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.