Agape Agape (4 page)

I'm thinking clearly, you see? Talks about the detachable self that can be withdrawn from the body, some kind of religious community Pythagoras set up with the idea of lives to come, and these dangerous demons with lives and energies of their own according to Homer was it? That aren't really part of yourself since you can't control them but they can force you to do things you wouldn't do otherwise before we get to the belly-talkers you hear about from Aristophanes and Plato they, good God sitting here alone in a room like something washed up from the ocean to have somebody, to have something to talk to! This second voice inside them they had conversations with and predicted the future in hoarse belly-voices and and, names? did they have names? Hello? Call him, hello Strabo? Call him Strabo, hello? You there? Rrrrrrrr. Damn. Talk to me, tell me what the, you hear me? Maybe only speaks Greek, song and dance man, tum tum ti tum, tum tum ti hey! Predict the future for me then, hear me? This surgery, I have to know, foretell the future for me, have this surgery or these chemicals doing the same thing put me out of business? Strip the romantic veil off the naked animal's only, only, good God what am I doing talking to a, this detachable self, can't control it, it's not my fault makes you do things you wouldn't stop. Stop. Got to stop and go back make a fresh start when I find what I was looking for in this mess point is the first thing, point is to avoid stress get me, get my breath and avoid stress, newspapers tangled up in the sheets here reading the obituaries there are people dying I've never even heard of, haven't had a drink for seven years. Problem with Plato, what are the soft and drinking harmonies? Softness indolence drunkenness are unbecoming always giving you a rap across the knuckles looking for moral improvement the first thing, point is the first thing is to avoid stress what those Ionian and Lydian harmonies are for, help you avoid stress, avoid stress, avoi, no, no stop right here. Minute you're looking for something, doing something for pleasure he raps your knuckles banished the Lydian the Ionian, the rhythm, the instrument, goes right down the list. The harp and the lyre but only simple versions no fancy corners or complex scales must be in this pile, got to find Dodds on the Corybantes under here careful, carefully avoid stress worse than all the stringed instruments put together, isn't flute playing an art that seeks only pleasure? Out! Banished from his Republic and a little lecture there on good citizenship at the end of the Crito when Socrates says the sound of the flute humming in his ears he can't hear anything else now, now, ease it out I think I've got it don't, oh my God! Who, my God! Who would have put a glass of water back there! All over these newspapers these Japanese staples down my leg and books, papers where, can't stand up can't, get my breath can't, avoid, yes avoid stress but, oh my God. Sit here talking to these detachable selves belly-talkers kangaroos, thinking someone else's thoughts deadened out of existence and I'm the other, I am the other, sit here talking to automatons the Turkish lady in four languages Vaucanson's flute player like Galen's patient haunted by hallucinatory flutists he heard and saw day and night and another one Dodds mentions panics when a flute is played at a party but that's not the, that's the, not what Dodds calls an old Pythagorean catechism, “Pleasure” it says. “Pleasure is in all circumstances bad; for we came here to be punished and we ought to be punished” it's all, pictures the body as the soul's prison where the gods keep it locked up till it's purged of guilt, purgatorio! Madness, it's all madness, wanted to break out of this prison I, look at it, look at me, skin like tissue paper blotches that blossom daily blood spilled a week ago and this damned armoured leg, lungs shot and what's going on down below's nobody's business can't see across the room the whole thing's wreckage, top to bottom, a prison like this one break out of it like blowing out a candle I, I can't no I, I can't. Purgatory it's all purgatory beginning to end, catharsis right from the start. Flutes and kettledrums! Orgiastic music dancing people out of their minds talk about treating anxiety states, talk about avoiding stress about diagnosing madness in these Corybantic rituals out there banging away different tunes till they hit the one that belongs to the god who's possessing the patient the only one in this pandemonium he responds to, finds which god's tormenting him and pays him off sounds like the waterfront, sounds like buying indulgences pick your saint intercedes with Mary intercedes with Jesus intercedes with God knows what's all this guilt, original