December 31, 2010
The past few days my literary energies have poured into the writing of my screenplay, Pillar of Fire, and the details I like to record of my life have waited, some of them lost irretrievably in the meanwhile. I tell my students that you never forget anything you’re meant to remember.
Outstanding review in Journal of Singing (Vol 67, No.2) of Frank Ferko and my Cyclamen. After quite a thorough exegesis the reviewer concludes it is a “beautiful and meaningful text.” The reviewer’s analysis of the music is too technical for me to appreciate, but the overall impression is very favorable. I would love to work steadily with a composer. I would love to set my own poetry. I used to write quite a lot of music, before I was hanging out with so many musicians, and the gap between their understanding of the intricacies of it all and mine shamed me into silence.
Burn the lights of the Christmas tree every moment that it’s dark, such as now, when the last dawn of the year is still an hour off. I look up and down the street and it’s the only one I see. Almost all the Christmas cards one receives are photos of the family. One is happy to keep up, but everything begins to sink under a chirpy secularization. What are our sacred things now? I’m not sure I know. Maybe I’ll spend time in the new year working for the re-sanctification of– something.
Hit the town last night. Saw The King’s Speech at the Fine Arts, then stopped at Sazerac for a drink. Said Happy New Year to John C and Matthew. A line of old people sat behind me at the cinema, One of them was deaf. This meant that when she made comments during the movie– which she couldn’t stop herself from doing–it was at a volume which would be for a normal person near to shouting. It also meant that no response cold be made only once:
WHAT DID HE SAY?
He said “bugger.” Now, you should stop talking.
WHAT??
He said “bugger.”
I DIDN’T HEAR YOU.
HE SAID ‘BUGGER,’ NOW PLEASE STOP TALKING.
I HEARD “BUGGER.” WHAT WAS THE REST OF IT?
Shhhh
WHAT??
It also meant she couldn't hear herself digging in her popcorn bag like a shovel into broken glass all thrugh the film.
Excellent sessions at the Y recently. In Christmas photos with my nephews I was too much older and too much heavier.
Driving home from Atlanta in the snow I had a mind-storm that I’ve not known how to put into words until now, and perhaps my words will be inadequate still. The odd thing was that holiday reading of Tolkien helped me into it. Christopher Tolkien makes the observation in The Peoples of Middle Earth that when the elves became aware of Sauron’s ring, they hid the three elven rings and, to keep them safe, made the everlastingly consequential choice that they should make nothing new, but only protect what was already made. For however thousands of years that was, the elves did nothing bold, but fought a long retreat, hoping to save the remnant. By contrast the fiery hero Feanor had risked all to forge ahead in a manner whose outcomes were unknown, but certainly perilous. Perhaps the elves had chosen the one in response to the terrible consequences of the other. Celebrimbor balancing Feanor, and each choice fraught with unforeseeable consequence. Anyway, I was pondering all this, when I realized that the choice of Feanor is always my choice, to a degree that the conservativeness of the elven lords afterwards is almost incomprehensible to me, as if it were a principle of debate and not a real option in the world. But I know most of the world would disagree with me on this.
So, as I was driving, I must have been turning this over in my mind, for with a jolt I realized that herein lies an explanation of my life. Far back in my childhood, lying in bed vibrantly awake, eyes brimming years, exultant far beyond any vocabulary I had then–or now– to describe it, I dedicated my life to love, and to a single love that has never wavered, however frayed by fury and disappointment, never explained itself to the laity, never known quite what it was beyond beauty and joy. Danger or mockery mattered not at all. Consequence mattered not at all, because I had found what in my life to love. I loved the spirit that came down to me on those nights. Was he an angel? Was he Shelley’s BEAUTY? I am happy to call him God, though what I mean by that word any more I am not sure. I have always called him God in my heart, though it is too secret–and embarrassing– to speak aloud. He was my Maud Gonne, my Beatrice, except one became a crone and the other died, whereas the love of my life is swift brave and and radiant forever. I became one who has dedicated himself not only to love, but to a love that required a certain kind of life, lived in a certain way, and fidelity to that choice has informed all my days. If your lover is God, there are certain things you do not do, and certain things you must do, and if I was sloppy and awkward at all this, it was because there was no precedent known to me to work from. I was learning it as I went. Things which were not worthy of him must be tolerated, of course, but never adopted, never accepted inwardly. His rules are not the world’s rules, and when I was writing poetry or singing in a choir or wrestling with sweaty boys in a Dublin sauna, all was the same, all sanctified by his imponderable example. I was set apart by love, given a destiny by love which I did not see clearly but which I groped toward every hour of the day. I loved the music that I loved because it seemed to be the music that surrounded the Descent. I loved poetry because poetry came to me almost with the Being’s first touch. People thought I was above myself because I wanted to go to museums and concerts, and perhaps I was, but I was pulled there by someone I loved and in desire for him I wanted to be as close as possible at all moments. I knew which things were of this love, and which things were not, and I provoked and puzzled those around me in my obstinate fidelity. I beat my way into a life of art when I seemed destined for a desk in an office like my father, because art was the nearest thing I could do which was like to him. I loved men both unwisely and well, for that it what I received from him, a passion overshadowing, transcendent, holy, shattering. They added only a body. Days and years were predicated on the awesome boldness of whispering yes to the presence in the room, vowing to follow wherever he lead.
