in the hall of mirrors

Broken lines of communication

A week since I've written in a journal, or done any spontaneous morning writing (see Dorothea Brande's famous 1934 book for instructions); and more since I've written here.

Well, let's see... an onslaught of students, most of them pleasant though some pretty feckless, but the sheer chaotic mass, the noise and mess, of them is daunting; three days of having a cold (more precisely: a cold virus endemic to a population of migrating undergraduates, transmission airborne, from a female first-year vector – who sat next to me in the first tutorial and sneezed and coughed at me for an hour, while I acted pleasant and urbane and thought at the back of my head, oh no, this won't end well).

And a difficult e-mail, an unfair and painful piece of work, from someone I didn't expect to attack me that way: and one that forbade me to mention it on this blog. No, I didn't feel any need to pay attention to that stricture – it's not anyone's decision but mine what to discuss here – but of course it tainted everything, adding a certain hostility, plus my own defensive anger, to every thought I've had for a week.

Which, of course, temporarily damaged my relationship to this blog, and to most everything else too... of course it has also helped me reexamine relationships, which naturally need a lot of attention in my life.

And, of course, all work on The Book has ground to a complete halt... it is always frustrating, and more than a little bit pathetic, how easy it is to stop me dead. Any foolishness can do it: I may be tough on some fronts, but in creativity/productiveness I am a helpless creampuff. Ridiculous....

Although not all the lines were broken: Patrick and I have seen each other a couple of times this week; he's doing very well, and it was very comfortable to putter around town with him, and to sit in his office while he gets ready for his own onslaught of students. The value of a good friend, in the absence of other kinds of support....

Kagel ist tot

Mauricio Kagel, composer, died today.

A brilliant and highly imaginative man... I have written about his work in a number of places, in print and also online, and met him a few times. I'm not grieving terribly because he had a successful career – the career he wanted – and he lived to a decent age (76).

Good for him.

Turn a trumpet on its head for Mauricio today.

Longing

Awake in the early morning hours, as often this week. The remains of Monday's full moon in Pisces. The hum of the computer in the next room, trying to do its automatic backup – which is clearly screwed up, so I got up to erase and try again.

And continued reading Mann's Doctor Faustus in the wonderfully clear new translation. Hit the passage early on – about chapter five or six? – where the young composer and his friend hear public lectures on Beethoven's late works, by a brilliant and rather asocial musician; full of the stuff that fascinates – used to fascinate? – me about music, the sense of drama and meaning attached to large forms and ideas. The passion and eerie disorientation of understanding these vast abstract canvases, of seeing what amazing depths of understanding seem to be there.

At a point in the year where we're bogged down in the trivia of more pragmatic aspects of music education, and when I'm traitorously  thinking of Jungian psychology – as if that could replace music and musicology in my affections; oh fickle! – this brings on resonance, passion, guilt. Longing.

And blog entries by a former teacher who went to Hawaii with my friend Mitchell among others are full of another passion, that for the beautiful, warm and lush, places of the world. Many Facebook messages with Gavin, the sensualist and poet, who now lives in Hawaii and daily tells me of the fruits and plants, meals, immediate joys he experiences – in contrast to the meetings and agendas I experience. Longing.

They're all piled up on top of each other in my head: the grand mystical longings of great music, great art, and visions of amazing possibilities; and the dense sensual longings of beautiful places, warm air. None of which are particularly lying around, here....

Mann / Woods

No, that's not some Joycean take on 'woodsman'.

John E. Woods has been translating – retranslating – Thomas Mann's major works for over a decade now; I only recently found out about it. I've got The Magic Mountain, and Doctor Faustus arrived today; Buddenbrooks and Joseph and his Brothers (which I'd always assumed was one of those unreadable 'masterpieces') are on my wish lists.

It's astounding: these are not merely readable, they're fascinating – I was slogging through the old, awful translation of Magic Mountain after I was in the hospital, and it was an unpleasant chore, tinny missed notes and pretentious messes in every sentence. But these new versions are whole new worlds – they're so good you start one just to see what it's like, and are drawn in so that you don't want to put it down.

