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| Typical Period Appointment Book, Editor's Personal Collection. |
I began my senior year with an appointment book for the first time ever. I had a lot on my plate and I felt the need to keep track. So turning away from the closely written scores in my notebooks, and letters that were sent to me, I now examine an outline of my life as I either lived it or hoped to live it.
This takes me as far as it went, but not quite to graduation day. After I was done with school, I break out into life and take a solo backpacking trip to think that enterprise over.
Then, following that, there is the coda.
There is much counterpoint in this document. The major lines are the pieces I hoped to write, and had to write to graduate, which I plotted out in a set of due dates. (I did not manage to meet my target dates, and many of these pieces remain as fragments.) Then there are fixed obligations, such as the classes that met on certain days, private lessons, rehearsals, and the schedule of my work life at the Westland Avenue Garage. Finally, there was my social life, which I recorded to the extent that it had to fit between all else. I make comments as was my habit in tiny pencil. This document works out exactly as the "Art of Fugue" works out: it gets to the good part and then breaks off.
Saturday and Sunday, September 11th, 1976, I worked 6-midnight at the garage.
School began on Monday. I ditched Bonkowski and took private composition lessons with Anderson Lee. He was a strict dodecaphonist, but it seems he let me start out writing in my own style. I am to bring him on alternate meetings a new completed movement from the Madrigal or Song project. I also thought I might write an anthem for my parents' church choir. The initials P.T. stand for the choir director's name, Philip Tedesci. M & D is Mom and Dad. Hi, Mom.
I can't believe I spent another year with Smith, but I did. We met each Tuesday at 9. My lessons were half an hour. That half an hour of torture that never helped me learn to play. I needed a gig to do that.
I ditched Zoltan's Chorus and sang in the Chorale. I auditioned and got in.
On Thursdays I had my private lesson with Dr. Norden. We've explored how that went, but here in the assignment book there are pithy remarks and a list of assignments given. On that first meeting, I showed him my score and tried to explain why he was wrong about it. I'm sure that went just great.
That was my academic week. It repeated over and over, barring holiday interruptions and cancellations which I note. For example, my scheduled hours at the Westland Garage on September 18th from 4 PM-12 AM were cancelled.
A note paper clipped to that page says (regarding my lesson with Anderson) "don't forget to ask about methods of copying scores - I need to copy homefires and make parts and soon." A word about "The Fantasy Variations on a theme of the Great War," which I always called the "Homefires Fantasy, because the theme was Novello's "Keep the Homefires Burning:" Into this set of variations, I threw in the kitchen sink of techniques that I had learned, except for fugue. There is no fugue in that thing. It starts with a chorale. There's a rag, there are quotes from Ives. I interpolated the clarinet duo from 1974, and it was a smooth insertion. The piece is scored for Piano, trumpet, clarinet and flute. It has no Fibonnacci scheme. (Other working notes say it does.) Was I rebelling? Probably. It was finished by this date. I was wanting to make a fair copy and Anderson Lee knew how to do it. His scores were works of art, beautiful. I wanted to attain that level of penmanship. I was studying with a guy because of his handwriting? I guess so. He was going to guide me in the preparation of the portfolio I would submit to graduate. He asked for a psalm setting, a verbal description of the symphony I was going to write, and completion of same to the end of the second large episode.
On Tuesday the 21st, I walked Heidi in Mara's footsteps over to the Gardiner recital. She was lovely and I was proud to have her in Boston. To walk side by side after the river of (so many) words was a good thing, but the consummation so devoutly wished for was not to be attempted. She was light and cheerful, and I kept my damned hands to myself. I think. I hope. I had that last letter, with its variation on the "let's be friends," and " need space" speech still flickering before my inner eyes.
