Townie Essay: Shifting Emotional Output From Violence to Art

Hailing from Haverill, the Massachusetts native and author Andre Dubus III published a novel quite different from what he had published in the past, pushing a non-fiction retelling of his own life from his own perspective entitled Townie: A Memoir to shelves in 2011. While his works had mostly encompassed fiction, Dubus began writing about his experience as a baseball coach for his son’s team despite knowing no baseball, and later this developed into what he realized could be a good book in and of itself. He found himself reaching further and further into his own past, and these recollections formed the basis of the book: A reflection on many events of his own life, and an analysis of what threads sewed himself together, what makes Andre Dubus III who he is. One of the key threads is one that changed constantly throughout the book, yet remained one of the most influential contributors of his life. This thread is violence, which for much of Dubus’s life, could be equated to an art form. Violence was how Dubus transformed his emotion into an art, one that would later manifest itself as writing.

Violence, to Andre, began as an answer. It was the answer to many questions, questions involving the pain and suffering of both him and his family. And this became his best answer, the one he decided to jump to when any conflict arose. This became evident more and more, one instance being the Tommy J. incident. After Tommy J. beat up Andre’s brother and called his mother a whore, Andre turned entirely to training. In hi own words, as seen on page 79, “Was I really this weak? Yes, I was. And small. And afraid. And a coward.” The line in his mind draws a connection between power and physical strength, and here, it becomes evident how this manifest in his ideals, where Dubus claims that, “These words about myself were not new, but today they felt less like the end and more like a beginning” (Dubus 79). In this choice of words, Dubus makes it clear: his new sense of training exceeded standard rationale; his fear was not a hindrance, it was the fuel to begin a new stage of his life, a stage that depended on his own physical strength, one where he can transform his emotions into violence. And while he had a number of opportunities to cause damage with his violence since he transformed his body into a powerhouse, he instead chose to act on his emotions a different way: boxing.

Despite initially wandering into the boxing gym while looking for a gym to body-build in, Andre grew to appreciate it for what it’s for. Becoming a boxer was what, in a sense, legitimatized his pent up anger into violence, allowing a way for him to vent his emotions through both training and fights. As seen on page 118 in the book, Andre envisioned the bag to be the faces of the people he despised, who were the face of Tommy J. and others, including “the kid who threw the Molotov cocktail into [Andre’s] mother’s car, or Dennis Murphy right after he slapped the pine into that old woman’s face, or Clay Whelan just before he started pushing [Andre] to the ground to whale on [Andre’s] face and head, or Doucette stabbing Jimmy Quinn, or any of the boys and men from the avenues lounging around in our rented house, smoking and drinking and listening to the stereo Bruce bought” (Dubus 118). He churned these feelings of hatred into a way to express his emotions, a way to use his emotions into a technique to better himself as a person from a physical standpoint, improving his strength and physical fitness. His sights were set to achieve a level of strength that he could scare away anybody he needed to, or wanted to, looking to bodybuilding magazines for examples. To Andre, power was strength, nothing else. However, this changes throughout the course of his life.

By the time he was an adult, his perception on power was that it was necessary to enforce what his interpretation of justice was, an ideal heavily supported by when his sister’s new husband, Keith, punched her. Upon hearing news regarding the incident, his first instinct was to exact punishment on his own accord. This is evident from page 211, where while his father planned on hiring a man to break Keith’s legs, Andre stepped in and proposed the idea to “Let’s just fly out there and do it ourselves, Pop. Let’s just fuckin’ do it ourselves” (Dubus 211). He even points out that “for weeks afterwards, I imagined shooting him, then digging a deep hole and rolling his body into it, filling it back up with dirt and broken rock and the roots I’d had to sever from any tree close to me.” (Dubus 212) While he realizes the truth of violence and the pain it causes, he lost the grasp on the reigns of his emotions and wanted to revert to violence as he once would. This happens at another point in the book, where Andre witnesses a woman being beaten on the street, and while the thoughts “Don’t hurt anyone. Don’t hurt anyone,” “Just get him off her”, and “Just hold him so she can get away,” were running through his head, he lost control, and before he realized it, “touching him did something to [Andre], his body healthy and unhurt while hers was not, and so when he swung around to see who had interrupted him, [Andre] planted [his] feet and tore through that membrane that separated [them], and he soon became far bloodier than she was” (Dubus 339). He regretted this, and was able to acknowledge the issue with this, but was unable to control his emotions here. However, this perpetuates one of the biggest changes in his life, which is when he was able to substitute violence for words, altering how he handled situations.

