Instead, one sees the survivor, a baffled and battered man, struggling to control himself. The repetition compulsion that drives so many works about a lover's death had helped White survive. But whereas you originally felt out of control, in the retelling you're in charge. For Ned Rorem too, art is control. For much of his career, this renowned composer has set the most emotional poetry to a music richly resonant but spare of sentiment.
Music has subject matter never.
Perhaps that's why Rorem also practices the plainsong of prose. In his diaries, which chronicle more than three decades in the cultural fast lane and its broad intersection with gay life, Rorem has never shied away from feeling. Previous diaries documented the deaths of some two dozen friends. But in the latest volume, Rorem deals with the epidemic's intrusion into the marrow of his life, as Jim Holmes, his lover of 30 years, slips away. His dying hovers over the cultural judgments, the gossip, and the aper us.