Of War (Redactor’s Addendum)

“Of War” depicts the evening of December 2nd, directly following the events related in “Of Raven.” It was probably composed sometime in the third week

Tell your story. Do your best, now.

Here begins the narrative of the Book of Miriam Schoen, chronicling the life and days of Miriam Schoen, faithful daughter and sister.

How she was cast down from the heights of Barnard College, how she fell from the firmament of Upper Manhattan to the humble dust of Flatbush, from whence she had

Ahem.

That was a mistake.

When Herschel does his funny, old-timey, faux-scriptural style, well, he can bring it off right, make it sound natural. I don’t know how he does it.

Whereas in my mouth it just sounds silly, you know?

Not that Herschel wasn’t silly, too, of course. It was a laugh riot, every day, around that kid.

Lightness and gaiety, merriment and rejoicing. Remember. You mustn’t strike the wrong tone.

Yes, yes. But if I have to pause in the middle of every sentence because I’m laughing too hard, I will never get anywhere, will I?

 

 

In my Book, here, I’ll tell the story of my December.

So I guess I should tell you a bit about who I am, to start out.

I should tell you a bit about who I am.

This is more difficult than it probably sounds.

Who am I? Who was I?

Oh, I don’t know.

As a little girl I liked to draw. I don’t, anymore, though.

I drew shapes, rather than pictures. Spirals, nested rings, lace-like plaitings and fleurons. That sort of thing.

The tablecloths and doilies of our kitchen table were my point of artistic departure, you might say. I found them very pretty, and wanted to have other things that were like them. That was why I drew, when I was small.

This doesn’t matter. It doesn’t tell you anything about me.

Or, what it tells you is exactly the wrong thing.

Who am I? Who was I?

A girl who wore her dark hair short, though not too short.

Who was tall, though not too tall, and thin, though not too thin.

Who was plain, though not ugly. Who was quiet, but spoke enough that she did not attract notice for being quiet.

Who did not attract notice.

If you are imagining much of anything in particular then you are getting it wrong, you see.

We were always poor, when I was growing up. Especially after my brother was born, naturally enough. Two kids, no father, and—although Ma was technically what they call a skilled laborer—her “skill” was a humble one, and her labor was not well compensated.

But we managed.

Did we go without dinner, some nights? Yes, yes. But Ma did love her frying pan, and what dinners we did have were rich, salty, greasy: a hungry child’s paradise.

Ma was strict, but I will say this for her: she did not make too much of a point about eating our vegetables.

We were poor, but not too poor. You see?

I’m supposed to give you identifying details. I’m supposed to show you how to pick me out of a crowd.

But if you can pick me out of a crowd, it’s not me that you’ve seen, there.

I went to the local public schools, same as Herschel.

How was I, as a student, then? Well, what do you think?

Oh, I did all right. Not especially well. I passed my classes. I did not get As.

I was not very well liked. I was not hated, either.

It would be wrong to say that I had no friends, at that time.

I was mildly sociable. There was nothing obviously repellant about me, and I acquitted myself well enough on the schoolyard. When I did not understand, I was silent, and so I never made a fool of myself, as so many others did.

I was tolerable enough company.

I acquired a succession of things close enough to friendships that neither Ma, nor anyone else, could notice the difference.

Even I didn’t notice the difference, at the time.

If I were trying to be poetic, I might say something like: the defining quality of my life is its own absence.

In everything there was a quality of holding-back, an absence of consummation.

I’d go, like any other child, to the houses of the other children who knew me, and I’d play little games there, and make jokes, and laugh. It was only that . . .

It was only that, at some point, they would go on, while I would have to stop.

Ma kept strict bedtimes, and early ones, too. So, often, I would have to go home, while they stayed to laugh and play.

But if it was not that, then it was something else.

Their talk would turn from the games and jokes, which I understood, to something else, which confused and frightened me.

They had interests I did not share, because they had interests, while I had none.

That is too much, of course. I did not not have interests.

I liked listening to the radio, and watching the television. But then, so does everyone.

If you are interested in a thing, then you are meant to have many, many things to say about that thing. This seemed to be the rule, though not for me.

My schoolmates watched and listened, at home, just like I did. Then, when they came to school, they were bursting with new things to say about what they’d seen and heard.

A frightening overabundance of rampant growth, like kudzu. That was how it struck me, at the time.

