Mara, Mara, no Tomorrow 2

I remember the afterglow of that one. We laid together side by side in Rod's four poster, the morning light streaming in, her ass in all its splendor serenading my gaze as that gaze moves from window to door across my sweat soaked chest. The bliss is interrupted by the door bell.

"Shit."

"Yeah, I thought we'd be alone up here."

"Forget it, they'll go away."

It's ringing again. And again.

"Apparently not."

I'm up, I'm pulling on my jeans, and I'm trying to close the door that won't close because there are clothes piled up around it. Mara's, mine. I am forced to leave my bare assed babe to fend for herself. I'm down the steps, yelling at the front door,

"Coming!"

"Cal!"

"Xenia! Don't you have keys to your own crib?"

"I do, but I never know what lurks behind the door. And see, there you are, lurking... Notice, I'm back from Scottsdale, ta da!"

"Ta da! Indeed."

"So help me with my bags, you dolt!"

"Sure."

There is some bustle and some in and out, but in short order the woman is restored to her own nest and is looking around. Somewhat surprisingly, Mara has not moved. She's still ass up on the bed, covered by nothing. Xenia pokes her head into her bedroom.

"Aha."

"You've caught us with our pants down."

There's that hysterical laugh.

"I can, uh, see that."

An awkward pause ensues.

"Is (she tilts her head in the direction of the bed) she...ok?"

From the bed comes Mara's sleepy alto:

"Never better. Don't make me have to move."

"My dear Mara, (says Xenia, sing song) I can't possibly explain to you your motivation in this scene."

"I'm motivated to stay put. I could be motivated to have some coffee."

I give Xenia a look and a shrug.

"We'll see what we can scare up!"

Xenia is now warming up to the idea that she has her semi rival in a vulnerable spot. 

"I think we can do better than mere coffee, my dear. We'll get you breakfast in bed."

"Xenia, that would be fantastic. But I don't want to be any trouble. At least not that much trouble."

"No trouble. Let's just see what's in the fridge."

The fridge door reveals nothing but a swirling fog.

"Shit we're all out it seems."

I'm feeling helpless.

"Mara, what say we all go out for a bite?"

"Better a bite than being bit," comes the sleepy reply. Ok, ok, I'm getting up."

Up she gets, grabs the pile of her clothes and pads into the bathroom. In the meanwhile, I'm pulling on my own shirt. I totally smell of sex. Do I care? In fairly short order we're on our way down the steps to the corner coffee shop. We've left Xenia waving in the doorway. She just got off the long bus ride, she's had enough coffee, she's not coming.

We're out on the street, walking to a coffee shop. 
 "Cal, I didn't mean to do that."

"You didn't?"

"Not like that, not without having some sort of discussion."

"I can't believe I'm saying this, but you can't talk everything to death."

"Like, it's true. We've changed sides or something."

"I think maybe we fuck better than we talk."

"I was thinking that that was better than fucking."

"What, talking?"

"No, I mean, we were making love. We were..."

"Two wild animals in heat?"

"Cal."

"What was it you wanted to talk about, then."

"Well, if you remember last time we, that is I, tried communicating, you lost your voice, or something."

"Mara, I tried to answer. All I was able to do was cover the floor with trash. Many drafts, nothing to publish."

"I want to know what to believe."

"You want ME to tell you?"

"I want to get one thing straight with you going forward."

This was not a tone I liked her to be taking. I felt my humiliation rise. How few the number of minutes since last we lay spent in sticky sweetness. The endless thrashing of words was too much like work; too much, too soon.

"Right. What do I need to get straight?"

"Is it necessary for us to be monogamous?"

"I thought your thing with the man Stan was over."

"It may well be, but that's not my point."

Two peas in a pod might have crossed my mind as we crossed the street.

"Are you asking for a pledge of eternal fidelity?"

"Cal. I'm getting very confused. Are you also...seeing someone else?"

"Mara, it's a town full of people."

We reached the door to the shop. We went in and got a booth.

"See? Look at 'em all. They all want one thing, and one thing only."

"Breakfast?"

"Yes, and lunch and dinner."

"I love it when you eat me."

"I love it when I eat you, but are you getting something more substantial?"

The waitress was at our sides with menus and her pad.

"Coffee."

"You?"

"Me too. Coffee."

"That it? Need a minute?"

"We need a minute."

She went off and we went on.

"I think you blew her mind with the 'eat me' bit."

"I'm sure she's heard it all."

"What were we talking about?"

"Nonsense. Exclusivity."

"Well? Are we gonna go steady?"

"Well, are we?"

"Mara, that's just my point. When you say it out loud like that, it's just so High School."

"Oh. Well. Excuuuse me. We're big kids now, we're all the way up to Sophomore year."

"I say that I don't like those terms. But then, when I read about you and Stan having a ball, so to speak, I see red."

"And you? Are you balling somebody else as well?"

"I'm not. But I might."

"Well, then. Sauce for gander is sauce for goose."

"It academic."

"The price is right."

"I'm in Jeopardy."

"See you on Carson."

"I could rule the world."

"If you could fuck the world."

The hideous expression flew out and hung in mid air. Her face reddened. She rose. I couldn't believe my eyes. I had been floating on the stream of conscious-ness, going along without conscience, and I'd gone just one step too far. I knew it. How to retract that arrow?

"Mara!"

But her flush has turned to purple and she's grabbing her pack and pushing in her way past the crowd to the big glass door. I'm also on my feet now, but what can I do? I don't want to make a scene. I watch her full furious stride as she gets away down the busy morning street. I sit back down, and here's the waitress. 

"Decided?"

"Yes. I mean, no. Just bring me a check for the two coffees."

"She ditched ya?"

"Ditched me."

"Sorry. You'll get yourself another, believe me. You're as lovely as the flowers in may."
  A beat.

"You wanna?"

"I'm married."

"I'm just kidding."

That, I was. I thought we'd just had a temporary tiff. I had the vague intention of trying out my homosexuality (or, more accurately, my bisexuality, or even better yet, simply my sexuality) on my new housemate. I had every intention of hiding this from Mara (and any other woman that might, like the waitress, make me an offer I couldn't refuse). I was young, I was a firecracker. I had no intention of permitting Mara the same liberty. I had, against my will, been led into a game of banter, and like a successful tennis volley, she had caught me out. She might have tolerated my infidelities, so long as she were permitted to have her own. She would not, it turned out, tolerate my intolerant jealousy. She was quite right to shun hypocrisy. Even though we were at the same school, and even though we saw each other from time to time, there was never a repeat of the sex scene, no matter how hard I worked at it. As in the wife/whore dichotomy of High School, I had been delivered a blow of my own devising. This was worse, however, since I still had three years of this to go.  However long my life is, I never quite got used to the absence from my world of Mara Monetti. Odd thing, that, because she was never really present. The exception might have been that one wild morning. Presence/absence side by side in time, circling above my head like a dream/nightmare. Where, oh where, is your victory? In the immediate aftermath, death might have, in fact, been welcomed as victorious.

Dean Moriarty and the Father I Never Had Part 1

Sophomore year was off to a wacky, wild start. It was like that science fiction novel in which something in the past has gone wrong because of time travel and things are a bit off. We're on a path to a very different future than the one we had in mind only last year. There's very little one can do to get it back on track other than getting back in that time machine and going back to the point where somebody dropped their glasses off the the side rail, or got off the thing and stepped on a prehistoric butterfly.

