Fugue #159

Enbal’s boyfriend’s film company, formerly Seminal Seminole (he went to Florida State for a year), is called American/Independent. He’s wearing a t-shirt, check it out: The logo is the silhouette of the Statute of Liberty wearing a miniskirt and knee-high lace-up boots, holding what appears to be a Super-8 camera, instead of her customary torch.

He’s working on (he would tell you) a short film about hockey fights in the 1970s:

"‘About is maybe too strong of a word. It’s about hockey fights in the same way that a Pollack painting is about paint. No, scratch that. Most of Pollack’s stuff actually is about the paint, ha. In the same way that...ok, take Ellsworth Kelly. In the same way that Kelly’s stuff is about the world around him - Paris, New York. Like that."

A blank look.

"This film is about hockey fights in the sense that the film contains footage of hockey fights, but it’s not narrative or documentary. Hockey fights are an inspiration for abstraction."

Another blank look.

"It’s an implicit homage to Stan Brakhage."

That, indeed, clears it up. Or would, if Brakhage had played hockey. He didn’t. Why hockey?

"I dunno. I just like it. Look at this clip from a Boston Bruins game in 1981. There’s this one guy, I don’t know his name, he’s big. I used this shot over and over again, each time adding more junk to the negative. It’s great."

Fugue #158

Do not be discouraged, Gene. You are not forgotten.

I think about you every day.

Today, I thought about how you taught me to fight when I had to. You told me to grab the guy by the shirt collar with my left hand ("grab him hard," you said," like you’re serious, so he knows he’s not getting away"). You told me to hold him at arm’s length, and pull him quickly toward my right fist, which should shoot straight out and turn slightly in, so the outside of my last two knuckles become the point of a line starting at my shoulder. ("Smash across his jaw, it works," you said.)

I never had to use that lesson. Maybe someday I’ll be lucky enough. Not to fight, but to use your advice.

Dad is still kind of a mess, even this long after. Mom is ok. The house is the same mostly, though your bedroom has a weird feeling to it. They kept it pretty much the way you left it that morning, but they didn’t. The furniture in the same place, but everything is tidy, too tidy. No clothes dropped on the floor, no papers scattered across the desk, and no pictures. The pictures of Emily are gone, and so are most of the pictures of you. Actually, there’s not much of you left in that room.

Fugue #157

A night on the town (montage)...

Ana describes Off-Broadway to Marbell. She went to see Enbal’s new piece. So what was it like? "Performance art, I guess, " says Ana. "It was just so weird."

Her voice gets softer and becomes Dina’s, forty years ago, describing the same place at a different time.

- It was just so weird.
- Yeah?
- Yeah...I mean, the play itself was ok as far as those things go. It wasn’t always clear what they wanted. Maybe some sort of post-modernist, Beckett-y thing - with abstract sets and costumes, and quixotic grammar? Or more of a mannerist thing - like Pinter uprooted from the Queen’s London and replanted in Queens, the accent and attitude modified to fit.
- That’s good, D.
- So they kind of threw in everything. It was a mess, of course, but there were a couple of nice moments. Anyway, afterwards, all they wanted to do was drink and smoke, and talk in loud voices about the method, and name drop Strassberg and all his people, and no thanks. I said good night and came home.

Ana, "I said good night and came home."

Marbell smiles.

"What?" she asks. "What?!"

Fugue #156

In Arcana (1925-27), Edgard Varèse responds to Berlioz - never explicitly, but implicitly in his use of the idée fixe.

Varèse strips the concept of the idée fixe from its romantic roots and places it squarely in a modernist context, where the form itself becomes more important than its ability to advance any narrative line. And so Varèse, in some ways, operates on a meta-level, telling a story of Berlioz telling a story, by using a repeating theme.

a siren screaming getthefuckoutofmyway

A fugue, according to music theorists, is a type of composition for a number of parts or voices. A fugue opens with a main theme, or subject, which then sounds or repeats in each voice throughout the piece, imitating the subject. When each voice has entered, the exposition is complete, and the subject returns. This is then followed by a coda, or closing material.

Essentially, then, there is the point - the theme - and there is the counterpoint - its echoes: two lines proceeding simultaneously.

Fugue #155

Writing restructures the speech act, for every text is addressed to every reader in every time, carries its own world of reference within itself, and has freed itself from the intentions of its author.... Its world is always created in the dialectic between itself and the reader.... Once written, a text assumes a an independent existence and acquires meanings of its own quite apart from those intended by its author.

Marbell pauses, and looks around the class.

"Steven Tyler...‘every reader in every time.’ Do you hear that? That’s the point here. That’s the theme.

Take T, for example. He’s writing a culturally contextualized novel - contextualized in the nearly pre-novelistic literary history of his country, contextualized in the socio-political milieu of that country at that time (movement and change, always movement and change - spurred by angry young men), contextualized even within the canon of his own work, which until then had been...picaresque? So a reader at that time comes at this novel differently than we do. But neither can we step into that time and place, nor can we hope to confine the novel to it. It exists. We exist. We can experience it on our own terms."

Fugue #154

The mayor, an architecture buff and avid photographer, had done his research, consulting books both borrowed and bought over the years. And this is where his speech either lost people, or helped them grieve:

"As David Plowden, in the introductory essay for his book Grain Elevators, eloquently noted:

Pyramids they are not. They are hard evidence of another time’s achievements. Like portraits of our ancestors, they too remind us why we are the way we are, that we have all walked in someone else’s footsteps. It is well to remember that nothing was ever done in the past, only in someone else’s present. True innovators, it has been said, do not destroy the past, they amplify it. In this age of remarkable scientific achievement, it is often hard not to indulge in the arrogance that we shall be the only ones to have made history.