sin like a plague down the ages one heresy after another mortifying the body wait around long enough and it will do it for you, pushpin or poetry and here comes Mary Baker Eddy to say the whole thing's a mistake, an egregious pululating error and here's your sample wet right down to my God, my God, my God! I can't, see what's next foretell the future where every prospect pleases and only mine is, is like a long corridor doors opening off it closing off it fresh start go to one door closes when I get to it run to the next one and no! No here's my mail, soaking wet never even opened it spread it out to dry with the, what's this. What in God's name is this doing here, deeds to the properties land surveys title insurance, supposed to be in my safe how did it get here mixed up with my notes books papers what I came here to work on, my whole idea wasn't it? Get down to work fresh start don't let other things interfere avoid stress doors closing settle in, spread out like a prison like a tomb where the bed's the catafalque made by God the bed-maker in the last book of The Republic, talk about avoiding stress. Three kinds of beds God made one of them, if he'd made two a third one would have appeared behind them, the real bed not a particular bed, that's the carpenter, and then the painter imitating what they've made, good enough to fool children or the simple-minded out there waiting to be entertained you see I've got to explain all this because I don't, we don't know how much time there is and I have to work on the, to finish this work of mine while I, get it all sorted and organized before everything collapses and it's all swallowed up by lawyers and taxes like everything else because that's what it's about the collapse of everything of, of, I can't even go into it you see that's what I have to go into before all my ideas are stolen before I get them written down before my work is distorted misunderstood turned into a cartoon and, towel here in this mess somewhere sheet's cold and wet dry my leg before I start to rust, back of my hand all these little criss-crosses looks like broiled bluefish but, a little music. Music, that's really where it all starts and ends next time I see a human being I'll ask for a little music here not just for pleasure no, look for those notes on Nietzsche's Apollinian measured beauty in this heap somewhere but that's not what it's about no, it's this detachable self or soul being tormented in Hades or this guilt Empedocles gets from Pythagoras' school of recollection, training your memory to recollect sins and sufferings of your previous life in his terrifying catechism we came here to be punished and we ought to be punished, because good God! You find it wherever you look, the body as a prison and there's the rabbinical student dying of love for a woman engaged to somebody else so his spirit inhabits her body, slips in when she's asleep and her body's unoccupied and the rabbi comes in to exorcise this dybbuk, who may be having a grand time in there. This guilt, guilt, guilt step in it wherever you go in this pile somewhere, what was I looking for, these pages on Tolstoy no I put those under here with some broken, with this training your mind to recollect sins in a previous life to these cases today of recovered memory, same thing isn't it? Satanism and cannibalism and rape under the guidance of your psychotherapist, abuse and abortions and alien abductions with the help of your church counselor and these vivid fake memories of satanic cults where they practiced cannibalism and the poor woman is told to bring the meat in and they'll get it analyzed for human protein but I mean where did this Satan come from in the first place? Read them the script the crazier the better when the angel bursts in on this madman banished to a cave in the Aegean, saying with the voice of a trumpet What thou seest, write in a book, and goes on to dictate a scenario breathing fire and earthquake, the stars falling, the sun turning black and the sea turning to blood in that overwhelming vision of total insanity called the Revelation of St. John the Divine nearer to thee, dear God! Nearer to thee, and what do you say of the choral art and of dithyrambic poetry? Invented to give pleasure to the multitude aren't they? Talk about avoiding stress little cup here somewhere with pills in it, my head is splitting, just stop shivering, if I can just stop shivering, find a pencil here and get back to work if I can just stop shivering, now where was I, where was that. Flutes and kettledrums in the Corybantic and Dionysiac cures for phobias and anxiety breaking down and weeping, hearts beating like like, like the kettledrums dancing out of their minds in their morbid mental no, no it's getting too close can't dance can't even stand