My new roommates were an odd lot. I knew that going in. I had my new gay boy, Stewart, in one bedroom. In another was Yoshi, who played the flute. I was in the master because I had signed the lease. (Or rather, my parents had.) Dad had been up to rescue the shit box, which had abjectly broken down on a trip to DC. I got as far as Rhode Island and Dad had to come up and and we towed that thing the rest of the way. That lesson did not stay learned because I supposedly fixed the leaky gasket and got the overheating under control, but then, since it had been too hot too long, everything else started to fail. I got it up to Boston, but now it was festooned with parking tickets and could not be started. Dad came up, signed that lease and went to the street to find the shit box (that little tin steed that had gotten me this far), and found it towed. We followed the signage to the lot and found that it had been already ransacked for parts. So we (Dad again) signed the title over to the cigarette smoking attendant. There was some small dialog:
    "That your shit box?"
    "Yep."
    "It''s gonna set you back $75 for the tow."
    "How much if we just leave it for scrap.?"
    "$75."
Dad's already fishing out the dough, shaking his head.
     The title was in the glove box. The smell of gas was overwhelming. I became alarmed about the cigarette. I could see us going up in a fireball. It would fit right in.
    "So long, old steed."
    "So, Cal, now you're a foot soldier."

Even Zoltan's chorus was whacked. The old accompanist was gone and in his place was the towering figure of a guy Zoltan introduced as Justin Van Dyke. I swear he showed up stoned. We'd all soon learn that he mostly cut through difficulties without faltering. On the rare occasions when he did hit a clam or, on one occasion at least, have to stop and stare balefully at Zoltan, Eminescu would say, as he never did of Justin's predecessor,
    "Van Dyke, my boy, you read very well. Very, very well. I realize that what the page before you is asking is awkard. I'm sure you'll prevail next time."
(Clapping his hands, we'll begin all over again. And sure enough, Justin Van Dyke, no longer reading prima vista now, would prevail.) Most of us there who were not barbarians were in awe. Let the record show, also, that in that first semester of my sophomore year, we were singing some whacked stuff. Some nonsense by Samuel Barber. More "American Impressionism." It was too hard and a little too well made for the basses to do anything but struggle through it with grim respect.

Another whacked thing was that Van Dyke was in so many of my classes. Harmony Two, there was Justin. Form and Analysis: there, again, was Justin. I think that the thing that finally broke the ice was the foolishness that happened in Annie Fuch's class. I'll get to that. It proved the beginning of a great friendship.

It was also whacked that Mara was not willing to take my calls. She totally shut me out. This was the most hurtful thing I had endured since I was back in High School, enduring the most hurtful thing that Adelle had dished out. "We brave their absence." Except that I don't. I'm not cut out for bravery of that sort. I yelled and screamed and wept and fasted. I wrote bad poetry and bored the likes of Xenia and Rod to death.

It was a chaotic, messy start. For the first time, now, I was cut off from the institutional food, and had very limited funds on which to manage a household. I learned that vendors at Boston's Copley Square Farmer's Market sold off stuff at close of business Fridays starting at 5:30 or so. I took the train down there and was poking around at the appointed hour. I was looking for something I thought I might be able to cook, something that would have a long shelf life. I returned to my apartment building lugging a twenty pound sack of potatoes that I'd scored for a half-dollar. Then followed the potato creativity test: I did them baked, fried, hash browned, scalloped, au gratin, with eggs, in stew, and, as a grand finale, in New England corn chowder. Of course all of these cooking adventures required other ingredients. My roommates ponied up for these, and it was like stone soup for awhile. At last, about two weeks in to the potato extravaganza, Yoshi and Stew confronted me in the kitchen as I hauled out the now half-full sack one more time. Stewart took the lead in his effeminate whine,
    "Cal, sweety..."
    "Yes, what's up with you two?"
    "...we can't eat another potato."
Yoshi, the model of Japanese politeness, stares at the floor.
    "Yosh, you also rebel?"
He nods, raising his head revealing a face haunted by the trace of half a grin.
    "You know what, you guys. Neither can I. Let's hit Charlie's and get us some slices."

So the bag of potatoes went back under the sink and was forgotten. But there was an epilogue. One evening after a late night at our customary tasks as composers, pianists and flute players, practicing, rehearsing and hunched over a spinet in a practice room, we returned home to a stench the likes of which we'd never experienced.
    "Jeezus!"
    "Don't say that. That's blasphemy, Cal!"
    "Sorry, Stew, but hey, did you cut the cheese?"
    "Phew!"
Yoshi is holding his nose, taking his tenor up a notch. I'm looking around for the the offense. Perhaps a small animal has gotten in here and died. I open the cabinet and sniff under the sink. The force of the odor is like a punch in the nose. I almost toss my cookies. From beneath the sack of potatoes I see a puddle of thin, grey liquid.
    "Oh...hell, it's the potatoes. I had no idea they could turn so vile!"
I grabbed the sack and walked it's dripping, offensive, disgustingly soft contents out to the street. I couldn't even make it to the trash can. I tossed the sodden mess beside the brownstone steps, where nature and Winter in Boston worked the final magic of decay. I never smelled that sack of shit again. Though I looked in Spring for the remains, there was no trace. It took a awhile before I choked down another French Fry.

On the topic of my fair young lad, Stew Littlefield, I had the idea that he'd be good for at least an experimental roll in the hay. The difficulty was his personality. I hadn't experienced the swish and dish lifestyle up close. All of Goode's and Davis' chums were intelligent, civilized people. Nay, they were the cream of the crop, and likely only harbored me, in my uncouth raw splendor because I was cute. That is not to say I didn't try climbing in bed with Littlefield. Once. The discovery here was that no matter how much I liked the idea of homosexuality as an arts cult, and as a cultural form going back to Socrates (and - certainly - antiquity greater than that, equal to the duration of the species), I myself was not made to be a practitioner. After wallowing around with Mr. Littlefield for part of an evening, despite my enjoyment of his fair visage, there was no way that I could really be a gay man. I was hopelessly, permanently straight. Stewart figured this out in a very short time and banned me from his room. Following this, the irritating whine of his voice and the superficial prissiness of his personality began to really pall. I became in league with Yoshi in torturing him incessantly. Eventually, of course, there was a cessation. He moved out. Perhaps I'll get to that tale if my narrative starts to flag. It was a laugh riot.

The Third Man Takes a Trip

6-18-2525. Blazingly hot. 

Boston ruins.

Dear One,

I made it down here! My bicycle gave me all sorts of trouble, not the least of which was my buttocks chafing on the plastic seating. I spent my first morning poking around the ruins. After my big find in DC, I am doubtful that anything more can be gained here. The place is a chaotic mess. Not only is it hard to believe that there once was a famous conservatory (or two! or three!) here in what remains of 'back bay's fens' - nothing much! - it's hard to believe people lived here at all. I scrabble over the blasted landscape looking...for what? I can't say. Anything that might connect to Hunter.

(Later.) I gave up on Back Bay. There's nothing out there but rubble. I might have remembered that from before. I headed back to the Public Library site. You remember me telling you about my previous visits. You'll recall especially the story about the 'librarian,' that old toothless fellow who haunts the mostly still intact subterranean floors. I always found it funny that 'librarian' means somebody that lives in an ancient library building and not one who deals with or knows about 'books.' Of course, there are no books. As I've complained endlessly, there are only these chaotic stacks of parchments, rotting in haphazard piles. The thought of digging through mounds of these (again) is disheartening. Of course, it was in one of these piles down in DC last year that I miraculously found the mother lode of Hunter materials. I guess that's spurred me on. Here I am again in the stinking stacks. 

Because of the overwhelming heat, the librarian was way back in his lair. I had to get past all the piss soaked, shit smeared territory of his outer perimeter. I found him dozing on his rotted couch. 

"Charley!" I had to shake him to wake him.

"You again. I thought I'd seen the last of ye with your endless scrabbling around in me stacks for stuff about...who's it?"

"A composer named Hunter."

"Composer!" He spits out this word like it hurt his knees to think of it.

"Yes, I'm back. I want to get back to the piles. You care where I start?"

