Idiophone

by Amy Fusselman

  Copyright © 2018 by Amy Fusselman

  Cover design by Kyle G. Hunter

  Book design by Connie Kuhnz

  Author photograph © Frank Snider

  Coffee House Press books are available to the trade through our primary distributor, Consortium Book Sales & Distribution, cbsd.com or (800) 283-3572. For personal orders, catalogs, or other information, write to info@coffeehousepress.org.

  Coffee House Press is a nonprofit literary publishing house. Support from private foundations, corporate giving programs, government programs, and generous individuals helps make the publication of our books possible. We gratefully acknowledge their support in detail in the back of this book.

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Names: Fusselman, Amy, author.

  Title: Idiophone / Amy Fusselman.

  Description: Minneapolis: Coffee House Press, 2018.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2017040748 | ISBN 9781566895217 (eBook)

  Classification: LCC PS3606.U86 I35 2018 | DDC 813/.6—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017040748

  252423222120191812345678

  For Frank

  CONTENTS

  Chapter I

  Chapter II

  Chapter III

  Chapter IV

  Resources

  Acknowledgments

  Funder Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  I.

  1.

  I can’t sleep in this uncomfortable New York City cab.

  It keeps moving.

  It’s like the bed in The Nutcracker.

  You can’t sleep in it, you can only pass out in it.

  Plus, it’s on a battlefield.

  I am tired of battlefields.

  I am tired of going to sleep like I’m in a war.

  I am tired of fighting to do what I want.

  I am tired of fighting to do what I want and then fighting to sleep.

  I want it all, boy.

  I want to drink a beer.

  I would so love to drink a beer.

  I had my last beer over twenty-five years ago.

  I can’t drink a beer now and sleep.

  I can’t drink a beer now and fight the good fight.

  I don’t want to read or write about the fight between drinking and not drinking.

  I want to read about what people do after they stop fighting that fight.

  I want to read about a woman parking her fluffy white bed at an odd angle and leaving the motor running and dashing into the deli to get a coffee light and sweet and then coming out and driving her bed down the West Side Highway with the lace bed skirt flying and the bed pirouetting in the snow.

  I want to be still like the world in snow.

  I want to be still like the wooden nutcracker I saw backstage at Lincoln Center, standing on the shelf beside his identical brothers.

  I didn’t know the nutcracker had identical brothers, but when I saw them together it made perfect sense.

  More nutcrackers are needed in case one gets broken.

  One always gets broken.

  I want to be still and not break.

  I want to be still and multiply.

  I want to see double and triple because I am quadruple.

  I want to quintuple.

  I want to sextuple while I sit on a throne watching candy and coffee dance for me.

  I want to do what I want in a world that does not seem to want me to do what I want.

  I want to not have to fight.

  I want my mother to stop rabbit-punching me from the assisted-living center in Tampa.

  I want my mother to stop reaching her skinny ninety-year-old arm across the country to rabbit-punch me in my sleep.

  I want to sleep a sleep that’s like snow.

  I want to be safe and warm like a rabbit in a hat.

  I want to be safe and warm in a hat listening to my magician intone, and then I want to come out of the hat with his soft gloved hands on my ears and the light all around me.

  I want to be in a circle of light that is not moving, that is protecting me.

  I want to feel the world move, every bit of the world, which is always fighting to live.

  I want to get out of the cab and walk up the steps and stand in the light of the doorway with my key out.

  I want to open the door and get out of this world.

  I want to get out of this world that is always at war.

  I want to get out of this world that I haven’t been drunk in.

  I want to drink in a new world.

  I want to drink in a world that has colored lights and music like a holiday party.

  2.

  The most impressive dancer in The Nutcracker is the tree.

  The most thrilling part of The Nutcracker is when the tree grows to the music.

  As the tree grows, the set changes:

  what was once a home decorated for a holiday party becomes a battlefield.

  It is so unbelievably easy for one world to turn into another.

  In my backstage tour of The Nutcracker at Lincoln Center, I saw the giant tree as it was being folded up for a new performance.

  The tree is like an accordion that sits in a box under the stage until it’s time for it to grow.

  When the moment in the music comes, wires pull it up to the ceiling and it unfolds in its glory.

  As I watched the tree being compacted, I was sprinkled with some of its snow.

  The snow was made of small, iridescent paper circles.

  I put a bit in my coat pocket and kept it there all winter as a lucky charm.

  I would put my freezing, gloveless hand in my pocket and feel the snow and think, Ballerinas stepped on this, and that thought would almost warm me.

  The stagehand taking the tree down told me that sometimes the ballerinas slip and fall on the snow.

  In the ten-plus years I have been going to see The Nutcracker at Lincoln Center, I have never seen a ballerina slip and fall.

  I stood and watched the tree until it was completely in its box.

  I stood and watched the tree until it was ready to go.

  I am in this world, but sometimes I feel other ones pulling at me.

  3.

  There was a time when I was small and my mother was huge.

