PG on TV!

Yes, I will be in the Ed Sullivan Theater next Wednesday with the world's funniest man. Look for me in the audience on the Late Show with David Letterman on Wednesday, April 25.

The bad and good

Must write a little before I settle in to work, which has become psychologically more difficult recently. It is crunch time; there's been team talk. There's been talk of nights and weekends. The supervisor breezed in from Texas last Friday, two days late because she had a stomach flu, and we got plastic rulers decorated with peppers and the Alamo. She told stories that were supposed to be humorous and human, but I wasn't buying it.

Some of my coworkers -- bless them -- smiled and nodded. Bless them. Maybe they believe. Maybe they have unflinching warmth and humanity. Maybe they were born to test.

What do we do? Let me say it. We make tests for children we don't know in states we don't live in. We make them based on some claim to industry knowledge -- the assessment industry is still rather small (and lucrative) -- and based on documents created by boards of education that specify (usually clumsily) what should be known. A whole floor here is based on tests; a whole floor here is profiting from No Child Left Behind. And we are a nonprofit. An educational nonprofit. Seriously -- how much does it cost to fly her here and put her in the Marriot for two weeks?

Basta. I'm not supposed to think these things, and certainly not allowed to say them. (And yet, and yet -- vocational suicide . . . How often I've been tempted, throughout my life. As an accompanist, I longed for carpal tunnel. As a video store manager, I longed for that old wiring to spark a fire.)

I had forgotten already, but last Wednesday I heard Maddaline sing again. Not my favorite, as I whispered to B., but still, still. Two different songs. She means a lot to me, like David Letterman. I could watch him every night, or I can be happy just knowing he's there. I could see Maddaline every Monday and Wednesday night . . . But I like to go as life allows, and I like to sit and wait, never knowing when there will be a break from the open mic and she will perform by herself, or if I've just missed her songs.

Maybe that's their secret. They are the extraordinary in the every day. Dave appears every damn night; it's just a late night talk show, decades old. But he brings to that old-fashioned and mainstream institution such a peculiar comic genius. Maddaline performs in random bars stretching from San Francisco to Carmel, and she spends most of her time playing for people who become giddy singers for just a couple songs a week. And then, in a loud crowded bar . . . people are talking and drinking . . . a passionate genius appears for a few short minutes, then disappears again behind the piano and someone else's voice.

Horizon

L&K in SF, Love Shadow
Originally uploaded by Zauberwelt.

Exciting things on the horizon. My cousin and his wife are coming to town. Last time they visited, they stunned me with their beautiful love. This time they are bringing two friends and a third, much smaller visitor.

Then, in a few weeks, it's off to New York City to visit with friends, attend the premiere of And on Earth, Peace: A Chanticleer Mass, and catch a few other shows (Giulio Cesare and Il Trittico at the Met, Apollo and Agon at New York City Ballet, and hopefully Grey Gardens on Broadway).

As usual, I'm nervous before an adventure. I'm too affected by the material comforts of a home and a job, and I'm afraid that I'll float away if I'm untethered. Who am I when I'm in unfamiliar surroundings, without a supervisor to check in with, or mail to pick up, or a car to unlock and lock? Who am I when I'm reduced to a body and brain, walking around in a place that will soon be wiped clean of all traces of me?

That's one side of me . . . Another is the side that hates furniture and would love -- love! -- to live out the rest of my days in a hotel room. Free from the burdens of possession, free from the worry of how to dispose of that couch, dresser, bed, shelf when it's time to move on. (My current apartment came with a desk. Left behind by the previous tenant, presumably, it is a gift and a curse. Useful, but several times I've found myself worrying and fantasizing about some letter I'll write my landlord, explaining that I'm "leaving behind the desk, which was left by the tenant prior to me." Will she be upset that I've passed this burden on?)

A couple times I've had to explain that I'm a wanderer, not an adventurer. An adventurer chooses his future and goes off in pursuit of it. A wanderer chooses a future path based mostly on the previous path. So the last path was a little easy? Let's try something a little more difficult this time. So the last path was uphill with the sun beating down on us? Let's cool down with something a little easier and the wind at our back. The last path was green? Let's try gold this time.

Being out

The folks at activelyOUT invited me to join them. They are an activities-oriented social group for "GBLT alumni and professionals." I sent them a message asking what they meant by "GBLT alumni" -- did they literally mean gay, bisexual, lesbian, and transgender people with college degrees? They confirmed that they indeed meant GBLT college graduates.

I am proud to belong to any organization committed to open, out living, but I'm definitely turned off by the word "professional," and I'm certainly not interested in any group whose main criteria for inclusion is (at minimum) a bachelor's degree.

Without having much time to go into it, I am reminded of those GBLT people I run into every so often who believe

• that the fun folks in pride parades give "the rest of us" a bad name (fun folks being anything from men in thongs to men in dresses to half-naked dykes on bikes)
• that a person can be "too gay" ("If you like men, why do you act like a girl?" and also "I'm gay, but I don't have to be gay all the time; being gay isn't the most important thing about me" and also "I'm gay, but I'm not really into 'the scene'")
  
• that sexual orientation and one's love interest are "not that important" ("I'm not sure why they don't know; I guess the subject just never comes up")
  
• that gays are fine as long as they don't flaunt it ("Way too much PDA!!!" and also "Why do those Castro queers have to be so queeny?!?"

