“Well, there has to be a place in the world for pissed-off
music meant for something else,” I told Lady. “Though it’s easy to forget about
it, somehow….”
“Whatever do you mean,” said Lady. “And why should music be
pissed-off?”
“Well, I don’t know if the music is pissed-off, but the
listener…”
“Dear me,” said Lady resignedly, “and what has he done now?”
“That’s just the problem,” I told her.
“And…?”
“’What has he done now’ is what you said. And no need
to specify who that ‘he’ would be! Why couldn’t he stay on reality TV where he
belonged? It was a perfect arrangement for everybody. He could be there getting
adulation and I could be here, ignoring him. But how do you ignore….”
“You’re becoming completely unbalanced, Marc….”
“I AM NOT!” I told her, though perhaps speaking in
capitals….
“Anyway, wouldn’t it be better, given your agitated state of
mind, to listen to something soothing? A Haydn quartet, perhaps, or a Mozart
divertimento…”
“Oh God, don’t remind me. I have to do something about damn
Josef Haydn!”
“Surely he wrote a masterpiece or two?”
“The problem may have been that he was too nice a man,” I
told her. “Has anyone ever studied how temperament modifies talent? Think of
how we imagine Haydn: there he is, in his frock coat, with his wig perfectly
powdered. And then there’s Beethoven—he makes Einstein look perfectly coifed….”
“ Was Beethoven really that tempestuous? Or was he just
unconventional?”
“Who knows? According to some, he was good to his nephew…or
at least, better to his nephew than the nephew was to him. Anyway, there are
days you just have to listen to Beethoven….”
“And today was one of those days?”
“Yeah,” I told her. “And so that got me thinking about
Egmont….”
“Ah, Egmont,” said Lady, perhaps suspiciously easily. “Yes,
opus 84. Based on the work of Goethe, concerning the 16th century
Count of Egmont….”
“You’ve been cheating,” I told her.
She immediately took umbrage.
“Indeed not,” she said, snatching the umbrage from my lap.
“Where are you going,” I called.
“Do you think you’re the only person who can have umbrage?!”
she shouted. “Well, I’m tired of it, Marc. Tired of always having to be told
things. Tired of always being the straight man!”
“Well, I’m certainly not going to be the straight
man,” I told her. “I didn’t come out all those years before it was fashionable
just to crawl back in the closet!”
“Here,” called Lady, “Santana—catch! You want Marc’s
umbrage?”
“This is ridiculous,” I told Lady. “I invite you into this
blog and here you are, stealing my umbrage, and worse, completely deflecting
attention from the serious business at hand. We’ve barely touched Beethoven, to
say nothing of Tchaikovsky and Prokofiev.”
Lady tossed the umbrage to Santana.
“Well, I don’t want this old umbrage,” said Santana. “Why
should I? I have plenty of umbrage of my own….”
“Anyway,” said Lady, “I don’t see what Tchaikovsky is doing
here at all. Prokofiev I get. He obviously got a bad deal all his life, even up
until the day he died. Which, by the way, was the same day Stalin died. So they
had to wait three days to bury him, and then guess what! No flowers—because
Stalin had hogged them all!”
“Ridiculous,” I told her, “and give me my umbrage back,
because now I seriously need to take it. Or have it. Whatever—that story is completely
unsubstantiated.”
“Yo, Santana! Guy here wants his umbrage back!”
“Well, I don’t have any umbrage,” said Santana. “Anyway, I’m
busy here, running this café. However, it’s certainly an irony that Stalin and
Prokofiev…”
“That’s Prokofiev and Stalin,” I told him.
“…that they died the same day. Poor Prokofiev. He didn’t
seem able to live either abroad or in Russia. He said he was miserable in Paris
and the United States, but then he got slapped down, just as Shostakovich did,
for writing ‘degenerate’ music. Or maybe it was ‘decadent.’ Anyway, it wasn’t
music that exalted the struggle of the proletariat. So the composers’ union got
onto him, and then Prokofiev had to write a letter, in which he had to renounce
all his previous music. Then, he started to write an opera called The Story of a Real Man.”
“Surely you jest,” said Lady.
“Hah!” I told her. “And I thought you knew everything! All
this business of Goethe and the Count of Egmont! But you don’t know a thing
about Prokofiev!”
“We divided it up,” said Lady. “I wikipediaed Beethoven, and Santana wikipediaed the other. We were
also busy trying to figure out how to cop your umbrage….”
“’Wikipedia’ is not a verb,” I told her.
She stuck her tongue out.
“Anyway,” I told her, “if you’re so smart, what about Tchaikovsky?
What’s the skinny on him?”
“I refuse to have anything to do with Tchaikovsky,” said
Lady. “I don’t approve of gay men marrying women for cover.”
“It’s that old story,” I told her. “Does a thing exist
before you’ve named it? Because we can hardly say that Tchaikovsky was gay—at
least the way we see it today.”
“I know all about this theory,” said Lady, “and I call it
specious with a capital ‘SP.’”
“You mean a capital ‘S’”
“I mean an ‘SP,’” said Lady. “Did Tchaikovsky ever
write anything serious? All that ballet stuff—The Nutcracker, Swan Lake,
Peeping Beauty…”
“Sleeping,” I told her. “Anyway, the man wrote at least six
symphonies. One of which, by the way, Mr. Fernández would give an entire day
to. Number 6—Pathetique!”
“Not convinced,” said Lady. “And I don’t see why he’s here
at all.”
“Three outsiders,” I told her. “Outsiders because of
temperament, or sexuality, or politics. Outsiders who chose to use—or maybe had
to use—somebody else’s story. Is that why this music is the perfect music for
the adolescent, or post-adolescent? Think so…. Anyway, it’s definitely music
written with one fist raised in the air!”
But by then, Lady had dive bombed Santana. She headed for
the door, throwing my umbrage back at me as she left.
