I’m from New Jersey

Everyone other than Ida and I end up going out to some club I’ve never heard of, pretty far outside the city center, including Jeff.

They all walk into the club, and it is from Jeff’s perspective no different from any other club he’s been to before, save for the company he’s with, and the people at the club, most of whom are Danish –

The music is loud, generally background house music, of the type they play at Le Bain, that seems an unending medley of indifferentiable baselines, all with a steady beat, the music changing so gradually, you never notice the changes at all, absent conscious effort.

Jeff is not a fan, but he understands the utility of this type of music, in an environment where you need to fill the void, creating demand for a type of primal communication, of which he is a master.

He gets to know everyone well enough beforehand, so there’s only incremental schmoozing left to obtain the arguably unwanted status of the center of attention, which is something he can’t do without, due to his physical stature, and imposing personality.

So he it makes it happen –

He identifies the most likely point of friction, Ron, the petite gay man, who appreciates Jeff’s intellectualism, after hours with him at our home beforehand, but is nonetheless naturally a bit distant from the large, lumbering, heterosexual male.

Jeff charms Ron to the point that Ron is later seated atop Jeff’s shoulders, as Jeff bounces Ron up and down to the music, as Ron sings along to a song he happens to recognize –

This catches the attention of a group of Danish girls, in their late twenties, seeing a petite man, in tight, high-legged shorts, perched atop the shoulders of a beast, with both men laughing hysterically, in earnest, at the presumed absurdity of the scene.

One of the girls makes eye contact with Ron, who waves them over, and seeing a sizable table filled with free drinks, before a couch fit for dancing, they’re now completely sold on the matter –

Ron taps Jeff on the chest, like some kind of giant horse-man, who gently places him back on the dance floor, both giving each other a giant hug afterwards, while still laughing.

The girls approach, and Ron offers them drinks, as does Jeff, one of the girls immediately firing off at Jeff in Danish, which is not surprising, given his appearance, which borders on the cliche Nordic man:

Tall, fit, with blond hair, fair skin, albeit a multiple up in scale.

Jeff replies to her in English,

“I’m from New Jersey.”, causing her to laugh, already softened up a bit from the scene before involving Ron.

She says, somewhat loud, leaning in so he can hear, with the music blasting, as he’s now standing behind the table, with her before it,

“What’s your name?”

“Jeff, how about you?”, he says, to which she replies,

“Pernilla”,

He repeats,

“Pernilla?”

And she says,

“Yes, you’ve got it right.”, to which he says,

“Just making sure –

So what do you want?

We’ve got vodka, Hendrix, and some champagne too, which you’re welcome to, but we don’t have a lot.”

“I’ll have champagne, if that’s OK.”

So he pours a glass, and she laughs a bit, as he lifts an already thin champagne flute, which now looks comically tiny in the full context of his massive frame –

As he carefully pours the champagne, she can see that he is oddly delicate, succeeding without any spillage, then recalling the way he placed Ron back onto the dance floor, immediately puzzled by an apparently complex person from New Jersey.

Physical graffiti

There’s only one late-night food option outside the club, which is basically a grocery store, that now stays open late only because of the club, giving them a brand new source of income.

Jeff walks in with Pernilla, both of them completely obliterated, after several hours of heavy drinking –

Jeff now confronted with an ocean of foreign labels, written in what appears to be heavily vandalized English, he spots a wooden cubby filled with bananas, a familiar food, and so he moves upon his prey, grabbing a bunch, still attached at the stem, roughly a dozen in number, and marches to the counter, simply pointing at the bananas with his credit card, while looking at the clerk, who nods, prompting Jeff to simply hand the clerk his credit card.

Don’t get too excited

Jeff and Pernilla get out of a cab, both hysterically laughing at nothing.

Jeff then opens the door to the house, prompting Pernilla to exclaim,

“Fann, who is your friend?”,

Upon seeing the landing of the staircase, unclear if she recognizes the painting, but in any case, with the sense, this is not a normal set up.

