A Month of Music, Day 9

“Go away,” I told Lady. “I’m deeply busy, this morning, trying to listen to the music of Pérotin, who could provide the missing link in music history.”

I had gotten it into my head, yesterday—where did all this stuff come from? Let’s put it onto another art form: suppose that you had a culture that had no written language, and then in the space of less than 500 years, you suddenly get Shakespeare. Wouldn’t you be a little suspicious?

“I think it was seeded by aliens,” I told her. “What else could it be? No, they’ve visited us before, and they’ll do it again. But at least now we know that they’re friendly. After all, who could give us Byrd….”

“Who’s giving us the bird?”

“William Byrd,” I told her, “and after I’m done trying to listen to Pérotin, we have to set right to work on recusancy. And to the question of whether Tallis was a recusant. There’s quite a bit to be done, so I have no time whatsoever to put you into my blog….”

“Marc, I have no idea what you’re talking about…”

“Neither do I, most of the time. Anyway, here’s the deal. Though I don’t always listen to it, it would be intolerable to live a life without English Renaissance music. It may be, in fact, responsible for much of the moral laxness and intellectual sloth of the current age. I completely believe that nobody should be permitted to leave the house, of a morning, without hearing at least the Agnus Dei from the four-part mass of Byrd. Minimally. Actually, to ensure compliance, it should be mandatory for all employers to play the mass in its entirety first thing in the morning….”

“Marc…”

“Well, we require lunch and coffee breaks, don’t we? It’s absolutely the same thing….”

“Marc, why don’t you just tell me what you’re trying to say.”

“Look, you know Gregorian Chant, don’t you? You know, it had a big vogue, all those years ago, and we were all taking scented baths in candlelit bathrooms and listening to Gregorian Chant played on our cassette tapes….”

“I have no idea….”

“You know, the monks from wherever they were in Spain. Anyway, the point is that people had always sung, and that for years the chants had passed from one generation to another. But here’s the thing: they weren’t written down. Then, people somehow got the bright idea of musical notation. But first, there was this very gradual evolution of the chant itself. Originally, it had been in unison—like the way we sing, or try to, Happy Birthday. Then they got the idea of adding boys’ voices, and did you know that the female voice is exactly an octave above the male voice?”

“I doubt that,” Lady said.

“Well, you’ll have to ask Leonard Bernstein about it, but good luck. Dead, he is!”

“We note his passing with…”

“Quiet,” I told her. “Then they added a drone note, and even cooked up those funny little instruments like the hurdy-gurdy to provide them. You know—it’s this low note that…well…drones on and on and never changes. And then, somebody finally gets the idea that we didn’t all need to be singing the same thing. Wait—first they got the idea of one line singing while the other sings exactly the same thing five notes higher.”

“And that was a good idea?”

“Yeah, and during this whole time, people were starting to figure out how to notate music. The two problems of which, of course, is what pitch the sound is, and how long to hold it. Basic stuff, to you and me, but it took a while to figure it out.”

“OK, so…?”

“So then we come to Pérotin, whose music I can’t listen to because I keep getting ‘error’ messages on YouTube. But I did listen to Kassiana of Constantinople, since not only is she the first female composer that we know of, she’s also the first! Or one of them, at least….”

“Ah, Kassiana, that woman of supreme beauty and intellect!”

“I doubt that you knew that,” I told her. “And what was her relation to the emperor Theophilos?”

“Stormy, as are all relations with beautiful and intellectual women!”

“A shot in the dark,” I told her. “Anyway, she flipped him the bird, and then hiked off to found a nunnery, and now we have the Hymn of Kassiana, which is still sung in the Greek Orthodox Church today. And which I was actually able to hear, since it seems that Pérotin is in error, but Kassiana is not. So I listened to it, and it’s interesting, in a rather monotonous way. OK, full confession: I only got through the first half before I needed coffee. But here’s the point: Kassiana is 9^th century and the unheard Pérotin is 13^th century. And though I haven’t heard it, I did read that Pérotin’s music inspired Steve Reich! Hah!”

