Nina Simone

We watched What Happened, Miss Simone? the documentary on the life of Nina Simone, produced by Lisa Simone Kelly, her daughter. Kelly has done the work of recovering from the pain and extraordinary power of having a genius for a mother and a sometimes-violent bully for a father; recovering from the devastation of being abandoned and then abused by a mother whose brain chemicals controlled her behavior. It is research woven into a coherent narrative, illustrated by films of Simone’s performances, excerpts of interviews with Simone and the people who are still alive who knew her, and it’s brilliant. Hard and gem-like in its brilliance, sharp like broken glass. 

Simone’s daughter said she never knew from one moment to another who her mother would be. Her mother could shift in an instant from a state of calm to a state of rage. The term bipolar is used in the film. It’s a word that comes in and out of vogue, like borderline personality disorder, like PTSD. People who live in orderly, predictable worlds, people with medical degrees and reliable incomes, people who sometimes wear white lab coats argue, write papers, dispute what to call this thing. 

But however the condition is named by people who observe it, I know it because, like Lisa Simone Kelly, I had such a mother. She could change in an instant from a playful, laughing light-heartedness to a hard, violent drive to smash whatever came to her hand first. She could be humming to herself, dancing, arranging flowers; a song sparrow might trill on a bush outside the window, and suddenly she would be the embodiment of rage with superhuman strength. She could sink into a bottomless depression, unable to get out of bed for days, and one afternoon she would arise, shower, put on Jean Naté after-bath splash, and be a new woman. “I feel like a new woman,” she would say. That might last for a few days, for a week, or only for twenty minutes before some other state would arise: perhaps deep aching melancholy, hymn-singing faith in God, acidic sarcasm, folksy story-telling nostalgia. 

Lisa Simone Kelly has done her work. This film is a gift to her mother, to herself, to the world. I watched her speak into the camera, telling the story, and I saw the heartache, the resilience, the compassion and admiration. It is hard to come to all that. I know there is more to Nina Simone’s story than her daughter tells, but it’s a good telling. I respect it.  Above all there is Nina Simone herself, making the sounds only she in all the world has ever made: fingers on the piano doing one thing, voice doing entirely another; longing, deep yearning, and rage in the songs, in the music she sang to free herself and her people.