Anyway, I was delighted that Pablo had decided to drop in on The City just for the helluvit. I showed up to meet him and JL at a diner near Carnegie Hall, a place that he had some sort of sentimental attachment to from his undergrad era. I didn't know the joint myself, but the very fact that we three former Bleep U piano-folk--who had already had some TIMES together-- were staging a reunion at this venue lent a preemptive "construction of nostalgia" to this otherwise-generic greasy-spoon establishment... it was soon to be in the lexicon of our collective experience! Oh YOU GUYS, remember the time at the diner?
Conversation soon turned to "what are you reading?" -- we had a bit of a book-club thing going on.--and I was forced to admit that I had been working my way through David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas on the subway recently because I had seen the trailer for the upcoming cinematic adaptation directed by the Watchowski brothers of Matrix celebrity (wait, one of them has now opted to become a Watchowski sister, right?) and it looked kind of intriguing, so I had picked up a copy of the novel BUT it was one of those garish flimsy movie-edition covers and I was SOOOO embarrassed to be seen reading this cheaply pandering paperback in public (even if the prose itself was decently literary) because then people were going to think that I was only reading the book because a movie was coming out, like a consumer, like a sheep-- which was exactly the truth, but I didn't want the general populace to know that! I dug the offending edition out of my bag to show to the table, hanging my head in shame.
"So, uh, what's it about?" asked JL with trademark supercilious skepticism. "Ohhhh, it's complicated," I said. "There are, like, six different storylines set at different points in history, or in the future... one of them is about a colonial maritime expedition in the South Seas, one is about a composer around the turn of the century, and one is a murder mystery from the '70s, then one is set in the present day in a nursing home... then there's a dystopia one set in Korea, and then the last story is this post-apocalyptic. Each story embodies a different literary genre; it's pretty clever. But the characters are all connected in some way-- like, the archetypes are the same in each story. And also, the future people have heard of the past people, so they make references to their forebears. I guess it's supposed to be about 'eternal recurrence' or whatever-- all of the themes and character types keep playing out over and over again. That's kind of the Big Theme of the book, as far as I can tell. So the thing about the movie is that the same actors have different roles in each interwoven storyline. I think Halle Berry plays a man in one of them!... no, that can't be right, all the CGI in the world couldn't efface her luscious melons in order to, like, project a convincingly masculine physique! ... No, wait, I think Tom Hanks plays a woman in on of the storylines. That's what it is. Hey, we should totally see the movie together! Don't you guys want to see Tom Hanks as a woman?"
Two sets of furrowed brows across the table, a swift and efficient division of the bill, and then we walked outside talking of other things. The leaves were yellow in Central Park so we adjourned there, stepped into the perimeter of this site where innumerable faceless-forgotten interactions had occurred but now we were co-opting the space for personal use; it was just another stage upon which to play out the dynamics of our pre-established triumvirate-- "Remember that time in the park, in the fall, us three?"
***
I never finished Cloud Atlas (nor did I shell out for the movie)-- the tawdry paperback ended up in that sad accumulated pile of Things That I Never Saw Through To Completion (also there: my Performer Diploma Degree from Bleep U, the Well-Tempered Clavier, the sprawling feminist sci-fi novel that I had started to draft in tenth grade, and, possibly to be joining the pile, my Ph.D. in Schmoozicology if I don't get my act together soon!) Despite not sticking it out with Mr. Mitchell's oeuvre until the bitter end, I did absorb the concept of Eternal Recurrence and started to notice it on micro-levels everywhere.
The first such example cropped up when I decided to host the rare Schmanhattan house party in December. I set out a few favorite Alana-snacks (hummus! olives! chocolate-covered espresso beans, awww yeah), improvised some whiskey cider to simmer on the stove, and awaited my guests. Peter was the first to show. A former flautist, he had been my across-the-hall neighbor at Snackwell Parish during the Bleep U days; after the ol' B.U. had effectively killed our ambitions of becoming professional musicians, we had both landed in this alien urban environment to strike out on new paths. Other guests started to percolate in-- a rag-tag bunch, some of them former Bleep U folk, some of them PUNY-ites, some of them friends-of-friends whom I had never met but whom I welcomed with open arms as long as they came bearing bottles. A pleasant buzz developed in the room, people chilling on the couch, people milling in the kitchen, people plinking out Chopin nocturnes on my janky little upright, and everywhere much conversation of "do you know so-and-so? did you go to X-festival/ institute/ conference?" and quickly it became apparent that no more than two degrees of separation existed between everybody in the room.
