Blue Self-Portrait

the cemetery, Brecht is decomposing in good company in the Dorotheenstadt where Hanns Eisler and Paul Dessau and Arnold Zweig and Heinrich Mann are also decomposing, and a great many more great minds and earlier dead and who knows who besides, the pianist here in this particularly favorable environment for composition, a place you might think entirely conceived for composition and not for consumption, a place in every way the opposite of the Sony Center, composition and consumption fundamentally incompatible, consumption decomposing quite differently than the cemetery, everything is in the manner or in the sentence object, he knows this without ever having to be taught and before learning any grammar and before writing his first German compositions, before seeing the Dorotheenstadt cemetery for the first time and then tasting Helene Weigel’s cooking in Brecht’s house, he knows this because it’s impossible for him not to have known it since the beginning, since before his birth, he particularly appreciates the company of Eisler, Dessau and Brecht as they are here, dead and buried, has no fear of the company of this heap of corpses, appreciates advanced decomposition, well-dressed bones, shirt collars, jackets woven on Silesian looms, blue trousers made to measure in Leipzig, well-polished shoes with rusty nails, without eyes to appreciate the might of the Sony Center, without ears to suffer the ambient music of that symbol of the United States of Germany, without eyes or ears but with shoes and clothes on their bones, all six feet under, that’s a good deal better than in an ashtray, ashtrays don’t keep you company like the tomb, the pianist remarked in Dorotheenstadt cemetery where he often used to go not after anything directly helpful for composing, but each time noting the positive effects of the decomposition of Brecht, Dessau and Eisler, of those three particularly, on his compositions. He goes to engage with decomposition no plans for his own composition and each time is surprised afresh by these three, asks nothing of Brecht nor of Dessau nor Eisler, is not visiting them on the hunt for inspiration, yet each time leaves the cemetery in fine composing fettle, then goes to eat Helene Weigel’s cooking in the cellar at Brecht’s house or weather permitting in the garden at Brecht’s house, but the very moment he is offered the menu with its renowned traditional Weigel dishes he suddenly feels disguised in this house of simplicity, as a pianist and not like Eisler in shirtsleeves and braces, not at ease like Eisler in Brecht’s house but imprisoned in his pianist’s clothes, the lost simplicity of Kurt Weill and of Brecht, a statue in the house of memory, imprisoned in the cultural institute, suddenly the Pantheon-esque scene, Brecht’s decoration in the poorest of taste, Brecht’s chairs notoriously uncomfortable, the Weigel menu inedible and Weill’s music nothing but peasant tunes, the pianist could have done with the girl that day, that girl and no other in Brecht’s house, he could have seen the girl seated on one of Brecht’s simple chairs at Brecht’s simple table, crossing and uncrossing her legs beneath that simple table as if beneath any table, he’d have sat opposite and they’d have had no need to come to conclusions about Brecht before arguing over not Brecht but post-Brecht, a brand-new era opening up after the death and decomposition of Brecht, that decomposition conducive to composition, an enjoyable subject in the girl’s company, her breasts so barely there that you could see her breathing through them, he has an inkling that she maintains no interaction with the dead as dead people, never goes to cemeteries generally although the Dorotheenstadt cemetery is obviously different, has never knelt in contemplation at gravesides nor laid flowers on them, going to see the once-living now dead no this is not the girl’s cuppa and at Dorotheenstadt she doesn’t lay flowers, there’s no call for flower-laying, she goes not intending to kneel or contemplate but then what is she seeking here, seeking a reason to run away as her reason to live, explores death’s home as a means to escape, to run and live as far away as possible but then you really need a reason, bringing herself close to death was the only way the girl could approach the tombs and feed upon the dead. She had never dined on the dead with pleasure but always declined the dish, no thanks, had never donned black weeds nor wept in fear but had always felt chilled upon contact with it, come to this place to seek the source of the chill, hoped to set down here all the corpses she’d been carrying without realizing why the chill, how long had the girl been carrying corpses without knowing why so cold, when exactly had her will to heft run out and had she decided to set them down where they should be, carry them as far as Dorotheenstadt and once more sense close by that death she no longer wished to bear, here to let them go abandoning them among the others, then to get away as fast as she could, he saw the girl dart off down the path, her little frame in motion made him want to whisk her away with him. You have to turn away from the dead as corpses, leave the dead where they are for what they are the girl said stomping back up boyish her shoulders loosed, they’re non-living that’s all, not missed but well and truly gravitated into the grave, while you’re right here, he would say it to the girl whose bones articulate so charmingly as she walks rapidly, almost flying, would like to say it to her, to catch her by the humerus and in one movement grasp her radius and cubitus, we’re missing nothing without them but we can miss something without a live person, any person alive but you more than anyone, the dead have disappeared, the living do not disappear, always leave at least an