destroyed

Telephone

At some time in the future, the great literary works of our time and culture will be translated from the Ancient English (as they may call it) into the dominant language in currency. How impossible this must seem to us! The idiosyncrasies and colloquialisms of Mark Twain, Cormac McCarthy, W.H. Auden; the richness and intertextuals of John Barth, Thomas Pynchon, Vladimir Nabokov; the directness of E.B. White, Saul Bellow, and Ernest Hemingway (well, actually, Hemingway might not be so hard); the already several steps removed ainglish of Geoffrey Chaucer and William Shakespeare and John Keats... all these in reconstitutions that must seem like trying to taste caviar with your tongue wrapped in plastic.

These literary meanings are so bound to their words, their sequences, the very paragraphing on the page, that any other representation must seem to us -- as with a translation in our own time -- temporary, of second-best necessity. But in the future, these versions will become definitive; all originals studied by specialists only, as scholars now are the only qualified to read Homer or Sophocles in Ancient Greek; Aquinas, Cicero, Ovid in Latin. Think of this when you read Ajax or The Oresteia or The Iliad. All that matters is what our imagination makes of the past (or, more properly, all that can matter). Even yesterday can never live again, whether you believe in it or not.

Is this any different from a translation of someone great in our own time, such as Borges or Celine or Garcia Marquez? In the deepest sense, I suppose the answer is no. (In the deepest sense, all our utterances are but approximation, so we have to practice a different kind of faith.) But somewhat more superficially, though I hope not without some piquancy, I do think there is a difference. We do, after all, maintain some cultural connections to our lineage and our timeline, however seemingly far removed. I can imagine the alleyways of Rio de Janeiro, though I have never been there, in a way that I have no chance of imagining the alleyways of Livy's Rome. To put it somewhat more accurately, I am less mistaken in my imagining of mid-century Rio than ancient Rome simply by virtue of proximity. The question would be: is this difference meaningful or meaningless? Or is the difference of degree really only a game of telephone: the farther you go down the line, the less connection to the original?

Who I Was, Who I Am

I became fasincated with Carl Sandburg's volume of poetry, The People, Yes, when I was about 9 years old. This despite the fact I had never seen the book, never held a copy, and never read any of its poems complete. There was a smaller volume of work that had alerted me to its existence, and probably to the existence of Carl himself, with an excerpt from the very beginning, the first poem in the cycle if I recall correctly. "From the four corners of the earth, from corners lashed in wind and bitten with rain and fire, from places where the winds begin and fogs are born with mist children, tall men from tall rocky slopes came and sleepy men from sleepy valleys, their women tall, their women sleepy..." I cannot say what it was about that beginning that excited or moved me, perhaps those sleepy women were irresistible, but I had to have the entire work. I went to the library (the Carnegie Public Library in Coffeyville, Kansas... eternal blessings on Andrew) and tried to find it without luck. I went to the librarian and asked her for help. She told me we could try to obtain it through inter-library loan but this would not do for me. I decided I must possess the work and to do that I needed to possess the paper and ink and binding that contained, like a box of treasure, the soul and its body. The librarian assisted me in ordering the book. I don't know why she did this but we didn't have a proper bookstore in those days and perhaps she just considered it part of her duty. I don't know. But we sent away for the book somehow and I recall I had to drum up something like three dollars or four-fifty, something in that range. I got the money. I would have done whatever I needed to do in my little faux-protected bubbleworld. And then I waited for weeks and weeks. I pictured the book being handstitched and custom-bound, a kind of one-off procedure just for me, at some workshop in Illinois. But arrive it did, at long last. It was shipped to the library and I went there to pick it up. There could be no question what the box contained. And inside was the treasure indeed. And I took it home and read it. Portions of it I read over and over. Was it everything I wanted or needed it to be? I don't remember. Perhaps it was. I don't think so. I did not remain a devotee of Sandburg's work much past my tweens. This is no reflection on him, it might well do me good to revisit. But the point is I had to get what I wanted. Whether or not it held or redeemed a promise is not the important point.

The handful of books from that period I still retain include masterpieces: McElligot's Pool by Dr Seuss; The Trumpet of the Swan by E.B. White; The Rain Forest by Armstrong Sperry; Kavik the Wolf Dog by Walt Morey. My hard-won copy of The People, Yes... I do not know where that volume is now.

Invisible

We can only really look at what we lose.

Universal

If you were a songwriter somewhere on the other side of your career arc, you could do worse than have Julie Taymor celebrate you. Her personal paean and love letter to the songs of The Beatles (mostly Lennon/McCartney but she doesn’t neglect Harrison no she does not), Across the Universe, is perfectly lovely. I have one bone to pick in terms of tempo: when the Hey Jude cover comes along (not my favorite song, I’ll admit right off), I believe she missed a terrific opportunity in letting the choral refrain (the Naaa-na-na na-na-na-naaaaa part) fall flat. The song builds emotionally to that point and if anything is true of Ms Taymor it is that she has no problem pulling out the stops to visually explode emotional lava floes. Instead, at that point in the song, we get a guy banging on some cans in a fairly tepid tap-along that sucks the energy right out of the set piece. Oh well. It is a minor point and I mean it. The film is full of simple, delightful measures. I am especially fond of the voices of the actors singing these songs, they really did a terrific job, creating valid covers in their own right*. I particularly liked T.V. Carpio’s version of I Want To Hold Your Hand. Heartbreaking and poignant, not bubblegummy at all; and her version of I Want You later in the movie is more of the same rich stuff.

