BASED ON HENRY JAMES’ SHORT STORY “THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE”
1.
I never thought it made much sense
for a classically-trained pianist to move to community — Twin Oaks intentional
community, isolated in rural Virginia to be precise — but, then again, what did
I know about classical piano? I had my rock ‘n roll adventures in the early
‘90s, when ‘making your own records’ was considered a dashing endeavor and,
like so many other D.I.Y.ers, got sidetracked by major-label dreams of ‘selling
out’ which subsequently led to having my heart smashed on the knowledge that I
was too principled to pander to the lowest-common denominator
taste of a callow public. Years later, I shortened all my qualifications
to a simpler formulation: I wasn’t any good. That partially explained my
‘ending up’ on a ‘hippie commune’ — sleeping in, making hammocks, going organic
and going with the flow. What it didn’t explain was why, contrary
to the average stay at Twin Oaks (which was only two years), I remained —
and that owed to the covert love I felt for the classical pianist’s girlfriend,
Starfish.
My initial inclination was to resent
the guy — Captain Schumann was his community name — but I couldn’t keep it
up due to a couple of factors. One was Starfish obviously loved this dude
in the most natural manner — she was happy at his side — and the other was, his
usually silent self-absorption prevented
him from totally fatiguing me. Other
than maintaining his quota (42 hours a week performing community functions such
as weaving hammocks, baking bread and weeding the garden), all he did was play
his Yamaha digital grand in his room. Starfish
— a classically-trained cellist — occasionally got him out to perform
modified trios (such as the charming last movement of Mozart’s G major, K.
564), although it was apparent Starfish played for fun, and the wish to support
the Captain’s passions, whereas with him, playing was everything.
Sometimes I wondered at his ability to take this gorgeous, giving, talented
woman so much for granted. Then again, he might have been on the spectrum and,
once I became more knowledgeable about classical music (Starfish always had the
best recommendations), I started to discriminate a bit more regarding his playing.
There were two conversational gambits
Starfish wouldn’t entertain. One was the overt manner in which she indulged the
Captain’s every whim (such as baking him special treats in the courtyard
kitchen while he hammered away at some tricky passage) and the other was
any imputation that the Captain was anything
less than a genius. Most Twin Oakers — grooving on the Dead — easily
granted his lofty gifts as long as they weren’t expected listen to them. This
seemed the easy way out — and I knew something about pitching art above
the heads of the unwashed masses
from my past; if someone marched to the beat of a different drummer,
nobody might notice the drumming was off tempo. The more it seemed to me that
Captain Schumann wasn’t playing Chopin’s “Nocturne in E flat major op. 9” so much as he was typing it, the more I marveled to observe
Starfish admiring his delicate
finesse (and looking around the community ‘house’ closets to see if
she couldn’t find him better lighting for practicing in his room). The
Captain had the tousled locks of Beethoven, the professional-grade keyboard
(courtesy his bougie grandparents) and the studious concentration of the
maestro (often falling in quota arrears); he had everything of the genius
except the proof. Why would I be hard on him?
As devoted as Starfish was to the
Captain and his playing (to love one was to love the other, after all),
‘adulthood’ did impose itself upon her within a few years. For both men and
women, this tends to happen around the age of 35, although the Captain seemed
“too much a purist” to succumb at the time. “Ah, this is exactly when an artist
must decide whether he’s the real deal or merely a dilettante.” (I was
impressed with Starfish’s tact in not betraying an emotion when she heard such
bon mots.) Nevertheless, the agreements of these two lovebirds required
— admittedly at Starfish’s instigation — that they would get married and
relocate to sister Federation of Egalitarian Community Ganas (in NYC),
permitting Starfish to pursue her law degree while, domestically, the Captain performed
nominal quota for the urban community’s used clothes shop. This arrangement —
supported by Ganas’ outside/internal economic model — enabled Starfish to
achieve her professional aspirations in the ‘mainstream’ while the
Captain maintained his habitual bohemian existence. Those late Beethoven
quartets he was transcribing into piano etudes certainly required a deep
investment of contemplation.
2.
I had long since passed those middle years of life
path reckoning (with its vulgar inducements of ‘career choices’), staying on at Twin Oaks — weaving hammocks in rhythm to my
beloved Haydn (whom the Captain critiqued as “rudimentary”). Community life is like
that; not accruing a nest egg, even basic social security, helps defer
‘adulthood.’ Because I could easily earn ‘vacation time’ (by working over
quota) and because Ganas had a liberal hosting-guesting policy with its sister
FEC communities, I maintained regular contact with Starfish and the Captain
over the years. Not surprisingly, they had a kid who already took to those Mozart Magic Cubes.
Starfish stayed as lovely — and devoted to the necessary placidity of the
Captain’s concentration — as ever, astonishing me with her agility in
‘triangulating’ a constantly-buzzing iPhone, a pot of simmering pasta and, on
entreaty (the maestro’s and mine), a few supporting harmonies on her neglected
cello.