"I want to diagram the web of people in here! Everyone is connected, man," I said to Peter as we canoodled on the couch as only a sweet flitty gay flautist and a high-functioning-but-perpetually-jilted female can canoodle. Peter surveyed the scene and observed that it all ran deeper than mutual acquaintance-ship. "This party actually feels like one of your Snackwell gatherings," he said. "It's weird. Like, the actual apartment is different and most of the people are different, but the energy is really familiar because it's still your place, and the people here all kind of feel like stand-ins for other people who we used to know." "You're right!" I said. "It's total deja-vu. Except the people aren't even stand-ins, really. Maybe they're, like, reboots! Manifestations of types! And since I'm a type, I would draw the same spectrum of types to my sphere time and again... right? Or it could be that it's just the Schmoozic peeps together again, and this will always happen..." I took a long contemplative sip of boozy cider.
Peter cocked his head. "You know, this especially reminds me of the one Christmas party you had at Snackwell, remember? with the mulled wine." "Hey now, that was a NON-DENOMINATIONAL winter gathering to boost morale!" I rebutted, and then we were off reminiscing about that particular event-- how it had started off innocently enough, all gingerbread and steaming china mugs, but then it devolved into madness once the composers showed up and started doing shots in the kitchen, and I, a little sloppy-sentimental, starting going on about how I had never been the It Girl, the one to whom the cool kids flocked, but now a crowd of self-styledly "hip" individuals was using MY domicile as a locus for the poundage of tequila shots, so CLEARLY I had made it, I had transcended my awkward outsidery youth at last to be surrounded by belligerent drunkies! And as I rhapsodized appallingly, Felix-- at the time all baby-faced and underaged and not-holding-well-of-his-liquor-that-I-should-not-even-have-supplied-him-with-but-oh-well-I-delight-in-corrupting-the-young-- little Felix somehow managed to literally somersault from the couch onto the carpeted floor with a crackening thud that jolted the entire teeming apartment to attention for the splittest of seconds. (Felix was okay, only minor brain damages and a deep well of shame to live down until he came of age).
Back to the Schmanhattan shindig with Peter et al-- it did not reach the hysterical proportions of the Snackwell days and thank God for that, yet there was an unmistakable sense of familiarity hanging over the whole affair. "Good call, Peter," I said, "it's Snackwell recapitulated."
The very next night, JL came to visit, and on our agenda was the crashing of a Toolyard party-- well, technically I had a connection to the festivities, but I was by no means in the "inner circle," so the whole business felt vaguely illicit. The event was billed as a four-story funhouse with standup comedy, billiards, a jazz lounge, a speakeasy... mostly I was just curious to rub shoulders with the musical hotshots of tomorrow, so JL and I trekked across Upper Schmanhattan to the hoppin' spot, which turned out to be what I am certain is the only townhouse in all of Poshington Blights. It had a stunningly collegiate vibe and seemed utterly disjunct from its 'hoody environs. We stepped inside only to be informed that the jello shots were all gone-- that's BULLSHIT! I cried-- and the "jazz lounge" turned out to be just somebody's bedroom with an electric keyboard in it, and the whole place was swarming with young hotties of which neither JL nor I recognized a single individual, and they formed impenetrable rings of young hotness everywhere we turned, and the two of us eyed each other with mild panic. Eventually we took refuge in the space under the spiral staircase, a serviceable hidey-hole from which we could observe the proceedings without seeming like such a pair of wounded gazelles.
