The glamorous life and thoughts of a concert pianist.

I was in bed, happily contemplating the length of my just completed nap, when my cell phone rang across the room. Its odd frog-like burbling did not annoy me. With some suggestion of lithe energy, I threw off my down comforter and made it to the phone before it went to voice mail.

It was my assistant, Cory.

“Yello,” he said, and the greeting was returned.

A couple sentences passed, where we discussed his inability to attend my concert at the Metropolitan Museum this evening. But then we came to the heart of the matter.

“I think,” he said ominously, “I’ve had my last Chantico.”

Such crucial topics are often discussed by us, and though I was not surprised by the serious tone this conversation was taking, I laughed nervously. “Your last one?” I repeated…

“Yes,” he said.

“How long ago was this final Chantico consumed?”

“Two nights ago.”

He was referring to an evening shared by his girlfriend, he, and I, in the company of some large shaken drinks. I deduced, then, that Cory had not been entirely sober when he had his ‘last Chantico.’ Was there some terrible admixture of effect?

“What made it your last Chantico?”

Then he proceeded to outline a gradual diminuendo of joy, proceeding from the initial Chantico, which was “fantastic,” to further Chanticos, each less delightful than the last. Drinks and mood had nothing to do with it; the spiral of diminishing enjoyment was seemingly outside the hurly-burly of contingent circumstances. was something greater and more terrible.

“So,” I said,”aesthetic exhaustion is the reason why you have had your last Chantico.” He concurred ruefully, and we agreed further that it was as good a reason as any to abandon an expensive beverage, although perhaps not as pressing as, say, should it become clear that animals or children would have to be murdered somewhere in order to make Chantico. On this sad, gruesome, but thankfully entirely hypothetical note, another of our essential phone conversations ceased.

An early morning return. Hazy, sleepy Jeremy looks out the window at Adirondack wilderness: green trees against white snow, patches of gray rock, looming heights, reddish-blue dawn sky. If only I hadn’t had those two sweet bean buns! They sit in my stomach as only piles of bean and dough can. Amiable (and so delightfully plump) at first, they become persistent, and eventually overstuff their welcome.

Thus we passed through the Adirondack state park on our way back to the city: Soovin and myself in the back seat with my bag and his violin, his parents in the front seat… His parents are extremely talkative even at 6 AM, eek! Clouded by buns, unable to really speak or think, I cannot fully appreciate the landscape. But I have a little pang around frozen Schroon Lake, where I spent some frustrating (and now frozen) quality time with an old love; suddenly I am paddling in a canoe, out to the center, reading Proust ….

What have I learned in the last week? Let’s see. Surprising things about reading and alcohol. Take, for instance, the following passage, which I came across first while having a delightful martini:

“Schopenhauer’s thesis is that the world presents itself to us under two aspects — as Will and Idea — and that these two aspects are always distinct and always conjoined; that they totally embrace, or inform, one another. To speak in terms of either alone is to lay oneself open to a destructive duality, to the impossibility of constructing a meaningful world …”

Now, the sober Jeremy, rereading, would have probably glanced right on by this passage, in the course of an impatient skim; but he thankfully was given pause by the tipsy Jeremy, who apparently was quite moved, mid-martini, judging from a giant “WOW!” written (perhaps scrawled) in the margin … the sentences were circled for good measure. Seemingly, drunken Denk is in some cases SMARTER than sober Denk, and is considerably more willing to walk with Schopenhauer into destructive dualities and whatnot. (Drunken Denk is also more willing to consume pints of Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream.) Now, the thing is this: normal, everyday Denk did a double-take, suddenly realized/remembered the beauty of this passage, its layers of significance yadda yadda yadda, because of these signs (like the markings of a caveman) left by his gin-soaked alter ego; the site of my revelation was in my brain somewhere, unearthed by a pencilled wow!, visible and valid currency to the sober eye, but somehow ignored.

So, the moral of the story, which I plan to pass on to all my children (should I have any), is: Drink Up! Blog readers: feel free to post your drunken or sober interpretations of the above passage. I am curious. See if it’s possible for you to construct a meaningful world.

For those who want to be regaled with tales about kiddie concerts, teeny-bopper Q&A sessions, and howling winds over Adirondack slopes, I refer you to my other blog, which actually recounts the events of my life, and which does not exist. No, no, it was a really delightful week “out of time.” There were many sweet people, and many sweets were consumed: cheesecake, cookies, glutinous rice pastries, Pepero-brand Korean chocolates… And we played hymns, and Ives, and Gershwin, and “Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair.”

Yes, after eating buffalo-pheasant-green-chile stew in Chicago, and egg salad sandwiches in Baltimore, I am allowed one fallow day in New York to contemplate the immensities of my apartment, and my carpet’s filth. Why vacuum? Ignore! And off early in the morning, too early, to Penn Station (we used to enter like gods, now like rats), and up the Hudson to Albany to dazzle public radio listeners in the capital district.