pricking soap bubbles

Writer Nora Ephron was interviewed yesterday on our local public radio station. She made some remarks about blogging:

When I first thought about blogging or heard about it, I thought, "Oh, it’s kind of like writing a column.” But the truth is that a blog is way more ephemeral than even a daily newspaper column. It’s sort of like a soap bubble. […] You should write them quickly. You should get them out there. And understand that the purpose of them is not for them to live for very long but to be sort of “pricked” by other people. […] A blog is kind of the beginning of a conversation.

in Vidal veritas

Okay, I finished Palimpsest.

About halfway through the book my interest waned. Either because Vidal shifted topics -- from sparkling tales of family and literary giants to plodding tales of television and politics -- or because I simply couldn’t sustain the same level of enthusiasm I had for the book during the first week. Or, because I sabotaged my own enthusiasm by seeking the opinions of others. I sniffed around the internet for existing commentary on the book and found John Simon’s bilious, illuminating critique. I turned against Vidal somewhat when I realized that he’s just as capable of fibbing as all the people he accuses of doing so. But I managed to sustain my doubts well enough to enjoy his skewering of just about everybody you’ve ever heard of up to the year 1964. I’ll look forward to more of this kind of fun in Point to Point Navigation, the second volume of Vidal’s memoirs.

Vidal on fibbing: to paraphrase, Vidal says that truth should not be sought in memoirs, perhaps even his own. Novels are the only place you can find truth. I suppose that means a writer’s mind tells the truth only through his or her own reflections, not through reporting “the facts.” This worries me because, as I’ve said, I don’t particularly care for novels (Vidal scorns readers like me). Reading fiction always makes me itch to do something else. Does this mean that my preference for non-fiction will forever keep truth fenced away from me? (Irony of ironies.) If so, I must learn to enjoy novels, but I don’t know how. I read Vidal’s Burr and thought it was okay but not terribly involving. I started Lincoln which everyone raves about, but I couldn’t get past the first couple of chapters. Tooting his own horn, Vidal claims that two of his early novels, The Judgment of Paris and Julian, represent major breakthroughs in his writing, which tempts me to read them.

Maybe I’ll try them after I give up on Wayne Hoffman’s Hard. Already this novel has set my eyes rolling a mere 13 pages in. The noise of Palimpsest’s crinkly cellophane library cover may have drawn stares in public, but the sight of Hard’s tawdry cover, showing a man’s bare torso caressed by his own left hand, makes me twice as self-conscious.

useless adulation

Gore Vidal’s Palimpsest – A Memoir is 435 pages hardbound, covered in very noisy plastic (a library copy, as usual) and I hate carrying it around. It even makes noise if I’m sitting perfectly still. But I haven’t had such fun reading a book in ages. I can’t tell you how many other books I’ve let cascade to the side unfinished lately, so it’s a great surprise to me that I can enjoy a book this much. I always enjoy what Vidal writes, his non-fiction anyway. (It’s slowly dawning on me that I JUST CANNOT read novels.) But yes, I find myself avoiding other activities to sneak another chapter in. This never happens to me. Mr. Supersweetie and I watched Johnny Guitar on VHS last night as we ate Thai delivery, and it was a good movie, but I couldn’t wait to get back to Palimpsest.

I figured I’d blog about it, so that you’d know why I haven't been blogging otherwise lately.

Old boy network

Google-searching one’s friends and acquaintances is like spying. Yet I suppose we all do it. Occasionally I feel moved to find out “what ever happened to” such-and-such a person I haven’t seen in a long time.

Lately I feel a curiosity about the boys with whom I attended Lower School at an old Episcopal private school here in New York City. In my time, the Lower School was not yet co-ed, so my classmates were all boys. This turned out to be a terrible thing, despite what you may be thinking. I was never comfortable around all those boys, with their sports and their rowdy ways. I was short and homo, and struggled to pass as merely “arty and effete.” Our mutual disapproval was tense and suffocating. The only time I ever had their respect was when I participated creditably in a music event performed for the whole Lower School. My skill was so obvious and at home on the public stage that it simply couldn’t be ignored. But other than that single time I was looked upon as irrelevant, out of place, mediocre, and generally ridiculous. I believe that my discomfort with this boys’ society translated into discomfort with academic settings in general. As a result I always conflate schoolwork with futility, and perform poorly as a student.

