Agape Agape (5 page)

project, combine this with authenticity preserved in the music itself and the fleeting performance by its finest interpreter or the composer himself like Grieg playing his dreadful Wedding March piece of paper here somewhere get it all written down before somebody steals it, of course if I write it down that's almost an invitation to steal it, mail all over the place here drying out just something to write on because this is the heart of it right back to the start, you see? Back to Vaucanson's flutist gives us Jacquard's loom back to pleasure that's bad in all circumstances and Pythagoras' terrible catechism sit here wet as a hen suddenly see the underside of my arm royal purple didn't even have to bang it, must have just pressed my weight on it got to get some, get my breath avoid stress just get my mind off the, back on the pantomimics and clones and mechanization of everything in sight, entertainment and the binary system and all-or-none computer where its technology came from in the first place, don't really give one damn for it, for any of it, like this dangerous demon you can't control not really part of you but can force you to do things you, head's splitting grinding my teeth if anybody heard me they'd think I was losing my, that I've lost it yes maybe I have why I've got to get back to the, to things you can weigh and count and measure the technology good God yes the technology! A hundred years ago measuring the time it took the hammer on the last eighth of an inch of tape down to fifty-one hundred-thousandths of a second? Not for some great breakthrough in medical science no, not for advanced weapons design or aero, for aerodynamics no, for entertainment, for pleasure in its highest form for music to entertain Plato's educated elite, widening the gap yes, between Huizinga's eighteenth century, when aesthetic pleasure in the worship of art was the privilege of the few, and this democracy of every man his own artist where we are today, this democracy of Plato's chance persons and having art without the artist because he's a threat, because the creative artist has to be a threat so he's swamped by the performer by the, by the pantomimic by the imitative who is not a threat see it right here in the, right here in Jung yes from the depths of his Swiss hypocrisy he's an inveterate democrat he says but nature is aristocratic, that it's elitist and so is he, Quod licet Jovi he quotes, non licet bovi draws the line right there doesn't he? An unpleasant but eternal truth he called it what's so damned unpleasant about that? Eternal truth that's what it's all about isn't it? The poet, the artist set apart from the common herd by some inner illumination that Plato thought was, because that's not even Plato no it's Dodds damn it where's Dodds? Had it right here didn't I? I know I brought it, brought some Flaubert some Nietzsche Huysmans Heidegger some Tolstoy even brought Friedrich and The Physics of Baseball but, didn't I bring it? Because it was Democritus, right there in Dodds it was Democritus saying the finest poems were composed with “inspiration and a holy breath” I remember that phrase, inspiration and the holy breath that sets us apart from reason and above reason, some inner revelation, some inner ecstasy even some abnormal mental state why they're out to eliminate us, why they'd say I'm afraid of the death of the elite because it means the death of me of course I can't really blame them, I've been wrong about everything in my life it's all been fraud and fiction, let everybody down except my daughters maybe I can still rescue them, not their fault is it? Fact that I'm forgotten that I'm left on the shelf with the dead white guys in the academic curriculum that my prizes are forgotten because today everybody's giving prizes for that supine herd out there waiting to be entertained, try to educate them did they buy those “Educator” piano rolls teach them to play with their hands no, went right on discovering their unsuspected talent playing with their feet here's Flaubert yes, “The entire dream of democracy” he says, “is to raise the proletariat to the level of bourgeois stupidity.” You want the essence of elitism there he was, his idea of art that “the artist must no more appear in his work than God does in nature, that the artist must manage to make posterity believe that he never existed” good God, the rate things change a generation lasts about four days what posterity? Everywhere present and nowhere visible leads him right into the embrace of the death of the author whose intentions have no connection with the meaning of the text which is indeterminate anyway, a multidimensional space where the modern scriptor is born with this, this detachable self this second voice inside predicting the future in its hoarse belly-voice, Strabo? You hear me? Strip the romantic veil off the naked animal's only purpose perpetuating the species the race the tribe the family for everybody else sex is for pleasure like the flute, pushpin or poetry “the most intense pleasure of which man is capable” says my golden Sigi, seek pleasure avoid not a clue what they're being used for even that they're being used till the roof falls in, doctors lawyers abortions adulteries thimble theatre learned nothing forgotten nothing go right back and do it all again. “My one impulse is to work and forget” says Tolstoy “but forget what. There's nothing to forget” and then? here's the scrap, “I shall write no more fiction,” he's about thirty, “people are weeping, dying, marrying, and I should sit down and write books telling ‘how she loved him'? It's shameful!” And where else yes here, “reading bad books helps me to detect my own faults more than good