Compelled By Melete IV

Bistro 44
01/02/06 - Kicked off the new year's sobriety effort by meeting Mick and Judi for mid-morning coffee and chit-chat at Bistro 44, a place I've come to thoroughly despise. It combines all the charm of a back-alley brothel in Amsterdam with the menu pricing of the toniest cafés of Nice. I mean, five bucks for a biscotti? A cookie? A dense, bitter, flavorless cookie?? A cookie that tastes stale fresh out of the oven??? I usually get two. And don't even ask how much the no-fat caramel latté I get with them costs.

We sat at a small table by the biggest little window in the place, near the front but not too close to the door. It's one of those old windows with stained glass on the bottom and clear on the top so that you can sit and sip without having to look at the hoi-polloi out on the side street, all held in place by enough lead to poison half the city. At night the unused tables are completely cleared. But the day manager, an angry, hulking showboat queen in his early thirties, decorates each table with a cheery vase and fake flower arrangement, strictly to express the irony-laced loathing he feels toward this place and by extension the world in general. It's completely appropriate and everyone who goes to the Bistro gets it immediately. Our vase this morning held enormous daffodils, so tall that they partly obscured Judi's face for much of our get-together. I was kind of grateful for that.

The clientel of the bistro are your typical no-job-out-of-college, still-living-at-home rich kids in their mid-twenties, slumming it on the West Side using daddy's platinum card. The sort of people who like a place that makes them feel dirty even as they maintain perfect hygiene. They dress themselves in a caricature of free-wheeling bohemia while shopping only at the best boutiques. (They sneer at the Gap and just the sight of a Walmart-style bigbox store gives them hives. Or it would, if they'd ever seen one.) Every now and then, when our own conversation dies down, I catch snippets from the other tables and I puke back into my latté bowl. They remind me of me at their age so much that I want to crawl into the bowl with the puke and drown.

Anyway, the Bis definitely has that dirty/clean thing going on. The bare 25 watt lightbulbs, the palid violet walls and shiny black trim, and the two-tone tile arrangement in dingy red and putrescent green combine in a way that would normally hide how dirty the place was. But at the Bis the opposite is true: the dank interior inconspicuously hides the owner's germ phobia-inspired cleaning binges. Only the occasional faint wiff of Dutch Boy gives it away.

Bistro 44 is the first of many small establishments in the same long row of old attached red brick masonry buildings. Except that the Bis' red bricks were painted black some time in the sixties and have stayed that way ever since. It's the same width front to back so that the washrooms, located behind the main seating area, are down a short hallway against the side of the building (which also leads to a mostly unused kitchen door marked "KEEP OUT"). The small black awning over the front door acts as an umbrella for the inevitable guantlet of smokers that other patrons have to pass through since the by-law started being enforced, a group usually lorded over by the day manager, who apparently gets to take a smoke break every ten minutes as part of the terms of his employment. A fresh coffee alway takes twice as long as it should because he's invariably outside when it's ordered, and he's the only one in the place who can properly run the antique espresso machine behind the counter.

In the back corner, opposite the hallway to the washrooms and kitchen, is a stage barely big enough to hold the microphone and music stand that sit on it. I've never seen it used and my personal opinion is that it's just for show, a half-hearted attempt to give the Bistro some real coffee house bona fides.

On the wall behind the counter, next to the espresso machine, is a yellowing reprint of a late 19th century French poster showing Balzac in a greasy apron standing outside of his own dingy little hole-in-the-wall in Paris, looking as proud as would any fellow whose name sounded like "ball sack". That and the Mapplethorpe photo hanging behind the toilet in the men's room are the only artwork in the place. I'm guessing the day manager, who slightly resembles Balzac, selected them both.

Mick and Judi have just gone through another rough patch in their relationship. They were subdued company and left me to make up most of the small talk, which I'm not really good at even under ideal circumstances. (Which these were not. Other friends of mine who know them secretly refer to them as "Punch and Judy", though if anyone gets tossed around it's usually Mick.) Judi was still nursing a New Year's Eve hangover. Must have been a real blow-out, to have her post-partydom depression last more than twenty-four hours. I didn't really ask for details. I already know more about their private lives than I'm comfortable with as it is. Suffice it to say that when Judi interrupted Mick shut up and stayed shut up.

Our visit lasted for just over an hour, and was punctuated by too many uncomfortable silences. I left earlier than I'd intended to and felt relieved for doing so. I've got to find a new crowd soon. Eric called from LA again, offering the same deal as last time but with a bigger retainer. Maybe I'll take him up on it.

