12,036. RUDIMENTS, pt.788

RUDIMENTS, pt. 788

(the rise of the waltz)

I was the inquisitive type.

In Second Grade my teacher

was a lady named Mrs. Schur.

I'm not really sure (not a pun)

about the Mrs. or Miss, or the
spelling actually, but then, it

makes no difference. On the

back of my report card, in

a comments section, by

'Deportment'  -  which I

only later found out about,

for its meaning and all; it

was a very scary word to

me, calling forth nothing

but trouble  - she'd written,

'Gary has a problem with

questions.' I never had any

idea, even as a second grader,

what in the heck that was

meant to get across, but my

Mother saw it and went nuts

on me (as if she knew what

it meant?). The fact of the

matter was, I had no problem

at all with questions; I just

asked them and, apparently,

this teacher had a problem

with answers  -  to which she

was unwilling to own up and

instead ripped it back onto

some poor little snipe of a kid,

(me), calling him out. From

that day forth, yes, I swore

to hate teachers and blaming

and turnabout and pomposities

and illogic and every other

normal and God-awful societal

thing that those sorts of overly

'taut' women professed, and

their men-versions too  -  of

which this same school had

a few real tart-examples of.

And my Mother as well was

a real pain in the butt over

these things, always siding

with the teachers and taking

every dip-shit and categorical

judgment they'd make as

lame, beauty-parlor gossipy

fact. The whole freaking

system was a bunch of

freaks making a system.

(There's my logic).

-

I never got over it, and still

spend occasional time working

it all out. Wasting my long and

overdue adult time still dwelling

on their wreckages of kid-crap.

The philosopher Bertrand Russell

declared that the great discovery

of the twentieth century was the

technique of the 'suspended

judgment.' Well maybe it was,

to him, but I was having none

of it. I made my judgment of

all this, quickly, and without

suspension. Bam!

-

There was a small bookstore

in Elmira and I often was

somehow able to find cool

stuff in its racks  -  including

the aforesaid Bertrand Russell,

(who seemed rather dry and

unreadable to me) and Ludwig

Wittgenstein (they were buddies)

who made a lot more sense and

excitement to me in the reading.

The very weird thing about

Wittgenstein  -  curious, actually,

unless it was just some fantastic

1940's marketing ploy or whenever

it was  - he had two distinct

'careers' of philosophy, and two

different bodies of books, well,

sort of, published and disseminated

differently anyway, but still.

books. The first  -  and eminent  

-  part of his career he laboriously

built up one thing, its theories

and conclusions and examples;

and then, after a long bout of

silence, he came back  -  saying

all of that had been wrong, and

he wrote an entire other side of

everything! Repudiation of one's

early work, in a sense, later did

become one of marketing's biggest

acts  -  all these rock-music guys,

for example, in referring to their

own work, always repudiate the

earlier so you can then buy the 

new. As in, "Fir Trees At Dawn?'

Oh, man, I can hardly listen to 

that now; it was way off. This

new album, 'Fickletown' is much

better; man, it's where we're AT

now!" See what I mean?

-

So, I don't withhold judgment.

Don't care much too, and probably

won't. Like today, yet again, I

see the local fireman guy coming

out of Introcaso's (a long-time

dry-cleaner in town) with some

fireman laundry, or whatever it is

that dry-cleaners do. I wondered

to myself. 'What? These guys can't

do their own laundry? They have

five bays of gleaming firetrucks

and gussied vehicles, two floors

of space for their offices, rooms,

and soirees, and two sources at

least, of tax incomes to support

their endeavor, and they have to

contract out an open commercial

account for for laundry service?

Is it bid? What are the yearly

figures? How many hands are

in those numbers? Why is it all

so secret?' That's an example 

only but it's the sort of thing

that drives me nuts. There's no

accountability; there's no

'nothing' anymore, and we

schmucks just keep on a'paying.

Lots of room there for discussion,

but the ants in his pants no-shine

Mayor won't even speak to

conditional motions of the public
weal. I can't tell what he has worse

  - a problem with questions, or his
own problem about answers. Screw
all of those guys. They can look it 

up, what they don't understand,

while they do their laundry).

And if he won't speak to it,

then none of them hoisted

petards should complain when

wrong issues begin to get

disseminated. Look that

up too, I guess.

-

In my little, old, leaky, farmhouse,

once I got it all settled and had

some 'feminine' input (and 

companionship), things got

righted and began nicely falling

into place  -  a tiny, little community,

us  -  amidst farm folk, rolling

hills of plenty, and a million new

things to learn. George Orwell

phrased it as 'Keeping the

Aphidistra Flying'  -  which we

did. Of course, and I would

think it's pretty obvious, I was

incompatible with the world

around me, and no one had a

clue what I was up to or doing,

least of all the two twin brothers

who ran that Elmira bookstore.

I got half friendly with them

just because of frequent exposure,

and my 9 dollars here and 9

dollars there (you could so a lot

with a dollar back then). I had

no idea what their sales quotient

was, nor their profitability. The

stock seemed good, and kept

fresh, and old too. The two guys

were twins, yes, but as different

as could be. You can't say one

was the heart, and the other the

soul, of the business, since that's

much of the same thing. Rather,

I'd say one was the 'mind' of the

place, and the other the 'soul,' or

spirit. The Mind brother hung

about the cash register like a

mole-rat, watching everything

and adding it all up; with the

other, the 'soul' of the place,

kept at the books, examining 

the shelves, reading the stock, 

looking through things. 

'Partaking,' as it were, of

the licit bookstore experience.

Which was, after all, their

premise and professed mission.

I used to imagine him, a la

Wittgenstein, 'repudiating'

his past and suddenly just

staying in one place with a

thousand comic books, while

drooling over each one with a

leering kid-smirk, as he read

the word-bubbles. 'The Hell

with books! Man THIS is 

where it's at now!'

-

Well, not so fast, Charlie Brown;

as the saying went back in those

days. Charlie Brown, by the

way was very confusing to me.

There was a Charlie Brown in

the comics, there were Buster

Brown shoes (?), and, previous

to all that there had been an

early rock n'roll song called,

'That Charlie Brown, He's a

Clown.' Something like that.

'Who calls the teacher Daddio?

That Charlie Brown, he's a clown.

He's gonna; get caught, just you

wait and see.' And then, in the

song, the dog-voiced Charlie says,

'Why's everybody always picking

on me?' (Uh oh, Mrs. Schur; he's

asking a question!)....

-

Oh, you're wondering....what's

about the rise of the waltz? Here:

'The rise of the waltz,' Curt Sachs

explains in 'World History Of the 

Dance,' 'was a result of that longing

for truth, simplicity, closeness to

nature, and primitivism, which the

last two-thirds of the eighteenth

century fulfilled. The waltz must

be seen as a hot and human 

expression that broke through

the formal feudal barriers of

courtly and choral dance styles.'

The waltz? Whaaa?