in the hall of mirrors

WAD

 Sorry I didn't comment on World AIDS Day, or attach a speech as I have for the past five years.

My reasons: it was a very long day – successful but long – and I ended up not using the speech I'd prepared; what I did say wasn't written down.

An all-day conference, largely organized around health services and various community organizations; professional, classy, but also – surprisingly enough – very pleasant and very 'real'. Unlike the conference of two months ago, which was well-managed but amazingly bureaucratic (lots and lots of statistics and politico-speak, in a way that seemed to bypass actual people almost entirely), this one felt as though it was about real people and their experiences.

It probably helped that the 250-some attendees were largely local, and many people already knew each other... our patient group spoke twice (which meant I couldn't go to most other sessions which was too bad but oh well), I gave a 45-minute Powerpoint on art related to AIDS (shamelessly heartstrings-tugging in spots). And then a final panel, with a little wrangling between someone who thought everyone should get tested whether or not they could be counseled, and others who disagreed (I was a bit on the latter side but was polite about it). Reactions to the whole conference, displayed on a screen while we all used things that looked like remote controls to vote, were extremely good.

Then we had a vigil! – except there were two problems: many people were very tired from the conference, and the outside temperature had plummeted to something considerably colder than we've ever had on World AIDS Day. The crowd of perhaps 40-50 was fortunately treated to hot drinks and soup from two outside wagons, courtesy of the conference – a brilliant idea that left them all a little more bright-eyed and engaged (they looked almost eager at that point, but I knew it wouldn't last). But, as I was also discovering that I wasn't just a speaker, I was in charge, and introducing one other speaker whom I didn't know – I thought: okay, let's make this a short one, but good.

Blithely casual introduction, comment on adjacent skating rink's music that hadn't been turned off (it never is for some reason, although they always promise to do so), chuff everyone a bit about the weather, joke about the artificial-light non-candles, emphasize passionate thanks for hot soup. Other speaker for 2-3 minutes; meanwhile I'm thinking of my three-page speech, which is a description of what our patient group has done for the past five years, and, as an old nightclub trouper, I think: to heck with that. And speak for two-three minutes about the aftereffects of this summer, about caring about people, about thinking one has a future versus thinking one doesn't.

Followed by – no, not a minute, but – forty-five seconds of silence. Well, silence plus the skating rink music.

And then a final song and good-byes – whole thing from rounding everyone up to dispersing about 2o-25 minutes. People engaged and happy but clearly ready to go home. Thank God I learned some stage sense, acquired from Mary Jo and other savvy performers in the 1980s... there's nothing like being able to read people and see when they've had enough.

Unfortunately, there was one more event: after some of us went across to a bar and had some hot drinks (and why is it that British bartenders are still so bemused by the idea of hot drinks? just give me some Courvoisier and put a little hot water in it – he did that and it was perfect), the two African women and I had to go up to One More Thing, a film being shown by the Stop AIDS Society up at the University.

Both women were still cheerful and ready for anything, at least until we got there. The students gave us a bit of food and Cokes, and C. got very sleepy as a result, and started to have trouble talking and following what was up. But the three of us held forth for about 15-20 minutes about our lives/experiences etc., then we actually stayed for the film – a fun film, about an African woman's soccer (= football to Brits) team that is entirely HIV+. Only about 40 minutes long, and really quite fun; then heartfelt thanks from the students (who offered to do some fundraising for the group – at this rate we'll be rich).

Then finding taxis for both women, sending them home, staggering home myself, and crashing in a tired but satisfied heap on the sofa....

A good day. If a bit long....

Enrage

[It's some months since I showed up at meetings of the University writing group; most of my classes and seminars this semester have ended at 1 p.m., and then of course people have questions, etc.; so crossing the University to be fifteen or twenty minutes late for a meeting that last less than an hour seemed a bit silly. But although it was already quarter after when I left my office I felt that I wanted to connect with them...

Only one other member was there today, a low turnout; but a favorite person, a remarkably pleasant woman I've bumped into several times in town, someone who spends a great deal of time on recycling projects related to the city. She told me she, too, had been having some kind of stress/neural problems over the past few months, with no definite diagnosis yet but possibly related to a light stroke; it was clearly worrying her. We talked about it for a while, and I agreed with her sister, who really wants her to get some attention from the doctors....