Mann, unputdownable? (The bookman's adjective.) Amazing. I'm far happier with these than with the retranslated Prousts, which are still pretty tough going (partly because the second volume always drives me nuts, with its endless fake fascination with girls and smarmy emotionality). My friend Joyce, whose German is good enough that she's happy reading novels in the original, said she hated Man's pompous irony – but I'm perfectly happy with it; in fact I enjoy it.

And I'd never connected the pompous, dithering academic narrator of Doctor Faustus to the pompous, dithering academic narrator of Hesse's Glass Bead Game, but now the connection seems pretty obvious. I suppose Hesse thought of it first... and, as a doddering academic myself, are these strange, undependable narrators all too familiar?

So the old, awful translations are off to the charity shop. Rather satisfying, really....

•••

A couple of notes, a few days later, when about a third of the way through rereading Doctor Faustus (if it's really rereading when this is such a different version): there are clearly a lot more similarities between Faustus and The Glass Bead Game than the narrator – even though the tone is so different (Faustus eerie, diabolical, tinged with fear, while the Game is serene, emotionally calm), many of the same problems and relations abound – especially problems of intellectualism, isolation, detachment; and how hard it is for the intellectual to relate to the world, whether it's a world in chaos or a reasonable and slightly stuffy utopia.

It's also remarkable to relate it to reading Jung, and perhaps Freud: I read somewhere that Mann, fascinated by both psychologists, had written the Joseph tetralogy with Jungian ideas in mind, and something else – Magic Mountain, perhaps? – with Freud in mind; but it's probably more accurate to say that a mixture of both can be seen floating around in many of his books.

In any case, given that Mann – among others – was angry at Jung for not leaving Switzerland during the war, and for not resigning his post as president of a German-run health organization; and thus dismissed Jung as a Nazi –it makes sense that one of the disturbing threads of pre-war Germany Mann weaves together is the archetypal, the deeply rooted. This isn't new, of course – the whole problem of Blut und Boden, of das Volk, and the disturbing way that all sorts of archetypal and folk metaphysics got twisted into Nazism is something that deeply tainted many thinkers, most notably Heidegger – but it's eerie to see Mann put various assertions about the deep meaning and great path of German youth into the mouths of students, with diabolic echoes around it that suggest what is to come....

Signal to noise

On a day when I'm finally finishing that article that has hung over my head for three weeks, almost finished; and need to work on airline schedules, voter registration, and other miscellanea, which really should be finished today...

not one but three invitations to chat, to have dinner, to go out. My negative response puts the lie to my usual complaint that nobody pays attention to me, that I'm pathetic and alone and what not.

I think it's a peculiar kind of synchronicity: when I actually get the energy to do something, perhaps I therefore – in some obscure, San Francisco-mystical kind of way – impinge more on people's consciousnesses.

How odd, and sometimes slightly annoying, is the timing of the world...

Of course it's a full moon. But there you are.

Autumnal acts

My cleaner, Katia, came today (she is Bulgarian, blonde, charming, and kind; she brought me chocolates when I had been in the hospital; her children and husband moved here a month ago from Bulgaria, and they are settling in to school, college, and jobs with alacrity).

We needed to do a Big Task: take the two window boxes down to the deck outside. Messy and heavy, but we did it.

I decided to take them down earlier this year, in a certain mild disappointment; the herbs didn't do terribly well this year – lots of bugs, gnats and aphids, and fungus that killed the marjoram, and I wouldn't buy either a curry plant nor a coriander plant again.

It's my fault, I think – I went with Bennett to buy the plants at a point when I was still very tired and ill from the hospital, and so left them outside for two weeks – and of course herbs simply attract bugs, outside, unprotected.

Ah well. It is still perhaps always good, to invest time and effort into growing things...

and yes, I still should be seeing about getting a cat. I promise I won't leave it – him, I think – outside for two weeks.

Relational

Not quite so sure I won't try to become a Jungian analyst; we'll see. Of course, in any major decision it is good to give up on it at one point, at least... but despite my concerns about age, health, time, cost, logistics, appropriateness, and what might be my underlying (possibly suspect, narcissistic, inflated or unrealistic) reasons for wanting this, the only concern that really stands in my way is wondering whether I'm only doing this in order to avoid writing The Book.

