Tuesday, February 14, 2006

Solipsism and Exteriority

"Something happens when you sing an F-major chord in front of the Almighty. You can't let go of it." -George Mathew

Something has been brewing in me for quite some time... something that I've been wanting to say, but has spun itself into such a tangle that I now find it difficult to grab onto the words. I have a story to tell, and I hope it's not too convoluted to follow. Please bear with me, as these ideas are only half formed. I hope that in the process of writing, some of it will become clarified in my own mind.

It starts with breath itself.

"Do you have anything you can stick on your tongue?" he asked.

"Um... I think I have a hair clip in here, or something." I fumbled through my purse, into my makeup bag and came out with a long silver clip. I use it to pin up my hair when I blow dry it. (I had come straight to my voice lesson from N's place and my bag was overflowing).

"That'll do."

I slipped the clip into my mouth like a tongue depressor, gently applying pressure, and I breathed again. Up the scale I went, higher and higher, my tongue fighting me as I rose, a powerful muscle lifting in the back of my throat. I jammed the clip down on my tongue. The muscles of the pharynx tightened. Shit. The note was squeezed.

We tried again.

Not much better.

We tried again.

He cut me off before I began.

"Nope. I didn't like that breath. Get a better inhalation."

I focused my brain. Into the sides and back. Keep the throat open; expand the waist; chest up; shoulders down; keep the knees relaxed; now, sound! Keep the stomach coming in steadily; don't tense your stomach muscles; don't tense your chest; don't help with your head; don't close off the throat; get enough space; modify the vowel right-- Shit. My tongue had gone up again.

Try again.

Again.

Again.

Again.

And then, somehow it came. The note floated out without feeling. A high G. Did I ever think I could sing that sound?

"That's it! That's it! What did you do differently that time?" he asked.

"I don't know. I mean..."

"Well, what did it feel like?"

"It felt like nothing," I said.

"Can you do it again?"

"I don't know. It felt like nothing."

It felt like nothing, but it was physical ecstasy-- the transcendence of every effort, every thought, every struggle, every way we interfere with our bodies. To sing correctly, the body must become nothing. It must be allowed to be. I doubt most people have ever experienced that. And how could I get it back? Do nothing. I told myself. DO NOTHING. Only, how to repeat it? It seemed impossible.

To be physical nothingness and absolutely whole. That's what I've been thinking of. The Beethoven concert I did last month has changed me. It has irrevocably changed me. I think I lived an entire life in the day of that concert. It was January 23, 2006. I woke up that morning with a broken heart. I ended the evening in a "ring of fire." (FEUERTRUNKEN! Fire drunken!)

The concert was at Carnegie Hall. The choir sat on the stage for the entire symphony. I was in the front row, perfectly in line with the conductor. To my right-- the double basses, bows rising in rumbling vibrations. To my left-- the percussion. (The principal timpani player was also the section leader of the Met Opera orchestra. I thought of the "curse" in Carmen. ("I will FORCE you to follow the fate that binds your destiny to mine!" NDN would say.)) In front of me-- the French horns. And all around me, ecstasy for all... even the lowly worm.



Freude trinken alle Wesen
(All beings drink in joy)
An den Brusten der Natur;
(From nature's breasts.)
Alle Guten, alle Bosen
(All good and evil things)
Folgen ihrer Rosenspur.
(Follow her rose-strewn path.)
Kusse gab sie uns und Reben
(She gives us kisses and grapes,)
Einen Freund, gepruft im Tod;
(A friend, tested unto death,)
Wollust ward dem Wurm gegeben,
(Pleasure is given even to the worm)
Und der Cherub steht vor Gott.
(And the cherubim stand before God.)


I swear, the universe was recreated in front of me that night-- the theme passed from instrument to instrument, the chandelier a halo, the ceiling shaking as if it were on hinges. The very air that I breathed, the force of life, was all music, sound, and heavenly sound at that. Not because it was beautiful, but because it was whole. A wave, a breath, an idea materialized and realized two hundred years later, pulled out of air as if it had been there silently at every moment. Be that wave; be breath; be Beethoven.

