Blue Self-Portrait

which nevertheless came only to partial conclusion amid the upper-octave distortions of the prepared piano, the usual accompaniment had heard the end but made no distinction, judged the end as she did the beginning, had reassured him about the end, it’s very good the accompaniment had said but obviously that wasn’t true, the accompaniment could easily have said excellent but he knew it wasn’t, had no illusions about the end’s weakness and could not leave the end as he’d first imagined it, so thinly imagined, an end that wasn’t really an end but a conclusion without urgency, a procedure whose end was, an expected end, in line with the audience’s expectations, forming a certain unity as it were but in fact a betrayal, a traitorous end, that’s what I’ve composed, an end imagined without imagination, imagination the power behind images, no power and no images in that end, no power hence no image, no image hence no power, the absence of imagination in this end would bother no one but myself, no one would be disturbed by this lack of imagination in the shape of image-forming power, no one if not myself, the end absorbed as easily by our audience of regular patrons as by the accompaniment, all applauding the end, no one challenging, no one taking a stand against this unworthy final procedure, this unheeded betrayal bothering absolutely no one apart from me who would betray myself with this ending.

No one but myself may decide my end, breathed the composer slowly as he drove in the setting sun, crossing the bridge over the Spree, passing the Philharmonic and re-entering the underground car park, with this realization he felt in no way empowered, rather lost once more in the negative solitude that did him no good, no one but myself, lowering the window to take the ticket, he would have liked someone beside him in the car, a girl perhaps who would tell him what she thought of his end, thinking no one but myself alone in the car is not the same as saying no one but myself to someone, a girl like that girl who would cross and uncross, who’d twist her hair round her fingers and would of course know not to say anything about the end as she knew that no one but he, she would understand the end’s shortcomings without benevolence but as if by magic. Enclosed in the car with him on the third level below ground of the Sony Center’s car park, she would listen to that end, not the end by the painter-composer who finished his portrait having left out an ear, but the pianist-composer’s end who was finishing a piece that demanded full attention from both ears, she would understand straight away without a word about the end nor with any kind of comment the inadequacy of this end, of course, the girl would say, the end needs another go, not the very last notes the girl would have said but the finish, the finish rather than the very end, in fact it’s the scherzo the composer realizes, that provocative inversion into tragic mode in the scherzo demands a finish, not a conclusion, no one but I, her apart, that girl, knows better than anyone except me, mind if I smoke? asks the composer and the girl makes a rollie for him, they stay there smoking in the car and now perhaps he understands, teenage-parked in here with her and the contained curls of smoke, the idea he’d been missing, musical, for the finish, to finish the piece in that volatile, intangible way, drop that obvious rallentando that trips too naturally into the G-flat to B-F-D-flat triplet sequence, pick up the initial theme in the right hand but no brio at all here, from the D-flat the chord this time in inversion, sing the inversion to the girl, invert the girl, invite the girl to come back with him and invert her at his place, in his Berlin apartment while the accompaniment is out, not inverting the girl on the bed but running his fingers all over the girl like a teenager and letting her fingers touch first here and then there, touching first a bit then a lot then endlessly, waltzing endlessly in the apartment with the girl in a waltz that’s so slow no idea why so slow and losing his balance with her and imagining her dancing with no one else ever again, alone with her dancing, no one else ever, squeezing the girl in his arms but without lifting the girl, letting himself spin floating turning slowly and floating slowly, letting himself go with her in that so-slow waltz, he knows the impossibility of romantic love, which has no resolution except in death that he knows of, let’s get out of here not stay where we are come to my place says the pianist gearing into reverse, come to my place another time, if you like, the next time you’re in Berlin you can stay at mine, there’s space here, my accompaniment’s offspring has a room here but she’s not around much, you could have the offspring’s room if you wanted, next time, when you’re back in Berlin. Thanks, I said to the pianist, that’s very kind but no, to take the accompaniment’s offspring’s room unmöglich, not something I can countenance, spending even one night in the offspring’s bed would mean dying in that bed, would mean quite simply killing myself in the bed, would obviously mean giving up all possibility of getting up again, I’ll never survive, said it not joking, of course I’m exaggerating and I’d have survived like the cow survives the disappearance of her calf, her last-born like the ones before, would have mooed for two or three days straight then survived and finally gone on living day after day and season after season, would have thought of it then not much then not at all, exaggeration along with not-caring my salient features,