There were times when I think I was the happiest boy in the world, and I could never tell anybody why.
In practical terms, when you’re looking for a mortal lover to mirror that radiant spirit, he has to be as much as possible like Him. The pursuit of heroes for your lover is beautiful, epic, but one must not be that surprised when it turns out. . . well, when it doesn’t turn out. When you are creating, you must create only, leaving publication to the powers of the world. On one level, this was a terrible, pervading error that I will pay for till then end of my days. On another it was simply right; it was what he did. He offered the beautiful thing, and one took it or one did not. How many ceilings opened to his dark, enfolding arms, and how many times was he turned away out of fear or conflicting values or just plain dullness? I would do the same as he. I could be as prodigal as earth, and let flowers bloom in hidden citadels of stone. I would create like no one created before, and leave creation at the roadside for anyone to pick up. That no one picked it up should have wounded me less than it did.
In recent years it has gone bitterly wrong, as love affairs do, and I have accused him of deception and cruelty. He is guilty of deception and cruelty, and no tribunal but repentance can wipe that clean. On the other hand, I lost my nerve. In a life which asked or sought no certainty, I came to a certain age–this one-- and realized I had none, no certainty, no palpable achievement, no family, no spouse in the flesh, no comfort, no provision for the time to come, no life as most people think of it. I panicked. I began grasping for things I never wanted before, assurances and supports and acknowledgments which are not of him, and were not of me until I grew afraid. Yet as long as I fixed on turning back to what was–or plunging forward to the paradise I thought we were seeking from the first-- as long as I fixed on bringing it all to the consummation I felt was just or right, there would be nothing for me but wrath and misery. He is wild; that’s why I loved him. Fairness, even kindness, was never part of it. I shouldn’t have deceived myself. He did not change. I did. I simply lived too long.
Driving in the blizzard, for whatever reason (perhaps mortal fear) I suddenly let go. The love affair was over. I began to sob, trying to drive through blinding tears. But the remarkable thing is they were not tears of sorrow at all. As I veered and skidded I was crying thank you. . . thank you. . . thank you, for I had lived a life bolder and more strangely beautiful than I could have imagined. I had dedicated myself with a hero’s valor, with a lover’s passion, and that it came to nothing is, ultimately, not the point. A more glorious interlude can scarcely be imagined. For a time–a very long time, now that I think of it–I was the lover of the power that shouts upon the mountain, that sings between the waves of the deep, and, in the face of that, disappointment in any mortal thing seems trivial. Thank you, thank you, I said. I still say it. When I drove into the parking lot across the street on St. Stephen’s Day, I was for the first time in fifty years free. Divorced. Widowed. I don’t know what to do with myself now, but I’m trying this and that, as any person suddenly single would. It is all right. Thank you. Thank you. From the bottom of the heart that is within my heart, thank you. And goodbye.
Angry note from Ste. I don’t know why. Something in my Christmas letter provoked hm. He said he should never have cooked Indian for me. He accused me of making lousy cauliflower curry, which is true.
Resolutions? I have already forgiven God for being the ruination of my life. I think that’s enough for now.
