Friday, March 1, 2013

I wonder sometimes about those great artistic achievements that came out of living Paris in the Twenties, the community of artists, the poets and painters, survivors of the Great War like Apollinaire, joined by the ex patriots of the English speaking world.  Picasso, for instance, kept a great circle of friends, and when done with the work of the day, they'd gather, eat, and drink wine, and they'd talk, and compare notes, argue, expound.  And they seem to inhabit a last, or perhaps a new and wild and different, finger of the Renaissance, as if on an outpost of it, meeting the sea.  They had, of course, hang outs.  They had Picasso's 'laundry boat' up on Montmartre near the top of the hill above a gentle bend in a road.  They had places like The Dingo, along with all the cafe spots the folks like Hemingway celebrated through utilization and fully living.  For the artists, such places were gentle, accommodating, and alive with possibility, and the art that was spawned in the subconscious revery and relaxations and wordless thoughts that happened within their confines was, of course, art that matched them.  The art that sprung from them was the art of the lives that wandered through, and so cubism was born, paintings of prostitutes, war survivors, free spirits, talkers, artistes, as the pages of A Moveable Feast sketch out for posterity, there Joyce, with his glasses, eating over with his family, encounters with Gertrude and Sylvia and Evan the poet, Fitzgerald.  (History will conjecture later of Joyce's afflictions--knowing certain habits of his--and the medical treatments that ruined his eyesight.)

And now places have changed.  Times have changed.  Economies have changed.  And somehow it is hard to recreate, in the current business model, an environment where artists might thrive, have productive discussions in public meeting places.  To create a flicker of such a place where people could meet, shake off their day and all its impositions like a dog shaking the wet out of her fur, relax, take comfort, have conversation, enter into discussions that go beyond all the tedious specifics of the day, to be transported, to have a little daily break, a teeny tiny vacation yet one that acknowledges all the personal realities, that would be, and is, an achievement.  And such a place would serve as a classical thing, and rise above its earthly duties of providing food and drink and other people's presence, to shine and accept its charges.  Such a place would be no small accomplishment.  It would have to rest on a good reservoir of the waters of hospitality, and one wonders if these times are prone to drought and 'here's your check.'

Show me a writer, and I'll show you a place the writer inhabits, as if he or she were a certain kind of wild creature, prone to certain habits.  Some people like mass behavior, loudness, thumping bass and displays of strength (shouting), for kicks, some like Bistro Du Coin, some like clubs called Dirty Martini, some like hipster hangouts, and some people are like the sweet creatures of nature, prone to find spots where they are comfortable, tree tops, overlooks, safe forests, undisturbed streams, where they might encounter other beings like themselves, with that flicker of nature.  Like things of the green world, healthy art and thought (effecting all aspects of life) must find a healthy place to grow, generous of water, sunlight, breeze.

(And I am relieved to find that the earliest of humanity is exonerated for enjoying fermented fruits, as the latest study of a particular branch of the digestive enzymes of our closest ape ancestors suggests that folk like gorillas left the trees, came down to enjoy the fruits fallen from the tree tops, dealt with it digestively, whereas folk like orangutans preferred to sleepily stay up in their tree top havens.  Humanity, in other words, didn't have to go to great agricultural lengths to whip up a little vino, or, at least, were capable of taking benefit from fermented fruit, even if they didn't immediately set up portable hunter gatherer stills.  That booze is traditionally brewed up in the natural cover of mountains doesn't seem to far off the general direction of humanity.  The soothing effects from digesting fermented stuff told the animal, 'this is okay.'  We're going back about 10 million years in evolution, so it's okay if you like a glass of wine.  It ain't no sin.)





After a few longer than normal weeks, Valentine's Day, Restaurant Week, someone on vacation, at the restaurant, I leave the restaurant without my phone.  The door locks behind me, I have the key to the top lock, but not the door knob.  Bundled up, courier bag on my back, it's not in all my layers.  Well, I'm tired, I'll get home, and come back to tomorrow and it will be there, like it was when I left my old iPhone behind on the bar or at the table by the chair where I took off my work slacks, changed into my dungarees, put my shoes on and packed up to leave, turning the lights off and all alone.  I get home, have my glass of wine in peace, find sleepiness somewhere down the line, get up around one, get ready, go to work, and, guess what, my phone, a new iPhone 5, isn't anywhere to be seen.  Hmm.

