in the hall of mirrors

Ringing

Charlemagne Palestine's Strumming Music for piano (1975?) is playing.

It's one of those vast, ringing minimalist works that makes the piano sound like an endless carillon: or not exactly – it's difficult to describe, because you'd want to show how it is different from Reich's Six Pianos (a favorite piece of mine, but very much about a lively syncopated phrasing, where the Palestine simply repeats identical rhythms) or Young's Well-Tempered Piano (which, because the piano has been retuned, doesn't ring out with as much power – that piece is more about the subtle complexity of that which rings, rather than the sheer power of a normally tuned sounding board, where the octaves and fifths and fourths will all support each other).

Although I've never heard Strumming Music before (this is a dub of the 1995 New Tone CD, which includes lovely and now-nostalgic program notes by Joan LaBarbara – you can't help but long to have been a part of the seventies downtown culture), it immediately calls up influences, resonances, even memory. This is in fact the sound achieved in the climaxes of John Adams' Phrygian Gates, one of my favorite piano works of all time. These pieces suggest a certain kind of minimalism, less male and aggressive than Reich, less abstract than Young. You might think of Riley; ultimately the Riley and the Palestine (and pieces by Niblock and such) are more innocent, more naïve discoveries of that great ringing eternity that the piano can project so beautifully.

Of course the Adams, though it uses these sounds in its palette, is more sophisticated than any of the pieces I've mentioned: which is one reason it remains a favorite – perhaps it is not unlike a musical paradigm for John Ashbery's Three Poems, which I lately mentioned here. Complex, rich, changing according to laws one cannot quite perceive, but which one senses are there – the vision of a world where strange but beautiful things happen according to reasonable logics that are nevertheless alien to our world....

(That sophistication is, of course, the result of Adams' development of complex and unexpected harmonic 'gating' techniques – whereby he modulates, or changes the focus of a given mode, by subtle means based on, not the root of the existing (complex added-note, or modal) chord, but a different note inside it – often a note you haven't been paying attention to until he uses it as a pivot to somewhere quite else. This is what makes Adams unique among minimalists, and even among neo-tonalists, and also makes him better at constructing large-scale operatic and symphonic structures than the others (at least, structures that don't depend so much on repetitive hypnosis); Reich's unusual approach to harmony, being much less embedded in historical tropes, is 'purer' but far less resonant as a result. And thus endeth the technical lesson for the day – listen to the dramatic shifts in the climax of Adams' Harmonielehre if you want to a sense of real and amazing mastery.)

Unfortunately, the finest and grandest performance of Phrygian Gates is out of print; it is the premiere recording by Mack McCray on New Albion Records, from back when nobody had heard of Adams, and from a time when my beloved, foggy, gently beautiful San Francisco was the perfect place for such musics to come into existence. I have it only on a now sound-distorted but still precious cassette that was made in 1986; although of course I buy any new recording of the piece, the later ones always seem a bit too dry, a bit too cold, to me. This is somewhat like Herbert Henck's recording of Hans Otte's beautiful Book of Sounds: a neatly printed and widely distributed replacement for the original recording by the composer – but never as perfect, as ecstatic, as joyous in its discoveries.

Judgement

Encouragement that I can get work done. Discouragement that I can't get work done.

Discouraged that the AHRC (Arts & Humanities Research Council, the rather incompetently run bottleneck that the British government employs to give lecturers and students funding, or actually mostly not to give it to them) did not give me additional research leave, which means I'll be back to teaching in September. Encouraged, a bit, that I'm promised a light fall semester – so possibly, if I can get work done (see above), I might get the book written.

Encouraged that Melinda, in a wonderful meeting with me last week, was so supportive. Discouraged that the day after that meeting I was worth nothing at all, depressed by gray weather, never got out of my robe all day. Encouraged that Patrick interviewed for a really wonderful job, discouraged that he might get it and leave. Encouraged that I might still get the promotion, discouraged that I probably won't get the New York interview.