Bursting with things to say is an alarming phrase, if you stop to think about it.

Like the things to say are a parasitic mass, spilling

Lightness and gaiety, Miriam. Remember?

Yes, yes. I know.

It shouldn’t seem grim, this picture of my childhood. I was not unhappy.

I did love my Ma, and my odd little brother. I did love our little apartment.

I loved the dust and clutter there, which made it feel lived-in. I loved its smallness, which made me feel that I was cradled in a tight, warm, familial embrace.

Even at times of strife between us, I felt the imprint that our shared bond had made on the home in which we lived. At the times when our bond was most severely tested, I felt the couch and the walls glow with the borrowed warmth of happier days, and it gave me strength.

I loved paging through the beautiful books that Ma had brought from the old country, her most prized possessions. I did not understand the words, but that did not matter; indeed, I did not want to understand the words.

I loved the way my brother would stand by my shoulder, as I paged through Ma’s old books. Watching the book with me, his eyes wide, an expression of all-consuming focus on his flat, bland, broad face.

I loved listening to the radio, and watching the television.

In the radio plays and the television shows, everything was the way it was supposed to be.

That was how I felt. I wouldn’t have used those words at the time. At the time, I wouldn’t have used words, because I wouldn’t have needed to articulate the feeling at all. It went without saying.

I was not happy, I was not unhappy. I loved and was loved, but not too much.

At times I was spiteful, egregiously ungrateful, petulant. I had a bad tendency to snap at Ma and even at Herschel, in hasty and unthinking irritation.

Just like any child, just like anyone.

I was just like anyone else, right up to the last threshold, and then I wasn’t. I was everything, except a person; I did everything, except existing.

I was a wisp, a void, I was no one. But I didn’t mind. How could I?

Lightness and gaiety, Miriam.

 

 

When I was eighteen years old, I went to college.

That’s the sort of thing that happens to a person, isn’t it?

Ma had never been to college, nor had her parents. She viewed the very idea of it with a mixture of suspicion and awe. Lacking direct experience of the real thing, the idea took on mythic proportions and colorations in her mind.

An unfamiliar, exotic practice, something that other people did, not us. With a gilded magic to it, too, that one could not look away from easily.

I do not remember applying to college. I imagine that I applied to several schools, as that was the typical practice, and I was just like anyone else.

I would not have applied to any schools that were out of reach on the subway, from our Flatbush home. Ma would not have me going off to live elsewhere, not when I already had a perfectly good home, right here. She didn’t need to spell this out for me. It went without saying.

One might say that my horizons were small, at the time.

When I learned that I had been admitted to Barnard College, my heart jumped for joy: I would get to go to the city! Not just once, as a special treat doled out for good behavior, but often, two or three times a week, or even five!

Across the bridge, over the river! Hurtling through darkness in the subway car, knowing that the fairy towers of the city are rushing past, unseen, above my head!

Up to Central Park, and past it! To the streets above the top of the world, with numbers that crest one hundred, and go further!

I had my heart set on Barnard College, immediately, for this reason. I imagined a place that was every bit as remote, rarefied, magical, as my brother’s Original Creation.

This was not a comparison I made at the time, of course. Herschel had not left his shell, yet.

Ma’s judgment agreed with mine, though for different reasons. This was not just college—this was “the whole works,” as she (somewhat opaquely) phrased it.

The very top of the heavens. Even the richest and most exalted of New York City’s fairy titans would be proud to send their children there.

We did not go to such places, of course. We never did, and could not. And yet, somehow . . .

Here I was, with my golden ticket in hand.

Herschel gives us such troubles, you know, but at least you, Miriam, at least you are going to college, to Barnard College.

At least you are crossing the impassable river, to the place where the other side lives.

Imagine—little Miriam Schoen, going off to the place the industrialists and the financiers send their daughters!

Ma did have her characteristic preoccupation with the haves and the have-nots, even back then. Still, it wasn’t only the promise of economic advancement that excited her. It was more than that.

It was “the whole works.”

 

 

I went to college. How did I fare, in college?

Do you have to ask?

I was a middling student. I passed my classes. I did not get As.

I was mildly sociable, and tolerable enough company.

It was very pretty, the campus. On the first day, the sight of it overwhelmed me, and I was giddy and glad.

But it was only a school, I learned soon enough. Only a school, like the other ones.