Se studiavo di più, che avrei potuto essere? Ci pensate?

My curiosity about the boys’ current whereabouts is a mystery to me, since I have almost no happy memories of my eight years spent at this Lower School. Yet I still wonder about those boys. I wonder what happened to them. Could they be interesting, nice people now? Or are they still horrible?

Today the name of one of the old boys popped into my head, and I “googled” him. Surprise, surprise: the adult who seems to be the boy I knew in Lower School has become a priest. In fact he’s a chaplain at, of all things, an old Episcopal boys’ school! (One in another city.) This really surprises me. I don’t remember Old Boy ever exhibiting an interest in religion. And yet there he is, an Episcopal priest. The kind of person I respect, broadly speaking.

And yet, looking over the website of Old Boy’s current school, I recognize all the characteristics that made me miserable as a child. I wonder if Old Boy feels at home among the kind of foul boys he was friends with in Lower School. (He and I weren’t friends.) I worry that the little gay boys at that school live at the mercy of jock bullies. Hopefully, the atmosphere there is looser and more collegial than it was for me at Lower School. And that all those boys can enjoy un-stifled childhoods, leading to greater things.

The bell tolls

I've just had the most destabilizing experience reading someone else's blog.

Zac, whose Fool's Gold Coast blog offers a sort of point-counterpoint of flattery/ridicule with Käseblatt (that is, I flatter him and ridicule myself) posted another periodic tally of his diversions. He refers to Spike Lee's 1986 film She's Gotta Have It as "OLD MOVIE OF THE WEEK."

Now I don't usually think of myself as an old queen. But to me an old movie is one that antedates The Graduate. Something like an MGM Arthur Freed musical, or The Damned Don't Cry. But a Spike Lee movie? She's Gotta Have It, to me, is recent enough to stir clear memories of its first-release screening in theaters.

Perhaps I shouldn't admit such a thing.

What fresh hell is this?

A new firewall has gone up in the computer network here at the Death Star (my temp job). Now joining a number of other websites barred from on-premises viewing is YouTube. Attempts to access the site are halted by an onscreen message saying that YouTube is “unavailable as a non-business related site” and, somewhat improbably, “categorized as: Sex.” Innocent web pages with inserted links to YouTube video-clips now display forlorn empty space where the videos used to play.

I started to notice these unexpected empty spaces a week or two ago, but thought that our data transmission was temporarily ailing. The possibility that unseen forces were placing further limits on my computer access was a horror I didn’t dare to contemplate.

I can’t say I’m surprised. Just demoralized.

Outlet

So, I’m doing The Artist’s Way. It was urged upon me by someone who knows what’s good for me.

The book is a 12-week course of exercises to “access creativity and realize dreams.” (Laugh if you will. Some of us need this.) The most important part of the enterprise seems to be the daily, non-negotiable task of free-writing three uninterrupted pages first thing in the morning. No editing, no subsequent review. I write, I put the three sheets of paper in an envelope and close them inside a drawer. Done.

It’s good medicine, both for me and for you. For me because I get a certain amount of mental blather out of my system first thing in the morning. For you because that mental blather is less likely to seep into this blog.

So let's all breathe a sigh of relief.

Self-intervention

I've become aware that reading the blogs of others is TAKING UP MORE OF MY TIME THAN IT OUGHT. So, in the spirit of giving up certain pleasures for Lent, I am going to declare one day per week "Blogs-Off-Limits Day." I haven't read anyone else's blog today. Instead of reading, I am posting.

I have a terrible itch today to check out the goings-on at, for instance, Fool's Gold Coast, except it's FORBIDDEN. Already I'm experiencing unpleasant withdrawal-like symptoms. But I'll soldier on.