"I thought this was going to be more of a... you know, civilized networking opportunity?" JL said to me. "Ah man," I said, "I'm sorry. This appears to be more of a Dionysian mating ritual the likes of which we have, um, outgrown. Mostly. But doesn't the scene feel oddly... familiar?" I continued, thinking aloud as I took in the geometry of the first floor. "You know, I would never guess that we're in Schmanhattan right now. This place is straight-up Shroomingtonian. Big-Ten Small-Town feeling. The house is even laid out just like some of those cruddy boarding-houses right near the School of Schmoozic. Remember? And the little fenced-in backyard... can't you just see 'The Fuzz' showing up to bust the young 'uns and then there's some mass exodus through the back door with a bunch of scared-shitless kids hurtling over the fence and running in every direction?" JL humored me. He was my captive audience under the stairs as I started to think back across many years of Bleep U Bacchanaliae. ... "and there was this ONE party, it was in a house just like this, hosted by brass players, I think, and it was a Halloween party and I went with Peter the flautist-- you knew him, right?-- and he was dressed as Marilyn Monroe and I was a sexy librarian, glasses, bun, red lipstick, unbuttoned white blouse, the whole nine yards, but AS IT TURNED OUT that was kind of a dumb decision because at this point in time I was already a graduate student, and of course who did I run into but a group of inebriated male students that I had T.A.'ed for in Ear Training. They went nuts over my attire, or lack thereof. One of them was like, 'You were my T.A! But NOW I can see your bra!' and another one was like, 'I would have come to class more often and paid WAY more attention if you had dressed like this on a daily basis.' And I was halfway-flattered, because who doesn't secretly want to be the object of some student-teacher office-hours fantasy? but then I was PISSED too because I was like WHAT? my vivacious classroom presence and rapier wit alone were not enough to keep you engaged? And you couldn't discern that I was biologically female and not unattractive, even if I didn't put the goodies on full display?... ANYWAY, this Toolyard party feels like a reboot of that Halloween event somehow. Except, like, a dream version where all of the faces are switched around and we don't know anybody..."
We stayed under the stairs for awhile and played a birdwatching game with the gaggles of Toolyard students who kept migrating through the room-- what are the distinguishing field-marks of the Brasshole? (Popped collar, long-ranging body odor...) And is that a flock of Soprani that I spy, all baubles and gesticulations? The excessive facial hair on that guy coupled with the bloodshot eyes leads me to believe that what we have here is a Double Bass Player, scientific name Excerpticus practissimus subspecies potheadicus maximus ... At that point, the stand-up comedy portion of the evening began, and the comedienne ushered in her set with a rape joke. JL and I exchanged a "time to bounce" look, and I assured him that there was a pub across the street from my apartment at which we could attain a moderate buzz in an acceptable adult manner, because clearly we had outgrown this scene even as we recognized certain aspects of it from our past misbehaviors, recurrent and abhorrent...
***
Returning now to Pablo. So Pablo now lives in Schlock Sangellis when he is not randomly gracing Schmanhattan with his presence, and since I am related to a bunch of SoCal-ians who expect semi-annual visits, Pablo and I have managed to sustain a truly bicoastal friendship. We have become close post-Bleep U-- he possesses a quality of all-seeingness and I possess a quality of, um, all-sayingness, and these two qualities combine efficiently so as to get at the core of things, i.e. there are not a lot of superficial pleasantries exchanged when we get together, just a lot of cogent aesthetic and sociological observations, exploration of DEEP TRUTHS (or so we would like to think, we wishful-iconoclasts, we false prophets).
In early July I was in Schlock Sangellis, and Pablo drove to pick me up outside of my grandparents' apartment complex. (Sidebar: the Kardashians also grew up in this apartment complex-- talk about brushes with greatness!) "Heyyyyyyy Poblano," I cooed, kissing him on the cheek. "Alanushka! Wonderful to see you." "Likewise, and THANKS for coming to get me. You know, I love my grandfolks so, SO much, but just a second ago my grandmother was literally instructing me on how to cross the street-- I mean, I thought she was being tongue-in-cheek because I had been teasing her earlier today for being the epitome of the Jewish matriarch who worries herself sick over minutiae that never would have occurred to your average Joe, but NO, then she started telling me that I have to remember to look both ways before stepping into an intersection, preferably twice, and I was like, hoo boy, she is not kidding, she is honest-to-God explaining to me how to cross the street, which is adorable BUT I kind of need to interact with my own peer group for a little while now and re-establish my competency as an adult human..." Pablo gave an indulgent smile. "Well, good thing we are hitting up this composer party, then... you'll feel young and hip amidst the musical intelligentsia... do you have Pan-Pan's number? Let's text him for directions while we're at dinner."
