Brother Blue - Storyteller

Brother Blue - Touched the Soul of Angels

Brother Blue in Harvard Square

Most people who remember Brother Blue remember him telling stories on the streets of Harvard Square. He would dress in all blue -- blue denim jeans, blue denim shirt, a woolen blue beret -- covered with painted on butterflies and pinned on rainbow ribbons and little bells. And there he would stand and tell his stories to passersby. His harmonica was his chorus and accompaniment. If there would be a little crowd around him, he would tell a story from Shakespeare. Sometimes he would tell a story to a tiny baby in a carriage. He made the stories up as he told them.

Brother Blue on WGBH radio

I saw Brother Blue on the streets in Harvard Square. But this is not how I first heard his stories, nor what I remember most about Brother Blue. It was long before I saw him in Cambridge and I was quite young at the time. I was not living in Boston or Cambridge at the time, but many miles across the water where, at night, the FM signal from WGBH would travel to a small Emerson radio next to me. In the overnight hours Eric Jackson played jazz and I was learning about Stanley Clarke and other contemporary and classical jazz artists.

In the middle of the middle of the night, around 2:45 AM, a man came into the radio station and began telling a story. The stories, poetic and playful, and one of a kind delighted me. Up until I discovered that these stories were a regular or near regular occurrence, I listened to this radio program at rather random times. After I discovered the story-telling 20 to 30 minutes in the middle of the night, I started trying to staying up every night to listen for the stories. When that didn't work, I tried setting an alarm clock to wake me at 2:30 so I could hear another story from Brother Blue. After a while, I just turned the volume down low and left the radio on before I went to sleep. Looking back on this, I might say that it was probably one of the best things I ever did because the stories, the real and true original stories of Brother Blue are embedded inside me.

One of the phrases Brother Blue is remembered for by everyone is that he would say his stories were "from the middle of the middle of me to the middle of the middle of you." Another part of Brother Blue's stories was when he would pause then say, "peek-a-boo I love you."

A child listens to Brother Blue

Around the same time I was listening to Brother Blue on the radio a friend of mine was having a severe bout with a flu. I went over to see her everyday to see what I could do to help. She had a five year old son and when she was at the lowest point of this flu, I offered to take her son to my apartment for a day or two so she could rest more. While the little boy packed his pajamas and toys he thought he couldn't be without, his mother told me to take a book with me and pointed to it. It was one of the Lang Fairy Tale books. I said, "this, are you sure?"

She said, "yes, he likes to have a story read to him before he goes to sleep. He'll tell you which one." I took the book with me.

Later in the day, after making supper for the boy and tucking him into bed, I brought the book out and asked him what story it was that he wanted to hear. It surprised me that he knew exactly which one he wanted.

I read the story for him. He was quiet. After a minute I capped the it with a few verses from Brother Blue. It seemed that the boy was now about to fall asleep. Then he turned to me and said, "Peter, what is heaven like?" Even now as I recall that moment, it makes my eyes teary. I felt honored that a child would think to ask this of me. To the best of my recollection I told him what heaven was like.

Brother Blue shared with a disabled man

Several years later I was working at a large institution with developmentally disabled people. The first six months of my time there I worked the night shift, the overnight shift. I will not try to explain everything about this period in this article. There were orders to wake one man in the middle of the night and keep him awake for 20 to 30 minutes every night. The man did this obligingly each night. His legs were paralyzed and misshapen, but he could, with a little assistance, transfer himself from bed to wheelchair. He only ever made two sounds verbally: a grunt-sigh, and "yeah." As far as I knew, this was the extent of his vocabulary.

The order was to wake the man and have him sit on the toilet for 20 minutes. The hypothesis was that the man would learn bladder control with this practice. The orders were devised by a pen and paper psychologist and I don't know that the man ever made the mental connection. Nevertheless, I performed the task each night I worked there. I did learn that the people who worked on the nights I wasn't there did not do this.

