There are several things concerning the Rorem diaries that I want to mention. Perhaps they’re of interest to me alone, but nevertheless, I want to write them down.

In 1970 Rorem writes about caustic references to "fags" on the same page of the Village Voice as a compassionate report of a "Gay-In," whatever that was. He also writes about reading comments of distaste regarding Andre Gide’s "buggery," and he sets the record straight, which I enjoyed. "For the record, those who would know maintain that Gide was not at all impelled to the act of buggery. His sexuality, when not simply vicarious, was no more 'responsible' or 'sophisticated' than anonymous masturbation of little boys in darkened movie theaters. Mauriac... publicly lamented his colleague's wicked ways. During the war an anecdote circulated about Gide's making love with an Algerian youth. Gide tells the boy, 'You've just slept with France's greatest author.' 'Yeah? What's your name?' 'Francois Mauriac.'"

Writing further about the Gay-In, Rorem says that gays remain the last group subject to derision... from all classes, including presumably tolerant intellectuals, noting a "beaming reference by Norman Mailer, on the Dick Cavett show, to Sade as a faggot," which got a "nervous laugh—nervous only because people wonder who Sade is." lol I wonder too. Well, we should not be surprised at derisive comments from Mailer.

At a dinner with Gore Vidal in Italy Rorem recalls how excited Vidal was that he'd seen Sartre in town that very day. Vidal observed Sartre waiting patiently in line at the bank for an hour. Vidal seems to be a talker, and Rorem noted, "We are silenced only by those we admire..." He goes on, "Gore is American in seeing greatness as an aspiration rather than as a fait accompli..., but he's French in that small talk becomes big, nothing's unimportant, there's little letup, guests must all be alert." God, just reading about it makes me sleepy. I haven't the energy for it.

Rorem writes on a few occasions in the first few years of the 1970s about the women's liberation movement, and all the attendant ideology. "Cunt is no more insulting for a woman than Prick for a man. What about man-as-object? [This has been my point for years—person-as-object is the essence of lust, and so no more harmful than our own innate desires.] To homosexuals rough-trade is an object though his role is hardly passive: he does the work, ramming the twitching lips, and is paid off without a word … But who's to prove he's a 'thing' without knowing what goes on behind the scenes of all concerned? That 'passive' homosexual deals the cards, purchases the merchandise (I command you to dominate me!), writes the sonnet, ends up literarily if not literally on top. Yet the trade, when he murders his client, does so for having been sucked off or sucked into, verbs indicating passivity. Meanwhile, everyone knows that some snatches have snapping teeth while others, like blotters or quicksand, are capable of absorbing whole human bodies. That aggressive cramp a twat inflicts might kill a man, and Wagner's not the only one to have died in flagrante." I'm not sure what he's referring to with the Wagner mention, but I like Rorem's use of the gay perspective to comment on, and to cast doubt upon, the prevailing dogma of the women's lib movement of the time. Do gay men stand in a better position to comment on women's issues than heterosexual men? I tend to think so, though I'm certain the keepers of the faith have by now absorbed and neutralized gay men into their overall ideology. I think Rorem can't decide whether to dislike Mailer for his hostility towards gays or embrace him for his confrontation of dogmatic women's libbers. At one point he says of Mailer: "...I found him quite cute. Mailer: speaks before he thinks and writes it down afterward." Lol On the same page Rorem uses the term "bull dyke"—one of my current favorites, though I was under the impression that it had only in the last few years entered common parlance. Not so.

In June of 1971 Rorem named a few new friends he'd recently made, among them a Robert Lucid, this during some discussion of Mailer. I'm certain this Robert Lucid is the same Robert Lucid who was the master of Hill House when I was at Penn living in that dorm my freshman year. Lucid was a professor of English at Penn, and a friend of Mailer. When I was living in Hill House, Lucid, as master of the house, brought Mailer to stay in the dorm for a few days. I met Mailer there and served him dinner. So this is my three degrees of separation from Rorem. Dan – Lucid – Rorem.