On the following day, Arranging with old flat top kicked off. I had no idea what arranging was, but it turned out it was lessons in how to score for big band. Absolutely everything about this course would have been useful if I had a jazz orchestra at my disposal. In '76, the big bands were few and far between. Still, this man was a font of knowledge. He'd ask us to get out our notebooks and he'd dictate the rules. All his chords were four note chords. "The last rhythmic attack V7 to I always takes flat nine." I always called him old flat top because of his hairstyle, which was 1960s pre-Dobie Gillis. But perhaps he could be called something along the lines of Yeshua Pleno. The ultimate American jazz arranger was an Israeli spy. Why not? He taught us much, and had I ended up a jazzer, it would have been more useful. As it is, it's two books of notes that I won't crack.
On Thursday, Hugo gave me the assignment to analyze a Bach Chorale. I did that assignment up brown. (A few chapters back.)
Monday bright and clear on the 27th, Lee, unable to contain his enthusiasm for the 12 tone style of the day that Bonkowski and I eschewed, takes up the topic of the combinatorial tone row.
"What's that?"
"It's a concept of Babbitt's that prevents the tendency of freely combined rows to reinforce certain pitches."
"A better mouse trap. You can show me that."
Thus I hit upon the day-saving idea of learning to write music that did not depend upon the ear to craft. I could expand these exercises into pieces in perfect handwriting, and do it in a fraction of the time. I now began to crank it out. There is a lot of shit in this "it." These are the pieces that I never played, were never played, should not ever be played, are not meant to be played, and when I find their bulk in my box of scores, I am astonished that I lent so much energy to an antithesis. I am also astonished that in parallel, I labored on with counterpoint. With Norden I never capitulated about using my ears. With Anderson, I folded right up. Strange.
I see that at my second lesson with Norden on the 30th of September, I was to write "a 16 bar ditty or two." I wrote, "Give the old goat his dreck." Beneath this catty remark is the due date (arbitrary, to a certain extent) for the third movement of my symphony. "The City Is A Song." I think that was the name of a sculpture or something that I'd seen and liked. Perhaps a mural. I was writing the piece from back to front, starting with the third and final movement. It was slow going. I blew this deadline. I make a catty remark to myself: 'no way!' Then, more optimistically, 'but soon.'
I was getting a workout at the Garage in the afternoons and evenings. It was the BSO season.
On the 4th of October, I am still thinking of an anthem for my parents' church and want a copy of "The Secret Art of the Netherlands School." Norden's home phone appears under this. (I never made the piece.)
That Thursday, I preceded my lesson with Norden by having breakfast with Heidi Walker. I've forgotten the menu.
My assignment that morning was to analyze thoroughly another chorale and to write a piece (simple) on the class example. On Monday the 11th, I called Hugo about the "Netherlands School." Or did I? I didn't check it off.
Fast forward: On the 18th, Heidi spent the night. She was a virgin, and I was not going to alter that. Did we make out? We might have held hands. The cool Fall weather was upon us and she needed, perhaps, some warmth.
On Friday, October 22nd, I went with Heidi to a little arts hang around the corner from Mary Baker's concrete tit. It was the brainchild and studio of a mysterious Asian dude, one Kaji Aso. You can Google him. He's a good man and he opened many eyes to art. His studio carries on to this day. She came by in the afternoon, leaving plenty of time to hang out. I had a record by Ron Maltese on the turntable, and Heidi made me take it off.
"That's the most irritating stuff I've ever heard."
"OK, OK...I'll take it off."
I put on "Bell Ringing in the Empty Sky" to cheer her back up.
"Better?"
"Oh, much."
"You seem very testy."
"Perhaps I am. School is work."
"Tell me about it!"
I sit next to her on my little bed. I have no couch, and only one chair. Very Bohemian digs. Our backs are to the wall. She takes my hand. Our fingers twine. After a while, as I hold my breath, she speaks.
"It's not just school."
Exhale.
"What is it, then?"
"It's this..."
She's looking down at our hands entwined.
"I am very nervous about sex."
I don't have a snappy comeback.
