Loose Cans

I spent an extravagant amount of time this morning typing an absurdly long letter to someone I’ve never met. He’s a guy coming to Dublin this week, a young novelist, three years out of Oberlin, and Big Johnny referred him to me. He wrote asking for advice on pubs and spots of literary interests, and he received a monster of an email in reply, more information than he could possibly digest, more than I thought I stored in my head. The thing was, it wasn’t just that I was having a good time with travel writing, (though I was. My favorite line is: ‘Trad varies in quality. I have seen sessions so atrocious that I wanted to garrote the fiddler with his own A-string.’) which is something I’m interested in. It was more the sudden chance to talk to someone. Granted, I spent much of yesterday talking to people, often in English, but I’m still being very solitary. I don’t intend to leave my apartment for the next four hours, when I head over the cinema at Beaubourg to see ‘The Devil’s Fire,’ documentary fiction, whatever that is, about Mississippi blues artists. Elmore James is among the cast. I’m sold. Anyway, I’m spending the day all alone and happy. It’s just when the chance to communicate with someone, to disgorge information, arose, something in me jolted into gear. The words came like rain. The metaphors mixed to form storm clouds (explaining the rain. Ha). I wrote well over two pages, single spaced, 10 point type, before I cut myself off. Could have written a goddamn book today. Giving a solitary writer a chance to write is no different than giving a moose a muffin. Give me an inch and I’ll mix another metaphor.

Metaphor cocktails for everyone!

The point is, after finally sending off the opus, I was reminded of Rilke’s advice in Letters to a Young Poet. I remember getting terribly bored reading it (it was a while ago), and finally fleeing like a rat from a sinking ship (though in such a situation, one has to admit maybe the rats are onto something there…) around the letter where he urges Xavier or whatever his name is to recluse himself. Find a secluded, preferably ramshackle cottage in the countryside and just sit there and write. I’ll admit he’s onto something there. But he spends God knows how many pages rhapsodizing about the pleasures of solitude, and how sublime it is for the writer to be alone with his thoughts, let them flit, frolic and flop amid the cherry blossoms of Bavaria. The purity of the countryside, the fervence of nature.

Blow it out your ass, Rilke. That’s not why it works. It works because the page is the only fucking person to talk to. Furthermore, it doesn’t talk back. Doesn’t get fresh. It’s the perfect conversation, when your interlocutor is the only person you’re really interested in: yourself. It’s because what the hell else are you going to do, rake leaves? It’s also because you’re starved for company, and because yes, you’re a writer, and thus a verbal person, so you need to TALK, but you can’t, so you’ve all this sturm and drang on file at the front of your head, boiling to come out. The application of pen to page, or, more appropriately (I am sick of the senescent, once-dynamic duo of Pen and Page. If we had any compassion at all we’d put them in a home), that of fingers to keyboard, is the strike of Aeolus’ trident against the walls of the pen where the four winds are kept. Out they come, huffing and puffing for all they’re worth, because who knows when the chance will come around again?

--I say, the demand for wind has slackened so dramatically lately, hasn’t it, Boreas?

--Oh, I agree, Zephyr. It’s terribly worrying. I suppose we must make the most of the chance, mustn’t we?

--I suppose we must.

--Shall we have a spot of fun, then?

--Oh, yes, let’s. To the fields where young Ashworthius plays the game of the extremely flying discus! His fierce, heroic spirit wants for breaking.

--To the fields!

(cue Ride of the Valkyries)

Yeah, I went there. I went classical. What are you going to do about it? Yeah, that’s what I thought. Not so hot now, huh, Page? Uh huh. Eat it. Eat your liver.





[Note: it’s also in small part because I can’t read comments on this computer. Internet Explorer refuses to load more than about 25 lines of blog, no matter how often I refresh. I’m counting on not being able to see what sort of ire this solicits from Rilke fans until I get back to Dublin. As it stands it’s a one-way street. But by no means should comment cease. Your ridicule is craved. Please, sir, may I have another?]

It’s 'round midnight. I'm sitting here with a glass of red and Camembert on lightly toasted pieces of baguette. I have Ella on the stereo. Are you eating your livers yet ?

The past two days could not have gone better. Yesterday was spent doing some entirely honorable studying: Paradise Lost and the Sin and Redemption class were mostly the focus. Also was purchased a carre de porc ; God only knows what that is in English, but it was called for by the recipe and weighs a kilo. Tomorrow, I think, I’m going to get around to making that carre de porc and gratin dauphinois dinner I’ve been after fixing. It should last me at least till Seema gets here.

