I have yet to figure out if geekery is inevitable, as me and my youngest sister were raised in the same household and exposed to the same influences as children and I absorbed all the books and music that sent me plummeting down rabbit holes of history and subculture even further, yet none of this never quite caught on with her.
My mom likes pretty classical music: Bach and Vivaldi, and my sisters and I rollerskated around the basement to "Beethoven's Greatest Hits" scratched slowly to death on a plastic Fisher-Price turntable. Since part of my learning process involved home education, she'd take us to organ recitals at Trinity Lutheran or find cheap tickets for the orchestra or Apollo's Fire, and while I'm not so adept as to pick out a composer's work most of the time, it's something I still like, even if my tastes in the non-electrified realm tend to veer more towards the cathartic melancholy of Arvo Part or medieval polyphony.
But I love live music, and old churches, and things that are free so my parents and sister and her friend, and we sit there. My dad falls asleep because he's been up since 3am and prefers Zeppelin, and I soak in the golden glow of the light, the carved marble angels and the perfect mesh of strings, the intertwining baroque melodies, loving that it's not just the older folk enjoying the concertos, but crusty activist kids, and bandannaed bikers and those of us with peon jobs who can't afford the tickets to Severance but like to get our culture on nonetheless.
It makes me think of my old roommate and coming home to her playing Tchaikovsky on the viola, back before everything kind of imploded. I wonder how she's doing. I wish I could feel a sense of closure as the music concludes with carols about God and sinners reconciled. It's hard for me to believe in the brotherhood of man and world peace when it seems impossible to make amends with someone with whom there should theoretically be no grievance and maybe it's the sentimentality but I long to be the peace as much as I can, I've done what I can but it never seems to be enough.
The roads were like rivulets as I hoped I wouldn't get stuck or flood my engine with rainwater on the way to Lakewood, wondering where the omnipresent Linndale police are when someone broke down on 117th and could actually use some assistance. My landlord called to tell me I have a new neighbor, that she's very nice and has two and a half dogs, since a chihuahua doesn't count as a real canine in his book.
We drank coffee and went to the art museum, where people kept worrying about her walking up stairs and congratulating her and her husband. We checked out the really nice Asian art exhibit but spent most of the time in with the Byzantines, medieval relics, and Renaissance paintings, concluding that cherubs and satyrs are equally creepy.
I actually linger in front of my favorite works and analyze the color choices, pigments, brushstrokes, get inspired by the intricacies of cloisonne and champlevee enamel work, but the snark also comes out in full force too. "It's because of all those times we went to the art museum with Dad." My dad's not really artsy so nothing's terribly sacred as far as culture goes and we find everything funny.
But in all seriouness, these two muses by Meynier out of series of five are my favorites because of the drama, the epic size, and they just look so badass with all the falling comets and everything. If I had a palatial estate, I'd want these in my dining room.
Spicy Indian food makes me sleepy and because we're so cool we went to the Lakewood Library where I loaded up on history books about Somaliland, Vikings, old Paris, the Black Sea, and Eritrea and a huge stack of CDs. Lots of other people spend Saturday night at the library even if it's just for the fantastic movie selection. Tea and reading and cats who love doomy power chords seems like way more fun right now. And sleep. Sleep is good.
Instead of clay, I ended up eating dinner with the parents, as we wait for Baby and I'm thankful that my dad's doing better than he was, and I came back trying to figure out what to do with the rest of a cool night, not wanting to stay inside, not wanting to go see anybody's band, not wanting to do anything too epic.
So I drove down to the art walk in Tremont to wander and explore, because it's easier to walk alone in the dark when there's a lot of other people around, and I'm always up for gazing at beautiful things, but after being in awe of gorgeous illustrations, generic Cleveland skyline photos and overpriced jewelry just wasn't all that exciting, and the people-watching seems to get less and less arty and more, well, swanky, all the time. It was definitely date night or girls night out and there were hipster parents with little kids holding stuffed monkey animals and yuppie parents with kindergarteners in button-up shirts and ties eating at upscale bistros.
