Gainsborough Might Have Painted

Bid my beautiful three ladies adieu, and darted out the door to the Di Di that was waiting for me there, now, having already turned around as per my welcoming request.  You won’t get out of this compound continuing on straight ahead laddie.  That I can tell you.  Soon I’ll be a two-gal-guy.  It’s down to weeks left before the older one forever spreads wings and darts out from the nest.  And then there were two.  The sky as I left looked like something Thomas Gainsborough might have painted; where the pinks and the blues were implausibly celestial.  Yes, this is Beijing I’m driving around in. 

My driver is from Han Dan, in Hebei.  He immediately tells me that he really doesn’t like the guards at my compound dressed in military uniforms.  Military uniforms should properly to be worn by people in the military.  I’m not listening closely, and I misunderstand.  I think he is asking about the way traffic works in the U.S.  (I’ve explained my point of origin.)  He takes this in, no doubt thinking I’m a dope and then repeats what he’d originally said.  I see now, precisely what he means and pretend that I knew that all along and say “yeah, military guys should wear military clothes.”  In a world of controversial topics, I find myself effortlessly agreeing with this.

The little one and I were trading songs last night.  I got an early version of tune by Suga, which I believe was called “Dis” or something like that.  He tore down some other, presumably imaginary adversary who’s baring was rather unimpressive.  I played the Last Poets, “Wake Up Niggers or We’ll All Through.”  Not sure why I felt that was important as my counter gesture, but there you go.  Rap, before there was rap.  The Petri dish from which Suga’s Daegu-dis drew seminal sustenance from.  

Later I thought to play some of the old Monty Python TV clips.  “And now, for something completely different.”  I played the dead parrot that morphs into the lumberjack song.  We both sang it.  We both knew it, mostly.  She then played a live version of “Cipher 2.”  I’ve seen this before. Suga raps very fast at one point and this is as good as it gets, for her.  My next turn was the Python “argument” sketch.  Somehow, I remembered Graham Chapman as having a role yet clearly, he didn’t.  The TV version is marvelous but not as crisp and rhythmically precise as the audio version they had on the old LPs.  And, when it ended too early, I played that familiar version.  “Stop hitting me!”  “Why did you come in here then?”  “I wanted to complain.”  “Oh, that’s next door.  It’s being hit on the head lessons in here.”  “What a stupid concept.”

We ended it there and she took off.  I decided I wanted more Graham Chapman.  And I watched a few skits with him as a cop, chasing people off the set.  “This is too silly.  Stop it right now.”  And then I got into the other Pythons talking about him and his coming out and his alcoholism.  And then I considered him, discussing the same themes, where he is looking much older, all of a sudden, just before he dies.  In one instance he mentions that he was drinking four pints of gin a day. I state the obvious when I paused and considering this amount, acknowledged this was a very great amount of gin, or as the interviewer suggested, a “lethal” amount.  Indeed. 

Sunday, 06/09/19