Matthew Gallaway

December Fades To Winter

Although it was technically the shortest day of the year, it felt as if it expired no faster or slower than just about any other day at work, i.e., time passed.

But when the sun began to set around 11:00am, I took a few pictures, wanting to memorialize the darkest day of the year, when the arc of the sun is almost horizontal.

Finally it was time to leave, and I rode a crowded D-train to 125th Street, where I transferred to a crowded A-train. I got out at 168th and walked south on Broadway, where the wind was blowing hard and the snow had turned to an unsightly shade of gray. The moon looked small and pathetic in the sky.

I coughed and felt my nose running, the beginning of a cold.

I stopped in at the house and was annoyed to find used paper towels in the ‘paper recycling’ bin where the tenants put their garbage. (This is the sort of venial misdemeanor for which we have received any number of tickets over the years from the Department of Sanitation.) I checked the mail and was happy to find a ‘reunion’ issue from my high school: a few months ago I had submitted an ‘update’ describing in a few sentences my current life: that I was living in Washington Heights with my ‘relationship partner’ and three cats, that I worked as an editor for ____, and that I had written a novel slated to be published in the fall of 2010. But as I scanned through the listings of my other classmates – full of news of marriages and children – I was dismayed to find that mine was nowhere to be found. Of course this could be an oversight; perhaps the class secretary had lost my e-mail or forgotten it – perhaps she hadn’t even received it! – but I could not help but remember a conversation a few years ago in which she expressed some concern about whether I wanted ‘everyone to know’ that I was now a non-heterosexual, and in her voice I could detect the fear and curiosity (for she was not judging me, only ‘protecting’ me) I have come to associate with so many whose lives never take them beyond the confines of their suburban existence; I even felt a pang of sadness that I had surpassed her in the intervening decades, as if I were grieving for my own lost naivety, and – as I skimmed through the listings a second time, confirming my absence from a group of people, several of whom I had once considered my ‘closest’ friends -- a part of me pitied her in the way we must always pity those whose minds are inclined to narrowness for whatever reason. But a part of me also hated her (and more to the point, the person I had been in the past) for allowing this to happen, for making me feel small and worthless and forgotten.

I returned to Broadway and felt disillusioned by the Christmas lights adorning the fire escapes.

Nor did I feel particularly cheered by the tree in the lobby.

Even when I tried to make the image ‘abstract’ and ‘arty.’ But then I arrived at the apartment and was comforted by Zephyr, who always waits by the door.

And Dante, who in the attempt to cheer me up ran to the scratching post so that I could praise him and offer a treat. And Elektra, who completely unlike her operatic namesake seems to be filled with love and appreciation, and so melted the venomous rage that had hardened within me.

Snow Fades Away

When i woke up this morning the rooftops were covered with snow, but the sky was dull and gray, as if exhausted by the effort of the previous night.

I went outside to shovel, and found the medians covered with several inches of snow. Except for the plastic bags stuck in the tree branches, it could have been 100 years ago.

Walking up the block to the house, I wished -- and not for the first time -- that cars were banned from Manhattan. (Except for my car, of course.)

I shoveled most of the snow in the front and then went to the garden, where I hoped that our new day lilies were only sleeping under a thick blanket, and not suffocated.

The birch tree and evergreens, by contrast, really step to the fore in the 'winter garden' and seem almost joyous (yet serene) in the snow, as if they have been looking forward to it since suffering through the horrible humidity of the summer.

The Hinoki Cypress bowed gracefully.

The statue had a new hat.

The blue atlas cedar always looks great in the snow.

Returning to the front yard, I was relieved not to have to shovel the snow again.

Back on Broadway, a bus was 'not in service.' 

In the lobby, I felt tired and frozen as I waited for the elevator.

I spent the afternoon researching non-heterosexual culture circa 1960 and taking naps with the cats. From Samuel Delany's memoir 'The Motion of Light in Water: Sex and Science Fiction Writing in the East Village 1957 - 1965,' I extracted the following quote:

'When you talk about something for the first time, for better or for worse you use the public language you’ve been given. It’s only later, alone in the night, that maybe, if you’re a blogger, you ask yourself how closely that language reflects your experience. And that night I knew that language had done nothing but betray me.'

