a huge studio space and doing well enough as an artist to meet his bills and fund his work. âI donât really want to go to New York or Berlin,â he told me recently. âI just want to stay in Maine and paint.â As this comment came in the wake of that terrible period of his life I didnât want to say that, quite honestly, the best thing that could happen for him as an artist was to get out of Maine for a few years.
Still, if he ends up in Portland . . . well, of course, Iâll love the fact that heâs just an hour down the road. And it will give me an excuse to drop down here more often â because this is a city I should be using frequently. And maybe now that Dan is bringing in a salary again . . .
No, letâs not think about any of that this weekend. Letâs call a moratorium on all domestic thoughts for the next forty-eight hours.
As if.
Kennebunkport. Summer home of the Bush family. I voted for Bush Senior, but couldnât give my support to Junior â as he reminded me of a richer, more vindictive version of the frat boys I always seemed to dodge at college. Iâve always loved the beach at Kennebunkport â a curiously rugged stretch of the Atlantic and a wondrously savage contrast to the well-heeled, upscale community that fronts it. I would love to somehow, sometime, live directly by the sea. Just to be able to wake up every day and immediately look out at the water. No matter what was going on around me there would be the immense consolation of water.
I glanced at my watch. I was making good time, listening to a Mozart symphony on Maine Public Radio. The 36th, subtitled the Linz. The announcer explained how Mozart showed up, in 1781, on a Monday at the home of the Count of Linz, wife in tow, and the Count, knowing Mozartâs habit of running up debts, offered him a nice sum of money if he could write a symphony for the court orchestra by Friday. Four days to write and orchestrate a symphony! And one that is still being played over two centuries later. Is genius, among other things, the appearance of effortlessness when it comes to great work? Or is there some sort of mystique hovering around the notion that all truly serious art must have a long gestation period; that it must be the result of a profound and torturous struggle? Even as the reception began to crackle, once I crossed the bridge that links Maine to New Hampshire, I couldnât help but be carried along by the immense lyricism of the symphony â and the way Mozart seemed able to reflect the lightness and darkness lurking behind all things in the course of a single musical phrase.
New Hampshire â just a stretch of highway here on this corner of I-95. Then Massachusetts â and suburban Boston announced itself with billboards and shopping malls and fast food and strip bars and places to buy lawn furniture and endless car dealerships and cheap motels. The conference was being held in a Fairfield Inn along Route 1, just a few miles from Logan Airport. Iâd Googled the place in advance â so I knew it was a large airport hotel with a conference centre attached to it. Up close it was a concrete block. Inconsequential. Uninteresting. A place you would never notice unless you were stopping by. But I didnât care if it was big and squat and all reinforced concrete and this side of ugly. It was an escape hatch for a couple of days. Even the unappealing can look pretty good when it represents a break from routine.
Two
FLORAL CARPET. FLUORESCENT lights. Concrete walls painted industrial cream. And a big reception desk made from cheaply veneered wood, over which were clocks that showed the time in London, Chicago, San Francisco and (of course) here in Boston. This was the reception area of the Fairfield Inn, Logan Airport. It did not look promising, especially since there was already a huge line in front of the desk.
âMust be all the X-ray people,â said the
Still, if he ends up in Portland . . . well, of course, Iâll love the fact that heâs just an hour down the road. And it will give me an excuse to drop down here more often â because this is a city I should be using frequently. And maybe now that Dan is bringing in a salary again . . .
No, letâs not think about any of that this weekend. Letâs call a moratorium on all domestic thoughts for the next forty-eight hours.
As if.
Kennebunkport. Summer home of the Bush family. I voted for Bush Senior, but couldnât give my support to Junior â as he reminded me of a richer, more vindictive version of the frat boys I always seemed to dodge at college. Iâve always loved the beach at Kennebunkport â a curiously rugged stretch of the Atlantic and a wondrously savage contrast to the well-heeled, upscale community that fronts it. I would love to somehow, sometime, live directly by the sea. Just to be able to wake up every day and immediately look out at the water. No matter what was going on around me there would be the immense consolation of water.
I glanced at my watch. I was making good time, listening to a Mozart symphony on Maine Public Radio. The 36th, subtitled the Linz. The announcer explained how Mozart showed up, in 1781, on a Monday at the home of the Count of Linz, wife in tow, and the Count, knowing Mozartâs habit of running up debts, offered him a nice sum of money if he could write a symphony for the court orchestra by Friday. Four days to write and orchestrate a symphony! And one that is still being played over two centuries later. Is genius, among other things, the appearance of effortlessness when it comes to great work? Or is there some sort of mystique hovering around the notion that all truly serious art must have a long gestation period; that it must be the result of a profound and torturous struggle? Even as the reception began to crackle, once I crossed the bridge that links Maine to New Hampshire, I couldnât help but be carried along by the immense lyricism of the symphony â and the way Mozart seemed able to reflect the lightness and darkness lurking behind all things in the course of a single musical phrase.
New Hampshire â just a stretch of highway here on this corner of I-95. Then Massachusetts â and suburban Boston announced itself with billboards and shopping malls and fast food and strip bars and places to buy lawn furniture and endless car dealerships and cheap motels. The conference was being held in a Fairfield Inn along Route 1, just a few miles from Logan Airport. Iâd Googled the place in advance â so I knew it was a large airport hotel with a conference centre attached to it. Up close it was a concrete block. Inconsequential. Uninteresting. A place you would never notice unless you were stopping by. But I didnât care if it was big and squat and all reinforced concrete and this side of ugly. It was an escape hatch for a couple of days. Even the unappealing can look pretty good when it represents a break from routine.
Two
FLORAL CARPET. FLUORESCENT lights. Concrete walls painted industrial cream. And a big reception desk made from cheaply veneered wood, over which were clocks that showed the time in London, Chicago, San Francisco and (of course) here in Boston. This was the reception area of the Fairfield Inn, Logan Airport. It did not look promising, especially since there was already a huge line in front of the desk.
âMust be all the X-ray people,â said the
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