“Don’t get too excited”, he replies, pulling up the chain that then lifts a trap door in the floor, exposing the staircase to the studio below, in the basement.

She looks at him, grinning,

“This is mental.”

Eurovision

Jeff is sleeping on the couch in the basement studio lounge, unfolded into a bed, together with Pernilla –

He wakes up first, to total darkness, since the studio has no windows, and no incoming light, but for the two staircases, which Jeff has left concealed.

He desperately needs to vomit, and knowing there’s a bathroom, he grabs his phone to use it as a light, but it’s not enough to navigate –

Spotting a light switch, he accidentally turns on a bright neon light that says, “This is not a door”, which is above what is plainly a door, now glowing bright red in his face, somehow adding to his nausea, annoying him, though he leaves it lit.

He then spots what looks like another light switch, which apparently does nothing, which he angrily flips up and down, but it is instead the volume fader for a set of headphones mounted on the wall of the studio lounge.

Finally, he spots the remote for the TV, which he wagers should provide enough lighting, when on.

Confused, and desperately hungover, still otherwise in the dark, he turns on the television, sincerely hoping for some kind of brightly-lit programming that will end his drunken woes:

It’s a best-of Eurovision show, glaring at an unreasonably loud volume, which Jeff fears he has no time to adjust, featuring a male singer, wearing what is in essence a figure skater’s outfit, throwing his body about a preposterous stage, with cheesy pyrotechnics, audibly exploding, basically shouting into a microphone, in what strikes Jeff as most likely to be German, as he briefly stares in disbelief at the TV, thinking for a moment this could be a telethon for mentally ill people, having seen some phone numbers flash, that are instead intended for voting –

Hearing positively awful, saxophone-heavy music, as the singer parades about the stage in spandex, with innumerable flairs, flying about, positioned inopportunely along the singer’s lanky, and highly visible frame, with a deep-cut tank, exposing copious chest hair, all of this ultimately expressed in a totally alien language.

Jeff, now able to see somewhat, quickly spots and grabs an ice bucket from the table below the TV, and vomits –

Pernilla bursts into laughter, then hiding herself under the blanket.

I’ve added a new sequence to the second book of my short story, Sketches of the Inchoate, entitled, “The awful boat”.

Enjoy!

Sketches of the Inchoate – Information and Belief

I’ve started a second book of short stories, continuing the first, with my work in information theory now explicitly incorporated in the text, that is nonetheless a continuation of the same narrative, about a young couple in Scandinavia.

Enjoy!

Sketches of the Inchoate – Information and Belief

The office

Today I’m working on thermodynamics –

Specifically, the first question I considered at the intersection of information theory and physics, about six years ago:

How much information do you need to describe a thing?

One conclusion that I reached, about six years ago, is that light must be the simplest substance we’re aware of, in terms of how much information it takes to describe its behavior –

Just point a lit flashlight at a wall.

How would you describe what the light did to get there?

You’d merely have to point in the direction that it traveled, since the speed of light is constant.

So if you want to describe what light does, all you have to know is the direction that it’s going, and then you know everything you need to know to about its motion.

Now compare that to throwing a plate of spaghetti at a wall –

If you want to account for the movement of the noodles, you’ll need a lot of detail, since they’ll all do different things, possibly moving at different speeds, in different directions, at different times.

There is of course more to my work than just flashlights and some noodles, and the commercial goal is to describe complex systems using simple code –

If you can do that, then you can predict how it will behave on a cheap computer, which has applications that range from farming, to defense.

And I’ve done exactly this, today, so now I’m headed home.

I pack up for the day –

I open up a new pack of printer paper, that I use to keep my notes, writing down an outline of my work.

Once I’m done, I wipe the dry erase board clear, using the eraser, doubling back with a wet cloth.

Then I punch three-ring binder holes in my notes, add them to a binder that’s been accumulating, for about a month, I’ll eventually have picked up, scanned, and placed into storage, and uploaded to a system I can search, later on, if I need to.

