June 30, 2014

Woke to the gentlest rain in the world. Blessed. As no one was looking, I climbed the stairs on all fours, and instantly flashed back to when I was a baby, climbing that way at my grandparents’ house, because I had to.

Pleated woodpecker in the great pine. Hunks of bark were falling to the ground. I looked up to discover why. His insane cackle haunted the trees for half an hour.

Drove to Waynesville last evening to audition. The auditions were in a barn that is a sort of museum of. . . what? Old time kitchenware and the like, I think. I didn’t do particularly well. D D was there, and he did very well indeed, the calmest and most professional audition I’ve ever seen from him.  When I drove home it was still light, and the great smokes of the rains were rising from the mountains.

June 29, 2014

Early coffee and writing at Starbucks. The addled Vet who haunts the place (and who seems to like me for some reason) carried on conversation with me that lasted five minutes without my understanding a single word. Then he asked for money to go across the street and buy cigarettes. I gave it to him, and he said, “I love you, dad.” I was glad I understood those words out of them all. I went to the studio and painted quite well. I’ve turned corners in my work before, but this is one of the biggest ones, and I am happy to have the brush in my hands. When I locked up the building behind me (still no one but I was there) a twenty dollar bill lay crumpled up in the dust before the door. Maybe the angels dropped it to (doubly) compensate me for the money I’d given to the Vet. After all this, a voyage to Reems Creek Nursery to fill in gaps in the garden: Bought yellow native swamp hibiscus, blue hibiscus (I hate rose-of-Sharon, but the name on the tag was “hibiscus,” so I closed one eye and loaded it in), meadow rue, ostrich fern, black-eyed Susan, blue phlox, white turtle’s head (to go with the pink I already had.) I did this all because we were promised rain, which did not come in any measure, but now they are home and I will water them dutifully until God does. My dreams were full of the sorrel (it’s sold as shamrock) in my old garden across the street. I guess this means that if it’s still there, I must dig it up and bring it over.

All the time at the studio, I kept thinking how much I miss Jason. “We will be friends forever,” said he.

Dinner at Avenue M. DJ talked about the Faith of His Fathers, while I recoiled.

June 28, 2014

Walk in the morning dark. The sky is low; it’s like walking in a very large room. Lilies in bloom in the front, suffusing all with their perfume. I never had luck with lilies before. There was a runner on the street, with one of those lights attached to his head, supernatural, a fleet Cyclops, perfectly silent even when he passed quite close. I was all in white, but still, so I think he didn’t see me. Bumbled into the “Biltmore Warehouse Sale” at my Riverside office. If you want certain very specific things, it was a deal. I bought two wine aerators and two sets of deer-head wine stoppers, one for a gift and one for me. The house fills up with things I think would make super gifts. Yesterday wasted for the most part. Right use for the season.

June 27, 2014

Slept late, pale, pale light in the east. Maud had to knock over the wastecan to wake me up.

Dropped by school to gossip a little with Dawn. I wish I hadn’t, for there is dissension and . . . well, strangeness that I was just as happy not knowing about.  Frank hinted at this and I waved it off, as I always do, as baseless nattering. Almost every departmental or institutional scandal (that I wasn’t the direct cause of, and sometimes even then) I initially publically poo-poohed as delusion. I simply do not pick up on these things fast.

Wednesday was so horrible that on Thursday I tried an experiment: I willed myself not to think of anything beyond the moment, where the next pleasure was coming from, what I should drink, what cool spot I should sit in to drink it, should go to the studio and paint (yes), should I do a little shopping (yes.). Get sweaty at the Y. Chat with the guy in the studio downstairs. Pull a few weeds. Water the garden. Take my time doing it. Watch a little TV.  Do not let any ambition or regret cross the mind. It worked. All the advice of all the gurus in the world should have assured me it would work, and they are right. In those hours of unaccustomed peace I realized, as I have at times before, that I have wandered from the Eden that the Lord set me in when I was born. I am a natural mystical, and the joy of dwelling in that radiant, guarded world sustained me through childhood and youth and would have sustained me forever if I hadn’t turned my heart to the world of men. The Expulsion from the Garden is re-enacted on my own little stage. Nothing but Desire keeps me from reentering the garden (I was there yesterday), and it is, almost hilariously, desire for the things which I know make men miserable: work, love, some sense of effort come to something, some sense of one’s own presence in the eyes of others. I lived part of my life with those things meaning nothing to me at all: maybe I could again. Is that wisdom or surrender? Today is another good candidate for a Day in the Garden.

June 26, 2014

I wake to find a cat pressed against me. I hear a tiny voice saying, “I’m trying to teach you how to be a good little animal.” Apparently this involves a lot of sleeping.

Dream that John Cram and I are trying to buy the same Matisse at an auction.  I saw it first, and his certainty that he will win it annoys me. I realize, also, that it is not a Matisse at all, but a Poussin, and that it is painted on two truck hoods. A special feature of the auction is that you can have lunch beside your favorite piece, if you want to, and the end of the dream is my looking for my car hood Poussin, lunch bag in hand, in a gigantic room full of art.

Buy some flatware from an antique store on Lyman Street. The thousand year old man watches the thousand year old woman ring up the sale, and he says, “But you didn’t press the credit/debit option when it asked.”
“You don’t have to,” says the thousand year old woman.
“But it TELLS you to.”
“You don’t have to do everything the machines tells you.” Then she smiles and adds, “Rage against the machine!”

June 25, 2014

Lone bird in the darkness.

Denied both Love and Work, my conversation narrows down to Fantasy. Isolation cannot be far behind. It is likely upon me now, and the dread is so great I refuse to notice.

Denied both Love and Work, I have no idea what to say when people ask me who I am. I finger the multiple, minor identities wondering which one to bring, this time, out into the light.

Denied both Love and Work– well, what to say beyond that? I’m like a soldier who’s lost all his limbs, and yet, because the uniform is fresh and in order, is commanded to go on as though nothing were amiss.

The boy-mowers mow down my stand of raspberries, which I clearly pointed out to the band of boy-mowers that came before. They are so speedy, so efficient I do not break their rhythm to tell them.

June 24, 2014

Note from Lucio:
dear Honora, Dahlan dear, dear David, thank you for your email. It's nice to do this work together. The time has stood still for a moment, and I can see you all together as we speak, work and walk together to the sunny streets of Budapest. We are really lucky that life has put us all to work together in such a creative way. I'm just the last to be here, and I think I have learned, just now, what it means to be creative. All thanks to you, a story really very beautiful, covered with words and verses perfect. I just closed my eyes and the music is coming from one, because everything is already in the history and in the words! now I'm so excited to hear the result of this work, and I hope that by this time there are many more adventures together. A hug with love, from this brave singing little swan! 
PS I'm dreaming, every night, the colors speak to me, they are still very concerned that their personality is represented in the music! Today Turquoise spoke to me with great severity ...

Thin film of rain at waking, the space under trees still dry. Good painting yesterday– the best painting, in terms of technique, I’ve ever done. Veered off to Jesse Israel’s to buy golden devil’s poker and a rust colored echinacia for the garden.

I have an odd, and not unpleasant, feeling of impending displacement, as though some relocation or adventure were about to happen, and that it will be well.