"Hell no. Just don't fall or drop a stack on yourself. I don't want  the bother of having to dig your sorry carcass out of here."

You have to admire the hospitality in this place, dear! So I'll let you know how my findings develop. I know you won't be getting these pages much before I'm back to give them to you, but it helps to keep personal notes, to be thinking of you, and writing you as though I were speaking to you face to face. It provides a break from the rigor of actual academic writing.

(Later)

One wishes there were water to wash the stink. I've been looking for things relating to Hunter and things he mentions about Boston. In particular, his allusions to Mara Monetti, the actor, and Bonkowski. Perhaps that man had a career. I thought perhaps I'd be able to find something about them here. Anything would be good, right? Nothing but pissy fingers. I did, drum roll please, find some stuff about Google, the company. I found a big packet of material that outlined the early history of the firm and the various structures and entities that led to its demise. Fascinating stuff, and quite voluminous.

To summarize, quickly (light is failing fast):

1. Google was an information collecting service. They had huge machines called servers that housed data that they allowed their customers to access. People, ordinary people, stored all sorts of material on these servers. The material was shared in a huge network of interlinked 'sites.' (I know! It's just fantastic!) This aggregate of sites was called the 'web,' like those made by spiders. I assume these spiders were much less threatening than ours, since they speak of the web often and without apparent cringing. Maybe their spiders weren't the size of cats! Anyway, the web had many facets. People could contribute freely to their own spaces called 'blogs.' I saw that 'blog' was short for 'web log.' The term was used as both verb and noun. (I extrapolate that Cal Hunter was blogging, that he had a terminal on this 'web' and used it to blog. His materials, the narratives, were, I'm supposing, once a blog.)

2. In addition to Google, there was a rival company called FaceBook. Many other rivals are mentioned (Twitter, Groupon, Linkdin, etc.), but it's not clear how these enterprises interconnected. FaceBook and Google got into some sort of snit. The rivalry blew up around the same time the USA social fabric was under strain because of the of economic disaster of the late aughts. According to the materials I found down here, as the USA government became unstable, the amount of 'blogging' about it was unbelievable. Some of these ancient pages are not in blueberry, or even the older ballpoint. Some of these are actual printouts from the servers, the hards, and thus directly reflect the blogs. It is really remarkable once you begin to understand what you are looking at. Ancient, yellowed pages, falling to pieces in your hand that are actual printed documents (and yes, who has the patience these days to rig up a press!) that mirror what was once seen on screens that we can only imagine. I can almost picture these people, so long dead, staring at their flickering - or maybe perfect! - electrical power operated screens, reading each others expressions as they 'tweeted' - I'm trying new vocabulary! - about the demise of their government.

3. The government changed hands and the new rulers took over everything. Taking advantage of FaceBook's willingness to tattle on Google, selling or giving away the data to the new rapacious government, and vice versa, the government sabotaged the two firms using their own greed as a lever, then straight away took over Google and FaceBook, and shut down many others. The government plundered the personal data. They worked with lightning speed, killing anyone who expressed anything but a very stilted, narrow opinion. I see descriptions of the 'pledge.' It has to do with 'one man, one woman, free market, no tax, no spend, small government,' etc. It's very confusing, but it is clear that the 'small government' faction was legitimately elected and then went on a bender of illegitimacy. This government isolated many people from others, but because of the nature of the web, it survived in a more than marginal way, being copied, printed and 'rescued' by vigilant 'illegal' action well into the Great Collapse. There is much blogging about the 'climate crisis,' 'global warming,' and 'climate change.' It's not like our ancestors didn't know what was about to wipe them out! Still , they were unable to act. The new rabid, murderous government was opposed. At the same time, there is evidence that certain powerful people tried to create an advantage for themselves. There is the expression, 'they threw the public under the bus.' (I surmise that a bus was a carbon powered vehicle of enough size to damage the public.) Although there were 'prophets of doom,' the people back then were incapable of grasping what they were in for. 

4. In the end, as we repeat in our peans to the balance of nature, 'we very nearly joined the dinosaurs in extinction.' Google and FaceBook are long gone, save for the cynical expressions that echo the names. I confess, it is a mystery why we even know about Cal Hunter. He plainly gets involved in alternative lifestyles. Perhaps there were so many more better known artists that could be more easily eradicated. Can you believe there once was a musician called "Lady Gaga?" Perhaps I should study her instead! I guess Hunter made it into our consciousness for the pure caprice involved in trying to kill everyone you don't agree with. We know of surviving communities that still practice it, and even eat their victims! The trouble is, you can't do it. You end up making enemies as devious as you yourself are. And then, at last, you have nature, impossible to govern in her imbalance, and that does what the rabid government can't: wipe everybody out.

Almost. Here we are. (Miles apart.) Well, I've been writing in the dark, and I'll sleep on this stack. A scholar's mistress. I miss you, dear one.

6-19-2525 Boston library ruins. It's hot down here, I'm glad I'm not outside.

Dear One,

I woke up on "pay dirt." (Don't you love how I use these 600 year old expressions? That's why you love me, I know.) I fell asleep but I tossed and turned and knocked a bunch of stuff loose down here. In the first light, I was holding an ancient newspaper fragment, a Boston Herald. The masthead was torn, so I only got part of the date. 2019. As my eyes focused, though, it wasn't the date that caught me, but rather the headline. "Boston Native Composer Executed!" Blessed Balance of Nature! I could not believe my eyes when I saw the word Butkowski in the text. Scanning it, I learned that Bonkowski wrote an opera called "The Fatal Ticket." It was banned, and the government executed him. There you have it!

This trip has been well worth it. I'm heading back.

Dean Moriarty and the Father I Never Had Part 2

"Wasn't that a smooth insertion?"
We erupt in helpless laughter, some of us bellowing, howling, and doubled over. This is Annie Fuchs' Music History course, and she's an idiot. She's been trying for several lessons to involve us in the intricacies of the tropes and neumes of ancient music. She began the semester with Gregorian chant. She touched on the birth of notation. Now she's trying to show us how into the plainchant more complexities were introduced by the "insertion" of tropes. I recall this without consulting Palisca, so her teaching cannot have been totally futile. Describing her as an idiot is unfair. She was nervous and inept. Her nervousness made her dangerous with a tone arm. She'd try to get the record on the turntable just where she thought it should go, and instead of a zen release, she'd hold on too long, shaking like a leaf, and the thing would go skirting across the sea of vinyl. We'd hear the screech of damaged LP and titter. When her malapropisms resulted in a corker of a closing line, we were thralls to the 'found' stand up comedy. We eventually laughed the poor woman to tears, and she quit. I was in the Dean's office over this. That's not my purpose in relating this aspect of the Boston Tales.

I mentioned that Justin Van Dyke, the genius boy accompanist (he was older than the rest of us by a year or so, but was always young looking, strong and tall), was my classmate. When we first spoke, it was of this class that we spoke. The topic was the time I went out on a limb with Ms. Fuchs over the actual function of the comic finale in the Opera Buffa. Trying to piece my argument together now after all of these years is tricky. For starters, the Opera Buffa is a comic form. Nobody dies, nobody moves, nobody gets hurt. There is a lot of singing over top of one another in these finales; each character, usually about four (a quartet), has their bit to sing, and each bit is usually at odds both as plot element and musical element to the others'. To burlesque it, without the music: one character is singing 'I love you with all my heart, with all my heart,' while opposite another sings, 'it's you that I can't stand, can't stand.' Then, added to this disjointed duet, a tenor in a ton of velvet will chime in, 'the marriage bells are ringing, sweetly chiming on this morning.' Finally, just when this side splitting dysfunction has gone on long enough, from a balcony above the other three, a moving couch with a heaving bosom will chime in, 'sister, sister you are silly, silly sister, silly sister.' It's always a glorious weave of voices, designed to end the scene with discombobulation, and it's often called the 'confusion finale.'

