Six impossible things before breakfast
a birthday reflection on love, legacy, and the art of bringing vision to life
Even accomplished impresarios such as Busy Graham can have their doubts about the fruits of their labor. Early on in our relationship she was perturbed by something that wasn’t going well in her work. In a moment of reassurance I remember saying:
“I love what you do in the world; but I love you for who you are.”
It is an important distinction for me, doing and being. I wanted to make the point that being is the foreground; doing is background. For Busy, however, the drive to make good things happen in the world, as often as she can, is her character note. Not a Latin scholar, I shamelessly used ChatGPT to help with this aphorism:
Esse agendo; agere ex essentia.
This roughly translates as “to be by doing; to act from being.” Who you are is expressed by what you do; what you do flows from what is essential to your being.
There are so many examples, but let me share an early one. She had had this idea for a while: a non-auditioned, multi-generational choir learns a set of songs composed (in this case) by Malcolm Dalglish for percussion and hammered dulcimer accompaniment, inspired by the poetry of Wendell Berry. The guest artists join the singers for the final week of rehearsals, and then there is a public performance. Thus was born the Carpe Diem Choral Arts Residency Project: the CARPE of Carpe Diem! A Ceremony of Song. In the hands of a conventional producer, that would be the show. Busy, however, seizes the opportunity to create something even more memorable, a multi-cultural and multi-disciplinary event — the best that it can be — as she did again in 2010 at the Strathmore Music Center in celebration of the 40th anniversary of Earth Day (see my post New Life, April 24, 2025).
Not insignificantly, the premier of Carpe Diem (which was at the time a project of Class Acts Arts, her first non-profit) occurred March 15, 2003, five days before the U.S.-led invasion which started the Iraq War, when the night skies above Washington D.C. fell ominously quiet. The light within the Metropolitan Memorial United Methodist Church felt like an antidote to the horrible spectre of war.
In that evening, our version of ploughshares took the form of song and of movement. Our company — 118 people, ages 8 to 80 — consisted of the Carpe Diem Choir, Shizumi Dance Theatre of Japan and the Kokomo Dance Troupe, the Liz Lerman Teen Exchange Dancers, Pedantics Appalachian cloggers, Irish step dancers, the InToneNation a cappella teen ensemble from Blair High School, musicians, directors and choreographers. The event opened with the procession of singers from the back of the hall to the stage, led by 16-year old bagpiper playing Malcolm’s song setting of Wendell Berry’s “Epitaph.”
This was just the beginning. Over the course of the next twenty years, Busy – assisted by her network of colleagues, artists, volunteers and eventually staff – would focus her discerning attention on artists and audiences alike, seeking out those most in need of what the arts can provide.
Most of these ideas sprung fully imagined, one could say, from her heart, nurtured by an amazing (to me) determination to see a vision manifest itself for the community..
Of course one of her favorite quotes is from Alice in Wonderland, when Alice is conversing with the Queen:
Alice laughed. 'There's no use trying,' she said. 'One can't believe impossible things.'
’I daresay you haven't had much practice,' said the Queen. 'When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.’
Today July 24 is Busy’s birthday. It’s no surprise that she is past the conventional age of retirement. Next month she will be turning over the Carpe Diem reins to a new executive director. The arts will undoubtedly continue to play a vital role in her life and in our lives together in the coming years. Needless to say, there are already projects in the wings.
I’m not sure that much essential will change in who she fundamentally is: a dreamer to be sure, an “ideas person,” but also a standard-bearer for high quality and culturally diverse arts programming, and a kind and generous spirit withal.
Maybe in our now 32 years of marriage, I am finally able to articulate what I have been experiencing: a person for whom the doing is the being.
To be sure, Carpe Diem Arts is like a child that she brought into the world and nurtured. How can she let it go? Well, in some real way she can’t, and won’t have to, inshallah. If there is a day or an idea that is ripe, she will pluck it. She will forever be, in my heart anyway and always, a class act on the stage of human enterprise. She will always carpe diem any way she can.
Journalist Chris Slattery said it best for all of us who know and admire who she is:
In the world of the arts, sometimes just one name is sufficient to identify a singular sensation, a driving force, a ubiquitous presence and a vision for good. Oprah. Barbra, Beyoncé. Busy.
In good company.
Notes
https://culturespotmc.com/stories/getting-to-know-you/arts-angel/
My goodness, what a tribute, and so well-deserved! I'm sorry to be arriving at the party so many days past the date, but knowing Busy as I do, I know she'll be up for an ongoing celebration. As a participant in the Eastern Shore version of that event with my young (at the time) daughters, I still think of it as one of the most memorable mother-daughter experiences we've ever had. I still remember the goosebumps that came over me as those of us in that non-auditioned choir sang our songs together, the feeling of unity and of being part of something much larger than just what was taking place on that stage. An impossible, wonderful thing!
Busy is a force for good who, like her parents before her, has devoted herself to doing what she can to make the world brighter for so, so many. This is it right here: "Busy – assisted by her network of colleagues, artists, volunteers and eventually staff – would focus her discerning attention on artists and audiences alike, seeking out those most in need of what the arts can provide." The embodiment of carpe diem! Happy birthday, Busy, and thank you, Stew.
Thank you Stew for this beautiful surprise birthday gift. You have been the solid rock foundation of love and support--and patience and endurance!--over all of these decades together. So little of my work in the world, whatever it has amounted to, would have been possible without you. I remain ever grateful and amazed every day.