Bach and Mozart are names that may be impressive to some, but those who know what I’m talking about will not place the authenticity of this episode in doubt. For someone as concerned with transcendence as my former “I” was, and as my current internal “I” continues to be, Bach represents the fundamental framework of my musical appreciation, a phase that cannot be left behind, and as such continues to occupy the same place in my esteem. Only now, over him, or rather, surrounding him concentrically, Mozart has covered that primary skeleton with new and pink flesh, and today when I hear the works of the German Konzertmeister I can readily discern the voids Mozart would later fill, the places where he would lighten the weight of the phrase to make it fly. Another aspect, no less important, is that in Bach no priority is given to the feeling of lieder, which the Austrian’s melodies convey. Perhaps the fact that the latter wrote fashionable operas plays a role in this, I don’t know. But Mozart’s melodies have all the charm and ease of a song. This is something that the Russian Чайковский (Tchaikovsky) learned better than anyone else from Mozart. In this, and insofar as timbre is concerned, my quasi-compatriot Pyotr Ilyich and the Austrian Amadeus seem to me to be akin, both equally beloved by God. As product of an era when the once minor genre of the song has displaced all others, I am perforce most grateful to these two splendid musicians for their happy union, so gratifying to my ears, of the trivial and the sublime.
III. (Trapped within networks of reflections such as these, his vision enmeshed by that melody, Monk was henceforth prepared to see only LINDAS who were haloed by that celestial music.)
FLUORIDE. It took me years to ascend from the abyss of dreams into the superior levels of wakefulness. Before that, in the depths of my existence as a multipod amoeba, I had no ears for the death rattle of the cetaceans in bloody struggle against the flesh-eating orcas. I did not know that one or more public personalities had launched a proclamation that denounced my abyssal existence, I had no eyes for the gradations of the color blue and was incapable of distinguishing, among all the many oceans, the good one of free will.
But after my visit to the (CHINESE) PALACE, I developed a new organ to help me navigate the clean, clear waters of a full life. I acquired a vision that could reveal in sharp focus the secret components of that state of freedom. Something like the heightened perceptions of the hypochondriac who every morning lends an anguished ear to the arrhythmic beating of his own heart and discovers a new ache, a persistent sharp pain in the side. . Still half asleep and in a bad mood, I jumped out of bed into an uncertain future in 198*. I went into the bathroom, chewed mechanically on the toothbrush, and was shaken by a sign of jubilation that shot through my nervous centers at lightning speed. My God! It was that magnificent toothpaste I’d bought the day before. I felt better and more confident, my mouth overflowing with foam. I stared straight into my own eyes in the mirror.
Spacodent was the name of one of those FLUORIDATED toothpastes.
I. Frivolity attacked the carbonic chains of the IMPERIUM with all the force reduction of FLUORIDE. The IMPERIUM, which had projected its considerable plantigrade weight into the distance of a perfect future, collapsed under the pressure of purebred dogs, the once impossible dream of Jaguar convertibles and soft Persian carpets, undermined by the new goal of a pleasant way of life that, over time, had managed to replace all its celestial objectives. It had been at least five years since anyone wore one of those awful striped neckties. That is: a profound antagonism had become apparent between the quietism of the Doctrine and the dizzying scandal of disposable diapers: between the search for a future kingdom of truth on this earth and the “general line” of the century, which was to consume the present and consider the future no more than a mental construct. The peoples held captive by the IMPERIUM peered out into the dark night, afloat on a warm sea awash in delightful detritus, to watch the illuminated ship that was the permanent carnival of the OCCIDENT coming toward them, and they heaved a collective, pensive sigh. “Yes, it’s in a state of decay, no doubt, but how good it smells!”
THELONIOUS: To believe that the IMPERIUM fell for purely economic reasons is to commit the sin of pedestrian materialism and ignore the teachings of Weber. I’ve meditated at length on the phenomenon of hits on the RADIO. For anyone not in on the secret, it turns out to be very difficult to assay the strength of a hit, its devastating effects. A song that is trivial — or musically impoverished, which amounts to the same thing — can come to have greater social resonance than a manifesto, but this influence is surreptitious, masked. The effect on the Doctrine is that of a stealth bomb that imperceptibly changes mentalities, distorting or adulterating our ineluctable responsibility to do something, become something, be useful. The influence of the hit is called “ideological deviation” or “ideological penetration.” A very apt name, for in reality what occurs is a kind of invasion by osmosis of the minds of people who want only to love, suffer, be successful, and live comfortably in a well-defined present moment between a yesterday and a tomorrow.
You might say there’s no reason why this should enter into any sort of contradiction with the Doctrine of the Distant Morrow. Nevertheless, the latter ideology is predicated on a kind of asceticism, a life whose every sphere is political, which, in the final analysis, does not deny the earthly delights (which are even encouraged, very timidly, by its ideologues) but places a single great objective ahead of them. Two or three hits, the latest style, the irresponsibility of youth, enter into open conflict with these postulates (giving rise to the so-called “ideological struggle”). Youth, breezy afternoons, a generous portion of some delicious frozen concoction (VANILLA ICE cream, for example), demand a here and now that is thrilling, exultant, danceable.
FOREST, CONIFEROUS (see: BOSCAGE).
G
GREAT GATSBY, THE. In the bottomless sea of the IMPERIUM’S former capital, a few islets of prosperity had lowered their anchors: full-fledged OCCIDENTAL boutiques, red and fluorescent. In front of one such establishment a few curious passersby were pointing to dresses that were very lovely and very expensive (like the gowns of Catherine the Great in the Hermitage, also behind glass: crinolines whose taffeta silk was very old and very distant) and, good Lord, ties that cost $30, an entire month’s salary at current exchange rates, knotted at the collar of shirts made of printed silk — the last cry that year — which also seemed very old because they belonged to an inaccessible present. It looked like the window of a cabinet of wonders, PETER’S Kuntzkamera: a mammoth tusk exhibited alongside a magnificent electric dishwasher.
I hadn’t told LINDA I planned to buy her a dress for that night’s dinner. She thought we were only stopping to admire the display. (Oh, yes, she’d seen leggings like these once before—lycra they call it — in a mail-order catalog!)
LINDA wanted to try on a dress that was very beautiful and very expensive, just to see how she looked. It suited her marvelously.
“It suits you marvelously. Have I mentioned that we’re having dinner at the Astoria tonight?”
At last LINDA understood the scope of my plan. She was speechless, then asked me uncertainly, “Do you think anyone might take it the wrong way, because I accepted your proposition so quickly? It’s a novel, isn’t it?”