And this week, my dear Janet, a lovely and amusing friend, is staying with me to work on the Buffy book. Janet is not only amusing, but also quite sharp, organized, take-charge – which is making me feel both relieved that everything will be all right, and at the same time even more helpless, more inept, that I'm not like her; though I'll try to keep up. A bit discouraging. Or encouraging. Depending on the time of day – moments when one of the book chapters seems as though it can be edited, fixed, improved, made successful; others where the confused mess of papers left by Vanessa's death leads us down unexpected dead ends, makes me panic about the amount of work left to do, the hopelessness of the whole venture.

And then I have to do all this kind of thing again, in April, with Joyce, working on the Stäbler book – which emphasizes my own ineptitude, my own inability to simply finish these damned projects, let alone to write the monograph that these projects are distracting me from. Leaning on Janet, on Joyce, as I leaned on Vanessa – I shouldn't need to lean; but I do. And, of course, as always, on women: I'm such a younger brother, always – I'm lucky they don't just throw up their hands in frustration.

Or, contrarily, those moments that remind me that these projects aren't that hard, and are well within my abilities....

•••

Tonight, when Janet was tired from editing all day (she was probably focused for as much as, say, seven hours, maybe a bit less; I, on the other hand, was only clearly focused for perhaps two or three? – sigh) she said, let's watch a movie. Her first suggestion, Brokeback Mountain, was vetoed by me – far too sad for me at the moment; her second, The History Boys, rather tentatively accepted.

Yes, well played, yes, an interesting film; but one that left me a bit bemused and distracted – I still find the peculiar British attitude towards sex between men so confusing, and (therefore) I can't understand why all the major British critics identified with this movie so much. (I'm equally confused by the obviously hugely significant gay element in the cult film Withnail and I, which is also, to an American, fascinating and disturbing.) Should I be encouraged, pleased, that they are so unclear about boundaries, identities, actions? But I never am – somehow it's even more confusing, discouraging, dismaying that all the straight men have looser boundaries here than at home. It seems to make anyone who is "really" gay particularly pathetic – or does it? – in any case, being viciously teased by young straight men seems like the nastiest possible hell for a gay teacher, and in Britain it also seems like the norm for them.

(I'm very glad, in my case, that I teach at university rather than in a school – we don't spend as much time with them, we don't get as close to them – and university students aren't as nasty, of course. Not to mention my relief, which I have felt strongly for years, that I'm seldom attracted to them at this age anyway – I think teachers and lecturers who fall in love with their students are just asking for trouble; thank God I only get really interested when they pass about the age of thirty.)

Of course, this is also one of those damned movies that Vito Russo so hated, where the Gay Character Must Die. Especially the older one, especially the more ridiculous one, and of course especially the one who Touched A Boy. What an utter, and pernicious, cliché.

Contrasting to that is the one Woman's Moment – when the older woman history teacher gives her remarkable tour de force on men and history, a real coup de thêatre; but it does feel a bit pasted in, as a sop to women in a man's play. But the actress certainly takes it even further than one would have thought possible – her angry eyes, her cigarette, as powerful as any prison warden or tough cop; but completely believable. Oh, and the handsomest of the guys: the red-headed piano player – no doubt about that one.

But I suppose this film is really (really) about judgement, about school boys getting into Oxbridge, or not getting in (and does anyone really believe that they all make it in the end? – impossible, just impossible). So it's about competition, or about the chaos of getting judged in a system that's ultimately cruelly arbitrary – or about losing all chances when you're young. (For me, not getting into Princeton, which, ridiculous as it may seem from this distance, utterly broke my heart, and my spirit – and at an age when I wasn't wise enough to realize that it might not be important, at all; and as for my colleague blahfeme, not getting into Cambridge, which was clearly as shattering for him: don't they realize how terrible these decisions are, for some of us?)

