The Pope, the Antichrist and the Light Bulb Freedom of Choice Act
Nov 13, 2009
I ask Marcel Proost if he wants to go to Washington, DC with me. I realize this means having to rent him a tux. He hasn’t been south of Stewart’s Point in years, but I remembered that he’d mentioned he had collected over 100,000 frequent flyer miles. How he did this without having done any flying I figure I better not ask.
I have to go for an award ceremony at the Kennedy Center. I didn’t think he’d be interested in opera, but it turns out that he listens to Wagner when he’s “cleaning product.”
Mainly he wants to meet Michelle.
“The First Lady,” I assume.
“No, Michelle Bachmann. She’s hot”
“Oh, you mean the Republican congresswoman from Minnesota?” Turns out Marcel got a satellite dish last year, hooked it up in a tree near his trailer and watches cable TV news now. He likes the fact that she thinks the Pope is the Antichrist. But what really impressed Marcel was the bill she introduced in Congress, the Light Bulb Freedom of Choice Act.
“You’re shittin’ me, Marcel,” I say.
“No, it’s the truth. She introduced this bill here to protect people from the Government takeover of light bulbs. I don’t want the Government telling me what kinda light bulb I can use, so I’m in her corner. I see her on Fox News saying, and I quote: ‘If the Democrats can hose up a light bulb, don’t trust them with the country.’"
I check it out, and sure enough, Marcel is right. Michelle Bachmann is a staunch supporter of the incandescent bulb.
So in the morning we will be heading to the airport to take the flight to Washington. I am of course nervous that the beagle that they take up and down the security line will sniff Marcel and get us in trouble, but he swears he’s only going taking his Red Man tobacco and nothing else. Fingers crossed.
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Hell Mouth is a blog about music (mostly contemporary), literature (mostly good), politics (mostly pernicious) and culture (mostly American). It is written by John Adams with the help of several “friends” who live in the redwoods of coastal Northern California.
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Comments (4)
November 13, 2009
On the Highway
Elegiac Travels with John A.
Chapter 1, the Concert
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“Bulbs? You mean light bulbs?” queries Adams.
“No, tubers,” I reply.
“Oh, tubas! Love ‘em, great for bass lines.”
“No John, I mean bulbs as in rhizomes. Lighter ones of a delicate hue, and so on, those are my favourites.”
I’ve been driving with John Adams down the west coast freeway for hours now. John is a composer, of long, and beautiful, pieces. We haven’t talked much, he started singing the melody from Naïve and Sentimental Music as we set out, and finished as we pulled in to fill up for gas for the second time. He’s a neighbour of mine, and when I’m not chopping wood, carrying water, or taking in the Zen in the trees, I like to drive him to concerts: it gets him out. Thoreau started a long and dangerous tradition of Americans going bonkers in the wilderness, although Thoreau might have survived better with a laptop.
I tell John the programme and he adjusts his glasses nervously.
“Will this mean actually listening to Le Marteau sans Maître, all the way through? He asks this with the kind of American accent that Left Bank French intellectuals find disturbing. His dog, Eloise, growls menacingly at the sound of the name Boulez.
“Mention Boulez and the highly trained animal growls,” I laugh.
“Sorry? Do you mean me or the dog,” questions Adams, by now looking pensive “and what’s this stuff about tubers?”
“You know,” I explain “it’s a concept from Wittgenstein, forms that are rhizomatic, splitting off in all directions with no central source or root. A continuous bifurcation of energies, it’s a bit like minimalist music. The multi level Dharma of sound fracturing across the cosmic void.”
John pulls on a Harvard look, pats the dog, and starts to whistle the Groß Fuge: just the viola part. He stares into vast unfolding distance that rolls serenely past at about crotchet equals seventy two.
November 14, 2009
I get it now. Marcel is your alter-ego, like Tyler Durden in Fight Club.
November 14, 2009
Thanks for sharing your stories with us, and many congratulations on your NEA award!
November 14, 2009
Thanks to Brian Dickie's amazing blog, I am looking at yours. What fun! If you weren't a Very Famous Person and an Important Awards Winner, I would say, "We ought to be pals."