Having washed the dishes, put away laundry, showered; and having written the previous blog entry, which was like taking an emotional shower – an awkward metaphor, but what I mean should be clear, which is: having removed the emotional dirt and dust of the past week by writing about it; and it being still and late at night, in a northern clime, at a time of year when the weather is reminding me of what winter has in store –
I can't help but think: what if I were to simply go home?
Yes, I know: the link is to an advertisement, something for new Sony televisions; but it is also a beautiful portrait of San Francisco. It's unusual in several ways that people who never lived there wouldn't realize – it was taken on a sunny day, which isn't easy; and the streets they chose look almost like the ones around Portola Hill, a relatively plain part of the city, without the elaborate luxuries and fripperies that are scattered around the older and wealthier districts. (It can't be Portola Hill, I think, because it somehow goes down into the financial district, but faces the Marina on the other side – I can't quite recognize the street; perhaps it's coming from Telegraph Hill instead.) But its peculiar specificity (all those bouncing colored balls), the kid, the dog, the alley, the woman in her apartment; even the way they have to curve the pavement so that driveways are possible on steep hills – they all caught at my heart when I first saw it, and frankly I burst into tears whenever it appeared on television. The music helps, of course – the softness, the introspection, the acoustic beauty of the José González song – blahfeme had to correct my first impression, which was that it was indigenous northern Californian (González is an Argentine from Sweden), but it remains a song that perfectly captures the best qualities of the city (and his name even sounds like he's someone you'd meet in a Mission Street café, with long hair pulled back, and who always carried a guitar).
And I have learned about what one does when life doesn't make sense any more: reading through the David Tudor archive at the Getty archive, I noted how often he had simply changed direction completely – dropped playing the organ in the 1950s to play the piano, then dropped playing European serialism in 1961 (just in time to drive poor Barraqué to distraction, along with probably many others who had been depending on him to present their works); simply dropped everything, and moved on. That took immense courage: of course he was a success at all of those things, which helps... but then so many biographies tell you that it is too easy to get stuck, that no one was ever harmed by dropping everything and walking away.
So wouldn't it make more sense for me to simply get on a plane and go home, then to continue working half-heartedly at things I don't care enough about? I've already turned a lot of talent into a minor academic career (my university clearly agrees); my life as it is, though not bad, is obviously unremarkable and drifting. It would mean giving up academe, of course – for nothing, frankly; I wouldn't be able to aim high in any kind of employment or way of living if I went back to San Francisco.
But I can imagine it – in fact a flood of plans pours over me: rather than spending a fortune bringing all these books and belongings back across the world, I could just give the books to the university, and the other things away; and go back, and look for a small, unimportant place to live, and work in a bookstore. I might even go to the SF Conservatory and meet with the dean, and make up some cock-and-bull story about my health and not wanting to die abroad (not so untrue, but no less true than it has been for twenty years) and say, well, if you can use me for a few basic music history lectures here and there, I'd appreciate it. I'd use the same story for family and friends, pretending that my prognosis had changed or something – the City itself won't much mind, people who have dropped out of their former lives are a part of the background there.
I wouldn't mind living around Portola Hill. I could work at SF Hospital, maybe.
It could even work....
I'll dream of the City tonight, I know I will.
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