The perfect room has walls the color of your first memory. It is the size of your current mood, with a reasonable breeze that oils your work-withered limbs. In it, the sound of a family argument comes from downstairs, although you know there is no downstairs anymore, only this room. It has also the music from your mind on a small record player in the corner. It says don’t worry, this will all be over soon. Beside the bed, where you rest, is a bottle of pills you’ve been saving for the day you become “too old.” That day has come and gone but somehow you’re still not ready. Besides, who will take care of your cat, who circles the room, constantly apurr and rubbing on everything. If the telephone rings, you let it run its course, because there isn’t anyone anymore. There is only this room. Perhaps tomorrow you will be ready, but for now you will just sit and listen to this music.

I remember, when I was younger, being very afraid of three specific things:

1. Turning 18 and therefore becoming eligible for the draft of WW3.
2. My parents dying.
3. My dad hitting an animal with his car and, as he described it with a perverse excitement, having to smash its head in with a rock to end the suffering.

All three, the first especially, would keep me up at night and often make me sick to my stomach.

Years later—today—a hummingbird hits our office window. I’m not sure how or why a bird crashes into such an obvious obstacle (if not on purpose), but it happens more than you’d think. It was a hard hit that made everyone look up from their coffee and sent the tiny life falling a short (but long enough) distance to the sidewalk. I knew what I had to do, which maybe I owe in part to my dad, but also as it has happened this way twice before. I’d find the bird—creature meant to be elusive and always on the go—in strange stillness, edge of life, twitching, oozing; and I would have to smash it as quickly as possible with a brick from the planter. All of this made me think of the above three points, of which I am still afraid at age 28, as well as the lines

What cries home
Where cries from
A blood red bird lies in the woods
Weeping into dead leaves
With wing torn and jutting bone

Smog, “Blood Red Bird”

and

I thought hard for us all—my only swerving—,
then pushed her over the edge into the river.

William Stafford, “Traveling through the Dark”

In the beginning, the earth was formless and empty and the Spirit of God hovered high above it.

“Let there be light,” He said, and there was light. God saw that the light was good.

He separated the light from the darkness. God called the light day, and the darkness he called night. And there was evening, and there was morning.

And God said, “Let there be an expanse between the waters.” So God made the expanse and called it sky. God made the land and the seas and saw they were good. He made the sun, moon, and stars. All of these were good too.

“Let the water teem with living creatures, let birds fly above the earth, and let the land produce wild animals.” Also good. It was all very good.

And then God said, “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along it.” God created man, male and female, in his own image.

They were so good.

God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and every living creature that moves on the ground.”

Man and woman blinked their eyes.

Then God said, “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit. They will be yours for food! And all the beasts of the earth and all the birds of the air and all the creatures that move on the ground—everything that has the breath of life in it I give to thee!”

Man and woman, stretched side-by-side along the earth, looked at each other languidly here, and, after some seconds of silent consideration, shared the smallest of movement amounting to a shrug. They would not proceed to increase in number. They would not fill the earth and subdue it. No. They decided thusly they would not even move.

“Not good,” God muttered. “Not good at all.”

Hovering on high, God saw all he had made and it was mostly very good. There was evening, he thought to Himself. There was morning. At least there were evening and morning.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

I’ve been accused of having a mancrush on Douglas Lee. This is probably due to the way I look at him when he plays, all mesmerized and inspired. But it’s not really Doug I fix upon, it’s all the stuff he does up there, the event. And, it’s not only me. You know that obnoxious group that’s had a few too many, a few tables back. They have no real reason to pay any attention to this. Well, those guys suddenly shut and look up in interested unison when Doug’s seemingly random background ambience pops into sharp focus and makes everything make sense. Then there is amazement at the inexplicable fingers on that what-is-that instrument (a Chinese lute) accompanied by unexpected hard beatbox beats. With his mouth right on the mic he rolls out a fill like shots from an uzi and then— We’re back, to the unpredictable, long and aimless calm. We release a held breath, blink out of our brief mancrushing trances. The obnoxious table returns to their obnoxiousness. And the music keeps going.