up that's the other can't, can't breathe just, just try to, put these back in this pile try to, to avoid stress get my breath and get back to work here's the voice of the mob the steam calliope getting closer hear it two miles away and the, wait. Wait yes here it is, what I was looking for not even 1910 yet, 1905, 1900 the automatic piano roll changer plays six five-tune rolls, look at it! Almost eight feet high weighs 1500 pounds the Wurlitzer Orchestra piano with mandolin attachment, 38 violin pipes, 36 flute pipes, set of orchestra bells bass and snare drums and a triangle as though Plato had written the prescription for this pandemonium yes, yes his comments on the back here, banishing the imitative arts and the products of the imitative arts and the pantomimic artist who can imitate anything, “He will attempt to represent the roll of thunder, the noise of wind and hail, or the creaking of wheels, and pulleys, and the various sounds of flutes, pipes, trumpets, and all sorts of instruments: he will bark like a dog, bleat like a sheep, or crow like a,” a sheep? Bleat like a lamb what was her name, that first animal cloned from a cell taken from an adult yes banishing the products of the imitative arts before we start to clone people? Not for me says a scientist who invents the techniques, to say how we should use them and goodbye Hiroshima, right here in the paper somewhere, if one of my relatives got cancer I'd clone him says another, use the clone to donate bone marrow to save the life of the, the body as a prison where we came here to be punished and we ought to be punished no we, pantomimics who can imitate anything got to stop here, it's, it's madness it's all madness thank God I'm not living now, get a fresh start in this pile where I put that diagram of this network of computers developing mutations that mimic natural selection and evolution all looked two dimensional so if you looked at them sideways you couldn't see them at all but that's, get a fresh start avoid stress get back to the, this pile here yes music haven't even looked through yet but, good God look. Look at this one! After eight years of constant labour it says here and this is in 1906 yes thank God I'm not living today. A refined musical attraction operated by electricity with nickel-in-the-slot attachment the Wurlitzer Harp look at it! Six feet six about Frankenstein's mimic's height, seven hundred fifty dollars with one perforated music roll, the harp is in full view covered by glass offering the opportunity watching the fingers (almost human) pick the strings like those, those tiny felt-tipped wooden fingers almost human, playing the lyre at festivals for pleasure? Remember Meles the harp player? No chance of him performing for the good of his hearers was there? Or even for their pleasure he was so bad, but harp playing was invented for the sake of pleasure wasn't it? So finally all of it's banished but the shepherd's pipe in the country and the lyre and the harp permitted in the city, extra rolls seven fifty and you can put in six nickels at once and get six tunes without getting to your feet again can't even feel my left one numb from the knee down if, if I can just stop shivering top to bottom the whole thing's wreckage except the heart, heart and arteries clean as whistles means the damn things will keep the prison going to enjoy every torment left, bad heart could take you out suddenly like Ambrose Bierce said, It beats old age, disease, and falling down the cellar steps find the pencil, I had a pencil get back to work's the only refuge but where was I? Clones and products of the imitative arts the pantomimics didn't know whether what they were cloning was good or bad, they wait, get this wet blanket off me here's a pill, prednisone oxycodone God knows what take it anyway my head's splitting, falls right into line doesn't it, collapse of authenticity collapse of religion collapse of values what Huizinga called one of the most important phases in the history of civilization, and Walter Benjamin picks it up in his Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction in this heap somewhere, the authentic work of art is based in ritual he says, and wait Mr. Benjamin, got to get in there the romantic mid-eighteenth century aesthetic pleasure in the worship of art was the privilege of the few. I was saying, Mr. Huizinga, that the authentic work of art had its base in ritual, and mass reproduction freed it from this parasitical dependence. Ah, quite so Mr. Benjamin quite so, turn of the century religion was losing its steam and art came in as its substitute would you say? Absolutely Mr. Huizinga, and I'd add that this massive technical reproduction of works of art could be manipulated, changed the way the masses looked at art and manipulated them. Inadvertently Mr. Benjamin, you might say that
