White Light (reposted)

This post was originally published on October 31, 2012. I leave you with it, in anticipation to a post coming soon....

It was only after I saw my shrink, today, that I fully understood what I had done.

Resolved the defining challenge of my life.

Defining because, yes, it had ruled me since I can remember. I couldn’t get the sounds in my head out of the cello. I raged, I bit myself—never puncturing the skin, but leaving the indentations of teeth marks for hours. I once broke a bow, slamming it on the strings of the instrument.

I knew it was in there; I couldn’t get it out. And with the rage came the depression. Black days, awful days when the minutes dragged, when no amount of will could banish the demon that lurked in the corner, always crouched, always ready to pounce.

Things I didn’t care about I did well. Teaching, never a problem.

The cello?

An agony that I couldn’t do, and couldn’t not do. I couldn’t breath at the cello, I held my breath until I had to gasp. My shoulders cramped, so tight was I.

I was practicing for hours at a time. There were days it went well. I floated down the street, beaming at strangers.

Most days it didn’t.

Late at night, in Chicago. Raf asleep, Marc alone in an empty apartment. I would be meditating, and almost get through.

I called it the breakthrough. The music would get out, I would get out, the struggle would be over.

I’d win.

Or be free.

I’d masturbate, hoping to use the energy of orgasm to push me through that door. And use Rush, amyl nitrite. I’d see a white light, I’d move closer, the orgasm would stun me. But I never got through.

Last March, I relived the moment I lost my mind, back in December. Had two weeks of struggle, of fierce concentration and mindfulness. It took five minutes to save a document. I washed dishes as if the process were a koan. I retrained myself to do everything.

At the end of the day, I would be exhausted. I’d sit and read what someone else had written.

I’d laugh out loud.

“He’s so funny,” I’d say.

“He makes the most amazing leaps,” I’d say.

I was reading that day’s post in a blog called Life, Death and Iguanas.

“I’m taking the writer to get his teeth fixed,” I told Taí. She was in a storm of worry ten islands down the Caribbean. I made sure he ate. I obsessed about his having water at all times. I needed to take care of him, this gifted guy whom I have nothing to do with.

And everything….

“He didn’t go away, I could have lost him,” I’m telling the shrink. And then, “hey, aren’t you guys supposedly to have Kleenex?”

He gestured to the side table.

Well, they are our confessors, these shrinks. And at one moment, retelling the story, I jumped back, back to a dark apartment, back to a man in agony, back to a man with his brain flooded with chemicals, and a light, a light, a light I could not get to. A light that would recede and leave me so stabbed with alone.

I’m gasping, now, as I was gasping in that red velvet chair, as I was gasping at the cello.

I have just had an orgasm I have never had. Nothing physical, no hands to wash, or floor to wipe. And no, I saw no white light.

I see that white light when I sit in my chair, at five in the afternoon and read the absurd, the tortured, most—the gifted—words he’s written.

He’s filled with that light, and I tell him, “fuck, you’re amazing.”

Famous and Unknown

There are guys who can make you laugh just by looking at you. Or repeating a word. Or making a gesture.

Consider that I have been laughing out loud in the café that became my office when Wal-Mart, during their realignment, realized that I (or my job) was outta line.

I challenge you—look at the clip below and try not to laugh. Unless you’re comatose, catatonic, or seriously, seriously depressed you’ll be chortling, giggling, laughing and finally holding your sides.

Victor Borge was born in Denmark in 1909. His father was an orchestral musician; Borge in turn becomes a child prodigy, later studying at the Royal Danish Academy of Music. He became one of Denmark’s greatest musicians, states the official website, and then turned to comedy.

Oddly, the website is the blandest of affairs (and could, incidentally, use a good editing—at one point, it speaks of “Victor borge,” another sentence manages to incorporate two mistakes….) I say oddly, because the site must have been shown to the family, who in 2008 participated in a documentary for Danish television.

And the documentary is anything but bland. Borge, for all that he appears the genial, grandfatherly character in later life, is a very talented, very handsome and…

…very nervous young man.