He also describes in great detail the docks and movie houses and bathhouses and parks where men went to have sex with each other during this period, and how there was something politically charged about seeing hundreds of men in one place doing something so 'degenerate' and 'subversive,' an idea that clearly foreshadowed the 'revolution' that would occur post-Stonewall. Because Delany (in addition to being a superb writer) was non-white and non-heterosexual, his words -- as an outsider on at least two fronts -- resonate with a truth that is often lacking in many contemporary descriptions of 'gay life,' not only as it exists now but as it existed then.

I woke up in time to see the pink skies of the setting sun over the bridge, and both regretted and did not regret that the only life we can experience is our own.

Time Fades Away: Snowstorm Preparation

I woke up and with reports of a snowstorm on the way decided to go outside to sweep up the remaining leaves in the front yard. There's something depressing about shoveling snow when you turn it over and there are a bunch of rotting leaves mixed up in it, so I wanted to avoid that to the extent possible.

On the way out of the apartment building, I felt the melancholy of sparse Christmas decorations.

The sky was not exactly the flat gray I typically associate with an impending snowstorm, but was still dramatic through the barren tree branches.

I stopped in to the hardware store on the corner to buy salt.

Someone on Broadway preemptively covered the sidewalk, which I thought was a bit extreme given that the storefront is under scaffolding.

At the house I began to sweep up the leaves and dust from the front yard, and as I did so, I remembered my old friend S___. We lived together for several years both in and after graduating from college, and when we moved to Park Slope in 1992 bought the above broom from the hardware store on Seventh Avenue. We used the broom the entire time we lived at the apartment (with at least 100 other people), and I remembered S saying to me once how he would always associate the broom with me, because it was very functional and reliable, which I thought was a nice compliment.

At some point S went to graduate school but we remained friends after he moved back to Brooklyn. But then I moved to Washington Heights and we drifted apart; the last time I saw him was at an art opening many years ago at which he was exhibiting some work, where I could tell that his father (whom I had met several times over the years) felt very uncomfortable talking to an openly non-heterosexual person such as myself, which obv did not comport with his memory of me. Or perhaps I was projecting my own discomfort. In any case, the last contact I had with S was around the same time, when I sent him a draft of my first novel after he asked to read it. He never wrote back, however, nor did he ever respond to the periodic e-mails I sent when I happened to listen to the Meat Puppets, a band he introduced me to and remains one of my favorites from the early 1980s, or when I wrote to tell him that Stephen and I had adopted cats, which he had always maintained were superior to dogs as pets during the years we lived together.

Friendships are difficult to maintain under the best of circumstances, and they become even less tenable when one person (in this case me) becomes a very different person than the one who existed during the period when you actively shared interests or activities or an aesthetic viewpoint. Given that the other person has also changed (just by virtue of being alive), the memories that can serve to fuel a sense of fondness or nostalgia have been tainted by a sense of repulsion or embarrassment that almost never overcomes the inconvenience of arranging a mutually convenient time to meet, and so the friendship dies. (Circumstances may contrive to resurrect the friendship, but this is the exception to the rule.)

I tried to express my feelings about my old friendships -- for S is far from the only person to have faded completely from my life -- by writing on the lid of the garbage can, but knew that my irreverence was rooted in a larger ambivalence for these people from the past, along with the realization that the world has an infinite supply of ppl, some of whom can be expected to replace those who have been lost. Because we have suffered the loss of old friendships, this process is more difficult than when we are younger, but is nevertheless feasible, and -- despite the effort involved in terms of emotional risk and wasted time -- can offer some consolation for the past, along with rewards of a different type, i.e., the association with someone who more closely reflects a vision of our 'truer' self, which we have ideally arrived at by virtue of dispensing with the 'untrue' parts over the passage of time.

Inside the house, I admired a glass vase that once belonged to my father's mother.

In the garden, some of the bricks were breaking apart where water had frozen in the cracks. Far from being concerned, however, I felt that these flaws -- if that's even the right word -- added a certain beauty that would not exist in a new path.

Upstairs, a lone poinsettia seemed to wait for the storm. 

At the end of the block, an apartment palace glared at the sky, as if daring it to destroy what has already lasted close to 100 years.

The George Washington Bridge Project: Three Marcel Proust Quotes

Here are three Marcel Proust quotes from 'In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower.' (In order to make his words even more relevant and believable, I have changed the gender where appropriate.)

'It is only because we have forgotten that we can now and then return to the person we once were, envisage things as that person did, be hurt again, because we are not ourselves anymore, but someone else, who once loved something we no longer care about.'