Did not audition for Coriolanus, remembering my resolve never again to work at that grubby sweatbox of an amphitheater. I’ve never liked confusion and like it less as time goes on. Did reread the play, and wonder–besides the obvious problem of many battle scenes– why it’s so little done. Read a Facebook entry by Mandy, I think, with a photo of her and Jayson and several others lounging abut in the grass at Montford. She remarked that the photo was from the time when they were so excited about the theater that they would come early and just wait around for things to get started. I felt envious. I don’t know that I never felt that, but I never found company to feel it with, and I hid my enthusiasm away.  My enthusiasms have, in general, been hidden between my heart and this page. This has kept me from public embarrassment, but also kept me, I would imagine, from enriched experiences. I did sit in the theater for Lincoln times when I was neither expected nor needed.

Interesting year-end evaluation from Merritt. He reads my student evaluations, though I do not. One asked of me “is it possible to know too much?” Another said I was a “seraphic” teacher. Another said my critiques of student work were ‘sensational.” He probably left out the nasty ones. Maybe, like a judge at the Olympics, he left out the very best ones as well.

June 23, 2014

Late waking today, I think because the birds were stifled by some mood in the air, and were not singing until just now.

Cantaria’s afternoon concert turned out to be triumphant. I didn’t know at first that everyone was going to like it, but I knew I felt better, that I was joyful singing as I had not been the first time. DJ and I went to Rhubarb afterward, on Pack Square, and watched the passing show, which was, in part, a dusty, skillful country ensemble from New Orleans busking beside the restaurant. Used to be that I couldn’t sit an hour anywhere downtown without seeing somebody that I knew well enough to salute; those times are over.

A appeared at the door and I said I was exhausted. He didn’t take the hint. Turns out I wasn’t exhausted after all.

Uncomfortable dreams before waking: magically confined to a colossal Tallmadge Circle, trying to get somewhere but always missing the proper exit. I’d set up housekeeping or open a business on one of the radiating streets, until the need to travel, to get to the real destination, hit me again.

June 22, 2014

Early morning jaunt, not so early as before, and there was blue in the east and north when I came back to my door. Disintegrating moon.

Excellent early morning at the studio. When I left, no on else had yet arrived.

Cantaria concert was, as DJ put it, better than it might have been. Tiny audience in a big space, though they expect a larger one this afternoon. Would I drive out to Warren Wilson for a concert of a summer’s evening? Put that way, I thank whoever did come, and bless them. I didn’t have my low notes, and one place in particular depended on them.

Ate far too late, and had various kinds of digestive distress as I fitfully slept. Perhaps to this I attribute the second hearing of the ghost voice.

The final note of “The Birth of Color” is a contra B flat. None of the boys had it. I do. I was dying to say so, but then I thought of all the ways that gesture could turn out wrong.

Must dedicate part of the day to sending out manuscripts. Other writers get writer's block; I get submitter's block.

June 21, 2014

Solstice. Rose before dawn under the fat crescent of the moon, jaunted about in the dark, mailed a letter. Toe achy but not debilitating.

Recollections from the journey: In Munich there was a big tangle before the security check before the gate from which our flight departed. A man at a desk on the side motioned me and a few random others to what we thought was an additional line. But once we rounded the wall, we discovered we had been waved past the security check altogether, just sauntering into the gate area as though we were VIPs. It’s not that I didn’t appreciate the relief from yet another security check (and this one seemed particularly rigorous, with the opening of bags and questions asked by serious-faced officials) but that I wondered why, if it’s so vital, can it be circumvented with such random alacrity.  In Charlotte there was a terrible backup at customs. My connection was far off so I didn’t care that much, but the harpies screaming at us “You must have your passport in hand” crossed the line for me. Needless to say, I did not have passport in hand, and as the woman pursued me screaming “I need you to have passport in hand!!!” I observed to myself that I didn’t, and she clearly didn’t need that at all. I got too deep into the crowd and she lost interest. Meanwhile, a blond lady cop was browbeating a kid for wising off to her. “I’m in charge here, not you. Do you think you’re in charge? Is that what you think?” The kid refused to answer her rhetorical questions. I admired him. The last thing I saw was her pulling him out of line. When we reached security after customs I was pulled aside, ordered not to touch my carry-on or my jacket, and four additional guards surrounded me. The urge to touch the damn carry on was almost, but not quite, overwhelming. All arbitrary orders must be disobeyed. Anyway, the guard said I had a Tupperware box filled with powder in my bag. What was it? I said I had no such thing, and he said the scanner clearly showed it. He rummaged around to his heart’s content–meanwhile the guards had put their hands on me, lest, I suppose, I bolt. Finally he said, “Oh, here it is.” It was a paperback book jammed into the pocket of my jacket. The fineness of the TSA’s discernment amazed me yet again. What other operation which is 99.9% useless and faulty do we endure?

Wild calling of birds just before the light. Enraging rehearsal this afternoon, then a concert tonight.

June 20, 2014

Rose before dawn yesterday and did a street-walk under the half moon. It was still dark when I returned, having passed through neighborhoods that close to my house that I do not remember seeing before, folded into the folded hills. Amazing dark, more like a thing than the negation of a thing.

Would repeat the exercise now, except that gout complicates the morning as it complicated yesterday, the pill I take for it making me sleepy throughout most of the day. I am an Olympian of sleep, a very Herakles.

Steve came and generously rehearsed me for the concert Saturday, after my having missed two rehearsals because of the European jaunt. He was sitting in the beam of the fan and I was sweating like a racehorse, trying to hold my toe at an endurable angle. I wish I could remember and savor in memory the indulgence that led to this affliction.

June 19, 2014

Much gardening and setting-in-order. Afternoon coffee with Frank. I think he’s an attractive man. I don’t know why the women aren’t all over him. The world lies all before him, where to choose. Drinks with DJ in the evening. Up at the brilliant hour of 3, which I hope will set the trend for the rest of the summer.

The task is to overcome dread.

The task is to overcome despair.

The task is to over come hope.

June 18, 2014

Sleeping huge chunks of yesterday and all night last night restored me. I was in actual pain– from exhaustion? Hardly seems likely, but– Good visit to the Y, weeding, dead-heading, watering, discovering honey locust had sprouted in my absence. I tried to transplant some of it to the sun, discovered it sprouts from long underground runners and maybe impossible to transplant. Did break of a section of runner and put it in the ground, watered it. Let’s see.

Brought two souvenirs back: a bag with a picture of Gustav Klimt and his cat on it. I love it. A piece of Hungarian lace. I hate it.

June 17, 2014

Returned last night while there was still light in the sky. It was the first time 51 seemed like home. I was returning home. The Chinese kid beside me on the flight between Budapest and Munich had apparently pissed himself. Whoever else pissed himself I missed, for I slept, slept, slept, watched two movie I had seen before, slept. Oddly, I was able to go to bed at a decent time, and had amazing dreams. Circe was of course sleeping against me all night, and every time I changed position she did too, and every time she changed position a map of red light lit up in the room, as though she were an organic console you pressed to get an LED display. My bed was a whole city and I was exploring it in sleep. There was even a recorded commentary in Italian, which I understood perfectly well. It was a magical sleep all in all, for all night a mockingbird sang in my holly trees, because of the clear half moon, or maybe the streetlight. I kept thinking of Shakespeare’s “and the bird of dawning singeth all the night.”

