the suicide

So.  I keep getting mail about my high school reunion.  Remember to reserve. Are you coming? Repeat. On daily basis.  Here's the class list. Page after page of names in 2 columns scrolling down, each with a link to the class reunion website.

Somebody put this thing together. Someone is planning the reunion. Getting the venue. Selecting the menu with meat, fish and vegetarian options. Scheduling the mixer. And the morning-after breakfast. The night before something. Probably drinks somewhere.  They picked a 'nice' place (it must be, right?) on the waterfront.

At last message there were seven reservation slots left.  So I think there was room for an even hundred, and not a body more.

Fifty years. Half a century after escaping from what we called then the 'pink prison.'

I'm not sure I knew anybody at my high school. Anybody. Although I recognize some names. I was too busy cutting school and taking the bus over to UC Berkeley, climbing into a cozy couch in the Student Union, pulling out my Penguin Aeschylus, and pretending I was a student there.  It never once occurred to me that cutting high school and demonstrating to yourself your intellectual prowess does not, actually, get you accepted into the college of your choice.

Yes. I was an idiot.

I had to take the long way round to get into the schools of my dreams, grad school—and eventually into the career of my dreams (if not a dream job). But I did it.

And all the years since, I've thought of one guy, and one guy only from my high school class.

The one who didn't make it.

And I don't mean those who died in Vietnam.  We had, apparently, around ten of those. Or the ones who died of misadventure. Three or four of those, two of which from drowning...

Yes, all of this is up on the website. With links to obits whenever linkable.  Somebody did this. Somebody maintains this list.

I looked for that one name.  That guy. The suicide guy I've thought about for half a century.

He was talented beyond reckoning. A bit goofy, but smart. Sensitive. Actually, I'm making all this up. This is what I thought. How I remembered him. It's not that I knew him. I think once maybe we were at the same holiday dinner together at the house of family friends.

I'm being vague here for a reason.

So. The suicide happened first year of college. The college of his choice. I heard it through somebody who heard it through somebody.  Drugs made him do it, they said. Depression, I think. I mean, it was the 60s outside. Both were possibilities. And all I felt was this oppressive sadness.  Here was somebody who was doing it all right. With talent that was nurtured and put to productive means. (Yes, I know, vague again). I had the you-coulda-been-somebody-important anger at him. Coulda been significant. Coulda made a difference.

These, I realize, are thoughts I have never once had about myself.

But I thought these things about him. And as a result, I worked like mad to make something of myself, however modest a contribution that might be. Made the decision to follow my dreams, despite the long and arduous path. If he didn't get to live that life, I was going to make sure that I did.

And then— a half-century later, there on the high school reunion list was his name.

And there was no asterisk implying he was dead. And no double asterisk implying he was missing.

Alive and well, after all this time.  No tragic demise, no youthful indiscretion. No blow your brains out (which was the image stuck in my head those long 50 years).   And it's because he's alive and well running along merrily just living his life that I won't tell you a thing about him.

All I can say is that he influenced my path, and kept me on it as I thought about alternatives. I owe my PhD to him. And probably my children too. Poetry and academic writing. Enjoying the daily hikes with dogs along the trails overlooking the Pacific.The beauty of the world. I owe to him. Because I thought he blew his brains out when life was just beginning.

But here's the thing.

If I hadn't thought him a suicide, would I have thought of him at all?



Oh. PS
That reunion thing? It's today. And no. I'm not going.

les troyens —the trojans, more or less

Okay.  Now that I've sat through the whole 5 ½ hour opera that Berlioz wrote and composed, I get to forever more call it by its French name, Les Troyens, instead of The Trojans. And of course, I never have to see it again.  Which is not to say that I didn't like it enough to see again (which I didn't), but rather that it is unlikely to be produced in its entirety ever again in my lifetime, at least in San Francisco.

My worries about Les Troyens started before we even got there. I was hoping they'd skip the whole dying soprano thing. But no. Long-winded female suicides started even before the first intermission.  And the really long-winded soprano suicide, well—we had to wait 5 hours to get to that one.

Berlioz was obsessed with telling this story since his dad read to him about Troy when he was a kid. So. It just festered until he finally got to write a version for himself (words and music both). Clearly a work of love. Only I think nobody told him that works of love require an editor. A really brutal editor. I think the first two or three acts could have been taken care of in about 5 minutes.  Ten minutes, tops.  But Berlioz really wanted us to suffer along with everyone else in the production.

I started suffering long before we found parking. Mostly about whether I could make it through the whole thing without running out to go pee. Turned out that was on a lot of people's minds. The silver-haired set predominate at the opera.

The curtain finally opens. And I'm already confused. Everyone's dressed in clothes from the wrong period. So. Clearly, I say to myself,  this opera is supposed to be a parable about something. But the program said nothing about it. And I didn't do my homework early enough to already know. Looks like the 1850s to me. I figure, Troy. Hm, that's Turkey. 1850's the Ottoman Empire was strong, but also just starting to fall apart. The Tanzimat reforms at that time tried to raise enough money to keep the Empire going... Maybe it's a commentary about the fall of the Ottoman Empire? But, no—the Empire hadn't fallen yet. And Berlioz wasn't that prescient, was he?

Trying to figure out the time period got me through the first couple of acts. And already a bunch of suicides, Cassandra's being the most prominent.

Turns out it wasn't entirely an Ottoman parable, but  a commentary on the Crimean War. Which did have something to do with the Ottomans. But also the Russians (apparently, they lost), the French and the British. During the first intermission the place lit up in iPhones tuned to Wikipedia trying to figure out the same thing.  Now, I'm pretty fuzzy about the Crimean War in the 1850's—but didn't Putin just invade and take over Crimea. Again?

So. Berlioz was on to something.

Needless suffering. That's what opera is about. And this opera is full of it. Needless to say, all the main female characters reminded me of my mother. Especially when they're groveling on the stage floor, tearing their hair out and threatening suicide.

There's also a lot of steampunk touches. The Trojan Horse, piles of military crap lying around here and there, and a giant Trojan Warrior that's meant (I think) to be heroic, but has a prominent cable holding up its arm. Very broken marionette. Very distracting.

I didn't think I was going to make it past the first intermission. But I thought I'd be brave and try. At Act III I was rewarded grandly when the curtain lifted onto an enormous North African ksar, or citadel—nicely accurate, at least for the northern Sahara—though I'm not sure Carthage ever looked like that. Still. It was beautiful! Finally some color! No more drab Crimean War steampunk and gray, but just the right reds and yellows and greens and stripes, and Berber tattoo patterns on the mud walls of the ksar.  I was a happy camper.  And so were the (entirely new) set of characters. Sweetness and joy and beauty and generosity ensued for a brief moment in time. At least until the Trojans hit town. After that, it's more rending, needless torment, and even more needless female suicide.

So. What I learned is that thinking about the fall of the Ottoman Empire can get me through more than an hour of drab scenery and singing. And the sight of something blatantly North Africa after all these years still instantly brings me joy. A ksar on the stage of the San Francisco Opera House can keep me staying put for 5 ½ hours, no problem.

The entirety of Les Troyens—and maybe all operas—really ought to be rewritten. By women. Not to supplant all the great operas out there. But as just plain antidote.