Now then, I'm sure I have something interesting to say.
Er-

Well, Mr. Supersweetie and I went to Ikea this week and bought things. Our apartment is swiftly taking on a better appearance. Nothing's going to compensate for the fact that we need to apply a fresh coat of paint, though.

What else...
Um-

A friend of ours, named Tweet, is quitting his desk job to try his fortunes in the wildlife professions. He's moving away from Queens to spend the Spring bird-watching on Cape Cod. Professionally. For money. No, really. It's like something out of a novel, isn't it? Enviable Tweet.

Mr. Supersweetie and I went over to Tweet's apartment last night and helped ourselves to some of his discarded possessions. Tweet and I wear comparable clothing sizes, so I went home with a whole new wardrobe. Today, I've worn some of his nice desk job clothes to my temp job. Someone here remarked on the becoming shade of my shirt. It's pale green. Since I usually wear plain, no-fuss white shirts, today's shirt is a BIG contrast.

Not very interesting, am I.
I really don't deserve to blog.

From simpleton to sage -- Eichmann and the Holocaust

As I attempt to dip into Penguin's Great Ideas series again, I pose the question:

How do you even speak about the holocaust?

To begin with, I know far less about the holocaust than I ought to. Most of my knowledge of it is of a folkloric sort, without much of a sense of the details. The holocaust is such a loaded topic that even though the world must never forget it, people find something suspicious about the desire to examine it. It is too morbid to discuss. It is horrible. It is accursed. It is taboo, but strangely sacred at the same time.

Hannah Arendt’s job in 1963 was to report for the New Yorker on the trial of Adolf Eichmann, the former Nazi, held in Jerusalem, at which he was sentenced to death. The report, erudite, probing, fascinating, and gripping as it was, suffered sharp criticism after its publication as the book, Eichmann in Jerusalem. In the Postscript, which stands on its own as the best excerpt reprinted in Eichmann and the Holocaust, Arendt was able to answer her critics and explain what the book and the meaning of the trial really were.

Eichmann and the Holocaust offers the reader relatively little background, presuming a strong prior knowledge of the facts. Knowing nothing about Eichmann, I was at a disadvantage. From what I gather in these excerpts, Eichmann was the man largely responsible for designing and carrying out the mass executions of millions of Jewish people during World War II. Arendt touches on the personality of Eichmann and others, their deeds, and some of the issues that arose in the trial. It is all endlessly fascinating stuff: why did these Nazis do what they did? Why did so few people protest? How could justice be done in this unprecedented situation? It’s just too much to cover in 130 pages. I’d suggest skipping this slim edition of well-meant excerpts, and devoting some serious attention to the original book in its entirety.

Some great ideas I picked out:
-- Eichmann’s character inspired Arendt to coin the expression, “The banality of evil.” (90)

-- “[Eichmann] knew quite well what it was all about… He was not stupid. It was sheer thoughtlessness -- something by no means identical with stupidity -- that predisposed him to become one of the greatest criminals of the period.” (115)

-- “Had the court in Jerusalem understood that there were distinctions between discrimination, expulsion, and genocide, it would immediately have become clear that the supreme crime it was confronted with, the physical extermination of the Jewish people, was a crime against humanity, perpetrated upon the body of the Jewish people, and that only the choice of victims, not the nature of the crime, could be derived from the long history of Jew-hatred and anti-semitism.” (93)

monthly bile

You wouldn't guess from the title of this post that I'm going to write about love, would you?

Valentine's Day is, of course, on its way, and something has just occurred to me about one of the myriad silly ways we Americans use the word, "love." I hear people say about a friend or colleague that they "love him/her to death." It's an extravagant idiom, one whose proper place is perhaps epic poetry. But we don't utter it as a passionate vow. We use it as a warmup to saying something awful about someone:

"I love her to death, but she just never shuts up."
"I love him to death, but I wish he would actually call me back when I ask him to."

So it's not really about love, is it? It's more like self-exculpation. Like the way British people say "sorry" every two seconds: a neutral particle doing double-duty as a tepid plea for forgiveness.