'How preferable the malleable memory of him seems: instead of the real meeting with him, in your solitude you can dramatize a dream in which the boy who is not in love with you assures you that he is! This memory, which can become as sweet as possible, by being gradually flavored with what you most desire, is far better than the future encounter with a person whose words will be put into his mouth not by you, but by his foreseeable indifference and even his unforeseeable animosity. To be no longer in love is to know that forgetting -- or even a fading memory -- causes much less pain than the unhappiness of loving.'

'If we are to make reality endurable, we must all nourish a fantasy or two.'

Let's Go See Elektra!

As part of my ongoing mission with THE AWL, I participated in a 'round-table' discussion (via G-mail chat) about the opera and the performance, which you can read here.

The short version is: Elektra rules! Go see it if you ever get the chance -- there's a reason why it's survived 100 years.

<3 u, Metropolitan Opera

Miss u, 1909.

On Jury Duty

Thankfully, it's done. (It was a late night, everyone, so this post is going to be very light -- more soon.)

The Saturnine Tour Diaries Project: 1995

October 27, 1995. We drove to the University of New Hampshire, which is located in a a New England coastal town -- waterways, buoys, wooden houses and widow's walks. We did an interview at WUNH with this mop-topped curly haired kid named Roy, who was nice enough. He actually played all of our requests (I didn't make any), including Jim's 'December' by Teenage Fanclub. Jim had been humming that song in his low monotone for about an hour in the van, so it was driving me insane. Jennifer has entered the nose-blowing/sinus-infection stage of the tour, so every time she blows her nose it sounds like a goddam bullhorn. At dinner she said: 'It's amazing, I bit into this pepper and a jet came out my nose.' The show in Portsmouth ended up being really good. We ate dinner in this place called the Stock Pot, which had a downstairs section overlooking the harbor. Then we walked back to the 'Elvis Room,' which is really a coffee house. I played backgammon with Mike and almost threw up from all the cigarette smoke being created by these four teenage girls who were sitting around a table chain-smoking different brands of cigarettes and talking about which ones they liked best. A bunch of kids came to the show and we sold 4 or 5 discs, which felt like a gold rush at the time. The band who headlined was called Waiting Kates, which was funny because Jennifer had just been complaining about bands who named themselves after a girl and worse, a gerund. They were terrible -- the guitar player had a million effects, the bass player wore his bass around his knees and the singer had a very sing-songy girl voice: th' Faith Healers they were not. During a drum break in one song, the drummer actually got out from behind his set and started break dancing. I went and tried to sleep in the van. Our soundman was this 19-year-old kid name Cam who played in a local hardcore band called 'Humping Muscle.' He liked us and spent a lot of time telling us about the stage show they had planned for their special Halloween show: white curtain, strobe lights attached to the drums and a murder scene with fake blood being splattered on the curtain. We drove back to Amherst in downpour, leaves blowing around on the windy roads, cloud banks setting into the mountains of Route 202.

October 28/Williams (before). Our highest guarantee ($800). we are heading to Williams at the moment on a winding two-land highway called 116 through the Berkshire Mountains. The sky is still an angry gray, and all the colors have been muted by the rain. We are riding past stone walls, old trees with lichen-covered trunks, and tree-lined lakes slightly whipped by the rain and wind. The horizon is brightening, and I can see patches of blue beyond the mountains.

October 29/Williams (after): We sat around Williams all day and played backgammon. We set up in the same hall where we played last year, and waited for Guppy Boy, who showed up about an hour late. Guppy Boy played around 9pm and seemed a little stunned to be playing live after recording for three weeks. They also switched instruments after every song, which gets kind of annoying. There weren't tons of people there because there were several Halloween parties on campus, but it was worth it for the $800 we made. I drove back to New York City with Jim so that Mike and Kelly, Jennifer, and Jeff and Sasha could stay at Williams for the night. The drive back was harrowing, as the edge of the highway the entire way south was lined with deer, all of whom seemed to be on the verge of jumping in front of the van. I was glad that Jim was driving.

