Life Is Short Opera Is Long

12/02/2021

Life Is Short Opera Is Long

The house felt very subdued after Elektra's death, but outside the fall continued its very slow march across the garden. Somehow we didn't get around to buying mulch this year and instead decided to buy a leaf mulcher. (What's the expression: give someone a fish and they'll have dinner, give them a net and they'll have a fishing career.) I didn't want to sweep up all the leaves, though, until they had fallen off the trees, which may take another two or three weeks.

Meanwhile, a single bellflower bloomed in a crevice between the bricks and the house.

On Saturday, I went downtown to see Eurydice at the Metropolitan Opera. It was my first time attending a performance in the city since I went to see Torche at Saint Vitus at the beginning of 2020. (My ears are still ringing from that show.) I arrived early to the Met and took a walk through Central Park. It felt good to be outside in a different part of the city.

It also felt good to be back at the Met. I felt like a teenager, just by virtue of being decades younger than most of the attendees. The opera was beautiful; the music was grand and modern as it moved between lush and melodic, crashing and playful. It took me into and out of myself, in the way that only opera can do. I thought about the differences between this version of the Eurydice myth -- which focuses on Eurydice's relationship with her dead father -- and the one I told in my novel #gods, in which Eurydice is a singer and Orpheus -- who is also gay -- is a musician who accompanies her.

Back home, I saw the garden with new eyes.

Posted at 05:52 PM in Expression, Reaction, Science Projects | Permalink

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#gods

ORDER HERE

A RADICAL NEW MYTH ABOUT SEX, FAITH, AND THOSE OF US WHO WILL NEVER DIE

A young boy wanders into the woods of Harlem and witnesses the abduction of his sister by a glowing creature. Forty years later, now working as a New York City homicide detective, Gus is assigned to a case in which he unexpectedly succumbs to a vision that Helen is still alive. To find her, he embarks on an uorthodox investigation that leads to an ancient civilization of gods and the people determined to bring them back.

In this colossal new novel from the author of The Metropolis Case, the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice collides with a new religion founded by three corporate office workers, creating something beautiful, illogical, and overwhelming. Part sex manifesto, part religious text, part Manhattan noir—with a dose of deadly serious, internet inspired satire—#gods is a sprawling inquest into the nature of faith and resistance in the modern world. With each turn of the page, #gods will leave you increasingly reborn.

Praise for #gods

“#gods is a mystery, an excavation of myths, an index of modern life, a gay coming-of-age story, an office satire, a lyrical fever dream, a conspiracy. One of the most ambitious novels in recent memory—and a wild, possibly transformative addition to the canon of gay literature—it contains multitudes, and seethes with brilliance.” —Mark Doten, author of The Infernal

“Matthew Gallaway’s #gods is a novel so brilliant, so funny, so full of strange and marvelous things, I couldn’t stop writing OMG WTF I <3 THIS SO MUCH in its margins. It’s rare to find a novel that so dazzlingly reinvigorates age-old meditations on faith and f&!*ing, art and eros. Luminous, enterprising, and sublimely cheeky, #gods tells the story, the myth, the dream of the human soul in all its glorious complexity.” —Suzanne Morrison, author of Yoga Bitch

“Matthew Gallaway’s storytelling manages to be both dreamy and serious; lean and luxurious. His words carry an incantatory power of mythic storytelling where beauty and savagery wrap around each other like bright threads in a gorgeous tapestry.” —Natasha Vargas-Cooper, author of Mad Men Unbuttoned: A Romp Through 1960s America

“If the ancient gods were just like us, only more so, then the same could be said for this strange, wonderful book, in which the mundane sorrows and small triumphs of very ordinary lives glow ever so slightly around the edges, sometimes quite literally. At once an oddly romantic send-up of dead-end office culture and an offbeat supernatural procedural, #gods is terrifically weird, melancholy, sexy, and charming.” —Jacob Bacharach, author of The Bend of the World

The Metropolis Case

'It’s to the credit of Matthew Gallaway’s enchanting, often funny first novel that it doesn’t require a corresponding degree of obsession from readers, but may leave them similarly transported: the book is so well written — there’s hardly a lazy sentence here — and filled with such memorable lead and supporting players that it quickly absorbs you into its worlds.'

-- The New York Times

Music: Death Culture at Sea and Saturnine

Listen or download songs and records from my indie-rock past with Saturnine here and Death Culture at Sea here.

Music Video: Remembrance of Things Past

Watch the rock opera Remembrance of Things Past written and performed by Saturnine and Frances Gibson, starring Bennett Madison and Sheila McClear.

Video: The Chaos Detective

The Chaos Detective is a series about a man searching for 'identity' as he completes assignments from a mysterious organization. Watch the first episode (five parts) on YouTube.

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Expression//Reaction//ScienceProjects

12/02/2021