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Last Sunday was the book signing party for T. at the Institution where he lives. The name of T.'s book was "AMUSINGS: A collection of humorous writings." It consisted of the best and funniest scribblings culled from his website.
Book Review for Amazon.com:
"The title 'Amusings' should be read A-Musings. Prepare to be amused as T. muses on various stages of his life -- student, musician, composer, mathematics teacher, resident at the Institution. When you have finished reading this collection of sketches, essays, and stories -- biographical, fictional, speculative, irreverent -- I think you will, as I have, also find yourself unexpectedly moved."
-- Phil
The book had been made possible by a miracle and several gifts. The miracle came when T. became too physically decrepit to play and write the operas he wanted to compose. After a ten year hiatus, he suddenly began to write prose pieces -- and with a vengeance: by the time of the party, he had written about 170 separate pieces of "finished" (as determined by him and his family) prose, most of them produced after he came to the Institution. (There is an expression, "The man who chooses to defend himself in court has a fool for a client." T. imagined there must be a similar saying in publishing.)
But this miracle was only possible because his daughter had set up a website on which he could post his writings; this gave T. a venue for an audience to write for. This constituted the first and main gift. Another gift was a friend Phil who read every piece T. wrote and gave him feedback.
And then there was the book itself, which was only made possible by several other gifts: first, the idea for the book and the offer to shepherd it through publication by an old acquaintance from grade school; the editing, design, and formatting of the book by his family and Phil; and finally the book party itself, which his dear wife arranged so expertly -- right down to the stamp of his signature which she had cleverly fashioned from the calligraphy on his opera score.
Guestbook:
Dear T.,
From the little bit I read of your book I thought it was SPECTACULAR.
Keep on writing,
Theo (age 10)
So yes, it was billed as a celebration -- a party to celebrate the publication of his book. But aren't memorial services often given the euphemistic title of "the celebration of a life"? And T. had the sneaking suspicion that, for a number of people there, this party of celebration was in reality a farewell gathering.
Perhaps he wouldn't have been so suspicious if he wasn't in a wheelchair suffering from the advanced stages of chronic progressive multiple sclerosis, a situation in which he could no longer move anything below his neck. True, he had his speech (weakened, and impossible to hear over the din of the reception), which he used to write everything with these days using voice recognition software. And he could move and direct his wheelchair using his mouth. Most crucial of all, he had his mind -- which led him to create the humorous writings contained in his book, as well as the more serious ruminations like the memoir found at the end.
Still, the signs pointed to the fact that things were becoming more acute. There was the situation back in April when he had been rushed to the hospital; there they discovered that he had not only pneumonia, but a UTI that went septic. So he was a very sick fellow -- so much so that his wife as well as a few other people thought that they might lose him in the long if not the short term (long-term: having to be on a respirator or on a feeding tube -- either of which he and his wife had agreed was unacceptable for maintaining a minimally desirable existence.) Luckily, he was doing pretty well, though he found it a bit harder to swallow these days. But what he was most acutely aware of were the ways in which the disease MS could shut down parts of his body, and render other important functions tenuous at best.
T.M. of Medford and Boston has died after waging a long and courageous battle against MS. (Actually, he was cowering in his bunker when the disease attacked his left flank with a pincer movement, and that was that.)
When T. arrived at the Pavilion (a quasi-Art Deco room which was flooded with indirect natural light from above) for the party, his wife and daughters were already there beginning to set up. The latter were setting out wine glasses and filling them; the former was displaying T.'s opera and other scores, and putting out a cute little notebook in which the guests were asked to inscribe their feelings about the book and T. Soon the caterer (a close personal friend who was doing this for the payment of two copies of T.'s book) was laying out her delicacies.
And then the guests themselves began to arrive: his in-laws from Philadelphia and Boston; his favorite three female cousins from upper New York state -- and many other people (the estimate was 90 guests in all), some of whom came to see him virtually every week. However, most of the guests he had not seen in years due to his removal to the Institution.
He felt as though he had something in common with Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn: after all, hadn't they attended their own funerals? And so, as with those two immortal characters, T. heard only good things said about him (including the disingenuous "You look great!" which T. saw right through immediately); after all, he was the Guest of Honor! Of course, when Tom's Aunt Polly discovered that he was alive after all, there was hell to pay; as for T., he saw only smiles in his direction, and he received countless kisses upon various parts of his face and neck, (some of which were a bit lingering.) In particular, they praised his book.
