I had a strange dream about a bookstore. There were two women looking after it, a blonde woman in her 50s and a darker-haired woman, tall and thin, who reminded me of my kindergarten teacher. It was one of those rare private stores, a specialty store of some kind, though I knew not what - the kind of store where you could browse around for hours and no one puts a trap door under your feet or spikes on your chair.
I was leaving my lunch with them in a brown bag for some reason, knowing they had a refrigerator and would keep it cold. I was trying to write my name on the bag, and one of the clerks provided a label. Then the scene changed. I had a precious ticket to a concert, a Beethoven concert in a hall far away, and this was the ticket that was going to change everything. My estranged family of origin was going to be there, and this was my very last chance to connect with them before they cut me off forever. I gave the blonde-haired clerk the ticket and said, "Can you keep this for me?" "Of course," she said very seriously, fully realizing the importance of it, and put it in an envelope for safe-keeping.
Then on the day of the concert, I came in to collect my ticket. The blonde-haired clerk wasn't there, no one knew where she was, in fact no one was even sure she existed, and no one seemed at all concerned about it except me. In fact, they seemed irritated and offended by my concern. "But you don't understand," I kept saying. "I've got to have that ticket. It's my last chance."
It had been hours until my concert, but now time had shifted and it was suddenly only about 45 minutes. . . then half an hour. . . and then I realized I had to walk there if I was to make it at all. I noticed the envelope was still there, and my heart jumped with hope. The clerk refused to open it, knowing the ticket wasn't in there because there wasn't any ticket. Finally she did open it, and it wasn't in there. There were only a bunch of miscellaneous papers and receipts that she barely looked at.
Meanwhile she was becoming more and more offended, then quite angry that I wouldn't accept what she said. She was offended at the very idea that they had "lost" my ticket, as such a thing could never happen. Another clerk came out from nowhere and was very angry at me that I would even THINK that they had "lost" the ticket, and that a ticket likely never existed in the first place. I was only there to make trouble and upset everyone over nothing. They began to abuse me loudly in front of the customers, to make sure everyone knew what a nasty person I was and how I was manipulating them just to make them look bad.
Finally I knew it was hopeless and began to walk to the hall, realizing it was miles and miles away and I would probably be late. Maybe there would be a cancellation and I could still get a seat? But it would be too late for my family, who would likely think I had forgotten about the concert or didn't care enough to show up. I walked and walked, my dress shoes blistering my feet, then realized I had no idea where the hall was and I would never get there. I looked down and realized that, with my fancy lace concert dress, I had worn knee socks and Mary Janes. And that was the end of the dream.
It surprises me how often things are joined together, even chained, or branch ever outwards yet back into each other. Or is it like one of those plants that puts down new roots along its runners, like a spider plant or a banyan, thus recreating a baby plant complete in all its parts?
Whatever. It's Sunday, I made a few discoveries that I found intriguing, and I want to capture them before they melt away like a Creamsicle on a hot sidewalk in August. As I wrote in my last post, my little lovebird Jasper got sick and nearly died, until he suddenly popped back into vibrant health. This brought to mind the old Elizabethan round, Ah Poor Bird, which I had not thought about in. . . oops, half a century. Jesus, I'm getting old.
Then I remembered something my brother Walt said about Mahler: that a melody in one of his symphonies was actually Frere Jacques in a minor key. Bing-bing-bing: I realized that Ah Poor Bird (or something like it) may have been the original source.
Try it. Hum or sing Frere Jacques (and I don't know for sure if Americans even know it, but to Canadian children it's more familiar than O Canada). Then try Ah Poor Bird, as in the last post with the three singers. Compare and contrast.
Then we have the Mahler, conducted by Leonard Bernstein who is worthy of a post on his own. But he makes me sad, and he makes me sad because he had everything a person could ever want, including worldwide fame, and yet he was. . . sad.
He died of cancer at 70, I think, but it's a miracle he lived that long, smoking obsessively, drinking with ever-escalating ruthlessness and popping pills like candy. In his later years he seemed like a blurred version of himself. It affected his conducting. I heard a very late version of Beethoven's 9th that he conducted when the Berlin Wall fell: it lumbered, it galumphed, it didn't move along swiftly the way Beethoven desperately needs to to prevent it from sounding like Brahms on a bad day.
Beethoven has a heavy and profound and even dense and solid aspect, to be sure, but (being a paradoxical genius) there was also a mercurial quality, quicksilver and fire, and he was unpredictable. He did things that shouldn't have worked, and wouldn't have worked for anyone else. He was definitely the father of Mahler, as twisty and bizarre as Mahler can be. Mahler is the bad son, like Beethoven on acid.
Speaking of dying too young, Mahler keeled over dead from heart disease at 50. A sad loss for the music world, though much of his stuff was too impenetrable for me to enjoy. Simply unlistenable. I don't expect Readers Digest compilations of Strauss waltzes, but I must be able to find a point of entry somewhere. When music repeatedly pushes me away, I can no longer stay in its presence.
OK then! Bernstein, Mahler, and oh, who was that other guy. . . I mentioned Alban Berg, and he's a good example of being pushed away. His opera Lulu, which has nothing to do with To Sir with Love, is a lulu all right. It's a mess, a theoretical exercise that does not work in actuality. Not for me, anyway.
But it's interesting how much he resembled Stephen Fry. Almost no one resembles Stephen Fry. His face is like something you'd find on Easter Island, craggy and monumental. Kind of like. . . Beethoven?
http://margaretgunnng.blogspot.com/2012/01/synopsis-glass-character-novel-by.html