I’m working for a private U.S. aeronautics firm, getting paid to do this type of research in A.I., having left my old job about a year ago.

Ida simply switched her office, working out of Copenhagen, which was fine with her, since she has a lot of friends in the city, and in Malmö.

I told her I’d be making more than I was before, with a year’s worth of severance, if the new job didn’t work out, so she was fine overall with the move.

What I didn’t mention is that I sold some rights in my core algorithms, which allow almost every problem in machine learning to be solved quickly on extremely cheap computers –

They can turn a $150 tablet into a supercharged 10-year old, that can read, and recognize objects, but also track the path of about a dozen rockets, and predict 10,000 steps in the future, in an instant.

I hid this not to lie to her, or protect my wealth, since it’s probably not protected by local law, in any case –

I did it so we keep things steady, so the move would be simpler, and this news would soon surprise her on the upside.

I told her the truth about the matter she was most concerned with, which is my salary, leaving this additional good news for another day.

The open house

Walking around Copenhagen, we often visit open houses, with old brownstones being our favorite.

We came upon an old brownstone on a quiet block, with a bright blue door, draped in vines, potted flowers in the windows, and a pale brick exterior.

We saw the sign for an open house, and decided to have a look inside –

There were a bunch of people floating around, with the broker near the door, with a tiny fold-up desk, and a bunch of business cards –

She was polite, but assertive, shaking both our hands, Ida’s hand first, handing each of us a business card.

The house is very old, with wide-planked, weathered, hardwood floors, an old wooden staircase, terminating at an exposed landing, with a wrap-around, wooden banister.

The house was completely empty, and so the tenants must have moved already, which suggests they’re either too rich to care about the cost of the house, or getting desperate for a closing.

In either case, they’re clearly done with the place, suggesting that it can be taken.

Ida seems immediately taken as well, walking up the stairs, on her own, I can see her fingers brush the old, rough railing on the banister, as she stares up toward the landing, eventually disappearing into one of the rooms at the top of the stairs.

I stay put, staring out, through the railroad layout of the first floor, out into the kitchen, then through the kitchen window, getting faint glimpses of the backyard, just beyond –

I can see the daylight, broken up by a moving tree, lightly swaying in the wind, casting moving light along the floors, walls, and ceilings of the house.

Ida comes back out, peeking in the bathroom at the top right of the landing, seeing me below, with a look I’ve never seen before –

A calm more than happy, serene in her slower motions, her hand again hovers down the railing, fingers lightly touching on its rough grain, beyond the light let in by the kitchen window, someone new opens up the front door, and Ida gets lit up, breaking through her newfound stoicism, leaving just a simple grin, looking at me with a subtle love, leaving me now sharing in her grace.

…

The next day I email the broker –

“Hi Anna –

I’m interested in the house, what are next steps?”

To which she replies, a few hours later –

“Hello Charles,

I’d like to set up a phone interview to be sure it all makes sense, as we have an offer, near the asking price.

What day works best for you?”

To which I immediately reply,

“I’ll pay .03% over asking, cash”.

To which she quickly replies –

“Hi Charles,

That’s great, but we’ll need to run a background check first, and so I think we’ll still need to do a call, before we move ahead.”

And I fire back, copying my banker –

“Anna –

Please meet Espen, he can get you any info that you need.

Espen –

Please see below, and coordinate with Anna.

I’d like to get this closed as soon as possible, so please keep me posted on any issues that pop up.

Thanks,

Charles”

We close on the house, six weeks later.

Another transponder

Driving over the Øresundsbron Bridge into Malmö, I play, “Hurricane”, by Mat Zo.

“This is a bit aggressive.” she says, to which I reply,

“Give it a minute.”

A large group of seagulls fly along the car, just beyond the bridge, with enormous clouds lining both sides of the horizon, beginning where the horizon meets the sea below, and up hundreds of feet into the air, though the sky above is perfectly clear – 

I take a sip from my water bottle, and she gestures, asking to have a bit as well, so I pass it over to her.