T. was under no illusions concerning the book: he knew that, were he not seriously ill, it most likely would not exist (he would be mucking about down in the Darwinian Swamps of Publishing like everybody else, including his wife.) But his family had rushed it to publication when it looked as though he might die: it was intended to give T. a reason to keep living (though he would tell you that he enjoyed life just fine, thank you.) In other words, it was undertaken (ouch -- morbid word!) as a Labor of Love, something for which T. was enormously grateful.
(Of course this created another level of ambiguity in T.'s mind beside the one about the celebration itself: was the book any good as a piece of writing -- as opposed to something that was mildly entertaining at best? And did it require serious editing by professionals? T. had no idea about the answers to these questions; but they increased his uncertainty about that day's event.)
Guestbook:
“You are so wonderfully forever T. Your tone of voice, the sudden twists, the wit, the warmth, the observation of us humans (including yourself) in all our modes are such gifts to us all. I love the book and I love you,
Helen"
There was a stage of sorts (really a landing for some stairs leading into another building) at one end of the party room. It was small but elegant (it was beautifully varnished.) And it seemed that T. and the rest of the guests were going to be treated to some performances this afternoon from that stage: first, of T.'s drum piece (really a one-person arrangement of such); then of three pieces by his wife's a cappella female singing group; and finally a reading of two excerpts (chosen by T.) from his book.
And then suddenly there he was, his dear friend Allen the percussionist whom he hadn't seen for years, come all the way from Cincinnati and standing there smiling before him. His thin gaunt frame was arrayed in all charcoal black -- pants, shirt, and elegantly cut jacket -- thereby skirting the edge of formality without being Formal. He hugged T. and said in his ear, "A day doesn't go by in which I don't miss Herbert [their teacher Herbert Brun had died a few short years before]." He filled T. in on the handful of other musical friends from Illinois, including the one who quit his job to write an opera and now couldn't find a another job; or the bassoonist who has had to stop playing because of Parkinson's. Allen had brought with him one small snare drum, two music stands, a fistful of sticks, and a cobbled-together score of T.s piece "para-diddle for three percussionists/nine snare drums" which Allen had arranged for one player (himself)/one snare drum.
(This must've been a déjà vu of sorts for Allen: some time ago, a younger talented composer/conductor friend from the Illinois days had died at age 49 from the effects of MS. Allen had attended his memorial service in Virginia and there played that man's piece for solo snare drum. T. considered himself lucky that he could hear Allen play his own piece at his celebration of life gathering.)
(Illinois: at the age of 27, T. became a freshman again and began the study of music composition at the University of Illinois, Urbana, a center for New Music. As he put it, "I wanted to write like the best composers at that time." Unfortunately, his idea of a modern up-to-date composer was Bartok, who had died 25 years before. As a result, the first meeting with his new teacher Herbert Brun was traumatic: "I showed him a piece I was working on, and he said bluntly, 'We don't write that way anymore.'" T. then spent his three years there trying to write music which Herbert might approve of; he only succeeded in writing for a group of speakers, woodwinds producing squawks, and a person making noises with a trumpet. T. added plaintively, "I went to school in order to become a better composer; but I wound up totally paralyzed to write any music with pitches whatsoever!"
(Finally at the age of 36 and far from Illinois geographically, T. wrote "para-diddle for nine snare drums (three players)" -- a work which contains no musical pitches, only relative ones (the longer the drum, the lower its pitch.) It is dedicated to "Allen Otte and The Percussion Group of Cincinnati." Soon they were playing it throughout the world and recording it on a handsome two-record set. T.: "There are two major ironies connected with para-diddle: first, it is as far as it can be from any piece I had thought I wanted to write; and yet it is my one undisputed masterpiece. Second, I never once consulted with Herbert Brun while I was writing the piece; yet it is permeated with his ideas. So my study with him bore great fruit after all!")
T.'s wife Dorothy began by reading a brief homage to Allen which her husband had dictated to her. She first noted humorously that T. had wisely limited the length of this all-drum piece to five minutes. She then read a passage which his friends would say was vintage T.: referring to Allen's reduced arrangement of his piece, he remarked: "All modesty aside, it reminds me of the arrangement for solo piano which Liszt made of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony." Yes, comparing himself to Beethoven (and his friend to Liszt) were amusing conceits; but the statement implies something else: that no matter how good it is, a piano piece cannot compare to the original Symphony. Just so Allen's arrangement of his piece: Allen may indeed be the Liszt of Percussion (that is, the Greatest Player and Arranger of his Time); but T. still had his doubts that his friend by himself could do justice to a piece that was already fiendishly difficult for three players.
