As promised

But first, before we get to the main attraction (for me), let's tell some dinner party stories. It went will, the dinner party. Six of us, from my Monday Irish lit class. I really have no stories. Just, you know, had dinner, sat around the table for a while. Perfected my Irish coffee recipe, including the method of using empty whiskey bottles to shake the cream so that you can float it on top of the drink delicately, with a spoon, as we know all things done with spoons are inherently delicate. One swash of whiskey at the bottom, blended with extra-dark brown sugar. Make double-strength french press coffee; don't use a french roast or anything too dark, as the cream really enhances a lighter Guatemalan or Nicaraguan origin (I used Ethiopia). Delicately (did I say with a spoon?) float the shaken cream (NOT WHIPPED CREAM, ESPECIALLY NOT FROM A CAN) on top of the coffee. Imbibe.

The rest of the menu was:

Butternut squash and parsnip soup
Whole wheat pasta with pecorino cheese and black pepper
Salad
German chocolate pudding dessert thing, actually from Germany

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First, read some of Beckett's Watt while listening to Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 1, Op. 2, preferably the last movement. Youtube it (This is all right, This kid is wretched, but funny). So, you have an almost crude sense of humor here, repetition to excess. Op. 2's last movement, the endless barrage of eighth-note triplets, Beckett's endless permutations of every possible instance (which he will keep throughout his career). Conventional, but almost. Paragraph breaks where they make sense; cadences and repeat signs at the end of the very clear development--Beckett writes a clear "II," one of his few chapter headings (which seems more like a movement marker than a chapter marker) at the point of completion of development, Watt's entrance into Knott's servitude. It is even somewhat crude, but yet it doesn't seem to care. Actually, it's very crude, rhyming Watt with Knott with pot--at what point does the pot stop being a pot; at what point do the eighth-note triplets become the beat? We claim to be in 2:4, cut time, yet we hear nothing but triplets. Is it 6:8, then? Has the pot become something else?

Now listen to Beethoven's Appassionata Sonata No. 23, Op. 57 while watching your local theatre troupe perform Waiting for Godot. Delicate banter, arpeggios of a minor triad--ominous, but not crushing. Quick eighth-notes of things to come (specifically, the fifth symphony) in the bass. And bam, it breaks into pounding chords, juxtaposed with delicate lines. Minute 1:41 of the recording (when played with more melancholy, as I believe it should be) is, in itself the phrase "Nothing to be done." Yet, it still clings to a semblance of form, even as it continually rehashes the same phrases punctuated by silence.

This is the point at which Beethoven is coming to grips with his total deafness; it is also one of the first works which Beckett writes in French. He said he wanted to write in French so as to strip himself of all style, of all conventions of the English language. He could not have that hanging over his head, the whole past of the language--it must be new, it must be constructed based on no preconceptions. In the starkest sense, it must come from his head, not his heart. This theme, this motive of the Appassionata seems to go nowhere, it leads only to itself. It is melancholy; it is earnest.

Now (if you've made it this far) read Molloy while listening to Beethoven's Große Fuge (Op. 133). Better yet, try to find some of Beckett's later pieces for theatre (Breath, a 35 second pan over a trash heap, or Not I, a mouth in darkness). Not I is, itself, a Große Fuge, Große Fuge apparently meaning large joint, according to my computer's translation program. It is beyond earnest; it is truly nuts. It is beyond (my) words. It is Beethoven at his most deaf, Beckett rejecting not only English but well over 99%of the human form. It is manic, above all else, unsettled. There is a determination, however. They are not nihilists, after all. After the violins play unresolved lines, like a last lament, they just dig in, they get frustrated, more silence, more repetitions of this broken cadence, until it finally succeeds.

Beckett's closing of The Unnamable, his last extended work of prose, is the most cadence-like of any: "I can't go on, I'll go on."

Happy pancake tuesday.

Back to bend of bay

I try to rationalize my absence (laziness) by telling myself that writing a blog titled "Dublin on Nitrogen" while in the haven of a Richland basement would be a lie. Really, though, I was just playing Beethoven. Tons of Beethoven. Also some Debussy. Scriabin when I was feeling it.

So, I got back to Dublin Friday morning after traveling since 5 a.m. Thursday, after sleeping for all of an hour Wednesday night. I truly cannot sleep before traveling. Something in me feels that since I will be gone for so long I just need to enjoy every last microsecond of wherever I am. In this case, it mostly meant playing Beethoven and reading and eating leftovers.

I checked my schedule today (Saturday), after sleeping all day Friday and napping/reading all of Friday night. I saw that I was scheduled to work tonight until midnight, and Sunday from 3-10, and almost cried. I don't have my essays done, and they're due Monday afternoon. If I end up turning one in late I won't be too sad, but I couldn't stand turning both in late, or even poorly revised. Particularly, the one on Basil Bunting. I really like the poem, the class, the professor, and even my essay so far. The other one, on Virginia Woolf, might take a little more work, but I'll probably do fine. So, I did what I always do in a crisis: play piano. After a solid half-hour of Beethoven (and some Debussy), I decided to call in and say I couldn't make it, a solid 1 1/2 hours before I was scheduled to work. I said I was very sorry, tried to sound broken up, and the manager didn't really say anything, just thanks for calling. I'd like to keep this job for at least the next two months, unless I get some jazz gigs. Not so much for the money as for the peace of mind that I get from not having to keep a solid budget.

I've been slowly reading Beckett now, in my off-time. I'm on the first of his trilogy of short novels, Molloy. I have this theory that reading Beckett destroys one's ability to read anything else. He includes pages regarding a particular character's thoughts, and next to nothing about physical description. We don't even get the name "Molloy" until about a quarter in, and it's a first-person narration from his point of view. There are endless permutations of every possible outcome of a situation, cyclical and repetitive. The dialogue is not in quotes, not paragraphed out (there aren't even very many paragraphs for that matter), and often ended with asides saying, essentially, that this conversation took place mostly in his mind--in reality, he probably just grunted unintelligibly.

How does it ruin me then? Well, now when I try to read "normal" novels I get bogged down by the slightest physical description. I can now withstand pages and pages detailing a character's system of organizing his "sucking-stones" into different pockets so that he has a proper rotation of stones in his mouth, yet I can barely tolerate a half-paragraph of his-boots-were/her-eyes-were. Beckett just seems to take all of what other authors deem a necessity, throw it out the window, and in its place insert what seems an extravagance, a mockery of what was once considered essential. He, obviously, was not the first; Joyce, Woolf, and Faulkner all used stream-of-consciousness. However, Beckett has an irreverence toward what seems like the book itself. He does not work in this stream-of-consciousness in the Joycean way where it gives in to grand metaphor and Dedalus's Grecian/philosophical allusions. His does not make the claim a la Finnigan's Wake that in the part is represented the whole; his seems to point to itself as if to say, look at this, it means nothing.

I would compare this to Beethoven if I could. Give me two pounds of coffee, the scores of his late quartets, and a week.