Although there was just half an hour left, we thought: what the heck, we'll write something anyway. Her exercise, which she'd thought of on the way over: write down as many emotional responses as you can think of. Then: think of a phobia and write about it, using these emotions. I was a bit surprised at the voice and tone of mine... was wondering if it could relate at all to reading so Bolaño's Nazi Literature in the Americas, a witty but definitely disturbed book. But then Bolaño's writing always seems rather disturbed, slightly psychotic, even when it's very good.]

I hate fags.

I mean I really, really hate 'em.

There was this guy, he was at the station – I don't know him. I didn't know him –

no idea, really. Just some kind of –

Anyway. Short hair, tattoos, the whole nine yards: ripped jeans like they do, it's disgusting.

I wasn't going to – I mean he just looked so disgusting, so –

but he did keep looking at me, the way they do. I was furious, didn't look at him – they act like you're leading them on then –

and I could see him starting at me, it's so, well. And the train didn't come and didn't come and didn't –

I look straight at him, furious, challenging him to, whatever. He didn't get it, of course, they never do, every time the same –

I mean I see these guys, they're complete, you know. Perverts, that's – and they just go around like that, even the goddamned police in those uniforms, they don't do a thing.

What I don't get is why they look at me, every time, it's like they don't know how much I hate –

like that guy last week, wanted to hit him so hard, break that white skin, that pretty face. They just don't get it do they –

and while I'm standing there, going to do something about it, going to smash his face into the wall, see how he likes that, the –

and this girl comes up, she's got this big nose ring, and tats too and they say hi and they kiss. Right there in front of everybody.

Like I don't know what's really going on, what fakes, you could tell.

And they walk away together, like nothin' happened, they just walk they didn't do anything.

What a fag, him and his –

I hate 'em. I really do, I –

Craic

A lovely one-day-late Thanksgiving: Bennett cooking, Merrie setting everything up; I brought Annie with me; Michelle and her husband came, plus two of our new postgraduates from the US. A gorgeous evening, good food, endless laughter, lots of stories, everyone seemed engaged right up to the hilt – just what a social life should be like, among good and new friends who have a lot of old stories to tell and affection to share.

And a number of semi-embarrassing photographs which will probably find their way on to Facebook... but it was worth it.

Bum roll

As I unpack the groceries, delivered to my doorstep, I discover that instead of nine rolls of toilet paper I have received twelve, three of them emblazoned with a  yellow stripe as Bargain Extras.

And I remember the old woman in San Francisco: when I was living in the ratty, drug-dealer-infested apartment house on Market Street in the nineties, and getting some groceries free from the AIDS Project and others in bulk from the local grocery store, a day when I was dragging home tons of things... including a big plastic bag of rolls of toilet paper that I was trying to hold on to without dropping everything else, as my fingers went red and numb as they usually did with the AIDS Project bags with all their cans and bottles.

And a homeless woman, an old crone, filthy and half-mad but in some ways far more clear-headed than I was, bursting into cackling laughter at the sight of me: look at you, with all that bum roll, what are you going to do with it all – I was embarrassed and annoyed but frankly that day I could see her point.

All the focal points and discrepancies of Marxism, all the bizarre experiences of failure and poverty versus comfort and hoarded goods, all the fears and uncertainties of failure and success, and further back all the strange and horrifically disturbing ways that the eighties flung the differences between Us and Them (those with homes and the homeless) or Them and Us (those with plenty and those of us scraping by) into our faces –

Putting these rolls of toilet paper away, I am laughing, long and surprisingly loudly. Like I just got the joke, and it's on me.

Post-Pacific

Possibly the worst mistake of my post-Pacific years – since 2002, that is; since I have no longer lived in my beloved San Francisco, in Los Angeles, in Hong Kong, since I was kicked out of Australia – is inanely watching television.