Wrote a story in Vienna and eleven poems in Budapest. Wrote three poems in the Budapest airport.

In the waiting area in Charlotte Douglas ran across a man who’d had two lifetime memberships to Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker’s Christian amusement park in Charlotte. “I could spend two whole weeks there every year. I did so look forward to that.” Jim Bakker is apparently selling dried food now, against the rigors of the coming Apocalypse. “They say Obama was elected by the New World Order to be the dictator to force the transition. . .  They say the US is going to collapse real soon, because we’re printing too much money. . . .They say that Kennedy was the last president who wasn’t owned by the new World Order. That’s why he had to die.” Finally, not wanting to argue, or even to hear at that point, I can’t stop myself from saying, “Who’s ‘They’?”

“Oh, you know, all them people who write about the New World Order.”

So much for a culture of evidence.

Walked into Starbucks and there was 1) a cop with a gun and 2) a private citizen open carrying, in his jean shorts, t-shirt, pistol in holder at his side. Was I the only one seeing wild wet shoot-out in the making? Yes, of course cops with guns are as dangerous to the citizenry as criminals (these days) but the solution is to disarm everybody so the worst is a few bloody noses, not arm everybody to the teeth so that the first fender bender in the parking lot or an off look becomes a massacre. Hello, America.

Can barely keep my eyes open. Received a call about the emergency message system at UNCA: held the phone in my hand wondering for an instant “what the hell is UNCA?”

3 AM, Budapest

June 16, 2014

Three-thirty in the morning, in a hotel room you’re about to vacate: the loneliest place in the world.

Dreamed I bought a new house, actually an old one, a farm house, with the expected features, but also with a gigantic unfinished room that stretched out for yards and yards, and ended without a fnal wall: an image, I would think, of the habit of living with hopeful uncertainty.

Sunday dawns

June 15, 2014

The man I have been calling Achmet (for God knows what reason) is actually Shariff Harthy, a person of great personal and historical dignity, whom certain elements (so Honorah says ) have offered the crown of Hungary. Glad to have known him.

My prayer to be wrong yesterday was answered handsomely, for the taping revealed a piece of great beauty, even here and there of splendor.  Lucio did such honor to my words that I was in tears. One blesses the singers for so much stamina, so much youthful good will! I do think The Birth of Color could have a place in the repertoire, if only it weren’t so hard to sing. There is one place where it becomes mud, a triumphant mud crescendo, but H says (not in so many words) that she called for mud there.  Rumpled, kind-hearted, soft-voiced Lucio bent over his keyboard assumes new dignity in my eyes. Nevertheless, the session was six hours long, and is scheduled the same for today. I have very little to do but to look on approvingly.

Lucio wanted to do something more after 6, and D said, “We’re way over budget already.” That released something that had been building in my mind already, at first the suspicion, and then the conviction that I was the only person in the room who had not been paid. Turns out to be the truth. I said, “So, are all these singers volunteers, or--” and got the explanation of finances that revealed. No covenants have been broken, and I am happy to be a participant, but I am uncomfortable that the ideal of joyful volunteerism is reserved for some and not even asked of others. The same thing happened in New York, where I realized that the playwright was the only person who didn’t see a dime out of Lincoln. Do I need an agent for everything? Does one feed on honor? Do I look even more like a dupe than I think I do? Is the same countenance that draws beggars and scammers across the street to me the one that suggests “he’ll do it free?” I feel divided on this. I was happy to have done it without payment, but when I found out I was the only one, it seemed to shame not only my work, but the craft of poetry, as if, unlike composing or singing or twiddling the knobs on the sound machine, it required no support or recompense. I do not claim it wasn’t joyful to do. But— well, I wish I hadn’t though of it. It darkened last evening, and now it is darkening the morning. Do you need the money? No. Then why not shut up about it? Because it isn’t right.

Ended the night at a street restaurant where they gave me a free dessert (maybe I looked devastated) and chatted with a giant Dane and his mom, who were here celebrate his masters degree in Finance. He made me eat goulash, and it is, after all, just like mom’s beef stew, with a little more spice. Maybe she got it from them, the Irish/Hungarian connection.  Meant to lie down a little and then go out onto the night street, but I lay down and woke in gray dawn.

Vicious and venomous messages from a former student, L, with whom I acted on the university stage when I first came there. His resentment has been simmering for nearly thirty years. I wonder if he feels better now to have spat it forth? He meant to calumniate me on Facebook, but Facebook, in some wonderful way it has, blocked it, so it came to my email but did not appear on my Timeline, or in “Home.” I can’t remember harming him in any way. Things that make you sit with your chin on your hand--


June 15, 2014

The man I have been calling Achmet (for God knows what reason) is actually Shariff Harthy, a person of great personal and historical dignity, whom certain elements (so Honorah says ) have offered the crown of Hungary. Glad to have known him.

My prayer to be wrong yesterday was answered handsomely, for the taping revealed a piece of great beauty, even here and there of splendor.  Lucio did such honor to my words that I was in tears. One blesses the singers for so much stamina, so much youthful good will! I do think The Birth of Color could have a place in the repertoire, if only it weren’t so hard. There is one place where it becomes mud, a triumphant mud crescendo, but H says (not in so many words) that she called for mud there.  Rumpled, kind-hearted, soft-voiced Lucio bent over his keyboard assumes new dignity in my eyes. Nevertheless, the session was six hours long, and is scheduled the same for today. I have very little to do but to look on approvingly.
Lucio wanted to do something more after 6, and Dahlan said, “We’re way over budget already.” That released something that had been building in my mind already, at first the suspicion, and then the conviction that I was the only person in the room who had not been paid. Turns out to be the truth. I said, “So, are all these singers volunteers, or--” and got the explanation of finances that revealed. No covenants have been broken, and I am happy to be a participant, but I am uncomfortable that the ideal of joyful volunteerism is reserved for some and not even asked of others. The same thing happened in New York, where I realized that the playwright was the only person who didn’t see a dime out of Lincoln. Do I need an agent for everything? Do I look even more like a dupe than I think I do? Is the same countenance that draws beggars and scammers across the street to me the one that suggests “he’ll do it free?” I feel divided on this. I was happy to have done it without payment, but when I found out I was the only one, it seemed to shame not only my work, but the craft of poetry, as if, unlike composing or singing or twiddling the knobs on the sound machine, it required no support or recompense. I do not claim it wasn’t joyful to do. But— well, I wish I hadn’t though of it. It darkened last evening, and now it is darkening the morning. Do you need the money? No. Then why not shut up about it? Because it isn’t right.
Ended the night at a street restaurant where they gave me a free dessert (maybe I looked devastated) and chatted with a giant Dane and his mom, who were here celebrate his masters degree in Finance. He made me eat goulash, and it is, after all, just like mom’s beef stew, with a little more spice. Maybe she got it from them, the Irish/Hungarian connection.  Meant to lie down a little and then go out onto the night street, but I lay down and woke in gray dawn.
Vicious and venomous messages from a former student, Lee Morris, with whom I acted on the university stage when I first came there. His resentment has been simmering for nearly thirty years. I wonder if he feels better now to have spat it forth? He meant to calumniate me on Facebook, but Facebook, in some wonderful way it has, blocked it, so it came to my email but did not appear on my Timeline, or in “Home.” I can’t remember harming him in any way. Things that may you sit with your chin on your hand--


June 15, 2014

The man I have been calling Achmet (for God knows what reason) is actually Shariff Harthy, a person of great personal and historical dignity, whom certain elements (so Honorah says ) have offered the crown of Hungary. Glad to have known him.