For example, there was the counterpoint -- the interaction of what each player plays with what the others play. One part of the piece T. had called "Dialogues" because of the give-and-take nature of the three parts. (He had written: "What is spoken, is spoken, not by the instrumentalists, but rather by the instruments themselves. It is pure music, wherein these instruments seem to say things that they didn't know they could say, things that they had never said before.") But how can you have a dialogue with just one person "speaking"?
And then there was the part near the end: Herbert had said a few times that, "If two or more people play the same thing together, it had better be for a good reason!" In para-diddle, there is only one section near the end in which the three players each play exactly the same music: it is a cadence on the largest drums; and its affect is intended to be one of the terror of a mob riot. But of course this affect is irrelevant if there is only one player to begin with.
Allen had begun to read a set of liner notes which T. had written for the booklet contained in the record set that included para-diddle. It was a quasi-poem whose main theme was the idea of "cadence":
"A cadence is a formula for a fall:
in one sense, the end of a piece;
on the other hand, the feet of those who march."
(Uh oh -- antiwar 60s alert! But wait, it gets better:)
"... a fall not of feet but of men,
a front for murder."
(T. was a bit embarrassed by the blatant political aspect of the text -- until he remembered that it was precisely those ideas which had generated the piece to begin with. But, embarrassed (or not) as he was, T. was still able to compliment himself for the triple pun on the words "a front".)
From time to time during the reading, an astute acquaintance or two (a married couple Don and Helen one time, a niece Meg another) would look back at T. in order to gauge how he might be feeling about this 30 year-old politically charged text. His responses did not disappoint them: either he gave back a look of pretend fright ("My God -- did I actually write that?!"), or a big winning smile ("Not bad, eh?"). Those were his public faces; privately he had the audacity to think that that charged text might bear the same relation to his drum piece as Ives's "Essays Before a Sonata" bears to the Concord Sonata, Ives's piano masterpiece. As for the reader/percussionist, it was obvious that he felt positively about the text himself, for after reading it he shook his head as if to say, "Wow -- what a piece of writing!"
Guestbook:
“dear T-die,
I loved that percussion piece! It was a dance.
It was especially beautiful contrasted with that pretentious communist written piece beforehand.
Love, Meg"
(But T. had another less nice view of his text and the piece it was written to accompany and describe: a disgruntled critic named Henry Pleasants (who was anything but) had written of "The Agony of Modern Music" as "ever-longer manifestoes and dwindling audiences". It was damning, and it hit home (especially since there was yet another whole text by T. in the record booklet which Allen hadn't bothered to read.) T. could not get the indictment out of his head.)
Allen had finished the (seemingly interminable) reading. Now he stood there poised over that solitary little snare drum, each hand holding two (or was it three?) drumsticks. He shook his head and said, "This is so difficult!" There was another pause; then subito he brought a stick down emphatically upon the rim and the drum head together: the piece had begun.
It was the most electrifying performance that T. had ever heard. Was it para-diddle arranged for one player? Almost certainly not (although not even the composer of this complex piece could tell for sure); rather, it seemed like the original had spawned this new one: they both had the same DNA, the same ruthlessness of drive -- and the same playful spirit. The fact that Allen had compressed everything from a piece for three players/nine drums into one for himself with one drum alone meant that the result gave off nine times as much electricity, nine times as much light as the original did. (T. was not unmindful of the fact that he had just invented -- or was it discovered? -- another principle of physics as applied to music.)
It was the fineness of the performance that impressed T. the most -- not only its ultrahigh quality, but as well its subtlety, the fact that Allen could wring so many variants from a simple drumroll (or "paradiddle".)
And then there was Allen's right foot, which he stamped down at various times. Of course this made perfect sense, given T.'s manifesto ("The fall of the feet of those who march".) The only problem was: there were no foot-falls scored in the original version of para-diddle; Allen had inserted those, whether consciously or unconsciously, purely on his own. But almost immediately T. decided that he liked the addition of the footfalls immensely; that they added a needed dimension where other dimensions had been lost or obscured.
The audience loved the performance -- something T. found interesting considering his assumptions about "New Music"; but the reason seemed clear enough: quite simply, the piece and its player were genuinely exciting.