Friday, December 31, 2010
Thursday, December 30, 2010
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
December 27, 2010
Blowing snow and drifting snow in the dark outside the windows, like time lapse photos of some great white desert.
After Christmas Eve service I skipped the parties and came home, staring at the lights of the tree until I was too sleepy to sit up. Rose and drove to Atlanta in the first outriders of what would become this monumental storm, listening to an audio books version of Moby Dick. Though written rather more lushly than modern taste, it’s clearly the great American book, still. Mapple’s sermon alone is excellent almost beyond imagination. Melville also funnier than I remembered. Had the honor of experiencing Atlanta’s first white Christmas in memory, which was in fact very beautiful. Beka did not return from Colorado, but Linda and the boys were well. The boys are inseparable, very handsome, very different. Both are wrestlers and therefore in breathtaking physical shape. They showed me their wrestling videos, which were impressive, but they pinned their opponents too quickly for there to be much to see. One white boy in a singlet looks much like another at distance, so I had to keep asking who was who. We ate incessantly. Jonathan drove us through the snow to see the latest Narnia movie, and then we played cards until midnight. I rose early and drove north. Deliberately did not listen for the weather report. Just above Atlanta the roads were a hair’s breadth from impassable. My tractionless little Prius slid and fishtailed if I went over 25, but on we soldiered. Cars had skidded into the grass on both sides of the road for twenty miles or so, and the air throbbed with the lights of cops and tow trucks. Several cars towing trailers had swerved around almost blocking the lanes. We inched gingerly past. I kept going, thinking, for some reason, that things would improve as I headed north into the mountains. But, in fact they did, and from north Georgia on the highway was dry, though snow fell ceaselessly and the roadsides and hills were a glory of pure white. You could see far into the roadside forests, and I looked deep for animals. Off the highway on the streets of Asheville, things were much worse. The streets were lined with bundled pedestrians, by which I knew everyone was afraid to use their cars. I couldn’t get into the alley, but parked at the apartments across the street, where the long-traveling Prius is now also trapped and useless. Don’t know if the pickup has any traction. Might test that out today. My ice driving skills did come back on I-85, and that gives me a certain confidence.
The only mark in the snow is my tracks from when I went out on the porch to fill the bird feeders.
The tree has not dropped even a single needle.
Circe startles when something surprises her, a leftover from her life on the streets of New Orleans, I guess. Then it’s a claws-out panic escape over anything that lies in the way. Last night–though what on earth could have startled her I don’t know–it was my face. I was asleep, and what came suddenly to my dream when it happened was a vivid close-up of thorny stalks of briar. I’m fascinated by this, by the way a physical sensation turned instantly into an image in dream time.
Blizzard conditions. High wind warning. The bushes outside my study window look like a snowman trying to peeping Tom.
Evening. The snow blanket made the nearby mountains wonderfully visible. I think you could have seen anything as big as a dog moving over the whiteness between the black slashes of the trees. When sunset came it made those same mountains the most radiant rosy gold I have ever seen. They seemed not to reflect but to originate the light.
Blowing snow and drifting snow in the dark outside the windows, like time lapse photos of some great white desert.
After Christmas Eve service I skipped the parties and came home, staring at the lights of the tree until I was too sleepy to sit up. Rose and drove to Atlanta in the first outriders of what would become this monumental storm, listening to an audio books version of Moby Dick. Though written rather more lushly than modern taste, it’s clearly the great American book, still. Mapple’s sermon alone is excellent almost beyond imagination. Melville also funnier than I remembered. Had the honor of experiencing Atlanta’s first white Christmas in memory, which was in fact very beautiful. Beka did not return from Colorado, but Linda and the boys were well. The boys are inseparable, very handsome, very different. Both are wrestlers and therefore in breathtaking physical shape. They showed me their wrestling videos, which were impressive, but they pinned their opponents too quickly for there to be much to see. One white boy in a singlet looks much like another at distance, so I had to keep asking who was who. We ate incessantly. Jonathan drove us through the snow to see the latest Narnia movie, and then we played cards until midnight. I rose early and drove north. Deliberately did not listen for the weather report. Just above Atlanta the roads were a hair’s breadth from impassable. My tractionless little Prius slid and fishtailed if I went over 25, but on we soldiered. Cars had skidded into the grass on both sides of the road for twenty miles or so, and the air throbbed with the lights of cops and tow trucks. Several cars towing trailers had swerved around almost blocking the lanes. We inched gingerly past. I kept going, thinking, for some reason, that things would improve as I headed north into the mountains. But, in fact they did, and from north Georgia on the highway was dry, though snow fell ceaselessly and the roadsides and hills were a glory of pure white. You could see far into the roadside forests, and I looked deep for animals. Off the highway on the streets of Asheville, things were much worse. The streets were lined with bundled pedestrians, by which I knew everyone was afraid to use their cars. I couldn’t get into the alley, but parked at the apartments across the street, where the long-traveling Prius is now also trapped and useless. Don’t know if the pickup has any traction. Might test that out today. My ice driving skills did come back on I-85, and that gives me a certain confidence.
