17. We Clamor For The Right To Opacity!
The Year of Paying Attention
[The year is 2017.] New York is a pain in the ass in so many ways, expensive, crowded, noisy and dirty. Simple things are hard, like getting from here to there, so if I’m putting up with all that, I’m going to see a play now and again. I got lucky recently, and saw one called Everybody. You’ve never heard of it, but it was in the running for a Pulitzer Prize, and the playwright, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, got one of those genius grants, so who knows? Maybe it’ll be the next Hamilton. I won’t try to describe it. Suffice it to say Everybody is based on a 15th century morality play, and the characters include God, who appears to be a theater usher; Death, who looks like a nice little old lady; and a character called All The Shitty, Evil Things You’ve Ever Done To The World and Other People. Keep your eyes peeled for a production near you!
After the audience gave the play a standing ovation, I collected a voicemail message, that said: “Hi, Mr. Warfield, this is Nicole calling from (short, meticulous, serious-faced) Doctor Scherr’s office. I’m just calling to discuss you CT results, which appear to be, um, normal, as far as your kidney surveillance goes. It looks like you might have a little bit of a non-obstructing kidney stone. If you’re not symptomatic, not worrisome, I just wanted to make sure you’re drinking enough water, and wanted to know if you’re taking Flomax or not which could help with that as well. Give me a call back… no urgency and not concerning. Thanks.”
I have a secret fantasy — maybe you have one just like it. Mine is: I’m going to be pretty much healthy until a few weeks before I die; when I start to fail, it’s going to be fast; still, I’ll have enough time to remind everybody how much I love them, how proud I am of them, how happy they made me, how grateful I am for their love and support. I’ll tell them all this, right before my Senses and my Understanding leave me (as they must leave Everybody), and then, with no real discomfort, I’ll slip away. (You should really see that play.)
The image of my late father-in-law, the formidable former Ambassador, as he approached his own demise, comes back to me, unbidden. He’s in pain in his bed, his adult daughters around him, one a respected and beloved doctor herself, and I’m there too, just the one time, as some of us help him sit up. He’s suffering. He’s roaring. It’s shocking. I’m in my 30’s, I have a baby daughter across the street in our apartment, a little thing in her crib, and as far as I’m concerned none of us are going to get old, get sick, or die.
Decades later, I’m standing with my father as we slip a tiny pill under my mother’s tongue. She’s dying. The pill will keep her comfortable. She’ll die later this night. She’s struggled with dialysis for months, years, until she’d had enough.
My end approaches. I don’t want to die. Like all well-off, privileged Americans, death, and the accompanying sickness, feebleness, mental and physical dissolution have been neatly hidden, treated like a shameful inconvenience, a failure of one’s fitness regimen, a problem the medical professionals have failed to adequately address.
What to do? In the play I just saw, our hero Everybody learns he can rely solely on Love, which will never abandon you, even as your friends and family and possessions, your mind and body and consciousness surely must. But what about God? Is God even real? To which Death replies, a little exasperated, “Why isn’t it ever enough that I’m real?” Good question.
***
I’ve been eating breakfast with Peter and Sean for years, comparing notes on marriage and divorce, culture and work, parenthood and such. Peter’s my age, and we call Sean our love child, since he’s a generation younger. Peter and Sean were pals first, both deep into poetry. Peter’s a respected publisher of artists’ books, often collaborations he’s orchestrated between poets and visual artists. Sean has an advanced Ivy League degree in poetry and a big job at a global non-profit. When Sean introduced me to Peter, he leaned in and said, “He’s the real deal.” When the two of them start talking about poets, I feel a bit stupid. Then again, when Peter and I discuss music, Captain Beefheart and The Fugs and Cecil Taylor, Sean has to play catch-up. And when Sean and I talk bureaucracy, managing up and down in a corporate setting, Peter’s interest flags, since he’s always done his own thing.
I secretly believe attending poetry readings is the price one pays to be a poet, but when Sean invited me to hear him read at The Poetry Project in St. Mark’s Church-in-the-Bowery, the epicenter of East Village old-school cool , I said you betcha. Peter was out of town, so Sean and I met up for dinner at Veselka, the Ukranian restaurant that opened the year I was born, serving pierogis and borscht around the clock.
