Today is my father's birthday. He's. . . oh, maybe 62? He wasn't home when I called. I was told he was out having dinner with his wife and a few friends. Very unusual for him.

My outlook today sucks. The world seems brutish, difficult, and dull. It's gray and unpromising as far as the eye can see. I don't like the world or myself. Hahah How is that for a bad attitude? Everything is an irritant to me. (My only goal in this entry is to somehow work into it my latest favorite word--voluptuary. So far my prospects don't look too good.) Ok, well, I like the Chopin sonata that's playing, but that's it. No, I don't like the young couple which has just sat down beside me. Leave me the fuck alone!

***************************************

That was me last week. I'm better now, or at least today. First, a little aphorism from Proust, unrelated to anything in this blog entry: "We strive all the time to give our life its form, but we do so by copying willy-nilly, like a drawing, the features of the person that we are and not of the person we should like to be."

Or how about this: "Similarly, in later years, in Venice, long after the sun had set, when it seemed to be quite dark, I have seen, thanks to the echo, itself imperceptible, of a last note of light held indefinitely on the surface of the canals as though by the effect of some optical pedal, the reflexions of the palaces displayed as though for all time in a darker velvet on the crepuscular greyness of the water. One of my dreams was the synthesis of what my imagination had often sought to depict, in my waking hours, of a certain seagirt place and its mediaeval past. In my sleep I saw a Gothic city rising from a sea whose waves were stilled as in a stained-glass window. An arm of the sea divided the town in two; the green water stretched to my feet; on the opposite shore it washed round the base of an oriental church, and beyond it houses which existed already in the fourteenth century, so that to go across to them would have been to ascend the stream of time. This dream in which nature had learned from art, in which the sea had turned Gothic, this dream in which I longed to attain, in which I believed that I was attaining to the impossible, was one that I felt I had often dreamed. But as it is the nature of what we imagine in sleep to multiply itself in the past, and to appear, even when new, to be familiar, I supposed that I was mistaken. I noticed, however, that I did indeed frequently have this dream."

Proust writes eloquently about the past, and its effect on us. It truly IS the central theme of "In Search of Lost Time"--it's not just a title. He inhabits the world of memories, of experiences that shape us. He rarely looks to the future. For him life is measured by the richness of the past, and the past is rich by virtue of being in the past. The past is venerable because it defines us. And the earlier the moment, the more distant the memory, the more venerable and potent it becomes. But it's more than that. There is a palatable idealism in his writing. The world is almost fully contained within memory for him. Proust is happy to inhabit the world within our heads. I wonder, as an aside, whether he is ever regarded as the culmination in some ways of 19th century idealism. After him, truly, is existentialism, with its emphasis on the future, and its repudiation of the past. I suppose it is no surprise that we look back with fondness on the 19th century, but are eager to turn away from two world wars. Anyway, my entire point in this freshman term paper-like rambling is to notice how I venerate the past, just as Proust does. I even venerate Proust for the same reason. An otherwise ordinary passage holds great significance to me because Proust wrote it.

This week I had an extraordinary experience, one I'll never forget. I was allowed inside the home of a great American composer, one still very much alive and still inhabiting the house in some ways, though he'd recently moved out. His belongings and his life were still contained within the house. I mustn't reveal his identity, even though most people would not know him anyway. But he played a significant role in the emergence of a distinctive American symphonic tradition. Before people such as Copland, Harris, Piston, W. Schuman, etc., there was really no such thing as American music. This group of composers gave America its music tradition, music recognizably American rather than European in derivation. This happened in the 20s, 30s, and 40s, and this composer was among the group of composers responsible, albeit a little younger than the others.

When I first walked inside the door, I was unmoved. To look around it seemed an ordinary, but messy, old person's home. But turn to the right and there was the beaten old Steinway grand piano, surrounded by piles of very old LP recordings, some of his own music, some of others. There were scores thrown about of all sorts of music. Album covers were scribbled upon with notes to himself and to others. I was leafing through one pile and saw, oddly, a Lena Horn album among the preponderance of classical music albums. Lena Horn had written on the back, a note to the composer. That album was sitting, unnoticed by anyone, among the piles and piles of clutter. The house was full of such unexcavated treasures. There were original recordings of Copland compositions, albums with notes attached ("courtesy of L. Bernstein"). There was art work on the walls and lying on the floors. The most valuable pieces had already been removed, among them a Picasso. Photos cluttered every wall space, photos of friends, some significant, some not. Although the Library of Congress had already taken much of the important correspondence, including letters from such luminaries as Stravinsky, Ravel, Boulanger, e.e. cummings, etc., his "study" area, which spanned the entire attic, was covered in paper, note books, posters, letters, etc. I felt like I was in the presence of a great person, and truly I was. At one point one of the persons evaluating some of the pieces in the house stopped in her tracks in the middle of the living room and said, "You feel as if here was a great life well lived" or something to that effect.

I felt an awesome veneration for the past, for his contribution to the past, to music, to American culture, to the noblest efforts of ordinary, and extraordinary, people. I have the opportunity to acquire some of his things. I want it all. Its monetary value means nothing to me. Yes, I want his metronome, and that I may have to pay far more than anyone else would pay, that few people would recognize its significance, means nothing. It's an irrational, emotional attachment to the past, but isn't that the very essence of collecting? It's the best of one's life about our passions? If no one else on the planet cares about the belongings of an old man, so much the better for me! So I may buy the ordinary dining room table at which Copland sat on during a visit to the house, not because it has recognized value, but because Copland sat his skinny, wrinkled frail old ass on the chair!

I read recently in a book on Gothic architecture how an early king of France had bought some religious relics from the nobility in Constantinople, who was selling them to finance a war. The French monarch paid an enormous sum for what he believed, what was commonly believed, to be Christ's crown of thorns. Imagine the impracticality of it. The French king could have spent such a large sum of money on his own glorification, a new castle, larger armies, but his money followed his imagination, what stirred his heart (though surely he gained stature and respect by owning such treasures). I respect that. If I had loads of money, of course I'd buy a nice home, and travel for sure. But if I were truly rich, I'd commission new compositions from composers, I'd underwrite orchestras and concerts, I'd collect original musical scores, I'd follow my passion for music. Why not do it now, when I can, even though I'm not rich?