And then, through the fog of the universe came a voice-- a human voice... a godly baritone. I was in love with him for the evening. (Charles Temkey is his name-- a young singer just out of MSM.) The whole world existed on a day that had been supreme loneliness. I was still alone. The events of that morning, that weekend, hadn't changed. But I was part of something else. Part of the ENTIRETY.


Seid umschlungen, Millionen!
(Be embraced, you multitudes,)
Diesen Kuss der ganzen Welt!
(In this kiss of the entire world.)
Bruder--uberm Sternenzelt
(Brothers--over the canopy of stars)
Muss ein lieber Vater wohnen!
(A loving Father must live.)


That voice pierced through the fabric of my entire reality, calling, kissing the millions, the whole world coexisting with my isolation, everything woven, linked, but in a way, it was nothingness... called out of thin air the way my magical breath had transformed air into music-- by doing nothing.

Everything and nothing are simultaneous, I thought. How perfect.

Everything and nothing. Everything and nothing.

N wrote to me after the concert: How was Beethoven? he asked.

I couldn't really answer.

All of these things were in my head when I went with Hammer to hear Bernard Henri Levy give a talk at the 92nd street Y. Levy talked a little bit about Emmanuel Levinas. It's a little hard to explain in a few sentences here, but he emphasized Levinas' notion of "exteriority." If we define ourselves in relation to "other," we shatter the totality of "Being" as an ontological whole (in a Heideggerian sense), and we are somehow reoriented towards the "infinite" in an ethical relationship to those around us. While the idea was not entirely new to me (I read Buber's I and Thou back in the fall, and it touches several of the same principles), at that moment, it rocked me quite a bit. I've been so solipsistically self-indulgent over the past few months... especially when my heart is broken.

On February 7th, Hammer tried to remind me. Remember Levinas, she texted me. You're the best you outside in the world instead of just in your own mind.

BHL talked about Judaism as antithetical to ontological totalitarianism, as it stresses the "unfinished." I liked that. He went on to describe ontological totalitarianism as a necessary precursor for political totalitarianism-- something I had never thought of before, but which makes perfect sense to me. We are defined by our debt to others when we allow for "exteriority." I tried to think about it in terms of the "liberal tradition." (Liberalism in the classical sense of the word). In my view, liberalism has always stressed the individual over the social relation. We improve ourselves and others through Enlightenment reason on an individual basis. Ethics arise from the protection of the individual. How does that individual stand in relation to the whole? (The same question on my mind as I sang Beethoven. The same question on my mind when I tried to learn how to breathe again. The same question on my mind when I tried to stop my heart from misdirected love.)

I don't know the answer to that. But I wondered about it again when I saw Les Miserables on TV at N's house in late January. I have always loved the story of Les Mis, and I think it's because of the possibility it acknowledges in humanity. It is a story fundamentally underpinned by religious love, what I consider the only kind of true love-- a love that is hopeful for humanity-- a love that allows us all to radically surprise ourselves and one another. I'm not particularly religious within any organized religion, but I am a religious person. When I watched Les Mis, I saw the transcendence above ontological totalitarianism. Jean Valjean is both brute and saint. He is able to transform because he is given the opportunity to defy expectations.

It frightens me how repetitious people usually are. Dr. Phil always says that "the best indicator of future behavior is past behavior." And he's absolutely right, in a practical sense. But that leaves out room for miracles. I believe that infinity is within each of us. We usually tap into such a small percentage of our possibility because we have found what "works" for us. (Repetition compulsion, repetition compulsion!) But when directing ourselves towards others, I believe that we have to give one another the chance to tap into that other percentage-- the seemingly impossible choices. That's where miracles grow. It's the gift that the Bishop gave to Valjean-- possibility.

