I've Seen That Smile Somewhere Before by Bob Kaufman

Claire Johnson Senior Picture, 1967

Once, long ago, before I was young - indeed, even before time, I knew her and loved her!

Then, as I was about to leave that existence, Mother assured me: "Everything will be alright."

It was as if she was sending me off to my first day of school.

I imagine she licked her fingers, as mothers do, and slicked my hair, tugged at my belt to straighten my shirt. She looked, and looked once more to be certain I had my sack lunch in hand. Then, perceiving my reticence, she scooted me out the door before I could object.

So, I departed, as we all did one by one, into The Great Agon. 1

     "Earth seemed a desert I was bound to traverse,
     seeking to find the old familiar faces", Charles Lamb wrote. 2

The Old Familiar Faces by Charles Lamb

That idea resonates with me.

It seemed part of my very soul when I first heard it not long ago.
I felt something expand within.
It was as the sound of angelic harmony – triads, and more complex chords, I have often heard, especially when the MCO women sing in three or four, or even more parts.

It is like an “arrival” chord. One that just feels right – that moment of anticipated resolution in the music, following a dramatic, suspenseful crescendo. I have felt similar beauties before - fulfillment of the promise that truth shall "distill upon thy soul as the dews from heaven." 3

Suddenly, I wished I had read more in the previous seven decades of my life. If I had, that truth might have drifted my way long before now.

"Where had I seen them, those familiar faces?", I thought.
"Certainly not here.”
“I have sought them as long as I can remember - since I was very young - even before that."

Their familiarity precedes time.

"If not here, then where?" I asked aloud.
(My thoughts, alone, could not contain that question.)

Spring 1968

Not the first, but my most memorable moment finding a familiar face, was the instant hers passed before mine, slightly lower, as five foot four is to just under six feet, not eighteen inches away, as close as two people can be within a single doorway without grazing against one another. I felt the faint breeze on my forearm as she passed by - all too quickly it seemed. Absent was the discomfort of a violation of personal space! Indeed, this was a most-welcome intrusion.

Though more than half a century ago, the image of that moment is unfaded.

Even if I close my eyes really tight, clench my fists, and think really hard, I cannot recall another familiar-face moment as vivid as that one, although, there have been many, many more.

Curious. Most have involved music, I think, but that's another story.
Or maybe it is this one.
My mind is yet unsettled on that point.

Spring 1968, Merrill Hall

Orson F. Whitney wrote: "More than once on hearing a noble sentiment expressed though unable to recall that I’d ever heard of it until then, I found myself in sympathy with it, and felt as if I had always known it. The same is true with some strains of music; they are like echoes of eternity. I do not assert pre-acquaintance in all such cases, but as one thought suggests another, these queries arise in the mind." 4

We Lived With God

Perhaps that is why I have found many familiar faces while engaged in singing music that also has a familiar echo. It is more than simple coincidence.

Wordsworth wrote:
    "Earth fills her lap with pleasures of her own;

    Yearnings she hath in her own natural kind,
    And, even with something of a mother's mind,
    And no unworthy aim,
    The homely nurse doth all she can
    To make her foster-child, her inmate, Man,
    Forget the glories he hath known,
    And that imperial palace whence he came." 5

W.W. Gibson wrote of ... "fresh moments that live again in remembrance - unfaded."

Living "again in remembrance" seems to imply a sense of deja-vu, but the passing of that angel before my eyes did not produce such a feeling. Deja vu is near complete forgetfulness...but not quite. Then, when it quietly, almost imperceptibly, drifts back into your consciousness, you feel you've been there before, but you cannot quite account for when or where.

No.
That wasn't it.

The feeling I had, as my heart leapt within, was complete remembrance and reunion. Unawares, I had been searching for her all along, but didn’t know where she had gone! Then I felt, just for an instant, that mother must have added, probably as an afterthought, as she gently kissed my forehead: "Don't worry. You will find her.”

Suddenly, there she was!
Unannounced!
Such an entrance should have been preceded by great pomp and circumstance!

Spring 1968, Together at Last

I was tongue-tied. 6
I tried but couldn't speak.
I didn't even know her name!

"Wie heißen?" (Literally, "How are you called?" – She always liked when I spoke German. I haven’t done it much in the eons since that September – 1967.)
The perfect greeting realized only now, half a century too late!
(Perhaps that eight-month gap between that moment and our first formal date might have been eliminated. Oh, but then, without the suspension, the “arrival” cannot be as sweet!)

Claire and Kristi, Summer 1970

Not quite a year later, on a warm summer afternoon - as we sat in the shade of the pine trees on the lawn where I once played imaginary baseball games on my knees, bouncing a soft ball against the sidewalk and fireplace at my childhood home - we talked of love and learned that we both had wished that the other would have come and sat nearby so we could talk. But she went to one side of the room, and I to the other. Gladly the distance of that separation would eventually disappear.

How could I not know her name? Earth might cause one to forget his former palatial home, but the face of eternal love is indelible! I have always had difficulty putting names to faces and remembering them for very long. I guess it’s just me.

     “I [had] seen that smile somewhere before.
     “Sometime.
     “Who can be certain when?
     “But, if I knew [her] then, it's strange I can't remember.
     “Feelings come so very strong, like we’ve known each other oh so long! 7

The Circle of Our Love

Helene Cardona wrote: 8

     To Kitty, Who Loved the Sea and Somerset Maugham

    For whatever we lose (like a you or a me)
    it’s always ourselves we find in the sea
    ―E.E. Cummings

     The angel who smells of my childhood
     My mother, piano and oboe
     Whose face the icon reflects
     Auburn hair like a Modigliani
     Eyes the color of rain
     Light caught by surprise
     Whose presence the absence reveals
     Whose laughter burns snow
     Whose warm breath I breathed
     This morning as I woke
     The scent of gardenias whispering
     I never left you

Truly, she never left me!

Either we knew each other in a pre-mortal realm or I am a hopeless romantic.

I prefer both. 9



Footnotes:

1 According to Wikipedia, Agon is an ancient Greek term for a conflict, struggle or contest. This could be a contest in athletics, in chariot or horse racing, or in music or literature at a public festival in ancient Greece. Agon is the word-forming element in 'agony', explaining the concept of agon(y) in tragedy by its fundamental characters, the protagonist and antagonist.

Wikipedia definition of agon 

2 “The Old Familiar Faces”, by Charles Lamb
3 Doctrine and Covenants 121:45
4 Quoted in "Jesus of Nazareth" Vol. 2, by Truman Madsen
5 “Ode on Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood”, by William Wordsworth - 1770-1850]
6 Like the young man in “Montage from How Sweet It Is”
"Then I knew that you knew that I knew that....
(This song became ours that bright and wonderful spring of 1968...but that's another story.)

7 “The Circle of our Love”, from “Saturday’s Warrior”, by Douglass Stewart and Lex de Azevedo
8 “Life in Suspension / La Vie Suspendue”m by Helene Cardona
9 O My Father, text: Eliza R. Snow, 1804-1887, verse 3:
      I had learned to call thee Father,
      Thru thy Spirit from on high,
      But, until the key of knowledge was restored,
      I knew not why.
      In the heav'ns are parents single?
      No, the thought makes reason stare!
      Truth is reason; truth eternal
      Tells me I've a mother there.