While for a large part of his life, violence was an answer to Andre Dubus, he came to a revelation and grew to accept writing and words as a more thought-provoking means of expression. In his shift from fighting as a boxer and working as an author, Andre learned the true value of expressing through writing, something he suppressed for years since his father was a writer. Part of this suppression came from the fact that oftentimes, such as after Suzanne was beaten, he believed his father told stories that weren’t his own to tell, claiming that “It felt like thievery to me. Like he had just stolen Suzanne’s experience and made it his own, and meanwhile Keith was still walking the earth untouched, unpunished, his in-laws’ warnings some distant echo in his head. And now this story for strangers to read. How did this help my sister? What good did this do?” (213). But there was a turning point in Andre’s life, one where he was able to accept words as a more suitable alternative to violence, and it’s when he was on the train in the U.K. He was stopping unsavory figures from continuing through the train, where they were scaring young children trying to sleep with their appearance and language, and a number of them threatened him. However, rather than fight them, as they were threatening, he talked calmly to them. The last time this happened, when he was confronted with the thug in charge of the others, and it was a turning point in Andre’s life where he could noticeably pin the feeling of a shift in ideals, recalling the following:

“While I talked he’d crossed his arms over his chest. He leaned against the wall and scrutinized me. In the pale fluorescence from the cars, with his long hair and sideburns, the narrow face and deep eyes, he was every street-tough I’d ever known: he was Cody Perkins about to knock out Sully; he was Clay Whelan just before he chased me down; he was Kenny V. punching me while Ricky J. beat on Cleary; he was Dennis Murphy slapping the old lady with the thin branch; he was Tommy J. walking away from my bleeding brother, and he was Steve Lynch the second before I threw my first punch. Except now I wasn’t going to throw a punch, even if the dealer was to step away from the wall and square off to shut me up; I wasn’t going to fight him either, and it was as if, in my explanation to him, I had stood between those trains and taken off all my clothes, then began to pull away every muscle I’d ever built: I ripped off the plate of my pectorals, dropping them at my feet. I reached up to each shoulder and unhooked both deltoids and let them fall, too; then I reached around for the muscles of my upper back, the first to show up years earlier, and dropped them at the feet of the dark dealer, speaking to him all along as if I’d never learned to do anything but talk, as if this armor I’d forged had never been needed because I could trust the humanity of the other to show itself. Trust. I was going to trust this stranger, this man who had entered my train car and not to talk. I was going to trust him to see and to listen and to do the right thing” (Dubus 357).

Andre dropped all reliance on violence and gave up on his shield of power he had built, opting instead to talk and trust, two things that were missing from many parts of his life. After this, he was able to be at peace with himself, no longer feeling like he needed to protect himself by looking like a bodybuilder and fighting those who oppose him. And as Andre mentioned at his talk at UMass Lowell on December 2^nd, 2015, he believes this realization and the ability to express his emotion through words is what saved his life and prevented him from winding up like many people in his life, where his reflections on his childhood reveal just how many of his acquaintances from his earlier life are either in jail or dead due to their violent ways. And as a result, he forgives everyone in his life, with the exception of the man who raped his sister.

Another local story with that mirrors this one in a number of ways is the story of Micky Ward, a boxer from Lowell who also underwent questionable upbringing. He, too, had violent tendencies and turned to boxing, similar to Andre, and more importantly, similar to his brother, Dicky Eklund. However, his brother’s path to a crack addiction and his family’s manipulation caused Micky to turn further to boxing, altering it from just a means of violence to a means of art, in a sense, as all sports are. He crafted himself to become a sportsman, similar to how Andre turned to writing, and was able to shift his emotional output to good use.

