I obviously slept well, if my mental space which allowed for such an expansive, rambling dreams as last night’s is any indication. There was even more to the dream then what I got down. Something about holding hands with a woman I’d just met while an ex-gf sat nearby, watching. That went nowhere. Or rather, that’s all I remember.
I could button up that story and make it sound more realistic. The tombstone crew has serious potential. I forgot to add that they all wore wife beaters, had Satan tattoos, and each of them gnawed on an enormous toothpick.
I feel good today. That is always surprising. But after yesterday’s miseryguts I guess I had no other direction to go. Plus I slept like a conqueror. I rambled all around, from Grand Central to the far west side, visiting the Trump Tower for the first time since the nomination was made official. It was not the shit show I expected but, for a Sunday, it was way more crowded then it might have been a year ago, or two years ago. It’s unfortunate that the Tower has no real splendor about it. I overheard some tourists say “Oh, look, there are gardens on the lower level.” They would be disappointed, I think, to find that these are not exactly the Mirabell Gardens, or even the Brooklyn Botanical. Just some perfunctory shrubs.
There is now a TSA-style baggage screener through which all bags are required to pass, a needless and purely cosmetic invasion of privacy to which few citizens would object. I don’t know if there was a metal detector. I did not notice one. But I had more carriage available in my jacket then in my bag, and no attempt seemed to have been made to screen my body for the battery of artillery I could have hidden within. I’ve noticed this about the NYPL, too, at least the Main branch on 42nd Street. The dipping of the security guards’ eyeballs into everybody’s bags seems to be a ritual performed for no purpose other than to keep those people employed. I could stuff a library book in my coat pocket and abscond with the goods as easily as being a dumbass and putting it in a bag I know will be inspected.
But I had the upper level Trump Tower garden all to myself, just like olden days. It was too cold to stay but I sent up a posting and a photo from there. I felt a genuine sense of change. Nothing will ever be the same now that this person is our president. I may live to regret saying this, but I think he will end up being one of the most popular presidents ever. I may be waxing optimistic about the malleability of a 70 year old man whose business was not built on accommodating the demands of the laws’ letters. But one can only learn from their mistakes, right? His mistakes so far have been colossal. If one truly learns from their mistakes then DJT will evolve into the greatest president we’ve ever had.
NYTimes headlines read like frantic airs of desperation, as if they are still trying to bring this man’s delusions and recklessness to the world’s attention. I think the world knows.
I wish he would fix his payphone.
…
Today’s random book off the shelf is Shakespeare’s King John, a play I’ve never read or seen performed. It is edited by Claire McEachern. Page 61 is the only page available from my trifecta. Here I find Constance defying death:
No, I defy all counsel, all redress,
But that which ends all counsel, true redress, Death, death. O, amiable, lovely death!
Thou oderiferous stench! Sound rottenness!
Arise forth from the couch of lasting night,
Thou hate and terror to prosperity,
And I will kiss thy detestable bones,
And put my eyeballs in they vaulty brows,
And ring these fingers with thy household worms,
And stop this gap of breath with fulsome dust,
Anbd be a carrion monster like thyself.
Come, grin on me, and I will think thou smil’st
And buss thee as they wife! Misery’s love,
O, come to me!
A footnote informs that buss means kiss.
Takeaway: “A carrion monster” sounds like death to me. “Ring these fingers with thy household worms” comes alive in a painting or illustration from the hand of some artist somewhere, I imagine. “gap of breath” is Constance’s reference to her mouth. Reminds me of, I’m sorry to say, “Titanic”, when the shipman with the gun threatens to shoot a woman if she doesn’t “shut that hole in her face” or something of similar borderline vulgar sentiment.
That is the first Shakespeare I’ve encountered in a long time. It does not strike me as particularly golden or notable among his effluvious output. I was reminded of Shakespeare via some stream of consciousness last week. A common complaint is that he uses 5000 words when 50 would suffice. One particular opening salvo, the citation of which I have no idea, involved a full page of text read aloud by someone in a high school English class. After reading every word on that page the teacher asked us to summarize what the character had just said. With a bit of a shrug the consensus of the class was that for all that text matter the character was simply asking “What’s up?” The teacher agreed, making no attempt to alter the general indifference of the class to the needless effluvia of words when a single sentence would have sufficed.
