Leverkusen and the Kind and Romantic Grand Gesture

Yo, yo, everybody who has ever been to Leverkusen (Coat of Arms below) will agree that it is not much of anything. The city has a decent football club and is where Aspirin was first made, but otherwise, it is totally unremarkable. The prestigious German Crime Series, "Tatort" (first episode aired 1970, and still running today) never made "Tatort Leverkusen" (although they did neighboring Duisburg and Münster). So much bigger was everybody's surprise when Leverkusen became City of the Kind and Romantic Grand  Gesture.

There was a distinct upswing in the city's mood, behavior, and attitude. Flowers in all stores were 50% off (Roses 60%), prices subsidized by City Hall. Longtime feuding neighbors became friends and were asked to dinner. Old friends disconnected for imaginary slights suddenly called up and invited each other to a "weekend by the lake, as in the old times". Parking wardens (especially Lovely Rita, meter maid) would give a twenty minute grace period and after that they would draw a heart on the 28€ ticket. The whipped cream topping on Mocca, normally 1€ extra, was suddenly complimentary everywhere. Jürgen Boberg, seventh grade (class 7B), who used to silently walk home with Bärbel Hoffman, seventh grade (class 7A), and would whisper shyly "Tshüß" at her door, one day, when they turned into Mühlen Straße, asked her if she'd like to for ice-cream at the Eis und Imbiss. He was delighted when her lovely pink and blond face broke into a wide grin and she said "Yes". The city felt differently, violent crime was down 78%, divorce rate was down 56%, Beyer Leverkusen qualified for the quarter finals and everybody was happy-smiley-lovey-dovey. Karl Kurzmüller, mid-level executive for "Grund und Boden", was home late every Wednesdays because the weekly status meeting. His loving wife Ulla waited with his favorite, the delicious Knödelsuppe. Karl, with newly found honesty and ethics, wanted to confess that there was no Wednesday status meeting, and he spent that time in Stefanie's bed (Ulla's beguiling best friend). Karl was also going to say that he knew Ulla didn't make the soup but bought it at Hanselmeier Feinkost, but when he sat down at the dinner table, he just said "looks great, Ulla, as always" ... I guess the Kind and Romantic Grand  Gesture only goes that far, eh?

Prisoners of the Paradigm

It was a literary luncheon that my agent insisted me to attend to increase my exposure for the highly anticipated second novel to be published soon. I was approached by a young man, who said that his name is Will Kale and he worked for The Wednesday Literary Credit Weekly. Could I, please, sit for a few questions? I accepted. He asked if I wanted coffee and how I take it. I tested him: "Like Winston Wolf." Will smiled broadly " 'lotsa cream, lotsa sugar' ." and added "The Wolf also said 'Oak is good'." I said "yes, that too" and sat down. Will came back with a cup of coffee and a cookie. I took a sip and raised my eyebrows, Will shrugged: "They ran out of sugar" and then asked: "When you plan your writing, do you start with the character or with the action?" I thought about it for a moment and then said: "Let me answer this with an example from my own family." "My grandmother, Rosa, died very young, she was just three when she passed. Each time I asked my grandfather about her, he would only say what beautiful hair Rosa had, that they met at the Mondberger Academy for Music in Clermont-Ferrand where she played the oboe and he played the xylophone and the saxophone and that they took long motorbike rides." Will asked: "How can she be your grandmother when she died when she was just three?" I cut him short: "Will, don't interrupt, just listen!" "But it doesn't make sense" he kept saying.

"You think time and space are linear, you think that where and when you are matters. Listen: only where and when you believe you are counts, ok? Timelines split frequently and the strands can break in any direction, some even double back so future events already happened and past events are still waiting to occur. Imagine a blue spiny sachidore with yellow wings in n-dimensions, you get it?" Will said that he don't get it. "Will, you don't get it because you're a prisoner of the paradigm, remember that things can happen before they start and continue after they ended, like when Kurt V. said 'unstuck' " Will looked puzzled for a moment and then asked: "So, then, for you is it the character or the action that comes first?" I replied that they are bundled, just like the sachidores, but even more so. Then I told him that I died on April 12th 1961, it was a Wednesday. 

The Vivaldi Brothers (and the unresolved Issue of the Peni$)

Giovanni Battista Vivaldi ran a barber shop in the late sixteen hundreds Venice, he was also a talented amateur violinist. He had two sons and three daughters who, by a strange twist of genetics, all had flaming red hair and great talent for music. This story is about his sons: Antonio Lucio and Francesco Gaetano. The boys learned to play various instruments but also received advanced musical education: composition, counterpoint, harmony, orchestration and were actively composing music since they were teenagers. Antonio, a gregarious extrovert, easily made friends and enemies. Francesco was shy and spoke very little. Antonio managed to get a publisher to sell his music earning money and a growing recognition. His brother, who was also a barber, wrote mostly for woodwind, and had Antonio sign and sell his works for him. One of  Francesco's oboe pieces, the Largo movement from his Concerto in C Major, was lifted by Ann Ronell  in 1932 to become the jazz standard "Willow Weep for Me".

