I'm Trying to Reach You

by Barbara Browning

  That got me thinking about the term biche. As you may know, it means doe in French, but it’s also a feminine term of endearment, like sweetie. The thing was, the deer that Fang had left in my planters both had antlers. I Googled “can female deer have antlers” and learned the following: reindeer, yes; caribou, yes; whitetails (deer in question), only rarely, in cases of “excess testosterone.” But who exactly determined what was excessive?

  Further sleuthing revealed that “les biches” is also a term used for lesbians. This may come from the “vaguely lesbian” 1968 film by Claude Chabrol. I’d never seen that. The IMDB suggested a Hitchcock influence, though evidently it’s mysterious without really being a mystery, as not much actually happens. I made a mental note to myself to suggest this film to Sven.

  “Les biches” is also the title of the famous Diaghilev ballet. It was composed (at Diaghilev’s request) by Francis Poulenc, and choreographed by Bronislava Nijinska (Nijinsky’s sister). It was first performed by the Ballets Russes in 1924. There are certainly implications of lesbianism. The most interesting character is La Garçonne. She was most famously danced – in a royal blue velvet flapper-like tunic with her breasts bound – by Georgina Parkinson in Lord Ashton’s 1964 Royal Ballet production. Nijinska was still alive at the time. She explained to Parkinson that La Garçonne should be “an envelope, her exterior neatly folded to contain the information within.”

  This was Parkinson’s most famous role. She said it was difficult for her, because she was, in her own estimation, not much of a technical hot shot. But she had a good feeling for the part.

  Despite the obvious distraction of the appearance of Jimmy Stewart, I knew I really needed to focus on the lecture I’d be giving in the fall. I still had a few weeks to prepare, but I wanted it to be good. NYU had what many considered to be the premier faculty in performance studies, including the founder of the field, Richard Schechner. L’éminence grise. He was actually pretty friendly. Somebody told me he sat in lotus position at the faculty meetings. I sat behind him at a lecture once and he was sitting normally, but he was making comical sketches of people the whole time in a notebook. I wasn’t sure if he’d actually show up for my lecture, but I’d been thinking about him, partly because of Merce.

  Merce famously said of his dancers: “They are not pretending to be other than themselves… They are, rather than being someone – doing something.” Neil Greenberg, who danced with Merce for years, said he thought maybe Merce rejected theatricality in dance because the roles men were asked to play in romantic ballet felt like a lie to him. As they felt to Neil Greenberg.

  But Schechner has a somewhat different way of thinking about the “real” self in performance. He says that there is always a “peculiar but necessary double negativity that characterizes symbolic actions. While performing, a performer experiences his (sic) own self not directly but through the medium of experiencing the others. While performing, he (sic) no longer has a ‘me’ but has a ‘not not me’… This antistructure could be expressed algebraically: ‘not (me… not me).’ ”

  So even if Merce wasn’t dancing Prince Siegfried, he was still dancing “not Merce… not not Merce.” Or algebraically, “not (Merce… not Merce).”

  I mean of course Prince Siegfried of Swan Lake, not of Siegfried and Roy.

  Georgina Parkinson as La Garçonne was “not (Georgina… not Georgina).”

  I came all the way to New York from Evanston to see Neil Greenberg reprise Not-About-AIDS-Dance in 2006. The most astonishing moment was when he danced with his face. He was very still. His eyes rolled back and trembled delicately. The text projected above him said:This is what my brother Jon looked like in his coma.

  He was in a coma 2 days before he died of AIDS.

  I’m HIV+.

  But this part of the dance isn’t meant to be about

  me.

  Neil Greenberg probably also thought he was going to die like that when he made this dance in 1994. So he was dancing Jon Greenberg, but also, “not Neil Greenberg… not not Neil Greenberg.” Even though he said, “this part of the dance isn’t meant to be about me.”

  On August 8, 2009, a small private plane collided with a helicopter carrying a group of Italian tourists over the Hudson River. All nine passengers in the two vehicles were killed. I didn’t actually see the crash, but the view from the balcony of my sublet was such that if I leaned out a little, it was possible to see a small section of the Hudson River between two buildings.

  I slept badly that night.

