Tag: Mainly myself

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"I wandered lonely [in a crowd . . .]"

I have celebrated a great many anniversaries here; and the birth of William Wordsworth, 7 April 1770, would sure be among the most deserving of my—or anyone else’s—taking note. Yet a far more intimate anniversary is on my mind tonight, hard-driven to distraction as I am in the fear that my old Mac is once again giving up the ghost after two reincarnations. This time around, the ghost-busted machine refuses to recharge, and, in a race against the time of its expiration, I am spiriting away whatever signs of my life might otherwise remain secreted within its juiceless shell. To paraphrase Dryden, I must pound the keyboard while it is still hot, but shall have to polish the issue at leisure, hardware permitting. So, what is the occasion for my ad hoc bowdlerization of one of Wordsworth’s most famous poems? On this day, 7 April, back in 1985, I first stepped into the noisy wilderness of Gotham, this “Tapestry” of sound that Norman Corwin and other radio experimenters captured or recreated for their virtual tours. Touring in the flesh, I, too, became engrossed in its soundscape, walking around town with a borrowed tape recorder and, having returned home, experience it anew in the quiet of the four walls that could no longer shut me up. Compared to the shiny, fenced in theme park it is today, Manhattan was still a fairly hostile jungle during those days, but all the more exciting for being dark and devious and full of unthought-of dangers.

Little did I know that within the course of three short weeks, my rather miserable adolescent existence would get such a kick in the well-ironed pants. How could I ever forget the delights and the dread that awaited the innocent abroad who was far too blasé for his own good? I had a lot to learn, and those twenty-one days were a crash course in survival, which I very nearly flunked: giving all the dough I had left for my trip to a team of confidence tricksters, being invited by a stranger on the street to see the Modigliani he claimed to have in his mid-town lair and not finding the promised masterpiece but myself violated instead, and, still capable of the love I had never experienced and the trust in humanity I nearly lost, falling under the spell of a charming young waiter at jazz bar on Spring Street who would turn my head and the mousy curls on it into something curiously yellow. The physical scar (previously scratched open here) was hidden from view; but those neon locks signalled to everyone back home that the boy who returned was not the one who had gone out into the world:

I wandered lonely in a crowd
That walked on by with dreads and frills,
When all at once I, too, stood out,
With locks like golden daffodils;
Beside the cabs, beneath the streets,
Alive and dancing (mercy, Keats!).

Indifferent as the stars that hide
Yet shimmer to discerning eyes,
They brushed in Harry’s new-found pride
Against the margin of their lies:
Ten thousand saw them at a glance,
When my head’s tossed, who’s got a chance?

The weaves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling pates in glee:
A fellow could not but be gay,
Show colors true for all to see.
I gleamed—they gawked—yet dreamed no more
What change those locks would have in store:

But now, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in somber mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the sight of solitude;
My older self to memory thrills,
And dances like those daffodils.

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Gone Garbo

Well, let’s skip it. The convivial “Well,” I mean, with which I have been wont to begin my posts for over two and a half years now. Things haven’t been well for quite some time, and I hardly feel gregarious enough to have use for such a hokey opening. For once, I am not going to assume the well-worn persona of the casual, nonchalant reporter or produce another impersonal, labored piece of prose commemorating the birth of a celebrity long deceased. That will have to wait.

This journal has been in somewhat of a shambles since my return from New York and London, during which carefree time of easy living I was reminded—if any reminder were needed—that I am truly an urbanite at heart. Matters were not helped when I fell ill soon after coming back to the countryside; nor has facing the first month of the year, bleak and blank as it looms before me, ever felt like a particularly uplifting or inspiring period to me. Renewal? I have yet to sense it.

I feel my isolation keenly at times, and sometimes I appear to be revelling in it as if in a state of martyrdom. Now, by calling this period—and I sincerely hope it is just a phase—Garboesque, I am already in defiance of this journal, Garbo being the only major Hollywood actress not to appear on the radio, the medium to whose stars, stories, and strictures broadcastellan is devoted.