He plays the Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto Number Two for his first big concert. Then something happens—the musician’s worst fear. He gets stuck, he goes and talks to the conductor, and covers the gaffe.

Performance is interesting. There is a part of every musician that must be a racehorse, a thoroughbred—quivering sensibility, starting if not bolting at every slightest sound, and in an agonizing awareness of the surroundings. But it also requires the abilities of the plow horse—stamina, stolid nerves, brute insensitivity.

And what happens when the mix isn’t right? A descent into the abyss that couldn’t be swifter if you greased the toboggan.

Borge’s solution?

Humor.

Which has, as you know, a dark side. A Jew, Borge wasted no time lambasting Hitler; in the words of the BBC:

His lampooning of Adolf Hitler provoked the ire of Germany long before the Nazis invaded Denmark in April 1940.

Fortunately, Borge was in Sweden at the time of the invasion. Like so many other Jews, he fled to the States, arriving with 20$ to his name.

That’s what the article in the BBC says. But he’s not quite that hard up: he arrives with his first wife, and she has family in New York. But yes, it’s a struggle, not the least of which because he can’t speak the language (his wife has written out the Danish routines into English, Borge is reading them over the radio….) He gets a big break, though, when he appears on the Ed Sullivan Show, and then the Bing Crosby Show. There, he’s slotted for seven or eight minutes, but takes 30 minutes instead.

The documentary makes it clear—he’s an absent father. In fact, one of his sons says that for some time in his childhood, he thought his father was a family friend. He is obsessed with making it, and practices for hours at a time. Notice, for example, that even when he is accompanying a singer or soloist, he frequently is playing without sheet music. Has he memorized, or is he so good that he’s improvising the accompaniment?

After twenty years, the marriage fizzles. He’s been on the road a lot; his wife has no wish to travel. He meets a young woman from a small town in Indiana, he’s entranced, they marry.

And live a very European, formal, Victorian lifestyle. The children dress for dinner, speak only when spoken to, are taught to behave in a way that will be a credit to Borge. And the family is a unit doing one thing—promoting and creating the great man’s career.

And how big is he? Well, claims the documentary, as of 2008 he still holds the record for the longest run on Broadway, some 849 shows. That’s two and a half years. Oh, and nobody had ever done a one-man show before.

He gets rave reviews. Which he can only read about the next day. His own reaction? His nerves had gobsmacked him, he thinks he’s bombed, he wants to leave at intermission. His wife has to order him back on stage, as she will later forbid him to leave the party after the show.

He is obsessive, every detail counts. He goes back to Denmark, and is received like royalty. He buys a manor house, and lives in the grand style. And then, at the end of his career, the critics turn on him.

Well, it’s gotta be said. They guy was repetitive—he must have fallen off the end of his piano stool millions of times in the span of his career. But Borge is hypersensitive—the one word “repetitive” cancels out the thousand of words of praise. He’s filled, says the photographer who followed him around for two years, with fury.

And he had a problem—the stage was his life.

As was, apparently, his strong and independent wife. “They didn’t need each other,” said his granddaughter.

Well, it seems he needed her—the photo of Borge slumped in the chair of his wife’s bedroom beams agony as strongly as, on stage, he would beam comedy. He grieves deeply but as always, goes on. He travels for one last time to Denmark in 2000, and then, hours after returning to the US, dies.

He traveled in high circles, had many honors showered on him, and lived an elegant and rich life. He had, of course, a brilliant career.

One wonders—did he have a life? There were two Victor Borges, says the photographer who gave two years of her life to him, and who weeps in the documentary filmed seven or eight years after Borge’s death. The one always interrupting, and always cracking jokes. And the one whom no one knew. If no one knew you, could you really say that you had lived?

I think of another Danish musician, Gunnar Johansen. And they were fast friends, Borge and Johansen, respected each other immensely, and had wives from small towns in America’s heartland. Borge became known as “the funniest man in the world.” Johansen turned his back on fame, went into his studio, and emerged, ten hours later. He had, perhaps, recorded another piece, or learned a new piece, or maybe just practiced. But at the end of the day, he was at home, with his beloved wife, who worshipped him.