Andre Dubus III documented his life in Townie, opening himself to strangers, and ultimately telling the tale of how he was able to turn to creating art rather than violence with his emotion, a far more creative output that doubles in being good for the world. Dubus puts his life out there for the world so that he can be an example, and not just an example for people who wind up like him, but for people who come from any struggle and rise from it better people, people like Micky Ward and Dicky Eklund, people like Wes Moore and Kendrick Lamar and many, many undocumented stories that never will be documented, simply because they may not be “notable” enough. Dubus wrote out of his comfort zone to remind us that while violence may appear to be an answer, there are always more options to better the world, as he has done himself, as have many others before him, as will many after.

Response 2: Industry and Culture: Fostering Craftmanship Since 1820

            Built up by the working class to foster a local but impactful revolution, the mills and factories of Lowell united an entire generation in the blood, sweat, and tears of industry. Immigrants came in from everywhere in order to make a living wage in the factories and mills, starting from the very bottom with hopes to rise to the top. These are the roots of this city, what Lowell started as. And if Lowell, as a community, acknowledges anything, it acknowledges its own roots. And these roots are celebrated through the heightened sense of craftsmanship that bursts from the creative seams of Lowell, a craftsmanship that expresses itself in various ways. Some of the highlights of Lowell can be seen from this mastery, and I’ve had the pleasure of indulging in these crafts over the past couple months, whether as a customer, a spectator, or even a performer. Lowell’s rich culture leads to its rich sense of craftsmanship, meaning that the craft of trade ranges widely, whether it express itself through cuisine, music, or literal crafts. The three destinations I’ve visited and partaken in have been Simply Khmer, a highly praised Cambodian restaurant that revels in Cambodia’s rich culture within Lowell; The Luna Sessions, a weekly free jazz event hosted by The Luna Theater in Mill No. 5, offering the stage to all musicians for an open jam of jazz standards; and Lowell Makes, an up and coming Makerspace located in downtown Lowell that offers 24/7 access to its woodworking, metalworking, leatherworking, and laser cutting tools, as well as its array of 3-D printers. Each experience has been drastically different from each other, but one thing shared in common between them was an advanced level of craftsmanship that has been brewing within the long history of the city of Lowell.

Sam and Denise, owners of Simply Khmer

            The first destination I indulged in was the exquisite dining experience of Simply Khmer, a Cambodian restaurant gaining impressive reviews and a powerful traction as a force within the foreign food industry of Massachusetts, let alone Lowell. We were greeted with great service by one of the co-owners, Denise Ban, who also answered our questions regarding the type of fish in the tank, and more importantly, the cultural relevance of the paintings hung around the restaurant. One of the special things about Simply Khmer is the deep focus on its Cambodian history, which is represented through the paintings, depicting the countryside and other rural settings and their inhabitants. Also seen in the restaurant is how important Lowell has been to Cambodian immigrants, where thousands fleeing from the genocide at the hands of the communist government, Khmer Rouge, specifically under the command of Pol Pot, found sanctuary in America, particularly in Lowell. Both co-owners, Sam Neang and Denise Ban, fled Cambodia as children and entered refugee camps in Thailand before making their way to Lowell, and they met in 1987 and were married by 1990. Their closeness with their Cambodian heritage shines through in their food, which Sam Neang cooks himself, as the head chef. Their food tastes as authentic as it comes, which is a fact verified by publications such as The Boston Globe and Boston Magazine. I ordered the Bai/Sach-Jrouk Chien, a pork dish with rice and salad. Contrary to what a standard, Americanized version of this plate would taste like, this was actually rather spicy, including jalapeno slices in the salad and a Sriracha sauce for the pork and rice. However, the taste was rich and the texture tender, but not falling apart, and if I left the restaurant with anything but a clear plate, I would have been doing myself a disservice. Here, we can see the craftmanship shine through, onr that utilizes a cultural revolution to spur its own burst into the scene as the delicious cuisine it is. Still surging through Lowell is another source of craftmanship, and that’s the music scene here.

