So you said I need to breathe a little bit more. Or at least to try to a little bit. To see what happens. So that’s what I’m going to do today. While I get some of my shit together, vaccum the apartment, figure out where my work is for the next several weeks, months. Some things just are not going to take the whole year. Which is nice to have. Some projects to make good on right at the start of the year of the ox. Ox. You.
You said, I think, that my stacatto was a little too intense. Or hard to take. I forget your exact wording because I was on my way to the Boileroom bar for water. Like I told my shrink, it was nice to have the distraction of the need for water because I had trouble taking the comment head on. It’s funny because way back when I was just starting to get set up writing you, I worried about the stacatto. That it was too much. Too hard to read. At some point I quit worrying about it and called it “my style.” Your comment made me start worrying again. Which, so long as I can keep writing to you, is no doubt just as well. If it crippled me into silence it would be a problem. But let’s not let that worry cripple us. It can just make us aware. Because, really, here I am writing you again. And I’ll keep coming back. I think we’ve established that by now. Let’s keep coming back.
It’s a question of pace. And also of walking around with someone. Which is one way of saying what we do here. Where there is no path except the one we make by walking. On your side of the ocean, the Animal Collective’s new album is out. There’s a song on it I’ve quoted here before. They’re not calling it “Bearhug” anymore. If I’m not mistaken it must be called “Brother Sport.” Pitchfork says it’s one of the centerpieces of their new album, but that those “obvious peaks would have less resonance if not for the more subtle moments.” Can’t wait to hear those more subtle moments. The album supposedly drops at the beginning of next week here in Euroland. And then T and I are going to go hear them that Friday. In “Brother Sport” they scream out about how “I want to walk around with you.” It’s funny because there was a series of three of four sessions of analysis where I kept citing songs. And that was one of them that came up. Most of them were Antony. But “Brother Sport,” too. And I said I guessed it moved me because there were so many people around in my life that I wanted to walk around with. Which is so much better than what I imagine the opposite would be like. Not wanting to walk around with anyone. But which brings its own amount of pain with it. People you know you want to walk around with but can’t. I was working too much when it came up. So there was that problem. And then so many of you are so far away. So there was that pain of wanting what I couldn’t have. “Jesus,” I said during that session, or another. “All this music that keeps coming up.”
Your entry helps, but can we get a playlist for the Patti show? So much of it is a happy blur to me. I spent most of the concert bobbing along ever so happily with my arms over T’s shoulders pinching his tits and singing the words to the songs I knew. Happy to be there alongside you and the others hearing Patti sing and say what we needed to hear. That is at least a little bit of her undoubtable magic. She says what you need to hear.
Like, I really needed to hear her say, and to hear you repeat in my ear, do not be afraid. Especially when, as my mother has repeated to me several times when we talk about financial news, “This is just the kind of thing that your father was so afraid of.”
I think that for the new year and now that I’m back in Paris and was around people who helped me think, I have two questions that I’m not going to be afraid of asking here and now. The first is: What child? Which I like in particular today because, as I was getting around to letting it formulate into a question, trying to figure out which question exactly it would be, the effort had me singing that Christmas song, “What Child Is This.” Hearing its distorted syntax that would play with my mind as a child. Hearing some of that childhood come back. Asking about the child. I like it, too, because if you insert a comma, it becomes a different and perhaps even more apropos question: “What, Child?” And of course because Kiki’s covered it, caught on that album that was playing on Huron street this last time around.
The second question has to do with the pacing I started off with for this entry. I told you I’m translating some Berlin bits to be published sometime soon here. And there are a couple of translating projects in the wings. The question is related to translation. But it’s also related to what I need to figure out how to say to the world. What bears repeating? By which I mean, what to I need to say again, with more breaths? What haven’t you and lots of others incomparably like you and me heard? What do we need to hear?
And this by way of B. A little gentleness in a world of brutes indeed. Savage and tender. You know the score. Now let’s make sure everyone does. We've got work to do. Remember.
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