The Famille Verte
The Famille Verte was bothered last evening by two questions: (a) how to convince friends and relations to plow through George Meredith’s fabulous but unreadable novel, The Egoist, which really, really needs to be turned into a movie; and (b) if Mozart didn’t write K 297(b), who did? Stand up, man; take a bow! Let’s hear it for the greatest forger in music history.
And that, my friends, is what comes of Giving Up Television: one loses touch entirely. But we do have a very jolly time.
Later that night….
Listening to Berlioz (Les nuits d’été — Régine Crespin). Is it really possible to be this old?
I notice lately that, when I twist my arm a bit, the skin folds like rope, torquing from wrist to elbow. It’s not awful looking, but it is awful. Sixty!
My youth was so completely (and obviously) wasted on me that I resolved not to wail about it when I grew up/old. So I won’t. But to be sixty is truly arresting. To say that I don’t feel sixty is a very bad joke, especially as I did feel fifty-five, -six, -seven, &c more or less uninterruptedly. Sixty! How breathtakingly pénible!
Because I’ve never been a bigger flirt than I am now. It’s not that I expect my flirting to lead to anything – Dieu m’en garde! But I don’t want my flirting to be ridiculous, now that I know, finally, why one would flirt.
Sixty! Que mon sort est amer!
Connaissez-vous la blanche tombe? Good — meet me there at six for a drink.