The only mark in the snow is my tracks from when I went out on the porch to fill the bird feeders.
The tree has not dropped even a single needle.
Circe startles when something surprises her, a leftover from her life on the streets of New Orleans, I guess. Then it’s a claws-out panic escape over anything that lies in the way. Last night–though what on earth could have startled her I don’t know–it was my face. I was asleep, and what came suddenly to my dream when it happened was a vivid close-up of thorny stalks of briar. I’m fascinated by this, by the way a physical sensation turned instantly into an image in dream time.
Blizzard conditions. High wind warning. The bushes outside my study window look like a snowman trying to peeping Tom.
Evening. The snow blanket made the nearby mountains wonderfully visible. I think you could have seen anything as big as a dog moving over the whiteness between the black slashes of the trees. When sunset came it made those same mountains the most radiant rosy gold I have ever seen. They seemed not to reflect but to originate the light.
Friday, December 24, 2010
December 24, 2010
Brilliant Christmas Eve. The Y was nearly empty this morning, the streets vacant. But the grocery stores are full to overflowing. Couples push carts with $200 worth of food in them while I stand behind them at the checkout with my sushi and cream soda.
Working steadily on my filmscript of The Pillar of Fire.
Sick to death of The Santaland Diaries.
Ste writes tender emails from Cambridgeshire. I answer them tenderly, I think, but I don’t know how anything sounds to anybody else anymore. Part of his delectable strangeness is an almost supernatural tenderness, a quality so extreme you think at first he’s mocking. But he’s not. I’m tender in my way, I suppose, but I’m also worldly and direct, and I don’t always know if I’ve mixed the recipe of my responses right. Yet somehow he blasted his life to smithereens. Somehow he got himself barred from half the pubs in his hometown, so when I was there we had to wander to find a place to tipple. What part of him is that? He can snarl and hiss. Sickened reaction to that in himself is part of his tenderness.
Muddy paw prints appeared on my back doorframe at about the height of my eyes. It seems pretty certain I was visited by a bear.
Christmas has defeated me every year since I was thirteen.
So cold in my studio that the paint won’t dry. My peacoat has a green stripe from where I backed into a piece that should have been dry last weekend. Driving back, I was almost wiped out by a garbage truck. Afterwards I thought that if I had died then, my last words would have been, “Logan! Merry Christmas!” That would have been all right.
Brilliant Christmas Eve. The Y was nearly empty this morning, the streets vacant. But the grocery stores are full to overflowing. Couples push carts with $200 worth of food in them while I stand behind them at the checkout with my sushi and cream soda.
Working steadily on my filmscript of The Pillar of Fire.
Sick to death of The Santaland Diaries.
Ste writes tender emails from Cambridgeshire. I answer them tenderly, I think, but I don’t know how anything sounds to anybody else anymore. Part of his delectable strangeness is an almost supernatural tenderness, a quality so extreme you think at first he’s mocking. But he’s not. I’m tender in my way, I suppose, but I’m also worldly and direct, and I don’t always know if I’ve mixed the recipe of my responses right. Yet somehow he blasted his life to smithereens. Somehow he got himself barred from half the pubs in his hometown, so when I was there we had to wander to find a place to tipple. What part of him is that? He can snarl and hiss. Sickened reaction to that in himself is part of his tenderness.
Muddy paw prints appeared on my back doorframe at about the height of my eyes. It seems pretty certain I was visited by a bear.