And Borge?

More often than not in a hotel room.

His children—one of whom is the page-turner in the clip below—speak fondly of him. His grandchildren as well. There must have been something in that Pagliacci, the world’s funniest man, the man nobody knew. 

White light

It was only after I saw my shrink, today, that I fully understood what I had done.

Resolved the defining challenge of my life.

Defining because, yes, it had ruled me since I can remember. I couldn’t get the sounds in my head out of the cello. I raged, I bit myself—never puncturing the skin, but leaving the indentations of teeth marks for hours. I once broke a bow, slamming it on the strings of the instrument.

I knew it was in there; I couldn’t get it out. And with the rage came the depression. Black days, awful days when the minutes dragged, when no amount of will could banish the demon that lurked in the corner, always crouched, always ready to pounce.

Things I didn’t care about I did well. Teaching, never a problem.

The cello?

An agony that I couldn’t do, and couldn’t not do. I couldn’t breath at the cello, I held my breath until I had to gasp. My shoulders cramped, so tight was I.

I was practicing for hours at a time. There were days it went well. I floated down the street, beaming at strangers.

Most days it didn’t.

Late at night, in Chicago. Raf asleep, Marc alone in an empty apartment. I would be meditating, and almost get through.

I called it the breakthrough. The music would get out, I would get out, the struggle would be over.

I’d win.

Or be free.

I’d masturbate, hoping to use the energy of orgasm to push me through that door. And use Rush, amyl nitrite. I’d see a white light, I’d move closer, the orgasm would stun me. But I never got through.

Last March, I relived the moment I lost my mind, back in December. Had two weeks of struggle, of fierce concentration and mindfulness. It took five minutes to save a document. I washed dishes as if the process were a koan. I retrained myself to do everything.

At the end of the day, I would be exhausted. I’d sit and read what someone else had written.

I’d laugh out loud.

“He’s so funny,” I’d say.

“He makes the most amazing leaps,” I’d say.

I was reading that day’s post in a blog called Life, Death and Iguanas.

“I’m taking the writer to get his teeth fixed,” I told Taí. She was in a storm of worry ten islands down the Caribbean. I made sure he ate. I obsessed about his having water at all times. I needed to take care of him, this gifted guy whom I have nothing to do with.

And everything….

“He didn’t go away, I could have lost him,” I’m telling the shrink. And then, “hey, aren’t you guys supposedly to have Kleenex?”

He gestured to the side table.

Well, they are our confessors, these shrinks. And at one moment, retelling the story, I jumped back, back to a dark apartment, back to a man in agony, back to a man with his brain flooded with chemicals, and a light, a light, a light I could not get to. A light that would recede and leave me so stabbed with alone.

I’m gasping, now, as I was gasping in that red velvet chair, as I was gasping at the cello.

I have just had an orgasm I have never had. Nothing physical, no hands to wash, or floor to wipe. And no, I saw no white light.

I see that white light when I sit in my chair, at five in the afternoon and read the absurd, the tortured, most—the gifted—words he’s written.

He’s filled with that light, and I tell him, “fuck, you’re amazing.”

Not working….

It’s a day when everything—including this blogger—is not working.

Well, I have those days. Yesterday, when I should have been resting, I industriously compiled the largest post I’ve ever written. Today, I am fretting.

It’s the damn iPod. Why is it that I absolutely crave every Apple product, and then instantly hate them the moment I start to use them? Do I have a secret aluminum fetish?

OK—news of the day. The iPod (curious—computer seems to know that word….) that put—or conversely shuffled—music into my ear, has died. And curiously, the death took the form of refusing to display anything except that annoying little apple with the bite taken out of it. It was the techie equivalent of the children’s “nyah nhay NA nyah nyah.”

(Incidentally, and just to fill up space, did you know that that sequence of sounds exists in ALL cultures? And that kids use it the same way? Just one of those facts that fill my brain, shoving out where the house keys are….)

