in the hall of mirrors

Exquise

The French Baroque: a favorite period of mine.

Although the German Baroque, in its transition from chaotic to orderly, is always impressive; and the Italian, though widely admired by good and intelligent friends, bores me; it is the quirky, unfinished but quaint English Baroque, and the fantastically ornate, seductive French, that I most enjoy. Lully, Rameau, Charpentier: I like the big stage works, as you will notice – operas, ballets, and grandly dramatic motets. I also play a lot of Couperin, D'Anglebert, and others when I can get at a keyboard.

Charpentier is in some ways a late arrival on the scene: I can remember as few as fifteen years ago he was generally treated as an also-ran, as an obscure fellow-traveller, with few performances or available recordings. Partly because of Bill Christie and Les Arts Florissants, and because the French classical music industry has seized on him lately, there are now multiple recordings of many of his works. On the CD player at the moment is Christie's recording of the aptly named Les Plaisirs de Versailles, plus a couple of pastoralettas – and it is hard to imagine a more coyly decadent term for a musical genre than 'pastoraletta': it sounds exactly like Marie-Antoinette dressed up as a shepherdess, with real but rose-scented milk in the pails. (Yes, I know, she was a century later, but you get the idea.) But the music is not so terminally cute – the rich darkness of the strings, the minor keys, the graceful but insistent rhythms create a considerably finer world than the title implies.

Much of my experience of this period is personal, not professional: I once wanted to write my opinions about the aesthetic implications of French Baroque, but Susan dissuaded me – she is more of an expert in the area, and she always seemed to think my interpretations and opinions were a bit off kilter, ultimately too modernist. Then there was lunch with Bill Christie, some years ago, in Berkeley: I told him how much I loved his recordings, but his response was to make an extended pass at me – until I told him about being HIV+, at which point he suddenly left me alone. In any case, though I haven't hung out with French Baroque specialists very much, I've made my own connection with it.

Playing Couperin on the piano, or if you're lucky on the harpsichord: the deep structure is predictable, static, but well-made, the harmonies constantly braking and holding time in place; but the ornaments, the melodic intricacies, give time an atomistic density, a sensuality, that I love. Perhaps it's because I am a fairly inept player (Bennett, whose office is down the hall from mine, races fluently through Beethoven sonatas on a daily basis, which are works I couldn't ever stand – their long-winded rationality wears me out); but the sheer fiddly richness of each measure, with its tragic minor resolutions, long suspensions and plangent discords, always makes me very happy.

No, not happy: but filled with, well, plaisir....

LA '89

He pulls back the brake, turning his head. Pressure of the gear shift. Bare arm and vinyl. Warm, bright air, a slight glare. Can’t see. Growl of the engine. He backs towards the red Porsche...

Hand on the brake, he pulls. Up. Feet on the clutch and brake, his head turns, he feels the breeze on the sweat of his forehead. A cough. Yanking back, turning, he sees...

Grabbing the brake, pulling. Foul exhaust laced with jasmine. Head turning, eyes away from the glare, a pull in the neck muscles, pain, feet lifting from the clutch as...

Hand still on the brake, window, sour air, noise of the street behind, slight headache, pulling, neck turning, too fast, gasp...

Reaching for the brake, turning, look, red Porsche, fast: how far, turning head back, arm, tired, pulling...

Hand on the parking brake, grip, smooth, upward, look, jasmine, exhaust, glare, pulling...

Letting go of the brake...

[Los Angeles, 11/8/89]

Afterthought (after bath)

I used to tell people (this is also in the context of noticing, over the years, my increasing tendency to organize my thoughts into neatly packaged anecdotes – a suspicious tendency, but useful at parties, if a bit artificial) that, before I moved to LA, I knew what it was like to relax over a drink, and I knew what it was like to relax around the pool; but I hadn't known that drinking around a pool is a multiplicative not an additive function.

Okay, I didn't say it that way – I said they multiply each other instead of adding, so that essentially drinking around the pool is relaxation, squared.

Some years later, in a relaxed gay resort on Gran Canaria, I discovered that drinking around the pool, naked, is relaxation cubed.

A hot bath with spirits is in the same ballpark: no sun or pretty men to watch, but still....

Cliché

The bathtub is half full; hot, with oil, smelling of mangoes. A glass of spirits (limoncello as it happens – can't quite do the cliché of a whiskey, not the kind of thing I drink – and that tells you something about me).