The man accepted this waking. I began telling him Brother-Blue-like stories during his time awake. I didn't have bells or harmonica, but I could describe butterflies the way Brother Blue did. The man who had a one word vocabulary would speak to me with his facial expression. He was blind from birth, so I don't know if he had any concept of butterflies, but he smiled at the description, the stories. After a while, he would laugh too, and this was his gift to me. A gift of value more than anything in the world. There's more. I wrote the long version about this man a long time ago. It will be included in a publication that I'll produce later.

Story telling in an elementary school

Another time I joined a story-telling group. The people there only talked about stories and it wasn't very interesting. I had mentioned that I had written a children's story. No one asked about it, but at the end of the meeting, as I was leaving, the organizer asked me if I would like to tell my children's story to a fifth-grade class. I agreed to do it. On the appointed day I met the man at his house and went with him to the school. It was an old fashion type of school building and it felt eerie to me because it was similar to the elementary school I went to. I think I was more nervous about telling the story to children in school than I would have been telling the story to adults.

The other man went first and it was boring, a moralistic string of words that weren't even a story. The teacher sat in the back of the room and, as I perceived her, was looking like she was thinking, "why did I agree to this?" Oh, that was because the man's kid was in the class. And I was in sympathy with the teacher.

When my turn came, I wasn't nervous. I had to tell the story I came prepared to tell. It was a simple story, crafted to be as beautiful as a story could be, as I learned from Brother Blue. Though this one was not like one of Brother Blue's stories, it had a rhythm and a pulse that reminded me of Brother Blue.

I began my story by telling the kids that this story was only Part One of a Three Part story (I think the teacher was relieved). It was true that I had thought out second and third parts of the story, but I had not written them yet. I began the story. The kids engaged immediately! And I was surprised! When I finished a kid in the front row raised his hand and asked a question. He asked if something was missing, if I had left something out. Really this meant he got it, they all got it. I told them that he was right. And I explained that what he thought was missing was what the second and third parts would be about.

I never did write out the second or third parts to that story. But perhaps that was for the best because then whoever would see it or hear it would have a way in and be able to superimpose their own journey in the story as they knew it to be.

Brother Blue on stage

Brother Blue was giving a performance on stage. Early 1980's. I forget the exact venue, but it was near Cambridge Commons, which is just a couple of city blocks from Harvard Square. It was my great delight that it was on an evening that I could attend. Tickets were $5.00. He was asked to tell his story, how he came to be the story teller he was. Telling this story wasn't what he liked best to do I think, but he did it. He went to Harvard for his Bachelor's Degree, got a Master's Degree at Yale -- he never mentioned that it was in playwriting! -- and a PhD from Union Graduate School. In the adjacent video, you can see him tell what his stories were about when asked by a passerby with a video camera.

I'm talking to the angels, there are angels out here. I want to touch to their soul.
~ Brother Blue

I saw Brother Blue in a coffee shop one day in the early 2000's. He would have been near 80 years old at the time. He was with his "Lady" wife Ruth and she seemed to be watching out for him. I went over and said hello, told him I remembered his stories from the radio. He nodded and I was just grateful. I left them and sat a few tables away. Some kids came in later and he stood and gave a little performance for them. His great exuberance and clarity had faded, but he was still Brother Blue.

Brother Blue passed on from earthly life in November 2009. There were people who tried to make a documentary of his life, but I think Brother Blue wouldn't completely cooperate. Here is a link to Brother Blue doing a segment of King Lear on youtube. Then look around more and see if you can find the video of Brother Blue at the last storytelling conference he attended. That one is the sum of his life, the documentary all of his own, all in a few minutes.

Who would we be without stories?

Who would I be without these stories? That is unimaginable. Who would all we be with no story? What would be left would be the light inside, the light in the middle of the middle, the Light that Brother Blue always referred to and reminded us of in his stories.

Speak as though you are under ultimate power in the ultimate spirit in the universe.
~ Brother Blue