I answered when spoken to. I laughed, and made jokes, and acquitted myself well enough.

I noticed a resentment brewing inside me.

I don’t know when it had started. It might have been well before college, that it started. It might have been building up for a long time, without my awareness.

Or it might not have. I don’t know.

I was raised by a strict mother. And yet, I have a spoiled child’s soul.

I walked the campus lawns, sat sullenly in the cafeteria, sulked aimlessly about the dorms. I watched people. Their laughter, their arguments, their embraces.

I lusted after them. Literally and figuratively, in different mixtures.

I knew, dimly, that what they had was the result of active and willed efforts on their part. I knew, dimly, that they had friends because they’d wanted friends, and had acted accordingly.

I did not introduce myself to anyone, of my own volition. This has never come naturally to me. It’s always felt to me that it should be the other way around: that others should introduce themselves to me, as I loll in my quiet indolence. Without my having to do anything.

As I said: I have a spoiled child’s soul.

I saw the fairy lords, in their shining clothes. I saw their perfect faces, their wide and well-shaved chins. I saw the oaklike solidity of their arms and shoulders, and I lusted after them.

I did not think of speaking to them. They ought to be speaking to me. Courting me.

I saw the fairy girls, hanging off the arms of these men. I saw the alluring outfits they wore, and their makeup, and their jewelry.

I knew, dimly, that they had chosen to adorn themselves this way. I knew, dimly, that you don’t just wake up like this, one day, transformed. They’d wanted boyfriends, and they’d acted accordingly.

I wanted what they had. But unlike them, I wanted to have it without reaching my hand to grasp it.

When I thought of doing what they did—putting on lipstick, or a fetching dress—putting on anything at all, besides Ma’s modest hand-me-downs—

I felt revulsion, when I thought of that.

I felt revulsion at the kudzu, around me. Too much, too much already. There is too much already, and there should not be any more.

The river flowed in the wrong direction.

It was not right that I, little Miriam Schoen, should be bursting with things to say, and with adornments that catch the eye.

Things should be the other way around. It is the others who should be bursting, overflowing. Bursting and overflowing into me.

If you are imagining that I blushed, when I wrote those last words, then you didn’t understand them.

I feel like I’m coming to a new understanding of you, Herschel. In a small way.

I’d never tried to be a writer, before. I did my drawings, as a little kid, and I wrote papers for school. But never creative writing, until now. And I never tried to write, until now, about myself, my innermost self, my true feelings.

It makes sense to me, now. The difficulty you have, in making yourself understood.

Despite your absolutely sovereign will, and your ability to speak in any way you choose.

 

 

I came home, every school day, on the subway.

I came home, and when Ma asked about my day at school—and about college, about Barnard, about “the whole works”—I would tell her that, oh, it was grand.

“It was grand,” I said, again and again. I dismissed her every question with a slight variant of this fixed phrase. Again and again.

Please, Ma. It is everything you imagined, and more. Believe me.

It’s grand. There, haven’t I said enough? Grand, grand, grand.

I sat on the sagging couch, and watched the television set. I watched the perfect faces there, the laughter and the flirting and the fights.

I watched, and did nothing else. The beings there could not see me, or hear me if I spoke, and this fact pleased me.

I lolled in my indolence. The television overflowed, and poured into me.

This, I thought, was right. This was the way it was supposed to be.

 

 

I read the assigned books. With a heavy heart, I read the syllabus handouts, where the set topics for the papers were specified.

The papers which I would have to write, in order to go on.

Haven’t I said enough? I thought.

Kudzu, blight, cancer, I thought. Enough. But they ask me for more.

I looked up from the kitchen table, and saw my strange brother standing just behind me. Staring at me, not making a sound.

For the first time, I envied him.

 

 

I managed. Through the whole of that first year, I managed.

I went with the flow. I lolled, and let the river carry me where it would.

I bit my tongue, and wrote the papers that were requested of me.

My resentment mounted, but I tried not to let it show. And mostly, I succeeded. That first year.

I was a pleasant acquaintance, when I existed at all.

I spoke, when spoken to.

Sometimes I did not attend class. I sat on the grass, instead, and watched the bugs as they buzzed and crawled. I thought about how they were always there, underfoot, usually unseen, but still going about their own urgent business. Seeking, finding, mating, dying.

Kudzu, blight, cancer.

I never much liked to read, as a child. But there was no way to major in “radio” or “television,” in college, now was there?