ones. Good books reduce me to despair” maybe where the idea for this whole absurd project of mine here came from this fear of failure, the technology the artist created being used to eliminate him and the piano, the player piano and its offspring the computer barricades against this fear of chance, of probability and indeterminacy that's so American, this fear this stigma of failure which separates the crowd from the elite when Flaubert writes to George Sand “I believe that the crowd, the mass, the herd, will always be detestable. Nothing is important save a small group of minds, ever the same, which pass on the torch” try to sit up straight here stopped shivering and dry out mind's clear as a bell, everything falling right into place get it all down before the belly-talkers come back with the death of the author, the artist's solitary enterprise with the individual reader Hawthorne talked about horrified at success with the public taste, with the crowd meant you must have sold out, send the author of The Marble Faun out on a book tour? Out giving readings from The Blithedale Romance to entertain this gaping clutch of pleasure seeking chance persons, this enormous market of the non-literate and half-literate devouring the poets who compose to please the bad taste of their reviewers end up instructing one another, what this glorious democracy in the arts is all about isn't it? Get up there and perform with what Hawthorne called “that damned mob of scribbling women,” even Poe with his mechanized genius for forcing order on chaos scorning the public and thirsting for fame, and Melville, good God Melville? Begins Moby Dick wants everybody to read it finishes daring them to, has to borrow money to write it because Harper's won't give him an advance, they publish it and he still owes them a hundred and forty-five dollars and eighty-three cents never forget that figure, “dollars damn me!” he tells Hawthorne, writes that terrible Pierre you can't get thirty pages into hates feeling he must take his readers where they expect to go, talk about elitism about setting yourself apart from the common herd beyond reason above reason on the shelf with the dead white guys ends up in the Custom House at four dollars a day reduced to a nonperson, to herd anonymity humiliated castrated eliminated as a threat that's what it's all about that's what I have to explain. Of course you can't really explain anything to anybody that's why all we hear are explanations of these explanations get right back to Wiener with his more complicated the message the more chance for error so stay with the June moon cliché on the fifty cent piano roll what this deification of democracy's all about, what this tyranny of the majority that Mill got from de Tocqueville's all about that made him famous, Mill never had an idea of his own in his life till that winter he got seriously tormented he said that the range of musical combinations might be exhausted. Five tones and two semitones in an octave you can put together in a limited number of ways only a few are beautiful and must have already been used up no more Mozart, no more Weber, like the head of the U.S. Patent Office resigning in 1875 because he thought everything that could be invented had been invented in that frenzy of invention flooding America only really began a year later with the yes with, the player piano always come back to it, all roads lead to Rome try to explain anything always come back to it, why this ought to be subsidized this work of mine look at it. Look at this mess, this bed this empty room these medicines cost of these medicines headache is gone clear as a bell must be these medicines whole thing government supported like it ought to be problem is you have to be wiped out. Have to be reduced to this herd anonymity, humiliated and eliminated as an artist like Melville got a nickel left they'll make you spend it go to work in the Custom House to survive as a citizen you have to become a nonperson, own one square foot of property means you're still self-sufficient because your property's who you are that's what America what the West is all about what it's always been about what I'm trying to explain here. Can't really explain anything to anybody no but if we could if you could just explain it to yourself and, and wait, damn! Should have brought those deeds, land surveys, title insurance tax records get the properties divided and cleared up and settled on my daughters before it's all swallowed by lawyers and taxes and I'm drawn and quartered by the government supposed to be helping me out backing me up all I've paid in taxes years and years of taxes become propertyless now divide everything three ways one for each daughter and we all benefit, let them worry about the upkeep repairs rents administering the properties and I spend a third of the year with each of them, get on with my work they look out for me and I'm allowed to show my generosity and they have the opportunity to show their love for me. Give them my money now give them all my cash securities God knows what they'd pay taxes on it and I'd have to wait thirty-two months for the government to come through but they'd probably just pay the taxes make sure they get the money now and we're all left out in the cold, don't even know what it all comes to statements probably right here in this heap of wet mail but they're my only refuge. Loss, loss all just loss wherever you look, only refuge I've got left for my, for what's left of my memory my discovery what I thought was my, would be sort of my vest pocket immortality and my, yes for my generosity and dignity, none of it left anyplace else I just took off in the wrong directions. Wrong about everything all so long