I quickly look out my window, to see an airplane at cruising altitude, making its way above the giant wall of clouds, painting a clean horizontal line parallel to the horizon below, with a second plane at what seems to be another few hundred feet above the first, heading in the opposite direction, in roughly our direction of motion, and Ida asks,

“Why do you always look at airplanes?”, to which I reply,

“I don’t know how it got started, but one time I actually found legitimate mechanical insight from it, so now it’s become a habit.”

“You’re a proper freak.”, she says, with a somewhat awkward pause afterwards.

The song takes off about a minute later, and I can see she really likes it, as she squeezes my leg, saying,

“I’m sorry that I tease you for your strange behaviors –

I see they work for you, and so I don’t mind.”

“Thank you, your majesty.”, I reply, looking forward.

So she pinches my leg.

Now four minutes into the song, we approach its climax, the kick repeating, leaving, alerting us to something new to come –

Synth pads bouncing, vocals panning, the bass line slowly rising, into higher registers, the bridge itself, rising from the road below, into a suspension structure, for the second time, with beams repeating, rapidly, as we barrel on, echoing the sky on either side, I see her looking up to trace their path, then descending, like a landing, as I see her joy, in the animated structure of the world around us –

Our decisions, however meager, contribute to a moving portrait, we share, together, as coauthors and spectators of an uncertain future, and a certain now.

She looks out the window as we leave the beams behind us, looking outward, singing to herself, this time content with my participation in her song.

She looks down at the windshield, seeing the small American flag stuck upon the glass, smiling at me, in my cliché, understanding my love for New York, and America as well –

That I could come from nowhere else, at least on this Earth.

Estampes

On the drive back, I tell her that I have a few surprises –

She’s a bit tired, leaning on my shoulder, and asks,

“Will they require much effort on my part?”, and she quickly adds,

“Please tell me they don’t involve that awful boat.”, to which I reply,

“There are no boats at all involved, just a bit of walking, but not that far from our apartment.”, to which she says,

“Fair enough, I’ll oblige.”, as she again rests her head on my shoulder.

…

I park the car in our usual spot, down the block from our apartment, and as she gets out, she says,

“So which way are we going?”

And I point, as the both of us head onward, now hand in hand, with Ida visibly a bit tired, episodically resting her head again against my body.

We get up to the house, and she says,

“I knew you did this –

I cannot believe you, Charles.”

I take out the key, and open up the front door, having already set the dimmer the night before, together with a blanket, tealight candles, a bottle of connonau, to remind us of Sardegna, with two, tall, wide glasses set on top.

There’s another light at the top of the landing, just above a painting she didn’t see at the openhouse, so she leans her head in, walking closer to the painting, and upon recognizing Odilon Redon’s, “Pandora”, she exclaims,

“Now I didn’t think that you did that –

Charles you’re a maniac, that must have cost a fortune.”

“Yes.”, I reply.

…

She starts to take off her shirt, as the warm chords of Estampes, by Debussy begin, and so I do the same, laying my shirt on the blanket just before me, under the old chandelier, with those thin, faux-candlestick lights, the crystals hanging under, partially illuminated, in the dim light that I’ve set it to, as I move over to lay my back atop my shirt, she moves to climb on top of me.

I can see the Redon at the top of the stairs, as we kiss, seeing Ida, somehow the subject of a painting from over a century ago, made by a man, I somewhat jokingly think looks a bit like Odin –

Having stolen Ida, just for me, from Heaven itself, paying with his life for his generosity.

She opens her eyes, knowing that I never close mine, and sees me staring up, knowing more or less what I see now, she slips down to lay atop my chest, my head now against the floor, looking up into the chandelier above –

Motionless, just like us, glowing of a different sort, till the song is over, both of us knowing, we’re to get up at the end, put our clothes back on, and walk home, together, because finally, it’s just the two of us.