A book, to me, is only a radio show deprived of its voice. A ghost’s ghost, barely clinging to existence.

I don’t have any special reverence for books, excepting Ma’s books, that she brought from the old country.

I watched. I watched the people, the bugs, the television set.

Reading was a poor substitute for watching, but it was at least a substitute, and that put it above most things, in my mind.

In short: when it came time to declare a major, I checked the box next to English Literature.

I managed. I carried on.

Summer came, and went.

 

 

Sometime near the start of my second year, I went to a party in the dorms, after school.

It wasn’t my first time doing this. Not by a long shot.

I had asked Ma for permission many times, and she was always happy to grant it. She could put her usual strictness aside when it came to things like this.

I can go, can’t I, Ma? It’s going to be grand!

I would ask her, and see that gilded gleam in her eyes, rekindled.

So, I was at a party.

I was there, as Herschel would say, to keep up appearances.

It was quite normal for me to be somewhere, without existing there.

I watched, and no one watched me.

I sensed that I was among the elite, even more so than usual at Barnard College. There was something about the hands of the people around me, at the table, as they poured wine into glasses, and raised glasses to mouths.

The hands moved with a lithe mastery, and seemed uncommonly alive. I thought of jungle cats, and predatory birds. I thought of strings and woodwinds, swooping and wheeling under the perfect, pre-ordained control of the original composer.

They knew what they were doing, and did it, I thought. And had no doubts whatsoever.

I lusted after them, literally and figuratively.

I looked down at my hands. I sipped wine, to keep up appearances.

The man across from me was bursting with things to say.

He wasn’t talking to me, exactly. He wasn’t not talking to me. He was talking to the whole table, and it was not just me who sat in attentive silence, listening to him.

No, everyone else was listening to him, too.

He talked about television shows.

Not the way others did. Not about what had happened, in last night’s show.

He talked about what would happen, in shows that had not yet been broadcast. In some cases, the shows that he talked about had not even been filmed, yet.

They would be filmed, though. He knew this.

I think he was a student, like me, but he didn’t say anything about his studies. He had more important things on his mind.

He refilled his glass with wine, and said: “the wilder, more decadent side of youth culture is under-explored in our current media landscape. That’s what I’m trying to bring to the table.”

This was in reference to several different films, all of them in the early stages of production.

He had written their screenplays, I think. I’m not actually sure. His sense of dominion was so complete, it was difficult to tell where it really began and ended.

He was some sort of writer, and some sort of film technician, too.

He seemed to be everything at once. And to know everyone, too.

And here I was, in his presence. He almost knew me. He really would know me, if I spoke up, and made his acquaintance.

And then Miriam Schoen would be one of the names he mentioned, in his casual and lordly way, to prove that he knew everyone, in case there was any doubt.

Did I want this? Of course. I have a spoiled child’s soul.

Did I speak up, introduce myself? Of course not. For the very same reason.

“MGM has been so kind to you,” someone said, in a gently teasing voice.

The man across from me smiled, at this, and said: “it’s not MGM, this time. I’m going independent, for a change.”

“Oh?” the first speaker replied. “Who’s backing? Jeremy?

“Jeremy’s been so kind to you, too.”

The man across from me was still smiling. “Not Jeremy,” he said, “not this time.

“Jeremy might take a minority stake, we’ll see. But no, this time Damien’s taking the lead.”

A beautiful, elfin girl, in a yellow sundress, shot him a look of amused surprise.

“I didn’t know you knew Damien Eggert!” she said.

I raged at her idiocy. Of course he knew everyone. Even I understood that, and I did not even exist.

Someone else laughed, and I turned to see a wiry, boyish figure in a fraternity jacket, whose pimples completed the perfection of his face rather than detracting from it.

“Eggert, psh,” the fraternity brother muttered. “Overvalued hype-train crap.

“Yeah, I said it,” he continued, a bit louder. “And I mean it. I’m short Eggert.”

“You’re short Eggert!”, exclaimed the man across from me, master of everything.

He laughed, heartily, and took a long sip from his wine glass.

It was not necessary for him to say anything else. The fraternity brother’s remark, whatever it meant, had been thoroughly punctured and refuted, revealed as an absurdity.

The man across from me had only to repeat the remark, in a particular tone, with a particular laugh. That was all it took, to puncture and refute it, thoroughly.