"We don't have to have sex. It's OK just to touch. Isn't it?"
She doesn't have a snappy comeback. But she does not withdraw her hands. At length she speaks.
"I like it that after a while, you can't tell who's who."
"I like it. That's true. I don't care if we don't really, you know, get it on," I lied, "but there's something I have to tell you. I've been wanting to say this out loud for the longest time."
"Please..."
"I'm seriously in love with you."
"...don't say that."
"Too late."
Now she takes her hand away.
"Let's go out for a walk," she says.
We walk in the general direction of Aso's, drifting over to the I. M. Pei reflecting pool. The globes, that have been the eyes of God on my acid rambles, are giving us the once over. We are drifting closer. Suddenly she stops and turns. What is it with these women and their dramatic gestures? She holds out two arms with outstretched hands like she wants to dance. It's a cue. I take her hands and she comes up under my height, under my chin, and looks up her eyes all bright,
"I love you too, you know."
"I know."
But somehow, we were not lovers. We were brother and sister.
It was poetry night at Aso's. We were caught unawares. We sat on folding chairs and listened to others read. The atmosphere was very informal. A young man reads his opus:
"like suns at a star party
i slipped the burden of time
and all my yesterdays
became ash wednesdays
look for the golden lining
whenever clouds line up
to die beyond my grasp
imaginings far short of
gardens and gatherings
make sense if you let them
but not as often as
you like"
"Well, what does anyone think?"
"To be brutal and honest, I think it's lame."
"Pointless. No stable location in any sort of narrative or reality."
"Is that necessary in a poem?"
"It's necessary to be understood."
"You know, I think you are way too high up on that horse, Cindy."
Wednesday, November 3rd. An odd remark at the bottom of this date: "compose tonight say the die." Jason Jones, the skinny kid in the Garage crew had lent me a little book called "Dice Man." On the surface of it, it was a novel. I don't think that it was intended as a guide to living. In the novel, a fake memoir (at least I hope it's fake) by a fellow named Luke, a psychiatrist, hits upon the idea that he can shake himself out of his boredom by making decisions by rolling dice. The things he finds to decide upon, however, are off the beaten path. It makes sense if you are trying to shake things up to toss a coin to decide whether or not to cheat on your wife. It might absolve one of some share of responsibility. It might be a more chatty version of prayer, a way of summoning up the opinion of the gods without a lot of huffing and puffing. As the novel goes on, the questions posed to the die become dire. They involve rape and murder and so on and on. It was a good read. I realized that Luke was nuts, and the rape and murder part was where I got off the dice man bus. But the phrase "fuck without fear for fun and profit" stayed in mind, became part of the language soup. I became a mini dice man. I started with dice, but evolved. I asked my questions in a yes/no format, which required only the toss of a coin. Heads, yes; tails, no. It provided an antidote to the regimen imposed by my appointment book. If the composing was going to get done, the labor of doing it had to be engaged with. By giving the decision of whether to work or not on a score over to the toss of a coin, while not as irresponsible as tossing a coin about having a toss in the hay with somebody, increases the chances that the work won't get done. That I employed this method as a discipline ducking device explains why my output was not up to the full J. S. Bach level that I had required for myself. All of this led to increased stress. The self confidence I'd arrived at with acid began to erode. I suffered from crying jags and feelings of being overwhelmed. That was because I was, in fact, overwhelmed.
In addition to "Dice Man," I'd gotten a copy of the "I-Ching" at the little occult bookshop on Commonwealth. I went all out and bought the Bollingen series translation by Wilhelm-Baynes with the preface by C. J. Jung. I took this out to Van Dyke's and we decided to try it out. We'd been babbling about hiking the Appalachian Trail in the coming summer. Justin proposed that we frame that as our first inquiry. We skipped the formality of writing the question down, but it was basically 'what of hiking the AT this summer?' We tossed coins, not having sticks handy. The result? Kua number 1, the "Creative," all solid (yang) lines, none moving.
