Читать книгу I'm Trying to Reach You - Barbara Browning - Страница 9

HARVEST MOON

It was good to be back in New York.

I was living in a sublet I’d arranged in those NYU faculty buildings between 3^rd Street and Bleecker. Some people referred a little facetiously to these buildings as “The Compound.” They were built in the ’50s, and they actually look kind of like Soviet bloc architecture. In fact, I kept being reminded of them when I was riding from the airport to downtown Zagreb.

I hadn’t been there very long, but it already felt sort of like home. Of course, my capacity to feel “at home” under provisional and precarious circumstances is something I’ve developed over time. A dancer has to – and in fact, so does an academic. We don’t really choose the places we live. We go where the gigs are. After I got my undergrad degree at SUNY Purchase, I bounced around for a while until I landed in Stockholm. I was with the RSB from 1988-2004, which may seem like a long time, but as you can perhaps understand, I always felt a little bit like a visitor.

Nils gave up directorship of the ballet in ’93. I worked under Simon, Frank and Petter, and finally Madeleine Onne, who was the one who gently suggested I might want to begin thinking about transitioning to teaching. No hard feelings. I liked Madeleine. I heard she recently took over direction of the Hong Kong Ballet. I wish her well.

Anyway, that was when I moved to Evanston to do my PhD. At least I was already used to the cold. Sven and I worked it out so that I’d visit Stockholm in July and January, and he’d visit me in April and October. The PhD went by in something of a blur. It was good to get back to reading so much. I like theory. Academia suits me. I actually wrote the dissertation pretty quickly. My advisor said dancers were disciplined. It’s true, I’m generally pretty good at setting myself tasks and then following through. It’s just the book revisions that have been holding me up. I had no trouble mounting a theoretical argument. But how to make it more accessible to a broader audience? I felt like I’d hit a wall.

Still, I had no business feeling sorry for myself. It was considered something of a coup that I got this post-doc. It wasn’t the most auspicious time on the academic job market. There was really nothing in the way of academic jobs in Sweden for the kind of thing I did.

Sven and I kept deferring the conversation about what all of this meant for us.

I was also lucky to get that sublet. It was a studio apartment, but fairly spacious, with a balcony. Nearly everybody in the building was NYU faculty, except for some really old people who were already living in the buildings before NYU bought them in 1964. One of the more ancient denizens of the compound lived on my floor. I’m sure she’d seen a lot of NYU tenants come and go, probably some with little concern for the old timers, so I wouldn’t have blamed her for feeling suspicious of recent arrivals. Whenever I saw her I tried to be especially polite. I held the elevator for her as she inched down the hallway with her walker. Sometimes it took her a good three or four minutes. The elevator would start making a honking sound to indicate that I’d been holding it too long, but I persisted. She was hard of hearing so I guess she wasn’t particularly bothered by the obnoxious elevator alarm. Once she’d gotten in safely, I’d smile at her and nod. Then she usually said something accusatory, like, “DIDJOO LEAVE DOSE STINKY BOTTLES IN DA GAHBAGE? SOMEBODY LEF’ SOME STINKY BOTTLES IN DA GAHBAGE!” She screamed on account of her hearing difficulties. I’d try gently to assure her that I wasn’t the culprit, and she’d say, “WHAT?! YA GOTTA SPEAK LOUDAH! MY EAHS AH SHOT!”

After several of these encounters, though, it seemed like she was starting to take a shine to me. At least she started broaching other topics than the accusations. One day we were coming up together in the elevator, and she shouted, “YA KNOW, MY BWUDDA WAS A VEWY IMPAWTAN’ POYSON.”

I shouted, “EXCUSE ME?”

I thought maybe I’d misunderstood her, but she said it again: “MY BWUDDA WAS A VEWY IMPAWTAN’ POYSON.”

I shouted, “OH REALLY?”

She said, “YEAH.” She paused and looked me straight in the eye. “MEL BLANC.”

