JORGE LUIS BORGES WITH THE FINISH LINE WRITERS, GLOUCESTER , MA

ME: Welcome Señor Borges. May we imagine that you are here with us at the Gloucester Writers Center, and that we are having a conversation with you?

JLB: You may imagine anything. You are a writers, are you not?  But, please, Señora, call me Jorge. It is good for me to be remembered. So you have been wishing to meet me?

ME. Well, I must admit Señor, I mean Jorge, I barely knew you existed until very recently, but now that I have read a little about you….

JLB: Ah! Then we have something in common, as ”I myself never knew if I actually existed.”

S. That is exactly why I am drawn to you. I feel that way sometimes as a writer between the thin veil of reason and imagination, reality and fiction.

JLB: Si si, si, my point, well one of my points. My work has been described by one critic as “irrealty.” You are experiencing what has become known as the “Bogesean conundrum”: "whether the writer writes the story, or it writes him.”

ME: Or “her"? When I heard what you had said about writing, and of coure how you write,  I knew I had to meet you.

JLB: You mean instead of Stephen King? Are you referring to my statement that, “I am all the writers that I have read, all the people that I have met, all the women that I have loved; all the cities that I have visited, all my ancestors.”

ME:. Yes, that’s it! I see your point. Who are we, fundamentally, if we are everything we have experienced, known or have ever been?

JLB: I am he, as you are he, as you are me, and we are all together.

ME: “I Am the Walrus,” I loved that song—a man of your stature and erudition quoting the Beatles?

JLB: As you say, Señora, you barely knew I existed, so your reaction is understandable. The essence of life and the universe to me is “an inexplicable maze, a labyrinth: I have only my perplexities to offer you.” I said that when I was almost 70 years old.

ME: I just turned 70 myself, and I too am filled with perplexities, which keep me in wonder and doubt. I am agnostic—sometimes! 

JLB: Which simply means that, “All things are possible, even God. This world is so strange that anything may happen, or may not happen. I have given the major part of my life to literature, and I can only offer you—doubts.”

ME: I can say the same—living for literature, or at least with literature all my life, which is more real to me than most things—-the body of truth in it clothed in fiction. So, you mean to say you did not live by any one religion or system of thought?

JLB: I have lived in many countries, experienced many cultures, read and understood many philosophers. The most significant influence in my life was father’s library with its thousands of books. I have not thought to find answers to my questions or solutions to the enigma of being human, so I enjoy everything and employed everything as esthetically enjoyable constructs.

ME: Your thinking, and your writing remind me that, at times, I feel it is not I who is writing, as if  what comes to me is latent in my DNA, waiting to be expressed, but randomly…or maybe from somewhere else—again perplexities and doubt. Not that I am in your league; don’t get me wrong. I wouldn’t presume to…

JLB: Gracias, but, Señora, there is no league—only labyrinths, mirrors and dreams.

ME. Oh, I don’t know what to say about that, do you mean in writing?

JLB: I mean in life, even for Shakespeare. Have you read, my “Everything and Nothing”?

ME: No, but I heard about it when I was listening to a New Yorker Fiction podcast in the introduction to one of your stories.

JLB: Really, I am mainstream now? I invented hypertext, did you know?

ME: What? I have to look that one up. Hmm... I am not sure you are mainstream exactly, but I wouldn’t be the one to ask. I do remember reading one of your short stories when I was in college,  “Funes the Memorious,” about a young man who is haunted by his memory of absolutely everything he has ever seen and experienced.

JLB: Si si, So you have read something of mine and now heard of others . So, tell me about that New Yorker Fiction podcast.

Me:  Well, the story on the podcast was your “Shakespeare’s Memory,” and  made me think about…hmm, I guess it made me think about and understand more about irreality.

JLB: Ah, my story about a man who is given the gift (and curse) of having all of Shakespeare’s memories which displace his own. Wonderful, and you will read my “Everything and Nothing”?

ME: Yes, I will as soon as I get back to reality—whatever that is, right?

JLB: Right. I will briefly summarize it, if I may to you and  your fellow writers: Jane, Dan, Barbara, John, Stacey, Cindy 1 and Cindy 2, as it contains the essence of how I think about the relationship between writers and writing, creators, and creations.

ME: Yes, please do; we’d love to hear it.

4 JLB: It involves Shakespeare, who he was and his own search for  a fundamental identity. We know him by his works, but little of his so-called real life. First, he was as an actor, and content to play someone else, but was that enough? No, he then imagined, moved, thought, spoke and felt through his characters in the plays—hundreds of them, many of whom also disguised themselves as others. He created “all possible shapes of being.” After twenty years of “controlled hallucination,” he returned to the “village of his birth, where he dictated his final will, which excluded every trace of emotion and his life-long literary gifts.

In  “Everything and Nothing” I wrote, “The story goes that before or after he died, he found himself before God and said: 'I who have been so many men in vain, want to be one man: myself.’ The voice of God replied from a whirlwind: ‘Neither am I one self; I dreamed the world as you dreamed your work, my Shakespeare, and among the shapes of my dream are you, who, like me, are many persons—and none.' ”

ME: I will have to take that into my "ponder heart," as Grace Paley would have said. Thank you, Jorge Luis Borges, for being with the writers in Gloucester tonight, and for your life and work of imagination and inspiration. It was an honor a most "real" honor.