ago, about everybody especially friends, thought we were all friends so full of who I thought I was some buffoon all two dimensional some cartoon minute I turned sideways they couldn't see me at all, left on the shelf forgotten work forgotten my prizes forgotten when a prize still meant something now everybody out there giving prizes to each other not even for winners no we're all just props for the ones who give the prizes, pantomimics imitation entertainment for this supine half-literate and non-literate crowd out there have to be read to it's all, good God why did we learn to read in the first place? You read to three year olds, get up and give a reading give a performance none of that fierce authenticity of Hawthorne between the writer and the reader, between the reader and the page what it's all about, that solitary enterprise between him and the individual reader yes, the one who comes after you with an ax in the middle of the night or Melville's grotesque hero who wants to be a popular novelist must have written Pierre out of revenge, only revenge the mob has on them both is to go to the movies, thirty fifty a hundred million dollars against a hundred forty-five dollars and eighty-three cents, the final great stupefying collective. No more illusion of taking part, of discovering your unsuspected talent when the biggest thrill in music was playing it yourself, your own participation that roused your emotions most no, no. The ultimate collective, the herd numbed and silenced agape at blood sex and guns blowing each other to pieces only participation you get's maybe kids who see it come to school next morning and mow down their classmates no more elitism no more elite no wherever you turn just the spread of the crowd with its, what did he call it, what Huizinga called its insatiable thirst for trivial recreation and crude sensationalism, the mass of the mediocre widening the gap the popularity of a work is the measure of its mediocrity says Melville no news there is there? The masses invading the province of the writer says Walter Benjamin a hundred years later, by now the fences are down there's no province left, on the shelf with the dead white guys you want the real gap, a look from the heights down on the mass of men who aren't worth anything in the first place, that there's a greater gap between some men and others than between these others and the animal kingdom yes that was Nietzsche before they twisted him all out of shape and the whole, get my breath here yes avoid stress try to get the, get my leg here makes him sound like what little my golden Sigi found any good about those human beings telling Reverend Oskar Pfister in his experience most of them are trash coming one way and Tolstoy the other with his duty to these scraps, just had them these scraps of Tolstoy under the wait, wait been looking for this yes that shot of mitoxantrone side effects
may cause shortness of breath, lower back pain, swelling feet and lower legs good God from whom all blessings flow but which ones? No discolouration at the site here where the needle went into the vein, unusual bruising or bleeding what do they call unusual? Other arm's already purple this one blossoming like a flower garden, red eyes yellow eyes whites of the eyes turn blue no way to see them any more than hearing grinding my teeth if there's nothing to hear, blood on the no it's not the blood on the shirt here it's the shirt yes doesn't look like my shirt was a broadcloth Egyptian cotton broadcloth this looks like a coarse muslin no collar on it either is there? Can't see clearly no mirror on the wall over there a long time ago, when we rented this place to an actress one summer, and that purple velour chair there in the corner with the long tear down the cushion where her dog, she had a German shepherd dog where it tore a streak down the cushion too good a story to have it repaired but the, but I, not seeing too well get a little disoriented sometimes but this room is, when we rented out the whole place here that year but it's not the change no but how fast the changes come now, not even the weeks the years but how many different lives you've lived, first step that counts yes I always took the wrong one like being five, ten, twenty different people wouldn't know each other if they met in the street wouldn't even say hello, you see? No. No it doesn't matter does it because you don't believe me so it doesn't really matter, lies and falsehood wherever you look why I brought along Huysmans with his party waited on by these stunning naked black women and his symphony of liqueurs, his symphony of flowers and the flowers that look fake, that everything is fake like the room like a ship with mechanical fish and that marvelous description of two new locomotives as women, the deliberate cultivation of the fake and the false in this French novel more than a century ago, À Rebours in 1884 even then an elitist gloss on a culture whose literature and art are being ruined by greed and the embrace of the mob, the what, the epiphany, the embodiment of mediocrity and everything repellent about it even then! and the source of this rot even then yes, America, no news there is there? Lies and falsehood bursting from the mob's mistrust of the elite wherever you looked, mistrust of the intellectual who Tolstoy called untrustworthy, useless and artificial nourished on books not experience who'd never fought in a war or plowed a field so their writings produced nothing but lies why you don't believe me because they're the common currency aren't they. Falsehood's the common currency and we're back where we started, not the pure unadulterated falsehood but what Plato calls the lie in words that's only sort