The Saturnine Tour Diaries Project: 1995

October 24, 1995/Providence: We arrived in Providence and saw clumps of punk rockers roaming the streets in preparation for a Rancid show. For some reason, Chris of Purple Ivy Shadows didn't know the names of any of the streets, so we had to find the club by landmarks. There were a lot of people in downtown Providence as we drove to the club. A few streets over from the punk rockers, their parents were all lined up for 'Phantom of the Opera.' We met up with P.I.S. (they're now calling themselves 'piss') and went out to eat at some Thai/Vietnamese place that was not the greatest, but cheap. The P.I.S. are in the middle of negotiating a deal with Zero Hour. Zero Hour's initial offer was for seven records, and PIS has countered with a one-record/option offer. The show was structured in two tiers: first PIS/Saturnine, and then two prog-rock bands called Vehicle/Sleestack. Purple Ivy Shadows have some interesting things going on, but they could definitely use a little more power. Typical for Zero Hour, I guess. Right before we started we got a request for 'Then Again,' which we ended up playing after a furious debate because we hadn't played it in a while. We almost played it perfectly, but Jim went into the final ending a measure too soon, which was kind of disappointing. Jim forgot his drum sticks in Burlington, along with his address book, so we're sort of up in the air about who should pay for them. We (except for Jennifer) stayed at Chris and Eric's house, which was very close to Brown, and was built in the early 1800s. Two more things about the show: 1) 3 kids drove 45 minutes to see it, and they all bought t-shirts, 2) Chris from Sleepyhead came to the show because he brought his guitar to Providence to be repaired. His friend Pete is going to play w/Sleepyhead next spring. Pete is supposedly some trust-fund kid who was touring with Cell post-Ian. He lives in the same house w/Combustible Edison, who are on tour, and Jennifer was excited because she got to sleep in the Millionaire's bed.

October 26, 1995: En route to Northampton. Last night, we stayed at Mike's parents' house in Connecticut. Despite displaying a sense of confusion about our career trajectory, they seem genuinely supportive and bought $100 worth of t-shirts. I slept in a bed with a canopy and about 100 dolls surrounding it. I had to sleep in the same room as Jim, which I sometimes find annoying because he always seems to wake up at the exact same second I do. So when I got up at 7:30 am to go to the bathroom, Jim was like 'HEY' in his deep voice: Jim, we found out, doesn't like to whisper for reasons that remain unknown. Then, when I got out of bed at 9:30, the first thing he said was: 'I had a dream about Grace last night,' which was annoying because I hate hearing about other people's dreams (except Scott F___'s), especially when it's about one of Jim's ex-girlfriends. So I just didn't say anything. Later, Jim told Mike's mom about his dream, which was: 'I was in a room with Grace, and then Samantha came in.' Just now, Jim was like: 'I'm not even that hungry, which is an unusual state of being for a Harwood.' Duh. On to Northampton.

October 26/Northampton: We arrived in Northampton and went to a record store in the basement of the mall where of course they didn't have any of our records, which was somewhat depressing because it was the third time we've played here, and the past two times it seemed like we were developing a little fan base. At least the best record store, where we went next, had the record (along with a single), but they didn't have our ep, which we've yet to see in any store outside of New York. We came to the conclusion that Angela really needs to hire someone to do retail if our records are ever going to be in any stores. By contrast, we've seen the Space Needle record in every store we've been in. This was an afternoon where I really felt like we were going nowhere, which set the tone for the rest of the night. After meeting Jim's friend Kirk and eating Mexican, we went to the Bay State, only to discover that there were four bands on the bill. The first was a singer named Linda Husik, who Mal Thursday put on as a favor to someone, probably at Caroline Records, which is her label. Then there was a little tension because Mal asked Jim if he would let the first three bands use his drum set, but everything was resolved and we finally played. The club is really a restaurant -- no stage and the bands play in a big bay window that overlooks the parking lot. It took us a long time to set up because there was only one outlet and the soundguy left the extension cord in a box somewhere. It was pretty crowded when we played, but not as crowded as last fall when we played with the Ass Ponys, so that was sort of disappointing. I was also annoyed because of the various entourages of Linda Husik and Harvey Sid Fisher. This one guy walked up to me and said: 'Do you want me to move my stuff?" He was actually wearing a badge on a chain around his neck. So I said, 'Who are you?' because I had no idea which entourage he belonged to. He seemed slightly taken aback that I didn't know and he said, 'I'm with Harvey Sid Fisher.' So I said, 'I don't care what you do with it,' because we weren't playing first, and because I really didn't care. Our set was sort of flat -- I was annoyed about playing with a joke like HSF and Mike was tired from running down to New York to see Kelly the night before. HSF was as bad as I expected him to be; it disgusts me how such a big hype can develop over some sort of washed-up lounge singer, like it's an inside joke that scenesters everywhere can laugh about. It's just like Tony Bennett on a smaller scale. It was even more annoying because my friend Marjo came and her stupid boyfriend Joseph was totally into HSF. (He even bought a t-shirt.) It was nice to see Marjo, though, and we talked throughout HSF's agonizingly long set as he worked his way through each of his songs about the astrological signs. The set was even longer because the final band, The Martinis (with the drummer and guitarist from the Pixies) never showed up. I saw Jennifer get into a painful transaction with one of her old acquaintances who plays in this band Cordelia's Dad. I think he wanted Jennifer to give him a disc, but she made him buy it, which was cool until he showed up with his stuff, which she in turn felt obligated to buy. Finally Jim and his friend decided to get high in the van, so the whole thing smells like old party now. 