Encouragement. Discouragement. Judgement. Lonely, gay, straight, sexual, asexual, isolated, social. Good enough, not good enough.

Given all this – frankly – how could anyone possibly not be emotionally exhausted, hopeless – even suicidal?...

Perhaps Brokeback Mountain would have been a better choice.

Boxes

I have continued, unfortunately, to be of no use to anyone; last Thursday, now six days ago, I had done many things for many people, and for myself, for about two weeks; then at that point I stopped utterly.

I'm helped in this by being finally on research leave: a state both wonderful and, for me, very very dangerous – let's hope I don't completely waste this time, as would be rather typical of me.

But what I have been doing (while doing nothing) is recuperating, I suppose; which has consisted of reading and lying on the couch; and ultimately a burst of William Gibson. So my mind is full of rereading Neuromancer (1984) for two days, then Count Zero (1986) for a day. It's striking how different the endings are of the two books – Neuromancer ends in a digital transcendence that practically vanishes offscreen, as the merely human characters drift away to their lonely, fragmented and dissolving ends; while Count Zero makes sure all its protagonists (at least those who are still alive) move on into happy, supported, family-like lives.

But what I wanted to talk about was the one of three story lines in Count Zero that I always loved, and which, on rereading, I find even more remarkable: the story of Marly, the art dealer recovering from disgrace and betrayal, who is hired to search for the sublime. She is looking for the maker of a group of mysterious box sculptures that are modeled on the work of Joseph Cornell (which appears in the story's background; above is a picture of his Cassiopeia I).

These passages remind me of another beautifully written response to visual art, the descriptions by the character Rita in Paul Monette's early novel The Gold Diggers (1979). The Gold Diggers is Monette trying to break out of his dense poetic voice (as in his wonderful first novel Taking Care of Mrs. Carroll (1978)) into something more popular and suspenseful; ultimately it all gets too plotty and tangled, but the fine poetry about personal emotions and understanding is still all there. And Rita, the art history graduate out of a job, who is going to stay with her gay friend the decorator, will discover a cache of stolen paintings, including a small Cézanne watercolor of a tree: as I remember it, she says to herself it makes her want to go live there, under that tree, forever....

I don't generally have those reactions to visual art – not to the right works, anyway; the pictures I like are often considered pretty second-rate, probably because I need narrative and symbolism and such things (which are better kept for literature or drama). So when the characters of Rita or Marly tell me why a, to me, simple work of art takes their breath away, I value it and try to think about it.

I had forgotten that, toward the end of Count Zero, when Marly finally meets the maker of the boxes (which turns out to be a stray fragment of the artificial intelligences that run everything in Gibson's Sprawl novels), it cuts pieces out of her expensive Paris jacket, pulls from her purse an empty Gauloises packet where her now-dead lover wrote an address, plus the holographic slides she has used to hunt for the boxes, and puts them all together into a new box sculpture for her – summing up the surprises and tragedies of her story, making them into art. She laughs and says, when it hands her the box, "I am honored".

Which makes me wonder: if a small wooden box, with a glass cover, could contain the important elements of my life – or at least a recent part of it – what would be in it?

Perhaps: the cheap little 128MB flash drive with 'Kaletra' stamped on the side – given to me by the drug company as a souvenir of the orange antivirals that both save my life and make me sick; a half-melted candle, I think; perhaps a tarot card – the King of Swords, probably; a page torn from my Moleskine notebooks; one of the polished translucent stones from the bowl next to my bed; and a corner cut from the vivid green trees photographed by my father.

If some genius would arrange those things, so that they made sense....

Search for meaning

After a startlingly busy week, about half oriented towards other peoples' needs (although I was supposed to start research leave a week ago, of course some people did not keep up with normal schedules and requests to help me do so; especially exasperating, given how much of my own past month has been oriented towards handling the problems that others had or irresponsibly caused), and about half towards my own career ambitions; and with one perfectly awful day when, enraged by someone else's foolishness, I said something pointlessly cruel to a junior colleague – something I regret but can't take back; I have ground to a halt amid the quiet of enforced isolation from students, colleagues, department. The blessings of research leave: and the strangeness of it.