Ah, Pan-Pan. This guy requires a bit of exposition and some traveling back in time (can you HANDLE it? my narrative structure is giving Cloud Atlas some stiff competition on the chronological convolutedness front). So Pablo and I had met Pan-Pan, a composer and a medical student, about two years prior when I had hosted a small Thanksgiving gathering at Snackwell Parish. Pan-Pan was not a Bleep U person but was visiting Shang, an old friend of his who was at the time our "colleague" in pianistic grad-studentdom, and so both of these gentlemen secured a place at my dinner table that night. They came bearing a twelve-pack of Miller Lite. (My sister, who had helped me cook the Thanksgiving feast, had gone into full-blown hostess panic-mode that we didn't have appetizers, a tureen of soup, napkin rings, etcetera, but I had assured her that my guests, though "classy" in their respective ways, were just super- stoked to get a free meal and would not notice anything amiss-- like, they would not pitch a fit if we failed to supply them with vegan-prosciutto-wrapped hunks of melon on toothpicks or some shit. "See?" I asserted to the sister as Shang and Pan-Pan sauntered in with their twelve-pack of piss-swill,"lower your standards." [As the evening progressed we ran out of drinking glasses and so I grabbed some measuring cups and beakers to use as impromptu beer-vessels, thus further elevating the proceedings]).
So I had not known Pan-Pan beforehand, but I liked him immediately-- he was voluble and observant, yet his running commentary (heavily accented) seemed to stem from book-learnin', from pop psychology tomes that he had imbibed as a substitute for real experience. This became especially evident when he started lecturing the engaged couple at the table on the "five love languages," providing the pair with a veritable blueprint for their decades of married life to come... however, Pan-Pan managed to append to the discourse that, though a relationship guru, he himself had not yet had the fortune to taste of Love firsthand, having been profoundly unlucky in matters of the heart. Aw, I thought, a kind-of-kindred-spirit, a dreamer, a non-alpha and I sidled up to him to banter more about the baffling intricacies of human relations. At the end of the night, he offered his appraisal of me: "You know, Alana, you are like, you are like one of these girls who is not showy, flashy, but you can hook all the guys by being a skillful at conversing, very good at the talk and listen." "I'll take it!" I said, "I mean, conversational know-how is low on the totem pole in terms of attracting a mate, I know, and, like, I more often draw people in on the basis of my badonkadonk that is somewhat proportionally large to the rest of my small-boned white-girl physique [I gestured to the legendary 'donk] and THEN that's when I force them to listen to me talk, but..."
And so on and so forth. Pan-Pan and I stayed in sporadic touch after that evening, having connected in an oddball way, having ascertained a mutual level of kookdom. At some point Pan-Pan landed in Schlock Sangellis to do doctoral work. At some point after this, I also landed in Schlock Sangellis to visit family, and this takes us to July, two nights before Pablo and I attempted to find the composer party.
My phone buzzed with a text; it was Pan-Pan. "A virtuoso pianist has come to Schlock Sangellis. Wow." I texted back to him that my chops were a little rusty these days but Hi! how are you? Meet soon? ... and before I knew it, Pan-Pan was pulling up to the Former Kardashian Komplex to take me somewhere for dinner. "Pan-Pan, is this a ZipCar?" I asked, surveying the wheels. "Yes," he replied, "I don't have a car but I a-had to pick you up like a smooth guy. So I arrange this for you on short notice." "Oh Jesus, you didn't have to do that! We could have just met some other time and I could have bummed a ride to somewhere more convenient to you, really... oh well, you already have the car, might as well be ridin' dirty..." Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde pulsed on the speakers. "Wow, you're a Mahler person?" I said, after listening for a minute. "Cool!" "Ah no," he replied, "but I know you like him because on Facebook you post about him..." "Oh Pan-Pan, come on, you can listen to whatever you want!" I said, smacking him on the arm.
We had Japanese dinner-- Pan-Pan insisted on footing the bill despite my protestations, my stuttering attempts to steer the evening away from the Date Zone-- and he engaged in one last heavy-handed flirtation with the waitress before we wandered off in search of dessert... the shaved-ice emporium had closed, so we hit up a bubble tea shop. Again Pan-Pan swooped in and paid for me before I could stop him-- "okay, FINE, but you at least have to have some of my boba if you insist on treating me"-- and we started walking back in the direction of the ZipCar. The power lines above us crackled dangerously-- "wow, listen to that humming," I said, and stopped for a second, at which point Pan-Pan stepped closer to me. "Electricity," he whispered. And then, "Pass me a boba."