In our everydayness, we see people as ontologically complete. At least I do, if I don't stop to think about it. The world is known. People are essentially known. But it's a mistake. The world is not known. And people can defy expectation. In Les Mis, that possibility is religion. However, unfortunately for Javert, he can not see around ontological totalitarianism. (And this furthers BHL's notion that it sets a precedent for political totalitarianism).

So, I've been thinking about the balance between solipsism and exteriority. Those who fail to define themselves in relation to others end in isolation and self-victimization. On the other hand, "exteriority" has its own dangers-- it presents the risk of a warped reality. It makes me think of my relationship with B. We seem to exist only in the spaces between each other. We have nicknames for each other (his starts with a "B," mine with a "K") and when I'm with him, I'm no longer "Hyde," but "K." The energy he directs towards me changes me. It's me, of course, but it's a B-me. And it can't exist with anyone else or in any other area of my life. This transformation is surely a "warping" as much as it is an "uncovering" and it poses a problem for both of us. Of course, my energy with him is not an open "exteriority" directed towards the world, it is funneled towards him, but even though I only ever feel like myself with him (in a certain way), sometimes I believe there to be more truth in my solipsism.

And it returns me to the Ode to Joy. In setting that to music, Beethoven sought to diminish the spaces between beings-- to dismantle the happy coherence of the ontological individual and place us on par with the lowly worm and the exalted cherub as life itself. What I felt in that music was the vast space of eternity-- potential within each individual.

It's quite an emotional gamble to let yourself expect someone to defy your expectations. If you've been a long-time reader here, you know that I've been waiting for someone to surprise me. It's how I know how to love-- that "religious love" I mentioned above. Maybe it's stupid... it's certainly not practical... but without it, I would become a totalitarian thinker, and I can not let that be. (It appears, for me, that Pope was right-- "hope springs eternal in the human breast.") So, I have tried to let it be. But it's changing me. My gamble appears to be in vain. And I feel myself hardening... becoming more cynical... believing in the static. I've been sensitive-- a naive, vulnerable and hopeless romantic, but I like myself that way. It allows me to find God. This way, I see only man. (Muss ein lieber Vater wohnen?)

I want to believe, again, in that individual eternity... in the span of the universe in the span of the mind, the arms, the heart.

And finally, I've been thinking about "boundaries." To assert ones boundaries is to assert oneself. But "boundaries" are a difficult issue for me. Only when I can trust the relationship, is it easy for me to assert my boundaries (as NDN knows!). At other times, I find myself so frantic to please that I entirely compromise myself (as all of you know). I seek the answer that the "other" wants to hear. "Yes," if the other wants "yes."

"Sometimes you think the other wants 'yes,' but what he wants is 'no,'" my therapist said to me this morning.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that people respect you when you assert your boundaries. They can feel you as a human being that way. They have a sense of your selfhood. That's what people fall in love with--not shapelessness."

I think that she's right.

I've always said that I wanted libestod, or sublimation into the "other" through love. But for Levinas, merging into infinity leads to totalitarianism. Exteriority is how the "finite" individual transcends infinity. The self is separated from Other. And the self must be separated from the Other in order to have the idea of infinity.

I love infinity. I love merging love. But perhaps neither is possible without the assertion of my own boundaries. All of this is a long-winded way of saying that I'm starting to see that I've been going about it the wrong way. I've never much been one for "self-love," or the idea that "you can't really love anyone else until you can love yourself." But perhaps what I'm saying here is that you can't really love anyone else until you can separate yourself and keep yourself separate by having the guts to assert your values, needs, and wants. Quite often, my conscience says one thing and I do another. In doing so, I'm trying to merge. But infinity evades me. Perhaps this is why...

We are now nearing the edges of my thought where ideas have become a blur... ill formed and unready to be processed. So I'll stop writing now, for all of our sakes.

I'm not sure if any of this makes any sense, but it has helped me reach a very practical conclusion... It has helped me rationalize a behavior I've been loathe to attempt... self-assertion and self-love.

Music is to pull the self out of the air... to pull the individual color out of infinity. To breathe properly, to breathe musically is to taste infinity.

