him to say good-bye. “I hope you get that position you want,” she says, with sincerity. “Whatever it is, exactly.”
“Ah, yes,” he says. “Whatever. Isn’t that how you say it nowadays? Whatever.” He kisses her on the cheek, and holds the elevator door open for her as she gets in.
In Between
The long corridors of Charles de Gaulle, the soundless escalators,the indecipherable human figures erased as soon as they are seen, the strange blank comfort of a space which demands nothing, in which everything is deleted as soon as it happens. She thinks, I’m free as a bird, and I skim against the surfaces of the world. Surfaces and episodes. On the plane, she takes out her schedule, tries to fix Sofia on the mental map. She no longer remembers why she agreed to go there, what trace of scruple, or curiosity moved her to say yes, she would make this absurd detour and play for a funny fee in Sofia’s main concert hall. She has a vague sense that Bulgaria has been through hard times, has been brave about it, was struggling still. Sometimes, in her hard, indulged life, she likes to feel that she’s doing something for a good cause. Something Good. It may have been this that prompted her hand to sign the contract which Anders had routinely faxed through for her approval.
Sofia
She is oddly cheered, though, by Sofia’s quaint little airport, the juddering Lada which takes her to her hotel, bouncing insouciantly over the deep and numerous potholes, the general uncombed shabbiness of the streets. She checks into the hotel, goes out for a walk. A fresh breeze, sound of doves cooing through the plane trees, the unhurried steps of the passersby, the low-built streets, the pungent smells … Europe eddying into something else, somewhere else, something earlier, an elsewhere. A muezzin’s cry pierces the subsiding light from a slim, barely visible minaret. She stops to listen to the sinuous musical line, weaving itself through the dusk and slow air. She falls into a slower tempo in response, feels a sloughing off of her habitual tension. No need to be on the qui vive here.
In the evening, she goes to hear the Bulgarian women sing. They’ve become famous recently, after having done some recordings in the West. They come out in their folk costumes, a colorful group. Then the music begins, and she sits up because she feels she is in the Presence. It is music, but hardly yet music. What emanates from the women’s throats is closer to unmediated emanations, raw whoops, fierce shouts. Wild calls, so piercing that she wants to call in response. It’s close to sounds wolves might make, or powerfully throated birds … A sort of pre-music, in which violence is not yet distinguished from pleasure, or aggression from wild love … Is that what the libido is like, she wonders, this pure, unmediated vitality. The voices go through her body like whipping winds, and she’s almost frightened by her pure response. If she were in a circle of Bacchantes, making these sounds, who knows what frenzy she might be capable of, what orgiastic dancing or tearing of flesh.
July 9, 1982
A lesson with Isabel Merton. She played the “Waldstein” quite convincingly. She is learning about discipline, about grasping the structure of the whole, so that each passage can fall into the right proportions within it. So that the form can reveal the meaning. I talked to her about the architectural exfoliation of Beethoven’s sonatas, and she listened with full absorption. She has that sort of love, the art-hunger. I felt as though my mind, my ideas, were pouring into hers. Sometimes I am full of wonder that this business of musical transmission still continues. An ancient knowledge, passed from mind to mind, hand to hand.
She played the first movement again, and looked up at me with her transparent eyes when she finished. I felt an urge to reach toward her cheek and caress it. My hand could have almost done it on its own. I didn’t, of course. Of course, I
“Ah, yes,” he says. “Whatever. Isn’t that how you say it nowadays? Whatever.” He kisses her on the cheek, and holds the elevator door open for her as she gets in.
In Between
The long corridors of Charles de Gaulle, the soundless escalators,the indecipherable human figures erased as soon as they are seen, the strange blank comfort of a space which demands nothing, in which everything is deleted as soon as it happens. She thinks, I’m free as a bird, and I skim against the surfaces of the world. Surfaces and episodes. On the plane, she takes out her schedule, tries to fix Sofia on the mental map. She no longer remembers why she agreed to go there, what trace of scruple, or curiosity moved her to say yes, she would make this absurd detour and play for a funny fee in Sofia’s main concert hall. She has a vague sense that Bulgaria has been through hard times, has been brave about it, was struggling still. Sometimes, in her hard, indulged life, she likes to feel that she’s doing something for a good cause. Something Good. It may have been this that prompted her hand to sign the contract which Anders had routinely faxed through for her approval.
Sofia
She is oddly cheered, though, by Sofia’s quaint little airport, the juddering Lada which takes her to her hotel, bouncing insouciantly over the deep and numerous potholes, the general uncombed shabbiness of the streets. She checks into the hotel, goes out for a walk. A fresh breeze, sound of doves cooing through the plane trees, the unhurried steps of the passersby, the low-built streets, the pungent smells … Europe eddying into something else, somewhere else, something earlier, an elsewhere. A muezzin’s cry pierces the subsiding light from a slim, barely visible minaret. She stops to listen to the sinuous musical line, weaving itself through the dusk and slow air. She falls into a slower tempo in response, feels a sloughing off of her habitual tension. No need to be on the qui vive here.
In the evening, she goes to hear the Bulgarian women sing. They’ve become famous recently, after having done some recordings in the West. They come out in their folk costumes, a colorful group. Then the music begins, and she sits up because she feels she is in the Presence. It is music, but hardly yet music. What emanates from the women’s throats is closer to unmediated emanations, raw whoops, fierce shouts. Wild calls, so piercing that she wants to call in response. It’s close to sounds wolves might make, or powerfully throated birds … A sort of pre-music, in which violence is not yet distinguished from pleasure, or aggression from wild love … Is that what the libido is like, she wonders, this pure, unmediated vitality. The voices go through her body like whipping winds, and she’s almost frightened by her pure response. If she were in a circle of Bacchantes, making these sounds, who knows what frenzy she might be capable of, what orgiastic dancing or tearing of flesh.
July 9, 1982
A lesson with Isabel Merton. She played the “Waldstein” quite convincingly. She is learning about discipline, about grasping the structure of the whole, so that each passage can fall into the right proportions within it. So that the form can reveal the meaning. I talked to her about the architectural exfoliation of Beethoven’s sonatas, and she listened with full absorption. She has that sort of love, the art-hunger. I felt as though my mind, my ideas, were pouring into hers. Sometimes I am full of wonder that this business of musical transmission still continues. An ancient knowledge, passed from mind to mind, hand to hand.
She played the first movement again, and looked up at me with her transparent eyes when she finished. I felt an urge to reach toward her cheek and caress it. My hand could have almost done it on its own. I didn’t, of course. Of course, I
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