In any case: I am much concerned about anima/animus stuff, relations, the way I connect to others. I need to be concerned about those things – as school revs up again I'm finding myself amazingly hostile, angry, resentful about the tedious things that are thrown at us in e-mails, meetings, and tedious presentations by outside consultants. It is as though we start out the school year with the most nonsensical, oppressive and bureaucratically misguided parts of our jobs – and because this is the UK, where the government runs the universities, there are very, very many of those.

I did, after all, live at least partly in the business world during the eighties and early nineties, and left it behind because it was so airless and ridiculous – there is a way in which all bosses become pointy-haired after a time. The fact that British universities are increasingly run by, and in the favorite ways of, bureaucratic busybodies is a seriously unpleasant aspect of life here, even more than the weather.

So I'm cranky, and being difficult to my colleagues – at points, very difficult indeed. I am not nice when I don't want to be.

Somewhere among all this, and a crowd of half-forgotten dreams that seem to be trying to push me in various directions, and a beautifully thoughtful, extended series of long messages on Facebook with an admired gay poet of the 1980s, I'm thinking of many things. One of them is connected to the Jungian, to the psychological, to the relational – the way that some major stage works, operas and plays, don't mean much of anything to me; and my attempt to figure out why, on psychological rather than aesthetic grounds.

For instance, neither Mozart's Don Giovanni nor Shakespeare's Hamlet, though both are supposed to be the greatest works by the greatest artists, has ever really gotten through to me at all. Yes, I get all the ideas; but they both seem strange, flat and dead, and simply unimportant to my world.

With Mozart, it's certainly not the nature of opera itself: I love Nozze di Figaro more than many things in the world, and I enjoy the fluff of Cosí fan tutte, even if the plot degenerates into drivel. I'll admit I'm not as enamored as Zauberflöte as many are, but perhaps that is because the childlike doesn't mean much to me. But no – with Zauberflöte and Don Giovanni, there is a sense of being forced to care about something that is ultimately too heterosexual, too concerned with the endless, tiresome war between the men and the women...

but then isn't that just as true of Nozze and Cosí? What am I missing in these works? Or is it significant that Nozze and Cosí are more from the womens' viewpoint – that both seem to be taking place, much of the time, in women's bedrooms?

As for Shakespeare: given how much I love Lear, Romeo & Juliet, The Tempest, and above all and more than anything A Midsummer Night's Dream, why does Hamlet leave me so entirely cold? And Macbeth is nearly as bad, after the witches leave the stage. (This can't entirely be a gay thing – Patrick loves the Scottish play, but maybe that's because he did it in school and knows it so much better.)

The problem with Hamlet, more than any of these, is that it is accurately described as intellectual, obsessed with death, tragical, rhetorical, complicated – doesn't that sound like something I would like? And I've tried repeatedly; but it just falls flat for me. I cannot see why it is greater than the other plays, and I can barely see why it is worth producing at all.

Of course I can't stand Gravity's Rainbow either, despite enjoying V and The Crying of Lot 49. Way too much war stuff, olive drab, yuck. Or Beethoven piano sonatas – though I love practically all the symphonies, even the wallfowers 4 and 8, the piano sonatas seem so heavy with male bombast – when Bennett plays them in the afternoon down the hall from my office, I can admire his passion for them, but I find the harmonies of that exaggeratedly male universe incredibly tiresome.

Is this, then, all something about anima relations – or animus relations – or the Double, or one of the other attempts that have been made to make sense of archetypes in the gay mind? (Which is one of the big places where Jung's often very heterosexual theories run into some trouble – and which is a place where there has been a great deal of discussion, as so many famous Jungians are gay men or lesbians.)

Is this – at the greatest depth and with the greatest resonance – a guy thing? Or a gay thing?....

Such a little difference a vowel makes.

A dream fragments, fades

Awake at 5 a.m., thinking of this possibility – this goal, this plan, this dream, this path, this vision, this fantasy – of becoming a Jungian analyst.

It is still hard to tell which of those various things it is... but right now I'm thinking: probably a fantasy.

I'll continue to check into it – web research is hardly enough; Melinda says she knows a woman up here who will know more – but I suspect that it is really a place holder, a marker, for a larger desire to go somewhere more interesting in my life. Which, given my situation in the past six years, is hardly surprising.