Perhaps appropriately, I drew a blank. And then it dawned on me: Mel Blanc. The voice of Bugs Bunny, Donald Duck, and Tweety Bird. She was Bugs Bunny’s sister.

I said, “WOW. HE WAS IMPORTANT.”

She said, “YEAH. I KNOW.”

After I got back from Zagreb, I did some laundry, went over to the Morton Williams to get some basic provisions, showered, and did a few ballet exercises holding onto a chair for the barre. It might have been more productive to take class, but given my financial situation that seemed like an indulgence. That day I did my routine to the Frank Sinatra album Only the Lonely, in my underwear: pliés, relevés, tendus, dégagés, ronds de jambe, battements. I like to do just the basics, but really slowly. That’s why I put on the Sinatra. He’s so concentrated.

My sublet faced south, and I guess the people living in the north-facing building on the Bleecker side of the superblock could see me if they really wanted to. I mean, they’d need to use binoculars to see much, but if they were determined, they could probably catch me doing these exercises in my underwear. Of course this made me think of Miss Torso in Rear Window, the exhibitionistic ballet dancer across the courtyard. Thelma Ritter’s character predicts she’ll end up “old, fat, and alcoholic.” Hm. Sven and I had watched this movie together when he came to visit in April. Sven was on a film noir kick. We got a few things from Netflix. I hadn’t seen Rear Window in years, though I read an essay about it in a graduate seminar on feminist spectatorship. It was fairly unsympathetic to the Jimmy Stewart character.

I had a flashback to that Jimmy Stewart look-alike in the Arcotel in Zagreb.

What was it with that guy, and what the hell was he doing in Zagreb? I was pretty sure he wasn’t part of the conference – he really didn’t seem to fit in with the PSi crowd – but he was definitely passing through.

Well, I had been, too.

After I finished my barre exercises, I fixed myself a snack (hummous and raw vegetables) and sat down at the computer to move some more commas around. I did that for about forty-five minutes before I decided to let myself go on the Internet for a minute.

Famous last words. At this point, it won’t surprise you that I ended up back on YouTube watching that Satie dance again. I knew as well as you what I was doing, and I knew it meant my “productive” time was over for the day. The moth’s video was up to forty-three hits. Who was watching it? I looked at the column of related videos – unsurprisingly, plenty of Satie, a few just piano solos, and a couple of other choreographies, none of which were of particular interest. There was, however, a video of Natalia Makarova dancing The Dying Swan to Saint-Saëns. It was posted by Schoevia. I clicked on it. It’s pretty shocking. It’s Fokine’s choreography, as you may know, but Makarova’s interpretation is unique, and people tend to have fairly extreme responses to its convulsive qualities.

The comment section was volatile. BubbleChikk14 started it off: “HER ARMS ARE BEAUTIFUL!”

But arakhachatran responded “No her arms are not beautiful. Thats her worst part in thisperformance. You dont understand anything in ballet but try to act like a smart ass.”

That really pissed off yuliya1995 who shot back: “how do you know she has very gentle arms and i bet you cant do that so who do you call a smart ass? its you who is a smart ass who think they know about ballet.”

A few others weighed in, mostly outraged at arakhachatran’s philistinism. Somebody named ahamayoisac took a more Solomonic attitude, acknowledging that the arm movement was not elegant in a typical balletic way, but was expressive of genuine agony and for this reason “perfect.”

Frankly, I love it, but I think arakhachatran had a point. It’s practically spastic.

And then I saw it: a recent comment – dated July 27, 2009 – by falserebelmoth. She must have been watching this video, which might explain its popping up as “related” to her own. Of course, superficially, they were utterly unrelated: Makarova’s emphatic stabbing of the floor with those pointe shoes, her anguished face and contorted, convulsing torso had nothing to do with falserebelmoth’s quiet little moonwalk and her indecipherable downward glance.

And yet.