"Sure." I handed him the portable plastic cup of almond bubble tea. He took a long sip with the straw. Then, several events happened in quick succession: he put his arm around me, leaned in, pressed his lips to mine, and then in probed the tongue, but there was something unnaturally slimy about the organ and it took me a split second to process that he had not only put his tongue in my mouth, but he had also slipped me the tapioca pearl that he had sucked in from the bubble tea-- a covert operation, a transfer of resources invisible to the outside eye! The unexpectedness of it all, the invasiveness, the sudden excess of saliva and tongue-muscle and tapioca slime in my private little mouth-chamber-- I acted on instinct, an instinct that was to splutter, spit out the foreign body onto the pavement, and immediately dissolve into hysterical laughter. "I'm sorry, Pan-Pan, haha.. oh, I'm sorry," I gasped, "but, um, we're taking things a little fast here and... ohhhh that was special, I did not see that coming, hahahaHAHA...ohhhh.... wow..." He didn't seem too perturbed by my reaction. "I got the idea from a commercial for Dorito," he explained, "but boba is even better for sharing!"
We were back at the car, and the "future" of the evening-- the question of continuation-- hung in the air so thickly that I had to cut through it on the spot. "Okay buddy," I said as Pan-Pan put the key in the ignition, "I think I should go back to my grandparents' place now... but hey, this was really nice tonight. And... memorable. And don't take anything the wrong way.... it's just that-- I'm only here for four days, and I live on the East Coast, and I'm a little bit of a mess, and you, um, you really deserve to get involved with someone who you can have a future with!... and--" He tried to kiss me again; I obliged but kept the tonguing business firmly out of the equation this time, because who knew what slippery surprises lurked there?! I was still gun-shy from the transfer-of-boba.
"Oh, you are so good a girl to have a conversation," he said upon disengaging from my face. "I would definitely chase you if we live in the same city." "Well hey, Pan-Pan," I said, squeezing his shoulder, "that's the way the cookie crumbles... but look, are you and your composer friends still having that party? I can probably come. I'll bring Pablo. We'll stop by, I promise." At this point
***
These events and others I related to Pablo two nights later over dinner-- he had taken me to a cafe called Leaves Of Grass that he claimed was a West-Coast iteration of The Crunchible Spoon, this a funky haunt near Bleep U that attracted a range of patrons depending on the time of day (these were: honking smudge-eyed sorority girls at brunch, aspiring literati during the afternoon hours, and in the evening a bizarre countercultural homeless population would congregate-- I remember their ringleader, a tall man with a long yellowing beard, who always seemed to be shilling some new homeopathic elixir to his rapt disciples ["It's a Life Enhancer, the stuff in this vial; it will alter your electromagnetic output, it will reverse the horrors that the pharmaceutical industry has wreaked on your body..."] The conversations that I overheard there led me to create a mini-blog-series called "Tales from the Spoon" back when I had a different blog that was even more embarrassing and in even more dubious taste than this one).
Anyway, Pablo was right that this Leaves Of Grass place had a whiff of the Crunchible about it, albeit cleaned up (and see, this is why I love Pablo-- he understands the recurrence thing too about people and places-- essences that stay the , old wine in new bottles). I sat mopping up my Huevos Rancheros while Pablo howled with laughter over the Pan-Pan boba-swap story... "Hey, don't be malicious about it!" I admonished. "Yeah, it's a ridiculous thing to do, but I kind of admire that he went for it, takes a special degree of chutzpa..." "Now I'm looking forward even more to going to his party," said Pablo with a twisted smile. He glanced down at his phone. "Shit! My phone is about to die. Alanuschka, remember this address: 340 Cloverdale Boulevard. I guess it's his friend's apartment where people are getting together." I made up a ridiculous mnemonic device and we set off in search of the shindig.
