aaah death in venice! that music! I saw it with a friend of mine many years ago in . . . . when he was studying theology there. we were friends from school and we discussed everything except the elephant in the room: our sexuality. Although we were contemporaries he went on to do a doctorate and so was still studying years after I was teaching in - - - - and only visited in the holidays. When I watched the film with him I was really seeing it through his eyes - as I imagined that he was seeing it . . .wondering what he thought about it and how he was feeling . . .
a couple of years later he introduced me to his fiancee and that was the last time I saw him. I still don't understand what happened after that: whether he avoided me or I avoided him . . . I was still living abroad when he got married and was unable to attend the wedding (I can't remember if he asked me!) but I always wondered about him . . . when the internet came along I regularly googled him but he never showed up until this year when I came across his name on a church website under 'memorial'. I contacted the church to ask if there was a connection and yes: it was his memorial. The vicar's wife promised to ask his widow to contact me and sure enough she phoned later that month. She told me that after he married he had taken the priesthood. He died of . . . . in . . . . and I never even knew. I had to grieve for him several years late and it was a really puzzling experience. After that phone call he visited me several times in my dreams during my own peculiar illness - startlingly clear and just as startlingly positive - which is an inadequate word but it leads me straight back to Mahler because whenever I listen to that piece now I remember not so much 'Death in Venice' but me and my friend sitting together in the darkness of the cinema watching it.
I'm sorry I had to erase words (I hate the gaps) but it seemed a bit too much info . . . .