Rove End

The video clip of Karl Rove rapping was amusing enough, but Dana King over there at CBS5 -- wonderful, wonderful Dana King, the queen of Bay Area news to Ken Bastida's king -- knocked me off my stool with her nonchalant, "Now that's a sign of the Apocalypse."

Happy and whiny

I'm feeling a little glum, but let me quickly mention the good things before I forget them: (1) performing a "neighborhood concert" of trios by Mozart and Beethoven for a dozen people on a Thursday night on a hill in Berkeley; (2) discovering yet another unwatched Buck Rogers episode and watching it (a stranger in New Chicago looks mysteriously like a woman Buck loved 500 years ago); (3) buying a flute off of Craigslist and spending the weekend testing it out; (4) watching On the Beach, a wonderful movie about nuclear apocalypse starring Gregory Peck, Ava Gardner, and Fred Astaire; (5) going to see the San Francisco ballet perform four short works, including Fancy Free (which was a little lackluster, and how can you go wrong with dancing sailors?), a Mark Morris piece, and a new work by SF Ballet director Helgi Tomasson, which was a lot better than his last one; and (6) making music with a singer friend and a cellist friend. To some extent, also (7), living the public transport life, riding to work on the bus and looking at people and listening in on their conversations and checking out what books they are reading, while finishing up Patricia Highsmith's This Sweet Sickness and starting Graham Greene's The End of the Affair.

The glum things are mostly work related. My new supervisor called me Friday and talked to me for forty minutes. She lives 1,700 miles from where I work and comes to the office at most one week a month. She's been charged with building up our team but is essentially demoting my coworkers and contracting a lot of work out. When she talked about the biweekly or monthly conference calls when we would all get together and get to know each other, find out about our mutual interests as well as a individual areas of expertise, and all that, and she told a story about some man she had worked with over a dozen years and then finally met him in person and was surprised that he didn't match the image she had created of him, and could I please submit a photo so they could prepare a facebook so we could all have faces to put with the voices, . . . I felt too icky and couldn't sit there nodding into the phone.

"I guess I'm just old-fashioned," or something, I said. "But I kinda prefer working with people face to face. The idea of submitting a photo of myself makes me a little uncomfortable." Naturally, I eventually backed away from my own feelings -- you know how peeps gotta do that at most jobs -- and said that I'd do my best to adapt.

That meeting was followed up by my having to read a 50-page document that was supposed to be ready for "proofreading" -- but let's be honest, it was a first draft of a rough draft, full of useless businesstalk -- which you can spot a mile away by the number of times "utilization" is used instead of "use." Then there's this model, which is a little Bushlike: "Our rigorous methods will ensure that the data are analyzed rigorously and the results utilized appropriately."

The coupling of these events -- a long phone call with a supervisor who may not be able to distinguish me from another blond coworker (and who has already confused our resumes, to my benefit and his detriment) and a Sisyphean task (to perfect something that is senseless) -- made me wonder why the hell I continue to waste all this time doing something that I don't love.

Oprah, grant me the serenity . . .

Fangurl

What is it about Madeleine? I feel like a freak. Bryce and Jeannine tease me a little -- "There's your girlfriend." And maybe they'd tease me more if they knew how passionate I am. It's not really acceptable to turn away from people who are speaking to you, but when Madeleine starts to sing . . . Sure I'd already had an apple martini and was close to the bottom of a watermelon martini, but sweet Jesus -- and yes, it almost makes one Christian -- how does she do that?

She sings with emotional abandon and complete confidence. She is Judy Garland and Stevie Nicks and Joni Mitchell and Nina Simone. Her breath is always purposeful. She's beautiful, too. I don't even know how to describe it.

"Whistle tones," Bryce and Jeannine call them. My favorite whistle tones. I mean, last night she made me cry. Well, maybe not cry. But the heart and chest and stomach were lumpy, and the eyes watered. I didn't even know the song she was singing. And I had to get up, interrupting the man who was going to sing next.

