Futile Horn

09.21.2003 - 6:00 am (apology)

I was trying to read on the train downtown last night when it occurred to me that I wanted to continue working on the somewhat lengthy piece of fiction I began in college, my “grand Faustian adventure” as I somewhat whimsically call it. But I’ve decided that it is truly going to be a novel “for the drawer”, as I think it is called. I am giving myself license to be as self-indulgent as I want, to use any kind of unrealistic devices I choose, to please myself and not worry if the entire world would think it was impenetrable muck. It’s not permission to be lazy (in fact maybe just the opposite), but it’ll be my playground. This may not sound like anything special, but I’ve written for money and I’ve written with the intention to sell, and I learned a lot from the experience, but it also made me cranky and occasionally miserable.

I went to the coffee shop where I wrote a few pages of the aforementioned grand Faustian adventure. The same jazz band was playing as last week, and I think after about a month the people there have begun to recognize me. My paranoia says they think I smell funny, but I rationally remind myself that someone who comes regularly, doesn’t create any scenes or make any messes, and fills a space at the relatively empty tables is probably welcome, and the looks on their faces are certainly genuine “let’s look pleasant so he’ll come back and drink more of our coffee and who knows maybe even bring someone with him next time, that dumb sorry loser” smiles.

I visited the music megastore, took a lengthy walk around town, and then sat my ass in the square where I watched the skaters and the bikers and that sort of gymnastics dancing there has got to be some name for, trying to be invisible to people who smoked and ate McDonald’s too close to me or asked me through too many teeth which tricks they should attempt on the stairs.

After at least an hour of this, a group of girls came up to me wondering if they could ask me a question. Apparently a friend of theirs was having a birthday and they were recording video greetings from people on the street on the digi-camcorder one of them was holding. This struck me as a brilliant idea, but although I had an attention whore from about 11 till I graduated high school, I was somewhat horrified at the prospect of looking like an ass-geek in front of these girls and then on tape for there friend, wherever he happened to be. I could have declined being in the pensive introverted mood I was in, but I felt that would have looked just as bad, so I stalled for what felt like an eternity (but I’m sure was under a minute) with inane questions about their friend and his tastes. I finally said “roll it” without an itch of a clue about what I would do.

I said, “I’m sitting here thinking about the philosopher Socrates and how he was brought up on the charges of impiety and corrupting the youth. And I thought to myself, what if it weren’t impiety they were charging him with. What if it were something else? What if they charged him with being a pimp? What would his defense have been like? So I decided to write a song about it, and it goes something like this.”

And I looked down at my notebook and read off what I had been scribbling. It went something like this:

They got me up on charges I’m corrupting all the youth
Looking far too gorgeous, talking far too smooth
Know’n’ the heav’nly bodies and what’s underneath their skirts
I can name every goddess, all the furies in their turn
These men are only jealous cus they haven’t got a shot
They thought they’re Casanovas but I showed them that they’re not
The gypsy told my mother, there’d be no greater man than me
Well, I didn’t believe in voodoo, but Lord, I’d check and see
I went sweet on all the honeys to prove that gypsy wrong
Well, it strikes me kinda funny, but my mojo’s just too strong
All the women that I’m wooing hear voices in their head
To go with what I’m doing, to swallow what they’re fed
They say they got no religion cus they’re giving what they got
But I promise when I love ‘em, they always cry ‘o god’
So you think your chances ample when this old man’s dead and gone
But you’ll be lost with no example to show you how it’s done

Even while I was squinting to read my tiny notepad in the dark, I noticed the girl’s eyes widen and her jaw drop, and I could tell she thought she was watching something cool. It was one of those great moments for me where suddenly out of nowhere you get to be awesome. Even if you had to be there, just the right person doing the right thing at the right time.

They went on to tape one of the dancers, and I walked around the square and went home.

The train was a very long time coming. When I got a seat, I read some of The Leopard. I noticed the woman across from me trying to read the title of my book, and she chuckled a bit. I could tell just by looking at her that when she got off it was 86th St. It’s a power I now have.

The chapter is the one where the prince lies on his deathbed trying to remember the worthwhile moments of his life. Estimates out of his seventy-three years, he’d really been alive for three of them. How many years of pain and boredom? Too weary to do the calculations. Seventy years.

I won’t try to summarize any more of it, only say I can’t do justice to the aching beauty of it (and most of the novel) here. But I found myself imagining what moments would be worth keeping the hour I felt the life rushing out of me? Would that night be one of them? So wonderful a thought, so depressing. I had a sense of those few hours being the microcosm of my life.

Born to play the funky céilí,
Futile Horn