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.