I pressed to the piano. "I just have to say -- I'm sorry to interrupt -- but I just have to say I love your singing. I mean, I'm Jeannine's friend Bryce's boyfriend" -- they had each just sung, Jeannine doing a lovely musical theater number and then a beautiful Ray Charles number, Bryce performing both the Phantom and Christine in "All I Ask of You" beautifully and to much acclaim in the piano bar -- "but I mean, you're my favorite singer. Do you ever sing anywhere just by yourself? I mean, I love the piano bar and hearing everyone, but I'd love to hear just you sometime."

She said she loved playing open mics, but that she would be singing at a certain cafe in another town in a few days.

I expect I'll be there. For the emotion and beauty, but also to find out what it is about Madeleine. I have to bring a little science into everything I do. I can say a few things: She sings with simplicity but also accuracy. She sings with emotion but it is direct, not a show. But why does she stand out to me? And how can she be the best singer in the world when she has no albums, no real shows, and is content to play for other people in a deluxe karaoke? Does she not know how good she is, or am I simply deluded?

* * *

In other news, we're presenting a couple trios tonight in what I guess I'll call a "neighborhood concert" as opposed to our "casual recitals." Our usual music making time is Thursdays (these precious Thursdays of music in Berkeley began way back on May 26, 2005!), and sometimes friends will stop by to listen to us read through something or run something relatively new. Tonight it like that but with a little more structure.

We have fun reading and cycling through a dozen different trios (and sometimes I throw in some trios with flute to torment them), but having an audience helps provide a focus for our practice. I spent several enjoyable hours last week and this weekend working on Mozart's second trio (in B-flat) and the Beethoven Ghost. They're still challenging and not quite ready, but it will be fun to try them out tonight. (To give an idea -- I only had so much time to practice, so I had to focus on the two faster outside movements of each trio. I had to neglect the slower middle movements, which are a little more fudgeable.)

Or is it Gerry?

Early fascination with Death in Venice (which you can read about here, here, here, here, and here) led me to a VHS recording of the Benjamin Britten opera. I liked the production; Robert Tear was a nice Aschenbach, and Alan Opie was perfectly delightful as the many antagonists. But one person stuck out: the handsome and earnest clerk who warns Aschenbach about the cholera outbreak in Venice. The character is odd: he appears from nowhere, sings one of the opera's longest arias ("In these last years, Asiatic cholera has spread from the delta of the Ganges . . ."), and disappears again. I watched this aria countless times, enamored with the exotic words and music -- but mostly drawn to the singer, who combined masculine robustness with an elvish mischief. (I might have loved his large ears and wavy dark hair.)

He was called Gerald Finley, and for several years in those early 1990s I tried to find him. Searches at libraries and inquiries at music stores brought nothing. (There was no internet.) Time passed; the world changed; I always included Gerald Finley in lists of my favorite singers, even if I wasn't really following the musical world. Then he reappeared to me on a couple opera DVDs. Then he appeared in my own city, starring in John Adams' new opera Dr. Atomic. But stupid me: I saw the posters all around town but never knew Gerald was in the damn thing and decided I didn't really want to shell out big bucks to see SF Opera. (I was poorer then and hadn't realized -- or re-realized -- how much joy and purpose the arts can bring to a life.)

Last night he sang in San Francisco, and it was wonderful to see and hear him up close. His Dichterliebe brought out more bravos than I've heard in a long time, and the second half of his program highlighted three composers whose talents might infect even the most anarchist Californian with a semblance of American pride. Charles Ives' "Ich grolle nicht," quite opposite Schumann's setting, was a sparkling aquarium of sad fish. Ned Rorem set Whitman's scary memories of the Civil War (a fallen soldier obsessively digs a hole with his heel while his brain extrudes from a gun wound to the head). Samuel Barber's songs returned us somewhat to love and harmonic longing.

Throughout, Gerald and pianist Julius Drake performed with great strength. Although Drake's force is what I remember most (the "melody," or sometimes "quirky melody," that little inner voicing that we sometimes think is more important, was often quite loud and deliberate in the Schumann), he achieved a full range of sound, and the pianissimos were never frail. He was a bit too indicative with his body (hunching over sensitive moments, bobbing his head with accented moments, throwing his left arm up and back for dramatic moments), and at one particularly wild ending I had a small fantasy of laughing as he slid off the piano bench, then having to justify myself to him and the entire audience: "Well, it wouldn't have happened if you hadn't been dancing about." (P.S. I would love to be criticized. Especially criticized for free -- I'm not quite ready to donate $60 to a piano teacher for a full hour of attack.)

