A NIGHT AT THE OPERA

Well, not exactly opera, it was the symphony.

Was invited to go with friends to the San Antonio Symphony; extremely talented and dynamic conductor, Sebastian Lang-Lessing whom you see above pinning the oboe with his Do As I Tell You stare. In reality a charming and open man.

First half was Rachmaninoff’s # 2, which was great, but then second half was Bruckner’s # 6 and I thought I would die of sleepiness, boredom and the overwhelming desire to get up and walk around or find the bar and another glass of champagne. Jose and Janis were also fighting to stay alert and look fascinated, we were on the 3rd row from the orchestra. They had friends in the violin section.

It was one of the last at the old Majestic Theater. which is lavish to the point of cartoonishness but I love it, just love it. those balconies in the Star Wars Alhambra style are actually balconies. 

If you’re up there you can go to sleep during the endless repetitions of Bruckner or go ‘Oh God’ to yourself and nobody will see/hear. They are building a new venue, the Tobin Center, opening fall 2014, which I dread. It looks bare and industrial and a bit claustrophobic compared to the gorgeous and overdone old Majestic.

Ah Well. A wonderful night with Janis and Jose and afterwards off to Mi Tierra for a late dinner and stories from Jose about old San Antonio, the San Antonio of his youth, and all the truly remarkable people he knew — like the man who made all the tiles (by hand) which floor the County Courthouse, and the tiles in Mi Tierra. A great night.

At present writing the difficult scene where Marcy gets hit by a falling window.

Harvest time, the rain has arrived this week with long slow drizzles. Just got the sequel in to my agent. It’s the old Ben Hur plot combined with the Captains Courageous plot. that same depressing world that Nadia found herself stuck in, only Alan Reavis is from the top one percent. It’s not so bad up there. Until he gets thrown out. But he is quick and smart and learns to survive in the streets; task — rescue his brother.

It went a lot faster beause the dystopia had already been created.

Theodore Roosevelt and friends. 1905. He apparently feared nothing. Not even reading great weighty books full of dense print when on hunting trips. Or even losing his eyeglasses. Or dirt.

One reviewer has compared Lighthouse Island to Terry Gilliam’s Brazil. I like it, I’ll go for it. Also the labels ‘retro-futurism’ and ‘sci-fi noir’.

I could watch Gilliam’s Time Bandits several times a week.

The endless city of Lighthouse Island. And the exclusive housing of the elite.

Actually the first photo is Mexico City and the second is a resort near the Dead Sea in Jordan. Searching through Bing images for what might be illustrations of the dystopian world of LI and now its sequel.

A fun book tour to San Antonio and Houston and Katy (which is a suburb of Houston, although Houston’s suburbs have now spread beyond imagination). My escort, the charming and helpful Mary Ann Knoweth said ‘I tell people that this out here was once all farmland and they look at me as if I were crazy or I were 200 years old’.  The cities spread and spread and spread.

It was farmland — ricelands, grazing lands. Now all subdivisions and big-box stores, corporate headquarters for BP and Exxon etc. etc. Far away on the shores of the Gulf of Mexico, there are one or two lighthouses.

The also kind and also helpful publicity guy at Harper-Collins, Ben Bruton, booked me into places that would take pets so Rita got to come with me. She was in pet heaven.

This is one of the classics of post-apocalypse novels, published in 1952 and despite the truly horrible cover art, it is a great read. It has an unsympathetic main character, and that is also unusual for the time and also because it works. Unsympathetic in terms of ‘hardbitten’ and looking out for Number One first last and always. It’s an action narrative, and speeds along without a pause for internal dialogue or flashbacks. You never even find out where the guy is from.

Many of the old post-apocalypse novels are also fascinating because they describe contemporary life (from the 50’s, 60’s, 70’s) in detail. Amazing how things have changed. None of them anticipate cell phones or the Internet. Exception being Jack Vance.

Okay so I have one of these little guys visiting me, a Ringtailed Cat, totally charming, (the above photo is off the Internet) and I went to YouTube to see if there was a video on them (habits, gustatory preferences etc.) and there was  one; some people in a small office in Arizona had one dropping through the ceiling tiles every night to feast on what they had left out for it, and somebody got a little amateur video of the creature sitting on a computer devouring cat food and oranges.

So far so good.

Then some wierdo posts filthy-mouth posts on the video. Speculating on the people’s sex lives, using the foulest language he/she could come up with. How did this crazy even find this obscure video?

I’ve noticed this on other You Tube toobs. It’s a kind of Tourette’s syndrome, I suppose. Others were on a video of a cruise ship in trouble, another on Bulgarian folk dancing (to which I am addicted). some YouTube videos are posted with warnings for the filth-mouth people to stay off. Does YouTube ever ban these people?

Interesting. No wonder my editor warned me not to allow comments. It’s a whole new human activity. Meanwhile the ringtail visits every night and goes on its language-less life, snacking on bird seed and the cat food I leave out for it. They are the last word in animal charm.

A tail of two kitties.