  On August 9, 2009, exactly two weeks after the death of Merce Cunningham, the weather was stormy in New York City. The rain and wind made the water of the river choppy, so they had to temporarily suspend the search for bodies.

  The search was taken up again on August 10, and the wreckage of the plane, along with the last of the missing bodies, was recovered from the bottom of the Hudson.

  That afternoon the sky was still gray, but the rain had stopped. It was a Tuesday. I was having a hard time concentrating on my work.

  I was feeling a little worried about Sven.

  Like a redeeming angel, Ellen called. Ellen, my massage therapist. Actually, I couldn’t really lay claim to being her client anymore. I’d seen her sporadically when I was dancing in New York in that knocking-around period before I lived in Sweden, and we’d remained friends. Every once in a while she’d work a kink out of my neck, but given my limited means on my post-doc, I was no longer in a position to hire her for real bodywork. But she liked me, so she’d periodically call me and try to get me to drive up with her to her friends Randy and Jeremy’s place in Woodstock. She kept telling me how relaxing it was, and that we could go skinny dipping, and how Randy knew Joan Acocella because he worked at The New Yorker.

  I told her I’d drive up with her that Thursday. I thought it might do me some good.

  Looking at those plastic deer in the planter, something popped into my head. Antlers. I remembered antlers. They were in that first video of the moth’s – the one with the moonwalk. I needed to go back and check her channel.

  There was a new video! It had just been posted. It was very different from what had come before. The first thing I noticed was a change in the décor. This video was clearly shot in the same space as her prior dances. But on the wall, hanging next to the portrait of Bruce Lee, there was an electric guitar.

  And in fact, this was the instrumentation of the music to which she danced – a heavily distorted, totally psychedelic electric guitar solo, accompanied only by a spare yet resonant bass. It took a little while to register that they were playing Carole King’s “Natural Woman.”

  In keeping with this theme, the moth had let down her hair, both literally and figuratively. It was a little unruly. She’d scrapped the leotard for bell-bottom jeans and a skimpy white top. She looked like she might have had a beer or two.

  Her dancing was in no way, shape, or form balletic. She was rocking out. As with her other videos, however, her gaze was mostly directed downward, or her eyes were closed. She’d periodically run her hands over her body in what appeared to be unapologetic autoeroticism. When she ran out of choreographic ideas she started swinging her hair around. It was pretty extreme.

  The exhibitionism of her dance seemed entirely in keeping with the musical interpretation, which was, I think, extraordinary.

  You will already have surmised from my brief mentions of my musical choices that I’m not really somebody you would describe as a “rocker.” Sven’s exposed me to a certain amount of pop music, but on my own I tend to listen to classical and jazz. I do have a basic knowledge of the major figures in the history of rock ‘n’ roll – including Jimi Hendrix, of course. He was the one this music made you think of. What Hendrix did to “The Star-Spangled Banner” was pretty much what this guitarist had done to “Natural Woman.” It wasn’t an ironic cover. He seemed to want to allow the song to be as rapturous as it could be. Hendrix managed to make a lot of tripping hippies have a moment of understandin
g the ecstatic possibilities of a national identity they didn’t even know they loved. I wasn’t there, of course, but I think that’s what happened. This was something like that.

  Hendrix was right there in the related videos, so soon I was scrolling through Hendrix performances and interviews. Dick Cavett interviewed him about “The Star-Spangled Banner” incident, and Cavett says, as if in his guest’s defense, “This man was in the 101st Airborne, for those of you who’ll be writing in nasty letters.” This confuses Hendrix, who doesn’t understand why there would be any nasty letters coming in. Cavett explains that any “unorthodox” interpretation of the national anthem is sure to inspire hate mail.

  Hendrix says softly, “It wasn’t unorthodox. I thought it was beautiful.”

  It really was beautiful.

  Anyway, scrolling through the various Hendrix offerings, I encountered a song I had, of course, heard before, but I’d never really heard it quite this way.

  “When I’m sad, she comes to me, with a thousand smiles she gives to me free. ‘It’s all right,’ she says. ‘It’s all right. Take anything you want from me, anything.’ Fly on, little wing.”

  My eyes filled with tears.