Today I had to call around to the HIV patient group to get some of them to come to a class, to a public presentation; lots of dates and schedules and yeses and semi-nos. Easy enough, used to do it all the time (since I don't run the group any more, it's about five months since I've done this). In speaking to one of the guys, and doing the so-how-are-you thing, he said he has changed meds – and when he changed them he had a major problem with anger for a couple of weeks. I said, possibly rather invasively, or (translated into UK English) impertinently: well, since Efavirenz tends to release a lot of feeling, does that mean you'd been holding in a lot of anger for a long time? He didn't know.

Lately I've been getting a bit of exercise, waking up a bit, perhaps I'm not quite as out of it as I have been for a long time: the body moving again. It's sort of like waking up, on a broader and vaguer scale: stuff moves, stuff shows up. For me, some anger, but tonight it's sadness: every fragment of various television shows that leads in that direction lands on me, as though it was aimed specifically at me. Perhaps best for my mood was one final episode of Gray's Anatomy, which I love anyway (and that also tells you something about me – probably the same thing, come to think of it). And the line that falls into my memory and resonates, as somebody comes into the bar, to someone they barely know: "You look sad."

The bathtub is half full; hot, with oil. A glass of spirits....

Dis/location

Late night television: at certain points – somewhere among the fragments of Robot Chicken, The L Word, and a long advertisement for a CD set of 'Classic Soul' – there are so many echoing fragments of Los Angeles: Industry in-jokes, with night views behind a talking head through a plate glass window, clearly in a house in the hills – Topanga, Laurel, other canyons; shots of the 405 above UCLA, in sight of the Getty; all the cloud of knowing references, tropes, common views and images. Because certain shows tend to emphasize their Hollywood sources – especially casually produced ones – the television screen makes watchers into inhabitants of a Greater LA.

Which gives me strange, disoriented sense of never having left LA... and, with the realization that I'm not really there, am in fact on another continent and a number of degrees of latitude to the north, there is a sense of being out of it: of being away from the center of things, in the provinces, in the boonies, uncool. Much as, in different eras and under different influences, someone would have felt far from Paris, or far from London, or far from New York.

But of course LA has better weather than any of those....

The American Page, part II

Spurious is talking about some kinds of writing, notably the vastness of the page/canvas in American arts... well said, but that was a time that changed, that seems to have faded.

I remember being startled, when I spent a year in Germany in 1993, at the sheer crowdedness of the country: at the endless neat sub-cities and semi-cities that dominated the spaces between anything important enough to have its own dot on the map. Realized on train trips, and a closer examination of maps: the entire country, and in fact large parts of Europe, were even more crowded than the areas where I grew up and later lived – Greater Metropolitan Areas, as they are loosely called. Not just the vastness of the five boroughs of New York that continue into the endless small cities of New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New York State and others, but even more the peculiarly repetitive suburbs of Washington, D.C., which spread through several states, and which seem almost entirely inescapable: wherever you go you have the feeling you've been to that street before, but it's just that it closely resembles a hundred others. They say that the conurbation of the East Coast now reaches practically from Atlanta to New York....

And California: there was once a sense of pockets of countryside in between stretches of small cities (at least in California, some of those cities are a bit more differentiated; some of them even have character, though a very relaxed and non-historical character). Most of that space has vanished, but luckily when you go inland the vast stretches of farmland in the central valley relieve the eye with space.

But an era when the page seemed vast, when thought could take freely to the sky, untrammelled by European traditions and a mass of other writings that occupied the same space: that feels as though it's over. Thomas Wolfe is replaced by Thomas Pynchon – books that are still long, but now cluttered with stuff that's already there, like crowded attics. I loved Wallace's Broom of the System (although I've bought his later books I haven't gotten around to them); but it is cluttered in the same manic way – a world that is simply full of stuff.

When I teach my contemporary music courses, I draw sharp contrasts between the Europeans and the Americans: the Europeans are deeply and unavoidably caught up in tradition, the Americans have a blank slate. That may have been true from the 1920s to the 1970s or so; but the blankness of our slate seems to have gotten rather crowded – music does appear to be at the end of an era rather than its beginning, and for about twenty years or so we have all tended to rehash and recycle ideas and styles, mixing them up in the hope that something will interest the listener. And books: although it does seem that, even in the bookstores of American airports, a higher class of writing is expected than formerly; but they all seem products from the same factories, they all seem to talk about each other in a rather claustrophobic way. They all seem sensitive, agreed – but as though their sensitivity is on display, as though they are competing for a prize in delicately felt artistry.

I was never all that enamoured of the wide-open spaces: they were always associated with a macho esthetic, with Guys And Their Stuff. Road trips, motorcycles, the open road: cowboys need space and emotional distance, the West is for the rough'n'tough. [Hmm, I think I just figured out the 'hook' for the paper I was supposed to write over the past month – must remember to go wrap my thoughts around this conflict.]