Antonio became music director at the Ospedale della Pieta which he turned into a center of musical excellence. Early in the eighteenth century, the  Opera craze hit Venice and Antonio couldn't pass-up the chance of making serious coin. Dozens of theatres were staging opera to satisfy the public's growing appetite and Antonio ended up composing more than fifty operas (almost all of them crap). He joined up with the other Venetian giant of the time, Carlo Goldoni, for a sure hit: the opera "Griselda", but when they submitted it to the censors, it was rejected for moral turpitude (Goldoni overdid it and had Constanza, a woman, fall in love with Griselda, another woman). Goldoni and Vivaldi had a horrible fight blaming each other and never spoke again. 

About 1740 Antonio was invited to Vienna by Emperor Charles VI to become his Court Composer. Alas, shortly after his arrival Charles died and Antonio found himself without a job, without a sponsor and without much money. He fell ill an died a year later almost destitute (the money he left barely covered the cost of a decent funeral).

Back home, brother Francesco was cutting hair and  still composing. Every now and then he would take his pieces to Antonio's publisher pretending that he found more music left behind by his bro. When Francesco found the "Griselda" manuscript, he took it to Goldoni to change it so it will pass censorship. Goldoni resolved the issue: Griselda was disguised as a man which proved good enough for the censors. "Griselda" was staged at Teatro Sant'Angelo at a huge success. The interest was helped along by somebody who wrote in bright red paint on the poster "Has Griselda a Penis?" Everybody suddenly wanted to see the Griselda Penis Opera. It ran for astonishing fifty-six weeks.

Francesco made money of it but still maintained the barber shop. He was composing small oboe pieces to play them with family and friends. Sometimes asked  himself if Griselda was really a man after all, and did it have a penis. 

The Composer as an Uncle

What I am about to tell you happened a long time ago in France. If you're preoccupied with how I know what I am about to tell you, you're asking the wrong question ... just try to focus on what I am about to tell you, ok? Here goes:

Jean Phillipe Rameau, 1760 

Jean Phillipe Rameau (hereunder simply called Rameau) was born in Dijon into a family of musicians and, naturally, became a musician himself. He had brothers and sisters of which only one brother plays a (minor) role in what I am about to tell you. 

Rameau had his first sexual experience after he turned twenty-four (which was about ten years later than the average age of the French males of his time) and was so deeply and utterly disgusted by the act that he remained celibate for the rest of his life. 

While Rameau was busy composing operas and writing treaties on musical theory, his younger brother Jean Christophe Rameau, a prosperous rice merchant, married the charming young German soprano Amanda Chloe Sturz. They had a son whom they named Jean Francois. The boy just turned sixteen when his parents died in a house fire and Rameau, the ever avuncular, took him in to try to raise him into a useful member of society. Jean Francois was more interested in nice clothes, fine dining and women and less in making France great for  Bourbon Louis #fourteen and #fifteen.

Rameau knew what the nephew was like, but being busy, he didn't do much about it. He was thinking and hoping that it was just a stage that the youngster would soon outgrow. Uncle and nephew shared the house, the habit of smoking tabaco and the pleasure of taking long baths in fragrant, soapy, hot water. One mild October evening in 1752, after a long and luxurious bath, the nephew went to the dining room for a snack and a smoke. He was wearing his uncle's bathrobe and his new wig when a masked intruder climbed through a window and stabbed Jean Francois in the neck. The blade severed the internal carotid and he bled out in four minutes. Monsieur Nicolas Rene Berryer, Lieutenant General of Paris Police, personally conducted a vigorous investigation. A large number of suspects were arrested and questioned but still, the case remained unsolved ... which is exactly what I said that I am about to tell you and now, I did. Pauvre neveu!