Everyone at the table knew this, I sensed.

But if they didn’t? I understood.

I looked at my hands, and sipped wine, to keep up appearances.

My thoughts swayed, and turned inward. I heard the voices around me, without really listening.

“Moses?” the man across from me said, a little later. “My father knows Moses quite well. I do too, a little.”

It was all I could do to keep from giggling.

He really does know everyone, I thought. I felt the wine in me, making my thoughts sway, making them not my own, and this fact pleased me.

The men and women at the table talked of highways and parks, of films and television shows, of buying and building.

Of how things were made, for the rest of us.

My thoughts swayed agreeably, and I asked myself funny questions, for the fun of it.

Suppose that I were in his place?

Suppose that I knew everyone, and many holy and profane names were kind to me, and would back any venture I chose?

If it were me, who determined what would be broadcast to the television sets? What would be on the reels, that are shipped out to the movie theaters?

What would I make, then?

I asked myself, and the void inside me answered.

Nothing.

There is nothing inside you, bursting and overflowing, pleading to be let out and sent in every direction.

It’s him, that bursts and overflows. Not you.

As long as I know this, everything is all right. Everything is the way it is supposed to be.

There is nothing shameful about watching, and listening, in silence. Is there?

Someone has to. What else are the televisions for, and the radio sets?

The shameful thing would be to imagine that I am like him. The shameful thing would be to broadcast my own nothing—in place of what he has to “bring to the table.”

I don’t have anything to bring to the table. I am the one who sits, at the table, and eats the meal.

Someone has to.

I understand this. There is no shame in what I am. So long as I understand what it is, that I am.

I stood up, then, and excused myself. I felt overwhelmed, and very tired, suddenly. I knew what I was, and had no need of anything more.

Not that evening, anyway.

“You look a little drunk,” someone said.

“You okay?” they said.

I nodded, and fled. To the subway station, to the rushing train, to the brown bricks of Flatbush. To the dark bedroom, and my silent brother.

To silence, to darkness. Finally, finally.

 

 

I seemed nervous, people would say, when they talked to me.

Many different people had this idea, independently. Nervous, nervous, nervous.

I wasn’t nervous. That wasn’t the problem. Still, I would nod, as though I agreed.

Once, in the college cafeteria, a beautiful man started up a conversation with me, and kept it going for some time.

He seemed interested in me, I guess.

He said, “you’re giving Sylvia Plath.”

He said, “you have a Sylvia Plath vibe. I dig it.”

I didn’t know what he meant by this.

It seemed to be some sort of compliment. But not an ordinary compliment. A slanted, deviant one, somehow.

A lascivious compliment, maybe, I thought.

Or maybe not.

I lusted after him, immensely.

It was for that reason that I stood up, abruptly, and fled the room.

 

 

In the spring semester of that second year, I took a class called “Introduction to Media.”

The course description mentioned radio, television, film. I couldn’t refuse, any more than I could refuse Barnard, when I got my acceptance letter.

The professor was young, handsome. A bit eccentric, but in a way that was not unattractive, indeed the opposite.

He had a way of speaking very quickly, and then pausing suddenly, for dramatic emphasis.

He talked about the accelerating pace of history, the rapid outmoding of old ways of understanding. His voice raced with an urgency that gave credence to the idea—and then stopped, suddenly, to let things sink in.

He watched us expectantly, waiting for us to feel what he felt: the heady wind of the future blowing through our hair.

As you can probably tell, I liked him. At first, anyway. In that first class session.

McLuhan, he said.

McLuhan gets it.

You’ll see.

He was a big, big fan of this McLuhan guy. I must have heard that name twenty or thirty times, that day.

Your other professors, he said with a wink.

Your other professors, well. They might know what I know—what you will know, too—about accelerating change, and the profound impact of electronic communication technology. They might be scuttling, as we speak, away from their moribund ways of understanding, and towards the new ones that will be needed very soon.

Or, they may not know. They may think that they can just keep teaching the same classes, and writing more marks on dead wood pulp, about other dead wood pulp, now and tomorrow and forever.

And if so, well. Good luck, is all I have to say.

End of speech. Dramatic pause for effect.

I liked him. I raced to the subway station with unusual eagerness, that evening, after my last class.

I sat on the train, opened my bag, and retrieved a stack of paper: the first assigned reading.