Then last night I went to that cinema down the street I mentioned and took in Jim Jarmusch’s Coffee and Cigarettes. Apparently it won’t come out in the states for some time, but I definitely recommend it. I’d heard nothing about it; I just stopped by the place to see what they had, and I looked at the ad. The cast is sick. But what’s done with them is even better. Anytime you see, in the opening credits:

GZA
RZA
Bill Murray

You know it’s on. And they’re in the same scene together. Bill Murray, playing Bill Murray, is drinking coffee straight from the pot and RZA, playing RZA, is also a doctor of alternative medecine who shuns all forms of caffeine. The movie is nothing more than a seemingly and ultimately unconnected series of vignettes which are held together only by the omnipresence, and central role, of coffee and cigarettes (duhhh hey), and the curious echoing of certain lines from scene to scene. Jack and Meg White discuss Jack’s Tesla coil, Iggy Pop and Tom Waits meet at a diner, and does anyone know who Renee French is ? Her name rung a bell, but I couldn’t remember why. Some guy told me later, she draws ultraviolent feminist cartoons, yes? She sounds lovely. Cate Blanchett meets with her cousin, also played by Cate Blanchett…it’s excellent. Go see it when it comes out, if it hasn’t yet. My intelligence on the American release was provided entirely by some random American I met on the line for tonight’s movie, which I’ll get to in a bit. But let me just say that I hate, hate, HATE it whenever I’m in another country, and I’m on line for something, talking to another friend who’s American, and suddenly it appears we’re surrounded by ‘fellow’ Yanks, all of whom reveal themselves by butting into our conversation. Yes. Congratulations. I speak English, too. How very magical. English speakers, here? Away from home, too, are you? Why, I never would have though it possible. How splendid. Don’t you love speaking English ? Pity the natives aren’t much at it. Would you like to come to tea, and we can speak English some more?

No. I’m sorry. I really don’t care if you place the adjective before the noun. Fucking cheers, mate. If I wouldn’t talk to you in the states, I see absolutely no reason why I should be talking to you here. Now either shut up or fuck off . You’re blowing my cover.

Honestly, first one guy butts in, then the two behind us, and already I’m asking are there ANY fucking French people on this line, and then three MORE Americans, just ahead of the first guy, also start chattering, and I die a little inside.

Anyway, today was brilliant, though. Really fine. Despite the weather, which has been worryingly Dublinesque of late, I decided to go to Ultimate, which was the right decision. Just enough people showed up for full teams. There were a couple of Americans there, as ever. One guy just left Uchicago, actually, Mike. His name is Rob, and he’s not too shabby, knows the Titcombs, obviously, and is coming back to play for y’all sometime soon. Just remember his name is Rob and he’s tall. Fun to throw too.

It was heartening: I more or less got to romp. They weren’t bad, really ; some were okay. Certainly no one matched the best Dublin has to offer. But this isn’t the best Paris team. It was fun to just kind of rock out. The problem was that it rained so hard and so long yesterday, that a good-sized part of the pitch was pure mud. You could not run though it. The word is slog.

Afterwards, we went back to one guy’s house for hot chocolate, pizza, and a beer. Cordial. I chilled with another guy from the states, our age, actually, taking a year off before going to Reed. We decided to meet up later because I was intent on doing something which I fully expected to provide a more than acceptable excuse for this ostensibly frivolous junket: Casablanca was showing down the street.

Ingrid Bergman. My God. Now I know why they had to invent the movie camera. So they could use it on her. They even deliberately shoot her out of focus so she gets this bewitching Mona Lisa sfumato effect. Woof.

There were some serious moment of hyperventilation watching her, the kind I’ve only ever gotten from watching Keira Knightley. I know it sounds tacky comparing them. In fairness, it was a slightly different hyperventilation. Keira Knightley is just my ideal woman, whereas Ingrid Bergman is THE ideal woman.

But oh, Jesus, what a movie. I’d never seen it before! Yes, that merits an exclamation point. And to see it on the big screen…wow. The best part was the moment at the end where you know the last line is coming, and you’ve heard it a million times, but never understood it, but now you do and here it comes and you take a deep breath and he says it, says I think this is the start of a beautiful friendship, and then finally exhale, WHOOF…yeah, it’s been a hell of a day.



p.s. For further reading on my new habit of spending all my time in Paris either in a flat or a dark cinema, see Sedaris, David, ‘City of Light and Dark,’ from Me Talk Pretty One Day.’ Now go and study Torah.