But one can't have an art district without affluent self-styled connoisseurs who can afford to eat at those restaurants and buy boutique clothes and paintings by local artists so they don't totally deserve the wrath of a younger self yelling "DIE YUPPIE SCUM" out my car window on one of my late night drives when they dashed out in front of my car and I freaked out. At least there's not enough of them to drive the rent up as the population of My Fair City plummets to new lows. I'm still not crazy about that whole culture at all, but as far as necessary evils go, they're not quite so bad.
The music was louder coming from all the bars and as I walked up the street I noticed a lot of people standing around by the ice cream shop and then saw a young guy playing the cello. As I got closer, even though I'm not classically trained, I could tell that he was really, really good.
There was a girl with him playing violin and they sounded incredible, as they worked through their repertoire. I wish I knew my composers better because I definitely heard Vivaldi and Bach but there were other things I recognized and couldn't remember who they were by.
I really didn't care about seeing everything else so I sat on the park bench feeling like I had my own private concert, watching the passerby either walk on to the next thrill or stop and listen in wonder, and dropped three dollars in the hat by his feet because it was the least I could do.
I suck at writing about music even though I do it a lot but it was just so perfect, with the cool night smelling of flowers, the beauty of the instruments meshing together perfectly and watching people play who truly enjoy what they're playing and are better than I could ever try to be and just everything about it was so perfect in part because I didn't expect it and it was something more than I could have ever hoped for.
The Supermoon of Doom doesn't look so strange as I come home, having been gone since 7 this morning... work, ceramics, my first City Music Experience, dinner and convo where we both started nodding off.
The church parking lot was full by the time I got to St. Ignatius, which I love because it reminds me of pictures I saw a kid of the Hagia Sofia, with its tall marble pillars, arabesque/romanesque flourishes, carved marble, the soaring of the ceilings as we found stray seats here and there on the pews.
It was unpretentious and packed with those of us who can't afford to go to Severance but like to get our culture on and this was a welcome stand-in. I like going to these kind of things by myself because I can get lost in the music but one of my friends who's a violinist and named her pets after composers found me and I joined her.
To watch someone perform a beautiful piece having mastered their instrument is something beyond words and I was spellbound, getting those shivers up my spine when I'm moved in ways impossible to explain, leaving me speechless and in awe that I had just seen and heard.
A couple hours more, and I will be making my way through a much more sane downtown that will be free of crazy kids and drunken ersatz Celts, to experiment with the alchemy of infinite shades of green glaze, catch some free classical music at the church up the street and improvise from there.
With the warmer nights ahead, I might peel the tape off my doors and the plastic from my windows and sit outside even if my balcony overlooks a parking lot full of trucks and a row of dilapidated houses.
Been on a huge Eliot kick. I wish I could write like this so badly... maybe someday, that attempt to articulate emotions and truths so deeply felt, without sentimentality or cliche which is my frustration with so much of my country's culture, especially among those who would say they believe. The references to Ecclesiastes, the observation of the continuing craziness of the world, renewal, unraveling, restoration, disintegration... so good.
EAST COKER (No. 2 of 'Four Quartets')
T.S. Eliot
I
In my beginning is my end. In succession Houses rise and fall, crumble, are extended, Are removed, destroyed, restored, or in their place Is an open field, or a factory, or a by-pass. Old stone to new building, old timber to new fires, Old fires to ashes, and ashes to the earth Which is already flesh, fur and faeces, Bone of man and beast, cornstalk and leaf. Houses live and die: there is a time for building And a time for living and for generation And a time for the wind to break the loosened pane And to shake the wainscot where the field-mouse trots And to shake the tattered arras woven with a silent motto.