Which is why I loved San Francisco – taking advantage of the spaces, of the newness, of the distance from the cultural centers of Europe and the northeast, but in a complicated urban kind of way. But certainly anyone acquainted with a century of California literature can see the changes – they are practically critical truisms now, at least in America: that northern California literature went from a free-and-clean rebelliousness to one that seemed all indoors, even one that takes place inside computer monitors; and southern Californian went from the rambunctious and rapid changes of the early days to a world of structure hierarchies, of agencies and benefits and a truly, finally interconnected Industry.

It's all sort of Spenglerian: I always liked ideas of Zeitgeists, of finding the 'spirit' or general tone of an age, a place and time. It's considered historically very suspect; but for me it's just a plausible extension of social construction – if people do indeed collect their ideas from the ideas of others, then why, especially in eras of generally broadcast ideas and images, can't you assume that everyone is following a related group of patterns?

End of an age: late Roman empire: static not moving: repetition, repetition, repetition.

And a culture of suburbs....

Therapeutic

One way to get past sullen dullness is to do things, to make things, to have something to take care of.

Two window boxes with herbs: parseley, sage, rosemary and thyme – and basil, as it happens; some new plants, plus the three rather tired ones I'd had in the windowsill all winter, all of which desperately wanted larger growing spaces (and now they have them). All very simple – something I'm sure either of my sisters, especially the elder who does landscaping, could have done in ten minutes without thinking – for me a bit more complicated and fussy, but ultimately successful. Slightly annoying to lose a few inches of sunlight in the room – up here you need all you can get – but I like the boxes anyway.

And the plants are finally perking up a bit... yes, the tops of lots of them are chopped (I used a bunch of basil and rosemary on the chicken last night). But the basil already looks happier than it has in months – its roots have clearly noticed all of the compost and plant food and water and, above all, room to grow, in just one day.

Hmm: symbolic, that. I guess I should go out for a walk, yes?...

Time: imposed, imagined

Sleeping too much, drifting: probably my thyroid is off again. Since Duisburg: several busy days, mostly administration, and a conference day; a lot of floating anger about promotions, ambition, respect; all among the strange long days of Spring in the far north. Those are the more sharply defined moments in what has felt like a soft, bright fog of vaguely lost hours.

I've been reading a lot of Avram Davidson lately, as I've mentioned. Dense sentences, and a rich, complex experience of time and accident. But behind it all is the lengthy tale of Davidson's increasing irritability, his irascible and uncomfortable old age, his sense of failure, his constant complaining about money and success – all of which sound rather like the way I'm getting with age. Resentment as a way of life, and the entire sense of time as a narrative of not-enough....

And Gerhard and Kunsu have to sell the house in Kreta, and I wonder how they will manage their old age. And Laura will be visiting Edinburgh this month, and I'll get to see her – but will have to answer her questions about how I'm doing, in comparison to her relatively successful, streamlined life. And my eldest sister and her MRIs, and my younger sister and her shaky job security; and my mother in her nursing home. And Trisha battling with her business while setting her poetry aside, and Terry as perpetual freelancer who's currently doing well, but not forever; and A. who has moved in with K., and may be finally settling down at long last; and L.'s new Irish colleen, who is moving here, changing countries for her new relationship. R.'s rather arrogant successess, D.'s dimming prospects. Perhaps it's no accident that these friends-and-loved-ones are mostly in the arts, or academe, or other thinking-oriented lives; it's a tough and unpredictable world to live in. But all these people will get older, more fragile: somebody will need to take care of them – who will it be?

Lives, and time: that eerie sense that we all end up recreating patterns over and over – and some manage to break patterns; and some patterns are more welcome than others. One of the most valuable aspects of the academic and literary lives is reading biographies – that is, reading about people: one becomes very clear that most people who suffer do it to themselves – and most people who fail seem to do it to themselves too, though it's not always entirely clear how that happens. And success is unavoidably a matter of chance, a roll of the die.

It's sort of a fanning-out of my usual anxieties about myself, to think about all the people I know: how they will do now, how they will get through their days, what will they be like when they're older. And a smearing of quantum variations in possible universes: as though you can imagine the whole fan of possibilities opening out from each moment, and what each might entail. As though ambition, anxiety, hope, despair, are multiplied, but not into mere grayness, but into a vast swatch of hues: all pastel though, because the intensity of emotional focus on any particular career problem or a hope is leached out by all of its variations.

