Love, freedom, and music. How does the pandemic influence your creative network? Name three records that help you through crisis times.
X Scorpios is now closed for the cooler months. Reservations for the season can be requested in the new year. Thank you! Your submission has been received! My first visit to Kentucky was in when I finished eighth on Carousel Quest - with whom I won Burghley a few months later. That disbelief has never weakened. Driving in, you immediately feel the history. Cigar Lane. Outside the stadium is a huge, bronze sculpture of Bruce Davidson jumping into the water.
It commemorates his World Championships win, which led to the World Championships taking place in Kentucky and the birth of eventing at this venue. That sculpture actually gives credit where credit is due to event riders. Ascot has a statue of Frankie Dettori. Epsom has Lester Piggott. With his neurologist's eye, he felt they looked like neurons.
I was sort of smitten, I had to admit. Even so, that was that — for then. There was an entire country between us, not to mention 30 years' age difference.
My decision to move to New York more than a year later really had nothing to do with Oliver, and I certainly did not have a relationship in mind. I had simply reached a point where I had to get away from San Francisco — and all the memories it held — and start fresh.
But once I moved, O and I started spending time together and quickly got better and better acquainted. I had visited New York many times over the years but living here, as I soon discovered, is a whole different ball game. On the other hand, one doesn't become a New Yorker by virtue of having a New York address. For me, the moment came the first time I left the city. I flew back to Seattle for Christmas to see family. No sooner had the plane lifted off than I felt a pang of regret.
T o be a New Yorker is to be away from the city and feel like you are missing something, I wrote on a cocktail napkin. In New York, there is always something amazing happening somewhere that one ends up hearing about only later.
What I meant instead was missing the evanescent, the eavesdropped, the unexpected: a snowfall that blankets the city and turns it into a peaceful new world. Or, in summer, the sight of the first fireflies in the park at twilight. The clop-clop of horses' hooves on cobblestones in the West Village, mounted police patrolling late at night, or a lovers' quarrel within earshot of all passers-by. Of course, what is music to my ears may be intolerable to another's.
Life here is a John Cage score, dissonance made eloquent. MAY 12, I brought over a bottle of wine and we went up to O's rooftop. JUNE 17, "Are you seeing anyone? This is not per cent true. O isn't comfortable with anyone knowing about us and gets palpably nervous if we are out together and see someone he knows. It was night time, June 25, , and I was standing at a streetlight on Seventh and Greenwich Avenue when I heard the news.
Everything written about Michael Jackson, everything rumoured, all the insinuations and allegations that had hounded him, driven him into isolation, his freakishness — none of it meant anything any more, I felt sure.
The only thing that would matter from now on was Michael's music, which one heard everywhere in New York: blaring from car radios, playing in bars, boom boxes on stoops, and people dancing, literally dancing, on the streets and sidewalks and subway platforms.
It sounded so innocent, joyful, romantic almost. At least, that's how it seemed for a week or so. And then details started to emerge about his death — his OD'ing on anaesthesia, the unseemly doctor, the lifetime of insomnia and sleeping pills — and soon Michael Jackson's death was less Sylvia Plath, more Anna Nicole Smith. I remember O had no idea who Michael Jackson was.
O often said he had no knowledge of popular culture after , and this was not an exaggeration. He did not know popular music, rarely watched anything on TV but the news, did not enjoy contemporary fiction, and had zero interest in celebrities or fame including his own. He didn't possess a computer, had never used email or texted; he wrote with a fountain pen.
This wasn't pretentiousness; he wasn't proud of it; indeed, this feeling of "not being with it" contributed to his extreme shyness. But there was no denying that his tastes, his habits, his ways — all were irreversibly, fixedly, not of our time.
For me, this was part of the fascination with, part of my attraction to, him. Dates with O were completely different. We didn't go to movies or to MoMA or to new restaurants or Broadway shows.
We took long walks in the botanical garden in the Bronx, where he could expatiate on every species of fern. We visited the Museum of Natural History, not for the dinosaurs or special exhibitions but to spend time in the oftenempty, chapel-like room of gems, minerals and, especially, the elements; O knew the stories behind the discoveries of every single one.
I learnt that not only had he never been in a relationship, he had also never come out publicly as a gay man. But in a way, he'd had no reason to do so: he hadn't had sex in three-and-a-half decades, he told me. At first, I did not believe him; such a monk-like existence — devoted solely to work, reading, writing, thinking — seemed at once awe-inspiring and inconceivable. He was without a doubt the most unusual person I had ever known, and before long I found myself not just falling in love with O; it was something more, something I had never experienced before.
I adored him. JULY 9, O's 76th birthday: After I kiss him for a long time, he has a look of utter surprise on his face, eyes still closed: "Is that what kissing is, or is that something you've invented?
I tell him it's patented — he's sworn to secrecy. O smiles. I lost the album a long time ago. I still knew all the songs! I knew most of the lines! I still hadn't read the original book. That's right! I said it. So I did and here is what I learned: Stealing is bad Being nice is good Mistreating children will probably get you not so great adults Fear can make you do bad things to people you love Great people can come from really humble places Faith in unknown goodness can get you through a lot Being prosperous and being greedy are not the same thing People are not always what they seem to be Sometimes great pain is loudest when there is no sound Forgiveness is only half of salvation All too often very little good comes after the words "You should Okay, and the birds too.
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