I’ve included yet another essay, as part of the sequence in New York, to my short story, “Sketches of the Inchoate”, and made a few other drafting changes.

I understand this is a technical blog, but the writing actually reflects my ideas on art, which are in turn informed by my ideas on A.I., and so I think the document is actually interesting for those interested in perception and signal processing.

In any case, enjoy!

Sketches of the Inchoate

Elderly woman on a small corner in Soho

We’re in bed the next morning, and I am brutally hungover.

Our hotel room is completely filled with sunlight, though the temperature is quite nice, and so I’m cowering under the blanket, literally moaning out loud, rolling around a bit in what is legitimate anguish.

I open my eyes, just enough to look outside, and see the glare of an airplane, at an extremely highly altitude, able to see it only because the sky is perfectly clear, allowing the faint reflection to make its way to me –

Seeing that I’ve opened my eyes, she leans her head in, obstructing my view, otherwise seated upright, close to the center of her side of the bed, which is closer to the window, her hair brushing up against my skin, drastically changing the scene from my drunken perch.

In my neediness, I enjoy the sensation of her hair, and the smell of her skin, so I deeply inhale, which she notices, bordering on disgusted with my condition, she says,

“Wake up you loser”, poking me through the blanket.

“No.”

“This is your fault –

I’m not spending all day in bed, this is my trip too, get up.”, she continues, this time, back to being seated upright, her ability to sit up adding consternation.

“No.”

Apparently in perfectly fine shape, she begins her merciless infantilization:

“Poor Charles –

Do you remember what you did on the walk to the car?”

“Somewhat, was it good?”, I reply.

“Not the best thing in the world, but the elderly woman you took to dancing with was clearly enjoying herself, so, well done, overall, I suppose.”

I pull the blanket totally over my head, partially in response, as she says,

“Fine, fifteen more minutes, then get up and take a shower, you stink.”

She leans over the edge of the bed, grabs her phone, which is resting on the floor near the bed, and disconnects it from the charger.

I can hear her connect to the room’s system, and, “Para Mais Ninguém”, by Marisa Monte starts playing, so I pull the blanket off of my head, the room so bright, my eyelids don’t do the job, as I can see the back of my eyelids lit up, in an inconvenient, fleshy color.

Nonetheless, I love the song, so I don’t give a shit what’s happening –

I hear the samba guitar, somewhere between classical, jazz, and flamenco, waking my mind, despite my body, so I smile, and she leans in, kissing the side of my forehead, but stops, and says,

“You smell like a tank of gin.”

“I know.”

“You’re such a loser.”, she says.

“I know.”

After the saxophone solo, she starts singing along, and I remember how beautiful her voice is:

Not quite keeping up with Monte’s subtle vibrato, but not really trying, either, instead with the clarity of a proper choir singer, leading me to tear up a bit, because it’s all so beautiful, and I’m emotional when I’m hung over.

“You fruit!”, she says, upon spotting my moment of weakness, due to overconsumption.

“Shut up, I love you.”

“Get up.”, she says, pushing me again under the sheets.

“No.”

I’ve been pounding away at this text, and now I think it’s essentially done, and includes a list of references of all of the music cited during the story, complete with hyperlinks to performances.

Enjoy!

Sketches of the Inchoate

Sketches of the Inchoate

The Club

She’s getting dressed at our hotel, whereas I’ve decided to visit my old social club, which has arranged all of my dry cleaning for me, and so I shower, shave, and get dressed there, before the concert.

I step out of the sauna, walking through the grey marble shower area, towards a white tiled room, filled with sinks.

There are aluminum racks mounted onto the walls, filled with fresh, white towels, of various sizes, and I grab a small wash cloth, that I plan to use while shaving.

My old routine comes back to me:

The sensations, and smells, of having spent about an hour in a sauna and steam room, working out, playing squash, my skin a bit numb, prime for a shave, I grab a disposable plastic razor.