Jenna approached me after the show with her astonishment. I was pleased and relieved she got to see for herself what I’d tried to describe but couldn’t with justice. There are many recordings of Doug, but there’s nothing like hearing him fill the room live. Jenna was equally impressed by the sudden attention he commanded, especially in the unlikely setting of a close-by dive bar we never heard of. We laughed about that obnoxious table, but I highly doubt Doug was put off by them; on the contrary, I think he would see their riot as part of the music and genuinely appreciate their being there. Like when Jenna photographed the show, he insisted she do it right in his face, with flash and everything. Of course he was messing around, but point taken. He doesn’t ask everyone to turn off all cell phones before he starts to play because all your cell phones are part of it.

Doug makes use of many instruments, some unfamiliar to most American listeners: Pipa (Chinese lute), erhu (Chinese violin), hulusi (cucurbit flute), cello and violin, Jew’s harp (while beatboxing), and those unexpected mantras brought to his throat. He is an expert of silence and novelty, shifting between the two, and full of surprises. He has roots in China but seems to spend a Passenger’s life on a long tour, making his way to venues as far as Los Angeles and San Diego, or elsewhere. His stage name (Dai Guo Li) is known to change and CDs in uniquely crafted casings are usually sold at his shows for fair prices. Below are a few selections from his new material:

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

If you missed the link above, here are the photos that Jenna took at that show.
Doug’s website, with other media files, is here. Facebook him here.

More fun facts I came across while cataloging…

• Sir Edward Elgar’s Cello Concerto in E minor, Op. 85 was his last notable work, and is a cornerstone of the solo cello repertoire. Elgar hummed the concerto’s opening theme to a friend in 1934 during his final illness, telling him, “If ever after I’m dead you hear someone whistling this tune on the Malvern Hills, don’t be alarmed. It’s only me.”

reminds me of

This Living Hand

This living hand, now warm and capable
Of earnest grasping, would, if it were cold
And in the icy silence of the tomb,
So haunt thy days and chill thy dreaming nights
That thou wouldst wish thine own heart dry of blood
So in my veins red life might stream again,
And thou be conscience-calmed—see here it is—
I hold it towards you.

John Keats

and also how

• The opera Carmen premiered at the Opéra-Comique of Paris on 3 March 1875, but its opening run was denounced by the majority of critics. Bizet died of a heart attack, aged 37, on June 3rd 1875, never knowing how popular Carmen would become. In October 1875 it was produced in Vienna, to critical and popular success, which began its path to worldwide popularity.
• As with so much of Mussorgsky’s music, Night on Bald Montain had a tortuous compositional history and wasn’t arranged until after his death in 1881 by his friend Rimsky-Korsakov. It was never performed in any form during Mussorgsky’s lifetime.
• When Herman Melville died in 1891, he was almost completely forgotten. It was not until the “Melville Revival” in the early 20th century that his work won recognition, most notably Moby-Dick which was hailed as one of the chief literary masterpieces of both American and world literature.
• John Kennedy Toole’s novels remained unpublished during his lifetime. Some years after his suicide, his mother Thelma Toole brought the manuscript to the attention of the novelist Walker Percy, who ushered the book into print. In 1981 Toole was posthumously awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. A Confederacy of Dunces is now considered a canonical work of modern Southern literature.

So much for endurance.

These days at work, I’m cataloging an endless number of classical music and opera tracks. It doesn’t even matter why. It’s boring, tedious work. I came upon Puccini’s “Nessun Dorma” (from the opera Turandot), so I played the file and have been letting it repeat over and over because each time it swells I feel hot and briefly hopeful and it moves me to tears. My close-by co-workers have not noticed my little episodes because none of us ever look up, not even when someone enters the room.

Jenna and I know this aria previously because it was featured in an episode of Six Feet Under, performed at a funeral of course, and then I put it on a mix CD for her. We like to blast it in the car and find ourselves amazed at how affected we are without knowing the meaning of the words beyond the title. It’s fun to try to sing along, not knowing Italian, or how to sing.

The routine of every day, no matter what one does as long as it’s over and over, easily makes life feel meaningless and unexciting; but even at work, at desk, hopeless here with headphones, something happens and the mind switches on (or off) and things can feel really beautiful. Maybe it’s the coffee.

I want this blog to be a catalogue of these briefly hopeful moments because most of the others aren’t worth mentioning. You’ll find here incidentals and my observations on this and that. I open with Puccini, who will get me through this day. Il nome suo nessun saprà, E noi dovrem, ahimè, morir. No one will know his name, and we must, alas, die.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.