            Lowell’s teeming with a powerful sense of musical independency, which ranges from the vast assortment of underground music, the fact that UMass Lowell has a powerful music program, the Folk Festival put on every summer, and the various events put on by places like Mill No. 5. One of the events at Mill No. 5 is entitled The Luna Sessions, which is a weekly event inside The Luna Theater at the end of the hallway of Mill No. 5. At its core, The Luna Sessions are a free jazz performance put on by a rotating cast of musicians, mixing and matching bandmates to assemble a series that sometimes has never even met each other, allowing them to get to know each other in the coming hours through performing jazz standards. Each of these session musicians are extremely respectable in their own right, all highly experienced in the craft of jazz and performance, and they all always have their own chance to shine, as well. At each Luna Session that I’ve attended, each person has soloed at least once; even bassists, who don’t often solo, have the opportunity, which is a rarity that is highly appreciated. However, one of my favorite aspects of it is the “open jam” functionality of it all. While it used to be a once a month thing, now if you attend a Luna Session with your instrument, you have the opportunity to perform on stage with the session musicians of the night, a unique window into what it’s like to perform with professional musicians on a jazz stage. Joe Folan and I attended a couple weeks ago, and had a chance to perform with them, since Joe brought his guitar and I brought a pair of drumsticks. We joined the bassist and the trumpet player in a cover of Jelly Roll, originally recorded by Charles Mingus, and throughout the song both Joe and I had solos. Initially I refused the solo, not at all confident in my abilities, but I caved and accepted it in the end. In retrospect, working with the musicians at The Luna Sessions was an entirely unique experience for me, since they’re all leagues above me in terms of jazz musicianship, even Joe. They’re all masters of the craft, but the best way to learn the craft is by practicing with the masters, and I plan on attending far more often now. The process of learning a craft can also be seen in one more place in this city, Lowell Makes.

The mushroom created by Alex Gribov at Lowell Makes

            Lowell Makes is a Makerspace located in downtown Lowell, right on Merrimack Street. Visiting one of the open houses, I walked into the cluttered area and was greeted with all the different segments of the workshop. Essentially, the way Lowell Makes works is that you can pay a monthy membership fee and have all day, every day access to the building and its tools. The tools offered range from a full carpentry room including tablesaws and other woodworking materials, a metalworking area, a leatherworking area, a laser cutter, a bike tuning shop, and numerous 3-D printers including filament to use. They have a wide assortment of members already there that will gladly help you with any projects you have. One of the members, Alex, is a student here at UMass Lowell, double majoring in Electrical Engineering and Computer Engineering. He’s the one who recommended I check out the place, since I want to start making guitars soon, and he’s been thriving throughout his membership, even making projects such as a ten foot tall mushroom to bring as shade to music festivals and the like. He’s created many other projects, including guitars, and a project he intends to create soon is a synthesizer. Another craftman there is Castro, who is currently running a clockmaking business out of Lowell Makes, using all of the tools at his disposal to make unique clocks being sold on Etsy. In addition, he makes advanced costumes to attend conventions with. More crafters than just Castro and Alex work in the Makerspace, extending the skill range to include a leatherworker who can help you as well as a few others. Overall, it is the most literally about the craftmanship out of these, featuring masters of crafting and creation, all available to students for only thirty five dollars a month.

            The Industrial Revolution’s impact on the people of Lowell never relented, and the craftmanship that spawned from the clash of cultures and the passion for creativity shines especially through here in Lowell. Whether it be one of the many restaurants, one of the many music venues, or one of the Makerspaces, we live in a communiy of crafters, and it’s one with an extremely heightened sense of craftmanship.