I'm staring at Annie Fuch's test paper. It's multiple choice. "The comic finale in an Opera Buffa a), brings the dramatic action to a close, b), has no effect on the action, c), is designed to make the audience laugh, d), carries the dramatic action forward." I'm thinking, ok, what the hell is the psychology here? Any of these answers are technically correct. The question boils down to asking us to deliver some poorly understood (by Annie) idea that we were instructed to read in Palisca. I did not really read Palisca. (I found the textbook dry as a dust storm in Scottsdale.) I was going to have to take a crack at it with my own wits. My reasoning may have been as follows: The comic finale in the Opera Buffa brings the dramatic action forward to a close. The finale, obviously ends the scene, and as it's the Buffa, it is meant to make the audience laugh ruefully at the folly of the characters onstage. A deeper analysis might be expressed by the notion that the 'finale does not effect the action,' since, in the finale, the action, having been served to this point of climax by alternating aria and recitative, comes to a total standstill. It's in the recitatives that the action is really moved forward, since it is in these secco passages we learn what's what in the plot.  All we, as audience members, can do is laugh and applaud. That was my reasoned thinking; but that would not serve where only one answer, allegedly the correct answer, was permitted. In exasperation I decided that 'does nothing to effect the action' was Annie's attempt at a joke. 'Makes the audience laugh,' well, that was too painfully obvious. It came down to 'moves forward or brings to close.' For the life of me, I couldn't choose. I rather suspected (as was correct) that she wanted 'move the action forward.' Instead, fuming at the foolishness of all of this, I circled both a and d. I appended a note to my paper: "the comic finale (d) carries the dramatic action forward (a) to a close!!! What a bogus question, Ms. Fuchs!"

The papers were handed out. This, if you're paying close attention, was very late in the semester. The opera buffa was well downstream of mediaeval chant. By this time, Annie's attendance had fallen way off. It might have gotten so bad that we were down to a quartet, not including Fuchs. One thing is certain, Van Dyke was present. He was stroking his chin, with a wry smile as I launched my objection out loud.
    "Yes Calbraith?"
    "I notice you took points off for my answer about the comic finale."
She comes over to me and take my paper in hand.
    "Yes, what you wrote is clever, except for insulting my question, but I wanted (d) carries the dramatic action forward."
    "You may have wanted that, but that's not correct."
    "Did you read the textbook?"
    "I've heard Rossini. They have already all made up their own foolish minds by the time they get to the finale. They just sing all over each other."
    "But it's too obvious that the action comes to a close! It's the finale! Why would I want the obvious answer?"
    "I don't know. Why would you?"
    "I didn't!"
And now, a third voice enters the conversation. It's Entwhistle, the bassoon.
    "I also fell into that trap. I picked (a). I want to change my mind."
I frame my entire argument in bold strokes.
    "No matter what answer you picked, they're all in some way true."
I rise from my seat and begin to sing in my best buffa style, shaky baritone all the way:
    "It brings the opera to a close, to a close. It might be plain for all to see, but it is true, it is true."
Not to be outdone, Entwhistle is up too.
    "He's got a point, a brilliant point, we'll rock this joint, rock this joint."
The third and final classmate, a mousy woman in Music Education cannot resist now stepping way out of character. Like a Quaker Meeting, she feels she has a killer line and she gets up to join us in improvised (but quite competent, as I recall) song.
    "A, B, C, D, any answer works for me!"
Annie Fuchs, purple faced and eyes brimming with tears of frustration throws my test paper to the floor. Had she been made of different stuff, she might have joined us, making a quartet mocking her multiple choice question. Instead, she brought the buffa scene to a close.
    "You horrid children!" She was screaming, spitting mad, and crying. Her sobs punctuated each word before she flew out of the room and clattered down the hall to the Dean's office:
    "I. Give. Up! You all can go to hell!"

We stood in the classroom in silence for a moment. We could hear Annie crying all the way down the hall. The big oak doors to Dean Streator's office slammed shut. The other two filed out, shrugging, embarrassed. This left me alone with Van Dyke, who had not moved a muscle during this entire abbreviated lesson. I sat back down in my seat, my face red with emotion. Van Dyke was still sitting with his right hand stroking his chin and he still had the same wry smirk. Now, he turned slowly in his seat to face me.
    "I have to say that that was the most buffa thing I've ever seen."
He let a beat go by. I went to pick my test paper off the floor.
    "Thanks, I think."
Such was my wan reply to this half-assed compliment.
    "I've listened to all the bullshit you've had to say this semester, and I've thought, 'who IS this asshole?'"
I'm sitting back on my chair blinking at this slap in the face.
Van Dyke gets up and heads for the door. I follow him out. The sobs in the Deans office have abated by now. Out in the hall, I stand in Justin's tall shadow, looking up slightly to see if he has any more to say to me. He does.
    "You know, this won't end here. You're fucked."

He was both right and wrong. I was summoned to the Dean's office by means of note in cubby hole mailbox. In his office, Dean Streator had Annie Fuchs sitting in one of his high-backed chairs and I felt my bowels turn to liquid.
    "Have a seat, Cal."
I sat.
    "I suppose you know what this is about."
    "Yes, sir, I have an idea."
    "I think you owe Ms. Fuchs an apology."
    "I reckon I do."
I do my best to look Annie in her big brown eyes (she's not an unattractive older woman, I could see doing the nasty with Annie. Annie fucks...), and make this apology really work theatrically. I figure it's my one chance to avoid expulsion or something.
    "I'm very sorry, Professor Fuchs."
Now Annie clears her throat. (Perhaps she, with her intuition at full, picked up my hint of desire.)
    "Now, Cal, I thought it over and I decided that you were quite right. However, the disrespect was bad. Intolerable. But your point about the comic finale was really pretty good."
(Pretty good?)
    "Is that all, Professor?"
Harry Streator looks a bit worried. He must be wondering where this is going. So do I.
    "Well, I want Cal to know that there are no hard feelings. I also wish him all the best in his education. He's... You're (she turns back to me) a very bright young man. I got home and discussed the whole thing with my husband, who is, I have to say, a much more accomplished musicologist than I am (husband...damn). I tried to remember that improvised finale you three were singing. I explained it as well as I could to Tom, that's my husband..."
    "Ms. Fuchs..." (Both Streator and I, in unison.)
    "No wait. We both broke up laughing over it. It was the funniest darn thing! Really very funny. I guess I over-reacted. I realized, both me and Tom, my husband, that you were quite right. It WAS a stupid question..."
    "Annie!" (Streator barks.)
    "...I just have to finish, Harry. My husband told me that he thought you all understood the Buffa perfectly, and that you had the comic finale pegged as well as any little Mozarts. He said 'you must have taught them something.' He meant me, that I had taught you something. He said that 'I was going to make it as a teacher, because I'd gotten the Buffa across so well.'"

The next time I had the courage to go to Music History, the class had been taken over by a faggot Art History teacher from Boston College. He ditched music and taught us about Titian and egg tempera. That was all fine by me. It wasn't the last time I was to be hauled before Harry Streator on charges of inappropriate conduct. In the end, though, I got Harry's number big time.

Dean Moriarty and the Father I Never Had Part 3

I got another crack at Streator's office that woebegone year. I had been admitted to the Conservatory with advanced placement status in English. This got me out of the Freshman English requirement, but it only worked that first year. In Sophomore year, I had to join the others in a second year of College level Lit. I recall a conversation with Contrabass player Mark outside Professor Sam Noth's classroom. Mark was bitching about taking 'this shit.' "Why do we need to do this? We're at a trade school. This crap has nothing to do with becoming a better musician." He had a point, but I thought to myself, 'perhaps it has to do with making you a better, well-read human, one that could make an informed decision as a citizen.' I let the issue slide. Who was I to argue with a person of Mark's caliber.

