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| Calbraith Hunter, Acid Art ex. 2 |
The bulk of my weeping, moaning, and bitching fell on the people who I deemed the least bit sympathetic. Van Dyke would not tolerate this topic, but Rod and Xenia had a ring side seat. Laird was engineering mind expansion and he took counsel to determine who might go along for the ride. He was counseled that my mental state was fragile. Xenia, also, with her tendency to hysteria (which I tended to doubt, since my own was so easily directable) did not have a boarding pass. She'd be hanging out in the airport, taking tickets. If I really wanted to ingest this "acid," I was going to have to at least appear to get a grip. It seems as though, whenever in life, I issue a strong opinion on a personal matter, I get sent to Counselor Troi. Unstuck in time, I have lost all memory of what week it was. I have access, forward and back, to every television show I ever saw, every book I ever read, and all of that wonderful music, some of which I must have written myself. Who cares, really, when in time it happened? There was a sequence, though, in roughly the Spring of 1976, that went roughly as follows: I had been weeping about Mara ad nauseam. This made no sense to Rod and Xenia because they thought Mara was a bit broad in the beam and not that good a dancer. Rod made fun of it in a play (fake tv show script) called "Edge of Mara." Xenia took me over to see a counselor at Project Place. Project Place was a free clinic for indigent people struggling with "issues." Having wept in front of my companions, and been warned by Tennant that if I didn't get my act together I was not a candidate for any acid trip under his guidance, I saw that a voluntary (it was all voluntary at PP) visit to a social worker would at least demonstrate my willingness to meaningfully acknowledge that I might possibly have "an issue."
I went up the stairs of Project Place's brownstone in the company of Xenia, who knew the ropes. She sat with me as I waited my turn to sign in. I signed a "medical history" form and sat back down to wait to be called. Xenia and I sat in silence. I was a bit afraid of this. It was dawning on me that to acknowledge that I was nuts might be a dangerous thing, in itself, to do to my psyche. My idea that I'd just do this, like ripping off a band aid, and then cease and desist talking about Mara to prove that it had worked began to seem dubious. Among the acid lit on the shelves was "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," and I began to imagine Nurse Ratched on the other side of the wall. At last I was called. The person that came to collect me for my session was a gorgeous blonde with a ponytail and a figure that would turn heads anywhere. I assumed she was the nurse practitioner and not the doctor. Still, my mood had brightened considerably. I followed her down a dingy corridor to a room that had once had yellow walls, but had seen a lot of tears and other bodily fluids. This Project Place must've been a whore house in former times. We sat, and I now realized that she was to be my interlocutor. Project Place was overseen by one doctor, and staffed by many young interns from the local medical system.
"I'm Tina, what's your name?"
"I'm Cal."
"Cal, can you tell me what seems to be the problem?"
Out of my mouth poured a story I could not have told anyone about. (Until now, years later, when I'm making it up as I go along.)
"I'm a student at the Boston Conservatory. My problem is that I feel completely overwhelmed by the process of learning to be a musician."
"What do you play?" she asked, sitting down in front of me so that I could see down her blouse. She was not in any sort of white coat. She wore tight jeans. I was effectively stopped by lust from saying a word about any other woman I'd ever known, including Mara. I'd forget all about Mara in an instant for a roll in the hay with this woman.
"I play piano. I'm a composer."
"That sounds like a beautiful thing to learn how to do. You must feel very lucky."
"I do. I have to say though it is not an easy course of study. I have a friend who is a genius. His name's Van Dyke, Justin Van Dyke."
"I've never heard of him."
"No, he's a student like myself, a bit older, but..."
"Do you find yourself intimidated, then?"
This woman was very good at getting you to open up.
"Yes! That's it! I am always fighting to believe in myself."
"How does that make you feel?"
"I get upset about it. I want to cry."
"Do you let yourself cry?"
I'm beginning to do just that for some reason.
"I..."
"It's good to cry, very important to let the emotions out."
She then pulled me off of the chair I'd been on and got me down on the dirty linoleum with her. She held me in her arms, as Madonna and child. This turned my tears into outright sobs. She held me until I gaspingly calmed down, There was no hurry, no pressure, nothing but gentle human to human contact. I had not spoken of the thing that I'd thought I'd speak of. Instead she'd gotten to a more troubling deeper truth. I felt inadequate and unsure as an artist, as a musician, as a person, and as a member of my new found family of friends. They cared enough about me to deliver me to Project Place, into the arms of this beautiful Tina, and here I was getting all the mother love a boy could handle. It felt so good. It was not sexual.
At last, she let her arms fall. I rose to my feet.
"Feel better?"
I nod my head. I'm speechless.
"If you need me, I'm here. Come see me anytime."