Well, I took the iPod to Radio Shack and they said they might—a shake of the head here—be able to fix it. So now I have a new iPod—not the Touch but the Classic. The new Touch, it seems, has gotten all fancy: camera, video cam, email, I don’t know whatnot. The Classic, I’m happy to report, has but four buttons, three of which I will probably never use. I did check, there appears to be no nemesis—the dreaded shuffle button.

Unless, of course, it’s hidden somewhere on the elegant aluminum sheath, and I activate it….

Right, so spending 250 bucks made me hungry, and I go to the café where a completely annoying woman is screaming into her iPad. She’s on Skype, or rather she’s dragging us all onto Skype—her Skype.

OK—and am I being paranoid in thinking she was using up all the Internet? Because for some reason the connection was terrible. She was closer to the modem, if that makes any difference. (If I’m right, please tell me. Otherwise, no….)

Well, my new iPod has now come to life. Because I have iTunes already installed, it’s synched its way through my library—those 2500 “songs” that are motets, arias, cantatas. It has greeted me cordially by saying “Welcome.”

So what am I supposed to do? Say “Welcome” back?

The manual, I think, which was artfully or zenfully hidden in the bowels of the box, beneath the iPod and above the little gadgets—ear buds, cable, dock.

The little manual, of course, doesn’t deign to do words. Just little pictures. I study these for a bit. The USB cable has to go into the USB port.

Thanks, Apple!

Oh, and don’t submerge the device in water….

Guys!

Well, I press the round button in the center of the dial. And Welcome goes away! Now what we have is a little list on the left side of the display. The first item says “cover flow.” Right, so what happens if I click it? I do, and discover the covers of every album I own doing the stupid Robert Burns (or whoever—Ms. Taí will know) effect that Apple loves so much. (Speaking of which, shouldn’t it be aPple?)

Guess what! I now have Beethoven’s Ninth symphony playing!

I know why—it’s the first “song” on the iTunes library. Why?  Because iTunes has decided to organize itself by artist. The mezzo in the last movement is Agnes Baltsa.

Agnes—A—get it?

I was always perfectly happy to scroll by Baltsa in the past, but now there’s a problem. I cannot scroll. I put my finger on the display—no luck. I press the down button, but that’s “play / pause.” There is absolutely no way I can get my way down the list to “playlist.”

Oh, and guess what!

There IS a shuffle button!

Worse, Apple has again hidden the volume button. On the Touch, it was on the side of the chassis. On the Classic? Who knows….

Hey, guess what! The stupid little black wheel turns out to be a dial! I just started whirling my albums all around—Now I’m hearing Zelenka!

It’s so typical Mac—I’m right back in high school and EVERYBODY knows where to get dope except me. I’m buying it off the undercover cop….

Well, I know what I have to do. They’re expecting me, the boys at Radio Shack. They probably have a pool going on how long it will take me to come back in the door, swearing under my breath, and ranting that their stupid product is defective. They’ll sigh, customers will look on in interest or disdain. It will develop that the volume button has been there all along, or that merely flipping my wrist in just such a way will roar the machine to epic volumes. I’ll learn all of this and forget half of it and have to go back and the boys will explain it all over again.

Of course, I will swear never to buy another stupid aPple product again.

Until the next sleek little device comes out….

P.S.—Jimmy, whom I know better than my own brothers, has just shown me the little dial thing. And when you have achieved the herculean task of actually making the thing play what you want it to play, then all you have to do is swing the little unlabeled dial again, and that becomes the dial volume.

Wouldn’t tell me where to get the dope, though….

Gorditas and a fallen woman

Always aiming to be of service, I give you this advice, should you find yourself boarding a público: try to sit as close to the door as possible. Also, try NOT to sit next to gorditas.

Why? 

Well, gorditas are young ladies who carry some heft to them. They occupy space. And when the chofer decides to impose the four-person-per-seat rule, he’ll cut no slack. Four people is four people, no matter their size. 

It’s especially bad if you are a flaquito (the gorditas’ opposite) like me, and if the gorditas are on both sides of you. Which in fact they were. So there I sat, looking like a shirt being squeezed out of an old-fashioned wringer. 