After a few wrong turns, dead ends, blind alleyways, we pulled up in front of what seemed to be the correct apartment building (there was a cab parked in front, next to which a stilettoed broad was kneeling and dry-heaving on the pavement while the Pakistani cab-driver appeared to be wiping down the upholstery of his appeared-to-have-already-been-puked-in car-- "this is a sign," said Pablo, "that we're in the right place!") But then. But then! We hit a snag. "Pablo," I said, "what was the apartment number again?" "Hmmmm... I don't think he gave me one." "Well, there are maybe, like, seventy apartments here? And we don't know the name of the friend whose party this is, right?" Negative. I tried to call Pan-Pan-- "He never picks up!" said Pablo, "he doesn't take calls. He only makes them. Original Gangster." "... Well, maybe he'll take a call from me, the bubble-tea dream-girl," I said with a little shimmy, and dialed, but-- straight to voicemail. DENIED!
"What now?" I said. Rows and rows of intercom buttons swum before our eyes, each emblazoned with the surname of a stranger. "Should we ring every person? Knock on every door? 'Hey, we're looking for a composer by the name of... I don't know, it's some guy, are you him?' Nah, not gonna work." We were so close yet so far, barred from Elysium by our ignorance of one crucial detail... I started to feel dejected, as though this were a metaphor for my whole life, standing just outside the threshold of where all the people were having so much fun and I had not gotten the secret password that would grant me entrance into the Kingdom of Fun and here I was looking at the empty eye sockets of windows and.... "OSTROVSKY!" Pablo exclaimed. I was yanked out of my existential spiral. "Eh? Come again?"
"OSTROVSKY!" said Pablo again, pointing to one of the intercom buttons. "I know exactly who that is! Vladimir Ostrovsky. Vlad. He's a violinist. It must be his apartment that the party is at. He went to the Schmanhattan School with me back in the day-- was a real pimp back, always wore gold chains, he ran some kind of website where hot musician chicks could get some extra exposure, if you know what I mean, but a nice guy... " "And he lives in Schlock Sangellis now?" I asked with a raised eyebrow. "I have no idea," said Pablo, "but it has to be him! Of course it would be him!" "Ummm, Pablo," I said, "we're in a large metropolitan area, and while 'Ostrovsky' is, like, not a common last name by our personal standards, I'm sure there's more than one of them out there in this very diverse and densely populated , and besides, we're looking for a composer, not a violin player, and you haven't seen this guy in four years and don't know what he's up to and--" Pablo had already pressed the button.
"Chello?" said a deep male voice. "Hi," said Pablo, "hi. Is this Vlad?" "Yes, who is thees?" (I smacked Pablo on the arm in disbelief, mouth agape). "Hey! Vlad. Hi. You wouldn't believe this, but it's Pablo. Pablo Gerstner, the pianist, from Schmanhattan School. Do you remember me?" "Pablo! No way, man! How are you? Hey, I'm in a club right now. How did you get my number?" "Wait, we're in front of YOUR apartment, Vlad-- how are you in a club but talking to us through the intercom?" "Hokay, I see-- the intercom is hooked up to my cell so I hear from veesitors even when I'm out. So what are you doing at my building?" "Well, actually, we're wondering if you know a composer who lives in the building too. We're looking for a party but didn't have the apartment number." "Oh, you mean Julio? Julio is my roommate. You know him too. He mentioned having people over tonight." "Wait, JULIO? Julio Arroyo? NO. WAY!" Pablo turned to me. "Julio went to Schmanhattan School too and he's a composer. Must be him that's hosting the party. We used to be good friends but I haven't seen him in years, he went to Toolyard... it's so insane that we would all end up in the same Schlock Sangellis apartment together just by chance, all because Pan-Pan, who we met at your Thanksgiving in Schmindiana two years ago, tried to tongue you a tapioca ball and you weren't into it but you wanted to let him down easy and agreed to come to his party... this kind of thing only happens when we're together, Alanuschka." "I KNOW!" I gushed, "our powers COMBINE and we, like, unite the musical world. We fortify the network. WE. CONNECT. THE. DOTS."
"So, Vlad," said Pablo, turning back to the intercom, "should we just buzz Julio to let us in?" "Oh shit, mahn, his buzzer is broken and I don't have hees phone number. But yah our apartment is 9G, just wait for somebody with a key to come through the main front door and zehn you can follow in and take up our elevator. I'll be back in a leetle while." "Okay great, see you soon! I can't believe this!"