I usually visited them. When not at
his Yamaha (which mercifully was most of the time), the Captain mused upon the
tribulations of “really getting somewhere” in the finer points of his
transcriptions of Beethoven’s off-putting later quartets — often clacking out a
staccato of jumping keys to illustrate “the difficulty” — and, as always,
Starfish stood nearby mollifying the toddler and sneaking glimpses of incoming
texts while, all the while, beaming beatifically at her handsome genius.
Occasionally the possibility of teaching a few students might be
diplomatically broached — or even graduate school — but, ever so
cleverly, the Captain would disabuse such notions as, well, beneath him. “The
thing about students is, these are the people who don’t possess the wherewithal
to teach themselves. And graduate school” he palpably sniffed, “is just paying
to have an attentive audience.” Like most geniuses, the Captain had it all
figured out. After all, what is ‘success’? Before Starfish could venture a
guess — somebody had better rescue that pasta — and I certainly was going to
hold my tongue, the Captain answered his own question, pontificating that “Real
success is originality. You’re only a failure if you give up.” And so
it went (describing my eternal admiration of Starfish).
The kid, legally named Wittgenstein,
grew into a confident teenage man. Although NYC offered him many distracting
pleasures — another difference between Ganas and Twin Oaks — he preferred the
summer Virginia lassitude (especially the swimming pond) availing himself of
frequent ‘long-term guesting’ privileges at Twin Oaks, of which I happily
played his host. Enjoying his company, I was subconsciously relieved he took
after his mother and generously spoke of her to me. As he reached 18,
finishing his public education, talk naturally turned towards his ‘future.’
Lamenting the inactivity (called ‘lack of success’ in private moments) of my life’s choices, I urged Wittgenstein
to jump into school and make something of himself. I hoped the inspiring
example set by his fully self-actualized mother would appeal more to his
nature than the recondite tenacity maintained by his incomprehensible
father and, always tastefully and diplomatically done, Starfish affirmed adopting
a ‘practical’ direction. She would never push of course. For his
part, Wittgenstein considered an intermediate — we agreed not to use the word
‘compromise’ — trajectory. He would apply to a music program at nearby UVA.
“You’re not really considering a music degree, are you” I inadvertently
blurted. “Why not,” he retorted without hesitation, effortlessly weaving a row
on a rainbow hammock. This prompted me to stand down from my prejudices; who
was I to mention the futility — even the damn vanity — of such a hopeless
‘profession’? I tried (what I thought was) a subtler tact. “But isn’t that
field, as your father so conclusively enumerates, filled disgustingly with
‘in-group’ politics and always awarding grants and fellowships to ‘flatterers
and flunkies’?” Like dad, Wittgenstein had the answer to that easily
arranged: “But that’s exactly why I’m going to school, unlike father.
I’ll be able to make all those connections he never did. Dad always did his own
thing, that’s why his talents are so unappreciated. But I’ll be ‘playing their
game’ and, once I achieve some recognition, I’ll be able to play my own game.
Mom thinks that’s a decent strategy.” And that was decent strategy, at
least for me — mentioning his mother’s wishes always quelled my own. But I
worried about the lad. If permitting his own aptitude to be audited by
‘so-called experts’ (how the Captain could sneer those words), would
Wittgenstein in turn adopt the assessments of the ‘so-called experts’ regarding
his father? What if school taught him his father
wasn’t the real deal? How could he possibly deal with, not his
father (who was blissfully oblivious to the drum beat of the world), but his
mother who, for all these years, devoted herself to providing the emotional —
and material — infrastructure sustaining the Captain’s ‘genius’?
3.
If I’m going to be completely candid
— with myself — I will concede that, all through the years, there was a part of me that wanted Starfish to hear,
when the Captain played, what I heard. It never quite conformed to the
professional recordings. After so many years of listening to him as well as the
lowest-common denominator ‘salespeople’ who made Mozart, Beethoven and (even)
Schumann accessible to the ‘rich barbarians’ filling the opera houses and civic
centers, I could hear the difference. Why couldn’t Starfish? After all,
she played a fine (but professionally unavailing) cello and knew her way
around those ‘tricky passages.’ What about Wittgenstein? Couldn’t he really
tell? Well, I feared, he soon enough would be able to tell. There
was always, in my fantasy, the moment when Starfish would hear it (that
painful but exigent truth) and, in a nihilist flash, stop loving — and
sustaining — the devious poseur. “The whole point, the way one can tell if
you’re the real deal, is one does it for the love of it, not the
money.” I loved Starfish appropriately — according to her sensibilities of how
a friend behaves — which is to say I loved her secretly and hopelessly.
A year later, it was summer break and
I was delighted to host Wittgenstein and his parents again at Twin Oaks. There
was a place that changed as little as the Captain’s view of “actual art.”