(T. was never able to write another piece for Allen, never mind one with para-diddle's quality and success. Over the subsequent years, T. grew increasingly paranoid about Herbert and Allen: he was convinced that, especially with regard to his music, he did not measure up to their standards; he had, if you will, an inferiority complex -- the sort of obsession that Hugo Wolf felt with regard to Mahler and his music (although Wolf had an excuse: dementia brought on by syphilis. T. admitted sadly that Wolf had had a lot more fun getting his disease!))
Guestbook:
"T.!
Still working –
Still producing: you're an inspiration to me.
Seriously.
Thanks for the music – I love playing this piece.
Al"
And then too soon, Allen was taking his leave (he had a very tight plane schedule; and classes at the University where he taught were beginning the next day.) And yet -- it seemed as though he were reluctant to leave T's side: he was trying to say something but he couldn't; and he seemed to be blinking back tears. At the same time T. was trying to tell his friend how much he liked the arrangement and how much he appreciated the fact that Allen had come all this way to play it for him; but his poor weak voice was being drowned out. (In fact, T. wanted to tell him that his arrangement and performance of his piece ranked as another one of the amazing and wonderful gifts he had been receiving.) But soon enough Allen was able to tear himself away and he was out the door. (Someone later told T. that they had seen the drummer out in the hall, and that he was "sobbing inconsolably.")
The next performance was by the UUlations, a pop female a cappella singing group to which his wife Dorothy belonged. And a greater contrast to the drum piece could not be found! If Allen's performance was the fillet mignon of the main course, this group's renditions constituted a wonderfully fluffy mousse. They began with a couple of pieces by the Gershwins, and then ended with "Alexander's Ragtime Band". And as always, the harmonies produced by those pure voices were tuned and true, never maudlin.
(T. was very happy and relieved when his wife found this outlet for her singing after he had entered the Institution. For she and T. had performed together even before they were married; they were a musical team, going so far as to co-found the Mystic Chamber Opera Company in order that their performances be dramatically as well as musically interesting. So the disease that took away his ability to play had caused as well a big hole in her own musical life.)
One of T.'s brothers-in-law (he introduced himself as "Richard"; but he also admitted that T. had the right to call him "Dickikins" or just plain "Dickey") now stood up to read a couple of excerpts from T.'s book. This particular relative was the other cut-up in the extended family besides T. himself. He was the one (when T. was still healthy, of course) who would egg T. on to "perform" some of his more outrageously obsessive tales such as "The Belt Story", which bordered on the risqué with its concern for disrobing and for T.'s zipper in particular. The brother-in-law would even go so far as to use a flashlight as a mini-spotlight to highlight those parts of T.'s pants during a "performance". Yes, outrageous! But it showed T. that his relative cared for at least those writings that concerned himself.
(Did T. harbor doubts that his brother-in-law liked his book? Of course; for T. was nothing if not paranoid! Was it as severe as the dual paranoias about Herbert and Allen which had held T. in a vice grip on and off over the course of decades? Of course not! But T. still felt some misgivings in relation to his brother-in-law.)
Besides his compositions and assorted prose writings, Mr. M. leaves around 100 volumes of a personal journal, which he described as "the height of self-indulgence": "I often had trouble composing, but I never missed a day to write about myself!" he said laughing. Indeed, the journals contain hundreds of pages lamenting the fact that he couldn't write music.
Dickey began to read an excerpt about pouring the wine in the restaurant from "Wine & Cigarettes". (If the reading were part of a meal, it would be the salad course with all sorts of leafy green vegetables as well as fresh cherry tomatoes from the garden.) And almost immediately T. noticed two things. First, that Dickey was reading at a good clip; he wasn't lingering over each delicious word, as T. would have done (T. had even placed his favorites in italics -- sadly, to no avail here.) It was a breezy informal reading, a text-gushing-forth sort of rendition that T. found to be rather attractive as an alternative. (But did he harbor suspicions that Dickey was deliberately rushing through his precious words so as to get through it as quickly as possible? Of course!)
The second thing T. noticed was that his brother-in-law would leave out a few words here and there -- sometimes whole sentences. Once he actually added a few lines of his own! But T. forgave him because this brother-in-law had been the actual protagonist in the real-life story he was reading about. (T.: was Dickey doing some on-the-spot editing in order to show T. "what a finished piece of prose should really look like!"? T. had no way of knowing. But when Dickey stopped one reading at the provocative words "It's Mr. Burgundy!" well before the end of the text, T. realized that that's where he himself should've stopped writing. So perhaps Dickey was sending T. that message; and if so, what of it?)