I’m sure it had something to do with the weird confluence of recent events – the shock of MJ’s passing, my dismal, meaningless conference presentation to the singular audience of Amanda Trugget, those disturbing encounters with Jimmy Stewart at the Arcotel… It was difficult not to read some kind of connection between these things, and I felt like the moth was trying to tell me what it was.

Her comment was, true to form, oblique, ambiguous, and strange: “like Birds One Claw upon the Air…”

To which quothballetcarper had immediately responded: “fancy seeing you here little lady. hows the pointe work going? practice makes perfect. i have my eye on you. bye.”

She answered, with what appeared to me to be modesty, quiet dignity, and slight defiance: “I cannot dance upon my Toes – No Man instructed me.”

He shot back: “Instruction is my specialty, little lady! Ur speakin to the ‘pro’! Whippin gals like you into shape is my ‘racquet’! Dont think Im goin to go easy on u just because ur a girl!”

Wow. And they thought arakhachatran was obnoxious.

I watched Natalia Makarova dance The Dying Swan five more times. Her tremulous, skinny legs stuttered over her pointe shoes. Her mouth was pulled back in a grimace. Everything about her communicated suffering.

“i have my eye on you”? What exactly did he mean by that?

I considered forwarding the YouTube link of Natalia Makarova to Sven but decided against it. Too much tragedy.

The great thing about that Makarova dance is that it’s obscene, but everybody acts like it’s normal. There are a lot of contemporary choreographers who just go ahead and make the obscenity explicit. People like Marie Chouinard. She’ll put her dancers in bondage gear and pasties with prosthetics and toe shoes. I kind of like Marie Chouinard, but Makarova’s more interesting to me.

There’s a famous essay by the dance theorist Susan Leigh Foster called “The Ballerina’s Phallic Pointe.” The title basically tells you everything. I could go into detail, but it’s probably not necessary. It’s a great essay. When I read it in graduate school all kinds of things became clear to me. Susan Foster is smart, and the essay is very erudite, but the tone is a little cheeky. At one point, she says, “She is, in a word, the phallus… Now this is a naughty thing to propose.” Well, yes, Susan, it is.

I like to imagine what would happen if you passed this essay out to all those stout, pushy moms with their little girls in pink tights at the Joffrey School.

There’s another famous essay in the field of dance studies by Joann Kealiinohomoku, called “An Anthropologist Looks at Ballet as a Form of Ethnic Dance.” That one also tells you pretty much what you need to know in the title. I often think of that one when people ask me if I do “ethnic dance.”

I’d been thinking a lot about Michael Jackson, and not just because of that dying swan. Actually, it was probably hard for anybody to stop thinking about him that week. Standing in line at the register at Morton Williams, I noticed his picture was all over the tabloids. I’m not sure how they rallied all of those editorial forces so quickly. He was even on the cover of TIME – just days after his demise. The conspiracy theories were rampant. I usually tend to be a pretty sober person. I’m not particularly quick to suspect foul play. But everyone seemed to agree that that personal physician of his was going to have some explaining to do. And as I said, I had my own personal concerns.

Of course mystery was something MJ seemed to encourage, what with the disguises, the glove, the various things he seemed to be trying to conceal. And maybe it’s natural that his propensity for concealment produced in me – as it did in many others – a complicated response. I already mentioned Reverend Billy. Like everybody else, I was a little perplexed by Barack Obama’s statement on Jackson’s death – but I also understood why he needed to pussyfoot around the issue. You may remember – he called MJ a “spectacular performer” but he felt compelled to add that there were “aspects of his life that were sad and tragic.” There were a few different ways to interpret this: as a melancholy reflection on MJ’s purportedly abusive upbringing, or as a subtle repudiation of his own purported abuses of others; as a lamentation of his seeming inability to own and inhabit his blackness, or as a suggestion that a racist world had led him to practically flay himself as a sacrificial lamb at the altar of whiteness. I realize my language may appear a little exaggerated. But maybe not so much for somebody like Barack Obama.