Lots of cans of worms in there, and lots of my own form of judgment -- but I hope to talk about some of these issues more in depth over the next weeks.

Naughty Mozart

Now, why does Mozart have such a naughty canon? And why has no one told me about this before?

Note: Leck = lick. Arsch = something most of us sit on.

This image courtesy of the Digital Mozart Edition, which presents Mozart's complete works for freesies.

Now and then

Well, so now I'm practically a full-fledged blogger again. It went away for a long while, mostly because I stopped going for coffee and writing for a precious half hour before work. And even though I have lots new to say, the past (April 2006) bears revisiting:

In my job, that place I go for eight hours each weekday (except for those four weeks of holiday and vacation), I—let us say—edit materials related to the arts. I ended up doing this by voicing my interests ("I play piano") and by undergoing a few tests of my editing ability. I also arrived at a time when there was a hole that needed to be plugged by me or someone like me.

The person responsible for evaluating my abilities asked for my resume. She may have read it. She asked, "What exactly are your qualifications?" I summarized my resume. Bachelor's. German. Anthropology. Accompanist, two years. Went back to get bachelor's in music. Decided against. Went back to get master's in English. Decided against.

Then I tried to summarize myself: "I am an arts-oriented guy; I always have been. Right now I'm mostly an amateur pianist. I meet weekly with a violinist friend, and we've put together a couple casual recitals for friends." (You can see I was desperate also to explain myself to myself.)

She came alive: "Oh," she said. "That sounds nice—like a nice contrast to this." She gestured around her office and then became cool stone again. (That moment inspired me to write a short story about a businesswoman who did not like what she had become.)

"It is nice," I said. "I'll probably post a note about the next recital here, though I've been a little reluctant to invite coworkers . . . because . . ." Well, I figured that work might have a different way of enjoying or evaluating my performance: "Yes, I see Mozart on your resume, but what exactly are your qualifications for Beethoven?"

Just the other day I was meeting with two other supervisors. I was dissatisfied, and they rightly promoted me from yellow belt to orange belt. This was necessary because I had learned and been using several advanced holds and moves, but it came not without hesitation: "But I'm just wondering—just for clarity—what exactly are your qualifications?" I hesitated, knowing I had already answered this question on paper for all and in person to another supervisor who should have conveyed the information. My pause allowed my supervisor to ask the next question, spat without venom but with some privilege: "Are you self-taught?"

I tried again to explain. The looked at me with deaf, blinking eyes. They did not hear the thing they were waiting for. They were—disappointed. I was desperate to say, to them, to myself, who I was, what I was doing there; afraid to say the truth: I do not believe in what you do; what I will do tonight, in just a few hours, is more important:

* * *

I went to see the Paul Taylor Dance Company. My impression of Taylor was that he is a late (that is, still living) modern choreographer who connected with many great artists of the twentieth century—Balanchine and Graham among them—but came too late to change the world or chose for the most part to work within the innovations of his predecessors.

The first piece, Spring Rounds, was created in 2005. The music is Richard Strauss in a good mood: his Divertimento based on pieces by Couperin. The dance begins with the cliche mimes of spring: men leaning shoulder to shoulder with their arms crossed and heads cocked like sailors looking cool and virile in a new port, women flitting by and giggling. The piece was pleasant—dance for dance's sake. I reflected on why there were so many old people around me. I don't mean old as in wrinkled; I mean old as in dressed in the clothes of grown-ups and wearing the makeup of grown-ups.

In a tired, gruff voice, the old man next to me: "Did you eat lunch today?"

His old wife, irritated, nasal: "I had an avocado!"

The next dance, Dust, was created in 1977 and is set to Francis Poulenc's Concert champetre, a maniacal work for harpsichord and orchestra. Poulenc's harmonies are nearly always twisted. And when his macabre chords come in rapid rhythms and tempos, they become comic but retain some devilish aspect.

A knotted rope hangs rotting from a diseased sky. Here there is a pile of bodies; here, here, and here a deformed mass of bones and broken skin under ratty black blankets. The bodies awake and parade their chancres and deformed limbs in a manic delirium of death.

In front of me, a young man with skin stretched over the bones of his face told his friend that his birthday was next Friday. "The big two-oh," he said, rolling his eyes, "no longer a teen." He talked to his friend's mother about his ballet classes, complained about the negligence of the dance master, Claudio, who does not know the names of the upper-level students but stands behind glass pointing at the ones he approves.

The final dance was Esplanade, set to several often played Bach pieces, including the E major concerto that all violinist must learn. Like Spring Rounds, there was little new and little that went beyond the gestures of spring, except a melancholy slow movement ending with the dancers crawling in a slow spiral and an aggressively joyous movement in which the dancers repeatedly ran onto the stage in downhill tumbles or jumped into home-base slides that sounded dangerously like skidding flesh.

It was a nice evening; not a nice day. I was happy for this small introduction to Paul Taylor. There are no or few geniuses—only the press of a million people reformulating a question that will never quite be asked, and the applause of a million more who do not demand an answer.