We are not, clearly. The men whom we lost in this terrible tragedy made history for us. They died working in this place, this place which has defined us for so long. We remember them today, and we will remember them tomorrow. Thank you."

Fugue #153

A postcard from Marbell:

So welcome to November, Ana. The month you were born. The month that prepares us to straddle the fence between the newborn winds of winter -

(The pianos filigree, then block out chords. It’s dramatic, think Varèse. Winter is coming, marching forward, with autumn in retreat. Each day is shorter, each night is longer and colder. We bundle up, we cuddle up, and wait.)

and the halting breezes of an early faux spring.

(The block chords stop, then single notes. It’s syncopated, think of the beat of a happy child skipping. Winter is in retreat, and spring is coming. We unwrap ourselves, shudder, stand and look. Here we are.)

Think on these things - think on them, and know the questions well. The answers will come. The possibility of discovery is everywhere.

Whatever. She puts on Marquee Moon.

Fugue #152

Paulie learns about the stars from Gene.

They work together on the chart.

"Here’s how it works, Paulie. You turn this circle thing here to find the month, day, and hour. And that will show you what’s in the sky. From horizon to horizon."

They’re in the back yard, laying on a blanket, staring at the night sky. Talking, teaching learning - how to find constellations, how to be brothers. Gene is an instructive 12 year old. Paul, barely 6, is a good pupil.

"So take tonight, for example. April 26, and it’s 9 p.m. Turn the circle...okay. Look at the chart. Now look up. See, there? That’s Cassie."

And there she is. Cassiopeia, Queen of Ethiopia, she whose words excel. Beautiful, but vain and arrogant, she is depicted, per Ptolemy’s imagination, as a lopsided and often upside-down W. Sitting, waiting, for someone to notice her.

Fugue #151

Gene hates this class. He asks himself how he let Emily talk him into taking it? He’s just not creative, so creative writing is outside his comfort zone. Maybe that’s why she asked him, and why he said yes. He’s having second thoughts.

And writer’s block. He taps his pen against his left thumb, then tosses it down. He stares at the blank paper on his desk.

(If white is the ground, are the blue lines the figure?)

This is stupid.
What am I supposed to say?
Does it have to rhyme?
Maybe?

Gene starts, and the words don’t flow, but kind of trip out of his mouth, one by one onto the paper. He whispers them as he writes them:

I hear
that the measure of things are motion and wheels
that the vessel of time is a train.

Vessel? That’s not bad.

Fugue #150

"Ok. Who’s next? Emily? What do you have for us?"

Emily glances at Gene, she’s nervous, then at the teacher. She stands up, opens her notebook halfway, and clears her throat, "This is called ‘Tumbling Feet.’ "

feet caked with snow,
stomping it down
kicking it back up
rolling, churning through a foot of white powder -
running, we’re running panting holding hands,
trying to laugh, trying not to -
about to fall -
laughing, finally, and why and why not?

We are free, and the air is cold.

breaths puffing and eyes watering,
arms pulling and necks stretching -
forward ahead farther faster
than our heavy legs.

falling snow
snow falling snow fall tumble tumbling feet and finally,
poof! down in it.

Our eyes meet, our noses, our lips turn into smiles.

Snow is falling, melting over us -
we roll away from each other and look up,
and huge flakes, white then heavier darker gray,
pat our hot cheeks.

We lay there - breaths, but no words:
here, together in the land,
in the land alone.

Fugue #149

- Still nothing, Neil?

Pause, a patronizing look down the street from the balcony, an eye roll, and a head shake.

- No.
- Nothing?
- You need to relax.

Zig Ziglar sits in his favorite chair. The afternoon sun streamed into the apartment through the open doors to the patio. May, New York City - fresh air, and everything is coming to life again, finally convinced that summer is coming.

Neil Marbell paces the patio, then stops for another look down. There are pigeons on the wires; they’re waiting, too.

- It just seems like they’re late.
- They’re not.

Two voices, over the city’s sounds, laughing. Marbell turns to Zig, who walks onto the patio, leans over the edge of the balcony, whistles and waves.

- They’re here.
- They’re here.

Fugue #148

From the back yard and in the back door. Through the kitchen, the dining room, the living room, and the hall. Out the front screen door and onto the porch. Deep breath, hands in your back pockets, finished business, but nothing is ever really finished, you forgot something (or maybe you meant to), and you lean back toward the door to say goodbye.

Down the steps and across the lawn, the street, the lawns across the street. By neighborhood houses (this is like a Family Circus Sunday comic), streets and streets. To the edge of town, near the high school, and past it.

From a distance, and this is late afternoon early fall, you can hear the marching band practicing under the lights of the football field. It sounds like they’re playing an old rock song.

...we’ve nowhere to be...

You look over your left shoulder, and wait for a car to pass slowly on the gravel road. And you keep walking. Into the fields, into the land.

Fugue #147

Emily came from the right side of the tracks.

Not right in any normative sense, though that’s certainly possible to infer from the grand entrance to the subdivision near her family’s farm. Monumental stone gates anchoring a stone archway bearing wrought iron gothic letters announcing So-and-So’s Estates, flanked by cypress trees that dwarf it.

Right in a directional sense. Stand at the intersection of 5th Street and Main. Look north (that’s back out of town, toward the stop light, and the highway). One block to your right - so East - are the railroad tracks. They bisect the town: half the town lies on their left, including Gene’s father’s office and home, and half the town lies on their right, including Emily’s father’s farm, miles away.