Also in 1971 Rorem met Anais Nin at a book signing. Rorem went to Gotham Book Mart at which Nin was signing books. Rorem got her to sign her newest diary. He doesn't seem to think much of her, though. They are both renowned diarists. It seemed noteworthy

Here's a funny simile from Rorem: "twinkling like crab lice in a massive black vagina."

Who does Rorem admire? Actually, more than you might imagine. He seems to have a good dose of vulnerability and doubt about his own value, and to harbor a (suppressed, to advance his own stature, it seems—reasonable) healthy admiration for many of the greats. He mentions meeting Messiaen in 1972, and writes, "I'm intimidated for the first time in years." That's nice, and he's right to be intimidated. He of course writes respectfully of Stravinsky. How can one not? He defends Cocteau with genuine affection and respect. And he says that Bach was the greatest composer to ever walk the planet. He's right again.

The term "flaming faggot," Rorem writes, "originates from the auto da fe which could produce flames foul enough to consume a witch only by tying homosexuals into bundles of kindling." It seems like something spun by zealously defensive gays.

It's funny that Rorem writes at one point about how he values the artifacts of correspondence he's had with certain luminaries, just as I value my things of David Diamond. "Letters from geniuses scribbled or maltyped n'importe comment, I value as things, as microscopes focused on my being, like those ten or twelve Cocteau (now irremediably glued in yellowing scrapbooks rather than singly breathing between cool museum folders) or the one from Gide, Gide who knew Wilde who knew Victoria who could have known Schubert..."

Here's a little bit on aging, applicable to me as well. Rorem had dinner with a few old friends he hadn't seen in years. "They hadn't changed much, except for the cobweb masks worn by everyone over forty. Their build and physiognomy seemed the same as fifteen or twenty years ago. The same, with the urgent difference that although they spoke of sexuality they no longer exuded any. How locate this invisible switch? Like trees in late afternoon, identical to their morning selves but without the direct sunlight. Shadows flutter in the evening, waving at their real selves so recently lost. I am embarrassed. But not until later do I direct the embarrassment at myself, for I feel so physically good."

Rorem on the Last Tango (the Marlon Brando movie): "Now the guiding fantasy of Last Tango is a male-homosexual one. The obligatory anonymous encounter is far less germane to heterosexuality, even in brothels, than to men among themselves who mutely endow their partner—who just may be a ribbon clerk—with the attributes of a gladiator." Perhaps, but I for one certainly have little interest in gladiators.

Another interesting bit re David Diamond: "In the twenty-nine years of our up-and-down friendship I've received twice that number of letters from David; rereading them this morning made my very body reexperience the flux of temperature he continually underwent; but he was nothing if not committed. If he's difficult, am I less so?"

I got done nothing that I regard as productive tonight. I felt compelled to write down these little Rorem notables, and so now am free to ... move on to the earlier Paris and New York Diaries. Tomorrow I'll try to go through some junk and pack away some things. I have a long list of things I want to do. Rorem at one point wrote something like "Life has become a series of lists." For me too.

Ann is gone for the weekend, a change of pace for us both. I imagined dozens of things I might do, things I should do. Mostly they are things I don't do alone much anymore. I thought of going to a movie alone, going to the market and wandering through the fruit stands alone, going dancing, renting some porn, spending a stretch of time going through accumulated junk in my apartment, inviting a stranger into my bedroom — I did none of these things, but I've had a pleasant time, nevertheless, being alone. I love time alone, yet when the time is presented to me, I meet it as though it were an impossible burden to be filled with countless activities. I'm glad it's an event for me, made possible only by her otherwise abiding presence in my life.