My prayer to be wrong yesterday was answered handsomely, for the taping revealed a piece of great beauty, even here and there of splendor.  Lucio did such honor to my words that I was in tears. One blesses the singers for so much stamina, so much youthful good will! I do think The Birth of Color could have a place in the repertoire, if only it weren’t so hard. There is one place where it becomes mud, a triumphant mud crescendo, but H says (not in so many words) that she called for mud there.  Rumpled, kind-hearted, soft-voiced Lucio bent over his keyboard assumes new dignity in my eyes. Nevertheless, the session was six hours long, and is scheduled the same for today. I have very little to do but to look on approvingly.
Lucio wanted to do something more after 6, and Dahlan said, “We’re way over budget already.” That released something that had been building in my mind already, at first the suspicion, and then the conviction that I was the only person in the room who had not been paid. Turns out to be the truth. I said, “So, are all these singers volunteers, or--” and got the explanation of finances that revealed. No covenants have been broken, and I am happy to be a participant, but I am uncomfortable that the ideal of joyful volunteerism is reserved for some and not even asked of others. The same thing happened in New York, where I realized that the playwright was the only person who didn’t see a dime out of Lincoln. Do I need an agent for everything? Do I look even more like a dupe than I think I do? Is the same countenance that draws beggars and scammers across the street to me the one that suggests “he’ll do it free?” I feel divided on this. I was happy to have done it without payment, but when I found out I was the only one, it seemed to shame not only my work, but the craft of poetry, as if, unlike composing or singing or twiddling the knobs on the sound machine, it required no support or recompense. I do not claim it wasn’t joyful to do. But— well, I wish I hadn’t though of it. It darkened last evening, and now it is darkening the morning. Do you need the money? No. Then why not shut up about it? Because it isn’t right.
Ended the night at a street restaurant where they gave me a free dessert (maybe I looked devastated) and chatted with a giant Dane and his mom, who were here celebrate his masters degree in Finance. He made me eat goulash, and it is, after all, just like mom’s beef stew, with a little more spice. Maybe she got it from them, the Irish/Hungarian connection.  Meant to lie down a little and then go out onto the night street, but I lay down and woke in gray dawn.
Vicious and venomous messages from a former student, Lee Morris, with whom I acted on the university stage when I first came there. His resentment has been simmering for nearly thirty years. I wonder if he feels better now to have spat it forth? He meant to calumniate me on Facebook, but Facebook, in some wonderful way it has, blocked it, so it came to my email but did not appear on my Timeline, or in “Home.” I can’t remember harming him in any way. Things that may you sit with your chin on your hand--

*

Evening: we finished taping with a maximum of to-do, and though not all parts are equal, I maintain that The Birth of Color is a sort of masterpiece. When the chorus left, I teared up, a lump in my throat. It was like the last morning of summer camp when you say goodbye to everyone. Great kids. I would intervene for the joy of the futures, except that everything I touch turns vaguely ridiculous, so maybe I’ll let it alone. When I left the radio station, a woman was walking her ferret. I went into the park beside the museum and sobbed like an idiot. I don’t even know why.

Yes I do.

Anyway, filling the hours until my early, early flight. Praying that all things go well and, unlikely as it may seem, I find my way back to Budapest.

Saturday in Budapest

June 14, 2014

They took away my snake plant. I’m sure it was happier in my room.

The concert at Saint Michael’s was jewel-like, the best acoustics I have encountered, anywhere, the musicians beyond perfect, the senile American behind me jabbering and poking each other almost the ruin of it. I tried to concentrate solely on the music, then tried to get over my resentment at having to try so hard to concentrate on the music, etc. Some people simply cannot leave their own jabbering selves behind for one minute. I’d lament the generation, but these people were older than I. Still, beautiful, the violin soloist, Gabra Gyula, handsome as a statue at the corner of a building, expressive, radiant. Drinks on the way home while the Word Cup played around me.

My guess is that today’s taping will be agonizing. Lord, prove me now, as so many times in the past, wrong!

Friday in Budapest

June 13, 2014

Friday the 13th.  As I went about my business today, there were Four Passing Sights, or rather not Passing sights, for I was a participant in three of them. I went to the Opera to discover that the ballet I wanted to see was not there, but at some other opera house “twenty minutes” away. I decided not to bother with logistics, and wandered off. On Andressay was an ancient crippled woman. She’d probably never been more than four feet tall or so, but now she is bent in half, so that she supports herself on a stub of a cane and her face is never more then two feet off the pavement, her brown face with two tiny eyes, practically no features at all. When I saw her I was thrown out of my mind in an uncomfortable way. I had no context, no excuse, not even the beginning of an explanation. I saw she had a begging cup in her hand, so I emptied my pockets into it. She lifted her face, but there was no expression I could read. The only other gesture was to pull her babushka more firmly over her head, to hide herself better. The existential “WHY??” was welling up in my chest when I was approached by an old man in great agitation. He talked very fast, holding a handful of florins out to me. When I finally said, “I don’t understand you,” his entire being fell, shoulders, countenance, as though I had been his last hope. When I crossed into the bright sun, heading for the museum, a burly man came out of the crowd and planted himself in my way. He chattered away. I said, “I don’t understand you.” Then a miraculous thing happened. Either he had some English, or I was understanding Hungarian, for what came next was almost perfectly clear. He demanded to see identification.
“No,” I said.
He reached into his pocket and pulled out some ID I was supposed to recognize, and said, “I am Police. You show me ID. You show me some document.”
“No,” I said.
“We do it here, or we go down to the station.”
“That’s not going to happen,” says I.
“One piece. One piece of ID prove you who you say you are.”
I hadn’t said who I was, and wasn’t going to. But I thought maybe there was something legitimate in the request after all, so I pulled out my platinum Am Ex, which was the closest thing to ID that I was carrying. He seemed disappointed. He said again something about “working it out at the station” and I responded, “Like I said, that is not going to happen.”
I should have said, “You go get a uniformed police officer,” but that was beyond our mutual understanding. I was pretty convinced by now he was not legitimate, though what he was I wasn’t sure. He said, “Look, we have a lot of problems with drugs. Drugs coming in. Heroin. You have money?”
“Yes I have money.”
“You let me sniff money, Just one sniff, to see drugs, then it’s all right.”
I pulled out my wallet, held it up to his nose and let him sniff. What did I know? Maybe that’s the way you do detect heroin. But in that instant I realized his next move was going to be to grab the wallet and run. I pulled it back. I shouldered him aside and said, “That’s enough. I’m going on my way. Now!”
Behind me I heard him hollering “No problem! No problem!” Had he been a real cop, I doubt that the shove would have been endured.

Less than a block away, two derelicts lay sweetly asleep in each other’s arms, directly in the shadow of a tree that seemed to have grown there for that purpose. They were watched over by two derelicts, awake and vigilant, lest harm should befall them.