Strangely, this makes me feel even more helpless in relation to my life: with all of floating time and possibilities, it becomes even more difficult – no, not difficult: merely implausible, merely rather pointless – to focus on doing something right now, on engaging in some action. One of Tanith Lee's beautiful stories in Tamastara runs through two parallel lives, one of a boy, one of a girl, both with the same soul and born in the same moment; both have joy and great sorrow (the boy a beautiful drone who loses his looks in a bus accident, the girl a dancer who marries without love). At the end the whole story evaporates as the soul moves on: the two stories were parallel visions of what might happen if the soul chose birth then, but it doesn't – neither story happens at all, both are negated into vastness.

This is sort of how my life feels now: sleeping too much, a bright fog: drifting – in time....

Duisburg VIII: Leaving

In the taxi, on the long, expensive ride to the airport. (Here’s a Travel Tip – when Ryanair claims that they fly to Düsseldorf/Weeze, don’t think for a second that that brings you anywhere near to Düsseldorf – Weeze is really an ex-military airport in the middle of nowhere.)

As usual, a shame and a relief to leave: lovely to see Gerhard, great to connect with his cheerful and productive energy, good to see where the work should go; but it will be great to drop all the dirty clothes in the wash and put my feet up. That, of course, is many hours away – the grueling airport journey, with each part doubled, is still ahead of me.

The flickering thoughts, negative and positive, of the past week – last night they were overlapping in a particularly chaotic manner: the sense that I could do all this work, invaded by the sense that I will again fail. Right now, the ayes have it; but I am not unconscious that when I get home, to my pleasant apartment, but also to a barrage of e-mail; to my own kitchen, but also my tendency towards isolation; to my friends, but no one who really seems to help me feel creative, positive, energetic – that the nays will win again. Of course it’s always in a mental state like this that one is exceptionally aware that there is always a choice: that you can always sidestep the naysaying voices….

We’ll see. Meanwhile, leaving Germany: very efficient, slightly depressing; highly productive, faintly inhuman. Gray skies, but different than those in northern England, which have shades that suggest the distantly stormy North Sea….

Another tip: don’t get trapped in Stansted (theoretically London, but not really of course) airport for too long; boring, limited, crowded. Worse in August, I assume; although it’s wonderful that air travel in Europe has gotten so cheap, it means that the airports are a constant chaos of people going all over the place. Ah, for a way of traveling that is both cheap – and elite….

On the other hand, it has its moments. In front of me two restless Italian kids and an English kid – all three are tiny; 5-6 years old? – are laughing and trading grins, sharing a joke, without understanding a word.

Duisburg VII: Working

Despite various dyspepsia (we are eating and drinking too well, and my gut was a wreck before I came), we are getting work done – perhaps the equivalent of four to six hours of steady work a day. It would be more if we weren’t going to restaurants. This is, of course, Gerhard’s life – and to a slightly lesser extent Kunsu’s (Kunsu was never quite as steadily, energetically active, and his health in the past few years hasn’t been quite perfect, so he rests more often); as well as the other hard-working Stipendiaten – German artists with government funding, steadily making things and making things happen.

I’m reading Leon Edel’s group biography of Bloomsbury – also a collective of working artists (who, not incidentally, benefited from aristocratic incomes, at least up to a point). The working artist, the working writer: the people those artists’ colonies are made for – I would have loved to be one of those. I could still be that kind of working writer – God knows, despite my university work, there is easily enough time left in the week that I could do so….

This feeling about this book about Gerhard; which was first conceived of in 1994 (nearly thirteen years ago!), and which has dogged me from continent to continent: piles of paper, translations, stuff – all horribly unmanageable, looming as dreadful and monstrously un-finishable. An albatross around my neck, stinking of fish, with feathers falling all over the place. And now, going from paper to paper, chatting with Gerhard, it feels so easily manageable – it’s just a book: as W. and Spurious urged me at dinner a couple of weeks ago, just crank it out – it won’t be what you want it to be, it won’t seem any good, but it will be done, and that alone will be good.

It all seems so easy at the moment: in the freshness of German spring; a change that is clearly as good as a rest; and the pleasantly, calmly energetic atmosphere that Gerhard always creates; I wonder, why would I have made this so difficult? The answer from old est seminars was always: humans are hard-wired to solve problems; and when we don’t have enough problems we make them. Which makes perfect sense in my case: in years of unproductivity, I haven’t been starving, haven’t been homeless or without a roof over my head; I need the problem of simply not putting words on paper, ridiculous as that problem clearly is.

That question always comes up, though: why make it all so difficult? And memory responds, idiotically, using tunes that don’t ever leave the back of the head, with as useful an answer as any: Because, because, because, because, beca-a-a-use… because of the wonderful….