"Well, hey, check it out on 'find your iPhone.''  Okay, thanks.  I put my password in on iCloud.  A compass wags, and then a dot appears on a map.  New Carrolton?  Lanham-Seabrook?  WTF?

This happens to be exactly where the honest sweet steady venerable Salvadoran cleaning lady who's been there forever, back to when the restaurant was a Greek restaurant, matron figure of much of the staff, happens to live.  Chef gets here on the phone.  "She says she doesn't have it."  I sit with the waiters and we watch the little dot on the map, and it moves, a little, then finally settles, at a particular corner, a block or two from, well, someone's house.  So, we get ready and do our shift, swallowing the sickened feeling.  "She'll bring it back tomorrow," someone says.

But she doesn't.  She keeps to her story.  "But, but..."  We consult the surveillance video.  Nothing.  It was Oscar night.  I called my mom around midnight that night.  Where exactly did I leave it?

I go and grit my teeth through Monday jazz night, through Tuesday wine tasting night, through Wednesday night, summoning vestiges of hospitality, reluctant hospitality, such that I have to grab each piece of it by the tail while people arrive and smile and want to relax.  I want to blow my stack.  Each night, I walk home from work.  I get home late anyway, but these too are late nights, maybe particularly so.

Finally the week ends.  Whatever avenue anyone might pursue here, as far as getting my phone back, leads nowhere.  What we all want is for the dark cloud and the suspicions to pass and be forgotten.  The boss is extremely kind, and solicitous, and it's obvious he cares about me personally and values my hard work as one of his main barmen.

I sleep all day.  I don't feel like dealing with ATT.  It turns out to cost quite a bit to replace your phone. You already have a contract and have to pay full retail.  I have my old phone still.  Soon I'm eligible for a discount 'upgrade.'  Upgrade.  Try, 'replacing my stolen fucking iPhone5.'  Next time, I'll get the carrier's insurance, as Applecare doesn't cover loss, theft or normal wear and tear.  A hot shower abates a headache lingering the last 24 hours.

I order Chinese, do some laundry, try to ignore the thumping bass and yells from the idiot kids next door while contemplating filing another noise complaint, take another nap.  It's only finally when I look for a PBS documentary on YouTube about Appalachia, (finding the meantime some nice scenes of Caroline waterfalls) that I come across a soothing mountain air, played on mandolin, that I feel some kind of catharsis.  (Music always draws us in.)  It's a song that is the opposite of the jarring sort of message of the modern advertisement's attempt to overwhelm your innate humanity with seeds of lust.  It's told in an old pentatonic scale that a child could put together, and it belongs to no particular country.  It could be originally Japanese, or Indian, or Middle Eastern, but anyway, it, or the basic scale and notes struck the Irish and the Scots as something worthy, so that they brought it with them, and played it on whatever tuned instruments they took the time and trouble to build in the midst of their hardscrabble existences.  And the music is the same as the teapot that whistles, as the octave reached in the sound of filling a vessel of water, or the same notes we have within us when we react honestly to something.  Music, as the ancient Chinese might say, reflects the order between Heaven and Earth.  Buddha's early lesson talks about the string tuned just so, quite centrally.  The song is, in one carnation anyway, called Beech Spring, an old harp song, an ancient air and maybe a dance.   The opening strains of it soundly oddly familiar and close to Happy Birthday.  It's played well in D, basically the key of Beethoven's 9th.

And as is my habit, I will refer to some wisdom of Shane MacGowan, that you can hear music everywhere, in the water, in the ground, in the wind, in the rain.  "We just put ... it in boxes."  (While delivering a lesson on the relationship of Irish music and the blues.)

Yes, the blues.

It is then, in the quiet of the night, that I feel my ancestors, that I feel music, that I feel that old scale and it's old song cheering me, letting me morn the potential loss of the last little iPhone videos of my kitty cat licking away at her bowl, or tossing a little furry catnip mouse around, stuff like that.  Downloaded to the computer, at least, but playable?  In the end we lose everything, health, home, life, so why not the dress rehearsal played out in some cheap but expensive scale, plus the hassle.

That's life for you.  Thank god for music.  For a glass of wine for digesting, when you are ready and capable of digesting.  Apes, we came down out of the trees, even as we admire our friends the birds, down to earth.




No comments: