Time goes. That’s the great thing about it. Whatever one says about Einstein’s relativity or a lover’s forever, one knows that time goes on regardless of us, at its own pace. Effective time management is no more about time than clocks are (how I hate them—I refuse to wear a watch that signifies some arbitrary (ok, not completely arbitrary) human construction, as if we could put Time in stays and pull the laces tighter by measuring and calculating). But time is a consolation as much as a curse, and there’s some comfort in its going.
The experience of it—a red squarrel scales the vertical wall of the apartment building opposite at the height of 5 stories before climbing to the safety of a ledge—can be like living an epiphany or how I imagine the Dalai Lama moves through his days. Slowness allows one to feel its drip-drip-drop as it goes. The sands of time were always watery drips to me. A glass-encased clock is ticking in front of me now, slightly out if time with the other ticking clock in my grandmother’s kitchen. The sound of them when I try to sleep on the couch at night drives me slightly mad if I’ve not sufficiently tired. But to slowness…if one could be enough in a moment, would that moment slow to an infinity if one could encompass it fully? Could you choose the moment, a lover’s kiss perhaps, or would you get stuck in a horrible one, like watching a car crash? I think that slowness, and the chance it gives you to really experience something, is how one wants to know the pleasant things of life. Similarly, quick should be life’s pains. Why is it then, the work days are so long, and the night of fun and fancy are so short?
There is an art to experiencing pleasure—the art of slowness. All the hustle and bustle of New York city, all black coats and blank faces. Maybe it’s too fast to be easily enjoyed, and that’s why my father think all the people there look miserable? (I never look at them myself, so I’m no judge.) But as Evidence #1 for the argument that making an art of slowness is the most satisfying way of knowing pleasure, I put forth Milan Kundera’s Slowness. The long ago love story of a chevalier’s amorous night and the present day buffoonery of Vincent’s attempt at sexual intimacy are linked by the same château as a setting and are mingled at the end when the satisfied chevalier encounters the disappointed Vincent. They have both spent a “marvelous night.” The chevalier’s was one of being led through the ritual of seduction, gradually raising suspense between the lover’s, dividing the night into three stages of lovemaking and handling it all with smooth sophistication. Vincent’s was one in which he saved his precarious self-esteem at an entymologist’s convention by attracting Julie, who is quite willing to follow him as he suggests skinny dipping and then copulating poolside in front of anyone present in a wild chase. Vincent’s penis doesn’t quite cooperate and Julie runs when people come and stare at them. Their marvelous nights are treated completely oppositely as regards time.
Kundera makes the point that “in existential mathematics, that experience takes the form of two basic equations: the degree of slowness is directly proportional to the intensity of memory; the degree of speed is directly proportional to the intensity of forgetting” and also that Epicurus in his hedonistic beliefs was not seeking unlimited temporary physical pleasures as we now imagine, but rather seeking to enjoy only what could temperately be enjoyed and re-enjoyed to create a long-lasting happiness, more like an absence of pleasure. Both women disappear after the limited night together, but the chevalar’s memory will last while Vincent desperately creates lies about his night to boost him image among his cronies while he puts out of his mind the real longing he feels for Julie. As Vincent loses her and the potential night between them, he regrets the loss almost as much as telling his friend’s of the comic misadventure. Bumbling and rushing through a night of great potential is just my point. It’s much more humorous that the chevalier’s night, but not satisfying. This approach of slowness applies to anything one wishes to enjoy as well as nightly adventures. One might say, “But why should Vincent create some romantic scene for a quick fuck? Why should they talk instead of running around a pool? One isn’t inherently better. Passion and spontaneity seem to be lacking in the chevalier’s tale.” The chevalier knew as little in the morning about his lover as Vincent knew about his would-be lover. Yet he was more satisfied. Slowness is harder to create, but the memory of it is indelible. Must passion be less to go slower, or with greater discipline can one want and fully enjoy more by going slower? Slowing down seems necessary to experiencing fully the thing as it happens, allowing one to appreciate it as it happens. Savor it.
Indeed, the value, and part of the pleasure, is knowing that it goes, is going, will be gone. One can slow things down and feel them pass without speed blurring his view as time goes by. That’s the thing about time, you can count on it going.
Stoppard’s Rock and Roll and Every Good Boy Deserves Favor
Recently, I had the lucky chance to go see an early work of Stoppard’s, Every Good Boy Deserves Favor, playing for one night in New York city in a combined effort from Boston University’s theatre and orchestra department. An unusual play, Stoppard created it in 1977 at the request of a friend and composer André Previn. Because it requires a full orchestra, it is rarely staged.
It tells the story of Alexander, put into a lunatic asylum in Soviet Russia for critiquing the Soviet Union, and Alexander, his truly insane cellmate who happens to have the same name. Alexander the lunatic “has an orchestra,” which is what he conducts throughout the political drama to mirror the rising and falling tensions. The orchestra, in this instance situated on the stage, follows his commands. He even interacts with his imaginary players, walking between them and yelling at individuals. Stoppard plays up the comedic aspect of the asylum, the hypocritical political system, and the unexpected dénouement fully. Also, a hint of the bizarre, akin to the huge cat in tails in Stoppard’s trilogy The Coast of Utopia, appears at the end, in the form of a Magistrate on stilts who towers over the two Alexanders during their questioning. This short play did not lack for clever moments, plays and counterplays of action especially, but the dialogue was sparser that Stoppard’s fully developed style, the settings, characters, action all simpler, and the political critique decidedly pronounced.
The use of music begs comparison with Stoppard’s show currently on Broadway, Rock and Roll. I failed to comment on Stoppard’s use of music in a previous post on this play. Rock and Roll’s blasting interludes and Every Good Boy’s full orchestral score are both atmospheric and also closely related to distinct actions or individuals feelings. Rock and Roll neatly divides the play when moments reach an emotional crescendo. Additionaly, the type of music very effectively grounds the audience in a specific time, place and intellectual outlook. Forget that you never heard of The Plastic People of the Universe (a Czech rock band that acquired political overtones when they were repressed) because taken together with the Rolling Stones and Pink Floyd you come to understand it signifies youth and change and rebellion. This underground Czech group are held up as an ideal of resistance to Communism by one character. The PPU and all other music in Rock and Roll contrast with the music of Every Good Boy not merely because one is rock and the other classical.
In Rock and Roll, Stoppard appropriates real music from the era he portrays, and in doing so lends veracity as well as nostalgia to his take on the aftermath of the Prague Spring. On the other, a score is invented to keep up with a playwright and a madman’s imaginination, rendering a unreal atmosphere to a charged political drama. The topsy-turvy music and the politics of the insane asylum in general highlight and critique Soviet government as illogical and absurd system.
Rock and Roll’s music, with all the veracity of authenticity and its loud volume, remains comfortably distant and in the past. Not only does Every Good Boy’s music not feel dated, it feels quite immediate and relevant. An interestingly unexpected effect, as Every Good Boy is further in the past and also has the effect of unreality. In different and surprising ways, Stoppard use music to great significance in both works. To return to a theme in such a different way is striking: Rock and Roll as the more mature treatment of themes of Every Good Boy deserves favor with their similar critique of Soviet suppression and emotional depth as well as the interaction of the individual with the state and with the media.
Great Theft
Art theft is rarely sordid, rarely violent. It is, in fact, a rarified and cultured kind of crime, one that every aesthete, in the darkest cockles of their hearts, admires. That lusty feeling that seeps into one’s bones as everyone else passes on like shadows while you stare at that thing—that marvelous thing—that seems to have sprung like Athena fully formed from your head, that feeling if why art is stolen. Sure, you might cry, but what about money? What thief could care less about the cold, hard cash a thing is worth?
Exemplia Gratis: Stephen Breitweiser. This young (not to mention, rather attractive) Frenchman lived in his mother and worked as a waiter for 10 years. He and his girlfriend often went on weekend trips to the ancient castles and house museums of Europe. Meanwhile, he was was collecting, via duplicitous mean, 16th and 17th century European masterpieces. In 2001, he was caught attempting to steal a bugle, one of only three like it in the world and with an estimated value of £45,000, in Switzerland. But it was only when he came back two days later to try again that he was arrested.
In his trial, he admitted to stealing 238 artworks. Why? According to Wikipedia, he said at his trial, “”I enjoy art. I love such works of art. I collected them and kept them at home.” Despite the enormity of his collection, he was still able to recall every piece he stole. He interrupted the lengthy reading of his collection during his trial several times to correct various details.” What more noble motive for theft than a love of beauty. The illguarded, barely visited museums dotting Europe have their share of visitors no doubt, but who loved those pieces as he did. The desire to posses each one must have been an all-consuming passion. How often does an indivudal fully realize one’s passions? His success ought to be commended and held forth as exemplary.
Instead, Breitwieser was given a 26-month prison sentence. While that is the unfortunate outcome of gambling with society’s laws, the real loss—and no doubt the one the Stephen himself felt most—was the loss of the paintings. Over 60 paintings, including masterpieces by Brueghel, Watteau, Francois Boucher, and Corneille de Lyon were chopped up by Breitwieser’s mother, Mireille Stengel, in what police believe was an effort to remove incriminating evidence against her son. And really, for such a man, is that in itself not punishment enough?
Even more laudable is the theif’s attitude toward the whole debaucle. Capitalizing on his capture and new-found notoriety, he wrote a book.