Which
person is she asking? For while most people have two personae, I have three:
the waking, the sleeping, and the up-at-three-in-the-morning.
Up at three
in the morning is nothing unusual, I know. Guys who worry about their mortgages,
their jobs, their teenage kids—they all get up at three. And in this life,
who’s not worrying about something?
My
getting-up-at-three is slightly different. I take a pill, Remeron 15 mg PO HS,
that is something like a date rape drug—it knocks me out, only to wake me up at
three. And then, I am sacked with a craving for sweets. I’ve done coffee ice
cream (Haagen-Dazs, $5.99 at CVS), jelly beans, (Jelly Belly, 30 flavors, $3.49
at CVS), mozzarella cheese (not a sweet, I know, but diabetes runs in the family,
so I forced the change) and last night, pineapple chunks (so does high
cholesterol, so I’m trying this).
The other
unusual thing is that while up, I’m not in that three-in-the-morning worry
state. I’ve done that, I know that; no, I’m quite happy, though I’d rather be
back in bed, asleep. But I munch on, and sated, frequently fall asleep in my
chair. I awaken (marginally) just enough to (usually) lurch back to bed.
This is not
a problem—what is a problem is what this drug does remarkably well to
avert. And that is depression, which is the worst disease possible in terms of
the quality of life.
Nor is that
me—that’s the word from an article I read years ago. It seems that you can have
anything, diseases as terrible as Lou Gehrig’s
Disease or Huntington’s
Chorea and still have a better quality of life. Not having any major
diseases to date, I can only trust the authorities.
But at
three in the morning, I am frequently trawling the Internet, stumbling on
interesting webpages, and emailing them to myself. This is my only clue, when I
wake up four hours later, of who and what I am and have been doing. It’s my one
glimpse into my shadow self. And
last night, apparently, I was listening to “Sure on this Shining Night,” by Samuel Barber.
It’s a song
that is impossible not to love. And it comes with a story,
which I must have read last night:
No doubt
the popularity of "Sure on the Shining Night" was amplified by
Barber's frequent retelling of an anecdote that directly involved the song. In
1979, Barber had just moved into a new apartment in New York City and needed to
call home. He was trying to reach Gian Carlo Menotti, whom he knew was visiting
the apartment. However, upon trying to dial the number from the telephone booth,
Barber realized that he could not recall the newly established phone number.
The composer contacted the operator for assistance who initially refused to
provide Barber with the number, but confessed that she possessed a
"weakness" for "Sure on this Shining Night" and requested
that Barber sing the song's opening phrase to confirm his identity. Barber
complied and was rewarded with his telephone number!
Right—a
nice image, the composer singing his most famous song in a phone booth in New
York.
Oh, and by
the way, Gian Carlo
Menotti was visiting? If so, Gian Carlo had been visiting for half a
century, since the two met at Curtis as students, and they had been life
companions ever since.
From Barber,
I must have drifted off to Rockwell
Kent, because I found that I had sent off the following illustration:
Nice, hunh?
Then I sent on this:
Hmmm—pretty
erotic; was Kent gay? Right, so I looked him up, and the answer is no—he had
three wives, five kids, and was sexually promiscuous.
But his
work must have reminded of another artist, Paul Cadmus, and boy, was he
gay. Take a look at this:
Mmmmm. How
about this:
All that
and he can read, too! Now then, where’s that famous one, you know, the guy on
the bicycle….
You talking
about this?
Well, I
must have been falling asleep. But why was I even up in the first place?
Because of
this….