(The thing that made Dickey such a hard nut to crack on the prose front was his secrecy about his own writing. T. knew that he had an inch-thick black notebook with unlined pages in which he has been writing for years, perhaps even decades. T. would see him with the notebook when their families would be vacationing together up at Lake George: Dickey would get up at the ungodly hour of 6 a.m. or something, go for a dip in the lake, and then repair to a secret place in the woods like some sort of exiled priest, where he would sit and inscribe something "deep" into his black notebook -- perhaps even poetry. Had he ever let T. see anything therein? Of course not -- that would spoil all the mystery and envy!
(Of course, in return Dickey freely admitted to a fascination -- at times it amounted to a veritable obsession -- with T.'s own journal-volumes: these were little blue lab books, each with pages numbered up to 128. By the time T. could no longer write by hand, he had completed exactly 100 volumes. Dickey would humorously beg to see even one volume, but T. would always turn him down -- why? Because it was too private? Not really. Too salacious? Hmm -- T. was still exploring the limits of that interesting notion! No -- quite simply, the reason was that the journals in T.'s eyes had no literary value; that is what he had consciously decided from the beginning, so that he wouldn't get hung up with writer's block. So what he was keeping from Dickey was the sheer banality (along with a little frivolity) of those narcissistic 12,800 pages.)
Guestbook:
"T-dikins –
Thank you for bringing out the best Dickikins in myself.
Your insight and humor continue to brighten the lives of all who know and love you. Here's to another season of g&t's!
Love,
Dickikins"
And then suddenly T. realized how lucky he was. For, book signing or pre-memorial service, it was still a celebration of T.: his creativity, his sense of humor, and his general joie de vivre. And that was something for him to cherish as precious and rare. This was brought home to him all the more by the recent death of another one of his brothers-in-law, a kind, gentle, and intelligent man who had worked for NASA. But as far as T. knew, there had been no celebration of the man's rich and creative life while he was still alive, such as T. was receiving here.
(How do you know when it's the right time to begin celebrating someone's life? Often times it's done when their age is a nice round number. (Sentence on the back jacket of one of his books: "Thomas Mann died not long after a memorable three-day celebration of his 80th birthday." That must've been some party!) In the old days, it also was done when the person retired -- and received a gold watch. Did T.'s brother-in-law have a real retirement party from NASA? Or did he just go out on disability because of his Parkinson's, thence to fade gradually-but-inexorably into the dark mental night of that disease? Then too, a retirement party will only highlight a fraction of one's life anyway.)
The party was almost over when a final guest approached T.: it was Epp, the soprano in their Mystic Chamber Opera Company. Her intent seemed to be to serenade him. And so she began by singing a bit of the aria "A Town, A Town" from T.'s opera "Harry and Helene" (which was as light-hearted and gay as the drum piece was ruthless and inexorable.) Then she took out a piece of sheet music, stood beside him so that he could see the music, and regaled T. with lines that included something like the following:
"Because you're so wahhn-derful,
so mahh-velous!"
-- thus did she half-humorously croon a popular (in its day) love song to him. And what did T. feel in the face of such unmuted adulation? Well, assuming that a person can be divided into parts, a bit of him was embarrassed, of course; another part (the modest part) was wondering what all the fuss was about; while yet another piece of him found it perfectly appropriate and elected to enjoy it.
But Epp was not finished yet. Now she came around and stood in front of him; her demeanor was serious, and she spoke to him face to face thus: "Before I started working with you, I was feeling very unsure of myself as a performer. You helped me become a seasoned, self-assured one. And for that I will remain forever grateful to you!"
Guestbook:
"LOVE YOU!
Thank you for my most memorable musical moments!
Xxx ooo xo xo Epp”
Then T. decided that he was going to cherish the ambiguities: the ambiguity as to whether this party was a celebration or a pre-memorial; and the ambiguity about the book itself (the probable fact that it was only produced because he was sick did not necessarily mean that it was a bad book.) In fact, he decided to take pleasure in having this book which he had written and those who loved him had produced "out there" where it might give other people pleasure -- thence at times to bounce back to give him more pleasure in return. (Just yesterday, the wife of one of the residents here had come up to him and said, "Your book is on my night table, and last night I was laughing out loud as I was reading 'Ball Boy Tells All'!")
It had been a good party, a wonderful party -- a Labor of Love-sort of party. And T. was already planning the table of contents for his next book...
Besides his wife and two daughters, Mr. M. is survived by a brother and his wife, several cousins, a plethora of relatives on his wife's side, and not a few devoted friends, many of whom seemed for whatever reason to find him amusing.
(24 October 2009)
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