On the evening of July 29, the day that I’d gotten home from Zagreb, unpacked, showered, shopped, done my ballet exercises, moved commas, putzed around on YouTube and discovered that uncanny video of Natalia Makarova flapping around like a gorgeous, convulsive fowl, I decided to check in one more time on falserebelmoth. “Decided to check in” may be stating this a bit casually. The truth is, she’d been flapping, moth-like, at the edge of my consciousness, and my own fascination was striking me as a bit creepy. But I couldn’t help myself: I went directly to her channel. She’d only joined a month ago, which is when she posted that Satie dance. Five channel views. Two subscribers (GoFreeVassals and that pesky quothballetcarper). There was a short string of channel comments, all from the carper, all in the last few days: “Hi. Two assignments. Learn Harvest Moon. Make a dance in ur bathtub. We dont have alot of time. Practice! Bye.” Then, “Back from my vacation at Moms. Aside from my racquet, Ive been using an axe and a chain saw a great deal recently, so when I say that I will hound you until you have produced, you must understand the real threat. I cn be brutal. Dont mistake the mild demeanor.” And finally, “Not joking about ur tub. Or the axe. Hurry up, no exuses. And remember, ‘Never say sorry its a sign of weekness.’ ”

The tone of these posts gave me pause. Obviously, he was probably joking – but the persistent axe jokes made me uneasy. I realized the degree of my interest in these private exchanges was inappropriate. It was unlikely that the carper was going to act on his threats. And yet stranger things had happened – like the case of that German Internet cannibal.

Somewhat guiltily, I clicked on the carper’s moniker and was transported to his page. He, too, had only signed up a short while ago, and in fact, he only had one channel view – mine being, presumably, the second. He did, however, have a video, evidently just posted. My heart registered with a thunk the identity of the slight, poised figure standing in the tub, eyes downcast, dressed in virginal white: it was the rebel moth! The neck of a miniature guitar, secured by a large, pale hand, was visible in the lower right-hand corner of the screen. The bathroom’s fluorescent light cast a dreamlike glow on the frosted glass of the shower enclosure.

The title of the video was “bathtub dance (harvest moon).” I clicked play.

Another plunky little chord progression started up – not Satie, but the old Tin Pan Alley tune, “Shine On, Harvest Moon,” on the uke. After four stumbling little bars of an intro, a scratchy, crooning voice came in:

The night was mighty dark so you could hardly see,

For the moon refused to shine…

Couple sittin’ underneath a willow tree,

For love they pined.

The little maid was kinda ’fraid of darkness

So she said, “I guess I’ll go…”

Boy began to sigh, looked up at the sky,

And told the moon his little tale of woe…

The “boy” squawked his mild complaint, as the “little maid” tiptoed her way around her tub en demi-pointes. At one point she executed a demure little bump and grind. The song and the dance were ridiculous, melancholy, amateurish, luminous, lewd, indecent, and foreboding, all at the same time. With the last chord, the scene faded to white, and the ambient echo of the bathroom seemed to hang for a moment in the air.

I sat there staring at the screen, trying to sort out my feelings. I recognized that inexplicable proprietary impulse. What was the moth doing on the carper’s YouTube page? Did she want to be there? And was that him commandeering the uke? She never looked him in the eye. Then again, she never looked up in that Satie dance, either. Was she being shy, or furtive, or a little hostile? Was she teasing him with that bump and grind?

His musical performance was equally perplexing. It was something between a lullaby and a howl. Was he serious about this “boy” and “his gal” business? In the pixelated, low-def video, it wasn’t easy to discern the moth’s age, but, to use that term I recently invoked in reference to myself, she seemed “mature.” The carper, or what you could glean of him, looked older still. There was a moment when he leaned slightly in to the video frame, and a small tuft of silvery hair became visible, along with the edge of a pair of reading glasses.