Out in the waiting room, Xenia stood up when she saw me. Tina took her clipboard to the receptionist and bent over her station to take care of the paperwork. I never saw her again. Out on the street, Xenia walked with me the distance that we shared to get to our cribs.
"Was that useful?"
"Sure."
"Those people are great."
"I agree. It's a simple thing, the confessional."
"Is that what you did?"
"Pretty much."
"OK, babe...here's where we part ways. See ya at Laird's tonight, or do you have to work?"
"I'm working, but we'll be at Laird's soon enough. The weekend."
Waves and good-byes, the bedrock of social interaction.
Next up in the sequence was the introduction of Justin Van Dyke and Laird Tennant. It was evening in the mists of lost time, and I had again lost my place in the script of my life. I'd been instructed to bring Justin around, since I'd been talking about him quite a bit and Laird in particular was keen to meet him. I followed this instruction by babbling about Tennant to Justin.
"He sells books, he talks endlessly about philosophy, and he's got a nice apartment."
"You've mentioned him before. He's the one that thinks you should do acid. I'm up for it. Let's go."
So we went.
It was over the Fenway and across Boylston street, down the little incline and up the stairs. Buzz the buzzer, pull the door, run up the stairs bypassing the rickety old Otis. How many times had I stood at the top of that flight staring at that old elevator, waiting to pull the cage door, my head buzzing with a haze of philosophy. Is psychiatry a science? Can the existence of God be proved? The machinery was crowned with a fly-ball governor. I watched it without registering its significance. It was a relic, but it was still doing its job. 'The laws of the cosmos would be fairly chaotic if they depended upon the sanction of human belief.' If this collection of atoms is so ephemeral, how did I stub my toe? With Van Dyke and I in full manic babble all the way up the stairs, I walked right past that thing without a thought. Laird was standing in the door, rocking back and forth on his heels as he did when he was excited. He always loved meeting new people.
"Mister Van Dyke, I presume!"
The die was cast, and soon we all called him Mister Van Dyke.
"And you must be the famous Laird Tennant."
The shaking of hands, the hallmark of civility's outer shell. Tennant did not say, "I've heard so much about you." He hated cliches, while I reveled in them, turning them always which way and that like a cat with a string. It is difficult when crafting dialogue to be sure the characters speak in their own voices and not one's own. Tennant said:
"Come in. We have beer, wine and I don't know what all else. Make yourself at home."
Van Dyke was circumspect when it came to new situations. He looked around the apartment, standing in front of the bookshelves, looking at the titles. Tennant walked over to him and put a hand on his shoulder. At this Van Dyke turned to face his host.
"Can I get you a beer?"
"Oh, sure. That'd be great."
He pulled himself up, perhaps realizing he was no longer the tallest male in the room. He put his lips together in a decent trumpet embouchure and made a tongueless version of the Bronx cheer. He looked over at the turntable.
"Nice gear."
Tennant came up with a cold one.
"Yeah, we enjoy our music. You're a musician, yes?"
"Yes. On the path."
"What do you listen to?"
"All sorts of stuff. Jazz, rock, classical sometimes. Anything, really; but Country and Western. I'm not a big fan of the 'fuckin' in my truck' school."
I wondered how long it would take Van Dyke to trigger Tennant's whinny. Off he goes like a wild hyena. He turns to me and says:
"I knew I'd like this guy."
Van Dyke is back at the books. He pulls one off the shelf. It's Jung's "Memories, Dreams, Reflections." Jung's on the dust jacket, smoking a pipe. Van Dyke looks over at Tennant who's bending over looking for a record in the pile under the turntable.
"I understand you sell books?"
"True. I'm the East Coast rep for Prentice-Hall."
"It's like selling cars?"
"No, it's a lot of driving around to little towns and meeting with librarians, school administrators, and the occasional bookstore manager or buyer. The retail people are my least favorite. They tend to be a little crude."
"Crude?"
"Yeah. I had a guy tell me last week, "I can't say I get a hard on for the reprint of "The Land That Time Forgot."
"Would he pop I boner for "Memories, Dreams, Reflections?"
"Likely, no."
Tennant has chosen that goddamned Wayne Shorter record again. The buzzer buzzes and in a short time, we're joined by Xenia and Rod. I head in to the little galley kitchen to escape that saxophone racket and strike up a conversation with Lucy.
"Hey, Lu."
"Mr. Hunter. How's it goin'?"
The dynamic duo have made it up in the lift, and are opening the door. Familiarity breeds too many sets of keys. The chorus now of many voices blends with mirth in memory, but I can't make out the individual words again until after we're sitting around passing the bong. By now we've got on to Browning. I'm holding forth in a recitation of "Prospice," apropos of nothing.
