Chapter 8

Polaroid photograph by Andrei Tarkovsky

It was dawn now on Long Island and we went about opening the rest of the windows down-stairs, filling the house with gray-turning, gold-turning light. The shadow of a tree fell abruptly across the dew and ghostly birds began to sing among the blue leaves. There was a slow, pleasant movement in the air, scarcely a wind, promising a cool, lovely day.

“I don’t think she ever loved him.” Gatsby turned around from a window and looked at me challengingly.

—F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

“His heart is a lute strung tight; As soon as one touches it, it resounds.”

cf. LIFE, 1969

“Son coeur est un luth suspendu;
Sitôt qu’on le touche il résonne.”
–de Béranger.

–epigraph from Edgar Allan Poe, The Fall of the House of Usher
 

“Presto in F Major” by Silvius Leopold Weiss performed by John H. Schneiderman on a baroque lute

’65 Love Affair

If I could go back in time
Well, I know somehow you’d still be mine
I wouldn’t be so blind
To that wonderful
’65 Love Affair
When rock ‘n’ roll was simple and clear
Oh, I still can hear
I can hear it baby…