I watched this video three more times, even though I found it somewhat disconcerting. On the surface, it was just another oddball home video, but I couldn’t shake that sense of menace. Then I felt embarrassed and told myself I should get back to moving those commas around in my manuscript. I closed the browser. I moved the commas. I stared into space for a while and thought about writing fiction.

That night Sven texted me: “got u a present.”

He attached a photo of what appeared to be a cheesy reproduction of Degas’s painting, La classe de danse, with the figure of the ballet master replaced by a bounding, open-mouthed, alabaster-skinned Michael Jackson. The ballerinas looked on in boredom – one staring at the ceiling, one sucking on her fingers, another examining her slippers – this, in keeping with the original. It doesn’t seem like a very likely scenario, really. If MJ were to have shown up in some dance studio like that, I’m pretty sure the ballerinas would have snapped to attention. But the implications were interesting. The painting appeared to be an acknowledgement of his stature as a master of movement.

I thought I knew where this piece came from. Sven works at the Östasiatiska Museet in Stockholm. While the museum mostly houses Asian antiquities and the occasional contemporary art star, there’s generally a middle-aged Chinese guy who goes by the name of Andy outside the museum selling his own low-brow oil paintings. These are mostly reproductions of European masterpieces, a few with these oddball substitutions. You can also commission him to feature your face on, say, John Singer Sargent’s Portrait of Madame X. He usually charges around 750 kronor for a painting, which is roughly a hundred bucks. But since Sven knows him, he probably got a break. Naturally I was very touched that he’d gotten me this present. I’d mentioned to him my preoccupation with MJ ever since receiving his text.

You may get the impression from this gift that Sven has a camp sensibility. On the contrary. He’s actually extremely sensitive. That’s why I didn’t send him that YouTube link of Natalia Makarova. I thought it might make him cry. I’m also not sure how much of a sense of humor Andy has about his paintings. While he gives the impression of being a very happy person, Andy also seems pretty sincere about the things he loves. I’m not really sure about my own degree of irony. I think it’s medium.

Sven said he’d put the painting in a tube and sent it by DHL. It would probably arrive in under a week.

It was a little hot in the apartment that evening. I don’t really like air conditioning. I thought I’d go down to the garden and sit near the fountain for a while. There’s a homely little fountain they sometimes turn on. I took that queer theory book down with me. It was almost dusk, so I knew I wouldn’t get much reading done. I’m not sure exactly how I thought I might incorporate this book into my manuscript revisions anyway. It seemed relevant, but if I started addressing more theoretical material, I was pretty sure I’d end up expanding rather than contracting the citations, which were already embarrassingly bloated. I had spoken briefly with an editor from Routledge at PSi, and he asked me about the potential market for my book. I made the mistake of saying something about its “citationality” being of potential interest. I could see from the look on his face that I was badly misconstruing the meaning of market.

I sat on a bench in the middle of the garden and opened the book up again to that passage from Silvan Tomkins.

If you like to be supported and I like to hold you in my arms, we can enjoy such an embrace. If you like to be kissed and I like to kiss you, we may enjoy each other. If you like to be sucked or bitten and I like to suck or bite you, we may enjoy each other. If you like to have your skin rubbed and I like to do this to you, we can enjoy each other. If you enjoy being hugged and I enjoy hugging you, it can be mutually enjoyable. If you enjoy being dominated and I enjoy controlling you, we may enjoy each other…

I’m sure a lot of readers might consider some of this a little comical. It has something to do with that question of irony I was thinking about before. About Sven and Andy and the painting. But I also think that Silvan Tomkins was very sincere. So the business about biting and sucking is really not dirty but sort of sweet and also a little eccentric. And the business about being dominated is really not just about sadomasochistic tendencies. It struck me as simultaneously more tender and more disturbing than that.

It was starting to get dark. I looked up at the moon, which was partially obscured by the branches overhead. I was sitting under a willow tree. There are two very beautiful willow trees in that garden. And suddenly I realized where I’d seen the carper before.

I was sure of it, and it terrified me.

It was Jimmy Stewart. From Zagreb.