Their big black eyes gazed into mine as I sang:
— with the sound of music
I extended the sound, until the vowels vibrated inside their eardrums, inside their bellies. They were melting, swaying, dripping, almost milking while swinging their tails in harmony.
— with the sound of music
with songs they have sung
for a thousand years
It was magical. The word years started their tails again. They crowded closer, penetrating my eyes, and letting me know that they listened, understood, and most of all, respected with silence and devotion.
— I know I will hear what I’ve heard before.
I was invoking the spirits to come and get me. I knew I would hear music, poetry like I heard before, with the same love mounting over a fountain of passion — water, water — I was thirsty, and the mountains so full of grass, trees, hills so steep, shaggy-hair, knee-deep, and so many rocks and roots and daisies and ripples and nipples, and so many swaying branches and stems and twigs, so little and so brittle — is brittle the word — I mean fragile — and others so strong — and I’m walking through the mud, muddying my sneakers and watching the clouds go down and down until they’re out of sight, cotton balls hanging by threads of light, a bird singing, its perch swinging, cows mooing, and one of them in perfect harmony with the whole universe moos:
— Yes, yes, yes, yes.
Nodding its head up and down, affirming yes because — yes, siree, I like the way yooou sing.
— Yes, we’ll hear it again. Don’t yooou agree?
— I doooo.
— We dooo tooo.
And then they tuned the music out and started grazing again.
— See, they weren’t paying attention after all.
— I thought you believed me.
— Yeah, but they immediately forgot you and went for the grass.
— I made my impression. They paid attention until the sound of music wet their appetite. What better than that? When I left, they were happy, content to eat their grass as if nothing had happened, and I continued singing on my road, and they continued on theirs. I did it my way, and they did it theirs.
— I have the most beautiful dream on the tip of my tongue. Woody Allen appeared in flesh and blood in the middle of a crowd. Everyone was dressed in black tights, and we formed a midnight train.
— Was I there?
— You were the 2nd car and I was the 3rd. The train was circling slowly behind Woody. I was getting impatient. This won’t get us anywhere. I squeezed your waist and shoved you ahead, so instead of chug-chugging in circles, we bolted straight through the crowd, and all of a sudden, it was only Woody, you and me. We were schmoozing. Actually, he was doing all the talking.
— I couldn’t do what I wanted in Husbands and Wives. The director repressed me.
— Lame excuse. He was the director.
— What he meant is that he didn’t think it’s his best work. I agreed.
— I have writer’s block and you’re making it worse. You’re dreaming my fears. You know this isn’t my best work.
— It wasn’t you, it was Woody, and he was relating to me, in confidence, about his work.
— Cut—Woody said.
— Just like the one Paco Pepe had with Fellini.
— You always want to one-up me.
— No, really, he dreamed Mastroianni and Fellini were strolling down La Strada and Fellini was saying:
— Marcellino, pannevino, what’s next? We’ve done it all, but I’m not finished yet.
You should have seen his face — drained, pained. He was wearing Guido’s hat from 8½. The roles were swapped. Paco says Guido had the face of Fellini, Fellini the face of Guido, except that Guido wasn’t suffering like Fellini. Then guess who came hopping out of the blue as a grillo verde?
— What’s a grillo verde?
— Una esperanza.
— Hope?
— A green grillo—that insect that brings good luck.
— A lady bug?
— Is it long and green?
— Oh, you mean a grasshopper.
— And you know what?
— What — what?
— When they examined the grasshopper, it had my face. It was me. Paco Pepe told me I was Fellini’s hope. I was so happy when he told me that dream.
— I didn’t tell mine right. It was epic.
— Go ahead.
— You took all the fun out of it.
— Tell it again. Scenes repeat themselves.
— Why?
— Because you told the story wrong.
— I wasn’t done.
— Go ahead. Start at the World Wide Plaza.
— It wasn’t at the Plaza. It was in front of Rizzoli’s.
— Yes, but there is a fountain in front of the Plaza, so you can make the train run circles around it until we break the neurosis and take us out-out.
— Faith DeRoos, you know who Faith DeRoos is.
— No, why would I?
— She was my Spanish teacher. She took me to the Middle Ages. She appeared to me with her skinny red pumps and frizzy black hair like Cher. We were in England, and you wanted to bring a castle to New York. You were using a huge wooden crane with stone wheels and lots of grappling hooks and claws to lift and move huge rocks and beams.
— So that’s how Stonehenge got here—I thought—I didn’t know they had so much machinery back then.
Faith and I were surrounded by medieval monks who had bangs like the Beatles and red beards masking their whole faces like Paco Pepe. Droves of monks in blue frocks were loading the stone tablets and wooden beams onto a boat. You were in front saying:
— Heave — ho — heave — ho!
— She plans to crown the World Wide Tower with the castle.
— Why didn’t you tell me she was nuts? — Faith said. How is she going to balance a castle on top of that triangle?
But when I looked up, you had already erased the triangle.
— I’ve got a pencil point for that. I’ll use the rest of my tools to draw on top of that big pink tower, so useless and fat. Forces of this rockety earth. I need the past and the present to make it work. No more doubts about myself. I’m making it right now.
The next thing I knew, Faith and I were on a wagon balancing the whole castle on our heads as if we were columns. Fireflies were swarming around us. As the castle rocked back and forth, you hollered:
— High-ho! Giddy-up!
You held out your arms, calling forth a herd of wild horses with black stripes and pink manes, galloping gracefully without braying or neighing, showing the white of their teeth.
Ta-da-dúm.
Ta-da-dúm.
Ta-da-dúm, dúm, dúm.
Then suddenly a road coiled around the World Wide Tower like a spiral staircase. Faith looked at me from the corner of her eye — the castle swaying on our heads — about to collapse — about to crush us to death. The wagon jutted, a loose beam came tumbling down, and the entire structure fell perfectly into place. I knew he was going to use our scene. Bright white lights went on, the crowd dispersed, and the crew started climbing down scaffolds and girders. Woody turned around to see who had changed his pace. He was panting and sticky with his face blotchy red. I was hoping he’d be fascinated. Fellini would’ve fallen in love with my runaway train.
— Who invited you? — he said to you. You ruined the whole scene. I’m not talking to you because I want you in the film. I’m here because I want you to write reviews in Newsweek on my work.