A Song Flung Up to Heaven - Maya Angelou [46]
“We will be seeing other writers, but who is your agent?”
Would they even consider me if I admitted I had no agent?
“I have a manager. He acts as my agent.” Having a manager might make me seem an important writer. “I’ll give you his address and telephone number.”
I wrote down Jerry Purcell’s phone number. “He’s away today, but I’m sure you can reach him tomorrow at this number.”
I needed the day to find Jerry before they talked to him. I had to tell him that he was my manager.
For over an hour we talked about San Francisco and the state of the Broadway stage and PBS in general and their station KQED in particular and the United States and Africa. That was the kind of conversation I liked to have, rambling, tumbling, wandering off from one subject onto another.
Their humor pleased me. I forgot where I was and why I was there. When they stood, I remembered and immediately wondered if I had talked too much and overstayed my welcome. We shook hands all around, and Jon said, “We will speak to your manager, and you will hear from us before the week is out.”
Yes, I did like them, and I hoped they liked me.
Three days later Jerry telephoned. “I got good money for you, so you’ll be going out to San Francisco.”
I whooped all the way to the library.
With time and a kindly librarian, any unskilled person can learn how to build a replica of the Taj Mahal. I pored over books about television documentaries. I read instructions on how to write television plays and accounts of producing and directing television.
I studied hard and memorized phrases and words I had never used. Boom and speed and camera angle, tripod and seconds and reverses. After a week I had an enlarged vocabulary. When I wasn’t reading about television, I was writing for television.
I thought that I would learn on the job, but I would learn quicker and more easily if I had some of the language.
I designed a series called Blacks. Blues. Black. We were blacks in Africa before we were brought to America as slaves, where we created the blues, and now we were painfully and proudly returning to being upstanding free blacks again.
The program would show African culture’s impact on the West. As host, I would introduce the lyricism of poetry and the imagery of prose. In one program I would have B. B. King playing blues and church choirs singing spirituals and gospel songs. There would be African, African-American and modern ballet dance, and I would point out their similarities. The art of African sculpture would be shown as the source and resource of many Western artists’ creativity. I would place Fan, Ashanti and Dogon masks alongside the works of Picasso, Klee, Modigliani and Rouault.
It was thrilling to think of returning to San Francisco, with something to do and the faith that I would do a good job.
Thirty-two
I was so excited that the telephone call hardly penetrated.
“My name is Robert Loomis, and I am an editor at Random House. Judy Feiffer spoke of you. She said you told wonderful stories.”
“How nice of her. James Baldwin and her husband told the best.”
“I am calling to ask if you’d like to write an autobiography.”
I said, “No, thank you. I am a poet and playwright.”
He asked, “Are you sure?”
“Yes, quite. In fact, I’m leaving in a few days to write and host a television series for PBS in San Francisco. I’ll be there for a month or more.”
“May I have a California number for you?”
I gave him Aunt Lottie’s San Francisco telephone number and my mother’s number in Stockton, California, where she had moved.
“I’m pretty certain that I will not write an autobiography. I didn’t celebrate it, but I have only had my fortieth birthday this year. Maybe in ten or twenty years.” We both laughed and said good-bye.
In San Francisco I collected dancers and singers and musicians and comedians. I went to churches and synagogues and community centers. On the day of the first shoot, Bob Loomis telephoned again.
“Miss Angelou, I’m calling to see if you’ve had a change of mind, if you are certain that you don’t want