I used to watch television very little; since the collapse of my Aussie dreams, since I've been bored and at perpetual loose ends in a leftover northern periphery of island Europe, I watch it too predictably. Many evenings, several hours each evening. And it is even more pointless on an evening when I feel physically and mentally tired, as of course television in Britain, outside of certain few weeks when they are paying attention to what is being watched, is ridiculously repetitive: they buy a few seasons of the same series and show them over and over, and over.

No wonder I can't think clearly enough to keep up with Michael's discussions or his work...

But tonight, as I switch the television off around midnight as so often, there is a sense of relief, of closing a door. I pick up a complex, sophisticated, slightly eerie book, and go to bed; I won't read for long; but perhaps I'll try to redirect myself a bit, in a direction that may bring a few of my brain cells to life. And maybe there will be a fresh wind, cutting through the stale predictability....

Sudden dimnesses

Worrisome news from Paris. M. is not well, in a way that too much resembles my experience this summer. Which cannot possibly be contagious....

And in the back of my mind, as I continue to work rapidly through the plans for the book with Gerhard, is a worry: if I do indeed move forward through some of life's clouds, and if many things suddenly seem brighter, more possible – if I am, in fact, given more than I have expected for a long time, then does that mean – as an inevitable corollary, as the rigorous and unquestionable balancing of an equation – that something huge must be taken away? Is this, in some weird oblique way, my fault?

Perhaps this is why it seemed safer to try for less, to expect little, hope for nothing....

... among artists

I am too sleepy to write much, or entirely coherently, after a long bath, bath oils, relaxed. Until the water is not very hot.

Gerhard has been here for three days, then two days more, working on the book about him and his work. And Kunsu's work floats around with it of course, his ideas and pictures, the words and pictures of various artists he works with, the projects, the artists, the dancers.

Gerhard's talk on Wednesday was the third in a row of composers – the other two our own people, Bennett, Agustín, both so varied, so intimate in their work and intentions. Tonight Gerhard and I, after working through all of these plans and texts, watched Fellini's Satyricon, which I love, and which he hasn't seen for many years – he seemed pleased, dreamy himself afterwards, as though he is happy to fall asleep with those arcane, bizarre images and stolen fragments of lovely music (especially the Mimaroglu bits of course).

Last night was the poetry slam at Pink Lane – I won, I won! – with the story Reitalianization, which is in this blog – and then gave the money back to the people running it (£30) because I have a job, and maybe they can use it to buy a good microphone. And they're all young and poorer than me anyway, it would be silly to take their money.

Other poets and writers on last night ranged from the first two – both talented and smart in very different ways, but so shy and uncertain they fled the stage after two poems each – to the skillful final three, the intelligent, assured poet with several fine pastiches, the black girl who had started doing remarkable parodies in various voices. The dark-haired youngster with green fingernails, the very rough sad one with blond hair and a scab on his arm. Not to mention the smart dark-haired student in a long coat, who will be skilled when he is older, who probably writes endlessly.

Gerhard's compositions are so free, so varied – it is rather fun to re-view this book, which has been a painful chore of Musicology, as a looser collection of articles, some academic, some personal, some artistic. Many photographs, many fascinatingly wrought pictures. The publisher will evidently indulge us in a volume that have good German paper and binding, with experimental formats whenever we want them.

Matthew, one of our graduate students in composition – but not for much longer I think, I believe he has handed in his doctoral work – has decided to set some of my writings to music, and sent me another e-mail today about his ideas. He took some of my pieces apart, one whole poem, other fragments, paragraphs: really lovely, I gave him my blessing to do whatever he wanted with them. The intent is that I may also sing them (if they aren't too difficult for my aging voice, nothing above, say, a high F-sharp, please).

That would be the first time someone has set one of my texts to music. I can even imagine publishing my short prose pieces and poems – there aren't a huge mass of them, and they probably won't grow, as I haven't had any ideas for a while, but – that's all right, some of them really were quite good; it would be nice to put the best of them together and bind them. And perhaps Dalkey will publish the Butor translation I sent them last month.

In the bath I have just read Roberto Bolaño's 'Sensini', the first story in Last Evenings on Earth, which is about two writers – an older and a younger – who write letters to each other about literary competitions, never meet, win a few prizes. A lovely story; about the scattered and unpredictable nature of artists, of makers. And, subtly but pleasantly, at the end of the story he mentions that the story won a prize in a literary competition....

