I went out with Scorchsky and his brother in Phoenix and hung a couple of signs early in the morning to beat the heat. Afterwards we had breakfast and talked politics, which is unavoidable, along with things like lighting, painting techniques, messaging for various demographics, on-the-fly photography and all the other ancillary arts and sciences that make political landscaping such a blast.
We also talked about classical music, particularly guitar, which Scorchsky’s brother plays, the nuances and complexities of the instrument, and the allowances that have to be made when orchestral or piano works are transcribed for it. The most obvious shortfall is volume, which acoustic guitars simply don’t have. Particularly when it comes to sustaining notes, which is why the more languorous romantic pieces like Claire de Lune or Ravel’s Pavane for a Dead Princess often seem rushed compared to orchestral or piano versions.
In return though, the guitar has a more human quality to it. The music is a more direct extension of the player - the occasional squeak of skin against the fretboard, the touch of the fingers against the strings — as opposed to the more detached, etherial quality of the piano or orchestra. And if it sounds a bit rushed maybe it’s because we are. Unlike music that comes from the heavens, we’re all going to die someday. Like the guitar, we also lack the sustain.
One piece where the guitar transcription beats the original piano for me is the Orientale by Granados where the essential sadness and practically aching beauty of the melody comes through with more of the human touch. And because I used to listen to it all the time back when I was eighteen, lying in bed with Karen in those few short, sweet months of our college relationship.
My relationship with Karen (not her real name for reasons that’ll become clear soon enough) was easily one of the happiest and most carefree of my life. We never fought - not even once — we just drifted together and then apart in a way that seems almost impossible to me now. Then again, we were sophomores in college, living in dorms on the edge of a redwood forest, and there just wasn’t a whole lot to fight about. And she was beautiful, with golden wavy hair and pale skin — like Botticelli’s Venus except with a bit more color and, you know... a personality. She was funny and smart, the loved and loving child of an upper-middle class academic family — one of those rare angst-less teenagers who was simply happy because she knew had every reason to be. Back then anyway.
Whatever it was she saw in me I was grateful for it, and after making love we’d lie in each other’s arms and legs and fall asleep listening to the soft guitar notes arcing through the darkness. Sometimes we’d get up and share a cigarette by the window, watching the moonlight fracturing through the branches. Although I didn’t know too much about life back then, I knew enough to understand it probably didn’t get much better than that... and I was right.
The semester ended and we remained friends but went our separate ways. I doubt she ever thought of me as much as I did her, but there were very few times in my life I wouldn’t have traded just to be back with her in that room, and it’s impossible to hear that song, or classical guitar in general, without thinking of her. Life got a lot darker and more complicated for both of us, and sometimes when I was lonely or scared and desperate for some kind of escape I’d put on that tape, close my eyes and try to remember those nights and our bed, the moonlight through the window and the smell of her hair.
In a way those times were even more romantic than the ones they recalled — how love, even if it’s just a memory, can offer refuge in a way nothing else can. That’s why it’s important to love as deeply and fiercely as you can, even when you know it’s doomed, because in the end love may be the best thing we ever get in this world.
Tragedy hit Karen in her mid-twenties, and all I can say is it was the sort that you never entirely bounce back from. But then a few years later a knight in shining, gold-plated armor swooped in and for a while everything in her life was better, or should’ve been. She fell in love and got married to the hyper-wealthy heir of some European industrialist. He was a longtime friend of the family who’d been in love with her since childhood and she moved overseas to live what was supposed to be a fairytale existence.
We all know about the abuse that goes along with poverty, and the way love will run out just after the money does. What I learned from Karen is that there’s a dark side to being married to the super-rich, and that when things go bad they can go bad in ways the rest of us could never even dream of. Simply put, when a guy with seven or eight hundred million dollars threatens to kill you, you’d better pray he doesn’t mean it.
Whether it was drinking that caused the divorce or vice-versa I’m not sure, but about two years after their wedding I started getting weird calls from her from Europe where I could barely understand her — partly because of alcohol and the slight delay in the connection - but also because she’d constantly allude to “things she couldn’t talk about,” and things that would’ve sounded utterly paranoid if her husband hadn’t been so rich. The worst were the calls where she’d whisper into the phone out of fear he’d hear her and I’d tell her for God’s sake to please not talk then… I didn’t want to hear her getting beaten or killed while I listened helplessly from the other side of the planet. I loved her and was worried for her, but grateful when the calls finally stopped.
The next call was about a year or two later and it was from Karen’s mother. Karen was back in the States but had missed a flight because she was too drunk to make it to the airport. My job was to go to an address in San Francisco, clean her up and get her sober enough to get on a plane back home where she could get into rehab. She’d give me a thousand dollars or however much money I needed to do it and naturally I turned that part of it down. I’d loved Karen from the day I’d met her and was glad to help save her if I could. And since I was divorced by then myself, love and nostalgia being what they are, I couldn’t help thinking maybe there was a chance we could return to where we’d left off as kids.
It took her a long time to answer the door — at least two minutes — but still not enough time to prepare me for what I saw. She was like a shadow of the girl I’d known, little more than skin and bones and probably weighing less than a hundred pounds. Her face that had once and forever in my mind been so beautiful was barely recognizable now — just skin stretched across a skull. It was one of those moments where I hoped I’d been able to hide my shock, and the embrace of long lost lovers I’d fantasized about for so many years I remember now as just being grateful for the chance to look away.
The place was bad, but I’ve seen worse. I’d had this kind of job before. The other times were heroin and meth, but for Karen, the culprit was nothing more than white wine. There were green bottles everywhere, filling the kitchen, and flowing out into the other rooms as well. There were shopping bags and half-eaten take-out containers, all from the deli across the street. It took about five or six large garbage bags to get things under control. It was her husband’s apartment, but she said she was getting it in the divorce. She said the problem was that the whole place was bugged and the phone was tapped and I thought she’d probably gone insane. It could’ve been both.
She knew why I was there. She’d given her mother my number after she’d missed her plane, and although we had some rough spots it took about five days to get her well enough to get on a flight home. I let her drink the first night, and a little bit the second day just to get her through. She tried to seduce me on the second night, partly as a distraction from the sickness, but mostly to get her more wine. It didn’t take a whole lot of willpower to turn her down, but I let her take me into her bedroom and lie on the bed with her, stroking her hair until she fell asleep.
I wish I could describe how profoundly sad it felt to be lying next to her again. Profoundly sad and at the same time strangely calming and beautiful, staring into the darkness and feeling a lifetime’s worth of longing and innocence draining out of me like blood. The moonlight and soft guitar music were all gone now, and instead the window across the room glowed with streetlight and the sounds of traffic and nightlife in the Marina District: all those young and beautiful people out for another lovely evening after another perfect day, talking and laughing like nothing was ever going to change them and that they’d never, ever grow old.
Orientale, by Enrique Granados