"...let me taste the whole of it!"
"Cal..."
I'm handed the bong and it cuts me off. I put the nasty thing to my lips, light the bowl and suck. The gurgle fills the tube with smoke and I pop my finger off the carburetor hole, sending the thick smoke into my lungs. I've got this aspect of my education down. I'm silenced by holding in the smoke.
"Cal...you can't stop him when he gets the notion to rattle off a poem."
"That's the truth."
"Quick! Think of a good topic of discussion before he starts back up again!"
"Not Ryle. I've been tipped off on that one."
"Well, then, Justin, you're the guest. You propose one."
"Let's see. I always come up short on bullshit when I'm on the spot."
Xenia comes forth with:
"There's been much talk up here lately about the existence of God."
"Have you concluded anything?"
"We decided that it couldn't be really worked on seriously without defining terms."
"This ought to be good."
Van Dyke has his most cynical smile screwed across his face. Tennant has been guiding this discussion for weeks, and he's happy to take a new victim along for the ride.
"It's problematic to try to prove or disprove the existence something that is so nebulous and variable as a concept."
"I'll bite. Tell me more."
"Well, when you use the word God..."
I've heard this before, and I'm anxious to blow up the pomposity with jokes. Plus, I'm stoned out of my gourd.
"...which is dog spelled backwards."
Tennant gives me the evil eye, but the finger is up and wagging.
"...you might be referring to any number of manifestations in the various belief systems."
"Aha. 'Belief!' There you go! It's a matter of faith for some people and it doesn't matter that there's no proof."
"As I was saying. The term God might be a monotheistic or a polytheistic construct. Some constructs are so amorphous that it is certain that something will be assignable to the criteria."
Van Dyke looks pensive now.
"So saying something like I think that "God is love" is tricky because we have an idea what love is, and we are equating it with the deity and it can't be disproved that it doesn't match up."
"Huh?"
"No. Love and God are equally volatile constructs. I'd say the idea that God is nature makes more sense. After all, nature is a huge entity and if you want to worship that, then you have a good chance of getting some takers."
"Yeah, I love a Wiccan."
"Watch out. This is New England. They burn witches up here."
"The two approaches that deal with proof come at the problem by trying to define what the word means, which spins off into epistemology, or the 'theory of knowledge.' The second is trying to determine what the concept does, or the 'nature of being.'
"Ontology."
"Right."
"I'm quite sure I'm too stoned for this discussion."
"Or not quite stoned enough."
Lucy Tennant now interjects:
"Laird, tell 'em that epistemology story."
"We had a guy in the course that was struggling to understand..."
"Yes, the class clown, what was his name..."
"Busbaum..."
"Buzz bomb? That's too funny!"
"That's not quite it..."
"...no, but it's close."
"Anyway, he listened for a semester trying to understand this stuff. What is knowledge? How do we acquire knowledge? How do we know what we know? A priori, a posteriori... the whole nine yards. We finally got down to practical applications and the Professor..."
"Old Fezziwig?"
"Doug Langston, big on religion, a Californian, he'd gotten around to language, literature, linguistics. At a certain point, trying to understand the connection between things and signifiers, that is to say, words for things, Busbaum gets up out of his chair and blurts out, 'you mean, you mean, if it didn't come up in the morning, we wouldn't call it the sun?'"
"The class broke up."
"So does God exist?" The question is reiterated by Tennant. He shrugs as if in answer. "We can't really say."
"If you want play c flat, you play c flat!"
I'm not understood in quoting that Davis story about Rachmaninoff, but I mean to suggest that it's a matter of faith or personal preference.
"I don't claim to be a believer," says Van Dyke. "But when I play Bach, I think that there must have been some divine spark that made that miracle possible."
"Hear, hear."
"Yes, let's hear some Bach!"
We ransack the Tennants' stash. They've got the Brandenburgs. Laird puts that on.
We sit back to be stoned in the prop wash of God.
"So, Mr. Van Dyke. You play Bach?"
"I'm an organist."
"I used to play the clarinet. I'm tone deaf."
"Does that cause you to have trouble with music?"
"No, I love it. I just am not good at making it."
It's true: Laird Tennant always had a great respect for live music and for good musicians. He pulled me aside, after Van Dyke had left and I was staring at the elevator works in the hallway, waiting for the clanking mechanism to deliver me from evil. He said:
"Thanks for introducing us, at long last, to your friend Justin. It is the start, I think, of a beautiful friendship."
Did he say that? It's a cliche. It was truth: they found solace in some strenuous pastimes that, while I attempted them, certainly, I was ultimately forced to abandon for lack of sympathy. They took up rock-climbing and chess. But I'm not to that chapter yet.