Here is the question formulated to help myself decide just how real it is: If I were living in a busier environment, with more friends around, events, groups I was involved in, things I was doing for work or leisure or such – if I were, in fact, living in a city where a program in training in Jungian analysis were actually available – would I still want to do it?

Given that such training probably involves at least six, seven or more years of tuition, clinical work, analysis, all of which would almost certainly have to take place somewhere other than here (because it's not offered here)... the closest possible location would probably be Edinburgh, and even that might not work – the truth is this is a fairly difficult thing to do anywhere in the UK that's not London. And many, many train trips would cost much money, and be stressful, and to some extent impossible to keep up with over a long time, given that I do have responsibilities here.

I suspect that, given the fact that it would take more years than I had thought, and that it would require money that's not really lying around here – although large parts of that six or seven or so years sound just fine to me – the whole is probably too vast a commitment, and one that stretches out too far from where I am now. Although I like the idea of a second career, and this one would be pretty wonderful, I'm not delighted at some of its realities – including getting involved with a new set of institutions and conflicts and limitations and bureaucracies.

This idea is probably more of a desire to get out, to do something different, something worth while. (And perhaps, embarrassingly but typically, it's an avoidant move away from writing this book – in fact it is probably that, given my normal patterns.) (Oh, and if you were going to tell me that a University lecturer does do something worth while – yes, of course, perhaps; but I might agree more strongly about that if I were in a place that needed me more, used me more and for more sophisticated things, and responded more strongly to the abilities I have to offer.)

It's a bit disappointing to think of it in these terms. But not shattering, and not depressing: at least I imagined something that seemed really worth doing. And started to realize that I may need larger goals – that I need something better, something bigger, to aim for, than merely surviving the bureaucratic requirements of a provincial university.

Even if only in my imagination....

Political

I really hate politics.

Especially American politics.

Since I was young when watching news about the Viet Nam war, since I was a teenager when Nixon showed us what politicians are made of, since I watched in despair as Reagan, then Bush, wrecked everything I had liked about America – and not incidentally directly impacted my own life, through inaction over AIDS and dismantling the system that supported the arts in America – I have come to think it's all horrible. Crap. Yuck.

Not quite incidentally, the Facebook application based on the wonderful website The Political Compass has me way down in the middle of the lower left quadrant – and all twelve of my friends who have answered their questionnaire are similarly in that area. Radicals all; while all the candidates, including the Democrats, are in the upper right quadrant. Perhaps everyone I've ever met is a bizarre leftist liberal pinko commie, but it seems odd that the two groups are so far apart.

But it's impossible not to have an opinion these days, of course. I hope, very much, that Obama wins; I was a bit sorry it wasn't Hilary Clinton, but for perhaps rather strange reasons – I'm pretty sure that the nefarious machinery Bush has left in place can only be fought by someone who's not at all nice. I would rather have had a shark than a pussycat, frankly. But hopefully Obama will hire some sharks to work for him.

Of course the entire discussion these days is: a black man for president? no woman for president? a woman nominated for vice president?... and lots of intelligent and nonsensical ink spilled. Of course these are very important issues...

but today it occurred to me: how soon will we see an openly gay president?

Ha. I won't hold my breath, either.

Nights

For the past seven or eight days – basically since finishing one of the two articles I've been working on – I have been either on the computer, or reading until three, four, five, even six a.m.

I keep trying to stop it, to get to bed more regularly: but haven't really succeeded.

Again, tonight: after a lovely talk all evening with Patrick, who is back in town – and is it really possible that we haven't talked face to face since February?... and we talked about the possibility of Jungian analysis. So tonight I was re-reading – skipping my way through – Robertson Davies' The Manticore, certainly one of the most lucid and intense tales of analysis. And a book I dearly love.

I didn't read the whole thing – I avoided most of the narrator's own, rather sordid, story, which makes up most of the novel – but skipped through the passages about the Jungian analysts themselves, the questions they asked, especially Dr. Jo von Haller. Very satisfying.

And, I must say, even though it is nearly four a.m. and I have a student calling in the morning, I don't regret it: it seems, at least in the middle of the night, a perfectly worthwhile way to spend the mid-night hours....