art now became public property, for the simply educated Mona Lisa and the Last Supper became calendar art to hang over the kitchen sink. Absolutely Mr. Huizinga, Paul Valéry saw it coming, visual and auditory images brought into homes from far away like water gas and electricity and finally, God help us all, the television. Positively Mr. Benjamin, with mechanization, advertising artworks made directly for a market what America's all about. Always has been, Mr. Huizinga. Always has been, Mr. Benjamin. Everything becomes an item of commerce and the market names the price. And the price becomes the criterion for everything. Absolutely Mr. Huizinga! Authenticity's wiped out when the uniqueness of every reality is overcome by the acceptance of its reproduction, so art is designed for its reproducibility. Give them the choice, Mr. Benjamin, and the mass will always choose the fake. Choose the fake, Mr. Huizinga! Authenticity's wiped out, it's wiped out Mr. Benjamin. Wiped out, Mr. Huizinga. Choose the fake, Mr. Benjamin. Absolutely, Mr. Huizinga! Positively Mr. Benjamowww! Good God! a way to find a sharp pencil just sit still avoid stress stop singing what, anybody heard me they'd think I was losing my, that I'd lost it yes maybe I have but I've got to get back to the products of the imitative arts and the pantomimics all falls right into line, bark like a dog bleat like a Little Lamb, who made thee? Dost thou know who made thee? Gave thee such a tender voice, making all the vales rejoice? Little Lamb, who made thee? Dost thou know who made thee? Little Lamb, I'll tell thee, Little Lamb, I'll tell thee: Doctor Wilmut made thee, Doctor Ian Wilmut cloned thee outside Edinburgh, Scotland, a product of the imitative arts that Plato banished find a piece of paper got to get this down, you see? Cloned like slaves by the pantomimics who could imitate anything like, yes like the black slaves bred in Virginia when Eli Whitney's cotton gin revolutionized the world markets for American cotton, people making millions, the African slave trade forbidden, illegal, over and done, so breeding slaves to cultivate the cotton turned Virginia into an immense breeding farm says Henry Adams' sharper brother exporting 40,000 blacks a year to the southern states' plantations where the market set the price piece of paper two whole heaps of it but they're all no wait, letter here almost dry from those eye test doctors about clearing up this bleary vision with the predni, what in the, prednisone? Not the prednisone it says, you have developed cataracts and should make appointments for the operations necessary to correct this condition as promptly as good God! Operations? They think I'm a, same thing it's the same thing it's the same damn damn thing breeding slaves to be reproduced where the market sets the price where slavery wouldn't be abolished George Washington said till it ceased to pay, being cloned to serve as bone banks letter in one of these heaps somewhere when I had a car asking if I'd like to be an organ eye and tissue donor see their faces when they open this package! Over fifty thousand out there waiting for these organ transplants, the first interchangeable parts made for guns by this same Eli Whitney two hundred years ago getting a little bit mixed up here why I've got to write this down before it's lost, before it's stolen, just to get the sequence right, what follows what, post hoc ergo this game you can't win because that's not why you play it trying to cultivate this whole swamp of chaos and chance, of paradox and perversity to wipe out the whole idea of cause and effect and, and, get my breath before I lose the, these belly-talkers and detached selves bred and cloned to be reproduced because that's the heart of it, where the individual is lost, the unique is lost, where authenticity is lost not just authenticity but the whole concept of authenticity, that love for the beautiful creation before it's created that that, it was Chesterton wasn't it? That natural merging of created life in this creation in love that transcends it, a celebration of the love that created it they called agapē, that love feast in the early church, yes. That's what's lost, what you don't find in these products of the imitative arts that are made for reproduction on a grand scale got to find some paper, piece of blank paper I've finally got the pencil now, now. Chance to straighten something out here's Friedrich's book where's the other one, getting them mixed up I can mark the passages and find who said what, find Glenn Gould, can't do better than Friedrich's biography it's stunning, a marvelous writer journalist and a prodigy, a piano prodigy himself, thousands of notes but which one? Spent six