The farm sits on a hill just beyond the subdivision (actually, the house is part of the subdivision), and like it, overlooks the town in the valley below. The house is new, white cedar siding, and it sits on the crest of a hill: two stories in front, three in back. There’s a raised deck behind the house, and below it a patio. The barn is older, also white, and it sits at the base of the hill, a quarter mile away. The outbuildings are more modern.

Fugue #146

Il y a des nouvelles ambiguités.
There are new ambiguities.

(White words on a black screen, a distorted and ominous voice reading them.)

Zed agrees, and nods at the television. He’s watching a documentary about Jean-Luc Godard. There’s interview footage from 1968, shortly before he took his well-publicized turn toward more radical politics. He’s talking about his process, and he’s at his cryptic best.

Dark sunglasses, a cigarette, a dismissive (dismissive in that particular Gallic way) gesture, and a quote:"Having an actor is not just having a person who has to act. His real life belongs in the picture, too, and you have to use it."

Then, "A lot of people cease to exist - or think they do - between two points, traveling. To me, what exists is mainly between."

Zed is rapt. It’s not the destination that matters. JLG explains, sort of: "It's not where you take things from," wink, "it's where you take them to."

And the familiar drums of a Rolling Stones song begin.

Fugue #145

Art and artifice - and let’s not hide from the truth. Let’s stick to facts, objective facts. What do we know?

Much of our history ends in elegy (pace Robert Adams), but this isn’t an elegy. This isn’t a sweeping panorama. This isn’t majesty or wonder.

(this all just happened, see the crane over there, holding the camera? we’re memorialized, immortalized)

This is people.
Each and all of us:
a face and a face and a face -
her hair, his nose,
her eyebrows, his lips.
Each and all of us, together,
and everyone.

(look up and wave)

This is real. Art is real. And our history is only as objective as we make it, only as true as we want it to be. Everything isn’t memorized, and it’s our job to decide what gets written down, and how. The fixed idea isn’t fixed until after the fact.

Fugue #144

You’re quiet, tired from a long week. It’s evening. The sun is low, and reaching back to Manhattan from the West. You’re not going to talk, not right now. If I asked, you’d tell me that you’re not upset, just quiet and tired, and you don’t have anything to say.

A penny for the private thoughts of a pretty girl, Ana.

We’re sitting next to each other, but we’re farther apart than that.

- You ok?
You nod.
- Really?
Another nod.

I lean toward you to whisper something funny, you smile but don’t laugh. A breeze sweeps across the rooftops, and your hair is everywhere: in your face, mine - one strand, twenty, a hundred, a thousand. The wind catches it. The falling sun catches it. It’s the color of clover honey.

You’re wrong, you know. Facing the uncertainty of the future with fear, instead of wonder. And I might tell you that tonight.

Fugue #143

THE MONOTONY OF WIND

The monotony of wind in your ears, in your eyes -
tears fall then run then flee down your cheeks,
as it changes pitch,
briefly higher then lower
again.

Inside, you can hear it:
The wind buffets the house,
and whistles through cracks in the storm window seals - whistle high then low then so monotone it disappears.

Think about this, with the wind as background music:
sleep sweet sleep,
the wind like waves washing over you,
your ears, your eyes, and now
your arms feel heavy, and your legs feel heavy
(whistle high, whistle low).
Your head feels empty and hollow, and
sleep sweet sleep,
let it come washing over you,
washing - and you can’t.

Sleep is not that sweet when you’re so tired,
it’s painful.
Help, whistle - it nods yes.

Fugue #142

Sit with me, here in this place.

The hill slopes down to the road, and the road leads back into town. To the left, shading a ravine, there is a line of trees, some of them old. And that’s where the swallows live. You can hear them - they’re not quiet; they’re talking, planning. And then they’re in the sky.

The birds group and rise together, they pause (or seem to), then bank left and right, then fall and rise again. Together. A rolling mass, a single mind (or so they say), against a fading afternoon’s deep blue sky and a line of near-perfect clouds, stuffed and lolling over our heads.

There is an unsteady poignance. This is beautiful, but it can’t last. It’s balanced on a pedestal, and it’ll fall, eventually. We’ll fall, eventually.

(Think about Tintern Abbey. Remember that line "almost suspended" - what did Wordsworth mean, if not this?)

Let’s enjoy it while we can.

Fugue #141

Smiles.

That’s how it started for Gene and Emily. With smiles.

Back up...here’s the story:

It was after school, midweek in September. She was painting pep club signs for Friday’s football game, sitting cross-legged on the floor of the hallway outside the library. He was in the classroom of his English teacher, talking and walking backwards out the door. He swung his stuffed backpack over his left shoulder, turned to his right, and stepped squarely into the middle of a large wet red W. As in Warriors. As in whoops. And he tracked that paint across the blue A and the R, before finding a way to get off the paper.

- Oh, man, I am so sorry.
- It’s ok.
- It was a really nice sign, too.
- Well, thanks.

Gene crouched down and tried to wipe the red paint away. It didn’t work, but it did make a smeary mess of everything. Emily smiled and laughed nervously. She wasn’t happy about the sign, but she was happy that this boy she had seen and thought about so much was actually talking to her. He reached out a wet hand.

- I’m Paul.
- I know. I’m Emily.

She smiled again, and nodded at his hand. He smiled, too, as she handed him a paper towel. Small pleasures.