Returned to the museum I found last night. It was not, unfortunately, an art museum, but one of Hungarian history, interesting, but my enjoyment was limited because I didn’t read the language. Some of the richness could yet be comprehended. Ate the best thing I’ve had in Hungary, fried goat cheese with a salad with sun dried tomatoes. The waiter said, “Excellent choice,” and so it was. Wandered around then, and came to a vast market that used to be a train station, at the end of my very street, Vaci utca. It was bafflingly huge, though one began to work out a certain order, food on the first floor, crafts on the second, leather crafts on connecting aisles upstairs. Bought embroidery from a shop on the street, at a far smaller price, and with the old mother adding a free gift of a tiny doily or cup holder. Passed Saint Michael’s, where there is a concert of Vivaldi tonight, and I am going.

and Thursday--

June 12, 2014

Went shopping today. I almost never “go shopping” but something–my need for extra underwear–started it off, and the boulder just kept tumbling downhill.

Met at the Hungarian National Radio for real early in the evening. It is a stunning establishment, modern and big and grander than any radio statio I’ve been in. Michlosch (phonetic) the sound engineer whom we lunched with earlier presided with calm and professional aplomb. He’s an attractive man. He had need of aplomb, for H was a parody of neediness and frantic misdirection. The session was scheduled for an hour and went on for three, which Michlosch mention in his gentle way, twice. The plan was for three of us, H, Achmet, and myself, to read all the text and then edit it in various ways later. H read first: such fussing and re-doing and amplified gulping of water you never heard in your life. Her first take took all the time allotted originally. Then I read, through, without stopping, without taking a break for exhaustion and nerves and dehydration, in one take. The Achmet read through in one take. And so it went. Michlosch turned to me and said, “She’s not very professional, is she? All those sounds she’s making with her mouth–“ She did slurp and smack and gurgle and gasp, which I wouldn’t have noticed if a sound engineer hadn’t pointed them out. Perhaps I do the same, and they remarked on it while I was performing. Achmet didn’t, in any case. Achmet is a Hungarian whom the Fs met in their religious community, and he was wonderful. It was like hearing your poems read by Dracula. Very cool.

At one point H, frustrated that she was the only one having problems, made me redo a passage “That was glop,” she said, “Come in and have some water.”
“No,” I’m Ok.”
“We’ll send it out to you– ger, take him his water–“
”Really, I’m good–“
“No, have some water. You must–“
”That’s OK. Where did you want me to start?”
“No, I can hear it in your voice, you have to–“
This went on for a long time. At her every insistence the will of my soul grew stronger that I would not, under any circumstance, have that water. Finally I just began reading the passage I though she meant, and we went on from there. H is often ignored, and to be fair she takes that in good grace, or doesn’t notice, but it does lead to wearying repetitions farther down the road. Some people believe that if they aren’t obeyed, it’s because people haven’t heard them properly.

Leaving the studio I sat for a while in the nearby park, which surrounds the art museum. I’d found it earlier, and in some odd way it struck me deeply, with longing and nostalgia, as though it played some part in my past. Which, of course, it could hot have done. The sound of a blackbird singing drew me in and I sat at a stone table and wrote, the moon rising over my shoulder: very, very romantic. On the other bench of the table someone had made a human face out of the petals of a flower.

Got myself lost in the “Jewish section” coming home, where things are as lively as they are around here, but with a different, far more local and colorful crowd.  The most beautiful woman in the world, a hostess at a restaurant, gave me directions back to places I knew. Hungarian women are the most beautiful and stylish I’ve ever seen. The men are almost uniformly built like gods. Either there’s an extreme gym culture around here, or someone passed down some very good genes.

Sat at Longford’s and ended the day in Strongbow. A naked drunk boy splashed in the fountain behind me. The Hungarians are very casual about nudity, thank God.

I’m learning a good deal about art, or rather confirming things I already knew. One is that will is the enemy of creation. God says “Let it be!” rather than “Make it be!” Everything that has gone wrong with this project, or looks like it will (we’ll know for sure Saturday during the taping) has been willed, forced, calculated, envisioned to within an inch of its life. Listening to my poems thirty times last night brought home to me that fact that the parts which are weak are the parts which were “workshopped,” changed by H’s suggestion to be more harmonious with the “vision.” I remember thinking I’d just do what she said and see where it all would lead. I still don’t know, though it is a far bigger deal than I expected. The Fs must be made of money.

Wenesday in Budapest

June 11, 2014

In my room early in the afternoon, nursing a sore leg. The worst part of traveling is not knowing when the maids are going to come.

Elektra last night was glorious. More streamlined that Der Rosenkavalier, it was excessive and “operatic” in all the right ways at all the right moments. How could the woman playing Elektra sing at such intensity for that long?  I am not familiar with traditional staging of this, but the Budapest production was done in the royal baths, which allowed gratuitous but nevertheless welcome male nudity. Strauss opera is very much more political than I had imagined. One of the attendants is also a soloist for The Birth of Color, so I got to boast (to myself) that I knew someone in the cast. The gangling kid in the seat beside looked at me whenever I made a noise, as if waiting for some secret knowledge, or perhaps afraid that I was about to explode. Ended the night under a rising full moon at the Longford Irish pub, where I had a Strongbow of excellence.

Yesterday was not otherwise a success. Attended the rehearsal for the soloists, and the solos were, to a note, ugly. I didn’t believe their ugliness can be blamed on ineptitude, but on the resolute will of the composer to work out complicated ideas independent of how they actually sound. It is all intellect and no ear. He had graphs matching colors to frequency and all that, but it seemed bullshit to me, because the outcome had to be explained for it to be other than chaos, and even explained it was ghastly. Of course, I have not heard everything together, and together some great aural vision make be working itself out, but the sin of the parts is being too thick, over-thought, messily opaque, and if adding layers helps some kinds of deficiencies, I don’t think it is going to help this. There were moments of loveliness a few days ago. Yesterday I heard all that drowned under a sludge of theory and wilfulness.  Lucio’s punishment for this was to have to play through every part multiple times, to the point of tearful frustration, because the excellent singers had no practical form, no musical coherence to guide them. God forbid you ask “what key are we in?”

H waited until yesterday to tell me she had altered some of the poems, and replaced some of her own. She was right that I would have walked off the project had I known. Wise to tell me when I was in Budapest, the day before taping, when REALLY nothing could be done.

We were meant to tape the narration today, but for some reason I COULD NOT get anyone to respond to my question, when? Where, I discovered on my own, and in frustration I walked there and found out from the guards at the radio station when we were scheduled. I arrived at 10 AM panicked that I was late. My mirth quotient is high, but other than successful tourism, this trip is not yet a success for me. The singers’ English is so calamitous that there is no real point in correcting what I do correct: (V-V-V-Violet, not Wiolet. . . WOOOOOND, not WOWND.” Dear God, they are so patient and working so hard and I just want to scream “This is Bullshit!” and go to a bar. I do not do so because I am not yet absolutely sure it is bullshit. I try to make do with handsome boys bringing me cool drinks in the shady cafes.

Stole a snake plant from an absolutely lightless alcove in the hotel and put it in my window. Nobody moved it back, so it must have been OK.