Using only unscented bar soap and water to moisten my skin beforehand, I trim the hairs that go beyond the intended perimeter of my beard:

The ones that grow too high along my cheekbone, or too low below my neck.

I use a pair of scissors, and a plastic comb, and get work, trimming the beard itself, using the comb to first lift the hairs up, by brushing up against the grain, and then using the scissors to clip the beard to a roughly uniform length.

I also trim my hair itself, eyeing for any anomalously long hairs that have grown out of sync with the rest.

This takes significant time, but I’ve set aside a few hours to enjoy myself at The Club, which I haven’t been to in about a year.

The Club is a proper, New York social club, centuries old, with deep, longstanding ties to the U.S. Government, set in a repurposed mansion, complete with paintings of U.S. Presidents, generals, and an old wood bar, with a fireplace, a stated code of conduct, and art from the Revolutionary War, and Civil War, that hangs above.

All of this brings back memories of my elementary school:

The blue blazers, khaki pants, my school motto and crest, turtlenecks, and Nicole Miller ties:

The Upper East Side in the 80’s –

I remember the sting of this joy being taken from me, after only a few years of childhood, leaving me totally crazed as a young adult, relentless in my ambition to return to the station at which I felt most at home, that I was completely convinced someone had stolen from me.

Later walking outside the Metropolitan Club as a broke teenager, seeing clouds painted into the colossal wooden ceilings, knowing now that I can walk in whenever I want, and order a drink, because I belong to a small circle of people allowed to walk into these types of buildings, all over the world.

The Club reminds me of who I am –

An American, that fell from grace, desperate to rebuild.

When I’m finished shaving, I enter the shower room, throw a fresh towel over the frosted glass door of one of the available stalls, turn the water on, spending a minute simply relaxing under the oversized showerhead, letting the water remove any soap, or hairs, that I may have missed during my shave.

I again use only the same unscented soap, not washing my hair, which I do at most once a week.

Once I feel ready, I turn off the water, grab the towel from above the glass door, and exit toward the lounge, where my dry cleaning and shoes are waiting for me, hanging in one of the dozen or so wooden changing areas that line the walls of the lounge.

A TV mounted on one of the walls is playing a hockey game, and there’s an old man in a bathrobe, seated on the leather couch, opposite the TV, staring into it, with a plate of deviled eggs in front of him, and what appears to be a sizable glass of straight vodka, with some olives in it.

I reach in, tearing the plastic wrapping off of my dry cleaning, to see my dark blue, Hugo Boss suit, which looks crisp, my white cotton Valentino shirt behind it, stains gone, and the cuffs look excellent.

My tie was already in great condition, a light blue, sort of shiny, also Hugo Boss, and so that’s rolled up in my gym bag, along with my belt, socks, and boxers.

I slip my boxers on first –

Ralph Lauren, cotton, spacious, with a comfortable waistband, solid blue denim in color, with a single tiny red horse on the bottom seam of the left leg.

Then I put my socks on, also Ralph Lauren, simple, black, no additional coloring, or unnecessary structure –

Just somewhat elastic, and tight, pulling them up, as high as they can go, up my calf muscle.

I pull my suit pants out the plastic, slip them on, and I can already feel they fit well, having been recently tailored to account for a sight dip in weight, I leave them open.

I then grab my shirt, slip my arms into the sleeves, begin tucking the shirt into the back of my pants, then pulling my pants up a bit, and button up my shirt.

Once complete, I close the clasps on my pants, zip them up, grab my belt, and loop it through, eventually running the right side of the belt through the gold buckle, and secure the leftover brown leather into the first loop to the left of the buckle.

My jacket still hanging, I reach into my gym bag, and pull out a pair of Paul Smith cuff links, gold, with the classic rainbow print that matches the trim on the interior of my wallet, and slip them both in, looking at them the way you would check the time on a watch, I can see the deep contrast between the white of my shirt, and the painted gold face of my cuff links.