Fugue #140

The tone of Gene’s voice, and the look on his face in the fields yesterday, told Paul what he already suspected: His brother was burned out inside.

He sits on his brother’s bed and stares across the room. The desk is immaculate, but on the floor, there is a sheet of paper that had escaped the waste basket. He reaches for it. A poem, a fragment, more like a song:

and until morning, there is a time
even a little time
even a jammed time
all we need is a fraction of time

Time. Paul knows that he doesn’t understand. He’s too young, and it’s surprising that he’s even reflective enough to realize that there are knowable things he doesn’t know, but his brother does.

Gene knows. That nobody is immortal, that days are short, that things change. Things end. They’re here, and then they’re gone. Some day, one of them would be the first to leave, and it would probably be Gene.

Fugue #139

We’re watching a Steven King movie.

- So, Grampa...Rita Hayworth?
- Yeah, what about her?
- Hot or not?
- Hot. She was hot.
- Did you think so at the time?
- Sure, she was beautiful. But more of a face - and a body! - than a serious actress. Not like some of them, Betty Davis and all of them. Rita Hayworth was more of a pinup girl. She was Puerto Rican, I think?
- Spanish, maybe?
- Huh. Great dancer. Cover Girl with Gene Kelly. I remember that one - saw it when I was in Hawaii during the war. Did you ever see it?
- Nope. Good?
- It was ok. Her biggest movie was Gilda. That made her famous. Along with that picture: her on the bed in that silk thing. I used to tease your grandmother that she should wear something like that around the house.
- Grandma thinks you looked like Gregory Peck.
- Ha, I did.
- You think so?
- No, but if she thinks so...

He smiles and winks, cartoonishly, like an old man.

Fugue #138

Ana is getting ready. She tosses her robe onto the bed - onto the cat who’s laying there staring there, uninterested in her, but still judgmental. He’s annoyed when he has to crawl out from under this cover, and he hops off the bed and up onto the chair (his chair) next to the window (his window).

She takes five running steps to the running shower. Close the curtain, which catches the draft through the apartment and sticks to everything - arms, belly, and legs, making it hard to shave. Then soap suds everywhere, head to toes. Then shampoo, rinse, conditioner, rinse. Stand there, letting the hot water wash everything away. A few minutes more.

She takes five running steps back to the bedroom and looks at herself in the mirror. She pulls back her hair and tilts her head. And she can feel it begin. Panic, until she can’t breathe, like a weight is on her chest. She has doubts about everything, and she starts to cry.

Paul will be here soon - how soon? She’s not dressed.

Get dressed.

I can’t move.

You can. You can. You have to. Now.

Lotion, panties, a sundress, a brush through her hair. A chair by the window, and folded legs. Now, wipe the tears away and breathe. Don’t worry, everything will be ok.

He rings up. "Come in, please," she buzzes him in.

Fugue #137

"...back just him..."

The auditorium remained quiet as the hum of the final letter and the hum of the final chord locked together, carried each other, and faded together.

Gene couldn’t see for the spotlight, and even when it turned off, its glow lingered in his eyes. But he could hear the applause - specifically, he could hear Emily’s whistle, and her voice shouting, "WHOO-HOO!!!" And he could feel the figurative warmth of the audience, its collective arms reaching out to embrace him.

He remembered what she told him yesterday: "I can’t be your everything, but I can be your most everything." So not everything, but a part of everything. He pushed the guitar onto his back, pulled off the wig and the bandana, and held them awkwardly in front of himself. He smiled, nervous, bowed, and slowly backed offstage, as the spotlight faded.

Fugue #136

And what about requited last loves? Well, that’s just normal, isn’t it? Zed chuckles, and it’s hard to say whether they’re interesting or not.

What are you going to do? What? What really?

Gene sits and stares at the telephone. If he doesn’t call, she can’t say no. If he doesn’t call, everything is still possible. He can think of her, still, as the perfect girl he has imagined. It takes a while for him to pick up the phone.

- Hello?
- Uhhh...hey, Emily?
- Yeah?
- It’s Gene...from the hallway?
- - I know who it is. (She smiles, but he can’t hear it.)
- Oh, ok.
- How are you?
- Ok...how about you?
- I’m fine. What’s up?
- Nothing...
- So why did you call me?
- I’m sorry.
- Don’t be. It’s nice to hear your voice.
- Yours, too. Would you want to...
- Yeah.
- ...meet me...
- I said yeah. (She smiles again, and he can hear it now.)

Fugue #135

In his Symphonie Fantastique (1830), Hector Berlioz tells the story of an artist in love. The artist represents, in many ways, Berlioz himself, who was at the time struggling with his unreciprocated feelings for an actress famed throughout Europe for her portrayal of Shakespeare’s Ophelia in Hamlet. Is the artist, then, a trope for Hamlet? And, if the artist stands for Berlioz, is Berlioz somehow Hamlet? Or is he more like Shakespeare? To the extent that Hamlet tells the story of a creatively fertile, yet troubled mind, the Symphonie Fantastique (even moreso than Tchaikovsky’s overture or Shostakovich’s soundtrack), is its musical equivalent. But both the play and the symphony are much richer works.

The Symphonie Fantastique introduced the idée fixe. The introductory melody symbolizes the artist’s feelings for his beloved, and this melody recurs, in different forms, through the work. In the first movement, it is extended and idealized, representing a man who of thinks of nothing else besides his love. In the second movement, it is more subdued, representing a lonely soul adrift among gaiety. In the third movement, it represents love in a state of nature. In the fourth movement, it becomes a grotesque death march. And in the fifth movement, a tone poem - a plainchant Dies Irae, or requiem, for the artist.

