Before I get to the main subject of this post, I'd like to mention something that occurred to me today than anyone who listens to GBV should understand. I find myself realizing that the song "(I Wanna Be A) Dumbcharger" is tantalizingly incomplete without "Game of Pricks" following it. I set up a playlist in which, fortunately, the two are in succession, because I think the former is a good intro for the latter, but while listening to it once the playlist had gotten to "Dumbcharger" (Go Chiefs, btw), I had this great fear that some song other than "Game of Pricks" was going to come after it, and it would all be so painful knowing that I had gotten so far through a the preceding song only to get to a song that is dissatisfying in its complementation. "Dumbcharger" is a somewhat unexciting song, and "Game of Pricks" is an eminently energetic song for some reason, so playing something pensive, like Ride's "Vapour Trail", for instance, would rob both songs of their enjoyability.
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Today I was reading an interview with Italian writer Natalia Ginzburg about her life, to put it most generally, because the interview bounced around quite a bit. It contained her interesting musings on other writers, on politics, on her heritage, and on other things. Most interesting to me was a mention of her having translated Swann's Way and Within a Budding Grove in her younger years because, as could be inferred, I am a great fanatic of Proust's work. Recently, I've also been in correspondence with a woman who has been reading In Search of Lost Time with great interest in the author's Judaism, which I find laudable because it is generally not the subject of Proust's story, especially after the first couple books.
Unfortunately, however, it has begun to make me feel somewhat insignificant for some reason. Actually, I should not say "some reason", because I know very well what it is, and I shall now make some convoluted psychological explanation for it. The reason is that I am very possessive of my cultural loves. Just like Marcel for Albertine, I have, if not a constant obsession (or, rather, not a constant obsession, because I rarely have time to think of such things all the time), a great fear that my lovers should, in their spare time, find new friends and partners even if it is by no means close to our mutual love. Like Albertine, I have kept my volumes of Proust sitting on the bookshelf in my room so that I may have them to myself as soon as I return. Yes, I am a jealous lover. And so when people talk about Proust to me, it is most uncomfortable. I feel the same pangs as that nameless narrator. He has captured my heart just as Albertine claimed his in some revenge that has come after so much time. So when Natalia Ginzburg talks about having had such great affection for Proust, she is like Andree, for I do like her as well - I have nothing against Natalia Ginzburg, and find her sensitivity befitting someone like Proust. I appreciate her companionship for Proust, at the very least, just as I would see him as being defaced in Ginzburg were replaced with J.K. Rowling or Nicholas Sparks. It would be unbearable. And when the curious bourgeois lady takes interest in Proust, it is just like when Albertine and Saint-Loup met - there could be no connection, because Proust's writing is indissolubly divided from his Judaism, at least as far as our relationship is concerned, and so, to me, the lady and Proust can never have a true love for him. It is much the same with my Maine origins. Being here at school, I never met anyone from Maine for a year, and now I have secondhand knowledge of so many. I have consoled myself that they are all from Southern Maine (although there are a few from the rival of my high school), and certainly have have a deeper connection than most - I have met few that are so determined to return to their home after graduating as I am, because there is nothing to be had there as far as a life is concerned. And yet, I feel that I am divested of all that makes me whole and of that which I could call my own. I have never been loved by another person, and therefore have never possessed another person, so I make due with concepts, ideas, elements of my character that prove so fleeting and sometimes reproduce themselves.
A friend of mine has a friend that is just like me in every way, from the typing in too florid a way in comparison to her everyday speech to the favorite quote about the value of art in life. I count myself fortunate that our interests are separate although still lined up in some way - she has recently read Williams' Spring and All, whence I procured my quote about art ("Art is the pure effect of the force upon which science depends for its reality". I think hers is from Virginia Woolf), and she also likes Lermontov (although I don't think she has read A Hero of Our Time), but her preferences otherwise vary slightly: Woolf instead of Proust, Eliot instead of Williams, new Indie instead of the antiquated Superchunk and Idlewild I listen to. If we had more superficial similarities, I think I should have no purpose in living.
I fear the cult of individuality, but it is the only thing I can believe in.
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