weeks making notes and sketches about Glenn that could be either one of them, finally decided they got in the way of what he was writing so he destroyed them all but that sounds like Wertheimer destroying his thousands of notes before he hanged himself, be the best or not at all that's Horowitz, a lot of malice and envy for Horowitz could be both of them, either of them either book but why, envy for Horowitz's brilliance or for his applause because Gould said he detested appearing before an audience and detested their applause didn't he? Because it's easy to let the piano become your enemy because it symbolizes the terror of the performance, if I hadn't met Gould I wouldn't have given up the piano, no more piano! I said. Absolutely no artist! The Goldberg Variations composed to help get an insomniac through the night, pleasure in all circumstances is bad says Pythagoras composed to delight the soul and they killed Wertheimer because we came here to be punished and we ought to be punished getting a little mixed up here by these detachable selves and demons making you do things you wouldn't when Glenn got so carried away performing a Bach concerto he cut his thumb on the keys in his exuberant finale? Then would he have said he wanted to become the piano? That he wanted to be the Steinway because he hated the idea of being between Bach and the Steinway because if he could be the Steinway he wouldn't need Glenn Gould he'd be the other. He'd be the Steinway and Glenn in one like the kangaroo he'd be the other! He'd be in control, he'd be in total control with his splicing and editing and altering pitch what he called creative cheating for the perfect performance with an arching melodic line that couldn't be mechanically imitated but it could be it was that's what all this is to, damn. Got it all there somewhere can't find the other book got the pencil didn't have time to write it down and it's more confused than ever but that's what it's all about that's the heart of it all can't lose it, can't lose it now because I had it wrong good thing I didn't write it down all that business of authenticity and the perfect performance what did I just say, the melodic line that couldn't be mechanically imitated because it was yes in Germany yes where else? Family named Welte in Freiburg with the reproducing piano, the Welte-Mignon that didn't just record the notes but more perforations that actually reproduced all the shadings and subtleties of the artist, the unique performances of their own work by Debussy and Grieg, Rachmaninoff George Gershwin and the greatest pianists, Paderewski and God knows who, don't you see? These Welte, Duo-Art Pianolas, Ampico all over the place what they'd done was to make the transient permanent, given the fleeting nature of music of great performances of great music a permanence that's the heart of authenticity, that preserved the whole concept of authenticity stood Leonardo da Vinci on his ear holding painting an art superior to music because of music's evanescent quality can't lose it no, don't have to write it down I can't forget it, it's beautiful, simple and beautiful like discovering space is curved good God, just the sheer simplicity of it the, where Occam's razor looked on beauty bare got to write it down before it gets lost, before it gets stolen before I have a chance to write it down like everything else because if Gould hated the idea of being between Bach and the Steinway if he could be the Steinway he wouldn't need Glenn Gould when Welte's reproducing apparatus put Debussy into the piano then you wouldn't need Debussy. You wouldn't need Grieg you wouldn't need Gershwin or Paderewski or any of them because you'd have their authenticity and the whole concept of authenticity preserved, the music itself and the fleeting performance brought together forever, given permanence that's the heart of authenticity like the, there must be some law of physics for this, for the or maybe it's, maybe I've discovered one. No more piano! Absolutely no artist, no more so-called legendary performances oh my grandmother heard Paganini, absolutely fabulous they said he was in league with the devil yes one of these dangerous demons with lives and energies of their own you can't control that can force you to do things you wouldn't otherwise, or Gottschalk? Louis Moreau Gottschalk? A brilliant stunning pianist, Chopin said he was, so did Liszt, so did Berlioz, that's the performer we'll never hear, but the composer? The music he wrote? It's so bad, honky-tonk and bouncy what he'd done, listen. Just like my plagiarist writing my ideas before I had them, he wrote music for the worst nickel-in-the-slot player piano fifty years before the player was invented. Pushpin or poetry it's the quantity of pleasure in these