Thursday, January 19, 2006

Reassessing

I still haven't decided what I want this blog to be about. It's no longer my "diary," as I've moved that to another blog address. But it's hard to remember to write anything other than my diary.

I think that to keep this address going, I'll have to make it more routine-- maybe a post once a week will do the trick. Yes... that's it. From now on, I'll post here every Friday and that will be that.

In other news, I just got a "friendster" invitation from a girl with whom I went to high school. I haven't seen her in 10 years! I haven't decided if I want to be in contact with her again, or not.

Ugh. I've changed a lot since then.

Back to cleaning my house now.

later...

-h-

Thursday, January 12, 2006

Sisters

I think I take my sisters for granted.

I rarely ever think about how lucky I am to have them. My dad may not have accomplished much in his short and sad lifetime, but he did something amazing for the three of us. He gave us each a gift. Two sisters for me and me for them. A greater gift, I can't imagine. I'm lucky to have them around, to have them in my life, and to actually like them! I mean, I know most people love their families, but my sisters and I are actually friends. Luckier still, they are both with great guys who get along with each other and are like brothers to me. This will be the core of my family forever, as new babies and new marriages come and as my grandparents and parents go.

I have to say-- it's a great home base. I trust it completely.

Sometimes I feel strange because in some ways my sisters are more similar to each other than they are to me. I've always been the "sensitive one," the "dramatic one," and the "secretive one." I've always been the "weird-artistic one," the "intellectual one," the "self-destructive one" that no one could make head or tail of. And I know that whatever guy I end up with, he will probably not "fit in" with Bro-in-Law and JBC as perfectly as they fit with each other. But that's okay... Because it is. And it has to be. And it doesn't change a thing.

I was having a pretty awful day today. I went into famine/work mode (major Jekyll-mode!) from about 5:00 pm yesterday and so I forgot to eat. (B knows me so well! When I told him how much work I had to do, all he said to me was "Please, Hyde! Just don't forget you have a body, okay?") Well, I did forget. The only fuel I offered my body over a 24 hour period was a shitload of Jack Daniels, some diet coke, a can of (sugar-free) red bull and some water. This afternoon I was woozy from the lack of food, lack of sleep and all of the reading and grading when at around 3:30 pm I stumbled back into my office to post the first round of semester grades. But when I went to check my email, I was met with a treat-- my sisters had sent me two hysterical pictures from their cell phones.

They are both in Florida right now visiting my grandpa. I was supposed to go as well, but had too much work to take care of this week, having left it all only half-finished when I departed for Argentina. Anyway, it's hard to explain to anyone else why these particular pictures were so amusing. It's something that can only make sense to me and my sisters. But that's exactly why those pictures were so special... and funny. And it's why they prompted me to reflect upon how much I love those two... and my entire family.

In the first, both of my sisters are standing in my grandparents' kitchen in front of a hanging basket in the shape of a monkey. When we were babies, BigSis and I were terrified of that monkey. Then, when we were a little bit older we liked to laugh at it and would beg my aunt to chase us around the house, monkey-basket in hand. This afternoon, through a veil of exhaustion, anxiety and slight depression, there my sisters stood before me, smack in the middle of my computer screen, the monkey lurking and my sisters shaking in their boots, chewing their nails, fright in their faces, laughter in their eyes.

The second picture showed Bro-in-Law and JBC next to a table lamp. We used to play with the decorative metal on that lamp when we were little, driving my grandmother absolutely crazy. In this picture, the two boys have half-embarrassed mischievous expressions on their faces as they play with the lamp.

My grandmother is gone now and so are those annual trips to Florida with my sisters, my mother's sister and my two cousins. I sometimes wish I could travel time, just to visit those days, those feelings... even if only for the day. Of course that is impossible. But there my sisters were, taking some secret thought of mine-- an image, a memory, a part of my emotional vocabulary that no one in this huge anonymous city could ever find, and saying it out loud, making it tangible, giving it back to me again.