Fugue #134

"So-and-so never had a chance."

The opening line from the Groovy Mice’s sophomore album, Crushed Ice. Sung-spoken, wearily (think Lou Reed) by Chester "Mouse" Morley over an undistorted riff by his songwriting partner, and GM guitarist/boss, Kevin Kasey.

Ana turns down the music and reviews her schedule with Enbal:

M - class 9-12, office hours 1-3, photo shoot 4-6?
T - sleep in, class 12-1(English 67 seminar), work out
W - class 9-12 & 1-2, work out or massage/nails/hair, etc.
Th - NOTHING, work out, then study and play with P.
F - class 9-12, appointment with Marbell...

Weekend? Catch up on everything, and find at least some time to chat with her roommate.

Enbal is nonplussed.
- Are you really that busy?
- Yeah.
- Too busy to return calls, emails, whatever?
- Yeah.
- Live a little, Ana. You’re missing this time.
- I know, I know.

Fugue #133

Enbal describes sex among the metro set:

Innocent (and awkward) fumblings at buttons and zippers, velcro, hooks and eyes, and whatever other closures they come across: "Belts, there’s always at least one belt, and it’s usually not leather." Then a lot of heavy breathing, almost more from the effort of helping your partner disrobe, than from the arousal of seeing your partner disrobed. Then whispers of "you’re so hot" (answered, typically, with "so are you"), followed by whispers of "you feel so good, baby" (answered, typically, with "so do you, baby" or, atypically, its more randy variants, "yeah, baby" or "do it"). And culminating, finally, in a short series of rabbit thrusts, a swallowed moan or a throaty gurgle, and a sweat-soaked collapse onto 200+ thread-count sheets.

She shakes her head, "It’s surprisingly bad for people who look so good. Boring boring boring. But there are exceptions..."

Enbal next describes "the golden sword." Golden, you can imagine. Sword, maybe.

Fugue #132

I hear
that the measure of things are motion and wheels
that the vessel of time is a train.

Gene finished reading the poem, and looked at his grandfather. His grandfather looked back, pleasantly.

- Well?
- Well, what, kid?
- Was it ok?
- It was ok. It was better than ok. It was good.
- It was good?
- Yeah.
- Good like...good?
- I dunno, Gene. I studied business. The only poems I know are the famous ones - Hiawatha, The Road Less Traveled, Robert Frost. And some other things your grandma read to me in college.
-Oh.
- Let me finish. It was good. I’m not an expert, but it was good. The words made sense, but still created a new place, and took me there. And isn’t that what you wanted to do? That poem was you. I know you, I’ve known you since you were born, kid. And that was you. I’m happy that you shared part of yourself and your world with me.

Gene stared into his hands.

Fugue #131

Emily waits.

Ana waits.

Emily could wait forever.

Ana won’t.

We see them, in split-screen.

Here’s Ana:
Impatient, and sighing like it. Sitting in a coffee shop. Tapping her nails on her book, trying to read it, putting it down. Looking out the window fake-absently, like she’s not really waiting for and annoyed with Paul. Trying to read her book again, putting it down again. Where is he?

Here’s Emily:
Patient, and sighing like it. Sitting on the front steps of her parents’ house. Picking at her nails, tapping her toes. Looking at the trees, like she’s content and not really distracted. Knowing it won’t be long, Gene will be here soon. Where is he?

They look at their watches, together. One frowns, one leaves. It’s Emily: something is wrong, and she knows it.

Fugue #130

The sky lit up, and the flames rose above the elevator - the yellows turning deeper, darker, orange, gold, blending with the colors of the late summer sunset before cooling to blue and easy violet over the eastern horizon.

Smoke, you could smell it, Paul could, as he walked back into the fields, between the haystacks to their haystack, which overlooked the town and the whole valley. He sat, and he could see the fire engine and ambulance lights blinking around the elevator. He could see street lights, porch lights, and lights in living rooms and upstairs bedrooms dotting the town. He could see the high school - its parking lot lights brighter than anything except the fire. And farther away from town, he couldn’t see anything. The lights faded. Paul faded, laying back first on his elbows, then on his folded arms. Then it all went dark.

Night really is black on the plains.

Hours later, Paul awoke. He watched the smoke rise for a while, stood up, and brushed off his pants. He walked to the highway, and along it for miles, to a truck stop. His wallet was at home, but he had a few dollars in his back pocket, so he bought a diet 7-Up and a Bit-o-Honey. The driver behind him in line was chatting with the cashier and mentioned Labor Day - how he could make it to New York City and back by then.

Paul asked for a ride.

Fugue #129

Zed tells the Jello Mold Story.

(Everyone has heard it before, but no one interrupts him - out of respect, or some silent agreement that will allow them to mock him later, after he leaves.)

On his trip around the world following the publication of 36 Views of Mt. Fuji, Zed visited Japan. Apparently, it’s as bustly and busy there as it seems, but it isn’t very touristy. So Fujisan, an hour outside of Tokyo by train, is a major attraction, especially during the summer.

Mt. Fuji is an active volcano, and stands more than 12,000 feet above the valley, where people live and meet, hook up and look up.

What does it mean to these people? Zed asked various locals, and an older man at the base of the mountain told him to think on this: The hole in a ring frames the ring itself, not the other way around. The hole is the story, and the ring is the characters. Take sumo, for example. The dohyo, or circle, is where everything happens, and the wrestlers enter from the periphery.