From Berlin

[Something I wrote in 1989... and now it is the twentieth anniversary of these events.]

Amazed, sitting in a restaurant and reading of the collapse of the Wall, that vast shift in the meaning of our world’s past.  The bizarre responses of people, Easterners who stay up all night and see real, free capitalist stores opening, Westerners bursting into the national anthem, children taking chunks of the Wall for souvenirs.  It draws me back into the Jefferson Airplane’s grand anthem: "I smell incense and balloons...  People dancing everywhere, people shouting: I don’t care..."  Their grandchildren will perhaps see a sort of monument, a mile of the Wall preserved in memory of those who died, those who couldn’t wait long enough – a weather-beaten concrete mass, in front of which their elders become oddly quiet...

Over my chicken teriyaki I am subjected to a subliminal flash, a momentary nightmare that draws out and expands:

Tonight’s edition of News 4/North includes interviews with the citizens of West LA. on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Wall... they speak to our reporters of the strange pressures of living in this opulently capitalist territory, bounded on the west by the sea, on the north by the radioactive ruins of Encino and Tarzana, and on the east and south, by the massive gray concrete of the Wall:

Kimberly: “I had a brother in Culver City before the war; when I was a teenager, we always went down there for Sunday dinners... I get mail from him about twice a year, but most of it is deleted by Orange censors...”

Scott: “My student activist group was really freaked when they started imprisoning the AIDS patients in Silverlake, but we feel that the riots by West Angelenos helped in forcing the Orange government to release them to the North...”

Jason: “We met this old woman in a bar the other night who said she saw the firebombing of Malibu... she said the really big stars used to live there... I don’t know if any of it was true, but we bought her a drink before we went dancing at the club...”

DeeDee: “I was only seven when the Wall went up, right after the War; but I still remember my father being able to drive straight through from downtown to the beach, with no soldiers and no checkpoints...  He was one of the ones working downtown, trapped down there when they began the Siege; there was nothing we could do...  We heard about him once a few months after the war, but nothing in the years since...  I hope he’s still alive somewhere.”

West Los Angeles residents rioted again today along the section of the Wall that follows old Highland Avenue; they were protesting the execution of five East Angeleno workers who tried to escape Orange-controlled East LA at the Santa Monica Boulevard checkpoint...  This is the third riot since April, when the Prime Minister in Anaheim instituted the new Race Reform Laws, prohibiting members of the Hispanic population of all Orange territories from Party and management positions...  Executive President Brown, speaking from the Northern capital of San Francisco, spoke against what he called “this outrage”...

Citizens of the Free City of Vancouver today declared their solidarity with the workers of West LA in the current airlift crisis.  In this declaration, they join Federation officials in San Francisco and the President of the Republic of Greater Texas, who spoke yesterday in Tulsa to a large crowd of supporters...  Grateful West Angelenos cheered the announcement at city government headquarters in Beverly Square beneath a memorial statue of freedom fighter Sean Penn...  The airlift is rapidly becoming crucial to the life of the city; it is said that a half-pound container of tofu costs four hundred and eighty New dollars, and precious avocados are hoarded by West LA housewives...

This issue of Harper’s/North is dedicated to new young writers living inside the Wall in West LA.  Since the Wall went up twenty-five years ago this month, West LA has become the center of the avant-garde in contemporary art and literature...  The strange feel of this beleaguered city is captured by young people who have known no other way of life: a city characterized by a frenetic night life, frequent and open drug use, political rallies, all-night parties, riots, and a peculiarly defiant capitalism that has created the highest rates of consumption and inflation of any city in the Northwest Federation, comparable to that of the city of New York before its destruction...

Maybe we already have a Wall.

[11/16/89-11/30/91]

Short List

So: exactly one long month after my last substantive (from my point of view) post, interrupted by only one jeu d'esprit about coffee... I keep thinking of the blog, of all the many large and subtle shifts that have taken place in that month, and keep feeling rather guilty for not writing about them... but then they were happening and I was too involved in them, or I was busy otherwise, or... I didn't quite know what to say about them.

So, just to bring us up to date: a list of points.

