June 6, 2024
This morning I woke up thinking about June 6, 1944. But I will leave that for another time. It's summer here. At last.
I've been sorting out time, summers are short and beautiful here in the north country. I am lucky to carve out enough to do a few worthwhile things---helping with the garden though Susan does the real work, riding the bike because age and bones are real, spending time in my study with the gods and the dead. How lucky. University life is still necessary, likely good for me since I might otherwise see no actual living beings other than the postman, but at this point the college steals time I would spend otherwise. There are five enrolled in a class that once had hundreds. Who has changed?
How can we really live when all we do is work? The American way, late stage capitalism is truly, utterly soulless. Who could we be if we had some time to sort that out?
For now, I am able to find a few hours to swivel back and forth between the work----the Sansrkit and Tamil I need for Camp and fall Rajanaka offerings, this is largely a pleasure---and the Bard who is now always a pleasure.
It is a life goal that I should have more than one complete, slow reading of Shakespeare. This takes time. At least for me. I didn't read much as a kid. But I've not been alone: Harold Bloom makes it a joy, such erudition and clarity. Dozens of his lectures are free on YouTube. Professor Bloom, thank you. Why did I not go to Yale and make this my life? Bloom has far too narrow a view of greatness---clearly he knows nothing of Kalidasa, Chomei, Dogen, Bhavabhuti, Tu Fu or Li Po. But he sure knows his Bard.
I read Romeo and Juliet first at 14. I remember so vividly. We had this school book that made the noble effort of comparing R&J with West Side Story. Of course this had never occurred to me. I loved West Side Story, who could not? Now to be told it had come from Shakespeare? I don't think my parents knew any of that, they were once Broadway but never Globe. By the time I came along all of that past of theirs had vanished or had to be foregone just to survive.
Bernstein premiered WSS on Broadway in 1957, the film came in '61, I had seen it every time it came on TV, black&white in our house. I wanted to dance like that. I'd seen Astaire and Kelly too. That was music I have never stopped loving. (I'm on an AmSongbook/Standards bender as I write.)
But I never learned to do those things. I wanted to play music with that kind of soul and wit and attitude. But I was too busy playing sports, being a kid outside, chasing rock n' roll and girls as soon as I knew there were girls. It was considered---and I hope you will forgive me this language---you were called a "sissy" if you dug those things. How stupid and horrid and ignorant that was---but such was the age.
I grew up with these artists and musicians as my literal neighbors. Now I have learned more, that my father had done some of these things, but things he never spoke about---recently found out that he had jobs as a Broadway show rehearsal pianist, playing at night and did some Tin Pan Alley work as song-plugger, and then there were under study roles as a dancer. Why didn't he tell me any of this? Why didn't he ask me if I wanted those lessons when all I knew was Little League? We don't know until we're lucky enough to learn.
Then at 16 I was taken to see Othello. I had been brought into NYC culture by a church choir mistress who had a full time job at Riverside and a part time job at the church I attended alone, without my family's slightest interest. What kind of kid sends himself to church? But it's true. It took a long time to learn that the theology is just lies, manipulation, and an endless dose of existential fear in pursuit of certainty (another lie). But what I had fallen into were people not much interested in any of that stuff---but who had realized how religion held together culture and art, and how "church" meant civil rights, changing the world, ending the war.
So in this world I learned what my parents knew little about: Lincoln Center culture, literature, The New Yorker, a world of museums and Chinese food and the civil rights movement. Those last two years before college I was just lucky: adults showed me another kind of world and then the late nights I created alone (or with a few select pals) downtown for jazz at The Vanguard, Seventh Ave South, The Blue Note. I would catch the last bus across the bridge, never be found missing in the mornings, my parents none the wiser.
My parents who did not approve any of those "church people" but I think they saw correctly that the priest was abuser or at least more than a little sketchy. I was spared because my "church people" had warned me of him and spoke diffidently about religion itself.
But the parents could not object to what they did not know. My secrets were best left in vagaries, "Oh the Church people are taking me to the ballet..." But those folks---bless them---not much interested in religion as such, thank goodness, only music and art, poetry and theatre. I learned how pipe organs are built and that it was okay to play jazz if it was in the undercroft after hours.
Now when I listen to Professor Bloom lecture on the Bard I am able to follow, read with love not struggle just to understand what is merely being said. And I think about being lucky and about how we're just born to the worlds, to the parents, to the life we are without consent but---again if we are very lucky---with choices. I think there are a few more to make. But ya' gotta have some of The Lucky.
