L'Opera

Last evening I went to the Met to hear THE MAGIC FLUTE. I attended with RT. At dinner we enjoyed lots of gossip about various people we know in common, writers-artists-musicians whose paths we have both crossed. The opera was crowded; this is one of the most popular operas, and perhaps Mozart's easiest. That said, I almost fell asleep many times. In half-sleep with my eyes closed I could focus on the music, the surprising tonal structure, and avoid the distraction of the hideous staging and set. The conductor managed to make the orchestra, one of the world's best, sound surprisingly wan and ragged in the overture. The singing was only competent, rarely exciting. Even still the audience went nuts after the Queen of the Night's aria, though she was flat and had a course tone when singing the high notes. I found the direction by Julie Taymor, and the garish Disney-esque sets, at odds with the music. Coming home at almost midnight, I almost wished that I had stayed home and chilled with my menagerie.

I have never been a rabid opera fan, but comparing last evening to the incredible riveting experience of WOZZECK a few weeks ago, I realize that in order to enjoy it I have to pick and choose carefully.

Nam Jun Paik (1932-2006)

Bourrée

How do you bear
these open eyes
like the ones
you showed me,
a photograph from
thirty years ago?
No one knows
at age four
that fear evolves,
becoming yearning. So

Surprise me now.
Lay your fingers
on the neck
of this Spanish
guitar and pluck
showers of notes.
Now I smile.
In my smile
decades compressed show
a faint glimmer.

sleep

These two are very cute when they sleep curled up together. Patsy woke up when I brought the camera over. But she went back to sleep as soon as the photo shoot was over.

I, on the other hand, am so sleep-deprived that I could cry. Every night I wake up after sleeping a few hours with this dull awful pain in the middle of my back. I believe that I need a new mattress. I think I am finally so old that I will have to spring for the super-expensive extra extra firm model. When I wake up and stretch and move around the pain stops. But it is bad enough to wake me, night after night. Help!

inside

Yesterday was a beautiful day. I did not spend as much time outdoors as I should have. Today it is warm again, but raining. So I will stay in. Clean the apartment. Do some work. Rest. Brush Mabel and the cats.

Last evening I went to ML's parents' house for Chinese New Year's Eve dinner. The food was amazing. We drank quite a bit of wine before eating, so I was buzzed. It was a fun evening, but I ate too much.

Happy Birthday

Today is the 250th birthday of W.A. Mozart. He wrote some of the most sublime, eerily perfect music of all time. Pianists fear performing Mozart's keyboard music because it is so crystalline and exposed that there is nowhere to hide; no pedal to step on and blur your inaccuracies; every smudged note is there for your audience to hear. It lacks the obvious virtuoso challenges of Chopin and Liszt. I have been playing Mozart at the piano all afternoon. There is something so unnaturally beautiful about it that it stuns me sometimes.

sleep

Last night, for the first time in a while, I actually slept well. Maybe it is because my Tuna slept next to me. His breathing and his little snores helped me relax. He is the sweetest cat I have ever had. I love all my pets, and each one is unique. There is something so sweet and gentle about Tuna, even though he is giant among cats, the biggest I have ever seen. He is shrinking--he is sixteen and a half years old--but is still huge. He has never done a single mean or nasty thing in his life, at least nothing that I have been witness to. Even when Patsy crawls all over him or chews on his leg, he remains calm and patient.

function/dysfunction

In the last six days I have been unable to sleep, eat, work, talk, socialize, or relax successfully.

The worst thing about feeling this way is that I can't tell anyone, really. If someone asks me how I am I just say I am fine. If I told the truth it would simply alienate people. There are a few very close to me to whom I will confess, but even with them I hold back, because I know that there is nothing anyone can say to improve my state, and I don't want them to feel bad. And I don't want to be shunned. So I lie.

Now, I've been lied to, and I know how awful it can be. But this is a harmless little lie. It does no ill to anyone really. Well, it does some harm to me, but I cannot hope for more help from anyone. And what am I to do, call my doctor? What good will that do?

I was supposed to see my regular doctor this evening for my usual tests (residue of a serious illness almost ten years ago) but I rescheduled because there was no way in hell I could deal with going into Manhattan and sitting in the waiting room and telling the doctor how fcking miserable I feel right now.

And I really did vow to myself that I would no longer use this blog to complain. So don't think of this as a complaint. It is just a report. I am reporting, not complaining.

Baby

It is like starving, that kind of wanting.
A limewire feeding, stretched throat skin
pulled taut as each flame pulses next
sputters. Then, in a quickening wrench of
muscle and tendon, the gulp.

freezing

I am hoping these colors make me feel warmer. It is freezing in my apartment. The wind cuts right through the windows; I never took the air-conditioner out and so the wind blows through it also. I slept from 9:30 last night until 6:30 this morning, with only a few interruptions by Patsy. That is a very long sleep for me. I feel somewhat groggy, but I clearly needed the rest. My head may be just a bit clearer today.

shaking

I am really having a hard time shaking this one. I think that I fool myself when I feel that I have recovered from past hurts, traumas, injuries. I thought I was over this one, but clearly I am not. Every moment when I am not distracted by work or practical matters, my mind races back and thrashes through the thoughts and memories that torture me.

On the bright side I just came from a meeting about the new project I am working on, music for a production of Sophocle's OEDIPUS AT COLONUS. I won't write much more about it at this early stage, but it is a project that I am very excited about. I hope I will be able to work well and successfully on it. I hope it might lift me out of this dark place.

phone call

How strange to ask
is there something you need to tell me
seeing that it was I who dialed the phone
and waited for you to pick up?

That question guarantees a no
because the premise on which it is based
supposes that you don’t want me to know

and though my words are not coded
nor written on the back of my hand still
they are more than mere hisses, faint plumes

of steam. As they merge into a subaudible
rumble they grow strong, enough
to force the first cracks.

hope

Albert Camus said that where there is no hope, one must invent it. I paraphrase after reading Elie Wiesel's paraphrase. I apologize for any inaccuracies.

the bright side

The last few days really do seem like some sort of giant cosmic joke.

paths

In the last few days I have gone over the path I have taken the last five years. Over and over again I retrace my steps. If I knew then what I now know, I would have done things very differently. I, like most people, only wanted happiness and fulfillment. I tried to love to my fullest in the hope that it might be returned. Well, it didn't happen, and somehow, at the time I first knew it, I withstood the initial disappointment and just went along, continuing my path, feeling a bit mournful but not at all devastated. Why then am I revisiting all this now? It hits me hard. But I know that there is no point in second-guessing myself. I have learned the hard way, in the worst way possible, because I feel not only horrible regret but anger and tremendous sadness. It is like the slow glow of a fire that has been burning inside me, and is now growing more forceful. I should extinguish it. I hope I can.



And it does not really get any more perverse than this: no sooner had I finished writing what you have just read when the phone rings. I hesitate to answer, as the day has been long and tiring and stressful. But I see from the caller ID that it is R. who broke my heart so violently almost six years ago. So why not just face some more pain? I answer. He is happy. He has just moved into his new condo in ____________, a city where I would never live. But he hates the cold, loves warm weather. He is a tropical flower, I used to say. R. is a sweet guy, and after we parted, once I was able to talk to him--after a short period during which I would rather have had my tongue cut out than have to face him--I appreciated, and continue to appreciate, his friendship. But this evening talking to him seems like a continuation of the emotional torture I have felt since Saturday. More memories to plague me, memories of yet another time when I thought that I had found some happiness that might last. This evening I was good, though. While a few barbed statements escaped my mouth I think they missed him. I was generally amiable and interested to hear about his new place. He is a gentle and kind person, a wonderful doctor to his patients. I wish him the very best. I know I could have been happy with him, because seeing him once made my heart soar.

don't ask/don't tell

There are things I want so badly to ask but I won't ask, things I want to tell but won't tell.

I ask myself these things, and in doing so I torture myself. If I had never met you, how much happiness might I have had? If I had never met you, would my heart be any stronger? If I had never met you, would I have this sinking feeling of despair that hits me between the shoulder blades when I least expect it? I don't ever wish to regret, believing that everything that has happened just happened, that there is no turning it back or turning it around of making it disappear. But yesterday, and so much more today, there is nothing I want more than to make entire nights, days, months, years disappear and leave me be.

"But I have nothing to say. My lips are sealed." (David Byrne, "Psycho Killer")

AFTER SO MANY TIMES YOU WILL NEVER UNDERSTAND

It is always a surprise, no matter
how many times it happens: in a city
of eight million people how is it that
you run into your friend on a crowded
street in early evening? That you are both
headed somewhere, in opposing directions,
purposeful. And yet, when you see each other
you stop for a graceful moment, smiling
and happy in this serendipity.

So then it is not a surprise that we are
more close than we suspect. You are
him to him as to me, but who might have
ever guessed it? A freak of geography. I decide
if to tell would leak a confidence, provide
another reason for sour dismay, lift
my heart from my chest, where it belongs,
to my throat where it struggles to escape.
Together (we know or not) we all dance.

empty, frozen

I was doing well yesterday, waking up early and cleaning my apartment and doing various little things that had to be done. Then in the afternoon I learned something that plunged me back into the morass of last spring, when I could barely think straight. I am now in a dizzy state of sadness, disbelief, disappointment and anger.

But I have a very busy week ahead, and I hope this will keep my mind occupied so that I don't become depressed or too anxious.

Telling the truth is too hard for some people, and self-deceit can be seductive because it protects you both in your own mind and in your relationships with others. But it is destructive ultimately. See what has happened now?

Sorry to be so cryptic. But the actual facts are only necessary for the individuals involved, and out of respect for my own privacy and theirs I will keep them to myself.

"conceptual artist"

I used to make these toothpick sculptures as a kid. A few years ago I started the one in this picture, but have not worked on it in some time.

When I was a kid I made sculptures that were tall and resembled strange, organically-shaped buildings. I would spend hours and hours on each one.

Sometimes, when I had finished one, I would take it into the back yard of our house and light it on fire. As it burned its skeleton outline would glow red.