  There was a time when I was tiny and my mother was huge and horrible and filled with light.

  There was a time when parties formed around my mother and shiny boxes were laid at her feet and the windows were opened and closed for her and mice scurried in front of and behind her.

  There was a time when trombone slides would glide up and down in skittish ecstasy when my mother walked down the street.

  Now my mother is frail.

  Now my mother is getting smaller.

  Now my mother’s bed is moving and she cannot sleep.

  It is so unbelievably easy for one world to turn into another.

  4.

  For a long time I admired The Nutcracker simply because of its storyline, which, from my viewings, I understood to be this:

  Marie’s family has a holiday party.

  Marie’s magic, eye-patched Uncle Drosselmeier comes and gives her a toy nutcracker.

  Marie’s brother, Fritz, breaks the toy nutcracker.

  Marie is upset, and after the party she goes to sleep with the broken nutcracker in the living room.

  Uncle Drosselmeier comes and fixes the nutcracker while Marie is asleep.

  Uncle Drosselmeier leaves.

  Everything becomes awake.

  The Christmas tree becomes gigantic.

  The toy nutcracker becomes Marie-size.

  Marie-size mice scurry around the living room.

  The Marie-size Nutcracker, along with Marie
-size toy soldiers, a Marie-size bunny-drummer, and Marie herself, battle the Marie-size mice.

  Marie throws her shoe at the king of the mice, which creates a distraction that enables the Nutcracker to kill the king with his sword.

  Marie passes out in a frilly white bed.

  The white bed dances.

  The white bed dances in a snowstorm.

  Marie wakes up.

  The Nutcracker reveals himself to be a prince.

  Marie and the prince travel to a magical land of sweets.

  The Sugarplum Fairy dances for them.

  Angels dance for them.

  Candy canes dance for them.

  Marzipan dances for them.

  Mother Ginger dances for them.

  Polichinelles dance for them.

  Hot chocolate dances for them.

  Tea dances for them.

  Coffee dances for them.

  Flowers dance for them.

  Grown-up versions of themselves dance a grand pas de deux for them.

  Marie and the prince get into a sleigh pulled by reindeer.

  Marie and the prince wave to us as they fly off into the sky.

  That’s it.

  That’s the end.

  I admired this plot.

  Why can’t more fiction be like The Nutcracker?

  Why can’t more authors just abandon their lumbering story lines halfway through and move on to something more interesting, like dancing candy?

  Why do you have to be stuck in a horrible world as it plods to its logical end?

  Why can’t there be mercy?

  Why can’t you just leave one world and move into another?

  5.

  The Nutcracker was first performed on December 18, 1892, at the Imperial Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg, Russia. At the helm was the same group that had done The Sleeping Beauty two years earlier: the director of the Imperial Theatres, Ivan Vsevolozhsky; choreographer Marius Petipa; Petipa’s assistant, Lev Ivanov; and composer Pyotr Ilich Tchaikovsky.

  Vsevolozhsky had wanted to make a ballet based on E.T.A. Hoffmann’s 1816 short story “The Nutcracker and the Mouse King.” The story was challenging to bring to the ballet stage, however: it contains flashbacks; the Nutcracker and Marie are cursed and made ugly at points; and nibbles of fat play a role in the plot.

  (Personally, I would very much like to see a ballet in which nibbles of fat are dancing.)

  Vsevolozhsky and Petipa simplified the narrative, also relying on an adaptation of the story written by Alexandre Dumas, père. The results of their collaboration were presented to Tchaikovsky, who worked from their list of directions.

  An example of a directive Tchaikovsky worked from: The stage is empty. 8 bars of mysterious and tender music.

  6.

  Two mice are shopping at a department store.

  They are driving around in their yellow VW Beetle convertible.

  It’s old and not super reliable, but it’s a good car for the beach.

  The mice have been shopping and are shopping some more; it’s like Christmas.

  “What do we have so far?” asks Mouse One, who is driving.

  “Cheese, cheese, cheese,” replies Mouse Two, peering into the bag.

  “We need more cheese,” says Mouse One.

  “You’re right,” says Mouse Two, closing the bag firmly.

  “I’m tired,” says Mouse One.

  “Let’s take a rest,” says Mouse Two.

  Mouse One parks the car under a king-size bed in the bed department.

  It is summer outside; it is cool under the bed.

  The mice nap in the car beside a stream of passing flip-flops.

  7.

  The Nutcracker as performed by the New York City Ballet at Lincoln Center each holiday season—that is, George Balanchine’s Nutcracker—was originally created by a small group of white men and is commonly danced today by a larger group of mostly white men, women, and children.

  It has been embraced by the dominant demographic in the United States, which is—at this moment, anyway; the fight’s not over yet—white and Christian.

  The Nutcracker has been remade by legions of ballet companies to reflect different takes.