"That thing is hooked up right, for sure," quipped Van Dyke.
I soon had yarrow stalks and a little kimono. For those difficult questions that don't lend themselves to yes/no answers, the I Ching is just the tool.
"What to do about Heidi Walker?"
"Kua 4, Youthful Folly."
Touché.
On the afternoon of the 8th of November, a Monday, I dropped acid. Not a bad trip, I note. "Lots of shit." This doesn't give me much to go on, and memory is mute. "Lots of shit" is shorthand, but in the imagery of some of these acid trips, literal shit figured in along with other odd shards of memory. The anus of my lover became a mandala. The shit covered walls was the raw material, the starting place of my creativity. Careful with those metaphors, son. That shit could end up all over the place. I put the pen to paper and summed up the agony in a poem:
"An allegro walk against a brisk wind
rushing images of a dark hedge
sharp turn
piles of leaves, scattered trash
snap at the green door and then
you're in
the cal crib stagnates in its rotting splendor
rising up out of the urine stench
and piles of fur
like a majestic dusty forrest
smothers with its owner
so, the image of defeat:
a spoon, a pea, the number seven
the top of a perhaps caboose
a can of coke
meaningless symbols of a lost face
stubbornly refusing to make sense!
hiding from friends:
is this the best that you can do
weeping your eyes out in the afternoon
or at a movie
'off the wall'
'out to lunch'"
Of the imagery, I see that I've been digging in the box of childhood. The spoon and the pea, a result of being made to either eat my peas or sit before the plate abandoned for hours. Seven, of course, is Biblical, but here I mean the marks on an old toy train car. The can of coke sat right before my weeping eyes. Paradise and lunch. (Ry Cooder album.)
This is not a happy Cal. It's ok as poetry, as confessional, as description of my old apartment in its most decrepit state. But I'm not going to be reading this shit at Kaji Aso's or even Stone Soup. This is a lot of shit.
In the evening, coming down, I took a walk with Heidi. I was manic and babbling about how I needed more discipline and was...
"...in need of good swift kick in the pants. I've got all of these deadlines and I can't get it together. I'm just turning out shit. I open my mouth and out comes shit. My head is full of shit..."
"Stop! It!"
The sound of Heidi yelling at me is like a slap in the face.
"Stop saying it's shit, dammit! I like what you say and do! Don't keep prattling on about it!"
There's your good swift kick. We walk the rest of the way in silence. I record this dialogue in my appointment book, exactly as it froze in memory. Here we are, two testy people. Alone within ourselves, a brother and sister in a family spat. I was hurt and battered, both by myself and now, in a rebuke by my muse. But looking back at what she actually said, never mind the yelling, was that she liked what I said and did. She didn't appreciate the 'prattle,' the anti-Cal remarks. It was a show of faith. I guess I didn't like the tune so much that I couldn't appreciate the text.
On the 12th, Friday evening, I made dinner for Heidi and her roommate. Gail was a plain girl, as I have said. She was Heidi's opposite. She was heavy, tall, slow moving and inarticulate. I had heretofore only seen her lurking in the background when I'd popped over to Heidi's place to take her somewhere. Since my place was trashed, this dinner party took place at Heidi and Gail's. I came over armed with ingredients for the New England corn chowder. The pair of women provided wine. That was the plan.
In my notes on the aftermath, in tiny pencil in the appointment book, I wrote: "Yes! Not too successful. NO MORE HEIDI!" Let me flesh that out. I rang the bell on Tetlow, I was greeted by the shy and bowing figure of Gail.
"Heidi's over at school. She called to say she's running late. But come on in. She just said 'start without her.'"