Tuesday

June 10, 2014

Walked the Andressa and bought a ticket to Der Rosenklavier. Have been largely abed since, exhausted and, frankly, comfortable half asleep in the cool of my room.

Stopped twice for drinks on the way to the opera. Stopped where they had mist coming from fans dropping on the diners. The Budapest opera is small but exquisite, all intricate and marmoreal, lined with portraits of people who, expect for Liszt, I’ve never heard of. Hungarian culture turns out to be foreign to me, more foreign, in some way, than Istanbul, for I knew its history. And the language! In Austria I knew enough, or could figure enough out from similarities and cognates, to get by. Here there are no cognates. I’ve figured out that utca is street and Ferenc is Francis, but beyond that, nil. Written, Hungarian looks like the Black Speech from Tolkien, though spoken it is soft, sweet, and rather secret, as though everyone were ever being intimate.

I had read the Rosenkavalier synopsis before going, and it sounded like a mighty thin story line to hang three hours upon. A TV show could do it in twenty minutes. But I realized soon that my aesthetic sense was gong to need adjustment. I’ve always admired Strauss, without having heard him in such a large dose. It’s all atmosphere, isn’t it? There are no arias; the changes in tone or energy are few and brief, all a sadly smiling elegy to lost youth, and reconciliation to the truth that time forges ahead. But on so many levels– in the life of the Marschallin, in the life of the self-indulging pig-of-an-aristocrat Ochs, and in the life of the whole Imperial idea which is itself another character, implied and dominating, like the Empress herself.  Class divisions are seen as real and immortal, the assumptions of rank unquestioned. Even Octavius and Sophie are about to be swept away, for he is a count and she longs to be a countess, or at least her family longs for that for here. It was 1911. In eight years what will be left? Maybe Octavius and Sophie ended up running a honeymoon B&B up in the Alps. I hope so. Never again will there be merry and wise authority like that of the Marschallin, who can make things go right simply by entering a room. I loved it. It was beautiful. I bought a ticket for tomorrow night’s Elektra.

The joke played on the Baron perplexes me. I don’t know upon which petard he was actually hoist. It looked like he was going to be exposed for a cad and an adulterer, but then he falls prey to his creditors. Either is fine, but I didn’t see how one crossed over into the other. I guess the Count is generally (maybe always, thinking of the tessatura) played by a woman, but that creeped me out a little. A girl pretending to be a girl really isn’t that funny. A blustering nincompoop making love to a girl because he thinks she’s a girl– well, really, again, not that funny. Was it in the original story? The tale goes back to Tristan and Isolde, doesn’t it, the woman falling in love with the messenger of love. Very lovely. I kept picturing myself as an all-day Rosenkavalier, bring silver roses to maiden after maiden in walled gardens, watching them blush and their eyes grow distant.

Did I respect it as theater? In a way yes. But Late Romantic and Post Romantic music never saw itself as the servant of anything else, not of words or of plot, so the lovely unfolding of Strauss’s musical ideas required the same thing to be said ten or twenty times, and for there to be a great host of gesticulating supernumeraries upstage sustaining states of agitation far longer than is natural. There is nothing more taxing than to “act” the operatic or balletic chorus. All measures of naturalness or plausibility fly out the wings.

Hearing it now as I type.

Interesting stroll home. The moon, almost full, was rising over the Danube. I was stopped by two prostitutes who wanted to know if I wanted to get a late drink before returning to my wife. They reminded me of something from Bosch, very old, skinny women (maybe as old as I) done up and shellacked to look like girls. They were actually kind of sweet. Then the man on the next block who hugged me and said that I should go get some “Power Pussy” at the strip club for which he worked. The two titty bars I know (already) in Budapest are right n the street, integrated with everything else. I used the wife the girls had invented for me and begged off. “Have you. . . men?” was on the tip of my tongue, but some good angel turned me and sent me home like a good boy. The man said, “Discretion, my friend. You don’t have to tell nobody nothing.” That has, in fact, been my motto in ewigkeit. 

Budapest Monday

June 9, 2014

Working with H is interesting because our methods are so different and yet our aims similar. We want the beautiful thing, but have radically different ideas on how to get it.  When she explained this project (fourteen years ago, not the twenty I had remembered) I recall swallowing back my impulses and going along with what she wanted, desiring to be part of the project no matter what. She was more specific than the imagination will allow. She doesn’t really do anything, no particular art of her own, but she has definite ideas of the outcome she wants–an impresario? In any case her process involves a whole lot of explaining. She tried to explain–several times– to the chorus, in English, the rather ethereal concept of the project, thinking it would direct their performance. They listened politely and did what they were going to do anyway. The director ignored most of the changes she wanted. Whether she noticed this or not, I don’t know. I think he didn’t understand them because they were not down on the score. The idea that explanation would have any part in the artistic process never crosses my mind, though, of course, communicating outcomes may. She was prostrate with disappointment because we couldn’t get singing bowls in Budapest (I bet we could) and had to be convinced (though she was not convinced) that the piece could be conceived, for the moment, without them. She wanted to explain how the singing bowls sound, so the chorus could somehow have them in mind as they sang. Try to explain a sound. There were parts of the quite beautiful music she wanted to change because it was “so important,” it was “vital” that things conform exactly to her original vision. I don't mean to say any of this is wrong, only that I would never, ever think of it. In all my years of collaboration I have never asked for changes because something departed from my concept. A concept is a seed and the grown tree may look quite different indeed. I think I can be a frustration to a director because when a question of taste comes up, I usually say, “whatever you think best.” But, in fact, I mean exactly that. When I read the text, I see all the things I would NEVER have done if H hadn’t wanted them that way, and, by and large, they are fine with me now. I found a way to incorporate them into my aesthetic view. Her vision altered mine, and that’s fine. The outcome is, I think, quite beautiful, though we’ve not heard it all put together. If she can be induced to leave it alone, to let it have its own life, it may be better than any of us conceived. Getting your way means things will only be as good as you imagined. Letting them free may mean they could be better.  D, her husband, runs elegant interference between her sometimes difficult-to-communicate vision and the practicality of the moment.

Today is Pentecost Monday, a bank holiday in Hungary, and the desk clerk told me everything would be closed. That was not true, but I took the big bus tour and saw the sights I might want to add to my itinerary. It was 37 celsius in Budapest today. I will remember this city in blazing light. The bus accomplished the rather amazing deed of having my seat in the blazing sun all the time, whenever we stopped, whenever we turned. I paid real attention after a while. It was quite miraculous.

The great hill above the city is the witches’ hill, where the witches danced in ancient times. The Hapsburgs built there, and the Hapsburgs fell. The Soviets built there (a monument to Liberation which the Hungarians renamed Lady Liberty) and the Soviets fell.  Sometimes it is better to let the Old Ones alone. I think of the Irish never touching Knocknarea. It is wisdom.

Budapest Pentecost

June 8, 2014

Pentecost

Amazing dreams, clear, narrative. I thank the ambience of the street below. In one I went to Hiram, to spend a long time with Denny and have him help me find a house there. We met finally on the steps of the Christian Church, facing the gas station that was. Then a dream that I had a young son, and I was teaching him how to travel. He was funny, and I laughed in the dream.  Limpid and happy, an improved world–all, now that I think of it, in clear night.