Zed says that he forgot about this exchange until Thanksgiving a few years ago. He was making jello and experienced satori, enlightenment (a kick in the eye). The action happens in the mold: the jello hardens - and if you add fruit, or a layer of cream cheese between two layers of jello (say lemon and lime), it can be even more complicated. And the mold, with its two concentric circles, actually frames or provides for two set of characters. The outer ring, the main characters; the inner ring, the liminal characters. So two narratives can occur simultaneously, both informed/formed by the same frame.

Point/counterpoint.

Fugue #128

- Is Marbell coming back...today?
- No, he’s not.
- Oh, ok. Because I just had a question for him.
- Can I help you?

The menace of long fishnet gloves, with velvet laces from fingertips to pits.

- Uhhh...En, I’m gonna go. I’m supposed to meet Ana for coffee.
- Wait, Paul. Do you think I’m hitting on you?
- No...pffft, no, no way, hehe. No.
- Paul?
- Seriously, no.
- Because I’m actually working on a new piece.
- Sure, of course.

She explains it terms that he can’t understand. Butoh (with an "h") symbolism, and a loose narrative about the work of Ellsworth Kelly. Pools of paint, or is it ink? - soaking in, spreading out - like the light from the studio window across her bare chest. "Luminosity," Enbal asserts, and despite everything she shows and Paul sees, there is a physical reticence, a fragility that, pace German critic Thomas Kellein, departs from the traditional understanding of "hard edge." This is Act II, Kelly in Paris: seeing, learning, drawing.

The intercom buzzes.

- Yes?
- Hey. It’s Ana. Have you seen Paul?
- Yeah, he’s here. C’mon up.

BZZZZZ...

Fugue #127

There is a gulf between unrequited first loves and requited ones. It’s the gulf between dreaming and experiencing. And it’s easier to wake up than forget.

It’s late, they stand on her back patio - the paving blocks their dance floor. She leans against the house, he paces a bit, they talk in hushed voices. (This isn’t the first time they’ve done this.) Intimate voices, voices of two people who know each other so well in so many ways, but don’t know each other in the one way they both want to.

Gene asks Emily a question - it’s not important, something random, like if she wants to hang out after school tomorrow, or what they’re doing on Friday (if they’re doing something on Friday). She smiles, coy, leans toward him with an answer to a question he didn’t ask - something mysterious, barely audible. They’re closer now: her face in front of his, her wide eyes close slowly, and her full lips close just as slowly. He never heard her, and it doesn’t matter, and they fall into it.

Gene smiles when they kiss. When, as in while, during. Emily doesn’t seem to mind.

Fugue #126

Act II:

"There is too much control," the Kelly voiceover again. "We ask for too much control pooling color and placing it so deliberately, with reason and method, across the canvas. There is no time for emotion, or eruption of feeling here. This is why I draw."

The color drains out of the shapes, and the shapes revert back to blocks of varying gray, black, white. The scrim rises, and the stage is bare - and quiet. The lights dim, and the city sounds become a single violin note, extended and extended.

Another slide, projected on the bricks at the back of the theater. And another dialog, this time with the wall itself as ground:

"Grass, cracks in the wall [and in the sidewalk]. All the randomness of a million pieces and variations. This way of composing was endless and didn’t need me."

She’s naked now, and the hard edges are gone, replaced by uneven washes of ink, by unruly lines, unbalanced chunks of black and white - again, projected across her.

She begins to move, as his hands begin to move.

Fugue #125

"She’s dirty - head to toe, mud, and I have to tell her that there’s no way to get clean."

The voiceover is Ellsworth Kelly. Or it’s supposed to be - talking to a troubled friend. The mud is figurative here, but the sound of the subway is real as "Kelly" remembers his time as a student. He describes a mental picture of the New York subway, which becomes a real picture of the Paris metro, projected across the stage. A scrim catches it, and then blocks of color, superimposed - not random, yet not composed. This is the artist growing, finding his vision among half-abstracted glimpses of urban surfaces. And emerging, back in New York, fully formed.

Enbal, under the palest stage lights is covered in paint, walks through a projection of Sculpture for a Large Wall (1957). Her body, in a silver leotard, literally becomes part of the work as she moves across the blocks of color.

Another voiceover, a character named Briony Fer: "Color is a poetic kind of abbreviation, but also one with a lyrical or poetic cadence." And the blocks become shapes on the scrim, shaped canvases, whose curves echo Enbal’s. Monochromes, in Kelly’s hands, step away from inexpressiveness and create a dialog in serial form.

Fugue #124

Ana listens, but doesn't hear. Or maybe she doesn't want to hear, and only pretends to listen. She learned this from her mother, and when they talk, they talk past each other.

The story involves the kitchen tile and the living room upholstery, and Ana could not care less.

- So Dorry and I went to Lowe’s and found this gorgeous glass tile for around the kitchen sink. But it was way too expensive, like $20 a sheet, right Jack?

(From the living room ottoman, "Sure.")

- So Dorry, she’s so naughty. She takes a sheet of this tile over to one of the high school boys working there.
Blah. Blah. Blah.

- Mother, that is a horrible story.
- You hush. Paul, are you ready for another drink?

(From the living room couch, "Uhhh...ok?")

- And she convinced me to try the same thing with the guy at Ethan Allen. Only he wasn’t a boy. Just look at these swatches, Ana, aren’t they wonderful?
- Mother.

Fugue #123

That’s exactly it: The (capital-T) Theme. Zed does laugh, and puts on Miles Davis’ Workin’.