“Hah, indeed. And who is this Steve Reich?”

“A modern minimalist composer! See!”

“Through a glass darkly. Marc, what’s the point here?”

“Just a couple of centuries later—OK, maybe a bit more—you have utterly maximalist composers like Tallis and Byrd!”

“In what sense were they maximalist, might one ask?”

“To which one might answer, Spem in alium.”

“Don’t get it,” said Lady.

“Neither did my version of Word,” I told her. “In such degenerate times do we live!”

“I utterly resent,” she began.

“I wasn’t calling you degenerate, just the times. Anyway, it’s a piece of music set to some simple, though affecting, words. Here they are:”

I have never put my hope in any other

but in You, O God of Israel

who can show both anger and graciousness,

and who absolves all the sins

of suffering man

Lord God,

Creator of Heaven and Earth

be mindful of our lowliness

“Mindful of our lowliness I ever am, and adjure others to be so at all turns,” said Lady.

“I rejoice to hear it,” I said. “And if you hear the Spem, you’ll hear 40 distinct separate voices singing one of the most astounding pieces of music ever written. And written by Thomas Tallis, and when was he born?”

“Why do I think you might tell me?”

“How I wish I could. Unfortunately, the internet drifted off somewhere. So all I can say is that he started off life as a Catholic in England, so he must have been about the age, if not older, than Henry VIII. So call him 16^th century—middle-ish.”

“And why would that be important?”

“Here’s the deal—these two guys, Tallis and William Byrd, wrote some of the most amazing, complicated and beautiful music of the Renaissance, and that’s saying something. One thinks of Palestrina and Tomás de la Victoria.”

“Never, never, are they barred from mind!”

“Stop it—these guys are major. And they’re also Catholic, since that’s what everybody was, in England in those days. But then, everybody had to switch to the Church of England, when Henry couldn’t get a divorce from Catherine of Aragon. So then, in mid-career, both guys had to stop writing in Latin, since that was Papist, and stop writing the really complicated music that they had been writing. Instead, they had to write simple stuff, which guys like you and me could actually sing. So they did that, but nobody knows how that actually sat in their gullets….”

“Did English Renaissance composers have gullets? And if so, were they used for augury?”

“So then, being a Roman Catholic was serious trouble—losing your head was a possibility, nor do I mean it in the sense of losing emotional control. So all of that was going on—remember the dissolution of the monasteries?”

“The monasteries were…”

“They were pulled down,” I told her. “And the Catholics had to go underground…”

“Not a bad idea,” said Lady, “although I suppose….”

“So that was cool, but then guess what happened? Bloody Mary came roaring onto the throne, and then everybody had to go back to being Catholic again!”

“Say what?”

“And then, well, she kicked the bucket and—after a couple of years—Elizabeth I takes charge, and do I have to tell you what religion she was?”

“Nah….”

“Yup, it was ‘if today is Tuesday, I must be Catholic.’ Or in this case, Anglican, because that’s what Elizabeth was. Though she wasn’t as nutso about it all as Mary had been about Catholicism. Anyway, the big question was whether Byrd or Tallis were recusants.”

“A question that burns in my mind to this very day,” said Lady. “My, how fine I sound, when dragged into this bog….errr, blog.”

“Recusancy—being a secret Catholic. Not much doubt about Byrd, but no one knows about Tallis. But Tallis must have been a good guy, since Byrd wrote a very moving song after he died, with the lyrics, ‘Tallis is dead, and music dies.’”

“Very nice indeed,” said Lady. “Now if only my poets….”

“Well, in a sense, it’s a shame the whole question of religion banged into it at all, because you can say what you want about theology, but musically, the Catholic Church wiped everybody else off the map. Shame they’re not still doing it….”