Increasingly over the past few days, though, I think about what there is to do that matters: essentially, though this is mostly detached from the more depressive mood I was working through last fall, I am once again struggling with The Point Of It All.

Sure, obviously: quasi-midlife stuff (can you still claim to be mid-life at 51?), your common or garden existential semi-crisis, or just the obtuse avoidance of the obvious projects in front of me; and I suppose a natural reaction to all that sudden quiet: not only, what should I do now?, but, what would there be some point in doing now? That is to say, what should I be doing now, that won't make me think on my deathbed (now probably decades away, AIDS or not): what a silly waste of time that was?

Of course, you should feel free to go click on something else on the Internet; but I'm going to write this out, if only for my own sake....

Rejections

So: the things that are, in one way or another, not important enough to satisfy me, at least at this jaded moment.

Art, entertainment, writing, talking: pleasant; interesting and amusing, sometimes with the illusion (and rarely but occasionally with the actuality) of resonating with some manner of deeper truths. But ultimately, these are literally pastimes: ways of spending hours, ways of getting from one point in time to another. Creativity, even if it can disentangle itself from markets, egotism, and fretting over such things as originality, style, success, is amusing enough; but ultimately just sort of a very high-level version of navel-gazing. And of course the rather silly choice of being an academic specializing in analyzing or discussing the arts (such as being a musicologist) is merely a once-removed version of passing time.

Science, knowledge, pushing the boundaries of technology? Interesting, somewhat; these days one is generally part of a research team, a cog in a machine, and of course many of those machines are used for dubious or spectral purposes. The bounds of knowledge: usually really only an egotistical goal, as one is pushing the bounds of one's own knowledge – so an elaborate version of reading textbooks, if one can define heretofore unknown parts of the universe as textbooks. (And wouldn't that make McGraw-Hill happy.)

Having children, educating and furthering the needs of the young: just really a way of continuing the selfish gene; this is merely making sure that the Great Wheel keeps turning, through supplying it with plenty of fodder. Yeah, sure, what a miracle to have children, how difficult, how complex: of course let's face it, most people botch it, at least mildly; but ultimately, whether done well or clumsily, this is just about continuation, not about actually going somewhere in life or existence. Worst of all, in fact, when one justifies a pointless existence by making more human beings in the hope that they will have less pointless ones: merely a sort of deflection of questions of meaning, not a solution to them.

Being a doctor or lawyer or police-person, saving lives, preventing suffering, guarding the weak: perfectly good stuff, actually quite noble and respectable (except for a bunch of the lawyers), perfectly fine. But also merely another way of keeping the wheel going, of putting people back into good working order; so that they can – well, what? So that they can just go on pottering along, doing nothing important, repeating their daily rounds? Doing these things is evidence of kindness and fellow-feeling, which are perfectly okay; but this is just a kind of maintenance, a more ambitious version of the need to vacuum, pick trash off the sidewalk, do laundry.

And building great buildings, clearing forests, saving species, funding orphanages? More maintenance, in one direction or another; illusion or maintenance, we are all either vaudeville magicians or janitors, every one.

I don't mean to imitate Leopardi or Pascal here; it's not that any of these life goals or activities are useless or pathetic, and I don't think that people are disgusting maggots on the surface of, etc. etc. People are perfectly okay, and the fact that most of them seem to be largely engaged in making more people, or in making life easier for people, are also acceptable things; but they're not ultimately very interesting things. They all seem to end up in a cycle of repetition: everything ends up as Maya, as illusion; as pictures on the wall in that damned Greek cave.