Lately my mind has been foggy. I've been unfocused and inarticulate. Ann called me this evening, and I could do nothing but stammer in confused, choppy phrases. I've been like this lately. I imagine she is tolerant of it, but wishes it would go away. If mental states are like basements, I want a mind sparsely inhabited by only the most valued stored possessions, and otherwise bare, clean floors, walls freshly painted with glossy white sealant. Instead I have dusty card-boarded clutter, bare light bulbs swinging from electrical wire, and decades worth of cob webs due to dryers which are not vented to the outside.

Rorem wrote this: "So impending are deadlines... that I grow hysterical. Reasoned essays to complete, piano practice for three recitals, music to be composed—all waited for, all expected to be of my 'usual caliber.' Toward what does such panic impel me, beyond writing this useless paragraph? Passed the morning moronically studding an orange with a thousand cloves." I do such moronic things all the time. And write (truly) useless paragraphs.

Rorem at multiple points throughout the diary notes that his standard of productivity in a year is about an hour's worth of music. This strikes me as meaningful. In some significant way the year for him is measured by that hour of composed music. All else is filler, the daily stir of activities, people, and talk, and of course, moronic nonsense. I have much the same attitude about most of my daily activities and duties, but without the hour's worth of artistic output to show at the end. What I care about are the things I'm listening to, the things I'm reading—recently read passages of Proust, the emotionally satisfying third movement of the newly recorded piece for two pianos by John Adams, the Rorem diaries, newly discovered details about David Diamond—these are the things I care about. But such attitudes are the luxury of artists. The rest of us must care about our daily grind, I'm afraid. I don't, and it's a problem. It's cliché to say that we must keep our eye on life's essentials, the things that really matter. I think I have the opposite problem. Not that I'm always thinking about love, friends, and family. Not at all. But I am always thinking about things utterly unrelated to and far removed from my daily life.

Rorem wrote this too. "'A bas Sartre, a bas Boulez, a bas Couperin,' one hears the French kids cry. One doesn't hear American kids cry 'Down with Goodman, down with Cage, down with Gottschalk,' because they've never heard of these men, much less Sartre, Boulez, or Couperin. Which is not to boast the superiority of French culture. The humblest French concierge knows the names, if not the works, of his country's cultural heroes for two thousand years, and is proud, while we, in a pinch, may know the names of Hemingway or Mailer (though not their works), but strictly as folk heroes." After reading this again, though, I'm not sure there's much to it. Still, am I just getting old and stodgy in wishing that we Americans knew and cared more about our cultural icons. In music at least, Americans know next to nothing about their heritage.

Rorem notes that Mahler met Charles Ives on a visit to America in the early 1900s. That seems bizarre for some reason.

The day was not exactly productive. It's good that I have no work to do, because I have no desire for work. I suppose I have no desire because I have no work. Anyway, much of the day was passed shopping and fantasizing. The first, and really only, accomplishment of the day was to buy shoe strings for my sneakers. The current strings won't last another week. (I've been saying that for weeks now.) I then bought a book on Windows security—a book I have no desire to read and a subject in which I have even less interest. Nevertheless, there is good reason to invest a few bucks in the book, if only for a long shot. Never mind this cryptic reference. I also bought another volume of the Rorem diary (the last volume, dating through 1999), and some CDs. I spent part of the day researching how one can buy an apartment in Paris. There are services which find apartments for foreigners (mostly English-speaking people), manage the renting of them, etc. It's an option, one I'll likely not seriously pursue, but an option which will occupy far too much of my inner fantasy life.

Somewhere today I read a blurb that mentioned something being "out of sink." No. "Out of synch," people. Please.