Seeing the boys reenact memories they never had themselves reminded me of the power of family and the power of choice. I want to be with someone who can be my family. I want to be with someone I can be silly with and share those things with. I want everything to stop being so heavy and so philosophic. I want to stop making crap of my life and settling for people with whom I have no real connection.

Those pictures made me laugh. And then they made me think twice about all of the drama in my personal life that I inflate to such monumental proportions. I love my sisters. And that drama? It's meaningless. It's stupid. It's unnecessary. And it's manufactured.

Things aren't really that bad.

I mean, how can they be?

I'll always have my sisters.

:)

h

Sunday, January 08, 2006

L'adieu

I love this song. It's Garou. You can listen for yourself if you want...

L'Adieu

Adieu
Aux arbres mouillés de septembre
À leur soleil de souvenir
À ces mots doux, à ces mots tendres
Que je t'ai entendu me dire
À la faveur d'un chemin creux
Ou d'une bougie allumée
Adieu à ce qui fut nous deux
À la passion du verbe aimer

L'adieu
Est une infinie diligence
Où les chevaux ont dû souffrir
Où les reflets de ton absence
Ont marqué l'ombre du plaisir
L'adieu est une lettre de toi
Que je garderai sur mon cœur
Une illusion de toi et moi
Une impression de vivre ailleurs

L'adieu
N'est que vérité devant Dieu
Tout le reste est lettre à écrire
À ceux qui se sont dit adieu
Quand il fallait se retenir
Tu ne peux plus baisser les yeux
Devant le rouge des cheminées
Nous avons connu d'autres feux
Qui nous ont si bien consumés

L'adieu
C'est nos deux corps qui se séparent
Sur la rivière du temps qui passe
Je ne sais pas pour qui tu pars
Et tu ne sais pas qui m'embrasse
Nous n'aurons plus de jalousies
Ni de paroles qui font souffrir
Aussi fort qu'on s'était choisi
Est fort le moment de partir

Oh l'adieu !

L'adieu
C'est le sanglot long des horloges
Et les trompettes de Waterloo
Dire à tous ceux qui s'interrogent
Que l'amour est tombé à l'eau
D'un bateau ivre de tristesse
Qui nous a rongé toi et moi
Les passagers sont en détresse
Et j'en connais deux qui se noient

Adieu
Aux arbres mouillés de septembre
À leur soleil de souvenir
À ces mots doux à ces mots tendres
Que je t'ai entendu me dire
À la faveur d'un chemin creux
Ou d'une bougie allumée
Adieu à ce qui fut nous deux
À la passion du verbe aimer

L'adieu
C'est le loup blanc dans sa montagne
Et les chasseurs dans la vallée
Le soleil qui nous accompagne
Est une lune bête à pleurer
L'adieu ressemble à ces marées
Qui viendront tout ensevelir
Les marins avec les mariées
Le passé avec l`avenir

Oh l'adieu !
Oh l'adieu !

Adieu

Thursday, January 05, 2006

Nostalgia

I find myself wanting to write something here, only I'm not quite sure what to write. I miss it here. But at the same time, I feel foolish having nostalgia for a mere "address." This place doesn't exist, and yet it has been my home for the better part of a year. For me, it was an uncommon luxury, as I rarely let myself feel "at home" anywhere.

On Tuesday night in Argentina, NDN and I quarreled. I got very drunk and lost my head. I had count to twenty as slowly as possible. It's funny what the brain will drag up to save itself. (This, reminiscent of the years in which I had panic attacks). NDN tells me that I kept saying I "wanted to call home."

"I don't think you wanted to call your mom," he laughed the next day.

No. I didn't want to call my mother. I wanted to call "home," although I've never quite had a firm sense of where that is.

When I was a little girl and I would cry, I would often cry that I wanted to "go home." I know that it always disturbed my mother.

"But you are home," she would say.

Somehow, I always felt a nostalgia for something never experienced. Something past-- much more in the past than any part of me. I've always had a very ancient memory. It's why I like to laugh that I've been a mermaid. It's the only image with which I can tap into that. A sign signifying the part of me that craves creative sublimation.