For a moment, feeling either overmastered by the task of keeping up with myself (the recent posts from Gotham and the Big Smoke having been mere placeholders, some of which I have at last begun to fill, as in the case of my getting caught in The Mousetrap), or feeling reluctant to look back, being wary and weary of nostalgia, I contemplated putting an end to broadcastellan. Only, saying “farewell” sounded rather too melodramatic, and, I nearly felt but certainly still hoped, rash and premature.

Its arcane subject matter and frosty euphuisms notwithstanding, this is a personal journal. It has to matter to me before it can matter to anyone. And recently I have been unable to matter much to myself. Not taking myself too seriously has generally been an asset to me; but you can take not taking yourself seriously too far, at which point you drift into a desolate place reverberating with the hollow laughter of self-contempt.

Let us say—or permit me to say it on behalf of myself—that, speaking Garboesquely, I have been in my Two-faced period, a wavering to which those less anxious to find just the right expression or indifferent to the joys of such a challenge refer as crossroads; but I have decided to go on, falteringly and doubtfully, instead of calling it quits without having half the cold heart to disguise such a move as the height of dignity . . .

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Little Town Blues; or, Melting Away

Well, “it won’t be like that in town.” That is a remark you would have heard frequently, had you been eavesdropping in on us talking about our anticipated move out of the country later this month. As it turns out, we will have to wait far longer to prove or confute our hypotheses about the differences between urban and rural dwelling. Our plans to relocate to Aberystwyth, the Welsh seaside town romanticized in the quirky murder mysteries of Malcolm Pryce, have been thwarted. The potential buyer of our present abode has nixed the deal, making it impossible for us to buy the house currently owned by the person desirous to take possession of our buyer’s home. There’s a neat little triangle gone Bermuda.

Meanwhile, our cottage is once again cut off from the world, due to an ongoing problem with the telephone lines. I am in town now to file this report, sitting, in fact, not far from the Edwardian house (pictured) we were hoping to occupy. After the welcome interlude set aside for this lament, I am once again singing the blues where no one can hear me sigh . . .

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The Present Is Shared Pasts

The day recalled in my previous blog entry was of such monumental significance to old-time radio enthusiasts that I thought it appropriate to shroud myself in the silence to which US radio drama was sentenced back in 1962. Actually, I was away for a long weekend up north in Manchester, England—but the timing was fortuitous. Now this past break presents itself as an opportunity to escape the rigidity of my “On This Day” feature, even though I shall continue it before long. In my attempt to avoid waxing nostalgic, I have become too much of an historian by letting past dates dictate my present thoughts. Now it is time for the present to have its day. Well, sort of . . .

Historians seek to make the past present. Those afflicted with nostalgia make their present past. The personal pronoun is significant. Nostalgia is a more self-centered engagement with the long ago. It is openly impressionistic and subjective, which makes it an endeavor at once intellectually dubious and honest. The researcher feels compelled to cover up the subjectivity underlying all our thoughts. As a refugee from the here and now, the nostalgic wanderer is not in need of such subterfuge.

Now, as I wrote when I inaugurated this blog, my approach to the past is neither historic nor nostalgic. Historians make it their business to discourse on the past and its relevance; nostalgic people tend to remove themselves from the everyday, the onslaught of a present they are at a loss to confront. Instead, they surround themselves with like-minded dreamers and reminisce about what they sense to be missing. How can anything we dream or think about be missing? It is there, present in our mind—and, in the act of sharing, it is being represented.

Why such reflections now? Well, having been away for a weekend alone in a big city, I felt detached from those around me. I went out for a few drinks one night and was so tired of standing by myself in the crowd that I went back to the hotel room to catch a late-night TV screening of The Curse of the Cat People. I was not wide-awake enough to follow it, but I had more of a sense of a shared experience watching something broadcast for everyone to see than I had staring at and being stared at in a barroom of unknown anybodies.

I had hoped this journal would make it possible for me find a few somebodies in a vast space of anyones—connected in the spirit of sharing. Thus far, my modest ambitions have not been realized. Anyway, this is the present, and I will get past it.