Shakespeare had vessels to fill, rhythms to keep, actors to keep employed.
I am listening to the urgent, craggy sound of a Chopin/Godowsky étude, this one based on Chopin’s Op. 25 No. 2 in F Minor. This one sounds faithful to the spirit of the original without inserting a separate étude on top or bottom. That form of counterpoint, now that I think of it, echoes of Ives, does it not? Never thought of it that way, as Godowsky was mostly just trying to be funny, I think.
These are the Carlo Grante recordings of these pieces, which are the only renditions I listen to. If each recording is itself not necessarily a winner I think that largely reflects the quality of the pieces themselves. I am now hearing another étude based on the Op. 25 No. 2 and it is a droning, cluttered picket fence of notes for the left hand alone. I have tried playing this particular one and found it ineffectual. I have a hard time playing music for just one hand. My brain slides out of balance, and my body objects.
Now this étude, the first one based on Op. 25 No. 3, this is like a dance of the bees, or the “ants” of which Arrau derisively said Godowsky’s études reminded him. It starts nude on the bottom, as does the original Chopin étude. But it fills out well enough, ending after a convincing and rousing climax.
Don Garvelmann once told me how much he admired Grante’s approach to these études, commenting that he further respected how the pianist recorded them not once but twice, because Grante didn’t think he got it quite right the first time through.
This should not surprise me but when I listen to piano music I find it hard to write about anything else. I take offense at the notion of using great classical music as background material. This is not soothing, placid stuff, and composers of most ilks, even composers of consummate mediocrity, would never have thought they were creating that.
Yet here I am, doing just that, playing piano music while intending to write about subjects unrelated. As if it should serve as mindless background droning and not do what it is intended to do, which is to mentally engage me.
…
I described the “CUNT” story to a friend last night. He seemed to think it had, erm, legs. Hah. I played him the one recording I made public from the chapel and he was positively impressed. I’ve known A. a long time. Last night he asked something I don’t think anyone’s ever asked: “How’s the apartment?” It seemed strange in a distant way to ask about the status of a place I do not own. He was nominally involved in my decision to move to Astoria after I came back from Atlanta. I expected to move back to the upper east side. That dream died but hey, AsLIC is just fine.
His question served as a prompt to say that neighbors called the building owner to complain about noise from my place, and that I felt like a fucking asshole on account of it. His response, I’m happy to say, concurred with my thoughts on the matter: Why didn’t they contact you first, instead of going straight to the owner?
Exactly. Dumbass Millennials, I suspect, might have been new to the building and unaware that the owner does not actually live on site, and who should not expect an ~80 year old man to march the quarter mile distance from his house to the apartment building at 1 in the morning.
I still feel like an asshole for it, though.
I read somewhere that once someone has been in a rent-stabilized place for 15 years it becomes almost impossible to kick them out — not that it is easy to kick someone out of a rent-stabilized place to begin with. If the 15 year rule is true then it might explain why the often cantankerous owner of the building was really pouring on the assholery around the time of my 15th year lease renewal. I might be imagining that but I don’t think I am. He wanted me out from the day I moved in. But around the 15 year point he just said it outright: “Why don’t you move?”
I also heard a troubling bit of gossip once from a woman at a bar. She lived in the building across the street and said she was friends with a guy who had lived in a first floor place in my building. The guy, who was the only black person I’ve ever seen living in the building, was told by the building owner that he had to move out because he wanted to move one of his family members in to the apartment. That scenario of an owner wanting to move a family member into an apartment is one of the few ways you can legally kick somebody out of a rent-stabilized place. According to this woman (who I don’t know beyond this conversation) that is what happened. But whoever those folks who moved in to that apartment are they do not look like relatives of the owner. If he really pulled that ploy then he seems to have lied, and I cannot help but entertain the racial angle on this. The kid was quite young, as I recall, and like me when I was in my 20s he was probably unaware of his rights — or else unwilling or fundamentally unable to stick up for himself.
It is also possible that this random woman at the bar was talking bullshit.
Reminding me once again of the sage advice from the old guy at Veronica’s, advice I have never heeded: “Beware, young man, of a woman who sits alone at a bar.”
OK, then, I am moving on from this library to another, as school lets out soon and this place will be a zoo.