I read:

Understanding Media

Marshall McLuhan

Part I

Chapter 1: The Medium is the Message

In a culture like ours, long accustomed to splitting and dividing all things as a means of control, it is sometimes a bit of a shock to be reminded that, in operational and practical fact, the medium is the message. This is merely to say that the personal and social consequences of any medium—that is, of any extension of ourselves—result from the new scale that is introduced into our affairs by each extension of ourselves, or by any new technology.

Something in me rebelled.

To be reminded that “the medium is the message”? Was this something I was meant to know, already? Something I might have only forgotten, temporarily?

I bit my tongue, and read on.

Thus, with automation, for example, the new patterns of human association tend to eliminate jobs, it is true. That is the negative result. Positively, automation creates roles for people, which is to say depth of involvement in their work and human association that our preceding mechanical technology had destroyed. Many people would be disposed to say that it was not the machine, but what one did with the machine, that was its meaning or message.

No, I thought.

No, no.

I have had enough, I thought, petulantly.

“Many people would be disposed to say . . .” Who? Who would say this? When did they say it? And why?

What is the “meaning or message” of a machine?

Does it have one? Must it?

Why?

Kudzu, everywhere.

I read:

In terms of the ways in which the machine altered our relations to one another and to ourselves, it mattered not in the least whether it turned out cornflakes or Cadillacs. The restructuring of human work and association was shaped by the technique of fragmentation that is the essence of machine technology.

“The essence of machine technology” . . .

Does “machine technology” have an “essence”? Can’t it just exist? Isn’t that enough?

I read:

The essence of automation technology is the opposite. It is integral and decentralist in depth, just as the machine was fragmentary, centralist, and superficial in its patterning of human relationships.

“Integral and decentralist in depth”—as opposed to merely decentralist, but not integral. Or merely integral, but not decentralist.

Or integral and decentralist, but not “in depth”!

“Machine technology” has an essence, somehow, and now “automation technology” has one, too.

And they are opposite . . . essences?

It’s not right, I thought.

It’s not right to write words like this, in this careless hurtling way.

Just because you are bursting with something to say, does not mean you ought to say it.

It would be better, really, if more of us were silent, and willing to listen, instead of spilling the shameful blight of our words out like this, day after day, page after page.

I read:

The instance of the electric light may prove illuminating in this connection. The electric light is pure information. It is a medium without a message, as it were, unless it is used to spell out some verbal ad or name.

This fact, characteristic of all media, means that the “content” of any medium is always another medium.

The content of writing is speech, just as the written word is the content of print, and print is the content of the telegraph.

Is it? Is it, really?

When I sit on the couch, watching the television, it is really just something else that pours into me?

And not the television at all?

Isn’t there anything that’s just worthy of existing? Something made right, the first time? Something that doesn’t need to become some other thing, to be good, to be allowed life?

It is not shameful to be silent, and watch, if that is your place. But it’s the most shameful thing of all, to pretend it is not your place.

To chatter as though you have something worth saying, and gild yourself as though you are worthy of courtship.

To be a fake. Like this McLuhan was a fake.

Acting as though he’s the man at the party, who knew Moses and everyone else, when he doesn’t know anyone or anything!

No, no, no!

You probably think my reaction was extreme, odd, hyper-sensitive. After all: I was simply sitting on a train, looking at a stack of paper.

But then, I am Herschel Schoen’s sister. What exactly did you expect me to be like, if not this?

I clapped the papers shut, and did not read any more.

I sat still, and spent the rest of the long subway ride like that, sitting still.

I sat, and watched the people, and the walls.

 

 

It was very soon after this that I first met Vincent.

Well, really, I didn’t meet Vincent until a little later on. On the phone, I mean.

He didn’t know my name, who I was, until a little later on.

I’m not talking, I guess, about when I met Vincent. I’m talking about when I first encountered him. Saw him, and heard him.

I knew him, before I met him.

I loved him, before I met him.

Herschel was out in the living room, on the couch, writing with his usual fervor. I lay in bed, feeling adrift, and in search of new things.

I turned a knob, this way and that, in a rudderless haze.

I tuned in to one frequency, then the next.

Confronted with any given thing, I immediately found it uninteresting. I have never really had any interests, you know.

I turned the knob, and a title caught my attention:

Vincent Vierge:

Debunking Marshall McLuhan (Part 1)

How could I resist? I needed something to soothe my soul, that night. Some sycophant, to tell me I was right all along, always right, always.