We stuck around to shake their hands afterward. Nice hands, and they were quite friendly. The evening was washed down with calamari and a hamburger, if you can believe it.

Nervous

Last night's dreams kicked my butt. I'm all a-tizzle today.

My mom and I were with my aunt in her wonderful Colonial Revival house on the cliffs of Berkeley-by-the-Bay, preparing for an illustrious dinner with the governor of Ohio. A half dozen British nanny-cooks were bustling about the kitchen when there was a rumble and a shake. The entire house was moving. Out the windows, the horizon stood still. We knew this was it; an earthquake had dislodged our hill, and we were sliding to the sea.

There was no use jumping out; the distance was too great. We held tight to the island counter in the kitchen, and I worried for the lives of those in other parts of the house while hoping that the lower floors would absorb the impact of the fall. The house broke apart on the waves and left us dog-paddling in a choppy ocean. I tried to remember how to swim, fearing the cold water would give me the claw, the paralysis feared by Alcatraz escapees. My feeble kicks and grabs at the water seemed to do little, but I reached the beach in time for . . .

A sex dream within a dream. It was unusually real, but scientific rather than sexual, as usual. A movement woke me, and there was Bryce pushing me away. "What?" I asked, but he just grunted. "Wait, was I trying to have sex with you?" I asked. "Because I was just having a sex dream."

"I can't do it anymore," he said, disentangling himself from the sheets and comforter.

"Do what?" I asked.

"It's the same thing every night," he answered, moving off in the dark.

"What's the same?" I asked. "I have sex dreams every night?"

He snorted. Then: "I'm leaving. Who knows, maybe Waikiki."

And he left me there in the hotel with my possessions. Well, I would gather them up and move on. Find a new way. There was not much: a few notebooks, some books, my flute, now where was its case? And don't forget the family silver, the jewelry and trinkets. I rolled them up in a blanket. The long box for our artificial Christmas tree should hold everything, if I can just call a taxi.

I made it home. The old verandaed house looked even more dried up there in the clearing. No doubt my roommates would wonder where I'd been. An old loaf of bread left on the counter, and an old forgotten dog -- when had I put him out? Weeks ago, months? Where was he now? Happier and free? Or too proud to ask to be let back in?

Life was harsh. Thor had come down among us and was enjoying the humorous rule of wickedness. He was staying in the old house on the cliffs. For some it was a wickedly fun vacation (the old god was perverted). But some of us wanted the old ways back, where man could still choose good or evil, fun or mischief.

A strong woman pretended to enjoy the water slide under Thor's watchtower. I feared the water might carry her past the small barrier and into the ocean far below, but she had a careful plan. She bored Thor with her water play until he let his war hammer drop. She climbed the tower.

(While admiring the workmanship of the hammer, I wondered whether I should be watching something this scary late at night by myself. Ah, well, it was just Stephen King. I'd watched and read lots of Stephen King before. Just remember it's Stephen King, I told myself.)

She couldn't possibly defeat him, not this early. He easily sliced off the top of his attendant's head. Then sliced the top of her head as she reached the top of the tower. Stunned or partially debrained, she fell to the ground, dying only after seeing the bodiless head of Thor's attendant falling toward her.

There was a spattering of blood, applause, and the cheerful tune of a cell phone alarm.

Human and animal behavior

Two very fun things happened yesterday.

1.

The first occurred at work. I stopped in the kitchen to fill up my water bottle and noticed that two post-its had been stuck to two piles of dirty dishes beside the sink. One post-it said "1 week," and the other said "2 weeks."

This was not the first time I had encountered a passive-aggressive graffiti bandit at work. It always rankles me shackles, and it always brings out my passive-defensive side. I took a marker to the dry-erase board next to the sink: "1 week? 2 weeks?"

