The world as it ought to be. Which is to say, upside down. "God I love to turn my little blue world upside down" (Tori Amos, "Upside down").
I'd like to tell you about a recent conversation between me and a woman of extraordinary, indeed I said "singular," beauty. Or rather, let me tell you about a conversation that never happened, but should have. So imagine, if you would, receiving a blitz from some random person saying the following:
"I recently inherited a zoo [in] the Congo. Would you like to fly down this weekend? (Otherwise we can do lunch.) Actually, I really only would want to do lunch; they say the rebels make travel difficult."
What would you say? What wouldn't you say! Now imagine that some friend of yours sent this blitz to someone you knew only aesthetically. "I was happy in the haze of a drunken hour, and heaven knows I'm miserable now!" (The Smiths, "Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now). Morrissey's tongue-in-cheek lyrics are appropriate here, for a little fun at my expense never hurt anyone. No indeed, but what caught my attention was her response, or rather again, an heteronomously authored response. Wishing me well in the most vulgar (and hence exciting) way, some valentines were sent to me as the dialogic response to "my" original e-mail. Yet another Smiths lyric comes to mind: "What she asked of me at the end of the day / Caligula would have blushed / 'You've been in the house too long' she said."
So that's what we said to each other, or rather what neither of us said to the other. A conversation that never happened. But there is another conversation that now can be recuperated only in music -- a conversation, a real conversation, I declare, that should have happened. Ideally, perhaps, but my declaration expresses a mere velleity. Subjunctive mood to be applied. But in this reality, this right-side-up world, no dialogic invocation or invitation would have been made by me.
For it is not an extraordinary phenomenon for a man to find a woman beautiful. But to go further? A far more rare event, preferring as I do the warm safety of philosophical suspensions, digressions, interdictions, ad nauseam. You will see, there are many forms of slavery. Confronted with beauty, should one act? No, I said. 'Twould be rude, affronting, violative of her space. All such arguments work equally well, one should note, as the subjunctive security blanket of one who would live only a life of the mind.
Fortunately, or unfortunately, I have some friends that feel more passionately, which is to say passionately. When confronted with beauty, you act, totally abandoning any inhibitions which would lead you to the skeptical stasis of an unrequited lover. When confronted with beauty, that is, you send that random, absurd blitz. For if you are to be skeptical and unrequited, do so poetically, like Stipe in "Losing My Religion." Don't succumb to Nietzsche's aphorism, "Supposing truth is a woman -- what then? Are there not grounds for the suspicion that all philosophers, insofar as they were dogmatists, have been very inexpert about women?"
And so at the center, an absence of what ought to have been -- a dialogue. But this dialogue can only now be the isolated monologue of a third, the music: "What she asked of me at the end of the day / Caligula would have blushed / 'You've been in the house too long' she said."
My real answer has been, perhaps would have been again, "And I naturally fled." But again, music captures what ought to be, and so what my answer ought to have been: "So if there's something you'd like to try, ask me. I won't say no. How could I? ...Ask me, ask me, ask me. Because, if it's not love, then it's the bomb that will bring us together" (The Smiths, "Ask"). Music often captures our lives most poignantly, perhaps even more poignantly than the lives themselves merit in this world.
And is there a better argument against deproliferation? For if the bombs will no longer bring us together, it's up to you, the world. But you, I fear, have forgotten to ask!
And ever more the dissonance between what is and what should be:
"Last night I dreamt / That somebody loved me / No hope, no harm / Just another false alarm. / Last night I felt / Real arms around me / No hope, no harm / Just another false alarm / ...The story is old - I KNOW / But it goes on / Oh, GOES ON / And on / Oh, goes on / And on" (The Smiths, "Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me").
The growth to intimacy, one de-hors texte, is the end of a feminist musicology, for it is both its goal and its limit. An entrance into intimacy signals the cessation of struggle, even (though only local) political struggle, moving from poleros to simply eros. And this entrance begins with contact, the simple elegance of a touch. "Any kind of touch is better than none, even upside down" (Amos).