The Common Creative Assignment: Documenting the Colorful Beauty of Lowell

The selection of art I chose from The Common, Issue No. 9, was Teju Cole’s “The Sense in Turning Away.” A series of photos dictated with a narrative prior, it details the art of photography; from the purpose and reason of color to the relation it has with religion and music. The photos that followed were what struck me: eight photos highlighted specifically to embrace the color and nature of both the city and the natural landscapes of Switzerland. As one who partakes in artistic photography to a slight extent, this reached out to me on an artistic level, a feeling only heightened by the narrative written about the photos. As a result, I embarked to find some of the most striking landscapes in Lowell, whether natural or not, to emphasize the color and beauty of Lowell. After all, color is the relationship between the world and us: our perceptive reality allows us to see color, just like how an untouched instrument remains quiet, a point the essay points out. And after all, you never know what you’ll notice as a result of observing something you took for granted. The photos that follow document numerous trips through Lowell, all at different times, all following different circumstances, all in different places. However, they all share Lowell as the common factor, a shared history of immigration and industry shaping the formation of the city from farm land to what we know it as today.

The pictures were taken at Allen House during the late afternoon, overlooking the beautiful Merrimack River and the far-away Rourke Bridge on a sunny day with a sky almost as blue as the river, a view from the Merrimack Street Bridge of the hydro-plant floodgates opening, pouring the excess water from the past few rainy days into the rest of the river, creating a clash of colors that only emphasize the green and yellow trees shattering the monotony of the gray hydro-plant, the breathtaking blue, cloudless sky as seen from the ground on North Campus between Olney and Olsen halls, interrupted only by power lines and wind turbines, and then a series of photos taken from the top of the garage near Tsongas at sunrise and sunset. These photos highlight specific aspects of the sunrise, one of which capturing the sun directly as it peers between the cloudy sky and the smoke stacks that emphasize the industrialism of Lowell, another taken directly after sunrise, creating an especially notable horizon captured between the backlit clouds creating an almost blue hue and the cityscape of Lowell’s buildings taken from the top of one of the tallest garages in the area. The last one is almost a cynical interpretation of the clash between the stunning natural color of the sunset and the gray outline of the clouds and Lowell suppressing aforementioned nature. However, all these pictures emphasize the beauty inherent within Lowell and the interaction we can all have with Lowell to draw us closer to the spirit of nature and Lowell itself, an interaction emphasized by taking in the colors of the situation you’re in and appreciating the beauty in some form, whether through taking a picture, painting art, or writing a poem.

Response 1: The Performer's Blood Runs Through Lowell

The culture of a city defines its inhabitants, and it’s become very evident to me throughout my life that without its culture, Lowell would be anything but the city it is today. The culture of the performer runs through the blood of Lowell, made evident through its plethora of shows, whether it’s a musical, theatrical, or even a sport. Over the past two months, I’ve had the pleasure of attending many of these performances, including free jazz at the Luna Theater on Thursday nights, basement shows put on by students, the Jack Kerouac Festival, or other events put on by the immense underground music scene of Lowell. Even before attending the University of Massachusetts Lowell, since I lived in the Lowell area, I’ve been to countless cultural displays of Lowell, including Lowell Spinners games, the annual Lowell Folk Festival, various local Lowell businesses, and performances at Lowell’s Merrimack Repertory Theater, even having performed there once with the Dracut High Band, accompanying Scott Grimes. In short, the culture of Lowell has made itself evident to me through personal experience even more so than through legacy, despite having a rich legacy involving Jack Kerouac, as well as all the immigrants that brought their own culture into the melting pot. However, the three I’ll specifically mention here are going to be the one-man performance of a play entitled The Lion performed at the Merrimack Repertory Theater, a one-woman show performed by a method actress detailing the life of Worcester-native abolitionist and women’s rights activist Abby Kelley Foster, and my personal experience attending the UMass Lowell hockey games.

