I reached the halfway point in my deeply foolish romp through archives, journals and memory. I say foolish because anyone undertaking a project so infused with the spirit of hubris is taking a huge chance. Today, as I labored over the 16th chapter (the blogger version has many more posts for the sake of the reader online), I reached the end of the beautiful ease with which I’ve been composing. I was trying to short-circuit the linear narrative and insert my hero’s presumed fate into the future, told through the eyes of the omniscient narrator and the unborn scholars of the future as they look back and laugh. Perhaps I blew the fuse of the muse. The voices of the characters that I have called forth ceased speaking to me. You can’t get a mute fictional character to respond to the blast of an ammonia inhalant. You have to knock off for the day.

So now, respectful of the demons I have called up, I’ve looked at that last fugue in the Art of Fugue, where just before J. S. gets to the good part, the mind blowing plan to try some 4 theme invertible counterpoint (the hubris!), Bach’s eyesight gets so bad, and he makes the often huge mistake of seeking health care from the usual providers (the same guy that killed Handel), and ultimately realizes that not only can’t he finish his great culminating essay on the topic of his specialty, he’s also finished with this earthly life. In the recording we used to play back in the day, the piece actually trails off, played as old Bach left the open score. From his ‘deathbed’ (the bed from which one never rises), Bach dictated one final work. It is a chorale prelude for organ, a species of music that weaves a beloved hymn tune into a contrapuntal fabric. The tune is one with the usual numerous verses, but the verse Bach has in mind is the one that says, “before thy throne I now appear.” I’m playing it over and over again. There is quite the little collection of readings of this “sublime masterpiece” on youtube. The version I have chosen to link to is one that proceeds, as one commentor beautifully puts it,  “in the medieval ‘integer valor’—the tempo is that of the human heart, each bar the length of one breath in and out—it is also in every other way a work of human scale and sympathy. (~ Evening in the Palace of Reason.)” Other commentators want a snappier pace, and you are welcome to check out the other readings.

For me, as the artist in a jam, I think that this is just about right. I’m not dying, and I am going to finish my novel one way or another, despite the interruptions ahead. I would be very unwise to publish it, advertise it, or otherwise call much attention to it. It is usually not good for the smooth, anonymous flow of life to tell of things in a strong voice that get too close to truth. Unless, of course, you’re writing a chorale. Then, by all means, let it all hang out.

The throne room I’ve blundered into is not the same one Bach was in back then. I’m at the altar of the muse, and we’re having a snit. I want more time, and I want my inner voices back, I want the demons to be conjured up without being singed by the dragon. I think Mary Chapin-Carpenter has a song about this. Bach would have finished the Art of Fugue if he could have. But the way we have it, it’s a testament to human ambition thwarted by human frailty and mortality. The effect it has, whether you hear it in the air, directly injected into your ears by headphone, or straight into your brain by reading it off the page, is shocking. As an effect, this is really blockbuster. So while I’m sitting here before some throne or other, I’m plotting. What happens if I let the firestorm of craziness that I’ve now set up, complete with fireworks, trail off just before I get to the good part? (Redemption? Self-awakening? The long road ahead?) What if I go out as Bach goes out, not with majesty, but with the signing of my name followed by the abrupt end of the creative act? Can this be imagined in a novel? I’m not Bach. Each letter of that name is a pitch designator in German. (B, A, C, B natural, the hauptstimme – leading tone.) I’m Beck. All I can do with that ‘k’ is start my identifier all over as the first letter of my first name. All I can do is start again.

Here ends a wild blog experiment, writing off the top of my head with a masterpiece in my ears. Tomorrow I’ll be back. It is evening in the palace of reason. But for now, this is Beck’s Good Word, signing off.