enormous markets of the non-musical and the half-musical, these chance persons with no true sense of musical values because they don't hear, they simply have no ear for music they don't know pianissimo from sforzando, diminuendos from crescendos and those elegant gradations that distinguish the performance of one artist from another on these reproducing piano rolls went for ten, fifteen dollars for the Welte-Mignon they couldn't dream of paying for these unique subtleties they simply couldn't hear, as though their ears were closed against the racket of American industrial strife everywhere like my left ear was closed from grinding my teeth at night from stress, yes. Yes avoid stress, good God to go through that again maybe I still do. Maybe I still grind my teeth at night no way to know because I'm asleep? Nobody to hear me maybe it's closed now and I don't even know it because there's nothing to hear if I, no wait, wait if I hold that glass against it and tap it with the where is the pencil, just stop shivering get this wet sheet over the, move my leg so numb I don't even know where it is good God to go through that again with the hockey mouth-guard twelve seconds in boiling water two seconds in cold put it in your mouth to mould it doesn't really matter if my left ear is closed though does it if there's nothing to hear anyhow get my mind off it, avoid stress just get my mind back on the, on what it was on turn of the century mob coming in from southern Europe meant that collective poor Roman Catholic audience for the pantomimic's products of the imitative arts produced to be reproduced just like themselves where the priest's the pandomimic and the gap gets wider, just look back at the great 1890 census that Hollerith put together now there's the beginning. There was the beginning of key-sort and punched cards and IBM and NCR and the whole driven world we've inherited from some rinky-dink piano roll widening the gap when Aeolian finally got into the reproducing piano act with their Duo-Art Pianola piano right before the war, they'd put one into a Steinway, for the pleasure of Plato's best educated elite and the unique great artist whose use of the sostenuto and soft pedals and his tempo phrasing and attack they pretended they could hear giving demonstrations and testimonials for Welte and Aeolian and Ampico and Angelus and Apollo, because these things ran four or five thousand dollars even before they started the wood carving on the case like Tom Mix in the manner of the Spanish Renaissance to match his house or the gilded garlands and decorations on the old ivory enamel case for the juvenile movie star Jackie Coogan or Rudolph Valentino's Angelus they're all here I just saw it, where's the list royalty right down the line I just yes, Dowager Empress of China letter here from Prince Ch'ing gets the jump on them all with her Apollo piano player back in 1906 goes right on to something I wrote in the margin what's the last ⅛“ 51 100/thndth sec this my writing? Must be, shaky uncertain like every wrong decision I've ever made never made any other kind, never came through for anybody, why I end up here with a hopeless project like this one conversations with these detachable selves and belly-talkers get back to the slurred letters in dght can't even read it shows character that's what's at the heart of the whole thing, lack of character see right here where money my ideas of money, my whole view of money has warped my entire life and the, all the, stress yes avoid stress widening the gap between Freud's nickel and dime trash and Plato's wealthy educated elite with these reproducing pianos in the Élysée Palace in Paris and Queen Mary in London, ex-King Ferdinand of Bulgaria, the Sultan of Turkey, the Khedive of Egypt, the Shah of Persia and the King of Siam, Mussolini in Rome, the Dowager Queen of Italy, the Duchess of Argyll and Her Late Majesty the Empress Alexandra Feodorovna of Russia direct line back to Marie Antoinette's gold canary and that mob at the Bastille but here the widening gap was money and democracy, between the Ampico in Vincent Astor's music room and six Autopianos on the battleship USS Delaware, between Helen Keller in the forest when the tree falls and the, no, no wait. Wait, this whole discovery I just made yes that's what this is, this scribble in the margin it's the technology! good God the technology! A hundred years ago this recording instrument that measured the time it took the hammer on the last eighth of an inch before it strikes the string for exact loudness, to fifty-one hundred-thousandths of a second! It's the whole thing! It's the proof of the whole thing, of my whole idea my whole thesis entertainment the parent of technology I should, I could write and publish a paper separate from this big