Sergio De La Pava - A Naked Singularity

One of my professors, who often skirted the shit out of this grace period, whatever it was, once said that if she could have dinner with anyone she would pick Goethe because he was the last person on Earth to know everything.

Or was that something someone else said about one of their professors?

Tell you one thing, I wouldn’t have picked some tardy quack who makes you feel all insecure.

I would maybe pick CalTech physics professor John Schwarz though. For one, the dude knows his Superstring Theory cold, being perhaps the person most responsible for its development, and it seems likely that said theory may in turn ultimately prove to be the key to the Grand Unified Theory or GUT that physicists since Einstein have been searching for to reconcile Quantum Physics with the Theory of Relativity. Also I’m sure Schwarz, like all these guys, knows his physics history. Given that, at some point during dinner I would turn to him and say: so John what about this deal whereby God, or Nature, or Fate, or whatever you want to call it seems to replace one ginormous theoretical physicist with another ? He would probably look at me all quizzical then I would remind him that Galileo Galilei died in 1642 only to be replaced by Sir Isaac Newton who was born in 1642, at least according to the Julian calendar used in England at the time. Later, James Clerk Maxwell died in 1879 only to be replaced by Albert Einstein born in 1879. My nephew Timmy would wonder if maybe there wasn’t enough room on Earth so that the predecessors died to make room for their successors. Mary might wonder the same thing but would likely remain silent.

Or I could be about to have dinner with Joe Satriani. Satch. We could talk about the palm-muted rhythm section of Always With Me, Always With You or we could talk about his former student in San Francisco, Kirk Hammett, and how Hammett gives him partial credit for that vicious interludy chord progression in Creeping Death .

Or what about the guy who trained Joe Louis for the second Schmeling fight?

Almost certainly dead I thought.

But why limit myself? Forget those puny living types. I could have dinner with fucking Beethoven! Ludwig van Beethoven my friends. I would ask him about Antonie Brentano, what went down there. Then I would say, between the appetizers and the main course, something like my sister Alana contends you didn’t really create music. Particularly with the late string quartets, she says, there’s no way any mere human could have created that stuff. Instead what you did was more like discover notes that had already been celestially arranged to optimal psycherattling effect. In other words, your function was not unlike that of a receiver picking up radio waves that could never be heard with the naked ear. Which theory, I would say, would seem to be belied by the apparent painstaking manner of your compositional process. What say you Lud?

But really these dinners would be no fun because of the pressure involved. A dinner with Beethoven would involve much gaping on my part and precious little coherence. Dinner with Traci on the other hand would be a blast. She wouldn’t even have to say much. Just the way I pictured she would dangle on the chair.

Whatever the grace period was, it had to be pretty damn close to expiring. Unless I had mixed up the dates or something — normally inconceivable but with my brain not unprecedented. I would wait just a smidgen longer. Or was it smidge?

In the meantime I would eat bread and think only pleasant thoughts.

Like how when I was a squirt the only thing I would consent to eat at restaurants was fried chicken with orange juice. If they didn’t have either I would have pout for dinner.

Or how a deaf Beethoven was completely unaware of the crowd’s rousing reaction to the initial performance of his Ninth Symphony until someone made him turn around. On May 7, 1824 in Vienna’s Kärnthernor Theater that happened.

I guess another important thing about the talent would have to be its potential profitability. I would want to make enough money so that I never had to think about $$ again. I wouldn’t have to screen calls from insistent student loan organizations. I could return their calls and maybe pay off all my debt right over the phone. I thought of what I would do then.

“Disappointed?”

“Huh? Oh hi. Sorry, what’d you say?”

“Disappointed?”

“No, I just. Oh I thought you weren’t coming and I guess I just spaced out.”

I hadn’t even gotten to do that thing where you stand when your guest arrives before she sat down across from me. Only now my brain had belatedly processed the information and I suddenly stood up while she remained seated, making it look like I was about to leave and basically making me feel like an idiot.

I sat back down.

“Just stretching the old legs,” I said. Mercifully the waiter came over about then, allowing us to use words whose content we were only marginally responsible for. Then as suddenly as he had appeared he was gone and we were once again on stage. To the extent that silence is somewhat acceptable in the context of the entire exercise it is almost verboten at the outset. The ball had to be set in motion.

On the Restaurant:

“Yeah, it’s pretty cool. What do you think?” I said.

“I’ve been here before,” she said.

“They certainly are attentive. The staff I mean.”

“Yes, they’re great.”

“Except it now seems to me that this sort of compulsive attention must be motivated by fear. I wouldn’t bet against an evil supervisory presence in this place.”

“I know the owner.”

“Well, I could be wrong.”

On the Weather:

“I hate it,” she said.

“Yeah, it’s brutal. I can’t remember it being this cold before. Makes you want to perpetually hang in front of a fire and have life delivered.”

“Hmph.”

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“Imagine not having a place to stay in this cold?” I said.

“I have a fireplace I never use.”

“You should, it’s one of the few winter benefits. Do you ever have professional occasion to go to the morgue? Is it full of homeless hypothermiacs when it gets like this?”

“What?”

On Her Job:

“Plastic surgery? Really? That’s interesting.”

“Very lucrative.”

“It seems like a mostly New York/L.A. type thing right?”

“What do you mean?”

“Is actual plastic involved?”

“Sometimes. Why?”

“Well otherwise the term would seem to be a slap in the face at the type of person who becomes a patient.”

“I don’t think I have any idea what you’re talking about.”

“You know, like there’s surgery for when something is actually wrong and then there would be plastic surgery for plastic, superficial people who can’t cope with their nose.”

On Misunderstandings:

“No I didn’t mean to imply that at all.”

“Right.”

“I’m serious. What kind of a hostile lunatic would purposely insult their dinner companion? I was just trying to be funny.”

On My Job:

“How can you represent someone you know is guilty? I could never do that.”

On How Late It Had Become:

“Yeah wow I didn’t realize how late it was.”

“I have to get up early tomorrow.”

“Me too.”

On Dessert:

“No thanks,” I said.

“No way,” she added.

She lived close enough for me to walk her home and I was Mr. Gentleman doing just that. I wondered why she didn’t mention she lived about a block from the restaurant. I guess if it turned out I was some kind of nut (there are many kinds) I could have used that information to stalk her. Assuming I fell in love with her. No danger of that.