Tonight I saw the premier of a short movie made in Rochester. A few friends had roles in the movie, and it was fun just to see them act and sing on screen. The quality of the movie was remarkably good, that is, the camera work, lighting, music, editing, etc. The performances were also good. It could hold its own with nearly any short film I've seen at the gay and lesbian film festival here. Its shortcoming was really its faulty "scaffolding," as Rorem likes to speak of structure in a composition. Well, actually the problem was not so much its structure as it was something equally fundamental—the basic story line was convoluted, and more importantly, dull. The story was hung upon silly Greek mythological references, in, I suppose, a bit of needless pretension. Mixed in was a good dose of clichéd gender-bending farce and several musical numbers, in an inevitably failed attempt to be all gay things to all gays... in 45 minutes. A romping gay time, it was not. It was not bad. It's just that I watched how much effort and talent were brought to bear on what was a fundamentally flawed idea, and it seemed a waste. If the story had been good, perhaps a simple little meaningless story, without attempts at more, the excellent directing, music, editing, etc. could have made this a wonderful little film. It made me wonder how the same thing happens on a much larger scale in Hollywood. So often millions of dollars are spent making a movie when the basic story and script are crap. How does that happen? In this case the script was not bad, or rather the spoken words weren't bad—the story was. Too bad. Keep it simple. It's so hard to do.

Add to my to-do list: Take 5 minutes to write a synopsis of a story that might make a good short film. Don't think about it; just write it.

After the movie I went out for coffee with Gerry and Brian. We had a good time. I always have lots of fun talking with them at coffee shops, talking about people, meeting the people Gerry knows. I could sit talking with them for hours. So much fun.

I haven't any ideas worthy of the time I might spend writing them out, nor of the time spent reading them. So I'll invoke the thoughts of others.

This was funny, I thought. Rorem gives his estimates of "homoerotics in the male sex." Among composers in the '40s, 75% he believes are gay (and three of the top four). Surely he counts himself among the top four. Composers of the '60s: 50%. Pianists, about 50%. Organists: 90% (due to their "sissified Protestant background, though in France it's otherwise"). Harpsichordists: 95%. Violinists, no more than 10%. (This is surely grossly underestimated.) Orchestra players, 99% heterosexual. Also underestimated. Harpists—fewer than you think. Abstract expressionists of yesterday: almost none. Pop artists of today: almost all. (Here he surely means Warhol, spoken of several times throughout this section of the diary. Rorem seems to think more of him than I do.) Rorem speaks of having a wet dream in September of 1966. It seems unusual. I can't remember when I last had a wet dream. Decades ago. I think to have a wet dream as a mature (and aging) man, you have to have no ejaculations for weeks and weeks. By then the semen has a lumpy yellow consistency suggestive of tapioca pudding. It's not the sort of thing to celebrate, in my mind.

I read this passage of Proust yesterday. I thought it notable simply because he rarely casts his characters as so categorically unlikable. It's funny.
Prince d'Agrigente's name "had always appeared to me like a transparent sheet of coloured glass through which I beheld, struck by the slanting rays of a golden sun, on the shore of the violet sea, the pink marble cubes of an ancient city of which I had not the least doubt that the Prince—who happened by some brief miracle to be passing through Paris—was himself, as luminously Sicilian and as gloriously weathered, the absolute sovereign. Alas, the vulgar drone to whom I was introduced, and who wheeled round to bid me good evening with a ponderous nonchalance which he considered elegant, was as independent of his name as of a work of art that he owned without betraying in his person any reflexion of it, without, perhaps, ever having looked at it. The Prince d'Agrigente was so entirely devoid of anything princely, anything remotely reminiscent of Agrigente, that one was led to suppose that his name, entirely distinct from himself, bound by no ties to his person, had had the power of attracting to itself every iota of vague poetry that there might have been in this man, as in any other, and enclosed it, after this operation, in the enchanted syllables. If any such operation had been performed, it had certainly been done most efficiently, for there remained not an atom of charm to be drawn from this kinsman of the Guermantes."

As I was sitting outside yesterday on the sidewalk of a café in mid-afternoon, I watched a group of four men, clearly gay men, hop into a Honda Element as if at the start of a grand day shopping and strutting up and down the crowded streets of P-town. A few were young; a few were graying. All were thin. Each wore the self-consciously fashionable casual summer wear that signifies hipster gaydom, their dark wrap-around sun glasses covering their wandering eyes (and their crows' feet). I loathed them. I still loathe them. What explains my antagonism?