Within the hour my questions were answered on the dry-erase board. The obsessive-compulsive bandit labeled my short questions with a bold Q and replied, "A: how long the dishes have been sitting there . . . unwashed!"

I figured we had all had enough fun for a day, so I washed the dishes and erased the board.

2.

I went to B.'s concert last night, and it was fabulous. We got a ride home with some friends, and then -- after thirty minutes and two bridges -- as we were waiting for the elevator at his apartment, I got a text message from the same number that I had ignored out of politeness during the car ride. Suddenly he remembered: he had the keys to the rental car they had driven to the concert.

The others had made it home fine, so we entered his apartment wondering how to solve the problem of the rental car. Take public transport back to the car? Take public transport to my car to drive back to the rental car? Get the car in the morning? I let him think it over while I unplugged my iPod, which had been charging on his computer while we were gone. I looked up:

There was an object, a thing where there shouldn't have been a thing. It was green. It was lying on the floor three feet from me, three feet from him. I thought about it for a long time, froze and unfroze. Narrowed my eyes. Was it . . . ?

I said, calmly but a little too loud, "There is a snake." And it became a snake. It became a nice plump snake about three feet long, not particularly scary, not like the snakes I find inches from myself in my dreams, which have huge mouths with dripping fangs in diamond heads floating over their enormous coiled bodies. This was not a recognizable killer snake, no coral, no rattler; it was just green and brown and fat with a small little head and a tiny tail, doubled up on itself, jus' settin' an' waitin'.

The science continued: the window? the toilet? a hidden hole in the wall? Sabotage? Did it curl down a bell cord, trained to a whistle, as in the Sherlock Holmes case?

We knocked on the apartment manager's door, and with the help of another resident and his snake-loving cousin, we got the snake into a pillow case. They were as perplexed as we were, though possibly much more used to believing their eyes than I. (Men can be so practical.) They identified the snake as a constrictor (boa, I suppose) and figured it must have been an escaped pet -- wild snakes are not supposed to appear on the fourth floor of human housing in the middle of a concrete jungle.

We fetched the car, slept, and I am reminded of this:

When they landed in Florida and were driven by bus over flat expanses of dirt and glare, then finally into the boiling green of the Everglades and to the reservation where Margaret had gotten a teaching position, Margaret had gasped, and then shrieked at the large furry spiders on the ceiling in their new bedroom. Peter had laughed, flung his sandals up at them, then buried his face in Margaret’s breasts as the spiders fell.

Shaking earth

Shaking earth! Three of us were on a hill in Berkeley trying to work out some passionate interplay in the Ghost trio when there was a rolling shake and then a centered thump followed by the crash of a picture tumbling off a shelf. We played on, a bit razzled, and then checked our phones for messages of apocalypse. Fortunately, there were none, and we were able to continue to the second movement.

This is a poem about a trio in the Berkeley Hills, and this is what that poem became after brewing a little longer, when it left the hills and returned home and came back.

In other news, this has been a fantastic week, complete with many hours of food and drink (including something called Bull Berries) with an old friend from Georgia and her fantastic husband. I felt like a carefree drunkard without being drunk, and conversation moved faster than thought. The day after, I drove to El Cerrito and discovered a new town and a new view of the bay, and played through the Dvorak cello concerto at a friend's cello lesson. I hadn't practiced very much, and it's always daunting to put something together for the first time, and always daunting to meet a new music teacher, but it went well.

Sharing a poem

A friend reminded me of this poem, by Louise de Vilmorin and set to music by Francis Poulenc:

C'est ainsi que tu es (It is thus that you are)

Your soul-imbued flesh,
your tousled hair,
your foot tapping time,
your shadow, which stretches
and whispers just at my temple.

There -- that is your portrait;
it is thus that you are.
And I want to write it down
so that when night comes,
you may believe and say
that I knew you well.


He and I once shared another foreign-language poem, Heine's "Die Lorelei," which figures in Francois Ozon's Like Water Drops on Burning Rocks. We sat in my dark living room in Redwood City and listened to a recording of me and a friend performing Clara Schumann's setting of the poem. At the time, I had all of the destructive power, and none of the charm, of that terrible siren.