“Well, aren’t they? Didn’t you go off and do a retreat at a Catholic Monastery in Chicago?”

“Not one of my best moves,” I told her. “Though come to think of it, the monks who were singing chant were probably taught the chants note by note, just as they had been a thousand years earlier. At least I think so. Damn, never thought to ask….”

“Well, you were preoccupied, then….”

“I was indeed. I want to believe, you know. I did my best—though I do admit to sleeping through whatever the 3AM service was called. Anyway, the point is that the music was very beautiful, though nothing as complex as the music that sprang up, so astonishing and improbably, a couple of centuries later. You know, I really do think that aliens….”

“Could I suggest something?”

“And that is?”

“Well, if you’re willing to believe in aliens, why not believe in God?”

You know, it does make sense…. 

    

A Month of Music, Day 8

“I have no idea how much pain you’re in,” I told Lady, “but you should probably get ready for some more….”

“What now,” said Lady? “Are you still tormenting everyone with that dangerous music? How about something soothing, since those surgeons have taken out a fair portion of my hip bone? The Pachelbel Canon, now, or Eine Kleine Nachtmusik….”

“I vowed I wasn’t going to do that stuff,” I told her. “But I’m seriously thinking of doing the utterly unthinkable. How would you feel about a shot of Mormon Tabernacle Choir?”

“I am generally as speechless as a parrot,” said Lady. “But you have done the nigh impossible. Do we jest?”

“Well, I ran into them the other day on YouTube,” I told her. “And you know, I think they might have a place here. They certainly have a few problems, the first being that they have most of the population of Utah on stage….”

“Well, it must be quite a sound….”

“Undeniably so. But to ask them to sing a brisk allegro is like asking a cruise ship to be a speedboat. And then there’s this nagging feeling: what’s an atheist like me doing listening to the Mormons? Because believe me—when they sing stuff like ‘Praise the Lord,’ well, it’s not a suggestion, but considerably beyond a marching order…”

“All excellent reasons to leave them, perhaps, in Salt Lake City?”

“You can hear them down here,” I told her. “Anyway, the MTC may be the musical equivalent of tuna fish casserole…”

“…tuna fish casserole?”

“Good Lord, what sort of mother did you have? You know, you boil up the noodles, throw in the cans of tuna fish, peas, and that inevitable and omnipresent Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom Soup, and top with—and this is culinary genius—crushed potato chips! Bake at 350 until burnt. Oh, and until the potato chips are soggy.”

“Nothing I have ever heard about your mother….”

“But here’s the thing about the MTC—they brought ‘classical’ music to a lot of people who would never have heard it. And if they sang everything in English—well, what of it? The point is that a hell of a lot of people got their first taste of music through the church choir. The purists can carp all they want…”

“Surely you didn’t spend your morning listening to the MTC,” said Lady. “Because if that’s how you waste your time, you could have been here, variously languishing and howling in bed, subbing for me. Really, Marc!”

“In fact, I had a wonderful morning,” I told her, “and no thanks to the Mormons. No, I was reliving the first seven days of  the creation. Or rather, The Creation. Because he’s too good to ignore, and who can’t help but feel sorry for Franz Joseph Haydn?”

“Why should I feel sorry for Haydn? Did he have syphilis, like all the rest? Abusive parents? Serious child loss?”

“Well, he nearly got to 80,” I said, “well over twice as long as Mozart and Schubert. And no, I don’t think he was syphilitic. But he did have a few bumps along the way…”

“…bumps?”

“Well, he spent his childhood hungry and in rags. Then he went to what Wikipedia calls ‘a completely unhappy marriage….’”

“Poor man!”

“Yeah? And what about Mrs. Haydn? Anyway, they both took lovers….”

“And the Mormon Tabernacle Choir sings his stuff!”

“See? Write classical music and you get instant respectability. Anyway, he was apparently devoutly religious, which is why he spent a considerable amount of time, at the end of his life, to writing The Creation. And wow—what an amazing piece!”