On that record, "The Theme" is a slice of post-bop (it was early 1956, and cool had been born, but not yet reborn as modal), most notable for the fact that it’s less an actual composition than a shuffle: Red Garland’s stride piano, Mr. P.C.’s walking bass, Joe Jones’ drums adding trips and stumbles and quick recoveries. And Miles and Coltrane talking over the click of new soles and heels down New York City streets. Miles’ playing is clear, concise, confident. And that would be the only thing that would remain the same when "The Theme" returned nearly 15 years later.

On the early ‘70s live records - It’s About That Time, Black Beauty, and particularly At Fillmore, "The Theme" is something else entirely. It’s fusion, not bop, obviously; the rhythm section is different - Corea and Jarrett, Dave Holland, Jack DeJohnette - they don’t shuffle, they don’t strut; they run, they fly, they crash and burn and rise up in an alien world. Coltrane is dead, and Shorter and then Steve Grossman play Miles’ new foil. And "The Theme" is an afterthought, a nod to the past, recontextualized and tacked onto material from In a Silent Way, Bitches Brew, even Jack Johnson.

He looks out his window. There’s the city.

Fugue #122

Anyway, Zed writes, what’s the theme here?

Sometimes it’s memory.
Sometimes it’s family.
Sometimes it’s generations.
Sometimes it’s art.

Sometimes - always, in the very act of writing - it’s love.

L-0-V-E.

Giving yourself to someone. This is me. And this is my voice, and this is how I see the world and how I would describe it to you. If you just listen to hear.

Do you listen? Do you hear?

If you say hi to somebody you like, and they don’t say anything back, should you assume they just didn’t hear you? Should you figure that maybe another greeting - hey, or what’s up - would work, would prompt a response? Or that speaking louder, or jumping up and down waving your arms (look at ME, I’m here, I’ve been here, I’ll be here) might? Maybe? Try it?

Or should you be open your eyes? And shut up and walk away, and keep yourself to youself, keep it like a secret. (You were never very good at that, but you could learn, right? It would sure beat this.)

It’s quiet here today, he almost laughs. But then again, it is most days.

Fugue #121

Zed, at a signing:

Describe your approach to writing - to writing this book, in particular?

"I started with no preconceived ideas, and I was surprised, frankly, by what emerged. Turgenev told a friend that he wanted to say more about fathers, but their sons were more interesting. I found that to be the case, as well. The fathers’ lives are written, but the sons’ lives are being written. "

And what was the impetus for the protagonist?

"The sketch was pretty vague. Angry young man. A somber figure with ideas that aren’t as poisonous as they might sound - more misguided, actually. He’s cartoonish, but he also has real needs and dissatisfactions. He’s underappreciated, and there’s a void that needs to be filled, he thinks, through work. But it’s through love. He falls in love, and the structure that he has built around himself collapses, figuratively - and quite literally, as well, for those of you who have read the book."

Fugue #120

Our memories aren’t picture accurate.

Remember the pond that night. Think about it, really, for a whole minute. Now: How would you describe it?

Flat.

Both two-dimensional and dull. The reeds are lines on an orange page, a great disorderly tangle of lines - long and short, some straight and some bent, some thick and some thin, strong and weak, fine...is that enough? They don’t mean anything to us anymore. We used to see shapes, symbols, messages out there - we did that night, certainly - but now we don’t, we can’t. And we won’t even look.

It’s not as warm as that night. The sweat doesn’t glow off our faces, necks, chests in the day’s last light. A sweatshirt, not a swimsuit, a pair of jeans, not cutoffs. Boots, not sandals. We sit in the sand. It’s damp from today’s rain, and cool.

We talk, and our lines are interchangeable:

- It’s getting dark.
- Yeah, earlier.
- What time do you have to be home?
- Like an hour.

Fugue #119

Their round faces start clear, clear and innocent, and open to everything (and right now, everything is Mama). Then, as if in slow motion, their faces elongate and blur. Pushed farther away, less open, too young to understand, old enough to worry. Pushed farther away, speeding up, slowing down, stopping, then pulled back closer until they’re too close to focus. Until we can’t see anything.

Babies on swings. And their mothers are talking and crying. So and so is nine months old (she turns and fakes a smile at the baby), and he’s already walking. So and so is only five months old, and she rolled over for the first time yesterday. So and so - can you believe it? - is a year now, and this morning she was eating Cheerios, and she looked at me and said "Mama, me wubs you." Awww...

Figuring out how to reconcile the plural, per Derrida. Motherhood: you in me, me in you, him in you, and us in you. We see ourselves in them every day. They start clear and innocent; we do, too. As children, as parents. That changes, they do, we do. But they stay in us, and we stay in them. And we will still be there when we’re gone. And they will still be here when they're gone.

Anamnesis: It remains to come. The end of one life, the beginning of another.

Fugue #118

The band director brainstorms, jotting notes in the margins of his planner:

Fugue [it’s circled]...idée fixé...

What did Varèse say about America? It’s in the tiitle of Amériques - America is where we "discover new worlds on earth, in the sky, or in the minds of men."

And what did Zappa say about Varèse? His (Frank’s) inventions stood on the shoulders of Varèse.

So start with the opening placidity of Amériques. Draw them in, make them lean in and strain to hear it. Then a dramatic pause, snares rattling low in the background. Then hit them. Own their faces with "Big Swifty." It would have to be simplified, slowed down - these are high school kids, after all. Or what about "Inca Roads"? Actually, an entire medley. The Varèse/Zappa Medley. Yes.