  There have been, among many other variations:

  a Harlem Nutcracker

  a bayou Nutcracker

  two urban Nutcrackers (one set in contemporary Cleveland, one in Atlanta)

  a Southwest Nutcracker (with coyotes and rattlesnakes)

  a Hollywood Nutcracker

  a Yorkville Nutcracker

  a Native American Nutcracker

  a Frisch’s Nutcracker (named after the Ohio restaurant chain that sponsored it)

  a chocolate Nutcracker

  a Bharatanatyam Nutcracker

  a Hard Nut (Mark Morris’s brilliant, retro-modern reimagining!)

  a hip-hop Nutcracker

  a dance-along Nutcracker

  and

  a Revolutionary Nutcracker Sweetie, in which Drosselmeier is depicted as a gay skateboarder whose lover has just died of AIDS.

  8.

  In all the years I have been going to the New York City Ballet’s Nutcracker, I have never seen a ballerina fall, but I have observed that the ballet unfailingly gets one laugh. It’s at an odd time for a laugh, at one of the story’s most somber moments: when the Mouse King dies.

  It happens like this: the Mouse King, with his seven heads and seven crowns, has just been fatally stabbed by the Nutcracker. He is lying flat on his back, his arms at his sides, his sword still in hand. The music slows and sputters. The battle is over. It is a solemn scene.

  Suddenly the Mouse King jerks into an exaggeratedly stiff position; his hands freeze in mid-claw, his legs in mid-run. He is no longer dead, he is “dead,” and in this meta move, he reminds the audience that he is alive and that this is a performance. And the audience laughs at how the Mouse King states, in movement, the obvious, and the audience laughs at how everyone has forgotten the obvious, and the audience laughs at how, with this conscious and choreographed movement, the Mouse King overcomes his death. He lives.

  That The Nutcracker is thought of as simply a festive holiday ritual is baffling to me. How bold is a work of art in which we laugh at death? How bold is a work of art that doesn’t tie it all up neatly at the end—that does something, abandons it, and moves on to something better?

  The Nutcracker doesn’t go from point A to B to A to C to B and back to A in a complicated little dance. It’s a straight line: it goes from A to B. It leaps from A to B, really—and the leaps are part of the pleasure.

  The Nutcracker, in terms of plot, is structured less like a story and more like a joke. I would argue that this joke organization reflects a human truth that is often danced around: the narratives of our lives tend to end not with a bow but a punch line.

  That reminds me: How many mice does it take to screw in a light bulb?

  Two, if they’re small enough.

  9.

  I was in the cab with my young daughter.

  We had eaten a big brunch, and we wanted to go home and nap.

  I’d ordered chocolate-chip pancakes and a glass of milk for her.

  I’d ordered a spinach and cheese omelet and a cup of coffee for myself.

  She’d only eaten a bit of her pancakes.

  I’d eaten some of everything.

  The pancakes at this diner are divine;

  they are portals to another world.

  When they arrive on their giant white plate,

  you want to lie down in them.

  When you pour maple syrup on them, you can hear angels sing.

  You can’t just keep going after a meal like that.

  You need to pause for a minute.

  You need to look back and reevaluate your life.

  You need to remember your name and where you are.

  You need to remember what you are doing and why.

  You need to forget all that, I mean.

  You need to forget
all that for a while.

  And then you need to remember it.

  And then you need to keep going.

  And then you need to get back into your yellow car and fly away.

  10.

  For a long time I didn’t think it was a big deal that I blacked out while drinking.

  One time when I was in high school my friend called me on a Sunday night and asked me if I knew what I had done the previous night, and I didn’t know.

  I had thrown up all over the bed in the guest room in her house, where the two of us had stayed that weekend.

  I had done this without knowing, while I was passed out, and when I got up I still didn’t know, and then I had taken a shower and made the bed and still not known.

  I just didn’t see it.

  My friend wanted me to write a note apologizing to her mother.

  I could have died choking on my vomit; my friend underscored this for me.

  I wrote the note in longhand on floral stationery.

  I put it in the mail and tried not to think about any of it.

  My friend’s father was the first person I ever met who was sober.

  One time as he was driving us home from school he told us how he’d quit drinking.

  He had been sober for seven years at that point, which seemed unfathomable to me then.

  His wife, my friend’s mother, kept a pile of little cards in her kitchen, wrapped up with a rubber band.

  They were the kind of cards you include with a bouquet of flowers.

  The tower of cards was from all the times he had bought her flowers since he had quit drinking.

  The stack must have been five inches high.

  It was so exotic to me.

  It was like art from the South Pacific on display at the Met.

  It was like the slit gong from Vanuatu in gallery 354.

  That thing is awesome.

  It’s over fourteen feet tall and carved from the trunk of a single breadfruit tree.

  It depicts an ancestor of the tribe.

  It’s hollowed out in the middle and has a long, narrow slit that runs vertically down the center.

  The slit is its mouth;

  the ancestors speak through it.

  Slit gongs are in a class of musical instruments called idiophones.

  They are a type of directly struck idiophone.