“So what’s so great about it?”

“A couple of things. First of all, it’s an oratorio, which means it’s a long piece for orchestra, soloists and choir. The most famous being Handel’s Messiah, which Haydn was familiar with, and which influences The Creation. But maybe I should just come out and say it, even though I’ll get death threats from all of those music lovers out there….”

“Dear me, and they so incendiary?”

“You have no idea. Anyway, here it is. As I get older, I listen to Mozart less and less, and to Haydn more and more.”

“What’s wrong with that?”

“Mozart has this status, you know. He’s a god, he’s a comet, but….”

“But?”

“You know, maybe it’s that composing was too easy for him. You hear Mozart, and you immediately get the impression: the work spilled out of him. But other composers work and struggle and polish and revise. They have to. Mozart doesn’t….”

“Must be nice,” said Lady. “You think that’s how Shakespeare did it? Got up, sat down, whipped off his sonnet, and then tackled his pop tarts?”

“No idea,” I told her. “But I think there’s such a thing as music for the young, and music for the old. Actually, the whole idea of The Creation could only have been conceived by an old man. And one who had attained some success, with its financial security….”

“Meaning?”

“Mozart was always scraping by, and if you have the wolf pounding on the door, do you sit down and write a piece of music that is nearly two hours long, about existential affairs? Or do you write an opera, Così fan tutte for example, which has the most glorious music attached to the silliest of plots? Because—big news!—the Biblical account in Genesis of the creation of the world is not exactly rave material. Anyway, when it was finally performed, it was a great success. But that’s because Haydn had doggedly worked for half a century for that success.”

“Well, all of that seems reasonable,” said Lady. “Still doesn’t explain why you think the classical music snobs are going to be putting car bombs in your cello case.”

“You don’t know these people the way I do,” I told her. “Veneration of Mozart is a religion, and like all religions, has its fanatics. And Mozart wrote some damned good religious music, among which are his Requiem and his Great Mass. Masterpieces, yes…but they always come across to me as a little theatrical. Whereas The Creation strikes me as fresh, innovative, and wonderfully cheerful. As well, of course, as utterly joyful….”

“So is this another piece from your childhood?”

“Hardly,” I told her. “I knew about it, but when I was a kid, I was busy learning the cello repertoire, which in a sense was totally stupid….”

“But you’re a cellist!”

“Of course, so I would have learned it anyway. But cellists should never, in my opinion, listen to other cellists.”

“What? Then whom should they listen to?”

“Singers—and as many as possible. So I had filed The Creation into that burgeoning dossier of music-I’ll-get-around-to. And then the time came, and there it was….”

“The time came?”

“Every piece of music comes at its own time,” I told her. “And this was a particularly happy time of life for me. I had just published my book—Life, Death and Iguanas—and I had had that wonderful feeling of holding my first book in my hands. And it had taken more time than I had imagined. And cost me more effort….”

“Why?”

“First of all, never write a confessional book. You have to dig pretty deep in places you really don’t want to go. And then, everybody who reads the book will know all your worst secrets. Oh, and your family will probably hate you….”

“Do they? Or did they?”

“It wasn’t an easy sell. I got my brothers to read the damn thing by hinting that if they didn’t, I’d likely be heisting errant lies about them and my family into the world. But none of my nephews and nieces has read the book, and nobody ever speaks about it. It’s like it doesn’t exist….”

“ But that’s terrible!”

“It’s true—it doesn’t exist. You think it will, you know. But unless you’re willing to get out there and hustle your work, it’ll sink to the bottom of the literary pond almost immediately. But I didn’t know that then, and so I floated along for several months, waiting for the inevitable to happen. Word of mouth would fan a forest fire of sales, and then The New York Times would be pestering me for interviews, and would I oblige them? Hah!”

“Yes,” said Lady, “worse than telemarketers, aren’t they? Swatting off The New York Times even before your morning coffee….”