I sit down on the bench inside the changing area, and examine my shoes, which look great, and I can smell that they’ve just been polished –

Sliding my right foot in, I get the sensation of the frictionless entry that occurs with a freshly polished pair of shoes.

I see the faded gold remnants of a Bruno Magli logo disappear as my left foot slides in, giving me a sense of completeness.

Carnegie Hall

We plan to meet outside the main entrance at 19:30, so I get there at 19:15, since it’s a concert, and being late could leave you shut out.

At 19:25, I see Ida begin to exit a black car a few feet away from me, through the crowd outside the concert hall.

I walk over to her, rather quickly, partly to make sure that she that sees me, but also because I’m excited to see her.

Once she’s exited, I lean in to thank the driver, close the door, taking her right hand with my left, and we head into the concert hall, together.

I’ve printed out our tickets, which are folded in the inner pocket of my suit jacket, which I present to the attendee at the base of the stairs, just beyond the main entrance.

The attendee tells us where to go, but I already know, as these are my favorite seats in Carnegie Hall:

Tier 1, Box 33.

We walk up the main stairs, and given that we have some time, we grab a drink.

The place is completely packed, the line for drinks unreasonable as a result, but we have time, so we stand, and we wait.

She tells me about the last concert she saw, at Oslo’s new concert hall, and I recount walking outside, with Norwegian friends of mine, a few years ago.

I tell her about my college professor, who would always talk about seeing Horowitz play at Carnegie, and her eyes light up, both of us mutually enchanted by these stories, and I feel a bit sad, realizing how rare it is for people our age to actually enjoy these things –

Most people wouldn’t even understand what I’m talking about, let alone enjoy the conversation.

We get our drinks, and eat some snacks they’ve laid out, for free, given the scale of tonight’s event.

The attendees show up, ringing the chimes, a few minutes before we’re supposed to head to our seats, and so we both finish our drinks, as we begin walking –

Tracing the hallway that surrounds the main concert hall itself, following the numbers along the way, ultimately arriving at the door to our section, which I open, and step back, as she enters.

We’re the first to arrive, and carefully make our way through the miniature maze of eight seats, on our way to the front row, having booked the center and righthand seat.

Just before she sits down, she removes her jacket, and I see that she’s wearing a beaded, black dress, effectively opaque, with straps over her shoulders, and a low-cut back, displaying the breadth of her shoulders, as she turns away from me, revealing the muscles in her back, placing her jacket on the back of her seat –

She’s not wearing a bra, since the dress seems to have internal support, causing it to be snug around her ribs, and under her breasts, lifting them.

This causes the weight of the dress to hang mostly from her ribs, rather than the shoulder straps, which appear decorative, not load-bearing.

The dress falls freely, not form fitting, but slowly floating away from her body as you approach the bottom seam, though it’s tight enough that you can nonetheless see the structure of her body as she moves.

The dress rises up under her breasts, and though it’s nonetheless modest from the front, you can see the outlines of her cleavage, with additional, small grey and mother of pearl beading, woven into the dress, beginning near the upper portion of her ribs, increasing in density as you approach the bust of the dress, accentuating the lift of the dress under her breasts, and the seams around the front of her dress, near her skin.

The bottom of the dress has fluted pleats, and is asymmetrical, higher on the left leg than the right, ending about six inches above her right ankle, with the same beading around her breast, increasing in density as you approach the bottom seam from all sides of the dress.

She’s wearing simple, black leather flats, with the leather a bit scrunched around the center of her feet, suggesting perhaps an elastic lining, creating tension, keeping them snug, as there are no laces.

Her purse is small, the size and shape of an envelope, completely covered in large, white sequins, that look like feathers, under which is a steel mesh that the sequins are sewn into, with the sequins and mesh almost totally obscuring a blue fabric under the steel that makes up the outer body of the purse itself.