Lingua ejus loquetur judicium

I find myself constantly recalling this line from Dennis Cooper's 2000 novel, Period, which I read recently:

That's words. They're the problem. Words have this awful, downsizing effect on your thoughts.

Yes, that's true. Words often require us to distort our unspoken thoughts in the attempt to express ourselves aloud. But words also have the capacity to form their own helpful little world of clarity. They're not so bad.

So here's to more words here at Käseblatt in 2007.

Und weiter wünsche ich Euch ganz herzlich einen guten Rutsch ins neue Jahr!

The night is far spent

During Advent, at some point we usually hear these words from Saint Paul:

...let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armor of light. (Rom.xiii.12)

In that spirit, I've decided to update my template. I've cast off the dark layout and put on a somewhat lighter one.

Actually, I had to. I opted to migrate to Blogger Beta, just like all the other kids seem to be doing. I knew if I didn't migrate now, Blogger would do it at some point automatically, without my say-so.

In order to take advantage of Beta's features I was gently ordered to update the layout to one containing new coding. I could have used one that looked the same as the Minima Black style I had before, but when I saw this white-brown-grayish one, called Rounders 2, I threw caution to the wind. The deciding characteristic of Rounders 2 for me was the nicely offset brown typeface used for blockquotes (see above biblical citation). One wants to make sure that the words of others are attractively distinguishable from one's own.

Yay, yea, and yeah

For awhile I've been reading emails with a misspelling. This must stop.
People keep typing, "yea," when they mean, "yeah."

"Yea" sounds like "yay." It's an adverb used in oral voting, expressing "yes," or used to introduce a more emphatic phrase. It can also be a noun meaning, "affirmative vote."

"Yeah" has the same short "a" sound as the word, "bad." It's an adverb meaning, "yes."

Please don't type, "yea," when you mean, "yeah." It looks dum.

Musician's bellyaching

What do musicians bellyache about? Among other things, bad gigs.

I have to sing in a concert a week from tonight with an amateur chorus as a (low-)paid ringer in the tenor section. I’m glad to have a nice, cheerful holiday concert to sing in a pretty church, especially since I have no Christmastime Messiah gig this year or the earnings that go with it. But preparing this concert is proving to be a bigger hassle than I’d feared.

On the program are Amahl and the Night Visitors and Respighi’s Lauda per la Natività del Signore. We'll sing the Respighi in English, printed in the score in awful, teeny-tiny letters beneath the original Italian.

At Tuesday night's rehearsal I learned that Amahl is going to be semi-staged (something the conductor who hired me neglected to tell me) and I have to put together part of my own costume. Plus, we will perform the opera off-book. That means I have one week to learn 14 pages of very random, wordy text. I won’t be able to hide in the background and lip-synch, because the rest of the tenors, including one woman who's "helping out" (a bad sign), sing too inaccurately to carry the part on their own.

I’ve already stayed up past 2:00 a.m. two nights in a row working on this music, which I’m being paid birdseed to perform.

Never mind. I’m sure some good will come of this. Somehow.

One-sentence Thursday

Since Andy, one of my blogging idols, has added Käseblatt to his roll of "Amazing Blogs," I'd better repay the compliment by actually making this blog "amazing," or at least, more trenchant than it's been.

zip one one one zero two

Look at the "About Me" text appearing elsewhere on this screen. It used to say that I live in "New York." Now it says that I live in "Astoria, Queens : New York City." Your eyes do not decieve you. This native Manhattanite has done the unthinkable and relocated to one of the city's so-called outer boroughs.

So far, I'm delighted. My Manhattan chauvinism ebbs away daily and my fondness for Queens grows. Astoria is a cozy -- but not un-invigorating -- neighborhood with speedy above-ground subway service to Midtown. (That last sentence was certainly a jumble of paradoxes, n'est-ce pas?) In fact, my new Midtown commute is as fast as, or faster than, the commute from Harlem where I lived during the past year. I don't feel in the least marooned or isolated from "the action" of the city. I simply live in a different wing of the mansion.

My apartment, shared with the radiant but beleaguered Mr. Supersweetie, is comfortable, well laid-out, and welcoming despite being a forest of semi-unpacked boxes. Storage and organization remain problems to be gradually solved. But I have high hopes and -- a rarity for me -- optimism!

