The Fredösphere

So, I guess I'm the last classical music fan to find out Ned Rorem has a "web log."  I suppose I have an excuse for this oversight, since Rorem's web log (or more simply, "blog") has not been published on the actual web.  I suppose his excuse for that is that he published it in the 60s, a time when the internet had not gained popular acceptance.  Instead, he chose the unusual format of words printed on sheets of paper, bound together at their sides into a volume (or more simply, "book.")

This is my cute way of saying I'm reading Rorem's New York Diary.  It's an odd book, and the first thing that strikes you about it is ... well, let's just let Alex Ross deliver the harsh verdict (which refers to the previous volume, the Paris Diary):

The oddity of Rorem’s career is that ever since he made his literary début, in 1966, with “Paris Diary,” he has been known more for his writing than for his music. The writing has an insolence and a swagger that the music lacks. The spectacular self-absorption of the diaries—“A stranger asks, ‘Are you Ned Rorem?’ I answer, ‘No,’ adding, however, that I've heard of and would like to meet him’”—made the young Rorem famous for being famous in his mind.

The second striking thing is the way Rorem never really lets you in on what's happening in his life.  Is this just Ned being Ned, or is it a conscious strategy?  It's certainly not shyness, since he doesn't mind updating the reader on the state of his KY inventory, for example, but he never truly reveals, he just exhibits.

Rorem relies on odd, short, paradoxical profunditites to fill out the volume.  They don't always hit the mark -- hey, epigrams are hard to write.  Here are a few, chosen by opening the book to random pages:

Can the dead fall in love with the yet-unborn? Let us be thankful we're of the same generation.

Why does Venice seem always to mean the death of someone?  Why don't maniacs more frequently put rocks on tracks to cause train disasters (it's so easy) like the Hungarian lunatic who used to stand off in the woods to applaud the mass of twisted steel and broken bodies he'd just caused?  The endless tunnels Italian railroads go through, as aggravating as a woman's purse!

Some of my best friends are 12-tone composers.  David laughs for Absalom.  Fugue is as suspect as its opposite, improvisation.  (This applies to present decades.) [...] I deserved the Gershwin Memorial Award (1949), but the piece I wrote did not.

I relive my songs, though I'm not always sure of the poem's meaning as I write the music.  I compose not through past experience but what will happen to me.  Today I create (not the, but) my future -- and, years after, I whistle my own tunes while practicing what they preach.

Huh?  (And yes, I transcribed that last sentence accurately.)  So tell us, Umie, why should anyone read the self-indulgent ramblings of a musician?

Umie the Umlaut says, "I think you better ask yourself that question."