Compelled By Melete III

Helpful Hints
The discerning individual can determine whether he's being kept in a basement CIA holding cell or the hull of an alien spaceship using the following three criteria:

1) Paint: CIA holding cells are painted grey, usually two coats and primer over plaster parging, which itself is spread over poured concrete.

The hulls of alien spaceships are just grey, the way a sugar cube is white. Grey, grey, grey.

2) Resonance: gently tapping the wall of a CIA holding cell will produce a dull thud. Again, plaster parging over poured concrete.

Gently tapping the hull of an alien spaceship produces a strange, hollow tinkling, like tapping two charred sticks together in a bonfire. (Warning: don't go overboard with this. You don't want to be making a lot of ruckus in the bowels of an alien spaceship. Trust me.)

3) Residue: No matter how much they scour, the CIA can never quite manage to get their holding cells completely clean. A small droplet of dried blood here, a fleck of unidentifiable tissue there, a sooty film in the crack where the wall meets the floor. Not much, but always present.

Aliens use some sort of irradiation technology, combined with whatever composite material their hulls are made of, to completely irradicate all traces of the former occupants of their holding cells. Two minutes after the bloodiest implantation procedure they could safely work on open microcircuitry in the same room. Donald Rumsfeld wishes.

The Oboe Cadenza Enigma

I've been wanting to write about this for a while. So, without having listened to the piece in some months, and having read nothing scholarly on the subject, I'd like to address the oboe cadenza in the first movement of Beethoven's fifth symphony.

Despite it's brevity, the cadenza's importance cannot be overlooked when listening to this piece. There are many potential reasons why the maestro included it, and it's impact is felt on many intellectual levels. I've given the matter some thought, and I've come up with my own short list of potential reasons for the cadenza's inclusion.

1) It's a form of musical joke. It's like the wannabe soloist who strikes out on a third out-chorus when the choirmaster has shortened the piece to two, or the lonely Protestant who adds extra lines to The Lord's Prayer at a mass. The clueless individual is so into his part that he keeps going after everyone else has stopped, with comical results. And just like the former group member who's become an isolated object of ridicule, the oboe cadenza's first notes are strong and logically consistent with the music that preceeded it, but then become progressively confused as it fades into silence and conformity.

It's worth noting that after his first symphony, in which he called the third movement a "menuetto" (standard fare for the time it was written), Beethoven used the term "scherzo" or joke for the third movement of all of his symphonies (except the ninth, of course, in which the second and third movements are reversed in order). Meaning (possibly) that he was not above the idea of injecting humour into serious music, or (again possibly) that he felt himself above following the established rules of composition etiquette.

2) Even if it is a joke, it makes a serious point. The first movement of this symphony is a monolithic display of the severe power of conformity. It turns a chamber orchestra into a unified force to sear it's simple melody and variations into the mind of the listener. The cadenza is a short, quietly juxtaposed off-melody, and can be seen to symbolize the lonely individual following his own path away from the crowd (much like Beethoven himself).

3) Beethoven wanted to create a sonata form movement that even the most basically educated music listener could grasp and understand. Sonata form is fairly simple to begin with: it is divided into three sections, being the exposition, the development, and the recapitulation. The exposition consists of two juxtaposed musical ideas, a strong theme and a gentle theme, presented in their most basic melodic forms and almost always in the strong/gentle order. In the development section the composer derives new music by applying techniques of variation to the two themes. In the recapitulation the composer re-presents the two themes along with some of the newly developed ideas, mounting to a crescendo and finale. However, in many examples of sonata form it is difficult for an inexperienced listener to discern where one section ends and the next begins.

Beethoven was a master of theme and variations, and no concept is more important in his work. His earliest composition, published while he was still a teen, is a theme a variations for piano. The first movement of the fifth symphony is a nearly perfect example of theme and variations, to it's very core. The strong theme consists of eight notes (which in themselves are a four note theme quickly followed by a four note variation) and a simple set of variations based on those eight notes. The gentle theme provides some relief by way of a longer melody designed to soften the dramatic, punchy effect of the strong theme. But even then, it is started by a six note variation of the core four notes from the strong theme, played by a solo horn so as to differentiate between strong and gentle.

Beethoven delineates between the exposition and the development sections is a unique way. When the strong and gentle themes have been fully presented, he stops the music completely and starts over again, repeating the two themes note for note. The effect is such that the beginning of the development section stands out, as it goes beyond what the listener has already heard.

To delineate between the development and recapitulation a different technique was required. The nature of development means that bald repetition could not be used. This is why the oboe cadenza comes in - it is used to clearly mark the boundary between the development and the recapitulation, much the same way the solo horn marks the difference between the strong theme and the gentle theme.

