Divas

May 10, 2010


Dramatic lack of energy. I’ll put it down to the weather or exhaustion from the semester for one more day, then I’ll do something about it. Coffee with Thomas B, who has, I think, brilliant ideas for new theater pieces. They’re more like performance art, but performance art approached from the direction of theater is more honest than that approached from the direction of “art.” Beyond that and some errands related to Cambridge, did almost nothing. But evening approaches, and that is the time, recently, when I have come alive.

Lena Horne is dead.

Assertion of memories, isolated, unbidden. I’m singing with the Johns Hopkins Madrigal Singers, under the direction of George Woodhead. We’re doing “The Dove Descending,” and we’re doing it for its composer, Aaron Copland. We finish, and Copland lopes across the room and shakes my hand. He is fantastically tall, very ugly and kindly. I’m quivering because I’d never before met anybody so famous, and he’s shaking my hand in front of two hundred people, whose cheering I can hear, but whom I cannot see because of the stage lights. I’m afraid he’ll ask me something musical, and force me to reveal what a fraud I am in such company. But he says, “The bass is always the most important. I could feel you through the floor. Thank you.”

I’m living in the dive-hotel in New York, on the corner of 8th and 42nd that is now a complicated subway entrance and interchange. I work nights in the dance hall and in my room in the hotel. Days I have to myself, so I’m heading up 8th Avenue to see how quickly I can get to the Park on foot. A block away I spy a tall stranger who looks confused. He asks me for directions, and I give them, almost unable to speak after I realize the confused Brit is David Bowie.

I’m singing with the Baltimore Opera, so I know Rosa Ponsell. I know the commune I’m living at lies right beside Villa Pace, her estate. I sometimes climb through the woods to one of her meadows for peace and privacy. One afternoon a horse is wandering by itself over the hill, a man shouting from below for me to get the horse. I stand up and take the reins and wait for the man to come fetch the horse. The horse nuzzles my pocket, snorting, as if my not having sugar or apples there were a faux pas quite beneath mention. He takes me back to the villa to receive the thanks of the mistress for rescuing her horse. I’m mortified because I’m dirty and sweaty and really didn’t do anything, but I’m ushered into a room and given a glass of iced tea. I set down to chat briefly with the two ladies on the divan. One is Rosa Ponsell; the other is Bidu Sayao. I don’t know how old Sayao was then, but she was beautiful. Sayao asks me if I can sing, and I say I can. She asks me to do so. Rosa Ponsell reaches over and gives me a pitch from the piano in what she discerns from my speech is my right key. She is, of course, right, I’m so flustered all I can come up with is Si Beg, Si Mor, an Irish tune for which I do not know the words, so I sing it on folk song syllables. The women and the horse groom applaud, and then Ponsell gives me the number to call when I want to come visit her again. Of course, I never do.

My father and mother are taking a Dale Carnegie course, which is supposed to make them more comfortable in social situations, to build confidence and further careers. They’re practicing the sentence, “Boy, have I got enthusiasm!” as an assignment for their next class. They tell me to say it, and I do. I can tell by their faces that they’re genuinely impressed, and my father says, “He’s the one that should be teaching the course.” They phone their friends and have me bellow, “Boy, have I got enthusiasm!” over the phone at them. I don’t even know what I’m doing that is so remarkable. I begin to develop the notion that adulthood is quite disappointing.

Some friends and I drive from Hiram to Kent State to see Stephen Spender read. He’s the handsomest old man I’ve ever seen. After the reading, we linger. Because we are young men, Spender gravitates to us. He chats candidly and sweetly. After a while he turns to me and says, “You’re the one who is the poet. Am I right?” I said that he was.