of an imitation, a shadowy image that's useful sometimes when you're dealing with an enemy for instance that's all we do isn't it? Why Tolstoy says it's our duty to edify the masses, our vocation to edify mankind even for the ones who think you can teach without knowing anything since artists and poets teach unconsciously, that music, literature, painting all the arts are just a stew of nonsense and falsehood if the masses don't support them because where is it yes yes here. “Perhaps they don't understand and don't want to understand our literary language because it's not suited to them and they're in the process of inventing their own literature” Tolstoy wrote that, we must write what they want or not write at all, “we are thousands and they are millions” Tolstoy writes, obey the law of the greatest number talk about the tyranny of the majority here's Ezra Pound widening the gap to the degree the serious artist lets his audience's values shape his own vision, he lies, can't say Tolstoy wasn't serious can you? That our literary language isn't suited to his common herd of millions out there maybe they're inventing their own, been to the movies lately? Listened to their lyrics?! Man I mean like I've heard it you dumb ass-hole give this muhthrfuckr a blowjob every man his own artist in this democracy of the arts lined up Walt Whitman singing his body electric didn't we? American classic Leaves of Grass he says the poet's merit is determined by the multitude good God, write what they want you'll end up with a Pulitzer Prize follow you right to the grave. Maybe won the Medal of Honor the George Cross even the Nobel but once you've been stigmatized with the ultimate seal of mediocrity your obit will read Pulitzer Prize Novelist Dies at whatever because they're not advertising the winner no. No, like this whole plague of prizes wherever you look, it's the prize givers promoting themselves, trying to rescue their thoroughly discredited profession of journalism. “The press is a school that serves to turn men into brutes,” Flaubert writes to George Sand “because it relieves them from thinking.” The prize winners? They're just props, cartoonists, sports writers, political pundits, front page photos the bloodier the better for that instant of fame wrap the fish in tomorrow, good God how many Pulitzer Prizes are there? Over fifteen hundred entries, fourteen categories for journalists because if you started your bondage there you're halfway home with that whole gang of sponsors, trustees, juries, God knows what who've survived that Slough of Despond and floated to the top. Just look at the next day's New York Times, page after page bulging with self-congratulation with seven more categories to leech on, music, what they call drama and of course books where the Grey Lady finally got it both ways with their journalist who reviews books, like the misty-eyed ingenue but destroys women writers and just for fairness crosses the gender line for an occasional assassination, give that lady a Pulitzer with oak leaf clusters! The books that are candidates are read by a jury whose decisions are passed up to the Olympian trustees with an eye to the multitude. We are thousands and they are millions, write the fiction they want or don't write at all, ruling out Pound's cry for the new, the challenging or what's labeled difficult, so when Gravity's Rainbow is being devoured by college youth everywhere and wins the National Book Award, its unanimous recommendation by the Pulitzer jury is overturned by the trustees for a double-talk spoof of academic vagaries by a bogus “Professor,” to everyone's relief, and the author at peril escapes unblemished by the, no, no, no you can't depend on it. Step on more sensitive toes with a brilliant biography of William Randolph Hearst that's a sure bet for a serious Pulitzer jury's selection and, pow! The trustees, still held in mortmain by their mouldering Demiurge, look the book over and stumble on Pulitzer himself portrayed as tall and rail thin, a blind nervous wreck given to profane rages, jumping out of his skin at the sound of tearing paper, weeping and cursing on his infrequent visits to his newspaper office when he's not in the soundproof rooms of his New York house, in one of his far-flung mansions or aboard his oceangoing yacht Liberty, called a “journalist who made his money by pandering to the worst tastes of the prurient and the horror-loving” by this free-spending Harvard Lampoon prankster who's left fireworks and chamberpots behind for this cutthroat carnival of journalism, and who promptly follows suit to the letter. Hearst's Journal and Pulitzer's World, nothing they wouldn't do, accuse the other of and promptly improve upon in the name of circulation and even survival, bogus news and personal thievery, scraping the bottom for crime and sordid sensationalism to bring the stupidity level of the bourgeoisie down to the subliterate appetite of the proles. Bogus news? It was, who was it, it was Pasteur wasn't it in a happier context who observed that chance favours the prepared mind? And after all, all this bloodletting was going on just a century ago, when the US battleship Maine lay in Havana harbour waiting on the unswerving punctuality of chance to seize upon the prepared mind of Hearst and change the course of empires, dragging his reluctant antagonist with him. Bogus news and we're right back with Plato's lie in words aren't we? Imitations, sort of shadowy images useful when you're dealing with an enemy whose name pursues its victims to the grave yes but, no but listen. Since all writing worth reading comes, like suicide, from outrage or revenge, there must still be a way to deal with some serious ideas here without