Parallel Stories

I'm reading Péter Nádas.  'I have spent my life between imagination and reality' is the translated catch-phrase that comes up in an internet search, from a widely-seen brief interview in his native language.  Years ago, I read the Book of Memories which was highly praised by Susan Sontag and described as Proustian; it was well worth the time investment. 

This time it's Parallel Stories--  received with mixed reviews. Among these were comments on the more-than-1100 pages as 'not quite the disaster of Brodkey's Runaway Soul' (which I managed to complete), but flawed.  It took 18 years to write. Like Mann's Joseph quartet-- also under-read at some 1500 pages, the author considers this his masterpiece.  I respect that, often consider the fact that the best songs I think I have ever written receive the fewest 'listens' on streaming media.  

It's hard to explain the attraction these huge novels have for me-- Proust, Mann, Bolaño, Gaddis, etc... even David Foster Wallace, more recently. As my personal hourglass runs down, the blessing of my well-stocked bookshelves and stacks and piles of run-over compels me... while I still have the bandwidth, although one never knows when one's capacity takes a hit; my memory for long-ago titles, plots, etc... is failing. 

More than any event in my life, the pandemic altered the wiring of my brain.  Grief, shock, solitude-- the coincidence of age and eventlessness... changed things.  I found myself distance-walking often-- monologuing, singing to myself-- inventing narratives and weaving a sort of quasi-literary alter-ego in my head.  Some of these voices wrote themselves into poems-- as though all I did was transcribe.  But once the trauma of grief left me with a little peace, I substituted the intimacy of authorial narrators of literature... they became my deep companions. 

Long novels allow the writers to wander down corridors of memory, to pursue tangents beyond what one normally allows in daily life. Some of these are obsessive and uber-technical; others autopsy old loves, bare and dissect already-naked moments to the point of repulsion.  Criticism of Parallel Stories highlights  the more awkward passages and there are some truly cringeworthy ones.  Readers who grew up on Joyce are accustomed to explicit familiarity with body functions and explorations.  Few pursue these long novels for prurience or eroticism; there is way too much of that imminently accessible in all media.

But generally, I trust these writers-- I forgive them their excesses and cannot fathom the editing.  Nádas alleges that he writes in longhand and an assistant transfers to computer.  Then there are the translators. Being a diligent reader, I sometimes look at maps of Budapest and Berlin-- I brush up on the Hungarian uprising of 1956. Politics, history--  are the fundamentals and rediscovering is part of the joy of unraveling these novels. European authors have wars and bloody legacies in their private visions. 

To put some disturbing icing on the 100-page chapter of tedious sexual excess I finished, last night I watched two Michel Haneke films.  My neighbor-- a writer-- is a huge fan of Funny Games and recommended these. So, The Seventh Continent was just a brilliantly visual piece of cinematic art with very little dialogue that pulled through to what you knew would be a horrifying end... but still you kept on.  These films of personal horror-- the exploration of the range of evil-- of cruelty and sadism-- done not like Hollywood but with a sort of chilling matter-of-fact quiet-- well, they haunt one.

My physical therapist and I spend most of our sessions talking about literature.  He has just finished Paradise Lost and went on to Céline and Henry Miller.  It occurs, as he torments me in the name of rehabilitation, there's a kind of ironic parallel to the things we watch and read.  The possibilities and random incidents in a city- -the falls, the accidents, the smashes and crashes.. and the episodic street violence... discourages some people from taking daily risks.  The catalogue of films and movies-- the gore and blood and terror-- has surely anesthetized us to the massive global human suffering we see on the news.  And still I heard my neighbor scream when she cut her finger mildly with a kitchen knife... and a woman who fell off her scooter today-- nothing besides a bruised pair of leggings.  But the screams-- they stayed with me. 

These massive historical novels, years past the events they reflect, remind not only of the horrific immediacy of battlegrounds-- of the aggressive and shameful human tendencies wars and violence force men to summon... but of the consequence... of the future.  It's not the event but the echoes, going forward-- the psychological scars and warped behaviors we humans tend to invent to somehow repair old wounds we never deserved in the first place.  Impossible to go through life unscathed, but so much we could do in the name of prevention. Football players wear so much padding; the rest of us-- especially the children of war... are so unprotected.  When the blood dries and the limbs heal-- or not-- there will be some indelible residue of evil-- of endless disturbing parallel stories. 

Dear Liza

Back in the 1970's, when I'd been living out my first chapter in the city as a self-supporting independent dreamer, my father showed up at my humble apartment which was a converted first-floor office I rented on the cheap.  'You're overdrawn,' he announced, without a trace of sympathy or paternal emotion, which was his MO.   At first I took this as a backhanded critique of my drawing techniques...I was still studying art... but then I realized he was talking dollars and sense-- the only advice-road he ever crossed where I was concerned.  SO... my checking account was $10 in the red and this, according to him, was a financial and moral sin.   Did he offer me a coffee-- an ice-cream?  A street pretzel?  I'd given up all luxuries to survive my little spartan life as a student with part-time jobs at Bloomingdale's, at an art gallery, babysitting... earning $90 maximum per week.  I gave him my word it would never happen again... and it didn't.