The handsome, venerable poet George Quasha was there having his dinner. So were dozens of good-looking hipsters. This East Village is trendy, expensive, and happening. This makes long-time East Villagers furious. After our dinner we crossed Second Avenue and walked a few minutes to the church, where I noticed there was a dollar discount, down to $7, for senior poetry fans. “I think I’m a senior,” I told the beautiful girl collecting the money. She smiled and said, “Well you don’t look it, but that’s great!” “How old do you have to be to qualify as a senior?” I asked. “I’m not really sure, but you look great!” she reiterated. Maybe this poetry stuff isn’t so bad, I mused.
We sat in the front row, and Sean went off to confer with his fellow poets. George Quasha was now across the room, chatting with somebody who looked like a poet. The room was buzzing in anticipation of the evening’s entertainment: “For Opacity: Visceral Poetics Now.” The printed program featured a quote by Édouard Glissant: “We clamor for the right to opacity for everyone.” My impatience awoke, and murmured, what is this bullshit?
Poets and lovers of poetry were standing or sitting or slouching, mostly solemn-faced, talking about poetry, I suppose. I perused the stapled collection of artist statements I’d been handed upon entry by that beautiful girl. The first page read, “At present we find ourselves alarmed by Asuric confrontation, by its odoriferous embranglement.” And it didn’t stop there. “The forces of darkness newly ablaze with poisonous silver led by a wretched behemoth not unlike Goya’s monsters devouring his children.” I turned the page. “Climate change is an effect of the distance created by the wrong kind of opacity: the inability to feel and perceive, let alone steward, waste…” It felt like I was being chided by a scold from Middle Earth. My mind was chattering — everybody here but me knows who Édouard Glissant is, what Opacity signifies, why we should all be alarmed by the Asuric confrontation!
At the podium the parade of poets had begun. One read an Inauguration Day poem National Public Radio requested but didn’t air. It seemed good, but what do I know? A young woman said her partner had carried some of her poems to Vietnam, where the pages had been rained upon. “I think they look beautiful,” she said, holding up the wrinkled sheets. I looked at my watch. I was never going to leave here. The rain woman was the fourth of 18 poets listed in the program. When Sean spoke at my funeral in a week or two, perhaps he’d mention that I’d stayed and stayed until I lost my mind, and died right there, in his arms at The Poetry Project.
A new poet took the podium. She spoke quickly, with assurance. She began reciting. It was arresting. It was powerful. I didn’t always understand it, but I felt it. She sounded angry and afraid, manipulated and abused by men and by the social power structure she’d grown up within. Her poem made me feel something real. Aha! So this is why I came tonight! I settled down. Maybe I had what it takes to dig poetry.
Eventually, thanks to miserable weather that prevented a number of scheduled readers from attending the embranglement, Sean took the podium. He explained that his piece started with a psalm, which he submitted to a process. I sort of understood what he was saying. He paused, took a deep breath, and clutching both sides of the podium, he leaned into the microphone. Out of his mouth came a keening sort of a song, preternatural sound rather than discernible words, his voice rising, his mouth nearly touching the mic. He was utterly focused, concentrating and leaning into the poem, the tone falling and rising. I felt like a witness to a ritual from another civilization, as if a shaman were invoking a god while in its thrall. The poem wasn’t long, possibly the most succinct of the evening. And it was thrilling. It ended, the audience burst into applause, and Sean returned to his seat next to me.
I leaned over and whispered, “That was fucking awesome!” He smiled. George Quasha was next, the last of the readers. He said, “It’s late.” He’d read my mind. He summarized his remarks, which had to do with how Tai Chi requires the practitioner to become one with the adversary, to merge somehow, in order to effectively be practiced. I was groggy, ready to go home, but I listened to what he was saying.
Finally, somebody introduced a video that an artist had provided. It appeared to be iPhone footage shot outdoors, of a nest perhaps, the image spinning around in a grove of trees, while a disembodied voice chanted in special poetry cadence about I’m not sure what. I did hear “vagina” come around a few times. It ended. All applauded. I rose and pulled on my coat and said, “Want to walk to the subway?“ “I think I’m going to hang out here awhile,” Sean said. I bid him good night and left him to talk in poet code with that roomful of poets.