  Little wing. Rebel moth. I took this very personally.

  I looked at the ruffles blooming out of the neckline of Hendrix’s velvet jacket, and remembered the sign language gesture for man – indicating the brim of an imaginary boyish cap, the ruffles of an imaginary elegant shirt. A certain masculine ideal.

  Little did I know that the moth’s ecstatic duet with the electric guitar was to be a kind of farewell performance. Not that she was going away, precisely, but this dance brought about a profound reaction from her two most vociferous viewers. GoFreeVassals seemed to be unable to contain himself. While his prior messages had indicated, as I said, a palpable erotic tension, this time his response was explicit: “Little you know the subtle electric fire that for your sake is burning within me.”

  Meanwhile, the new musical selection was clearly viewed by the carper as a provocation – and one that demanded a radical shift in strategy. Apparently, he was miffed to have his position as instrumentalist usurped: “Ohoooo!!! I see ur goin ELETCRIC. Intersting choice. Guess the BATHROOM wasnt quite BIG ENUF????? Fine. This calls 4 a GAME CHANGE. A mans gotta do what a mans gotta do Im outta here, but U R 2!!! Pick ur new HANDLE!!! Freedom Boy, that means U 2!!!!! Signed, ThyMusketEmailJerk” – a fitting moniker for his weirdly threatening and yet anachronistic digital communiqués.

  The carper had proposed a game change: if the moth was going electric on him, evidently he wanted to shift the rules, and the names of the players. Of course, that’s what’s utopian about the Internet, but also creepy – this possibility of jettisoning one persona for another. I would like to believe that it was the liberatory potential of the proposition that led to my friends’ acceptance of it. falserebelmoth responded with what struck me as a slightly risqué joie de vivre: “Perhaps I asked too large – But smaller bundles – Cram. (AhNethermostFun)” The freedom fighter, likewise, declared his fervor. He was in, come what may: “I have instant conductors all over me… (ACabFreshenerOnTypos)”

  There were a couple of other comments from random interlopers. Somebody called heavymedlarruti666 compared the guitarist’s solo favorably to Slash. This appeared to infuriate callmelegobob, who wrote: “@heavymedlarruti666 go fuck ur self u bitch slash is much better then most crap u probly listen too fagget now go back_tofuckin ur dad u quier and yes im 10”

  This time the moth didn’t even bother to delete these comments or mark them as spam: she was evidently ditching the whole channel.

  Fly on, little wing.

  PART II

  BACK TO THE GARDEN

  Two days later Les Paul was dead.

  I was in Woodstock the day that Les Paul died. Ellen and I were nearing Randy and Jeremy’s house when we heard it on the radio.

  So this time I was the one who texted Sven with the big news, but he just answered: “vem är det?” I explained that he was the inventor of the electric guitar. Sven acknowledged the magnitude of the loss: “ufb!”

  Ellen was also taken aback: “Wow. Les. Paul. It’s like the fucking name of the instrument.”

  But they really had no concept of how hard this news was hitting me, considering the recent emergence of the electric guitar as a singular bone of contention in my alternative YouTube universe. Could the carper – or should I now be calling him the email jerk? – be going to such extremes of retaliation? Had the shift from uke to Les Paul really precipitated the taking up of the musket?

  Of course I didn’t go into the whole story with Ellen. I just expressed the vague and general disbelief that many people must have been feeling that day. But I had a darker preoccupation. Something felt badly wrong.

  I know, I know, Les Paul was 94 and he had pneumonia.

  Randy and Jeremy weren’t there when we got to their house, but they’d left it open with a note telling Ellen and me to make ourselves at home. To her, that seemed to mean preparing herself a vodka tonic, lighting up a joint, and stretching out on a lawn chair in the backyard. To me, it meant tapping into their wireless connection on my laptop and getting some information.

