The Write Thing

The key difference between Gibert Jeune and Gibert Joseph lies in the fact that the latter is a wider experience to the thirsty mind. Only a few years ago, to be honest, did Joseph expand its array of books and fanciful stationery (I have fallen in love with oh so many calligraphy sets…) to include DVDs and CDs, in one of the most amazing musical and movie selections ever. Another great thing is that you can even get hold of used items there, which both reduces the budget and expands the opportunity of finding real treasures.

In my life, I have made two wonderful discoveries at Gibert Joseph: Brad Mehldau and Jan Dismar Zelenka. Mehldau happened first, back when he was relatively unknown to the inexperienced Jazz ear. It was on the occasion of the launch of his CD Songs: Art of the Trio III, which remains my favorite by far. I remember ambling around the Classical section of the store, putting on the headphones and transporting myself in time and space into wherever Brad took me. I bought the CD and listened to it hours on end as I was preparing myself for the big test of France.

The second discovery took place much later, in 2005. I was there for work reasons, having long got back to Buenos Aires. I entered Gibert, browsed through the DVDs (which is what I normally do, in that order), and headed for the Classical section at the end of the corridor. At first, I did not notice the peace and the magic around me. It was only minutes later that I was caught into the spell of the wondrous Zelenka. My first guess was Bach, of course. I would have even stretched it to Vivaldi. But there was something that seemed both unheard of and familiar in that work. It was the first time in my life I had felt that ambiguity. I mean, we have all listened to Baroque music, and it seems OK to work, cook, and even make love to it. But this…this was something different. There was a quiet hunger in those sounds.

I went to the counter, for the first time in my decades of music-loving indulgence, and asked the shop assistant to tell me what we were listening to. Zelenka was the name he gave me. I thought, at first, that he might be one of these modern freaks who decide they can compose like Bach. If it was the case, this was a good one, because he even sounded better than Bach — he was different. I decided to buy the set of three CDs with his Orchestral Works.

There are no photographs or drawings of Zelenka. He remains — to this day — an unknown virtuoso. In the 1960s, a group of people with an ear for passion decided to bring him back to life. It turns out to be that Zelenka is, as a matter of fact, a real genius, and musicologists worldwide dare to place him on a same level as Bach. He was probably unlucky, as fortuna does exist, much to the dismay of working souls. Some years from now he will be known for his unique talent. After more than 300 years, there is something new to emerge from Baroque music. Zelenka was just living in the wrong times.

I finished reading Haruki Murakami’s Sputnik, sweetheart in Spanish, as I still can’t read Japanese (or understand it for that matter). I cannot say I did not like it. I did. Yet, there is something missing in his writing (or should we say traduttore, traditore was more to blame here?). The story in itself is interesting, a typical triangle of love (oh, don’t you love number three? who was not in one of those little stories him/herself at least once in life?) between two women and a man. The narrator loves Sumire who loves Myû and so on and so forth. No, don’t expect raw sex bursting out from the pages à la Ian McEwan in Atonement. But you should, by all means, expect sexual tension. Sumire at times seems a typical lost soul, one of those we would all love to take home and feed on a daily basis, take care of, and read to at night before tucking her in. However, there is this darkness about her, emanating from her own suffering as a struggling writer/woman in this world. Yes, writers, we’ve all been there, or we may still be. The narrator is a schoolteacher with a sex life, in spite of his undying love for the protagonist. At a given moment, Myû comes along and disrupts the love flow between narrator and Sumire (narrator giving, Sumire receiving — oh, heterosexual males, have you not suffered at the hands of little girls who just don’t know what the hell is going on?) . All of a sudden, Sumire, who had felt no hunger for human flesh until that point, begins to yearn for Myû. So far, so good.

Now, I won’t tell the rest of the story because I could be sued, but it is in what I consider to be the book’s climax that the pile of cards crumbles before us, and it really doesn’t get together again. There is something there that simply does not happen, something I lost as a reader. It is universally acknowledged that Murakami looks simple, but he is indeed complex. To be honest, I am not really sure. This is one of the possibilities of literature, we simply can decide that someone is complex or that he just digressed from the core of his own artistic work. We can hail him as a genius — he might be, I’m just a poor amateur — or destroy him because he could not really grasp his own essence. But, isn’t it what literature is all about?

Many years ago, a former girlfriend was defending this theory of hers stating that, in tennis, if two women were playing doubles, that meant they were in some sort of a “more than friendly” relationship. She would ramble about Steffi and Gaby, Conchita and Patricia, and so on. I was thinking if, in the opera world, the story might not be similar. It appears that, at times, it has been. After all, a lesbian fantasy might as well be to sleep with a prima donna…at least for intello-lesbians.

A very famous opera critic in Buenos Aires once told me about the rumors involving a famous soprano of the 1960s, whose first name was Lisa, and one of her co-stars. It seems that there was quite a lot of thorough backstage rehearsing before and after the performances. Well, if we consider that this famous soprano was well-known for her portrayal of the Marshalin in Der Rosenkavalier, or her role as the Countess in Mozart’s Nozze di Figaro, the association with the world of tennis does not seem too capricious. After all, what else would roles en travesti be good for?

Years ago, mezzo-soprano Marilyn Horne mentioned an anecdote about herself having a similar slant. She commented that, during an interview, a journalist asked her whether it was true that she and Joan Sutherland were in fact having an affair. At the time, the two women were singing the opera for which they were known best as a duet — Rossini’s Semiramide — with Horne in the starring role en travesti. Horne’s answer to the out-of-place question was blunt and funny, as she is in life, and throughout her delicious autobiography My Life. She nonchalantly explained that it was indeed the case, only that Sutherland played the man between them, because she was taller.

Had Horne said that today, she would have been greeted with approving grins on one side of the GLBT spectrum and, probably, might also have been accused of being politically incorrect by others, more sensitive to the existence of roles in same-sex relationships. Whatever the case, back in the 1970s, Horne’s answer was surely avant-garde and brilliantly funny.

I am thinking that funny might indeed be a key word in a world of difference. We are far from able to thrive on difference nowadays, the world at large is. If we could only be more relaxed about ourselves and laugh at our own incoherence, we might all be a little happier, and free.