4) More than wanting to write a sonata form movement that was easy to follow, Beethoven wanted to write a sonata form movement that was textbook perfect, but for some reason he balked at the last moment. The oboe cadenza is an intentional anomaly in an otherwise perfect score. Perhaps he was superstitious, and didn't want to tempt fate by creating a work that was perfect, and therefore unsurpassable.

Compelled By Melete II

Untitled Character Study
My schedule, being as busy as a modern life is in daylight hours, leaves only the night for haphazardly timed visits to the local Y. The treadmills there face windows looking out over what at night is a mostly vacant parking lot, not much to see. But the glare of strip lighting also turns them into semi-opaque mirrors, useful for stealing quick glances at the twenty-nothing gym princesses who, by their general demeanor, apparently own the place. All things considered, I'm not entirely bored.

Directly behind the treadmills is a row of cross trainers, the most desirable of all gym apparati and nearly unobtainable during the peak hours between 5 and 7. During that time there is so much heaving, churning activity in that area that the sweaty narcisists who ride them meld together to become a faceless and unknowable mass. Later at night though, when things are winding down, they remain largely unoccupied and so individual users stand out.

This guy would have stood out even among the aprés-work crowd. He rode the machine almost directly behind me, slowly pedalling backwards, unconsciously cracking his knuckles, his visage an expressionless serial killer stare to nowhere. I'd seen him around at night a few times before, and he always struck me as a natural outsider, a genuine weirdo. But with all of that the thing that was really striking was his hair. Too black. Too long in all the wrong places, and carefully combed to enhance those ungraceful lengths to boot. It was like he'd just stepped out of somebody's 1974 high school year book, the kid most likely to kill his whole family. The first time I noticed him I thought "rug", but another time in the showers it was apparent that if it were a wig, he'd Krazy glued it to his scalp. With this guy, who knew?

Driving home one dreary night, I passed him waiting alone at a bus stop, in the rain, and I thought, "That's just so him."

Compelled By Melete I

Ilsa the Pirate
12/18/05 - Spent the morning on a closed off section of Bondi doing the SI shoot with Ilsa, using Aussie lifeguards as props, blah, blah, blah, typical stuff. Cloudless sky, hot as winter Down Under. "Hot enough to boil a monkey's bum" the Monty Pythoners once quipped. Hot enough to burst a saline implant in our case. Thank God that didn't happen.

Things went well all morning and we broke for lunch around 11. Ilsa had the usual - a smoke and a handful of paint chips plucked from the base of a lifeguard stand. You think I kid, but she spent her down time slumped on the sand in the tower's shadow, and she was eating something when she came back over to the car, and she didn't have any food with her at all. Most models don't bring food to a shoot on principle. Always with the health, this crowd. I tend to bring at least a bag Doritos and a Yoo Hoo, but then my flabby ass never makes it around to the other side of the lens.

Whatever it was, we had to wait an extra half hour for her to come down from the energy rush that a body unused to calories experiences after food is taken in. She had uncontrollable giggling outbursts that spoiled a couple of shots. After that we had about an hour of productive shooting, and then another incident that I say confirms my paint chip theory: we decided to do a series of shots of Ilsa clenching a disgusting old sabre in her teeth "pirate style" (her idea) and the rusty goodness of the blade put her back into spazz mode. That pretty much canned the shoot, but I think we got enough for the spread.

A few hours later we met the rest of the crews at Mal's winter retreat for a soirée, including the iconic barbecued shrimp and Fosters, which none of the models would touch. Except for Jenna of course, but she's got some sort of farmgirl genetic thing that doesn't let her accumulate body fat and so she eats like a horse. A carnivorous horse. Bitch.

I had no idea that Ilsa was political. Apparently she joined P(large 'e')TA a few years ago, which led to a brief flirtation with Chomsky. (I'm made to believe that most flirtations with Chomsky are brief, but that's a totally different story.) Then a few tentative Google searches led her to Kos and the DU, and now she does the occasional post on Huffington's blog. She started riffing on Bush, and then the war, but Mal cut her off. Having spent something like a hundred grand to get Howard re-elected, I guess you could say he's for the war. The conversation changed abruptly to gardening for some reason, and Ilsa had nothing more to say. Indeed, she spent the rest of the night in petulant silence, and returned to the States the next morning without her usual goodbye call.

(Addendum: I saw her again a week later in New York and it was business as usual - she was all hugs and kisses. Coincidentally, she had just come out of an Ethan Allen.)


[Ed. I know, it's blasé to write parodies about the supermodel lifestyle, but what the hell. I was compelled by Melete, upon awaking from a dream.]