“Well, it was a nice and fairly harmless delusion,” I told her. “At least I didn’t buy any yachts on the basis of future royalties. Though I did treat myself to a little vacation, and went off to Culebra to celebrate. So generally, when I hear The Creation, I think of Culebra. Not a bad association….”

“By no means,” said Lady.

Culebra is a tiny island off the east coast of Puerto Rico. It has a seriously beautiful beach—so good that it usually makes the list of the ten best in travel magazines.

“Time for me to rest, now,” said Lady. “Just do me a favor, would you?”

“And that would be?”

“Take the Mormon Tabernacle Choir with you….” 
   

A Month of Music, Day 6

“It’s probably time to tell the truth,” I said to Lady, “which is that a surprising number of composers were seriously fucked-up. In fact, none of the goings-on (or the going-ons, whichever it may be) of the popular music crowd are very impressive. Jimmy Hendrix? Madonna? Virtually every composer puts them to shame. Schumann, of course, is one the worst: he threw himself into the Rhine, had to be rescued by fishermen, and died in the madhouse. Oh, and they wouldn’t let him see his wife, Clara, until two days before he died. And he had been languishing there for two years!”

“Horrors,” said Lady, “syphilis, I presume?”

“Probably,” I said, “but who knows? There’s also Schubert, who almost definitely did have syphilis, and who may have been gay. There’s Beethoven, who used to play in bawdy houses as an adolescent, to scrape up money. Probably necessary, since Beethoven’s father was a drunk, as well as abusive—and we all know what a toll that takes on disposable income! Bach, of course, looks normal enough, but he must have had a hell of a life. Lost his mother when he was nine, and then his father the next year. Then he gets sent off to live with his oldest brother, and who knows how that went? Got into duels, got thrown in jail for a month, lost his first wife and over half of his kids. No, it must have been a hell of a life, and there he is, churning out one masterpiece after another.”

“Well, surely there has to be some composer who isn’t completely cracked,” said Lady.

“Well, if anybody can make the claim, it’s probably Mendelssohn,” I told her. “He came from a privileged background, but that has its own challenges. There was this whole thing about his religion: he was of Jewish background, but his parents didn’t circumcise him, and in fact baptized him as a Christian in the Reformed Church. So nobody quite knows what that’s all about.”

“Reformed Church?” asked Lady.

“Oh, I used to know,” I told her. “It doesn’t much matter. Anyway, he had success and was—supposedly—‘equable,’ as Wikipedia put it. But then the article goes on to say that he once had a fit of furor, and had to be spoken to sharply by his father. Oh, and then they put him to bed for 12 hours….”

“Well, well…”

“Anyway, Mendelssohn never made it into his 40’s,” I told her. “And in some bizarre way, we still don’t quite know what to do with him. His music—isn’t it just a bit too pleasing? A bit too conventional? And yet, when I heard his last string quartet, I couldn’t believe it was Mendelssohn…”

“Hmm, so there was something more there?”

“Remember how I said that coming from privilege bears its own challenges? Well, if it was bad for Mendelssohn, just imagine how bad it was for Mendelssohn!”

“Ummmm…Marc?”

“Well, there was Felix, whom everybody knows, and then there was Fanny, whom few people know. And the confusion wasn’t helped by the fact when some of her songs were published, it was under the name of her brother. She only performed once in public, even though knowledgeable listeners thought she was as good a pianist as her brother. And the only thing she seems to have published—without consulting her brother—was a collection of songs.”

“Well, what’s wrong with that?”

“Nothing, until you realize that her brother was composing oratorios. Massive works for full chorus and orchestra. So a collection of songs—especially since they were published on different colored paper and illustrated by her husband…. Well, it’s all just a bit too ladylike.”

“Well, I see your point….”

“It’s odd, when you think about it. Here’s what her father wrote to her: Music will perhaps become his [i.e. Felix's] profession, while for you it can and must be only an ornament.”