1 – Michael read the 'Smart guys' post, much of which was about him. This was neither embarrassing nor problematic, because we've both certainly been around the block – actually around and around and around the block – and aren't overly concerned about such things; and of course as he's a dancer he's accustomed to people having Passionate Attachments for him.

2 – And he was evidently pleased. He took the train down from Edinburgh the following weekend, put his suitcase down, sat on the couch, pointed out he'd read my blog, and said: So I think we should do something about this. And kissed me.

3 – We proceeded to spend the following three weekends together, two here, then one in Edinburgh; then he went to Paris to start his doctoral studies, where he is now. Wonderful, heartening, many good things. I've had only occasional flashes of wondering where this could lead and whether I am really all that interesting for him, but that's just knee-jerk negative narcissism speaking.

4 – I will visit him in Paris, perhaps in a few weeks or so when he has his own place.

5 – Good lectures – even, if I may say so, very good lectures, with excellent responses, smart students who are interested in the materials. Much of my nervousness about being allowed to teach this course in cultural theory and music, which I haven't been able to teach for five years, has evaporated, as I've remembered that I know what I'm doing and I enjoy it.

6 – Various films, artworks, performances. Perhaps most interesting at the moment is Jacques Roubaud's Great Fire of London (which should really be called Destruction – because The Great Fire of London is properly the title for the entire series of six books of which only five are published and two translated into English). The first volume: such a calm, eerie, grieving, thinking voice, pulling you into such a hyper-aware space, filled with subtle literary moves and even clouds of mathematics – it is what he is writing instead of the great project he had planned; it is what he is writing out of the tragic death of his wife; it is his attempt to shore up existence.... I'm just starting to get into it but might say more as it goes along.

7 – I love Great Monumental Series in modern literature – Proust, Joyce, Musil, even people like Thirkwell... this might be just what I want to read.

8 – My recuperative body chemistry after the stroke seems to be settling down to something more normal. About two weeks ago, at the end of Michael's second visit, was the last time I can remember getting upset and worried over nothing. Sent long detailed message explaining medical status to family, which involved good news, though it was couched in somewhat technical terms.

9 – Much good fortune and good work among my students. A sense of the universe supporting people and their work, which would certainly be a nice change. Annie even got a fabulous scholarship for the next three years....

10 – It's late now. After excellent dinner at Liza and Daryl's – brilliant composer and brilliant conductor, with their houseguest student and son – followed by long, rather chilly train ride home – it is a blessing to lie on the couch in the warm flat. Bed soon.

11 – But before bed, answered an e-mail from Michael....

G'night all.

A cup of coffee

I have a dreadful confession to make:...

I don't actually like coffee.

Which is perhaps why I've never finished writing a book, why my writing/working/career have all tended to drift around chaotically rather than moving forward in an efficient, organized... no, that's probably just me, isn't it.

I was particularly ruthless in disposing last month of a large bag of especially high-quality coffee kindly given to me by Johann, my Columbian PhD student – I gave it to Michelle and her husband, and they were obviously delighted. As for me, I knew I'd never drink it.

However, my new acupuncturist/diet consultant has told me: no tea, but coffee is all right. Which seems, admittedly, to stylistically go against a whole cluster of sandal-wearing-cultural tenets, but all right, those are my orders.

I was looking online for a single-cup coffee maker – not terribly easy; a stylish little one had bad reviews, and the local department stores mostly had coffee makers that would give me anywhere from six to eighteen cups of coffee. A ridiculous waste, of course.

So I was delighted to find a single-cup maker in the specialty kitchen shop – clunkier than the stylish model, but it makes a full-sized cup of coffee, and is gratifyingly cheap.

I must also admit to liking flavored coffees (cries of 'No, no!' and 'Shame!' from the balcony, sneers from the orchestra seats). This is perhaps similar to my liking for sweet wines and liqueurs (rotten fruit thrown from the second balcony, audience members leaving in droves). So I made a cup of something that claims it is flavored with Bailey's Irish Cream (technical crew turning the hall lights off and on in protest), and it is actually quite good... smooth, really nice. Tastes brewed, not instant, not unpleasant...

Hmm: I could get used to this.