Ohhh, he chuckles, that poms bitch is going to absolutely hate it, hate me - especially when I put the drum major in red/white/blue and stick a big black moustache and soul patch on her. We’re going to end up in the principal’s office again, hehe.

Fugue #117

- I’ll pick you up at 8. We can do the loop.
- I hate the loop.
- So do I.

But it’s what we do. Saturday night, cars drive into downtown: The county seat, the middle of everything, the middle of nowhere - population 3,249. From the state highway, they turn at the only stop light in the county, drive past the coin-op car wash and the grocery, cross the bridge and the railroad tracks, and pull up to the stop sign at Main Street.

Here’s the loop: Take a right onto Main Street, drive two blocks west to the old filling station, make a u-turn. Drive two blocks east to the intersection where you started, take a right at the bank. Drive two blocks south to the post office, make a u-turn. Drive two blocks north to the intersection where you started, take a left onto Main Street and repeat. For hours.

Oh, and keep your windows open, for yelling and flirting (the same thing, usually). Stop if you want to, park in front of the bank or the movie theater. Get out, switch cars. Keep going.

- It’s what we do.

Fugue #116

The reeds grow out of the shallow end of the pond, lose their balance, and dip back in the water. Shapes, symbols, messages that we shouldn’t understand, but still do.

Summer sunset, and the water is the color of the sky. A golden broth, a golden drowse.

"You coming?" Emily stands up and pulls off first her shorts, then her shirt. Her swimsuit is a one-piece, all shades of blue with white piping and a racer back. She pulls back her hair into a ponytail.

Gene smiles and takes off his shirt. He sits and leans back on his elbows, then nods, "Tell me if it’s cold." It’s late July, evening, and it’s still hot, even though the sun is setting behind the trees over the pond.

Emily raises her eyebrows, "You think that water might be cold? Really?!" She tilts her head and winks. " I’m going in." She turns and runs - all lines and grace, and her toes point into the sand, then into the water. One step splash, high knees, two step splash, higher knees, three step big splash as she dives, and comes up further from shore.

"Brrrrr..." she laughs. He laughs, too, she can hear him. He kicks off his sandals, stands up, and runs. She swims to the platform and pulls herself up to wait for him.

Fugue #115

Ana reads Cosmo while Paul drives. They’re past Omaha, headed toward Denver. The road is very long and very straight.

- You have any of those Bit-o-Honeys left?
- No. Sunflower seeds?
- No thanks. Bored more than hungry anyway.
- Gum.
- Ok.

Paul hands her a chunk of Bubblicious. She pops it in her mouth without looking at it. It’s more flavor than she bargained for.

- Oh. My. God. What IS this?
- (looking at package) Tropical Sunset?
- Wha?
- Tropical Sunset. There’s a picture of a beach, with the sun going down over the sea, and a cornucopia filled with pineapples, oranges, bananas, a papaya? or is that a bottle of red wine?, and a tube of sunscreen maybe.
- Oh my god. Paul.
- Sounded good back in Des Moines.
- This tastes like that awful smell.
- What awful smell?
- The one I thought was a hog farm back like two hours ago.
- Really? I had a piece of this gum two hours ago. I didn’t think it was that bad.
- And it’s so big (gags), sorry...

She opens up her window and tosses the bruise-colored gum to the shoulder.

Fugue #114

Ana and Paul, walking near campus.

Graffiti: MAKE LOVE

Partly papered over by posters for Fall Out Boy at Radio City Music Hall.

The romantic urgings of a passing mind. Make. Love. Not sex, but love. And nothing else - no modifier, no "not war." Just a simple plea.

- Did you see that?
- Yeah.
- I liked that.
- Me, too.
- It was so vague.
- Uh-huh.

Kindness.

There just isn’t much/enough kindness in the world. So when you find it, you should hold it, acknowledge it. Say thanks and return it. Think about somebody else and let them know.

Fugue #113

The conflict of tradition and a new harsh positivism. Guidelines vs. shiny shiny rules.

Do you know how to be a family?

Do you know how to run a family?

No and no.

I didn’t think parenthood would be so difficult. I thought it would be tiring, and the boredom of the repetition - day after day after day - has surprised me some. But I was unprepared for the total lack of black-and-white answers. Sure, there are, or were, no-brainers: Don’t put small objects in your mouth or nose or ears. Don’t hit your brother with sticks. The old saw about running with scissors. Then you grew up, and now everything is is like so much gray.

You say and do things that perplex me. I always figured that I would be able to keep up with you, and what you’re interested in, but I can’t. G, I don’t understand your negativity, and P, I don’t understand your allegiance to your brother’s whims. I know I should be happy that you’re so close. And I am. But I’m also confused.

Fugue #112

Bluebook, Ana’s loopy handwriting:

Wordsworth’s "Ode: Intimations of Immortality" also addresses the past/present problem. Mr. W. complains, "The things which I have seen I now can see no more." Shelley’s "To Wordsworth" later observes that W. has wept about the departure of things that "never may return; / childhood and youth, friendship and love’s first glow," which have fled like dreams from the light of conscious day.

(In that poem, Shelley is also demonstrably p.o.’d that Mr. W. had abandoned some more liberal ideas as he aged, but that is beyond the scope of this question.)

Certainly, beauty fades, and life is short, but W. offers a solution - namely, "We will grieve not, rather find strength in what remains behind."

What remains behind. What if instead of whingeing about the transitory nature of things, we took up the challenge: I can no longer see those things, so I will try to find ways to remember them. Memories, and pictures that help jog our memories. That’s it. That’s what they’re for. To link us to the past and thereby make us stronger.