Took an alternate route to Buda, over a different bridge. It was longer, but I was feeling hale. Had iced coffee and met a Hungarian dog.  What has to be said is that The Birth of Color may be an important work. The music I have heard so far is just beautiful. I wept at more than one place, and only part of it was gratitude for the usage of my words. Sat at another café and wrote a poem at lunch, and then joined the crew for more lunch (which for me was water) Stomach has been upset, and when I finally ate a meal tonight, I ended up throwing it up behind a beautiful church down by the water. This adds Budapest to the long list of Cities I Have Barfed In. Vienna may be the only one not on that list.

Two kids from who knows where ask me direction on the street. I say “I’m American, but I’ll help you if I can.” They are SO foreign they don’t even know I’m not speaking Hungarian. The male finally gets out that he wants to see the Danube. We’re standing on the side of a hill, and I want to say, “Down, sweetheart, you always go down to see the water.” Instead, I just point. When I pass they are looking at the Danube.

Feeling one thousand times better tonight than I did last night. The Lord waited for me to go to sleep, when I couldn’t fight him, and smoothed the creases from my forehead.

I have been all this day, happy. And sweaty. And so tired one foot would not go in front of the other. But, happy. Voices in the street. Gibbous moon over the flowing Danube.

Budapest Saturday

June 7, 2014

Walked to the Kodaly in the morning taking 10 minutes off my time. The weather was perfect. The city is so clean it looks like it’s just been built. Was re-acquainted with Honorah and Dahlan, and met the Lucio Ivaldi, the composer, and the director whose name escapes me, and, most importantly, the wonderful chorus, only a few of whom are old enough to be high school graduates. Because of the Kodaly method they are able to sightsing very difficult passages (which is most of Color) without use of the piano. It was very impressive. They don’t spend so much energy on sound quality as they do on accuracy– sometimes it was a bit strident–but maybe that will come with the second rehearsal. Apparently we’re doing the work here because many other groups turned it down for being too difficult. There are two composers, the vanished Foisson and the present Ivaldi, and there were passages (let’s blame them on Foisson) of needless and point-making difficulty. You can hear when a composer is addressing some ancient criticism from his composition teacher, acutely recalled and still rankling. I will never again be caught whoring to tonalism!. But–and here was the surprise–there are passages of the most annihilating beauty. I wept during “White.” Contemporary composers tend to bury beauty under dissonant overlay, so as not to be seen falling for that sort of thing, but sometimes the beauty can still be discerned. I like Lucio. I get along well with living composers. He has the softest and most gentle Italian speaking voice. I didn’t know which passages were his and which were Foisson’s, so I asked before I complimented too fulsomely. My own poetry seemed beautiful to me. I wept not only for the music, but for the sad fate of my creations, which wander in the wilderness and I don’t know why. By there, where they seemed the work of an alien, they lived, and I was happy.

Not much for me to do, actually. The words are finished, and though I corrected a few pronunciations (No, there is no “v” sound at the end of “know”), the Hungarian accents are so thick that one can discern only every few words anyway. I had no idea what they were singing unless I looked at the page. “Th” as in “the” is impossible for the Hungarian tongue. One shrugs. One hopes libretti are distributed. I have considered the gap between words and music in the past, how I can write a script in an evening which will be the composer’s agony for six months, and the performers’ after that. Part of it is that modern composers work too hard. I bet even Beethoven sometimes said, “Oh! That was pretty; let’s go with that.” When there weren’t matters of performance to be addressed, there were matters of recording, which is what happened at lunch, with our slim, tall, excellent English-speaking recording engineer. It is all very complicated, and part of the reason why I preemptively (before I knew how complicated it would be) chose a medium where you set it down, make sure it’s right, get out of the way.

The evening was bad. Nothing is worse than sitting in a happy square in Budapest having excellent wine and thinking how your life came to nothing. Sad over the direction life took without my seeing it coming, and with no conceivable way of knowing to do it differently. Forever fighting the unseen and Omnipotent adversary. One stands on a bridge in the middle of the Danube and lets out a scream of rage, because one had been right and had been defeated by sheer Power. Then one steps aside for the bikers.

Time to soak my legs in the hottest water I can stand. Time to let the noises from the street mingle with my dreams.

Budapest

June 6, 2014

Train from Vienna, the ground gradually rising and breaking into disorderly hills as we near Budapest. It’s like two worlds divided by a magic river, flat modern Pest, Buda all ancient and spread across a hill on the other side. The Zoltan Kodaly Choir School is on the Buda side, so I will be crossing over the schone blaue Donau all but daily. Not only is it on the Buda side, but tucked away in the single most obscure address in Europe, so that after walking for an hour to get to the vicinity, I walked another, around and around, trying to find the actual building. You can’t get there at all unless someone tells you to mount some steps, for the street, as far as I went, does not seem to connect to a any other street, but only to a system of steep stairs up from other streets. It is also, of course, not on the tourist maps. The Belgium Embassy lies across the street, so there must be some traffic other than frustrated American pedestrians. The people I asked for directions were kind. It was wonderful to watch them find enough English to be helpful. Did treat myself coming homeward to wine beside the river, where I had a sight of the beautiful Parliament first at sunset and then begin to twinkle with lights. Happy streets, though my legs ached terribly by then. The youth on the streets made me think of a colossal Galway. When I arrived at the Promenade Hotel they gave me a quite horrible room on an inside atrium with no window (and no bathtub, but only a nozzle aimed at the bathroom floor). I complained, and they gave me, for 10 euros a day more, a splendid one right above the street, where light and air and noise come wonderfully through. The farther east one goes, the scammier the hotels get, pretending that things like windows and tubs are options which one adds by paying a higher price. Istanbul was scammier than this, though the Promenade is plenty scammy, and one must watch one’s step. I slept fitfully because of the din from the street, but I never mind that, and I think my dreams are affected by what is going on down there. One long dream involved a group of young girls discussing what they thought of the soul.

My heart leapt when I walked out onto the streets of Budapest as it did not on the streets of Vienna. There is no explaining these things.

Vienna 3

June 5, 2014

Ordered Schnitzel without knowing what it was. Not only did I not like it, but it was the largest portion of anything I have ever been served, overlapping the plate around all the rim. The waiter gave be a bag to take it home in.

Viennese beggars are aggressive and do not, like some others, go to the bother of actually looking like they need a hand-out. I am an exceptional target because I am alone.

Dreams last night that had to do with disguising property so that people won’t want to take it, and then of a great tree falling on 62. I dreamed of a great crack in the wall, then woke and saw it is a vine climbing the wall of my ventilator shaft.

Went to the Jewish Museum, but didn’t go in, because the first thing you see is guns, and you imagine from that all that’s coming. Was shortchanged in a famous café across the street.