Ned Rorem spent the summer of 1967 at Yaddo in Saratogo Springs, NY. (I checked out Yaddo's web site at yaddo.org, and Ned is pictured in the 2000 group photo, looking pretty good.) Diamond spent some time there as well. He speaks about it in taped interviews I have of him. He was there after the war, in the latter 1940s, I believe he said. I'm not sure of that though—I'd have to go back and listen again. He's listed on Yaddo's guest book, without specific dates. (The list covers 1927-present. It's a who's who of America's great artists. The list of writers far exceeds the list of composers. When Ann was with me in Diamond's basement she found a wooden crate that was addressed to Diamond from Yaddo. Pretty cool.) Anyway, on Labor Day, 1967, Ned notes in his diary that he returned that day from Yaddo, flew to the liquor store (he was an alcoholic), picked up a carrot cake, and "gave a wet party for Virgil [Thomson], the Phelpses, David Diamond, my parents, Arlene Heyman and her boyfriend." "In one day," Ned continues, "I lost my suntan, posture, non-smoking resolutions and, fortunately, virginity." I wonder if he lost his summer-long virginity to Diamond? Probably not, but it's fun to speculate. I'm sure, if asked, he'd say. Ned's not at all secretive about such things, at least in his diary. A biographer of Jean Cocteau once asked him if he had ever slept with Cocteau and he said no. Truthfully, I'm sure. I need to read the Paris Diary. That's where all the juicy stuff is, I believe. Yaddo suddenly fascinates me, as does all of early 20th century American cultural history. So many luminaries, such a fascinating time. I'm sure much has been written, but this still seems fertile ground for more research. Diamond wrote a yet unpublished biography which was removed from his house. He speaks of it in interviews. I want to read it. That summer of 1967 Rorem claims to have read all of Proust in French.

Rorem "cannot abide" the word 'delicious' as it is applied to edibles, which seems odd to me. "In a pinch," he writes, "it works for clothes or clouds, or when meaning 'delightful' as the French use delicieux. While eating dinner at a plaza a lady next to him, "relishing a bleeding cherry cobbler," uttered the word 'delicious.'" "Really delicious," she repeated, "the adjective oozing gooily off her tongue like the pastry itself." With that he could eat no more. Hahah I like to use the word myself, mostly in the context of describing a body or indeed an entire boy I think is attractive. Ann thinks it sounds a little gay. Maybe she's right. It never occurred to me. But it sounds right for the unrefined wave of lust, and the imagined sexual satisfaction from the delicious body. Beautiful bodies are consumable. I've had a taste for one lately.

I've spent the better part of the evening swatting at the most oversized, lethargic fly imaginable, yet unbelievably I can't seem to kill it. I bat it to the ground, thinking I have it, but then I loose it, only to hear it take flight jeeringly just beyond my reach. What are these monstrosities that appear in doors now and again? They're like the undead of the fly world. Are they the retarded and discarded of their species?

Having just checked out Ian's blog again, he's killing me with the regularity of his writing. I can't keep up. He's indefatigable. And it's interesting stuff. Fucking stop so I look better. hehe

I have my own tell-tale heart growing more pronounced every day within my bathroom. My tub cold water facet is leaking badly. The sound is driving me crazy. I can't escape it. Am I going to have to begin sleeping downstairs on the couch? Christ, it's the frickin' Niagara Falls in there. Actually, it sounds like someone is dropping pebbles into a ceramic bowl, or maybe golf balls into plastic tubing. My light switch in the adjacent room also recently broke, so I moved a lamp into the room. My apartment is crumbling before my feet. The only thing left to do is abandon the place to its own disrepair. I have to leave.