A Belief in A View from Abroad

On this most romantic of days a little advice for the ladies (as well as any assorted Lolly in the audience)…

Photo: freepik.com is licensed under public domain

Valentine's Day date

Whenever a gent pays you the compliment of comparing you to his romantic ideal — LET HIM.

Time and again one hears the opposite alight from the lips of inarticulate females, "Oh, I don't look like HER at all!”

*sigh*

And with these brief words the face which launched a thousand ships will have sunk them all.

Hear me, gals, if a man ever compares you to: a movie star, a pop singer, a classical painting, a Greek carving…even if YOU don't think that dame resembles yourself in the slightest, at least dissemble and consent.

Basically whenever a fella offers such flattery it is the same as saying you're the tops, so by what reason are you trying to convince him otherwise?

Don't be a dunce — Accept the tribute.

Looks Are Deceiving…Depending On Who Is Doing The Looking

To further illustrate my admonition we are going to canvass some historical examples to prove the point.

In each case what YOU see will not be what THEY saw, and herein is the Lesson For Lovers.

Arno Breker — Beauty in Bronze

Without getting into all the politics and recriminations which come therewith, the fact is Breker was (and remains, because True Art never passes) one of the premier sculptors of our previous century.

The man never copied, but was copied by others.

His clean strokes can most aptly be described as "streamlined” which puts him distinctively in the latter Art Nouveau and fully Art Deco epoch. (Quite different eras, by the way.)

As with all gifted creators, his style was his own; maintaining integrity from his early stonework of the 1930s unto maturity in the 1970s; during which he produced abundant bronze feminine nudes.

The model for many of these pieces? His first wife, Demetra Messala.

Born to a Greek diplomat stationed in Paris, Messala modeled for no less than Maillol, Rodin and Picasso himself (during his Blue Period).

The paramours were first introduced approximately 1933, at a time Breker retained amongst his retinue of acquaintances no less than: James Joyce, Alexander Calder (who lived for a year in Arno's studio), Jean Cocteau, Jean Renoir and basically every torch worth flickering in the City of Lights.

A Cherub With Clipped Wings

In 1934 Demetra quit posing for others to relocate with Arno to Berlin, where she became an art dealer. (Not unlike the partnership between Dali and his Russian wife, who became a representative. Incidentally, Salvador was another confidante of Breker and claimed his bust, "Captured my soul!”)

Our couple married in 1937 and despite again making their rounds of The Consequentials in that metropolis there are precious few photographs of his Frau.

Alas, in this may be the crux…because despite her sublime rendition in stone as well as idealized much later in bronze, Demetra was…not quite as glorious as we might suppose.

Of images this author has seen that poor woman flew lower than the heightened angel Breker saw.

Indeed, when I put the query (and photo) to a friend she recoiled with the reply, "All I can say is that man saw her with the eyes of True Love”.

Be that as it may, these two wedded until her death in either 1955 or 1956 (accounts vary) by automobile accident; following which he remarried a good woman described as "loyal and reliable”.

Whatever else Demetra was to the world, to Arno she was perfect…as so are the depictions he crafted of her.

Russell Garcia — Symphony in Blues

As you may have gathered, Russell Garcia was of Hispanic derivation, born in Oakland, California, in 1916, to a large family of five brothers.

Told by the man himself, he was raised in an "ordinary” home where the only music came "from the radio”, save for the fact the youngster had stellar parents.

Noticing at but age five that little Russell would idle by the wireless every Sunday morning awaiting the New York Philharmonic to come forth, they appreciated their moment for encouragement. Contemporaneously, one brother got him a $5 used coronet, which Russell taught himself to master.

(By the way, and this is VERY important, the CIA once did a study — as it does on EVERYTHING — and concluded that composers denoted as "the classical greats” were all technically less proficient musicians but likewise all self-taught in their respective fields…take that as you will, Sportsfans.)

When he went off to primary Russell started his own jazz ensemble which performed compositions he created, and by the time he reached high school he was working five nights a week playing music.

Naturally, like all respectable individuals (*cough*…*cough*), he dropped out of university because they were not teaching what he wanted to learn. On the road with big bands, Garcia remained unsatisfied because, "I wasn't advancing fast enough”.

He quit again and went to Hollywood where he sought the best teachers he could uncover.

A Tune in Tinseltown

Russell, by his own account, took "every lesson on every instrument” to have a deeper appreciation of the intricacies involved in composition.

