In the Beyond the Curve’s final story, a man walks up a hill. At the point at which the path will turn around the edge of the hill, he stops. He knows he has walked on this road before. He knows he has seen the view from the other side of the hill. He knows he has walked down into whatever can be seen from that view. But he can’t remember what the view looks like, he can’t remember what’s there, and he can’t bring himself to walk one step further.
Until recently, the view into the yard of the neighbor below me was completely hidden. Two trees and one bush’s branches hid every inch. Whenever she was outside, I could only hear her, never see her. Last week, she trimmed every branch as far as she could. Now, I can see everything she does. She’s very old, at least in her eighties, and I think she has lived in that house for a long time.
The Violins of Saint-Jacques is a woman’s story of her youth. Berthe de Rennes, living in Greece in the 1950s, discusses her life fifty years before, when she was a tutor on the volcanic island of Saint-Jacques. Her story culminates during Carnival. After a long night celebrating with the islanders, taking part in elaborate dances and rituals, she pulls apart from the festival. On a boat in the quiet bay, she enjoys the view of the crowded streets, rooftops, and patios, taking it all in from afar. At that moment, the volcano erupts and the island collapses into the Caribbean.
One of the trees that my neighbor trimmed grows in my yard. It leans toward her house and most of its branches reach out over her roof. Afraid that it would die if she hacked it all the way to the fence, we asked her to not cut too much and volunteered to help pay for the trim. She agreed with everything we asked, then cut it all off anyway.
In Temple of the Scapegoat, a book about opera, a German philosopher and an Iranian Muslim discuss Bellini’s Norma. The German and the Persian can’t understand each other’s perspectives and, even worse, can’t find a method by which they might be able to reach an understanding. The German believes that no subjects should be prohibited from argument. The Persian believes that argument is the West’s form of fundamentalism, a fundamentalism in which all values are set against each other in order to be destroyed. Religion, on the other hand, refuses to argue.
We spent hours talking to my neighbor, trying to convince her to not cut too much of our tree, and every step of the way she agreed with us, then did something we had asked her not to do. We always thought our argument had been resolved, only to see her do exactly what she had said she wouldn’t do. We couldn’t understand each other and, even worse, couldn’t find a method by which to make ourselves understood.
In opera, these situations end with fire, stabbings, and beheadings. For us, it ended with a tree cut perfectly in half.
Ted Hayden 