As I stood in the tidy kitchen and sauteed onions in the bottom of the pot, Gail sat silently at the little table sipping wine. I couldn't think of much to say. After all the potatoes had been cut (yes, I was back to potatoes), and all the carrots and the water added up to the top of the vegetable mix, I had completed phase one and settled back to let it boil. I sat down at the table across from Gail. Still no Heidi. I also sipped at my Chardonnay. Desperate for a topic of conversation, I asked,
"So Gail, what is it that you do?"
"I'm an accountant."
"You're not a student?"
"No."
"Where are you from?"
"Right here. I'm from Boston."
"Really. You're one of the few natives that I've met so far. You don't have the accent."
"No. My parents are a bit too upper crust for that."
"Upper crust?"
"Not upper upper, but not...well, just well enough off that we don't..."
"...speak like the commoners."
"...well, yes."
Pause.
"But I wouldn't put it quite that way."
After an agonizing hour of idle chat, pulled out bit by bit, like fishing wire through a wall, the chowder was done, the bread was warm, and we were fairly sloshed.
"Delicious!"
"Thank you, thank you."
Two bottles later, I'm reeling at the table. I deliberately try to let her outpace me, and she does. As the song goes, "she's looking better every beer." And then, she does something not completely surprising. She's taken off her shoes, and so have I. It's coming up on winter in New England, and we are in the habit of doing it like the Dutch. She puts out a foot and rests it on one of mine. We're playing footsie under the table. Is this wise? Where is my coin to toss? "Fuck without fear for fun and profit?"
Before you know it, we're making out. She's unhooked her bra, wiggled out of her panties, and dragged me to her bedroom. As the night passes we pass out together in the middle of heavy petting. She's said she's never gotten this far with a man, she's said that she's tired of being a virgin. I say I can't really help her out with that, as I don't have any condoms. She says that's OK, she's happy to do whatever it is I want to do. Whatever we can do without risking pregnancy. What we do, in our drunkenness is fall asleep.
We awake together before dawn. I roll over, trying to gauge where I am. Gail takes my penis between her thumb and forefinger, and manipulates it to life. I'm on the edge of blue balls. With astonishing expertise, she gets me to the edge. How did she learn this trick? From books?
"Wait. If you keep that up I'm going to make a mess."
"So make a mess. I want it."
In a moment, we are baptized in ejaculate. She rubs it all over herself and myself greedily; the joy of sex.
At just that moment, with the rosy fingers of dawn peeping in under the shades, we hear the downstairs door open, the footsteps coming up the stairs, the front door open and the somewhat muffled voice of Heidi Walker discovering our clothing strewn all over the kitchen and the hall, leading in little piles to the bedroom, with its half open door.
"Wow. What happened in here?"
That's Heidi talking to the walls. Her wool-capped head peeks in the bedroom. We're busted.
"Woo-hoo."
She turns back to the hall. There are odd sounds, the meaning of which becomes clear in a moment. She's gathered up our clothes. They come flying into the bedroom and land in a heap on the floor. Then, she gently closes the door. I'm lying next to Gail and I start to giggle. "Nobody ever done me like she done me. She done me good."
"I'm sticky."
"Me too."
"We'd better wait for Mother Superior to..."
"...what? Jump the gun?"
"I'd say you jumped it."
"You told me I could."
"Wanna do it again?"
"I double dare ya."
Somehow, I eventually made it back to my own apartment. I had mixed feelings. On the one hand, it felt good to get off after a self-imposed dry spell. (I'd rejected Lucy to concentrate on chasing the elusive Heidi. It had seemed the humane thing to do.) It also felt good to prove that looks did not matter, at least not in the sack. Seeming a little less shallow had softened my self-loathing. I worried, though, rightly, about the damage I had done to my chances with Heidi. (Utterly and totally ruined, as it turned out. What foolishness had put off, bad timing would finish off.) I worried also, quite rightly, what would happen to Gail when I rejected her down the road as I was sure to do. I was a serial rejecter. She was desperately needy, and now she'd been led on by a pity fuck. That's not quite right, though. Right enough though for the sake of fiction.