  Les Paul was somebody I knew of but had never paid a lot of attention to. But given the circumstances, I felt compelled to do a little research on him. As you surely know, he’s as well known for his talents as an inventor as for his musical gifts. It wasn’t just the solid-body electric guitar, either. He pretty much came up with multi-track recording. Some of his ideas came to him when he was very young, horsing around with his mother’s radio and telephone parts. I found a recent interview he’d done with Esquire, in which he told a story of being sick with the mumps at the age of five: “They threw me in a crib so I wouldn’t roll out onto the floor. And there’s a big bay window in my house, and that window stayed perfectly still until that train started to chug. At a certain speed, I could reach up and feel the pane, and that glass pane would vibrate. I said, Doggone, there’s got to be a reason for this. So I go to the kindergarten teacher, and she takes me to the science teacher, and the science teacher takes me to the library and reads it off to me – ‘This is called resonance.’ That was the beginning.”

  Obviously, Les Paul was a genius, but he was always saying things like, “Doggone.” Then when I actually started to watch the videos of him on YouTube, I realized that his music was like that, too.

  I also read a little bit about his relationship with Mary Ford, who was his wife and musical partner for many years. Her name was Colleen Summers when they met, but he encouraged her to change her name to Mary Ford. Why in the world would you encourage somebody to change her name from Colleen Summers to Mary Ford?

  Les Paul was from Waukesha, Wisconsin. So was my mother.

  Randy and Jeremy got home around six. They were coming back from the farmers’ market. I heard them pulling into the drive. Ellen appeared to have fallen asleep on that lawn chair, so I went out front and introduced myself, and then helped them in with the bags of produce. Randy had clunky black glasses and nearly shoulder-length blond hair which he tucked behind his ears. There was something very youthful and springy about him although I gathered from what Ellen said he was almost my age. He and Ellen had been at Princeton together. Jeremy was a little taller, and marginally less animated, though they both seemed pretty excited.

  “Oh. My. God. Can you believe these heirloom tomatoes?!!!” Randy said as he began pulling them from a bag. “Jeremy, take a picture for Facebook!”

  Jeremy couldn’t find his phone right away so I pulled mine out and snapped this:

  “I LOVE THESE!!! YUM!!!” While Randy arranged the vegetables in the fridge, Jeremy began opening a bottle of red wine. Randy asked me how long I’d known Ellen and then told a funny anecdote about a performance art piece she’d done in 1990 at the Princeton Quad inspired by Carolee Schneeman’s Meat Joy.

  “Oh, speaking of performances, you wouldn’t
believe what you missed at the farmers’ market today. Brian Madden and the Neo-Trio – look, we bought the CD!” Jeremy passed it to me: Bi-Saxual in Woodstock. Brian Madden plays both tenor and alto. The photo on the back showed three white-haired guys with two saxes, an upright bass, and drums. One of their tunes was called “Mr. Al Fresco, the Outdoors Type.” Brian Madden had included some self-effacing comments on the back of the CD indicating that he didn’t consider himself to be in a league with the Charlie Parkers and the John Coltranes of the world, but that he hoped he spread a little pleasure by blowing his horns.

  Jeremy said that after the Neo-Trio, Phil Void and the Dharma Bums had taken the stage. “Get it? Phil. Void. It’s very Zen!”

  Randy widened his eyes and looked at me. “Oh. My. God. Ellen would LOVE Phil. We invited him and the Dharma Bums to swing by later.”

  Jeremy handed me a glass of red wine, and another to Randy. We all tapped glasses and took a sip.

  Ellen stumbled in, bleary eyed, and hugged her friends. She filled a large glass with water from the tap and leaned against the counter as Jeremy put me to work shucking corn. As I removed an ear, I noticed a flyer stuffed in the bag, and pulled it out. It was from the Woodstock Farmers’ Market Festival: “Super Fire Woman The Roller Dancing Super Hero of The Heart™ will be at the festival on September 2nd to sing an original rap song on her favorite subject, yes you guessed it, love and the power of self love on the main stage at 5:45pm. Tommy Be will be accompanying her on the frame drum.”

  I was asking myself why I’d dawdled so long in coming to Woodstock.

  We had those tomatoes with basil, olive oil, and sea salt. Delicious. Randy grilled some big bloody steaks. We boiled the corn, and Jeremy made a salad. We drank a lot of red wine, and Ellen asked Randy what Joan Acocella was like. She was asking for my benefit, but as I’ve already mentioned, I’m not a big one for professional gossip. Still, I was enjoying Randy’s storytelling.