“Thanks, Dad!”

“I know. But has anyone ever explored why there are so many fabulous female pianists? And have been for centuries? Fanny’s mother, by the way, was a student of a student of Johann Sebastian Bach. So all of this veneration of Felix for having ‘championed’ Bach…well, we know where that came from!”

“Well, it’s obvious, isn’t it? Every well-bred house had a piano, and ladies were expected to be able to play. So inevitably, the piano became the instrument of choice. Can you imagine a female French horn player in the 19^th century?”

“You’re probably right,” I told her. “But there’s something infinitely sad about Fanny. You know, Clara Schumann may have had, in some respects, a better life. They two women were both great pianists, and also composers. But Clara was a child prodigy, and actually was the breadwinner, especially when Robert was ill. Both women were composers, as well. But here’s Wikipedia quoting Robert Schumann:

Clara has composed a series of small pieces, which show a musical and tender ingenuity such as she has never attained before. But to have children, and a husband who is always living in the realm of imagination, does not go together with composing. She cannot work at it regularly, and I am often disturbed to think how many profound ideas are lost because she cannot work them out.

“Not disturbed enough to get a job at Burger King, and let her get on with composing?”

“Nope—poor Clara had to take charge of the home and be the breadwinner. And her career, by the way, spanned 61 years. And she died forty years after her husband. Poor dear, she didn’t have much of a life. Hard to know which of the ladies—who must have known each other—had a harder life…”

“Well, who’s to say? But my vote, somehow, is with Fanny,” said Lady.

“It’s ironic,” I told her. “You know, I listened today to the piano sonata that Fanny wrote, and that everybody thought was really by Felix, because it was so ‘masculine.’ And I was able to post it onto Facebook, but somehow I can’t post it on the blog. And nothing I could find of Clara Schumann would play on YouTube. I kept on getting error messages. But then, the string quartet of Felix Mendelssohn—which he wrote in honor of his sister—well, that plays just fine! So I’m going to leave the space where the piano sonata should be blank. But you can click on it here, and for the next 28 days listen to it. It’s sort of melancholy, you know. Two great women, two great composers, and still…well, still struggling to be recognized.”

“It’s not ‘sort of melancholy,’” said Lady. “Here’s what it is…

…tragic!”   

   

   

A Month of Music, Day 5

“I am,” I told her, “excessively busy. So don’t even bother asking me to be in my blog today….”

“What!” cried Lady. “I don’t want to be in your stupid blog. And you’re no more busy than usual!”

“Well, it feels like I am,” I told her. “After all, I’m personally in charge, now, of some 400 years of musical history, and what happens if I flub it up?”

“Is there any reason to think you might?”

“I feel that I have to do something about the Grosse Fugue, and that has me completely stopped.”

“And what’s wrong with the Grosse Fugue?”

“Well, you know that Beethoven went deaf, right?”

“Well, we all know that!”

“So the deafer he got, the weirder his music got. And finally, he wrote a string quartet, and one of the movements was this fugue. And since the internet is shunning this table, I can’t get the full story, but it went something like this: everybody hated it. So Beethoven wrote another movement, to replace, and that was nice. But then he turned around and published the fugue as a stand alone piece. And now, most people who play the quartet use the original, with the fugue. But you also very frequently hear the fugue all by itself. So it’s definitely a Catch-22.”

“Is it that bad?”

“Frankly, yes. It’s extremely dissonant, extremely complex, and—unfortunately—an absolute masterpiece. It’s a sort of musical psychosis. It’s something that only Hannibal Lector could like. It is, in fact, absolutely fascinating, in a thoroughly repellent way. Music for Auschwitz? This would be the top hit!”

“Well, skip it, then….”

“I’m considering it,” I told her. “And then again, some part of me needs to incorporate it. After all, not all music needs to be beautiful, as odd as that sounds. And the Grosse Fugue is sort of like a hurricane, but instead of rain, you have razor blades. Or maybe it’s what a string quartet would sound like, if you replaced the instrument with jackals.”