Creative sublimation? Just the idea of it tears at my brain. I'm not cut out for it! I don't have the stamina. Creativity is too lonely a prospect for me, and so I prefer love.

That's just it, isn't it? A sickness... It's a weak answer that I've come up with-- especially for a girl with infinite strength (as I believe I do have). What is this love? This generosity? This pity, sympathy, worship, craving in my heart? It's a religious impulse. A creative longing for annihilation in an other.

I feel so adolescent sometimes that I am embarrassed even of myself. But there it is-- I am fixed on the crucial conjunction of love and death in the most sophomoric way-- I am gloomy Schopenhauer, plagiarizing from the Buddhists so that I can savor the gothic and the sensual, making myself over into a melancholy German.

And what is it that I want out of life? The disintegration of the "phenomenal" into the "noumenal."

Even if it's a lie, Hyde?

Yes, I tell myself. Even if it's all in my head.

B and I used to joke all the time about wanting a Liebestod. Only I wasn't joking, and I think he knew it. Sometimes he laughs uncomfortably and says we are "too close."

"Don't you think it's bad if we're dependent on each other?" he asked me this afternoon.

"I'm not dependent on you," I said. "I love you. There's a big difference. And that's the least of my problems."

"Are you sure about that? Are you sure it's not at the root of your problems?"

"Yes, I'm sure." I replied. "I don't tell you the worst of what's in my heart anymore. We're not as close as you think."

(I closed my eyes. I'm not that close to anyone anymore.)

"Well, then... What is in your heart?" he asked.

"I've started to see the world through eyes not my own," I said. "Self-hatred."

"And?"

"And... Most of the time I agree with it all. I hate myself and I want to punish myself. And I do, don't I? With much success. But then, sometimes it clears. Sometimes I see. Only rarely do I remember myself--my true self and get angry at things for what they are."

(I know I sound cryptic here, but I can't bear to share with you any more of this strain of thought than just that.)

We didn't finish the conversation. It turned to some tears on my part and he wanted to change the subject. We stiffly discussed the souvenir I brought him from Argentina before making plans to meet at 4:00 tomorrow. We've got a date to go see Wozzeck at the Met, and I couldn't be more thrilled.

But I meant what I said to B. And I had such a moment of clarity this week. It was a true revelation. I sat on a balcony, my eyes fixed on the sea, the bitter taste of red wine in my throat and tears hot on my cheeks. It was then that I realized something very basic...something I had been complicating... romanticizing ad infinitum. And yet, there it went. Right before my mind, it crumbled into the mundane--into the repulsive... Somehow, my great project became something much more shallow and pitiless. And right then and there, a piece of me fell out of love. I've waited several days now for the change to reverse, but it has not.

I have amazing skill when it comes to not wanting to accept what is before me. For some reason, I keep thinking of that tattoo on my arm: "the signifier is the signified." Yes. That's what I've always believed. Similarly, didn't Foucault say somewhere that "the symptom is the disease"? (signs of sickness are signs of truth?)

But in this New Year, I'm beginning to doubt the infallibility of my readings. Signs are shadows and not light. (Thank you, Plato.) Signs can be misread if one is as romantically inclined as I. For after all, signs are just that--signs. They are, by definition, one step removed. They can not ever be enough to lead one to an annihilatory liebestod (however foolish a dream that might be).

And so, I stare the New Year in the eye, and long to cast off these veils, but I am terrified. Should I let go of my spirit, let go of my orientation and my vision, let go of my illusions, I will be unrecognizable even to myself. How can I live without my own mythology?

I force myself to pause. I must stop myself and ask, "What are you afraid of?"

In consolation, I remind myself of Tennyson's In Memoriam:

From scarped cliff and quarried stone
She cries, "A thousand types are gone;
I care for nothing, all shall go."

-h-

PS: Sorry if this post took on sort of a strange tone. The old Hyde is still here. Just a little pensive these days... Perhaps a visit to Cheers tonight will remedy all that is off kilter.