Snap

 

Snap 120 x 120 cm mixed media on canvas - c/o Karin Goeppert

ROMANTICISM

Is Romanticism merely adolescence

extended a century longer than feasible? And does

an American Ballet Theatre gala seem to meet the criteria?

Balletomanes, long past romanticism—i.e.

not at all in touch with the sublimely unattainable

in love, faith, art—

are in the bar downstairs, smoking and drinking, waiting for the bell

and clearly more interested in bodies than in spirit.

I remember wearing torn-up yellow running shoes,

no socks, commenting loudly, “Doctors are little more

than glorified plumbers.”  Which may or may not

be true, but who cared about truth? I was all about impact.

A response from strangers of bewildered admiration.

Strangers because, well, people I knew shook their

heads, though never responded with

“Fuck you talkin´ about?” For which I’m grateful.

How old was I? Not too. Not very. Not enough.

First experience of ballet: an aspiring

Ballerina, a kinky sixteen year old, once asking

me to sit on her upright feet: the third most

erotic moment of my life.

The world was not so much my oyster

as a 24/7 drive-in burger palace

in the Berkeley flatlands, where San Pablo Avenue hits University.

Enough about me ( I hear “me-me-me-me”

echoing like the opening phrase of Beethoven’s Fifth.)

Natalia Makarova and Antony Dowell take the stage

for a short number from Manon Lescaut. No dancing,

just mime and emotion, lots of heat, panting, intense looks.

Now, back to me.

I feel uncomfortably warm while those experts

in romantic manipulation struggle with all kinds of

feeling. There’s a heater in my chest. I feel ecstatic, in the ancient Greek

sense of the word. All of this sublimity is not healthy. Neither is

using the ancient Greek sense of a word. Any word. Almost as

bad as racing home with a bag full of bean and beef burritos

and watching Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet with an equally underemployed

neighbor who, steeped in sensibility, is harmful to no one but herself.

And what flesh-eating Romantic wouldn’t take advantage of that?

After the ballet we stagger off to Ghirardelli’s

for triple banana splits, feeling more or less normal by now,

even common, even rather pleasantly stupid,

and pushing this as far as we possibly can.