now used to record the entire scene: the sound and sight of two voices melding into a single thing, a thing that compels the listener to join them. The barriers we erect to keep others out are gently lowered, and the crush of too many people in a tight space becomes, instead, a chorus of hearts connecting through the universal hope of music: vulnerability.

Dialects from across the planet are silenced, and the universal language of harmony rains into the room. A woman looks at me and just shakes her head, wide-eyed and teary. A man finishes videoing, looks at me and says, simply: “Wow.”

The next morning, as I was climbing into a cab to head to the airport, I noticed the FDNY Store across 51st Street. In the window was a sign that read: “All gave some. Some gave all.”

The 9/11 reference reminded me that Manhattan isn’t hard for no reason. NYC isn’t a strong town “just because.” Life often seems to demand toughness from them, and all of us. But for at least the time when the music was playing, humanity lowered its guard. The savage breast was indeed soothed. And the heart had a chance to sing its song of hope and community.