“Wonderful,” said Lady. “Wow—this blog post will set the world on fire….”

“Well, I just listened to it again,” I told her. “And the good news is that it’s only fifteen minutes.”

“And the bad news?”

“It feels like fifteen hours….”

“It can’t be that bad…”

“I should probably listen to it once a day for a month or so, and then I’d get it,” I told her. “Here’s the deal. A regular fugue will have one theme, which will be passed around like a Frisbee among the players. But when the player doesn’t have the theme—or the Frisbee—then he or she plays some music that is related to the theme. But Beethoven decided to go one better—which is why he created a double fugue. So now we have two fugues going on at the same time.”

“Oh, dear….”

“It’s easy to understand if you listen to Ernst Toch’s Geographical Fugue,” I told her. “And of course you’ll never hear the word ‘Trinidad’ without smiling. Anyway, the fugue, and especially a double fugue, is really cerebral music. And even though we think of Beethoven as a passionate composer, he was quite cerebral in his way. As well, of course, as psychopathic….”

“Still don’t think you should include it,” said Lady. “Who needs ugly music?”

“It was an ugly time of my life,” I told her. “Remember? Maybe pain is a kind of fugue. After all, the same themes kept recurring, day after day and week after week. I was lying in bed, and dreading the moment when I had to turn. Or I was taking pain medicines—though never, thank God, opiates—and feeling a slight bit of relief. Each day was essentially the same, with only minor variations.”

“I remember seeing you during those days,” said Lady. “You looked haunted, and you moved like an old man. You could tell how much it hurt….”

“It was the endless repetition,” I told her. “Do you remember how Santana was feeding me papaya smoothies? He had just taken over the café, and I could see in his face the worry. So I kept on coming into the café, and he must have known that I was a regular. So each day, he’d make me a smoothie, which I didn’t much like. But there it was—if it really could help, who was I to say no? Oh, and most of the time he didn’t charge me.”

“Well, what went around came around,” said Lady. “Because now the café is packed….”

“The worst day came,” I told her, “at pretty much the end of the experience. Because even though I didn’t need surgery, well, I wasn’t sure. I knew that if the pain continued, somebody at some point would suggest it. And of course, if it’s a choice between constant pain and getting relief through surgery, I’d have to do it. So one day Craig came in, and said something like, ‘Well, they tell me you’re going to have surgery,’ and I lost it. So there I was, sobbing in the Sala Poética and that’s when David found me….”

David—a guy from Mexico who is, in fact, stuck in Mexico. And nobody knows when he will get out or get back. But there he was, and there I was, and suddenly I was sobbing in his arms and telling him my entire life story.

All right—not the entire story. Just, in fact, the painful stuff, which in the mood I was in was pretty much everything.

“Pain is so exhausting,” said Lady.

“So I’m sobbing away, and telling David that my whole life has been pain, pain, pain and nothing but pain, pain pain. And it started when I was a kid…”

“Well, at least you didn’t go back to harsh fetal environments,” said Lady. “Or did you?”

“I was a weird kid, and most it was because I was gay. Except that I didn’t know I was gay, because nobody talked about being gay. So it was confusing. And then I hated sports but loved music, so I got to be a cellist. And then that got all cocked up, because I had a big issue with one of my teachers….”

“Dear me, you were going far back.”

“I had a unified theory of my life, which actually was very simple. The theme, it turned out, was pain, since that’s what I encountered at every turn. So I was explaining that to David, and crying, and lying on David’s lap—as much as a 6 foot three inch man can lie in a five foot something guy’s lap. But it didn’t much matter,  because I was completely incoherent, and all David could do was sit there and stroke my head. Oh, and say, ‘yes, yes,’ or ‘no, no,’ or whatever it was he said.”

“Oh dear….”