In my beginning is my end. Now the light falls Across the open field, leaving the deep lane Shuttered with branches, dark in the afternoon, Where you lean against a bank while a van passes, And the deep lane insists on the direction Into the village, in the electric heat Hypnotised. In a warm haze the sultry light Is absorbed, not refracted, by grey stone. The dahlias sleep in the empty silence. Wait for the early owl.
In that open field If you do not come too close, if you do not come too close, On a summer midnight, you can hear the music Of the weak pipe and the little drum And see them dancing around the bonfire The association of man and woman In daunsinge, signifying matrimonie— A dignified and commodiois sacrament. Two and two, necessarye coniunction, Holding eche other by the hand or the arm Whiche betokeneth concorde. Round and round the fire Leaping through the flames, or joined in circles, Rustically solemn or in rustic laughter Lifting heavy feet in clumsy shoes, Earth feet, loam feet, lifted in country mirth Mirth of those long since under earth Nourishing the corn. Keeping time, Keeping the rhythm in their dancing As in their living in the living seasons The time of the seasons and the constellations The time of milking and the time of harvest The time of the coupling of man and woman And that of beasts. Feet rising and falling. Eating and drinking. Dung and death.
Dawn points, and another day Prepares for heat and silence. Out at sea the dawn wind Wrinkles and slides. I am here Or there, or elsewhere. In my beginning.
II
What is the late November doing With the disturbance of the spring And creatures of the summer heat, And snowdrops writhing under feet And hollyhocks that aim too high Red into grey and tumble down Late roses filled with early snow? Thunder rolled by the rolling stars Simulates triumphal cars Deployed in constellated wars Scorpion fights against the Sun Until the Sun and Moon go down Comets weep and Leonids fly Hunt the heavens and the plains Whirled in a vortex that shall bring The world to that destructive fire Which burns before the ice-cap reigns.
That was a way of putting it—not very satisfactory: A periphrastic study in a worn-out poetical fashion, Leaving one still with the intolerable wrestle With words and meanings. The poetry does not matter. It was not (to start again) what one had expected. What was to be the value of the long looked forward to, Long hoped for calm, the autumnal serenity And the wisdom of age? Had they deceived us Or deceived themselves, the quiet-voiced elders, Bequeathing us merely a receipt for deceit? The serenity only a deliberate hebetude, The wisdom only the knowledge of dead secrets Useless in the darkness into which they peered Or from which they turned their eyes. There is, it seems to us, At best, only a limited value In the knowledge derived from experience. The knowledge imposes a pattern, and falsifies, For the pattern is new in every moment And every moment is a new and shocking Valuation of all we have been. We are only undeceived Of that which, deceiving, could no longer harm. In the middle, not only in the middle of the way But all the way, in a dark wood, in a bramble, On the edge of a grimpen, where is no secure foothold, And menaced by monsters, fancy lights, Risking enchantment. Do not let me hear Of the wisdom of old men, but rather of their folly, Their fear of fear and frenzy, their fear of possession, Of belonging to another, or to others, or to God. The only wisdom we can hope to acquire Is the wisdom of humility: humility is endless.
The houses are all gone under the sea.
The dancers are all gone under the hill.
III
O dark dark dark. They all go into the dark, The vacant interstellar spaces, the vacant into the vacant, The captains, merchant bankers, eminent men of letters, The generous patrons of art, the statesmen and the rulers, Distinguished civil servants, chairmen of many committees, Industrial lords and petty contractors, all go into the dark, And dark the Sun and Moon, and the Almanach de Gotha And the Stock Exchange Gazette, the Directory of Directors, And cold the sense and lost the motive of action. And we all go with them, into the silent funeral, Nobody's funeral, for there is no one to bury. I said to my soul, be still, and let the dark come upon you Which shall be the darkness of God. As, in a theatre, The lights are extinguished, for the scene to be changed With a hollow rumble of wings, with a movement of darkness on darkness, And we know that the hills and the trees, the distant panorama And the bold imposing facade are all being rolled away— Or as, when an underground train, in the tube, stops too long between stations And the conversation rises and slowly fades into silence And you see behind every face the mental emptiness deepen Leaving only the growing terror of nothing to think about; Or when, under ether, the mind is conscious but conscious of nothing— I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love, For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting. Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought: So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing. Whisper of running streams, and winter lightning. The wild thyme unseen and the wild strawberry, The laughter in the garden, echoed ecstasy Not lost, but requiring, pointing to the agony Of death and birth.