risking this seal of Tolstoy edifying the masses, in this novel published by some nickel and dime southern university press. Talk about the classic contributions of Aristotle and Plato in the participatory democracy of ancient Athens in creating the sense of community, just scare them all away. Places like Athens and Laodicea might as well be on the moon, names like Leonidas sound like a zoo, look for Athens you read New Or-leans, hide the great ideas someplace, disguise them, mask them and let them break out with a life of their own, a character who yes some simple name like Jones. His name's Jones, dark glasses spewing cigarette smoke answering an ad for a job as a porter in a honky-tonk nightclub, he's asked for a character reference. “A po-lice gimme a reference. He tell me I better get my ass gainfully employ” Jones says. “I ain exactly a character yet, but I can tell they gonna star that vagran no visible mean of support stuff on me. I thought maybe the Night of Joy like to help somebody become a member of the community, help keep a poor color boy outta jail. I keep the picket off, give the Night of Joy a good civil right ratin.” Experience? The pay is twenty dollars a week. “Wha? Sweepin and moppin and all that nigger shit? Hey! No wonder the right man ain show up. Ooo-wee. Say, whatever happen to the minimal wage? The las person workin in here musta starve to death. Don worry. I come in regular, anything keep my ass away from a po-lice for a few hour. Where you keep them motherfuckin broom?” See what he's done? Isn't that glorious? Aristotle defining politics as the struggle between the rich and the poor hasn't changed a damn bit, has it? Maybe this sense of community they're talking about would be accomplished by widening the rights of citizenship to the poorest class? Remember this great cradle of participating democracy depends on slave labor, whose participation may not be that enthusiastic, and Plato sees that force alone won't ensure submission of the poor and lower classes, to make it work you've got to instill a sense of irremediable inferiority in the hearts and minds of these poor and lower classes, deny them these rights of citizenship and treat them like a different race? “She think cause I color I gonna rape her” Jones conjures of the woman sitting beside him on the bus. “She about to throw her grammaw ass out the window. Whoa! I ain gonna rape nobody. I gonna tell that po-lice I gainfully employ, keep him off my back, tell him I met up with a humanitaria payin me twenty dollar a week. He say, ‘That fine, boy. I'm glad to see you straighten out.' And I say, ‘Hey!' And he say, ‘Now maybe you be becomin a member of the community.' And I say, ‘Yeah, I got me a nigger job and nigger pay. Now I really a member of the community. Now I a real nigger. No vagran. Just nigger.' Whoa!” Good God, see what he's done? It's glorious. Are we what our mothers made us? His spends the next ten years breaking her neck to get it published and of course, it wins the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, it's the book bears the blemish in a last bow to journalism, “Whoa! That paper sure sending out plenny mothers taking pictures and axin me all about wha happen. Who say a color cat cain get his picture on the front page? Ooo-wee! Whoa! I gonna be the mos famous vagran in the city!” get you one way or the other, Book Award they give you ten thousand for biting the hands that feed you every minion in publishing at that black tie dinner at the Plaza must run them half a million just a, get my breath here yes avoid stress maybe try to get my leg over the side here and, just a shadowy image isn't it? Isn't all of it? Count Tolstoy pounding it to stray peasant girls in the wheat field drops in to haunt this elegant Europeanized weepy panicky no, no gets too close where are those Tolstoy scraps yes, getting too close following Turgenev everywhere with his piercing terrifying glare “enough to drive a man mad” Turgenev tells a friend “with a few vicious remarks” and he's in tears again, can't understand “this ridiculous affection for a wretched title of nobility” he's, you see? Can't, can't, gets too close being tormented like this by some monstrous, some detachable self, some dangerous demon not really part of you since you can't control it but can force you to do things you, can't let you get away from him follows Turgenev home like a dog can't, getting a little confused here getting my dates mixed up doesn't matter no, when Tolstoy was still much younger doesn't really matter because you don't believe me anyway just the shadowy image the imitation gets home shattered getting shaky, getting my breath here get my leg over the side staples are dry just to get the blood running get the, get my pencil get the mail's still wet yes he gets the mail, letter from Flaubert says he just wants to be around long enough to dump a few more buckets of merde on the heads of his countrymen, end of an elite end of an era of, whole leg down there numb and heavy as a, foot numb and heavy as a clubfoot or do they just look numb and heavy? Publishes Childe Harold he's famous a great hero great romantic hero scandals money horrors forced to sell his estate get out of England but why Greece? Maybe's just a metaphor but who's the metaphor? Byron for Greece fighting for freedom from the Turks or Greece for him, fighting for a fresh start, get rid of the fiction or be the fiction because he hated the idea of being between them if he could be the fiction he wouldn't need Byron, strip the romantic veil off the naked animal's only purpose being used to perpetuate the race sex with girls sex with boys not for pleasure no out of sheer despair sell the estate, go back to