Noth himself was a stringer hired from Boston College (or maybe it was Northeastern) to bang some literature into our heads. He moved like a bird, always darting his head this way and that. I had, luckily I thought, plenty of ammo for a lit class. As a shouting member of the old lit and crit club back in HS, I'd penned any number of papers that I thought might fit some of Noth's assignments. Why not recycle? I, too, was desperately trying to become a better musician. 

So it came to pass that I laid a paper on Noth called "Hamlet and His Problems, a Critique of Eliot's Objective Correlative in the Play By Shakespeare." It might be tricky (and futile) to try to explain this arcane title. Oh, hell...here goes. Eliot (that's the B. S. from T. S.) had written, in 1919, an essay critical of Shakespeare's Hamlet. What a crock of shit! Among the scattershot, half baked ideas in this godforsaken piece was this insane bit about the 'objective correlative.' I guess it got a little under my skin because I realize I use the expression pretty much the way Eliot describes it. Not having the essays handy (either mine or T. S.'s), I'll have to go it from memory. 'The only way of expressing emotion in the form of art is by employing an objective correlative.' In other words, (if you) want to make the blood boil? Concoct a sun-soaked plain. Feeling grey, let's bring on the rain. The object (one's character) is correlated to the setting. I may have this completely wrong at this late date, but that's the way I recall it. So, even as a whipper snapper, my bullshit detector was up full blast. Doesn't that rule out a certain sort of irony? Suppose your mother dies on a sunlit day. Isn't that just the irony that makes reality the minefield that it is? My essay went after Eliot in high dudgeon and purple prose. It made, I rather thought, a valid point. That Eliot was missing the point of Hamlet, that "Hamlet" (the play) was more of a psychological swamp than Eliot was perhaps capable, with his banker's brain, of really understanding fully. I thought Noth, who spoke often of Eliot and Shakespeare, would appreciate this. I was both right and wrong.

Once again I  got the cubbyhole summons. "Urgent, please schedule a meeting with the Dean of Students at your earliest convenience."

Knocking again (too soon) on the big oak door, I was greeted by a red-faced Streator.

     "Hello, Calbraith. Thanks for stopping by. It seems like only last week..."

I saw Noth in the high backed chair with my essay, which now sported a great deal of red pen. I thought, 'you didn't need to scribble all over it, now did you!?' But I said:

     "Yes. Who would have thought that I could cause so much trouble."

I confess, when I saw the essay on the table before Sam Noth, I actually thought I was in for some long overdue praise and respect. After all, the other students in  general distrusted me slightly because I got up and spoke and, well, I'll explain in a bit one other good reason. These men might actually appreciate a good solid intellectual argument. It was Sam who popped the bubble:

     "Where did you get this?"

     "What do you mean?"

     "I mean, where did you copy this paper from?"

     "I... copied it from my own archives."

     "Ah ha."

Streator looked a bit ashen. 

     "Cal, plagiarism is a serious charge."

     "Oh! You mean you think I actually STOLE this paper?"

I was on my feet. This was a serious charge, and a major slap in the face.

      "I suggest you sit back down. Calm down. I'm sure..."

I was not so quick to sit. The idea of walking out on these two baboons flitted through my mind.

     "I suggest," I began, quietly but menacingly, "that you tell me, Professor Samuel Noth, why you think I couldn't have written this essay."

Streator nodded.

     "Tell him what you told me, Sam."

     "OK, I've looked this over very carefully...this...is a very well crafted argument. I have never seen anything like this. I showed it to some colleagues and they'd never seen anything like this. Half of them, me included can't write like this. This is...completely professional, publishable work."

     "Does that mean you'll help me publish it?"

     "Cal..."

I catch Streator trying his damndest not to smile. Apparently Noth's argument against the possiblity that I was the author played a little weaker on second hearing. It might have been the 'publishable' part that caught him off guard.

     "You can't publish it because you're not a scholar, you're a music student!"

     "Sam..."

     "If that's all you've got, then...well, I've got Eminescu's chorus at 3..."

Streator looked at the desk, then up at his still twitching and purple English Lit instructor. 

     "Sam, there's a simple way to solve this dilemma. Give Cal some paper and let's see if he can write."

     "Oh, Henry. That's insane. Write about what?"

     "I can't believe I'm saying this, but I agree with Professor Noth. It's insane. I have class in half an hour."

     "I'll get you out of class, Cal. I'm the Dean."

     "What do you want me to write about?"

     "You're the Professor, Sam. Give the young man a topic."

     "Er. OK....write about...oh, I don't know, tell me what you think about the "Wasteland."

     "Sam..."

     "No, that's fine. Perfect. I have an opinion about the "Wasteland." I know the damned thing by heart, I don't need the text. I'll be back with an essay...in 20 minutes, 'cause I'm not missing Zoltan's chorus."

So it was that, armed with pen and paper, I was shown into a cubicle off the Dean's office. It was a closet. It was full of supplies. I could swear that there was Alphin's old vacuum cleaner. I didn't have time to look around much.

"Eliot leads off with 'April is the cruelest month...' The "Wasteland"is the cruelest poem and it both 'breeds lilacs out of dead air,' and 'mixes  memory and desire.' Sexual imagery and a feeling of suffocation are juxtaposed with imagistic fantasies and flights of the most sublime order in Eliot's masterpiece."

And on I bullshitted for about fifteen minutes. I came to a suitably ringing conclusion and left Sam Nosh with five minutes to make a decision about my writing skill. He didn't take the whole five minutes. He read my thesis and skimmed down, pen in hand. Streator watched hi face as it reddened.

     "Well, Sam? Are we going to throw him out of school or are we going to let him go to his class?"

     "This kid's a writer of the first magnitude. Let him go to class. And Cal..."

     "Yes, sir?"

     "You have my most sincere apologies."

     "You could make it up to me by getting my stuff in print, sir."

I closed the door on the laughter of two fools.

Dean Moriarty and the Father I Never Had Part 4

I thanked my lucky stars (who comes up with these clichés?) that Justin Van Dyke had not been around for the debacle of my experience with Elmer Dickson, another floating Professor who worked the arts schools circuit teaching history. This was not music history, so the hard core instrumentalist might not have approved of it on principal. It was a class that freshmen had to take and it was billed as The History of Western Civilization. (2 credits, one semester.)

Elmer, and of course we all called him 'Fudd,' strode in on day one of a bad week (as you'll recall - nosebleeds, butt-fuck failure) and held his arms aloft and yelled:
    "The history of Western Civilization doesn't start down here."
He crouches as low as his elderly legs can take him.
    "It starts up HERE!"
He's on tip toes, which by now, I know as 'relevé.'
    "It starts up here, with Homer."
    ("What'd he say? Homo?")

Again, with Elmer, I made the mistake of writing in my full high dudgeon. He used those little blue exam books and we scrawled out our bullshit until the clock ran out. When I got the first paper back, his comments in the margins were embarrassing. "You write so beautifully in our native tongue! Why not offer me a copy to keep?" I would keep these blue pamphlets with such marginalia hidden from the others in the class. It was no use. Elmer began to single me out for bellowing praise. No music student worth a semiquaver was supposed to either like these academic requirements, or to do well in them. I was, as we have seen, suspect among my peers.