All right, this is just standard Buddhist existentialism, of the kind discovered with a shock by moody adolescents; perhaps I should simply go meditate somewhere. But although over the years I've read a great deal of Buddhism (and of course there are ideas and texts from Hinduism, Taoism, and even the monotheistic religions – not to mention any of the metaphysical philosophies – that intend to help out here), all those answers feel, at this moment, too totalizing, too institutional, too ideological: follow me and we'll found a church, or a school, or a system, and then we can hang around arguing about the details of our existential problems, which simply becomes a more elaborate way to avoid doing anything about them.

But perhaps you are bored, if of course you're still reading, by this rather obvious stuff.... do you think perhaps I'm concerned about all this, merely because over the last year or so it's become clear that I'll be relatively healthy for years to come? Because early death from AIDS won't save me from deciding what it all means – because I won't be able to smarmily claim that, had I only lived long enough, I would have Figured It All Out?...

Night, books, fortune-telling

Feeling all of this especially acutely last night, I had a (rare for me) glass of wine – a large glass; became oddly weak but relaxed afterwards. I know that my reaction to alcohol is heightened over the past year (is this one of the medications, or just aging weakness perhaps?). And, resolving to move further into the problem, I pullled out the I Ching. (You may only make fun of this if you have a better idea – ha, didn't think you did.)

So, what did I get?... hexagram 44, with no changing lines (unusual; what's the statistical chance of no changing lines? – out of six rolls, a one out of four chance of 6 or 9, so three-quarters times... no, I've forgotten all my probability studies; but low-ish in any case). A slightly alarming result: a subtly dark hexagram, with nothing out beyond it, no exceptions or doorways out through changing lines and a further hexagram – which makes it almost like a short-term trap, as though I should be careful of something but it won't tell me what.

This made me frankly, and oddly, fearful: as though I had to do something, now; as though the existential crisis was more than a mere Denkexperiment, as though it was a real crisis that needed attention, now, like a man hanging over the side of a cliff. I wandered among my bookshelves, looking for some sort of help: not the shelves of literature, or of religion, or psychology – but the ones on philosophy, on culture; and then, frustrated, I dug through the poetry as a sort of last resort.

Of course you will immediately see the problem: modern philosophy doesn't do answers, doesn't do metaphysics. And older metaphysicians don't seem terribly useful, at least not to me, not now – their worlds are so alien, so unreal, that the great works of classical philosophy seem merely like charming antiques at best. I ended up, strangely, with three disparate and frankly mostly unhelpful books:

Elaine Scarry, Dreaming By the Book. New to my shelves in the past week; I don't know much of Scarry, though her name has gone past me a lot lately, but I do feel a certain trust for her point of view (as I do that of Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, or Annie Dillard). But this is really a book on writing and how it makes meaning; therefore, in my current state, quite useless, as it merely extends meaning by connecting it to more pleasant and interesting illusions.

Lee Edelman, No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive. Well, all right: in comparison to most of my twentieth-century philosophy, post-structuralism, cultural studies, this is a book that does indeed take on some of the problems that are bothering me – but obviously from the wrong direction: this is a sort of celebratory nihilism, about gay men and women deciding not to care about the impossibility of connecting to a world of making and educating children. Besides, it ends up being too Zizekian; and given the current intellectual climate around me, that makes it automatically feel too annoying and dispiriting and dogmatic.

The only partial success was one of my favorite books on all my shelves, a peculiar contribution from poetry: John Ashbery's Three Poems, his extraordinarily beautiful and semi-incomprehensible vast stretch of prose in three parts (over a hundred pages), that really consists of musing on reality and his place in it (he was 45 at the time).

***

And so I've been reading Ashbery today: I'm not sure that it helps; but it doesn't throw me back into dull patterns, into illusions, into Maya. It doesn't, in fact, offer any answers – but at least the questions are of a high quality, and unlike most of the ones available in daily life, they might be worth considering. And that, at least, is something....