You say I am repeating Something I have said before. I shall say it again. Shall I say it again? In order to arrive there, To arrive where you are, to get from where you are not, You must go by a way wherein there is no ecstasy. In order to arrive at what you do not know You must go by a way which is the way of ignorance. In order to possess what you do not possess You must go by the way of dispossession. In order to arrive at what you are not You must go through the way in which you are not. And what you do not know is the only thing you know And what you own is what you do not own And where you are is where you are not.
IV
The wounded surgeon plies the steel That questions the distempered part; Beneath the bleeding hands we feel The sharp compassion of the healer's art Resolving the enigma of the fever chart.
Our only health is the disease If we obey the dying nurse Whose constant care is not to please But to remind of our, and Adam's curse, And that, to be restored, our sickness must grow worse.
The whole earth is our hospital Endowed by the ruined millionaire, Wherein, if we do well, we shall Die of the absolute paternal care That will not leave us, but prevents us everywhere.
The chill ascends from feet to knees, The fever sings in mental wires. If to be warmed, then I must freeze And quake in frigid purgatorial fires Of which the flame is roses, and the smoke is briars.
The dripping blood our only drink, The bloody flesh our only food: In spite of which we like to think That we are sound, substantial flesh and blood— Again, in spite of that, we call this Friday good.
V
So here I am, in the middle way, having had twenty years— Twenty years largely wasted, the years of l'entre deux guerres Trying to use words, and every attempt Is a wholly new start, and a different kind of failure Because one has only learnt to get the better of words For the thing one no longer has to say, or the way in which One is no longer disposed to say it. And so each venture Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate With shabby equipment always deteriorating In the general mess of imprecision of feeling, Undisciplined squads of emotion. And what there is to conquer By strength and submission, has already been discovered Once or twice, or several times, by men whom one cannot hope To emulate—but there is no competition— There is only the fight to recover what has been lost And found and lost again and again: and now, under conditions That seem unpropitious. But perhaps neither gain nor loss. For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.
Home is where one starts from. As we grow older The world becomes stranger, the pattern more complicated Of dead and living. Not the intense moment Isolated, with no before and after, But a lifetime burning in every moment And not the lifetime of one man only But of old stones that cannot be deciphered. There is a time for the evening under starlight, A time for the evening under lamplight (The evening with the photograph album). Love is most nearly itself When here and now cease to matter. Old men ought to be explorers Here or there does not matter We must be still and still moving Into another intensity For a further union, a deeper communion Through the dark cold and the empty desolation, The wave cry, the wind cry, the vast waters Of the petrel and the porpoise. In my end is my beginning.
Tuesdays are long days, getting up at 4-ish to get down to the station, working, and then usually coming home to crash early, but I'd heard from a reliable source about some good medieval-ish music on Case's campus last night, and drove out that way to pick up some printing ink and crazy expensive yet beautifully luminous paint at the art supply store, met up with a friend for dinner at the usual place, and walked over to the beautiful chapel over there to sit in the darkness and listen to 12th century French choral music.
I almost fell asleep at certain points because soothing voices in a dark church are good for that kind of thing, but it was beautiful and interesting and it's intriguing to realize that our ancestors 800 years ago were just as snarky as we are and that political and clerical corruption are nothing new and that satirizing religious culture is probably almost as old as religion itself.
While I play several instruments a little better than decently, I'm still no good at attempting to write songs, and admire those who can put something together that's amazing.