Of course they weren't really peers. They played instruments well, and I was struggling. I took trumpet lessons that first year. Then I tried drums. As a sophomore, thinking of Mara and Thoreau's flute, I tried to learn the flute. I couldn't get a noise out of it. Every time I picked the rented instrument up, I'd be dizzy just trying to get a sound. Furthermore, the thought of the flute now made me weep. I failed. The exam in flute was a nightmare. I stood there, with the baby flute book open, and blew over the hole, no sound emerging but the rush of my breath on the way to disaster.
    "Cal, I have to ask. If I came to you and played like that, what grade would you have to give me?"
    "I'd fail you," I said, tears pouring helplessly down my face.
    "I'm sorry. But I have to flunk you."
So over the Summer, rather than re-take the hopeless flute, I rented a clarinet and played the shit out of it. When the instrumental teacher said,
    "Very good. You get a B."
I was a happy man. I still struggled with piano. Smith still marked my scores until they were torn. I stuck with Smith, not out of loyalty to Goode, who I had now abandoned, but because he provided some solid discipline. There was no way I was going to be playing like Van Dyke. I now took voice lessons. Perhaps I could learn to sing. The requirement for a second instrument disappeared in the Junior year. Again, I thank those lucky stars. I'd never have graduated if that were not the case.

And besides all of that, Elmer somehow persisted even after I was free of his course. Even though I'd shaken off Goode, and Don Davis was dead, I soon found myself being madly, embarrassingly pursued by Elmer Fudd. I was now the straight man, but I had a dreadful history to live down.

Somehow or other, and I really can't recall exactly now, Van Dyke and I began hanging out. I could make up a story... perhaps it was that I came up to the piano after a nasty chorus rehearsal. We did tackle more Brahms, the "Schicksalslied," and I remember Van Dyke once telling me it was the hardest shit he'd ever played up to that point. (That point was a ways ahead, out past the intended scope of this volume.) To see Van Dyke struggle with something was a merciful sign of vulnerability. It was a lot more inviting to approach a human than a sight reading machine. So let's say that's what happened. I went up to the keyboard and stood behind Justin as he went over some bit of knotty accompaniment. Aware of my presence, of course, he speaks, but maybe more to his score than to me:
    "Shit fuck."
    "It's a bitch."
    "No shit."
I try imitating Zoltan's accent.
    "Justin my boy, you are having a crisis of energy."
    "I'm having a crisis of too much marijuana."
    "Ooo. I always suspected you did this stoned."
    "The only way to do this. Although this shit is kicking my ass."
    "So, you're like a piano major?"
    "Nope. Organ."
    "I can't believe it!"
    "Why not? It's a total body workout!"
    "It's just that I've always loved the instrument. The king of instruments. I used to play a bit at a church. My family, they're church goers, choir singers, organist lovers. I used to watch the organist when I was a kid. I thought it was just amazing."
    "It is that."
He gave me a quizzical look, an eyebrow raised, a smile curling slightly.
    "You wanna come out and blow some dope?"
    "I'd love to."

And just like that, everything had changed in the blink of an eye. My new hang was the key to respectability among peers, perhaps (though the musicianship had to be owned and that was the only currency), and beyond that superficial benefit, I was about to become involved with a much more sophisticated scene. I was about to embark on the second half of learning what music was about, what life was about, and where I fit into the vast scheme of things. In the blink of an eye. Changed.

Of course it took time to get out to Framingham. Justin drove a shit box, but at least it worked. His was a big boxy thing. There again we had a commonality.

    "Shit, Justin! I learned how to drive in one of these things. Ours was a '66. I got up on a hill, line of traffic behind me, and I still hadn't got the hang of the clutch. Dad says, 'put in the clutch and count to ten.' This was to keep the gears from screaming. I put in the clutch and got to maybe three before BANG! We hit the car behind us. Dad says, 'you're supposed to also keep your foot on the brake.'"

    "Well, this one's got its problems, but it gets me around. C'mon, jump in, let's hit it."

The scene in Framingham was very cool. It was, in fact a family scene, as Justin was sharing his flat with a young couple. I was introduced as 'that composer dude, and general troublemaker,' to Sue and Greg Llyon. It was evening, they were making dinner. Justin and I were clearly not invited. Very curious, this couple, wrapped up in their own difficulties. Justin and I took over the living room. He put on the first side of "Bitches Brew."  Imagine! It was only about 5 years old at the time! I, of course, had no clue what it was. Greg poked his head in and gave Justin the thumbs up. Justin looked up from what he was doing (filling the pipe) and nodded back. He took a lighter and lit his bowl, then took a big drag and handed the pipe over to me in one fluid motion. I had just formed the question:
    "What is this we're listening to?"
    "Miles. Bitches Brew." (Through clenched teeth, retaining the pot smoke for full effect.)
    "Miles?" Bowl in hand, I take in my first dope since the heady days of HS. Van Dyke exhales, filling the room with acrid smoke. The exhalation coincides with a hint of exasperation at my profound and unreasonable ignorance of jazz. It's true: I didn't know shit.
    "Davis. Trumpeter. Bandleader. Composer. This from '69. Named after wife."
    "Witch..."
    "Nope. Bitch."
    "Funny."
    "Great. Great music, don't you think? If you're hearing this for the first time, you're in for a treat."

As with so many of the visits to Framingham, I don't remember how I got home. I assume I took the bus to the T and caught the T back to my crib. (I now was learning huge swaths of the jazzer lingo.) Jazz was all new, but my time with Van Dyke would have been less tolerable if it were a one way exchange, from his mind to mine. That's not to say I had much to teach. It was rather that we had commonalities. Besides the King of Instruments, there was Bach, Beethoven and Brahms. We could always speak of backpacking, the great out of doors, walking in general and later, Zen. We strode the blocks of the old towns, and discovered we had Walden and Thoreau in common. Justin's gig (ie., church) was not far form there and he threatened to take me out some Sunday to hear the Mary Baker sermon, "Ancient and Modern Necromancy, Alias Mesmerism and Hypnotism, Denounced."
    "You're on."
    "Plus, you get to hear me play some Bach."
    "No further incentive needed. Just tell me when in the liturgical year you get to that shit."
    "You got it. I'll give you fair warning."
Huge swaths of many literatures were fuel for our rants, for Justin was a formidable reader of not only musics, but also words. He claimed that he read all the time, but also claimed to read automatically, not recalling what he'd read. This was, in fact, bullshit. He knew much about auto mechanics, aircraft engines (take that, Dad!), birds, bees, carpentry, the Charles, rock climbing, Dickens, Dickenson, the diapason (of course), electronics, Everest (wanted some day to climb), enteritis (bad shit), flying (he'd taken lessons, but had no license), fishing, filigree (he hated it), God (not a believer), gold (not a hoarder, but favored the standard), Golding (loved "Lord of the Flies"), hatchets, Harlequin romances, hasps, inter-cooler turbines, inverted triangles, intensity of effect (in favor), Jesus (not a fan), Jews (was sure that Hitler had been one), and Jehoshephat (usually jumping, otherwise biblical), and Kerouac.

    "Kerouac?"
    "Jack."
    "You're kidding! You've read "On The Road?"
    "Man, I ate that shit up in High School."
Now I demonstrate my ability to quote from memory, semi-accurately,  large chunks of poetry:
    "' I know the children must be crying in the land where they let the children cry, ...and don't you know that God is Pooh Bear?  ....nobody knows what's going to happen to anybody besides growing old. I think of Dean Moriarty, the father I never had, I think of Dean Moriarty.'"
    "Dean Moriarty, aka Neal Cassady, man. That's some very good shit."

The Omniscient Narrator Zooms Out

A good novelist does not need to fuck around with device. It's all artifice, and the goal is not to make it hard to understand the story but to make it crystal clear. Of course, a fake memoir must convince, have the flavor of authenticity. Our first person narrator must weave in and out of his tale, writing with great speed, with the urgency of Kerouac, but without that sort of skill as a typist. (Kerouac, it is said, could bash out 100 words per minute. No wonder someone once quipped 'that's not writing, it's typing. This was surely said of the scroll! (By Truman Capote, that infamous, jealous wag.) Do we really think an editor ever saw the scroll? Can we imagine taking such a thing to a publisher for real? Even omniscient imagination has limits.) Cal weaves and bobs in time, doubling back to pick up parallel threads. Add to this the chaos and losses of a "Great Collapse," and it is clear that sussing out the "truth" of the narrative has no future. Music has its own truth, though, and perhaps that has a better chance.

