I Lived for Art, I Lived for Love
A Poem by C.W. Emerson
I dreamed I walked barefoot all the way to your house in the snow. Everything was the blue of smudged ink and you were still alive. There was even a light the shade of sunrise inside your window.
—Ocean Vuong
As I approached the house, I could hear the soft click of your record player and the dark hum of a woman’s voice, shaded in blue, emanating from your window. If I had to describe in detail the color, the hue of the voice, of the moon-shadow and the moon, I would say indigo.
I could hear the movement of the music as waves of sound refracted off the snowbanks around me, chords progressing from minor to major then back again, minor seven chords scaling upward to create tension that the voice would then resolve, bringing all back into order with the solidity of a major fourth, letting the ear rest for a moment, just long enough for the listener to identify the song—no, the aria—it was “Vissi D’Arte” from Puccini’s opera, “Tosca.”
There was no doubt as to the singer’s identity, even without a closer, more nuanced listening, I knew who it was, who it had to be. You would be waiting for that penultimate phrase, the one you’d heard hundreds of times before, where the singer eschews the need for a breath—and all other singers require one—in the middle of the word “signore.” Then, the voice takes two steps down, perfectly balanced, to end the phrase in the most exquisitely controlled pianissimo.
It could only be Caballé.
*
In the dream, as in our waking life, you were a creature of extreme habit, easy to predict. Years earlier, I knew to expect your terse note when, post break-up, I tried to abscond with my favorite recording:
The album of Puccini arias is not a gift to you. Please see that it is returned, posthaste. As Tosca discovered, “living for art, living for love” does not necessarily guarantee the best, most hoped-for result.
*
In the dream once again, walking barefoot in the snow, walking backwards, entranced by the blueness of the air yet longing for the sun-risen promise of being there with you, warm, golden, in your room, in your arms. You were still alive. Caballé had yet to sing that last phrase. The air and sky had turned from cobalt to navy to a new shade of blue, just shy of a dark turquoise.
I could still breathe freely, could still hear that aria not as an indictment of God and of my own life, but as a work of art separate and apart from me, from the life I’d lived and would go on living. None of us would remain as we were, flung out of one dimension into another, but that is another dream entirely.
C.W. Emerson’s (he/him) work has garnered numerous international accolades, including two awards from Poetry International: the C.P. Cavafy Poetry Prize (2018) and co-winner of the 2023-24 Summer Chapbook competition. Emerson’s poetry and literary criticism have been featured in esteemed publications such as Harvard Review, Oxford University Press, Greensboro Review, Tupelo Quarterly, and more. He is the author of a chapbook, Off Coldwater Canyon (The Poetry Box, 2021), and the prize-winning portfolio, The Thoracic Diaries, forthcoming from Poetry International.
Emerson’s poetry was a finalist for The Montreal International Poetry Prize (2020), and shortlisted for the International Beverly Prize for Literature (2019). His work has been anthologized in several poetry compilations containing themes relevant to the LGBTQIA+ communities.
Dr. Emerson is a retired clinical psychologist, and divides his time between southern California and San Miguel de Allende, Mexico.
Visit his website at theolderamericanpoet.com