“OK—so it wasn’t quite in the job description, but at least Nico came by and saw that I was in complete meltdown. Which was nice, since David was supposed to be making the little houses for you to paint. But there I was, so what could Nico or David do? And then, of course, I progressed into my college years, and guess what?”

“Let me guess,” said Lady, “it wouldn’t—just possibly—involve more pain?”

“You’re startlingly perceptive,” I told her. “One might even say sagacious. Yes, I detailed all of the pain, the loneliness, the uncertainty of coming out in the early to mid 70’s. I did everything but tell him about hanging out in the sixth floor men’s room of Memorial Library….”

“Is this information I really need to have?”

“Well, I’m sobbing away, and then I start to shake, and I realize that I’m starting a panic attack. So that’s just wonderful, since I now have covered absolutely every angle. Physically, I’m a complete wreck. Emotionally, I’m in a total free fall. Socially…”

“So then this beautiful little kid comes in—you know, the one who thought he was straight, but everybody knew he was gay?”

“Well, we didn’t really know,” said Lady. “Although nobody would have fainted away with surprise if it had turned out that he was. And whatever happened to him, by the way? Did he go into the Marines after all?”

“Well, we never saw him again, after that day. Which somehow doesn’t surprise me. Anyway, David turned me over to the beautiful gay / non-gay guy, and that was just terrific, since I was in a full-blown panic, and could tell the new guy all about my life, from the beginning! And by the way, did I mention….”

“Pain,” said Lady. “Yes, perhaps you did….”

“So we’re back to my childhood days, and the beautiful man is stroking me just like David. And though David is OK-looking…”

“Dear me,” said Lady, “and you were lying on the couches in the Sala?”

“Nothing happened,” I told her. “It isn’t that kind of a story. But then, guess what?”

“The beautiful man had to go into the Marines?”

“Or somewhere. So I’m still crying and explaining to people that my life—have I told you this?”

“And this was in working hours?”

“Of course! Look—what do people expect in a poetry work area? Normal, well-adjusted people? Of course not. You know, what Jill Johnston used to call nice normal fucked-up people. Poets, in short….”

“So what happened?”

“Well, the Marine or the pre-Marine or maybe the proto-Marine had somewhere else to go, and it was at that point that I decided I was hungry. So since the neo-Marine was clearly about to bolt, I went into the café, and asked for Santana. And he, bless his heart, knew just what to do!”

“Let me guess…”

“Yup, he put me at the very back of the café, where I was away from anyone else. And then he gave me the smoothie with about three tablespoons of sugar in it.”

“Wonderful,” said Lady, “a sugar-fueled emotional breakdown.”

“Oh, and he offered to drive me to the hospital, if I needed it. Which I probably did, but certainly didn’t want. Anyway, I ate and my sugar rebounded, and then guess what?”

“This story cannot go on….”

“It does. Because now my stomach erupted, which wasn’t surprising, since I hadn’t taken my acid reducer. So I’m in a panic, my blood sugar is iffy, my stomach is revolting—in every sense of the word—and I have to go to the pharmacy. But how can I? Remember the panic attack? Remember that I’m crying and shaking? So then I realize: I need Klonopin! And that’s when I look around, and I see Carlos!”

Carlos—the pirate poet. When the poetry is slow, he dresses up as a pirate, and gets people to give him money in exchange for a photo. And this money-making enterprise attracted the evil and small mind of a ranger up at the fort. So Carlos got arrested, and ended up in the hoosegow, still clad in his pirate outfit. It completely startled all of the drunks….

Anyway, Carlos and I head for the pharmacy, where we can get the acid reducer but not the Klonopin. So that’s when I decided to take Benadryl, instead, to see if it would at least make me sleepy.

“And did it?”

“Sort of,” I told her. “At least it took the edge off the panic. Anyway…”

“Yes?”

“The Beethoven stays.”

After all, it was exactly how I felt that day….