I dialed in the frequency, and watched, and listened.

I saw Vincent. I saw his shaggy, uncared-for curls, and the wild expanse of his beard.

Something struck me about him, immediately, at that first moment. It was only a first impression, but it wasn’t wrong. Later on, after I came to know him personally, I would have the very same thought again, very often, about Vincent.

This is what a man looks like, when he doesn’t care about his body.

No, not quite that.

When he has spite for his body.

When he has spite for flesh, and walls, and dust.

His face filled most of the frame. His face was bathed in the white of some unseen lamp, somewhere behind the camera, but it was apparently too dim for much of the light to reach the walls behind him.

His head loomed, in the darkness. I squinted, and saw the pattern of the wallpaper behind him.

A paisley weaving of lighter green on darker green.

It was strange, I thought, to imagine someone living among such outlandish, swirling harlequin colors. Making a home, there, in that.

But he doesn’t mind, I realized. He has spite for walls, and flesh, and he shows it for all the world to see.

In the darkness behind his head, I saw the outline of a door.

I saw the outline of Vincent’s bedroom door, as it happened. Although of course I didn’t know it, then.

Around the doorframe, the darkness of the wall gave way to an even greater darkness. A halo of splintering, tendril-like shadows projected outwards from it.

Like strands of cut magnetic tape, I thought.

Like some dark, manifold thing was emerging from the room behind the door, I thought.

Or, no. No, the exact opposite.

Some dark, manifold thing was pointing inward, toward the door and the room. Calling, beckoning, with its tendrils of magnetic tape.

Come in.

This is where you ought to be.

I was transfixed by what I saw. So much so that I didn’t catch the beginning of Vincent’s monologue.

Or, maybe, I did not want to hear it.

His voice washed over me. It was the voice of a man who had something to say.

That was enough. I didn’t need to know what he was actually saying.

And anyway, it was sure to disappoint me, like everything else did.

It was sure to disappoint me.

Wasn’t it?

My mind swam, with the current, and to the tune of the humming wires.

I heard his voice, just his voice, for a while. Until something roused me, and I heard what he was saying, too.

“McLuhan isn’t wrong,” Vincent said, “about the importance of media.

“He’s right that speech differs from writing. And writing from the printed page.

“The printed page, from radio. Radio, from television.

“He’s not wrong, that these differences matter. They matter greatly.”

He was impassioned, and utterly sincere. His stare pierced me and pinned me.

“He’s not even wrong,” Vincent said, “when he talks about the importance of ‘hot’ and ‘cool’ media.

“Media that are ‘cool,’ as in low-definition. With missing details, that the audience has to fill in for themselves.

“And media that are ‘hot,’ as in the opposite. High-definition, entrancing. Only needing one thing from the audience: to be an audience. To bear witness.

“He is all wrong about the details, though.

“After all, can anyone really believe that television—of all things—is a ‘cool’ medium?

“That television requests our participation, to fill in missing details?

“That television needs us, for anything besides the act of bearing witness?

“McLuhan thinks himself a prophet of the new media, but he cannot see what is in front of him.

“He doesn’t see the screen in front of him, the way you and I do. The way so many do.

“Television! Television is the unified signal that is sent out into many homes, all at once. And makes many into one, e pluribus unum.

“Television is not quite pure, but it is far purer than anything that has come before.

“Television comes the closest, of all media, to the place that all media are taking us.

“We will be there, in that place, very soon now.”

Did he know?

Did he know all my innermost, private things? Could he?

I hadn’t thought that was possible.

“Here is what is happening,” Vincent said.

“In the succession of one media form to the next.

“You’ll recognize it, when I say it. It’s not hard to see.

“First? In each of its new forms, media improves upon its own capacity to mimic human experience.

“Print could mimic speech, but only partly. It had the words, without the voice.

“In radio and the phonograph, the voice arrived. But it was a voice without a face. Only in film, and television, does the face emerge too, alongside the voice, and the words.

“Have you sat in front of the television, and forgotten your surroundings? Fallen into its world, instead, a kind of waking dream? Yes, you have. Of course you have.

“Television is lacking a few things, though. Touch, taste, scent—to name only the obvious ones. But all that will arrive, too, soon enough.

“Second? Just as each new media form is a better mimic of experience, it is also a better mimic of life.