It occurred to me, listening to my son rattle off the numbers of his friends with wealthy parents who backed their start-ups, bought them apartments, set them up with stock portfolios... this was my strict lesson in economics-- my hard-landing, my teenage Brexit.   While I had little in common with my military Dad who disapproved of my life choices until he died, I raised my son with a parallel ethic.  But somewhere in the last 40 years, urban values have changed.

Last night I listened to Danny Fields talking via the LES Biography project about city life back in the 1960's and 70's... the music scene, especially... and I nearly salivated.  Yes, I remember when there were maybe 1000 hip people in New York who were doing things--- very few of them had money, but there was a certain fierce bohemian patriotism... we hung out and listened and exchanged... things were being discovered... things were new and hypnotically interesting... you'd miss them if you stayed home.  Even mainstream music was pretty good-- bands were inventing and becoming.  Records were important and in the clubs, no one dared get up and perform unless they had a concept.  Not much of the avant garde was on television, and punk was so much more than a recording-- it was energy. It was live.

Not watching the Grammies has become a no-brainer.  This is not music-- it's some new kind of industry that has little to do with discovery and everything to do with marketing, cultural manipulation.  Money.  I admit I turned on television for a quick minute in time to catch a quick visual meme of Jennifer Lopez thrashing it out on a piano-top... and I literally felt sorry for her.  Okay-- I'm pretty old now, way past the age of strutting onstage half-clothed... but let's face it, there's a small fortune's worth of spandex and Spanx in the Beyonce and J-Lo shows these days.

The truth is, I feel rich.  I am grateful to have lived in the Danny Fields version of New York, and lucky to have seen what I saw, usually without paying very much if anything.  But the time-- it was worth it.  Staying out all night year after year, dragging myself through classes and gallery afternoons just to make it to another night of back-to-back gigs and inhaling the charged air of downtown.   I never 'made it' in the music business... and I still feel rich.  I never asked anyone for a dime, once I settled the 10-buck debt with my father.  In fact I paid him back in spades, but that's another tale.  He went to his grave without sampling a single one of my living catalogue and it doesn't bother me.

I guess we can't help wanting things for our kids-- I'm sure he wanted me to have the best appliances and home decor-- the perfect tennis-playing husband, the country club and the vacations... For my son, I want him to have that discovery New York gave me-- the jolt, the inspiration-- the courage to be what I wanted-- the values I cling to that had me starve for years for a painting I craved, work weeks on end to collect $50 at a gig, walk miles carrying heavy equipment...   But it seems while I was mothering and forging onward, the urban garden turned into a money crop, and I'm a bit lost here.  One thing I do notice: rich people, with a few exceptions,  do not feel rich.  They are insatiable and often unhappy.  They trade in their wives, their homes, their cars, their clothes... and still they search for more.

Someone asked me the other day about my Bucket List.  I remember the first time I heard that expression and didn't recognize it.  It's a recent coinage, I think... although a bucket is a pretty Mother-Goosey kind of image.  What I thought of immediately is that old folk song-- 'There's a Hole in the bucket, dear Liza, dear Liza... '

There's a hole in my bucket, for sure.  But my list is kind of checked off.   And so many of the things I'd wish for-- well, I've done them, in a sense.  Traveling the world-- I guess I saw plenty of places playing backroom gigs and going to art auctions when I was young; and I can look at images, watch films... no hotel room hassle, stressful delays, no airport security.  My shelves are lined with the best books I'm lucky to have become acquainted with-- because plenty of young people come in here and have never read Pushkin or Celine or Borges.  I visit the past with these authors who open their minds and landscape for me.  I read on trains and kids sometimes ask about my book... they often note titles on their phone-- their version of a bucket list.

Maybe the after-effects of something like poverty have seeped through my cracks and wrinkles and changed my chemistry from a longing young girl feverish with passion and ambition, to a wiser and warped older woman who just wants some time to finish my work and study that of my heroes.

Last night that Supermoon was pretty amazing.  It outshone any of the red carpet jewels the Oscar nominees will be showing off.  As for me, I'll be doing a gig somewhere, wearing the not-on-the-bucket-list necklace my son gave me for my birthday.  It's tiny and magical and so perfect, the way these things are meant to remind us of a star-- an unattainable tiny point of light...   perspective.  Somewhere in this city of competitive bank accounts and 7-figure Valentine gifts they forgot the point of beauty.  Nothing compared with that moon that hung there for every single one of us-- homeless or penthoused... not the ring of Steph Curry or the trophies of Tom Brady and Cardi B.  So keep your eMemos and iNotes going... I've still got plenty of work to do, God willing, but fixing the bucket is not on the list.