Jim Sturgess, a gangly guy I thought was American after his work in the movie 21 but turns out to be British, burns in an assured performance, and his voice is good enough to be the fifth Beatle. (If he is a songwriter, he could have a career; if he isn’t, maybe he should consider it.) Evan Rachel Wood continues to impress, I like everything I’ve seen her do and I think I’ve seen everything to date, professionally. Hell they’re all good, all the other actors are ones I have not seen before: all fresh and full of juice. This is reinvention of a higher order. I congratulate everyone involved.

*The trend to have actors sing their own parts… it seems to be working out pretty well. (The opposite — singers acting their own parts, e.g. Jennifer Hudson and Beyoncé — isn’t going too badly either.) The somewhat related corollary of rap stars as actors (Tupac, Eminem, Ice-T, Ice Cube, et al): no, not so much. (I could cede Will Smith as an exception, though I think his appeal is more movie star than actor. He is unquestionably the former.)

Check It Out For Yourself

In the movies, whenever Michael Douglas kisses a girl, he keeps his eyes open.

Just In Case, Maybe I Should Bring A Tape Recorder

Were I to visit my father’s grave, could I resist the temptation to speak? We set monuments in the ground, stone over bone, a sign of respect for the life that was. We don’t really think the auditory nerve is still in function there, do we, muffled under dust? Or that, enspirited, the ghost can’t make its way beyond the confines of the cemetery soil and so is obliged to hang around waiting for someone to talk to?

And yet, could I resist the temptation to say something to my dad. All that is left in that moment are symbols, so why not speak to one? We set up compartments in our head, places we address the imagination, this is a matter of course — after all, not every conversation is held face to face with another living body. This would be no different. Another way of talking to myself, a way of making sense to myself, under the flag of make-believe.

I’m sure I would at least say hello. So long as I do not expect answer, I would be all right.

Post-Surgical Care

Tell me of your dreams under anaesthesia, and I will tell you the meaning of the world.

(Voice recording, November 9, 2007)

Fixed, Dilated

Glenn Gould once remarked, obliquely, infamously, that Mozart was a lousy composer, yet of course in his own recordings of Mozart he was able to find infectious fun, an extraordinary sense of energy, tremendous beauty.* Indeed it is true of other composers as well. Scarlatti (D.) is an example for me of someone who is very hit or miss though I always look forward to the piano player who can really find, even in the less than stellar works, something worth quarrying that I didn’t hear before (as Gould has done with virtually all of Mozart). It’s interesting to find people who respond to Mozart — any Mozart, all Mozart — in this primal way, the pure genius and all that. Reminds me a bit of people who respond to Kenny G (total poison to my ears, almost no music affects me like that). Brings to mind as I’m listening on Sirius to the Mozart Piano Concerto No 27 in Bb, the announcer, whoever she is, says that whenever she first heard it however many years ago, she was in Florida (a clue?) listening to the radio and became completely transfixed, had to listen all the way through to find out what it was this miraculous music. As I sit here listening to it all I can say is: it is simply not a transfixing work on any level. Mid-grade Mozart, filled with his isms but nothing particularly distinguished. Who knows, the right performer or performance could bring out something of fun perhaps, but intrinsically to find this transfixing is to be in some sense already transfixed, entranced. Pious at the entrance to the church.

*For me they are not the "distortions" purists find, but rather the best versions available. I have a perverse and accurate suspicion Mozart would have thought so too.

No Matter How You Slice It, It’s an Awful Lot of Money

"There is going to be hell to pay."

It could mean there will be a monstrous quantity, a placeholder for a tremendous amount, an onerous amount of cash, a torturous forking over… an infinite amount of capital, indeed an eternal amount.

The other sense: hell as a place, as a person, an entity, a receiver… an institution perhaps, a corporation (a very old corporation)… something, someone to be paid more than you can presently afford.

Both uses are fascinating. There is a certain hyperbole, amusing, something old fashioned about it, something from another era, another belief, another sense of seriousness.

In my mirror: Dead hawk, hit by vehicle. Intact. Wounded, then expired.

(voice recording, 12/7/2007)

The Force Was With Him

As I have said before, though I'm not sure I've said it in this forum, Beethoven was no melodist. (There are precious few exceptions, see if you can name five.) But then what is he exactly? A harmonist, yes. A formalist, all right. But more essentially what we might clunkily call a Forcist, an Energist. His is an art of permeation and timpanic effect rather than specificity*. Is it possible to consider him a precursor to Philip Glass?

*In saying this, I do not mean to diminish his art of voicing.