“It is more alive, I mean.

“Because there’s no difference, in the end, between perfect mimicry and the thing itself. I believe that, deeply.

“There aren’t many things that I believe more deeply than that.

“Does television live, when you are not there to watch it? No. Not yet.

“But it is closer to life than radio was, and radio was closer to life than print.

“There is something that breathes, something that almost lives, in the glow of the screen and in the hum of the wires. You know this, I think.

“Or you don’t. Maybe it makes you laugh, the idea of something that almost lives within the TV set, and the cables, and the waves in the air.

“Maybe you do laugh. But you won’t for long. Not long now, no.

“Third! Each new media form is more technically esoteric than its predecessor. More remote from the understanding of the common man.

“We become more and more dependent on the priestly technicians, the few who can follow the ever-more-intricate logic of the boxes in our homes.

“Can you build a radio? I can.

“It’s not really that hard to build a radio, if you know a few things about electrical circuits, and electromagnetic waves.

“But I can’t build a television. Neither can you.

“Do you imagine you’ll be able to build the thing that is coming next? Do you imagine you’ll be able to understand anything about it?

“Do you imagine that you will need to?

“Fourth. Each new media form tends to concentrate the power of distribution in fewer and fewer hands, while simultaneously widening the range of that distribution.

“How many books are there? Thousands upon thousands.

“But there aren’t thousands of TV channels, are there?

“There are just the few. A handful of signals, going out to every household that’s got a TV set. And that’s virtually every household, period, these days.

“The transmitters are few, the receivers are many. Do you see where this is going?

“You do. I know you do.

“The successive media forms are spiraling inward, towards a single point. Follow that line, and it’s not hard to see where it ends.

“I, for one, would like to be ready. I intend to prepare myself for what is coming.

“For the one broadcast that goes out to all.

“And becomes our life.

“Not the life that we might have chosen for ourselves. But another life, one that is chosen for us.

“Chosen by the broadcaster, whose understanding outstrips ours completely.

“And who will still need us, even then. But only to be vessels, for that which he has chosen.

“Only to bear witness, to that which he has chosen.

“Are you ready to be a vessel and a witness?

“I am.”

 

 

Three weeks later, I called Vincent on the phone for the first time.

Don’t ask how I got his number. It wasn’t that hard to find.

He did want to keep in touch with his viewership, insofar as his viewership wanted the same.

Two hours later, I had a boyfriend. My first.

Although it was only on the phone, at that time. Ma didn’t quite believe that Vincent was real, until he came to visit, in November.

A month after our first call, I received a strongly worded letter about my academic performance. But it had been a long time coming.

It wasn’t because of Vincent, that I fell behind in my classes. I know, Ma, I know. I’m serious.

Four months after the letter, I learned that I had just barely scraped by, and passed enough classes to let me progress on to junior year, in the Barnard College English Literature program.

Around this time, Ma came home with the bad news that her pay had been cut, again. Another step in the long, slow devaluation of the wordsmith trade.

I’m worth just as much as I ever was, Ma said. The only thing that’s changed is that the parasites on top think they can take more of what’s rightfully mine.

She had been in the union for years, but it was only after this particular indignity that she began to think about her membership as anything more than a necessary formality.

A week later, my brother unexpectedly spoke his first word, at the age of sixteen.

And talked and talked and talked. Oh, how he talked, once he started!

He talked, and Ma and I laughed and laughed. Berries in the sky! Original this and Original that! Little Herschel Schoen coming to announce the next age, a pipsqueak messiah, with rosy cheeks and an inability to tie his own shoes! The Schneerson of Flatbush!

He grew cross with us, and that only made us laugh more.

In September, I began attending classes again, in my third year at Barnard College.

At the end of October, I withdrew from Barnard College, so that Ma would get back some of that year’s tuition money. She needed it. We needed it.

In November, Vincent came to visit me. He came all the way across the country, all the way from Portland, Oregon.

He was with us, in our little apartment, among our dust and our clutter. I knew that it wouldn’t bother him, of all people. The state of our home, I mean.

In November, I existed, for the first time.

See, Herschel? I can be just as poetic as you can. My way is a little different, yes. But I am your sister.

In December . . .

But I am getting ahead of myself.

Lightness and gaiety.

December.

Oh, yes.

Yes, yes, yes.

My love, my love! Oh, my love!