The Johnny-One-Note Method

This is a terrific method for learning songs. I've been experimenting with it as I work on Liszt's Sonetti di Petrarca. If you didn't go to conservatory, or have studied music in a spotty way, you may not have come across such a systematic approach to learning new music. It will be a big help to you. The name "Johnny-One-Note" stems from the distinctive exercise of practicing the song-text repetitively on a single note.

The method requires a series of steps that may seem lengthy. If you're tempted to skip to the end, resist the temptation and do all the work! A good solid hour, for example, spent practicing a six-minute song as directed will prepare you well and save a lot of time and anxiety in the end.

Adapted from Tami L. Petty, Carol S. Webber, and a number of other voice teachers.

The pricipal stages are:
1. Translate
2. Speak/intone
3. Write
4. Melody
5. Perform

The step-by-step process:

1. TRANSLATE:
Write one line of original text with the literal, word-for-word translation directly beneath it. Repeat with each successive line of text.

2. SPEAK/INTONE:
a) Speak the text poetically; look for special qualities in imagery, word emphasis, rhyme or lack thereof, assonance, alliteration, etc.
b) Speak the text in rhythm observing all rests (under tempo is fine). Add a layer to this preparation by observing dynamics and articulation markings, as well.
c) Chant/intone the text on one pitch poetically: you may change the initial pitch periodically throughout the exercise, but aim for a comfortable tessitura.
d) Chant/intone the text on one pitch in rhythm as in step 2c).

3. WRITE:
a) Write each line of original text with its literal translation directly beneath, as in the translation step. Do this five times for each single line of text. If no translation is required, simply write each line of text five times before moving to the next.
b) Write from memory as much of the original and translated text as possible. Leave blank spaces on the page if you miss words or phrases. You may be surprised to find out how good your memory is!

4. MELODY:
a) Sing the melody on a neutral syllable in free rhythm omitting all dynamics, articulation markings and timbral qualities. Sing a syllable like “la,” “za,” “ah,” etc., at a comfortable dynamic: mp or mf. You are putting the pitches and intervallic leaps into your voice and on your breath. Give yourself time to incorporate this important vocal step before moving onward.
b) Sing the melody on a neutral syllable following all rhythms, rests, and articulations. Dynamics are not important yet, but the articulation markings are – they relate directly to the language and interpretation.
c) Sing the melody on its written vowels, omitting all consonants. You may need to look directly at the original text during this step: tricky! If you find any one passage difficult, go back first to intoning, then to steps 4a) and 4b). Some vowel modification may help.

5. PERFORM AS WRITTEN:
Having spent time on steps 1-4, step 5 should come easily. You may actually find that you are close to memorization by this point, as well. Continue writing your texts (with translation) as you work towards memorization!

James Alison -- We Always Start from Where We Are

On Being Liked, Chapter Four, “Creation in Christ”

James Alison realizes that many of us are seriously baffled and troubled by the story of Christian salvation that we’ve heard.

“We begin with creation and the fall, we move on to salvation, and from there to heaven.(47)” This order of events gives the impression that God created a perfect world that humans spoiled, forcing Jesus Christ to come fix everything, after which the duty to keep the world from getting spoiled again, if fulfilled, will permit humans a permanent place in heaven. This interpretation is a distortion that paralyzes us.

I consider that what is first in the order of our knowledge is an intuition of salvation, first worked out and elaborated over many centuries of ups and downs by the Jewish people, which issues forth into a very special refinement of this Jewish discovery in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. It is starting from this intuition of salvation that a critical understanding of creation was worked out, and not the other way round.

If we stay with chronological intuition (that starts with creation, etc.), we get stuck. But the world wasn’t created to be saved. Salvation created the world. Or rather, salvation CREATES the world.

This notion is wonderful enough on its own, but one of its really terrific consequences is that it puts the biblical story of creation into its proper light. In other words, it shows how pointless today’s Creation vs. Evolution debate is.