By his 20s the young man was conducting the West Hollywood Symphony Orchestra once a week.

In 1939 Garcia took his first regular occupation as a composer on the program This Is Our America where he was "discovered” by the actor Ronald Reagan, who lobbied to keep him on the show.

Afterward, the talent went on to work in composition for the NBC network, later for Henry Mancini, and then on to Universal Studios where he remained over the following fifteen year period.

Garcia collaborated with Charlie Chaplin, Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald and wrote the textbook on composing. (No joke, he LITERALLY wrote a textbook on composition which is still in use today.)

Paramount all of these achievements is perhaps the most lusciously tender orchestration ever recorded, his soundtrack for the 1960 movie The Time Machine — there is no finer or more lovely piece of film score in history.

Even so, and herein we return to our theme, the image of the human Russell Garcia was…not quite so impeccable as the melodies — with a wide nose and gap-toothed smile he was hardly the amorous paragon.

Alas this is of little importance in that when posterity considers him they will not see, but hear.

Sebastien Japrisot — The Debauched Idealist

Coming into this life about the way one might anticipate a cynical drifter would enter, in 1931 Japrisot was born in France to an Italian immigrant family…whose father promptly abandoned the child at age six. (Sebastien Japrisot was an anagram for his actual name, Jean-Baptiste Rossi.)

Sebastien began formal education with the Jesuits where he started writing his first novel. He then graduated to the Sorbonne in Paris where he skipped classes in order to perfect his initial entry (about a boy having an affair with a Jesuit nun…), published in 1950 and which sold 800,000 copies.

From thence he did pieces on crime, translated English books, took a position in advertising, and made two short films also based around the seedier aspects of existence.

By the 1960s he was in tax trouble (NOTE: always pay MORE than you owe, children), but a pal saved him by commissioning still another crime novel…except Japrisot wrote two landmarks — The Sleeping Car Murders as well as Trap for Cinderella; both of which were eventually made into films themselves.

Next was The Lady in the Car with Glasses and a Gun which, despite its absence in English cannon, for crime devotees is regarded as another masterwork. That too was made into a movie in time.

Japrisot is often compared to Graham Greene, which is infuriating in the sense that the former evokes a sense of passion while the latter is effectively a staid investigative writer — plenty of blood without any pulse. Japrisot entailed an unorthodox style that discarded conventions of the genre.

A Shot in the Dark

During the 1970s Sebastien transitioned to films as his primary form…and one can generally see where this is going by the titles — Farewell Friend, Rider in the Rain, And I Hope to Die.

Eventually he published another book, One Deadly Summer…and on and on…you get the picture.

But then! Following relocation from Paris to the countryside of Allier, in 1991 the man published the quintessential — perhaps final to date — important work of great literature, A Very Long Engagement.

It is the story of a girl searching for her lost fiancée during the aftermath of World War One as told in the manner of a grand detective novel yet with the sentimentality and emotion of a magnum opus.

Later Japrisot returned to screenplays, again depressingly crime-ridden, to carry out his days; interviews tinged with a cavalier bitterness which is apropos his similarly gritty body of creation — always the disdainful pessimist who left to posterity a sublime monument.

In the Eye of the Beholden

One final note on the nonsense of casual observation:

• In the case of Breker, that staunch German "fascist” you are taught to hate…his beloved Demetra was allegedly a Jew and they spoke French in the privacy of their own home.
• In the case of Garcia, that forceful powerhouse of musical dynamism and material entertainment success gave it all up…he and his wife were universalist adherents and left to preach their gospel.
• In the case of Japrisot, that bon vivant evidently signed his moniker about as frequently as Button Gwinnett…in two decades I have found exactly TWO autographed copies of his magnificent novel.

The Mirror is a Liar

Listen, these past years a great many things and a grave many things have occurred for some.

Perhaps events have transpired which leave you without hope or without favor…feeling injured, disfigured or ugly in ways even not readily apparent.

Except trust me when I tell you that — first and foremost — there is beauty within you.

Moreover, whether or not you can discern it in yourself, I can guarantee someone else does see it in you…more likely than not, that admiration emanating from a someone least expected.

Whatever you believe Love to be, it is waiting for you somewhere.

As our examples above demonstrate — a homely woman can become a goddess, a goofy short fellow can put down a masterpiece, a dissolute sceptic can provide the world among its finest romances.

Do you think yourself so different from they?

Guy Somerset writes from somewhere in America