Starfish, even though now disencumbered of active motherhood duties, was still
too busy with her buzzing iPhone and simmering pasta to ever visit longer than
a weekend. The Captain would even (grudgingly, I suspected) forgo his studies
(and pasta dinners) to accompany her. How I lived for those rare moments
talking with her — even if the majority of her conversation focused on the
Captain. He had accepted a couple of ‘promising’ students and
contributed a little to the family fund, enabling the both of them to finally
leave Ganas for their own bougie homestead. With the new-found freedom from
working at the used clothes shop, there was even a possibility he might finally
record some of his “remarkable” transcriptions of those late Beethoven
quartets for public admiration. “Oh, the ‘culture consumers’ aren’t too bad to
accept money from,” Starfish smiled, “it’s just usually the Captain is too good
to sell.”
And what about Wittgenstein? He
mainly floated in the swimming pond while his parents were there. After they
went back to ‘the city,’ he stayed, and got chatty. How was the music
department? What was he going to major in? Was modern classical really so
awful as everyone averred? Well, he didn’t really know — or much care. “I
haven’t yet figured out how I’m going to break it to Mom” he said — allowing
the unspoken understanding that breaking something to his father
wouldn’t be an issue (since he would invariably nod his head and then go off to
commune with Beethoven) — “but the whole classical scene is just a lot of
bullshit. At least, that’s how it seems to me. What the NEA people are looking
for I couldn’t conjure up in a million years. I mean, whatever bullshit
it is, the bullshitters really seem to believe it. That’s what locks me
out.” Hearing this was discouraging — and it came so expensively. But what
about classical classical? Recitals of Mozart piano concertos, that sort
of thing? “Oh that” the
lad scoffed. “Believe me, that’s the first thing I learned. I’m not any
good. I might as well transfer to the engineering department.” Well, that was
disheartening. What about teaching? “Oh no” he exclaimed, “that’s the last
thing I’d want to do — go encourage some other poor bastard to waste
their youth chasing a dream. Look, there’s a reason there’s no Mozarts anymore.
Nobody wants one.”
Well, damn. This made me
wonder what the boy — the grown-up boy — made of the Captain. How did he
hear him with this now-jaded ears? My curiosity got the better of me and I
dropped a few dozen teasers in his direction over dinner, the ever-ubiquitous
tofu salad and bean paste. He finally took the bait. “I used to think, how in
the world can Dad stand it? All the ‘undeserving’ sell-outs who make
it while he is ‘really
innovating’? Now I know. There’s a reason Dad spent ten years in
community — I don’t mean to offend you in your choice to make a home here —
working up his transcriptions of Beethoven’s unloved late quartets instead of going
out and hustling his stuff in the real world. He’s not good enough.
He always needed a small audience of people who can’t discern proper playing
from mediocre. I used to be one of that small audience. Now I’m not; I’m just
another guy who ‘doesn’t get it’.”
I was shocked, and I looked shocked
as he looked up at me. We finished our meal and decided to walk along Tupelo
Ridge where the fireflies put on a good show every June. Wittgenstein’s
assessment of the classical music scene seemed pretty bitter but he, himself,
evinced no trace of bitterness; the lad, as I saw him, was smarter and more
confident than ever. So what were his plans if music wasn’t in his plans? “I
wish I was ambitious like Mom — she’s got her own practice doing all sort of
‘right on’ stuff. I mainly hate to disappoint her.” And what about her I
asked. Would he ever breathe a word to her about what he discovered
about his father? The whole family dynamic rested on the unquestioned
understanding that the reason the Captain was ‘uncontaminated by success’
was his putative innovation and that was why Starfish subordinated ‘mainstream’
expectations of — this sounds brutal, I concede — having an actual adult husband.
To my surprise, Wittgenstein displayed a good deal of sympathetic insight into
this conundrum. “The way I see it” he observed, “is that they had an
understanding from the very first — something like ‘If you’re going to
admire me for my devotion to Beethoven, it wouldn’t be fair to expect me to
change later on’ and, lovely person that she is, she accepted that premise. She
grew up and made sure he never had to. But what about you, Kohlrabi?” he
confronted me. “How is it, after all this time, you never let on that the maestro is a humbug? I mean, I grew up watching
you appreciate him — or at least tolerating his shuck — as much as I was
expected to.”
That pained me to consider. Before I
could extemporize any sophisticated falsities, Wittgenstein caught me unawares.
(I have to admit, if he didn’t learn about music, he learned about people.) “I
don’t believe you wanted to ‘spare’ mother the truth. I have since discovered
she’s known it all along — she’s an attorney and a musician; how could
it stay concealed to her? What’s incredible is how you stayed so silent.
Then it came to me.” I started regretting I quit smoking years ago, I so craved
a subterfuge as the June fireflies started their show of passion. Wittgenstein
stopped and waited for me to look at him, which I reluctantly did. “It’s my
theory you never mentioned anything because you didn’t want to know that she
knew. If she knew, that shows just
how much she adores the old fraud for himself.”