Christmas has defeated me every year since I was thirteen.
So cold in my studio that the paint won’t dry. My peacoat has a green stripe from where I backed into a piece that should have been dry last weekend. Driving back, I was almost wiped out by a garbage truck. Afterwards I thought that if I had died then, my last words would have been, “Logan! Merry Christmas!” That would have been all right.
December 23, 2010
Tiny snow, like salt, carried by the wind.
Harpist Grace Cloutier joined us for the Britten Ceremony of Carols, and at Avenue M for drinks afterwards. She is reinforcement for my judgment that, among professional artists, musicians tend to be the least temperamental, the least diva-ish. Her last and next gig are at Saint John the Divine, so our class quotient soars. To continue the thought above, musicians (along with, maybe, film-makers) have the greatest tendency to equate artistry with the fixing of mistakes. One really has very little to do with the other.
I think I need a rest from the things that annoy me. I probably annoy them just as much, and they need a rest from me.
Massive windstorm, during which only one bulb was torn from the spruce tree outside. I will take that as a sign.
Tiny snow, like salt, carried by the wind.
Harpist Grace Cloutier joined us for the Britten Ceremony of Carols, and at Avenue M for drinks afterwards. She is reinforcement for my judgment that, among professional artists, musicians tend to be the least temperamental, the least diva-ish. Her last and next gig are at Saint John the Divine, so our class quotient soars. To continue the thought above, musicians (along with, maybe, film-makers) have the greatest tendency to equate artistry with the fixing of mistakes. One really has very little to do with the other.
I think I need a rest from the things that annoy me. I probably annoy them just as much, and they need a rest from me.
Massive windstorm, during which only one bulb was torn from the spruce tree outside. I will take that as a sign.
December 21, 2010
Terry came to the studio yesterday and decided to give me a show at Avenue M. This means a new task ahead of me, for the most part a joyful one, of preparing and touching up and selecting and filling in gaps. I had misunderstood her purpose, actually, and wasn’t ready for the offer of a show.
Decorated the spruce and the magnolia in the backyard with red bulbs. They’re shocking in the universal brownish-gray of this dull day.
Appropriate gloom for the Solstice.
Terry came to the studio yesterday and decided to give me a show at Avenue M. This means a new task ahead of me, for the most part a joyful one, of preparing and touching up and selecting and filling in gaps. I had misunderstood her purpose, actually, and wasn’t ready for the offer of a show.
Decorated the spruce and the magnolia in the backyard with red bulbs. They’re shocking in the universal brownish-gray of this dull day.
Appropriate gloom for the Solstice.
Tuesday, December 21, 2010
December 20, 2010
Bright moon setting far to the north. Did my Saint Nicholas gig at church yesterday, the time I think I have enjoyed it most. People remember me for doing this far more than I remember doing it–which is only when Thomas asks me to at the opening of Advent. They shout “Saint Nicholas!” across the street to me, and I have to stop and think what they mean. A little girl in one of the houses I looked at was beaming at me the whole time, and her father said, “She is proud to have Saint Nicholas in her house.” I bought balsa airplanes and balloons for the kids. This seemed to have the same temporary effect as very expensive gifts.
Putting up DJ’s Christmas tree. The stand would not unfold, and he handed it to me. I said, “I’m not really very mechanical.” He said, “You always seem to have your way.”
Haven’t been following the issue closely, but L seems to have written something in a Mountain Xpress review which provoked people to cry politics. Some of the same people defending her attacked me on the very same principle for my blog, and attacked SS for daring to give The Beautiful Johanna the review it deserved. Politics called for a hatchet job, and because he didn’t succumb, it was assumed he was indebted to me in some way. The most cravenly political are the first to cry politics. Now that L is tied to the Magnetic Field, dishonest people will assume dishonesty. Any review not glowing will be read by the offended party as meant to profit herself and the venue in some way. L bravely defends herself. I was so shocked that I laid low. Her defenders are vocal. I assumed I had none. But perhaps I’m being too careful on L’s account and mine. The sort of people who respond anonymously to reviews in the papers usually do not have an actual point of view, but merely vehemence of reaction. Maybe more people understand this than we realize.