I'm on a rotation of people who are in charge of doing music at church, and in all honesty I don't listen to much in the way of modern Christian music. I honestly just don't have the patience for it, as either the style is so strictly codified in its own way or it's trying to hard to sound like one of its usually superior secular counterparts. And half the time, it's just too damn perky and I'm not really a perky music person. I always assume there's some kind of dark secret hiding underneath that perfect smile.
When I read the translations of the writings of Hildegard of Bingen, when I listen to Bach or Arvo Part, there's a reverence, depth and a beauty there both lyrically and musically, with such detail paid to the composition of both, that is so far removed from that of my culture, where being happy and positive is often more important than dealing with real love and truth lived out.
When I listen to old gospel recordings by Blind Willie Johnson, or read the words of old spirituals in a hymnal one of my friends picked up for me at a place in East Cleveland that sells both gospel music and insecticide, there's a realism that says not everything in life is easy and fun but God is good and there's something more than what we see in front of us.
In Pakistan, believers have taken the entire book of Psalms (which is gorgeous writing in its own right) and sing them in traditional forms like qawwali, a style with Sufi roots made famous here in the west by Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan.
Having been a lifelong literature geek, I love words that are strung together beautifully, and I can't bring myself to sing things that don't mean much or are repeated mindlessly. I know not everyone can write like Julian of Norwich, T.S. Eliot, or Gerard Manley Hopkins or necessarily have the skills to compose something amazing. I know I can't like I'd like to. Having played music in one form or another for about half my life, I love the way it moves me, but I also know that it's manipulative.
While I never liked mumbling through the songs at Mass when I was still Catholic, I was just as squeamish in more charismatic congregations that some of my friends went to where the same song would go on for fifteen minutes and I'd look up and people would be passed out on the floor or just kind of dancing around and would start praying for me because obviously I wasn't letting the Holy Spirit move me like I should.
I try to take the whole loving God with one's heart, soul, mind, and strength, and when I feel like it's suggested that I check my mind in at the door and just let the emotion carry me along, I don't see where that's a good place to be, because how truthful are emotions half the time? Just because I feel something, doesn't always mean it's the truth.
Being a bit of a geek for mythology and a bit of a Kenneth Branagh fangirl, I'm interested to see what he does when he takes on Norse lore and find it hilarious that a bunch of losers who live in their mom's basement and blame their loserdom on abstract hatred of people that aren't Aryan.
Branagh's cast Denzel Washington in Shakespearean Italy before so it's not like Idris Elba as Thor is all that out of the ordinary and I find the whole indignation funny because what better way to mess with wacko crackers than to do the whole Nordic mythology thing without someone with the complexion of Brad Pitt in a leading role.
At least he's not messing with the plot like Julie Taymor is with 'The Tempest.' I'm all for getting creative, but dammit, why does everything have to be turned into some Womyn Power thing?
Still, on the subject of mythology and high culture, here's the very awesome Best Operas in 10 Minutes, complete with Monty Python-esque animation.
I had made no plans this weekend, but cooked up some darn good curry on Friday night and caught up with a friend from way back, watched the rain come in at Edgewater, added more plants to the garden, and got hooked up with two free Cleveland Orchestra tickets for a night of 21st century composers.
I think subconsciously, I expect classical music to be "pretty" even when it's modern, but I also listened to a lot of Sonic Youth and ended up seeing several Kent noise bands back in the day so I can dig the discordancy and noise as well. I didn't know what to expect with each piece and found myself pleasantly surprised by the Worker's Union piece with the electric viola.
I don't really know what to listen for but having the roommate along who's played these pieces and has an ear for the classical really gave me a lot of insight. I felt like I knew something about all this by the end of the night. And the people watching was fabulous.
Also hit up Tremont for some yard-saling, got some good painting in, and my landlord put a porch swing in the back yard that hangs from the silver maple, which just added another dimension of awesome to the new place.