Fifty-Four (and counting)

A few days after his fifty-fourth wedding anniversary, he sat in the backyard with a book open in his lap and thought of all the things he'd learned 

1. There are things we know and things we don' t know; between them, there's the Doors.
2. Never wear green on Wednesday
3. Best day to go on a trip: Tuesday
4. Best day to return from a trip: Thursday 
5. All his dogs are called Lola
6. All his cats are called other names
7. You regret more the things you didn't (do) than the things you did (do)
8. Never put your bag on the floor
9. Never put your hat on the bed
10. Always use Arial
11. Never use Arial
12. Say as little as possible, mostly "Yes"
13. It is not only Flight or Fight, there is also Freeze
14. If you lose something, it is OK. You will never have to lose it again
15. Always add more garlic
16. If you don't like it, don't eat it, but if you must eat it, eat it
17. Buy two of everything
18. You did a whole lot better than they thought you would
19. Old hearts break just like young hearts, but hurt less
20. The past is truth, the future is lies
21. What goes up must come down, spinning wheel go aroun'
22. Look to the right and to the left, but also, o-c-c-c-casionally, look up
23. Only remember ideas and sensations
24. You can leave your hat on
25. Yes, you can steal time
26. There are clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right, and here I am, stuck in the middle with you
27. No! You cannot put everything back where you found it
28. When you say "never," you probably mean "always".
29. When you say "always," you probably mean "never."
30. There is always something, as there was never nothing
31. They invented time so that everything wouldn't happen at once 
32. Tried to trade in all tomorrows for a single yesterday ... it didn't go well
33. It starts with love, and it ends in hate, and in between it is mostly fear
34. There ain't no particular sign I'm more compatible with
35. Boredom chews up your soul
36. If they ask "how many?"  just say "approximately six." and you'll be usually correct
37. Don't be the canary in the minefield
38. Don't be like the bull in the Chinese shop
39. Don't be the escape goat
40. When you know they know, deny, deny, deny, and run away 
41. No set density is safe
42. No set density is dangerous
43. Zed's dead, baby, Zed's dead!
44. Turns out that the love you take is equal to the love you make
45. Fibonacci was right, but he was also an idiot 
46. There's nothing I'm wishing to be owning
47. Always hold hands when you cross the road
48. It was always me and Julio down by the schoolyard
49. Don't ask "Are you breaking up with me?" They'll tell you when they are
50. The romantic perception is the reflection of an erection
51. Always pick the tallest, blondest
52. Fixing past screw-ups in the future often screws it up more ... so just do your thing in the present
53. If you think that the world in your head is the real world, you're in trouble
54. And so, castles made of sand fall in the sea, eventualleee 

Later, he also learned to rap:

She liked nectarines

And the mandareens

And theatre scenes

And necklace beans

And Wednesday greens

And Voodoo queens

Of New Orleans

Where they play slot machines

In submarines

With ugly teens

In dirty jeans

They never cleans

Oh, worldly spleens!

Errare Humanum Est ...

This ancient dialog holds true to this day. Read on, my friends, and think on it.

She/Her: You're late!
He/Him: It is three twenty nine.
She/Her: We said three o'clock.
He/Him: No, we said three thirty.
She/Her: We said three o'clock!
He/Him: Sorry, I made a mistake.
She/Her: You make many mistakes
He/Him: You don't understand, because you don't make mistakes.
She/Her: You are my biggest mistake.

The Ringleader

The very pretty village of Lourmarin in Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur is about an hour south-east of Avignon. It has a sumptuous Renaissance castle which is booked for the glamorous and extravagant annual grand-fête of the Anonymous Association of Ornament Removal (AAOOR). That weekend, the number of Rolls-Royces, Bentleys and Maybachs parked locally rivals Monaco, Qatar or Knightsbridge in London. Originally, the local council was against hosting the world's most famous jewel thieves, but seeing how much money came in, they quickly changed their mind and welcomed them warmly. 

Extravagantly dressed people make their way to the castle's the ball room. A clever observer would notice that nobody wore jewelry, zero, not even wedding rings! How strangely bare the Balenciaga gowns of the ladies looked without their rings, bracelets and necklaces as did the gentlemen's Brioni,  Dormeuil and William Westmancott suits sans their usual Audemars-Piguet, Vacheron Constantin or Rolex President Edition watches. 

Jewel theft is an extremely lucrative business and these were its crème de la crème. The event was to award prizes for last year's individual haul with the dollar figures aggregated  by Meyer & Herzberger LLC from Universal Insurance Agents yearly reports and could not be contested.

After the opulent dinner, the chairman went to the front with the envelopes for the three categories: Most Necklaces (Necklaceleader), Most Rings (Ringleader), Most Overall (Mostleader). Drumroll ... Ayelle B, won for Necklaces, then, unexpectedly, the Mostleader was announced which went to Virginia X. The audience was stirring and whispering when the chairman announced that this year the Ringleader diploma will not be awarded. Rumors were that whoever won broke the AAOOR conduct code by returning loot.

Earlier there was a disturbance at the gate when an veteran member was not all. He was shouting that he was the legitimate Ringleader and he gave back one ring by mistake. When he was later asked by reporters how he felt about being disqualified, he said that he can only compare it with having an arm and a leg chopped off.