JLB: De nada, es un placer—to exist once again in the present among the living, rescued from death's oblivion to speak to fellow writers—seekers wandering in and recording life's labyrinth of everything and nothing.

CATCHING THE STARS

 

For forty years, Fran had taken the elevator to the 10th floor, walked down the hall to the blue door and put her key into the lock. Now, for the last time, she will open the door to her Play it Again music shop, maybe the last one in the country. It has been a cherished place for her, and for conductors, composers, musicians, opera stars, and others. 

     The creaking door opens to the tinkle of a bronze bell. Over the last few days, it has not stopped ringing, as dozens of guests (as she called her customers), and others braved the wintry weather for a farewell visit--some for the first time, but all for the last. She stands disoriented, immobile at the threshold, although she has anticipated this day for months. For a moment, she imagines hearing strains of music echoing—symphonies, fugues, concertos and sonatas emanating from within the sheet music, now in boxes waiting for movers to take them to be archived at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna.

    Closing her eyes and taking a deep breath, Fran steps over the doorway. Opening them, she scans the empty shelves. Nothing to be done, except to ponder the years spent here, recalling how her guests lauded her stewardship of sheet music in the thousands, many rare. One guest, had said she was comparable to a maestro herself, orchestrating the vast collection: organizing, expertly arranging the music according to composer, edition, composition, or other more subtle aspects only she knew about. 

     Guests, both ordinary and extraordinary, had wondered at Fran's uncanny musical insights and intuitions, and all were charmed by her dark eyes and flash of a smile that seemed to fill the space with light. There was light in her whole being— for the love of music yet to be discovered, played and heard by others.

    She had known it was only a matter of time for the inevitable oblivion of the shop and its wares--no longer a need for a brick and mortar shop. With the vapid sources on the internet, one could research, browse and download free anything and everything related to music. Concerts now are performed with downloaded music to laptops, instead of sheet music on stands. Rarely do musicians have the sensory experience of touching and seeing music on paper, holding the sheets in hand, turning pages, or even tucking them away somewhere until found again on a shelf, like treasured old books.

    Hearing about the shop's fate guests came by over this last week to Fran’s universe of unheard music, some to take in again, or for the first time, the ambiance of the space: that certain slant of afternoon light; the sound of distant traffic below, the mood of anticipation of what they would experience--as in concert halls before the conductor walks on and the overture begins. 

    Last week, a "nice young man" from The New York Times came to interview her about the shop's closing. He titled his article, "The Heart and Soul of Classical Music,” and quoted that hers was, “a place where there was one of everything. I just love that moment when I put something on the counter and a guest says, ‘Ah! I can’t believe you have this.'"  But, she always had what they needed, even if they didn't know exactly what they were looking for. Her hands deftly lifted each sheet to lay before them, pointing out the uniqueness of a score, the subtleties of a particular version—like a mother who knows so well the virtues and foibles of each of her own children.

    Over the years, new guests were not only amazed to learn of the scope and depth of the colossal collection, but also were curious about the basket of eggs and bunches of rosemary, sage and basil on the front desk. Frequent visitors, though, knew of Fran's little farm in western Massachusetts where she kept chickens and sheep and tended gardens. Often they left the shop with their sheet music, a package of eggs, herbs, and a receipt— handwritten in pencil by Fran herself--all part of what she called her “little stage,” wherein every day she was happy to “do her act.”

    When business began to dwindle to only a few guests a day, then on some days not even one, she felt herself at the edge of a cliff about to fall over. If she herself could create a composition, it would be a Lamentation to attest to how forty years seemed like a fleeting moment, like stars slipping through her hands. 

She is moved then to listen to Mendelssohn's The Hebrides Overture throughout the day—transporting her to another time and place. She was a young woman living in a crofter's cottage on the isle of North Uist in the Outer Hebrides. When she first arrived, she felt her life pared down to a simple routine in the remote landscape, stark and austere, but day by day, she began to appreciate the subtle colors on land and sea, the purity of air, the brilliant sunlight, and came to love learning to collect seaweed, tend gardens and shear sheep. 

     Her last "guest," this day was the memory of that last evening in Scotland, spent with the MacKays, who had welcomed her for a time into their family. As the sun was going down, they took a modest meal together, drank a wee bit of whisky, and recited and sang Robby Burns’ poetry and songs. 

     Filled with the kind of sadness she is feeling now, she thanked the MacKays—grateful for their hospitality, and experiencing the wild and beautiful place where they lived: eagles flying high above, wide drifts of wild flowers growing right up to white sand beaches; thatched-roofed cottages with driftwood or whalebone timbers, and the lovely low stone walls.

    She promised, “I will never forget you, and the beauty and light here…and…and…oh, just everything!”

    “You haven’t seen everything yet, Lassie," said Mr. Mackay. "Come with us now, but keep your eyes closed." Fran was led into the night by the two older MacKay children, one on each side leading her on to a narrow footpath of sand closer to the sound of waves on the shore. Opening her eyes she saw the expanse of the dark sea, and infinite bright stars of the heavens perfectly reflected in its waters.

Fran never returned to the Hebrides, but on this last day. in her beloved shop, as on many days since, she recalls that last night of "catching the stars," a memory of magic: wading into the water, cupping her hands to hold the stars, as they slipped through her fingers into the dark sea.