Dream last night that I had insulted a judge or a magistrate or someone and was sentenced to a week in jail. Everyone shrugged and said “it’s only a week,” but I was devastated, and vowed to fast until the week was over. I think I’d watched too many episodes of CSI before bedtime. Curious thought about that: I adore the people on all the versions of CSI, which I watch whenever I can– yet viewed from the point of view of the public they’re supposed to serve, they’re arrogant, reckless, self gratifying assholes. Katherine in Los Vegas is a Nazified bitch, just as happy to destroy reputations as find the truth. Most of them are mightily pleased with themselves and smirkingly amused by their own abuses of power. When I’m in the fictional moment, I think it’s amusing too. When I put myself in the place of the public, I think they’re vaguely horrific; I feel that one must think twice to decide whether the protection they provide is worth the abuse they dole out. The more true to life this is, the more disturbing.
I know the solutions to two major problems of contemporary American society. The economy: legalize marijuana and tax it. This has the added benefit of getting a quarter million harmless people out of jail. Law Enforcement: change from the American paradigm of putting bad guys into jail to the Irish paradigm of keeping the peace. In a glimmer goes the whole brutal, wastefully expensive, asinine conception of law as a cock fight between prosecutors and defenders, wherein the truth is, by and large, irrelevant. The only argument against that is that people who get rich off the suffering of others would lose access to the sources of their wealth.
Incipient blossoms on the witch hazel.
Bright moon setting far to the north. Did my Saint Nicholas gig at church yesterday, the time I think I have enjoyed it most. People remember me for doing this far more than I remember doing it–which is only when Thomas asks me to at the opening of Advent. They shout “Saint Nicholas!” across the street to me, and I have to stop and think what they mean. A little girl in one of the houses I looked at was beaming at me the whole time, and her father said, “She is proud to have Saint Nicholas in her house.” I bought balsa airplanes and balloons for the kids. This seemed to have the same temporary effect as very expensive gifts.
Putting up DJ’s Christmas tree. The stand would not unfold, and he handed it to me. I said, “I’m not really very mechanical.” He said, “You always seem to have your way.”
Haven’t been following the issue closely, but L seems to have written something in a Mountain Xpress review which provoked people to cry politics. Some of the same people defending her attacked me on the very same principle for my blog, and attacked SS for daring to give The Beautiful Johanna the review it deserved. Politics called for a hatchet job, and because he didn’t succumb, it was assumed he was indebted to me in some way. The most cravenly political are the first to cry politics. Now that L is tied to the Magnetic Field, dishonest people will assume dishonesty. Any review not glowing will be read by the offended party as meant to profit herself and the venue in some way. L bravely defends herself. I was so shocked that I laid low. Her defenders are vocal. I assumed I had none. But perhaps I’m being too careful on L’s account and mine. The sort of people who respond anonymously to reviews in the papers usually do not have an actual point of view, but merely vehemence of reaction. Maybe more people understand this than we realize.
Dream last night that I had insulted a judge or a magistrate or someone and was sentenced to a week in jail. Everyone shrugged and said “it’s only a week,” but I was devastated, and vowed to fast until the week was over. I think I’d watched too many episodes of CSI before bedtime. Curious thought about that: I adore the people on all the versions of CSI, which I watch whenever I can– yet viewed from the point of view of the public they’re supposed to serve, they’re arrogant, reckless, self gratifying assholes. Katherine in Los Vegas is a Nazified bitch, just as happy to destroy reputations as find the truth. Most of them are mightily pleased with themselves and smirkingly amused by their own abuses of power. When I’m in the fictional moment, I think it’s amusing too. When I put myself in the place of the public, I think they’re vaguely horrific; I feel that one must think twice to decide whether the protection they provide is worth the abuse they dole out. The more true to life this is, the more disturbing.
I know the solutions to two major problems of contemporary American society. The economy: legalize marijuana and tax it. This has the added benefit of getting a quarter million harmless people out of jail. Law Enforcement: change from the American paradigm of putting bad guys into jail to the Irish paradigm of keeping the peace. In a glimmer goes the whole brutal, wastefully expensive, asinine conception of law as a cock fight between prosecutors and defenders, wherein the truth is, by and large, irrelevant. The only argument against that is that people who get rich off the suffering of others would lose access to the sources of their wealth.
Incipient blossoms on the witch hazel.
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