Pablo and I waited on the sidewalk, marveling over the smallness of the universe and congratulating ourselves on clearly being Important People, convergence points, liaise-ers of once-disparate socio-musical circles-- "Now I may never amount to much as a pianist or as an academic," I intoned, index finger pointed at the sky, "but by God, I will have known everyone, partied with everyone, and possibly have made out with everyone who is important or marginally important in the up-and-coming classical schmoozic scene, so that's gotta count for something!" At that point a older yarmulke'd gentlemen put his key in the front door; he cast a scornful glance at us good-for-nothing loiterers but allowed Pablo and me to follow him into the foyer. We had breached the walls, we had captured the castle!
An elevator ride up to the ninth floor, a ring of a bell, and then we were greeted by a lanky Latino-- the elusive Julio, composer, thrower of shindigs -- who gave Pablo a hearty embrace and expressed astonishment that an old chum from schmoozic school in noughties New York had turned up unannounced at his door. I introduced myself and we made our entrance.
Now, neither Pablo nor I had ever been in this particular apartment before, of course, and neither did we know the majority of the people in the room (save Pan-Pan, who blew me a kiss from the couch before returning to an intimate discussion with a pretty honey-tressed girl) but that deep familiarity, that deja-vu, that "ah, here we are again" feeling washed over the both of us and we looked at one another in amazement: here was, somehow, the same scenario playing itself out, the same energies crackling in the air, the same types milling about... it was a music party; we were among friends. Soon the "do you know so-and-so from such-and-such" game began amongst the guests, and the smallness of the musical universe re-asserted itself as the coincidences abounded (Example 1: Julio had gone to Toolyard [Hooliyard!] and knew the guy who had organized the bizarre, teeming, borderline-fratty event at which JL and I had awkwardly sequestered ourselves under the stairs last December. Example Deux: Vlad-from-the-intercom finally made a flesh-and-blood [and ghetto-gold-chained] appearance and proceeded to tell us that, prior to clubbing that night, he had played an orchestra gig with a young hotshot pianist who had performed the Tchaikovsky concerto, and said young hotshot pianist just happened to be the guy who lives one floor below me in Schmanhattan... again, I asked myself if I was really at the center of the action to know all of these individuals, or was I a wannabe, a fringe-folk, a draw-er of connections and believer in kismet when we were all really just random bodies colliding in an indifferent void..?!!)
Julio and Vlad whipped out their violins and started a friendly battle-of-the-bows. Meanwhile I tried to speak to Pan-Pan but he seemed to have discovered a new muse and was immune to my charms. "Look at how interchangeable we women-folk are," I snorted to Pablo in mock-bitterness, gesturing to Pan-Pan and Honey Hair. To which Pablo replied, "Aw damn, looks like you missed your shot." We slipped out onto the balcony. "Nice view," I said. "Yeah," said Pablo, "different from Schmanhattan, right?" "Well, yeah," I said, thinking, "but it's so weird, I feel like we could be anywhere. Snackwell Parish in Shroomington. My apartment back in the city. Some janky student 'flat' in Europe. Just any place where Our Kind congregate... we, like, create the space, time and again" "I know," he said. "Eternal recurrence! Cloud Atlas. Did you finish the book?" "No, of course not. But wait, aren't these things supposed to recur over generations, over millennia, not within the space of a few years? Are we just having deja-vu?" "No no, the things are recurring through us from Time Immemorial and that's why they seem familiar, we're just the latest vessels for the eternal truths..." "Hell YEAH I'm an eternal truth!..."
... and on and on, silly soft theories that we bandied about with half-rolled eyes, but see, when you are a musician and you spend so much time by yourself in a little room trying to pin down the ephemeral, and you are a godless heathen, you have no organized religion (save the trinity of Bach-Mozart-Beethoven and all the disciples, apostles, affiliates) but still you are driven to find order in chaos, and so you all permit yourselves to see the divine in the mundanely coincidental, to create imagined communities, to comfort yourselves with the daffy speculation that all over the world there are secret security bubbles to which you have access-- it's a schmoozical Illuminati, an insider's game from generation to generation, all you need to do sidle up to the intercom that calls out to you, speak "friend," and enter...