The inside of the purse has a decorative silk lining, like a classic ascot, or tie, with an overall blueish hue –

I look in to see that she’s brought only her phone, lip gloss, credit cards, and keys, as she quickly applies a bit of lip gloss just after sitting down.

She’s wearing hardly any makeup, just mascara, and what is ultimately a subtle, almost colorless lip gloss, with no earrings.

She smells like Heaven when finally settled into the seat next to mine.

Evgeny

Evgeny Kissin walks on to the stage, which is itself littered with seats, the piano surrounded, because the show is totally overbooked –

Everyone rises, the entire house bursts into an uproarious applause, with some even shouting in their excitement, as he approaches the piano.

He’s wearing a simple, black tuxedo, white shirt, black shoes, his confidence remarkable, walking directly into a sea of people, celebrating him, desperate, for him to deliver them somewhere better.

Unfazed, this is exactly what he does:

He opens with, “Lieberstraum”, by Franz Liszt, which begins with a delicate opening line, modestly accompanied by arpeggios in the upper registers, that is of course later full of the dramatic, impossibly busy work that Liszt is know for, and that Kissin is famous for interpreting.

The acoustics are wonderful –

I can almost the feel low register of the left hand, the high register, clean, lucid, resonance sustaining, without a noise in the house.

Ida and I are transfixed, as Kissin begins to hammer the bass notes, as the piece modulates from E major, back to A flat major, eventually dissolving into the midpoint:

An initially busy, but ultimately sparse, chromatic line, that reintroduces the opening theme, this time in a higher register.

I point to the program, which lists the song title, taking a pen out of my suit jacket pocket, drawing a line below the title:

“Lieberstraum, S. 541, No. 3.”

I then write below the characters,

“541, No.”,

The message,

“Eda, Norway.”,

She looks at me, concerned, as if she’s slipping into something, but she understands.

…

Kissin is notorious for extended encores, that would otherwise border on abusive, except no one wants him to stop, with people sometimes seated for an hour after the scheduled closing –

Ida and I are more than happy to simply sit there, until he’s said what he needs to, astonished, every moment passing, appreciative –

The tireless, relentless, human effort, and love, that go into reaching these levels of performance.

Both of us know how lucky we are to simply participate, however meagerly, alive, knowing there’s a pile of bodies that blindly and relentlessly dedicated themselves to nothing other that what we are experiencing.

The unending nonsense of heartache and death, disease and pointless loss, misfortune and injustice –

Whatever, we will make art,

For we know this is not a world made for us, but we will make it ours, anyhow, take what we can get, while we can, most importantly, each other.

…

After about thirty five minutes of unscheduled performances, of Fauré, Chopin, Bach, Mozart, The Brahms Intermezzo Op. 118 No. 2, shocking me with, “Je te Veux”, by Erik Satie, he finally closes with, “The Lark”, by Mikhail Glinka:

The piece briefly modulates to C sharp major (using the mode on the five), but then, the opening theme is reintroduced, again in A sharp minor, but now with the addition of an independent chromatic line, in the upper register, as if Liszt showed up, lending a hand, but she still sees only one man on stage, doing all of this work –

I hear Ida say, “My God”, under her breath, almost in tears.

I look over at her again, during a lull, just before the closing phrase, now to find that she’s actually crying, her bottom lip quivering, and I lose it –

I feel tears start to well up in my eyes.

She sees this, takes my right hand, and with a bit of desperation, places it below hers, on top of her left leg, and I can feel the beads of her dress press into the palm of my hand, under the weight of hers, the tip of my fingers briefly brushing against the red velvet of the seat below, feeling the warmth of her hand above mine, and her leg below, as the closing phrase of the piece finally begins, echoing the opening, but with the introduction of a major third, still holding onto the minor sixth –

Bitterness, the simultaneously irreconcilable tones, when separated by time, making the joy of the major third, feel like relief, holding Ida’s hand, after only a moment of separation.

Attached is an updated copy of my short story, Sketches of the Inchoate, that includes the latest essay:

Sketches of the Inchoate