Ben Scheuer performing in The Lion

The first of these experiences, The Lion written and performed by Ben Scheuer, detailed the coming-of-age story of an aspiring folk musician. The play was actually a non-fiction story telling the story of the author’s (Ben Scheuer) life up to that point. Having said that, it was an emotional performance delivered in the Merrimack Repertory Theater, and the theater itself helped with the atmosphere of the play, since it was the perfect size to seem as personal as possible, but was also big enough to contain and entertain the setting of the musical realistically, since it portrayed his spoken interpretations of the places he traveled. The play was fostered here in Lowell, what with the creative development of the story being constructed here between the collaboration between Ben Scheuer and Sean Daniels, the director. In addition to the above, the play debuted here in Lowell, specifically at the Merrimack Repertory Theater. The shows we saw as a class marked the beginning of a national tour of the production, which is an honor in and of itself for the Merrimack Repertory Theater. However, that won’t be the first big production put on by Lowell’s theater. It’s been running shows next to the Lowell Memorial Auditorium inside the historic Liberty Hall for over three decades, putting on five to seven shows a season. These shows range from originals to revivals, but they’re all welcome in the 279-seat theater. The theater is an important reminder about the strong sense of culture inherent within Lowell’s history, having a lot to offer from the performer’s perspective.

Abby Kelley Foster

This sense of performance is carried through to the other excursion I’ll detail here, a show performed by a method actress detailing the life of Abby Kelley Foster. On October 14, 2015, Lynne McKenney Lydick acted as a window into the life of the revolutionary women’s rights activist Abby Kelley Foster, performing in Allen House in a one-woman play to depict the radical impact Worcester native Abby Kelley Foster had on the field of abolition and women’s rights, offering insight on the life of Foster. Lynne McKenney Lydick’s studies into Foster shine through her emotive performance that both entertained and informed the viewers regarding the life of Abby Kelly Foster. While I had never heard of her before, I learned that Abby Kelley Foster was a radical force within women’s rights, and one of the main reasons it started when it did, and that she stood up for what she believed despite the repercussions, which there were many of. She often had things thrown at her during her presentations and occasionally was thrown out of towns, yet despite these obstacles, she continued her lectures and helped spur the movement. She was also not recorded very heavily into historical texts, since she did not keep any personal journals, so as a result her legacy is often abandoned for other figures in her movement. The performance was housed within Allen House, a historic location on the South Campus of UMass Lowell, specifically inside the Spinola Gallery. This event furthers my point regarding performances: the culture of Lowell is heavily seeped in performances, which can be seen by the riveting performance put on by Lynne McKenney Lydick.

The performances don’t stop there though. Another kind of performance is an athletic one, and this is one that is specifically in abundance here at UMass Lowell. Particularly, hockey. Hockey games make up the majority of the sports followings at UMass Lowell, due to the high quality hockey team that has risen up in the ranks ever since being declared Division One fairly recently. They’ve made it to the Frozen Four numerous times in the past couple years, and they only get better. However, the biggest part of hockey here at UMass Lowell is the games themselves. Between the large crowd turn out at important games, the general atmosphere inherent in hockey itself, and the hockey pep band, the UMass Lowell hockey games have been a pleasure I’ve been indulging in far before even considering UMass Lowell as a college to attend, back when my father would buy season tickets for himself and one other, usually either my mother, a friend of his, or me. In short, the entire ensemble of the atmosphere is a performance, between the players’ impressive athletic displays and the hockey pep band, the jazz rock big band. The jazz rock big band is directed by Dan Lutz and Deb Huber and provides UMass Lowell home games with an extra element as their songs, which are anything from jazz to rock, blues to funk, and even a little fusion, add to the already buzzing atmosphere of the games. The band’s big brass sound, characteristic of jazz and blues songs, adds to the energy of the students, who cheer loudly from the student section. The saxophone section, reflected in the funk and ska pieces the band performs, adds a mellow vibe to the energetic brass section and the rhythmic force of the percussionists, which drive the tempo of the group and encourage the spectators. Since UMass Lowell has a fairly significant music program, music majors from all over are drawn to the hockey pep band, and they perform highly energetic shows every game, truly adding to the performance of the game, and feeding into the performer’s blood that runs through Lowell.

Lowell is a city of performer’s made evident through its Merrimack Repertory Theater’s significance, the plethora of talented actors and actresses scattered throughout, the music programs here at Lowell, the underground music scene, the folk festival, the art shows, and many, many more displays of talent. From its beginnings as a cultural hub, this blood has poured through the veins of Lowell and makes itself as evident as ever in modern times.