Time Fades Away: Il y trois jours (Elektra!)

Thursday morning was bright and cold. On the way out of the apartment building, I was surprised to see a slice of light reflecting in from somewhere and creating a silhouette of the iron work of the staircase, unchanged in the 100 years since it was installed.

Outside the sun, which even at 8:00am in the morning appeared to be setting, reflected against a building to light up an otherwise shadowed block.

A garbage truck roared by and I admired the timeless elegance and modern simplicity of the 'sanitation' font.

Like a birch tree (here adorning the housing project at the end of the block), it is a font that looks great almost anywhere.

I arrived at work at 9:00am, just as the sun was setting to the west. 

Time passed. I left work and made my way down 34th Street, where I paused to take a photograph of the light display in front of Macy's, the famous department store. I wondered if I would ever manage to get inside this 'eighth wonder of the world,' and doubted it.

I took the 1-train uptown and exited at 66th Street, where I again admired the mosaic figures lining the platform.

I made my way to Lincoln Center and carefully made my way up the unfinished steps, which were better marked than the last time I was here, when due the overhang I had tripped. 'These things are a lawsuit waiting to happen,' I had thought at the time, succumbing to my litigious instincts.

Because I was here early to pick up the tickets, the plaza was mostly empty. I stood around and shivered for a few minutes on the windswept plaza as I waited for a friend to arrive, wondering how it had happened that the temperature had dropped more than 100 degrees in less than 30 minutes.

I distracted myself by admiring the poster for Elektra, which I was about to see performed for the first time (not including the final dress rehearsal, which I had seen a few days earlier). It is one of my favorite operas, but seemingly one of the most difficult to pull off: as Stephen has described it, the work needs to really 'take you to another place' from start to finish, so that you are pretty much sitting on the edge of your seat the entire time, being tossed around by the furious currents and riptides that mark the music as it rages from one second to the next. On this night, I also planned to concentrate on some of the antecedents to the piece, e.g., the way you can hear the Wagner's Walkure music (at the end, when Wotan is saying goodbye to his daughter as he places her in the ring of fire, which some consider to be the saddest music ever written) echoed in Elektra's scene where she remembers her dead father Agamemnon. Or how similar at times the group of maidservants resembles the Walkures, representing that part of our unconscious that screams and wails when we are frightened and panicked. Inside a packed house buzzed with anticipation.

A slash of red on the curtain seemed to represent the fire into which we all hoped to be immersed, to be obliterated for a few minutes, to emerge burned clean by mythological songs of anger and revenge.

Time Fades Away: Saturday is for the Birds

This morning a bird -- a hawk, perhaps? -- flew across the sky as I took a shot of the George Washington Bridge.

Because the weather has turned cold in the past few days, I felt particularly grateful for the sunlight that for a few seconds streamed into the guest room, which is usually dark. It was a quiet day: the cats meandered around, sleeping here and there, while Stephen and I worked on our computers. At one point my mother called to ask about some photographs and I spent a few minutes talking to my father as well, who is having a party in a few weeks for his 80th birthday that I'll be attending.

As the day wore on, the sky turned to an almost brittle azure, which made the bridge look small and distant. 

As time does outside of the workplace, it passed quickly and with decided determination until we decided to have afternoon tea and stollen.

As the sun began to set -- at around 12:30pm -- we decided to go for a short walk. Outside a flock of pigeons circled madly overhead, and I wondered if I was seeing a projection of my own racing thoughts.

At the house, I admired the Christmas cactus, which is blooming right on schedule.

In the darkening sky, I was shocked to see a massive bird descend from a nearby tree to land on a street light.

I ran across the median and confirmed that it was a red-tailed hawk. Though hardly unprecedented in Manhattan, I had never seen one in our neighborhood, or at least on the commercial strip. I wondered if it might be the same hawk I had seen streaking across the sky this morning.

Back in the apartment, the river -- smooth and flat as glass -- reflected the last remnants of the sun but offered no answer to my question.