Well, the gorditas were students at a school of aesthetics (escuela de estética) which, no, doesn’t mean what you’d think. These little chubbies were not discussing philosophical principles or the properties of beauty and proportion—they were learning to cut hair. That’s aesthetics, down here.

I know this because one of them showed me her “practice head.” Real hair, it seems, is too precious to waste on anything less than experienced aestheticians. Gotta practice first. And she told me what I had always wondered. Yes, the practice head is full of “hair.” After you’re done aestheticizing (oh, of COURSE that’s a word!) you simply snip of the excess aesthetics and start again!

Well, well, something to know….

And happy I was to chat with the chubbies, because, really, the landscape is dreary, in this part of the island. The western edge of the city is a painful repetition of fast food outlets, strip malls, tire shops, car repair shops—all crammed next to each other, and all with monstrous signs with clashing colors. The only break comes when you lift your eyes, and see El Yunque, the tropical rainforest located on the highest mountain in the northeast part of the island.

That’s what I was looking at when the silliness started.

“¡Pare, pare! Hay una señora corriendo, y si ella se cae…” Hey, stop—there’s a lady running for the bus, and if she falls….

“Será una mujer caída….” She’ll be a fallen woman. (this, said by a young lady next to the window.)

Yes, it means just the same in Spanish.

Could it be? Would it finally happen? For my last three trips in públicos had been nothing like what I remembered from years before. Long, extended jokes and gags. Laughter. Gentle teasing and good humor.

Well, the lady catches up to the van, and it’s clear—she’s not colorless. Quite the opposite, for she is chattering the moment she enters and promises not to stop until she exits.

“Ay, mi madre, ¡es la cocina pa’mí!” Oh my lord, it’s the back of the bus (literally, the “kitchen”) for me!

She squeezes her way past, and sits—rather wedges—next to the guy I’d been talking to, those minutes-read-hours at the bus stop.

“Puej, la última vez que estuve en una pisicorre, estaba casi en la falda de otro pasajero…” The last time I was in a público, I was practically sitting in someone’s lap.

“I would be happy to provide that service,” says the guy.

Instantly she is outraged-womanhood.

“¡Señor! ¡Soy una dama casada y respetable!” Sir! I’m a respectable, married lady….

“That hasn’t been established. In fact, it was challenged even before you entered the bus!”

The lady is horrified!

“!¿QUÉ?! ¿Qué usté dice, señor? ¡¿La gente estaba hablando de mí, antes de llegar aquí a la gaugita?! !Qué cosa! ¿Y quién estaba hablando de mí??”

The guy points with his lips (a Puerto Rican thing) to the young woman.

“¡¿QUÉ?! ¡Una mujer como yo, hablando sapos y serpientes de mí! ¡Nena! ¡Qué vergüenza!” What! A fellow woman talking snakes and toads about me! Girl! No shame!

Well, now it’s a trio, as brilliantly witty as anything Haydn wrote. The lady is all outraged innocence, caught against her will between a lascivious man and a saucy young lady. And everything they say plunges her more deeply into her perilous hole. At last, she can bear it no longer!

“Usted, señor,” she says, tapping my shoulder, “make room for a poor thing seeking protection.”

She notes that I am gringo.

“Puede ser que él no entienda….” Maybe he won’t understand….

“Claro, señora. Señorita, move just a bit, to offer protection to the fallen woman….”

This is met with a horrified squeal.

“Ay, ¡mi madre! ¡Los hombres! ¡Son todos iguales!” All men are alike!

“Don’t move a muscle,” says the guy behind me, “it’s been months since I’ve been this close to a beautiful lady….”

“Ay Dioj mío! ¡Un hombre desesperado!” Oh my God! A desperate man!

Well, it goes on and on, as we pass the dreary stores and encounter a street flooded for an entire block. And it never goes over the edge, never gets vulgar, never is less than light-hearted and fun. But at last, the saucy minx gets out, the man as well, and finally, our lady of the wounded virtue.

“Santos,” she says, backing out of the van, “thanks heavens my saintly mother wasn’t here to see this spectacle!”