As omniscient, the zoom can be pulled very far (even all the way) back. We might zoom in, too, to see what's in a mind. We could go back. We could drop in on Brahms, making wax records of his improvising near the end of his life. We could get inside a great composer's head and observe the clockwork. But we won't. Instead, we'll look in on our third person as he returns to his wife in Brattleboro. He himself can't see us, or even what we see.

We see him stowing his curious bicycle, made of bits of found plastic and wood. It's a cumbersome looking contraption compared to a more familiar manufactured product. Our man lives out in that distant time when manufacturing is not practiced. Nothing is banned, because banning things is banned. Nobody wants to disturb the balance of nature. The species has just survived and is in a long recovery phase after having royally fucked things up for themselves before. See? Crystal clarity. Eschew obfuscation. Pulling back the cover to his subterranean bungalow, he goes down the earthen steps with their wood and plastic reinforcement (there is much more plastic to work with in the rubble of the past than wood), and he accepts the embrace of his wife. They're shorter than we are (were), but they're in much better shape. They actually have to work to live. That's work in the old-new fashioned sense of strenuous exercise. Yes, she's comely. What would we think of her beauty? It's not the ancient mode, certainly. Inside the bungalow, she wears no clothes. Heat has long been a problem and it's high summer. Our scholar now also pulls off his rags and we can see his enjoyment of his wife. Our gaze does not blink, but why describe what we've seen so much of already? We'll wait them out and try to think of something not so arousing.

We know, even though the third man can't, what happened to Cal. Let's contemplate that as a boner killer. The man, his wife, his cats, they starved to death when the food ran out. There was no beating the heat (or cold, or rains, or snows, or floods, or earthquakes, tornadoes, hurricanes, typhoons, what have - had - you), but they didn't quite make it to all of that. They died clawing at the dried grass in what used to be somebody's yard. Oh, one of those cats was a hunter and lasted a bit longer. Not too much to hunt, though, even for a cat.

Gee, that was quick, they must have been really horny. OK, let's listen in now as they swap post coital notes on the pallet bedding.

    "Oh babe, I missed...
    "...me also."
    "So you'll have to fill me in on all."
    "I learned more about Google."
    "Don't google me!"

This always gets a laugh out of our man of the future!

    "I also learned that the teacher, Bonkowski, was executed for writing an opera."
    "No cocking google! Our ancestors were barbarians."
    "Other than that, I wrote notes. Here, have a read."

He hands over his parchments. When he says 'berry juice and twigs,' he's half right. They have cultivated berries, and they really ramp up the color by a drying process. The 'twig' bit is less accurate to our ears. The twig is a very sophisticated piece of wood working that holds the ink and makes a clear line. It's old, old, tech.

Calbraith Hunter, Suite for Piano 1974, I, p 1, 1994 edition. Private Collection.

    "I also have been writing for you. I made an analysis of the "1974 Suite, Movement One."

She hands over her pages and they settle back to read each other. They also talk a lot, but in this future, they are quite caught up with being truthful and accurate in their communications. The species has learned that they cannot be too careful in this regard. The homo sapiens can write. Why should they trust memory?

You might be curious how they do music without electricity. Music, you might find it hard to remember, needs no power to happen. All you have to do is sing and clap. Piano music, on the other hand cannot be sung or clapped and still be what it was meant to be. You can believe (because I tell you) that pianos are very rare. There is only one fully functional piano in all of what was once New England. A music scholar, such as our Third Person, has access and has some skill. That's what he's been doing his entire life. It's not just words. Piano music is recorded (that's right, recorded) for the consumption of interested people by such scholars and practitioners on machines (they do know how to make machines - the bike, remember?) that use no electricity. This is where Edison started with the whole thing. As Brahms once jammed for the phonograph (now called an Edison), so our number Three records Cal Hunter's suite for reproduction in gatherings still called 'concerts.' Small groups of people (and there are only small groups left!) gather around the horn and are enraptured by the musics of the past. The present also has a rich creative vein, as expression in all its forms (sexual, artistic, scientific) is cultivated. Concerts mix periods, as they once did, do now, and will into the endless future. Phonograph horns are not small. Our offspring have perfected the 'Perfected Phonograph.' Necessity is the same mother of invention that it always was.

We've already read the Third Person's notes. Let's take a look at the writing of his spouse:
we quote -

June 18, 2525. Indoors, hot as hell outside.
Some notes on the "1974 Suite for Piano, Movement One" of Calbraith Hunter.

It has been my great privilege to have access to and to enjoy the recording of this work made by my husband the esteemed Hunter scholar. It is not, he says, a difficult work to play. It is a little more difficult to get to like. It's salient features involve a certain monotony, and this must be overcome and endured to get the meat out of the nut.

Our Edison does a very good job with subtleties. Many machines are not so refined, I know. Let me describe the (my) experience of the piece.

It begins with an ostinato in the left hand. To those unfamiliar with the ancient Italian terms for music, 'ostinato' means a constantly repeated phrase. The phrase comes up from the low register and returns back down. The effect is meant to be like the waves lapping at the shore. Our oceans now have again calmed and we know what this is. I agree that this is indeed the effect. The repeating bass is established and a melody rises up from it, beginning as a doubling of the bass in the treble. Here the effect of parallel octaves is a deliberate violation designed to conceal the origins of the treble voice. The melodic voice sounds first as dissonant passing notes, rushing up to a consonant perch. The voice then falls over the course of some measures (8) to disappear 'beneath the waves.' This melody, and indeed the entire opening gesture, is repeated, but the meter has shifted to add a beat (3/4 - 4/4). We wonder at what point Smith, or perhaps Van Dyke, lost interest. A restless ear will find it easy to do. I find the lull of the repeating rhythms and the contour of the melody erotic. I am like Bonkowski's wife. I dance and wet, therefore I like it. I get to the end of the records, and I want to wind it up and begin it all again. If I didn't have to get up and replace cylinders, I'm sure I'd come. You will understand, this is a personal response. Others hate this music.

Getting past the repetition (variation?) in 4/4 time, one comes (ha!) to the syncopated part. The syncopations seem to destroy the 'groove,' to use the ancient term, still so apt. The tune now crashes into the bass and it descends into the depths. These depths are off the range of even our Edison, but in overtones I can imagine the thrill. I hope someday to be able to accompany my husband on a recording session and hear the piano played in the air. I will naturally be on guard against the obvious inclination to have an orgy in the same room. My husband says it happens! Perhaps the fantasy is to let the guard drop. Let the clothing drop, let everything just happen. There is a pause, which my husband makes very long, that resolves at last into a cadence on the feminine, (3rd on top), to end the first record. The piece then begins again, as it were, but in a different key! Those who find this boring are not listening with my ears. I find the swoops of the melody now lead into the frenzy of rapid notes with a peculiar logic. The turning point is this huge cadence. The cadence again changes both the tonal center and the mode. It is usually at this point I find myself wondering if these harmonies were whispered in Hunter's ear by Venus. Mara might be standing in as goddess of love. I can imagine the hot sex scalding her dark skin.

[Narrator's Note: This woman is not an adherent of the 'text on its own' theory.]

Calbraith Hunter, Suite for Piano 1974, I, p 4, 1994 edition. Private Collection.

