Degrees of Separation–Lateral and Ladderal

Many of us are familiar with the “six degrees of separation” theory.  This is the idea that everyone on the planet is connected to everyone else by no more than five other living people, including strangers, who have social connections with either you or the others.  In the culture this theory has taken root in the parlor game, “Six Degrees From Kevin Bacon,” for the movie industry.

There is some support for this theory.  So you should be connected to both Kamala Harris and Donald Trump by some combination of five or even fewer others.  Our politically divided population is more deeply connected than we could have imagined.

But I have been thinking about a different version of this lateral idea, which connects living people to each other at one point in time.  I am thinking that the theory can be revised to address degrees of separation over time.  That is, a connection I might have made years ago is connected to a recent connection through an improbable series of links.  Let’s call this ladderal degrees of separation,¹ in contrast to the lateral theory.

œœœœœœœœ

Here is an example from my own experiences.  Stay with me now.  This example needs context.

In the winter of 1978, I visited New York City for the first time.  I was in Manhattan conducting research for my doctoral dissertation on the environmental regulation of industrial water pollution.  I spent my days there in Lower Manhattan at the federal Environmental Protection Agency’s Region 2 headquarters, which was responsible for reducing industrial pollution in New York and New Jersey.  My data collection effort was dogged, detailed and draining work at a desk at the rear of a very large room of EPA employees working on enforcement of the nation’s pollution control laws.

Late on a Friday afternoon, several 20-something EPA employees gathered right behind my desk to chat with each other.  I was trying to concentrate on the work, but couldn’t help but make out that they were discussing their Friday night plans.  In particular, a couple of them were saying that they had scored tickets to a private opening party for a new discotheque club on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.  They made it sound like this was a very special and lucky ‘get’ for them in the culture of young New Yorkers, especially given the privacy of the event.

Remember, this was the ’70s and disco was in vogue.  I was also in my mid-20s, although not at all involved in the disco craze anywhere, let alone in New York City.

Still, and even though I was a quite shy introvert who knew none of the people standing behind my desk, I had been working alone hard all week and had nothing to do that weekend night (knowing no one in the city of millions).  So I turned around and simply asked the lucky ticket holders, “Can I go with you?”  To my surprise an attractive woman replied, “Sure!  What’s your name?”  They had an extra ticket.

œœœœœœœœ

So after a solo dinner, I met her and the other EPA staffer, and we cabbed up to the tony Upper East Side in which the new disco was opening.  We joined the line of young people checking in with the club’s security, and I entered the world of disco for the first–and last–time.

Upon passing through the door together, my female host ditched me immediately.  I did not see her again all evening.  So, alone, I took in the setting as if an explorer to a strange world.  And it was strange.  The space included a bar area and a large dance floor crowded with young people either dancing or watching (and there was plenty to watch!) to piped in music and under the spray of light points emanating from the large, mirrored disco ball rotating from the ceiling.

The dancers were making a variety of moves that ranged from the wild flinging of arms and legs to slow and seductive sexualized moves and parries.  The beats in the canned music that was playing were nothing more than suggestions for dancing rhythms.  One pair drawing crowd attention were playing the roles of a male lion tamer with chair and a provocative female lion who crawled the floor expressively (alternately threatening and seductively).  All of these young folks were beautiful and dressed to the nines in a variety of colorful late 1970s raiment.

I was dressed in the drab work clothes of a midwestern graduate student.

œœœœœœœœ

A couple of hours into my silent anthropological observations, a young woman approached me near the dance floor.   She was sharply dressed and wearing a fedora with just the right tilt for glamour.  “Don’t I know you from somewhere,” she asked me.  I had to laugh.  It could have come across as rude, but I couldn’t help myself.  First for the role reversal in the come-on (which I liked, I must say), and second for the fact of my first time in the city.  “No, I don’t think so,” I smiled back.  “I am here working for a few days.  I live in  Madison, Wisconsin.  Where are you from?”  “Brooklyn,” she said.  After which we chatted amiably and danced a bit for 90 minutes or so amidst the disco din.

By 2 a.m. we had both decided to leave for our respective places.  But just before “goodbye” I had an idea.  I had been planning to see my first ever Broadway show the next night, using funds I had saved from my per diem travel account provided by my federal government research grant.  I was going to buy a half-price ticket at the same-day discount ticket sales stand in Times Square that Saturday, and I figured I had saved enough–by eating fast food rather than restaurant food for three days–to buy two tickets.  I asked her if she would like to go to a show–I didn’t yet know which one–and she agreed.  I imagined it would be nice to see the show with someone so that we could compare notes afterward.

œœœœœœœœ

When I reached the ticket booth the next morning, I did not recognize most of the shows.  But I saw one starring Liza Minnelli, the rising star daughter of the legendary performer Judy Garland.  Liza had first come to my attention in the 1969 film, The Sterile Cuckoo, for which she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress.  I had a minor crush on her from seeing that film, and so–knowing nothing about the show itself–I bought two tickets to the musical, The Act.

The show was fine, although not nominated for a Best Musical Tony Award in 1978.  Minnelli, though, was brilliant throughout, dancing, singing and acting her heart out from beginning to end.  Her performance won her the 1978 Tony for Best Actress in a Musical.  I considered my first Broadway show a fine choice.

Our date for the show was fine, too, but ended very shortly after the curtain closed.  She caught the subway back to Brooklyn, and I had another solo dinner that evening.  We hadn’t clicked, but we did agree that Minnelli was stunning in the role of Michelle Craig.

œœœœœœœœ

Fast forward.  Years passed, then decades.  I moved to the East Coast to teach and write, met my professor wife-to-be months into my first post at Yale University, with whom I soon moved to Boston University, had a son who grew up to become a talented jazz pianist and composer who moved to New York City at 23 to take his career chances, who three years later–at a Starbucks, no less–was approached by a young actress and singer aspiring to a career on Broadway, a pair who eventually married and moved from Harlem to Washington Heights in Manhattan, and who both established themselves against the odds as successful artists and teachers.

Meanwhile, I retired from paid employment.

œœœœœœœœ

𝐓𝐡𝐞𝐲 created and 𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐦𝐞𝐝 𝐟𝐫𝐨𝐦 𝐜𝐨𝐚𝐬𝐭 𝐭𝐨 𝐜𝐨𝐚𝐬𝐭, 𝐭𝐨𝐠𝐞𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐬𝐞𝐩𝐚𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐥𝐲.  They played local spots and iconic venues.  While one starred on Broadway, the other played concerts at Carnegie Hall.  They wrote songs, created sold-out cabaret shows and recorded successful albums.  They won awards and earned strong reviews.  They met many people in the performing arts, from teachers to colleagues, in genres ranging from classical and jazz to pop and the Great American Songbook, and in theater from classic plays to dramatic and iconic musicals.

œœœœœœœœ

Then this year they met Lorna, an actress and singer about my age.  They met to rehearse a pair of duet singing shows she and our daughter-in-law, Julie, would perform together this fall, with son Jason serving as music director.  That would be Lorna Luft, Judy Garland’s other daughter and Liza Minnelli’s half-sister.

 

So while my 1978 date on Broadway proved to be only a minor note in the composition of my life, it clearly formed a step in the ladder of chords that followed it, all the way back to where it began, on Broadway.

1. A play on words, “ladder” here representing the movement of time as climbing from past to present,[↩]