The Write Thing

There are stories that come to us without warning. One moment we think we have everything under control, and the next we are hopelessly itching with desire for that same thing we were formerly indifferent to. These days, images of an old movie I saw long ago have been playing constantly on my mind: David Lean’s Brief Encounter.

The story is a typical case of untimely love, in those days when some people at least questioned themselves before being unfaithful to their spouses. As the protagonists Alec and Laura gradually realize that their innocent meetings are leading into something far deeper than a mere acquaintance, they decide to put an end to the affair — actually, to its potential. The film is based on a play by Noel Coward called, more accurately, Still Life.

I saw the film at least over ten years ago, so relying on my memory completely might prove risky. However, I have the vivid impression that it is Alec who voices the palpable passion that dwells in both of the never-to-be lovers. In a memorable scene — or a fictitious invention, my memory will tell — he looks at her and says…”you know what’s happening, don’t you…”

I know what’s happening. Here, there are no husband or wives to cheat. There is only a distance, which in the modern world planes travel more frequently than I help myself to meals. Further favoring dramatic momentum is the fact that obstacles make excellent dramatic opportunities, facing protagonists with their tests of love and courage as the story they tell us unfolds.

Jeanette Winterson would probably start this account with a phrase such as “I would like to tell a story”. I am afraid I am already telling one, even if not as deftly as Ms Winterson. Better yet, we are telling a story, as we have told each other so many during the wonderful days we have just spent together. I must admit that it is simply very easy to flow when in company of a writer, something I had not yet experienced.

When I get to editing my own story, the one I am yet to tell, perhaps I should also mull my first line very carefully — after all, incipits are key. A good story must be subtle and yet solid enough to carry its own weight without wearing the reader down. Preferably, the protagonists should reveal their motives gradually, or let the reader find them around the corner of a gesture, or in the minimal expression of a misleading word. Stories can be written alone, in pairs or even in teams. Regardless of the number of hands assigned to the task, action and pace must flow as if only one single pen had written it.

I do not know if my story will flow as smoothly as I would like it to. Maybe not, because uncertainty is part of life, and as such it deserves a place in my account. I do not even know how the story started because, as all good things in my life, it began without warning and, when I least expected it, there it was.

So the readings went. The suggestion was to be “temperate”, like Shakespeare’s summer’s day, or like a good old Christian interpreting the Bible that nobody wrote. Temperance, that was what 2008 was about.

Edgar Allan Poe became a member of the Sons of Temperance societies in August 1849. Based on the graph above, the meaning of temperance in this case would be sobriety. How else could it be, considering that Poe was an alcoholic? Strangely enough, when the word temperance comes to mind, that meaning in English is almost lost to me. Yes, the word “sober” can also be used as “proper” or “controlled” to some extent. But is a non-alcoholic somebody “controlled” or “proper”, or is (s)he simply a dry drunk?

This brings me back to the question of temperance, and the “no-no” state in the world of alcoholics…what nobody likes to be called: dry drunk. From what I understood, a dry drunk is the person who stops drinking alcohol but remains an alcoholic in behavior and lifestyle. Technically, then, you would stop being an alcoholic when you no longer consume alcohol but…is alcohol the worst of your issues, or only a good cover-up for what you do not want to deal with? If that is the case, we are all technically alcoholics, no matter whether we drink only water, as we all have issues we do not want to face. Now, are we all dry drunks? I guess most of us are, partially, in one way or another.

With the last day of December gone only a week ago, I would officially declare my year of temperance gone. I have now become acquainted with wet and dry drunkenness, and this has opened a new question for 2009. In what way am I a dry drunk?

Good old Poe probably had a poem (nothing better than having your name embedded in the noun denoting your profession to be a master) for this, or more. I dare myself to open that technical recueil on the man that I once rescued from a dusty shelf down near Port Royal RER B station as I fight off sleep and the melancholy of my good ol’ C having flown herself off to Brisbane (even when it would have never worked between us…but what the hell?)

And he has, as poetry always does, an answer:

Take this kiss upon the brow!

And, in parting from you now,

Thus much let me avow –

You are not wrong, who deem

That my days have been a dream;

Yet if hope has flown away

In a night, or in a day,

In a vision, or in none,

Is it therefore the less gone?

All that we see or seem

Is but a dream within a dream.

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.