Made my way to the Leopold, where I felt immediate and profound harmony with the great figures of the Secession, especially Klimt, who, it turns out, painted a lot more things than decadent gilded women, and all those paintings are more interesting. My own painting is, by intuition, Secessionist. Made my way from there to the Secessionist building surmounted by the dome called locally the Golden Cabbage. The Beethoven Frieze is unspeakably wonderful. Walked and walked, stopped often to drink. Great pain in my legs, sometimes, but it went away when I stretched or sat down, so I kept moving. Crossed the Donau Canal as the half moon rode in the sky. One block from this spot is the liveliest place in Vienna, and I didn’t know it until an hour ago. Crossed the water and came back, and on this side watched a huge brown spider repairing her web by moonlight. She was the best. She was the Beethoven Frieze. She made me happy.

I leave Vienna tomorrow. All last nights are fully of the melancholy of what might have been. Might as well lie back and enjoy it.

Vienna 2

June 4, 2014

Abstemious breakfast, then I lit out for the Albertina under the most perfect of all skies. The Albertina was a consolation prize to the Archduke Albert for losing the governorship of Belgium, and I think he came out on the better side. What a gracious building, among the most gracious art museums in the world, if you consider the building’s own self. As for the collection, it was refreshing and fascinating, partially because it was new to me. Wrote down what I thought of the paintings in my little blue journal. It is heavily German, and that is somewhat the way my tastes in visual art run, so all was well. Had white wine in the shade after the Albertina, then moseyed over to the Theater Museum, which I did not understand. Meant to hit the great mass of museums lying just beyond the Heldenplatz, but instead met there a boy of the most fetching energy and directness, who wanted to take me on a tour (he being a guide for Alte Stadt Tours) on a kind of adapted fire truck. Took the tour. As he promised, his narrative was lively and richly wrought. As near as I could tell his German and his English presentations were identical. He got only a few things wrong, and one was asserting that Urania was the Muse of Entertainment. In some ways that’s bettering the fact. I’m glad I took the tour, not only for his diverting presence, but in that it helped me orient in this intricate city. Specifically, it helped me find the Muzikvereins, in whose golden concert hall I attended a concert which in substance was largely last night’s, except that the musicians wore brocade and powdered wigs. Both were more tourist events than concerts, so I tried to (and succeeded in) tamping down my fury at the audience’s crassness. About 60 percent of the audience was Japanese. One sad truth I know about the world is that the Japanese take to many pictures. There are no events and no places, only settings for Japanese people to be gazing into phone cameras. During the exit after the concert, one gentleman stopped five hundred people pouring down the staircase so he could snap a shot of the bust of Clara Schuman.  Both nights the bassoonist has been seven layers of handsome. I assumed it was the same one, but decided it wasn’t. Maybe there’s something about the bassoon.

You can take a Third Man tour of the Viennese sewers.

How lovely Imperial Austria would have been if it had not also been a political reality, if the emperor had been just a kind old man who watched people dance. SiSi, Franz Joseph’s Kaiserin, is hugely popular, I suppose a little like Lady Di, both unconventional reluctant royals and violently dead.

Caught a glimpse of my legs in the full-length hotel mirror. They qualify as a hideous deformity. I suppose I’m glad that they still work, after a fashioned, like an old beat-up jalopy damaged almost beyond recognition, but still running.

The hotel has no bar–a misfortune, for a nightcap would end the night perfectly.

Vienna

June 3, 2014

Installed in my adequate room in the adequate Hotel Karntnerhof, though I’d like to know what message I send out that gets me a room typically overlooking the ventilation shaft. A placard warns me that I can be surcharged 50 euro if I leave a bad smell in the room. The journey here – though crushingly long--was not particularly eventful, except for the turbulent Turkish woman in the middle seat, who had to be up and down constantly, and who had to carry on a conversation with the German woman on the other side of her, invariably checking with me for translation.

Descending over the colors of the Austrian countryside I noticed that, whereas Ireland would be emerald and gold, Austria was sap green and dull gold, everything as if mixed with a little misty gray, with a little less edge and more dignity. The city is a little complicated to navigate, but I am finding where I’m going. First stop is Stephansdom, another of the world’s great churches off my list. Its gloomy Gothic is out of keeping with the rest of the city. Yet it is surrounded my carousels and merchant carts, and is the family playground of the city. I met there a young man who said he played bass with the Wiener Residenzorchester. Turns out he indeed does so, for I went to the concert at Auersperg Palace, and there he was onstage, in a tuxedo, looking far more uncomfortable than he did on the Platz. The concert was in the oval Rosenkavaliersaal, which may be the shapeliest and most civilized room I ever encountered. The program was ripe plums from Mozart and Strauss (the waltz one) and not what I would have chosen if music had been the point of the evening. That said, the music was beautiful in the context for which it was written–like seeing Shakespear at the Globe-- and everything gleamed with old gold and crystal and pink marble. The perfection of art which is such an effort elsewhere is here a mere gesture, a shrug, perfection being default setting and unexceptional. Even the loudmouthed hag a few rows back, who never stopped chattering, became part of the music, like one string out of tune, or noise from the distant street. In the midst of “La chi darem la mano” I burst into tears, everything was perfect.

As I type, one of the hotel workers sings in the basement, thinking no one hears her, the sound coming up my ventilator like smoke up a chimney.

June 2, 2014

Ready to travel with diarrhea and an attack (moderate) of gout. So what else is new? The gout medicine, as I observed before, relives the pain in my shoulders. I resist associating these things with growing old. I fight them, certain that they can be made to go away, and I can get back to “real life.”  Curiously lacking in my customary travel anxiety. Happy to get going, secure in having lined up all sorts of reliable people to keep things moving here. Good Cantaria rehearsal last night with diminished summer forces.  Why my own voice sometimes sounds glorious to be and sometimes barely marginal I don’t know. Does it sound the same to others at the same times?

Found Lucio Ivaldi on the Internet, explaining his music to The Birth of Color. I got to hear my name said in honey-dripping Italian.

Sweet Maud cat licking my toes–

Woke in utter darkness, utter stillness--

June 1, 2014

Woke and took a walk through the neighborhood before dawn. Kelley says she says bears, and I wanted to see bears, but of course I did not. I saw the silhouettes of birds on branches and wires. You could tell there was a being there, and that it was pouring out music, but if I were the alien I have been postulating for my journey, I might not know what it was. Would I think they were organic, or maybe speakers set out by a kindly people so sleepers would have a musical waking?

Went downtown to Suzanne’s show at Blue Spiral, and bought one of her paintings. Bees were the theme, and my small painting has layerings of bees over music.

Stung my eye with some plant toxin while weeding at 62. It will be suspicious for me to sit on the plane weeping.

May 31, 2014

What an odd journey will begin on Monday! Except for the barest housing and transportation essentials, I have made no preparations. I have not studied the German I meant to study. I have not researched points of interest in Vienna or Budapest. I always thought it would be better for me to travel like it was just the continuation of an ordinary week, and maybe I’ve achieved that. I’ll work out a fiction wherein I am an alien set down in a strange city, ignorant of the languages and customs of the people, and see if can make my way.  I’m picturing Vienna in misty blue day and Budapest under moonlight.

Vomited out the first Yeats play in four days. Maybe that went so well because I was meant to be doing something else.

Odd days. If I picture them, they are like a great disc, as the books picture the discs the planets ride around the sun. The center is peopled with matter and souls, and matter and souls are spread through the outer reaches, but here, where I am, there is only me, a rock floating where a planet failed to form. It is not unlovely, but it is curious and solitary. One can’t figure out exactly how one arrived.