In 2014, I finished Richard Powers’ spectacular Orfeo – a novel with a composer as the protagonist. Not a sickening Mozart-in-the-Jungle zoo observation about music, this book was emotionally symphonic and structurally like a late Beethoven quartet. It, like all Powers novels, seemed like it was dictated from my own subconcious. Each of his successive novels has been a milestone, memorializing a deepening awareness of the world around me, and my place in it. The accumulation of detail in each novel comes close to my experience of life itself, a virtuality indistinguishable from reality. So, I wrote him, and he wrote back:
Dear Richard:
For starters:
I was re-reading Plowing the Dark, along with Burton’s One Thousand and One Nights late at night on September 10, 2001 in my home in NYC. The next morning, a crisp, clear blue sky with a crescent moon and the morning star in close conjunction, was my daughter Sophia’s second day in nursery school, up in the Medical Center Nursery School in Washington Heights. We heard the first plane head down the Hudson, and watched the Towers go down from an empty classroom while our kids played in the room next door. Somehow, the image of Adie and Taimur meeting in the virtual Hagia Sophia has stayed with me, permanently linked to this day: the alchemical creation of hope from horror.
I’m a cellist, played new music, including much of Partch’s music on his original instruments with Newband. Barstow was one of my favorites. I’ve had a relatively marginal life, helped by an IT job at Pfizer for many years. I left my wife and girls in NYC to move to the country (RI) – mostly for health reasons – and though my circumstances are different than “Peter’s”, I still hurt. I am an adjunct professor. I have the music of Palestrina, Bach, Foo Fighters (my daughters…), Partch, and god knows what else swirling around in my head, music which somehow mediates between the logic and the emotions that influence me to stagger forward in my erratic way. My cohort of composers and performers, slowly diminishing (Dean Drummond, Bob Ashley, Lee Hyla, Fred Ho…), draws closer together, still puzzling out the mysteries that you describe so perfectly in your book.
You, through your work, have been a kindred spirit, an inspiration, and a part of my cohort of companions since the day I finished the first of your books (Goldbug). I don’t know how you do it, but your voice is clear, life affirming and a comfort to me.
Thank you.
Sincerely Yours:
Ted Mook
Dear Ted Mook,
Your remarkable letter reached me yesterday, and I have lived with it quietly for a day before replying, just savoring the encouragement and satisfaction of your words before sending you my thanks. My circumstances, too, are not exactly Peter’s, but all his uncertainty and qualification and sense of shortfall along the way are certainly drawn from life. So when I hear from someone for whom the music meant something, I feel a gratitude way beyond words. Know that your letter helps to keep me going.
As Greil Markus put it, music seeks to change the world, the world goes on, the music is left behind, and that’s what we have to talk about. I’m so glad you felt like reaching out and talking. The comfort cuts both ways.
Gratefully,
Richard Powers