The harmony under the rapid notes shifts center again, going down (as cal once went down on Mara) by half steps. At last we've sunk to the same place where we began, and the placid lake is back. Oddly enough, the piece now climbs out, shedding again its tonal center and ending up on a major triad formed on the sub-dominant pitch. In most recordings that I have heard, including my husband's, the piece manages to just fit on two cylinders. I invariably let the machine run off the edge of the wax as I ponder the genius that was Cal Hunter's. If I were in the habit of wearing what used to be called 'panties,' I would have to change change them or tolerate my damp.

[Narrator again: Now check out the scholar's reaction to witness how morality has shifted five centuries hence.]


    "Wonderful, darling!"
    "Thanks sweet man, I thought of you."
    "I see that. I can tell. I think this piece of parchment will be a very good guide for the unschooled listener who would like an idea what this music is about. If you do someday attend a session, I'm sure you'll have your pick of the many cocksmen at these affairs. Just be sure to let me lick your ass."

[Narrator here. You can gather from all of this that it's not your Grandfather's future we're looking at here.]

Dean Moriarty and the Father I Never Had Part 5

The father I never had turned out to be an old High School friend of Rodney's, Laird Tennant. He was the father of us all just by sheer force of personality.  He had an apartment on the far side of Boylston, just up the block and down an incline from where Don Davis had died. He and his wife, Lucy, were opposites, he a bear of a guy and she a wisp of a thing. As intellectuals, they were both giants.

I met Laird for the first time up at Xenia and Rodney's. (They'd moved. They moved around the orbit quite a bit, since they traveled. New York, France, the dreaded Midwest, the great Southwest, hither, yon they went, gypsies never far from their steamer trunk of costumes and practice clothes. They had to rent new dwellings repeatedly.) The new apartment had a big dining room and Laird approved of this. They'd "engineer tostadas" and he'd hold forth. I can't forget, nor can I leave out of my tale, that fabulous introduction to the philosopher Gilbert Ryle that made me want to kill Laird dead on the spot. Reader, you be the judge. See if you can suffer the following explication of the well-known work of mind-body philosophy without becoming irritated by the draconian pedagogical method. There's going to be a quiz at the end so I'd advise taking some notes.
I:
    "I have in mind some very copacetic tunes." (Van Dyke had salted my lingo.)
He:
    "You have in mind."
    "Yes. That's what I said. I have in mind..."
    "In what?"
    "What?"
In the kitchen, Rodney is wincing. He's been down this bumpy road before.
    "You have in what?"
    "I was thinking..."
    "You said, 'in mind.'"
    "I said...'in mind.' Yes."
    "Where is that?"
    "Where is what?"
    "Your mind."
    "Where is my mind?"
    "Yes. Where do you think that?"
    "I think I think it in my head."
He's got a whinnying snicker of a laugh. He snorts with derision. He goes right on:
    "In your head. You mean, if I cut open your head, I'll see your mind in which I'll find 'tunes?'"
    "No. If you, god forbid, cut open my head you'll find my brain."
    "And that's the location of your mind?"
    "Yes."
I get, now, that instead of being allowed to program the turntable with my new-found love of jazz classics, I am instead taking a philosophy course. I believe that I've trumped it, but I am dead wrong. He:
    "Your mind is in your brain?"
    "Right. Mind in brain."
    "How do you KNOW that?"
    "I think neuroscience teaches..."
    "You think. You think that's what happens in your mind; thinking, and you think your mind is in your brain."
    "Yes."
    "I'm asking you to tell me where you think that."
    "I just told you. I think in my brain."
    "I cut open your brain..."
    "...again with the threats of surgery!"
    "...and I see thinking going on?"
    "No, you'll see a lot of blood and grey matter. The thinking is going on as neurons fire..."
    "So I'll be seeing these neurons firing and that will be you thinking, that will be where what you 'have in mind' resides?"
    "You will not be able to see the neurons. That may be an analogy."
    "So it all turns out to be just you thinking that that's where you think that."
    "No, I think..."
    "But WHERE do you think that?"
    "I think you're on a loop."
    "Where do you think it?"
    "Do you mind?"
    "Where's your mind?"
Tapping my head I say, with some exasperation:
    "Mine's up here. Where's yours?"
From the kitchen:
    "Tennant lost his in college."
That's Rod speaking, but in the background, Xenia's giggling. Laird Tennant is also cackling, but his finger is still wagging in the midair above his head, indicating his desire to continue.
    "I have in a way lost my mind!"
    "Aha! I knew it!"
    "I have lost my certainty of the "concept of mind...."
I'm hearing Ryle's title for the first time, so it doesn't register, other than as another irritating trope.
    "I can not say that I can pin down its location. It is, as you suggested about the neuroscience of brain tissue, an abstraction."
    "My word was 'analogy'..."
    "...be that as it may, you can't tell me where you think anything. It may be that the concept is a misnomer. It may be, as Ryle suggests, that 'the ghost in the machine' is an artificial construct."
From Rod in the kitchen:
    "That's what Ryle says?"
Me:
    "Who's Ryle?"
Rod:
    "Gilbert Ryle. He wrote 'The Concept of Mind.'"
Laird:
    "...an artificial construct that is not necessarily peering out of our eyes at the world, but floating free, free at least in concept, free to be expanded infinitely, free to do so many things that only a concept, or construct, can do..."
He's almost singing this, speaking like a crazed professor. In my naivete, I did not get the connection between a free consciousness as a concept and psychedelic drugs. I knew of neither mind-body philosophy nor hallucinogens. This would change, but for the moment I had no choice but to let this colossal misunderstanding of the signature work of Gilbert Ryle, (1900-1976), stand. From the kitchen, Rod:
    "Free to alter the weather?"
Huge cackling laughter, rising in pitch from tenor to contralto, from Tennant, who has won again at word chess.
    "Yes! Free to float in the atmosphere and seed the clouds!"
    "Free to change the channel?"
    "Indeed, we can change the channel."
    "Are you, sirs and mesdames free for dinner?"
    "Yes we're free!"
    "Good, because dinner is served."
I:
    "I have just one question before we all sit down."
Xenia:
    "Yes, Cal."
    "May I, at long last, take my 'wherever I think that' over to the stereo and replace this "Weather Report" and put on "Bitch's Brew?"
    "Not a fan of Shorter?"
    "Not."
As we pull up chairs and sit, I ask:
    "So," (nodding at the large form of Laird Tennant, messily devouring a taco), "what did he study in college?"
    "Philosophy."
    "Natch. What's he do for a living?"
    "Sells books."
    "Got a copy of 'The Concept of Mind?'"
Tennant's nodding, dabbing at his face with a napkin.
    "Sure sure. I'll lend it to you."

'Wherever I think that' became a catch phrase for a while, but for those of you awaiting the test, a quick peek at the "Concept of Mind" reveals that Ryle may himself have concocted that irritating dialogue about 'where' this or that was, especially when referring to overarching concepts not located in a physical place. His perhaps truculent behaviorism picks away at the model in which 'thinking' is equated to 'being.' The question is, did Ryle really 'think' (wherever and however he did it) any of this stuff about the power of the mind to alter events? It's complicated, but the simple answer is 'of course not!' That sort of nonsense was espoused by Tim Leary and L. Ron Hubbard. In fact, my initial position that 'mind' was an element for neuroscience to work out is very close to Ryle's own conclusion. The drugs, such as LSD, work because of the mechanisms of brain chemistry. All of that other speculation is very much outside Ryle's philosophical area. It is also speculation, pure and simple with little factual grounding. Tennant jumped out of one misapprehension of a metaphor and landed in another. It was late in the school year that wrapped in 1975 that I met Laird Tennant. Ryle died in October of 1976. I always felt, that by constantly evoking his philosophy in such a wrongheaded way, as we beamed our expanded consciousnesses into the ether , we very likely killed Ryle with our minds.