That’s my reaction, at least -- Alison might or might not like it. I hope I’m not twisting his words.

We always start from where we are. When Catholics say that God created the universe, we are not making a claim about a ‘religious’ way of describing how things came into existence… We are saying something about our contemporary wonder at the fact that they came into existence at all… We are expressing amazement at the gratuity of it all.
       This expression of amazement at the gratuity of it all is not an alternative scientific explanation of anything. It is, on the contrary, a condition of possibility for us not to be frightened of advancing as far as we possibly can in our understanding of how things came to be.
     …So we make a real mistake if we consider creation to be something which very specially has to do with the remote past… The only access we have to the past is the access for which our present understanding equips us.
     …Both the contemporary holding on to a sense of wonder or mystery that there is anything at all, and the contemporary refusal to accept specifically ‘religious’ accounts of how things came to be are central to what we are talking about when we talk about creation. And of course, the ability to do those things, to hold on to that mystery, and to refuse religious shortcuts, let alone the ability to do both of those together, are abilities which have been acquired over a long time, and have a history. (49-50)

*tap, tap...* Is this thing on?

Judging by the intermittent flow of comments arriving at this blog, a few people are actually reading what I’ve posted. This means I’d better give them something new to read.

In the news:
I voted this week. Hip, hip, hooray for the Democrats. I guess I did my part.

I’m preparing to move in with Mr. Supersweetie. At the end of the month I leave Manhattan, where I have lived ALL MY LIFE, and set sail for Astoria, Queens. The distress of leaving the borough I call home is abating little by little with the help of Mr. Supersweetie’s love. In the meantime, anyone looking for an apartment share in Manhattan should be aware that my current roommate is looking for a replacement for me. Do contact me if you might be interested.

At the moment I am devouring the books of James Alison. Any further postings here on Penguin Great Ideas and Anglo-Catholics: What they believe will have to wait because all my powers of concentration are focused at the moment on Alison’s far-reaching vision of Christianity, gayness, and human conflict. Faith Beyond Resentment was a huge eye-opener, staggering. I wanted to re-read it and ponder it and write about it, but the impulse to move on to its sequel, On Being Liked, was too great to resist. And I’m so glad I didn’t -- it’s an even better book, taking up unanswered questions posed in the previous one.

He’s so good, I’d like to give you taste. I’ll quote him in a second posting.

Don't hold, don't aim

I just read John Weir’s new novel, What I Did Wrong.

The narrator, Tom, an English Teacher at Queens College, recollects an episode from his high school days. Scared of sports, and targeted as gay, some kids beat him up after gym class. Feeling hopeless, he goes to his best friend Richie’s house. Richie, a gifted athlete, distracts Tom by teaching him how to shoot a basketball. No one ever had the patience to teach this to Tom before, so until now he has judged himself to be “pretty bad.”

“I can’t even really hold a ball. I mean, forget throwing it. Forget aiming it.” Richie offers Tom two rules: Don’t hold the ball, and don’t aim. “Can you do those two things?” Tom shoots, and the ball goes in the basket, for the first time in his life. They play for an hour practicing baskets, and about half of Tom’s shots go in. It’s a huge accomplishment.

Tom realizes this was the happiest day of his life. “I don’t want kindness, exactly, or salvation, but just a way to grasp things and how to throw them away, a mental trick: Don’t hold, don’t aim.”

Weir could have written these passages to describe my singing. Both my problems (for years, no one was able to teach me the right way, I didn’t know how to hold or let go) and the solutions (Don’t hold, don’t aim).

As I practice this week, when I remember the “Don’t hold, don’t aim” rules my singing is better, easier, and more natural than ever before. I don’t tense up, and my vocal mechanism does pretty much what it’s been trained to do, without my conscious interference (“breathe, prepare, support, find the pitch, blah, blah”). This new ease isn’t consistent yet in all the music I sing, but a sprout is taking root. To sing using a conscious mental trick like “don’t hold, don’t aim” risks being distracting. One needs to keep one’s mind on how to make music, rather than on the mechanical operations of the voice. The rules will work best when they become automatic and unconscious.