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“Brahms?”
That one word pulled Lucien Carr into a year worth of adventure. A year worth of poetry, drugs, friendship, and love. A year of defying laws, defying the status quo, defying everybody and everything but themselves. A year of Lucien Carr and Allen Ginsberg.
“Brahms?”
Brahms wrote intrinsic music. Swirling and lilting like a melody. Sometimes it was volatile though, rushing and rushing like a mad whirl of emotions, a storm of reality crashing down. Maybe this was a perfect start for Allen and Lucien.
Their relationship was just as confusing as Brahms’ collection. Just as incohesive, round-about, upside down and backwards.
It’s not like they realized it, of course.
To them, Brahms was just a kick-starter, the match that lit the flame. It was a simple thing that brought the two together, Brahms, their shared love for the complex rhythms, then their shared love for poetry.
All this morphed into their shared love for the classics, for changing the world, and then for each other.
“Brahms?”
A simple question that changed their lives forever.
Two years ago, Allen Ginsberg believed himself a coward who would never amount to anything as a poet.
Two years ago, Lucien Carr believed himself a God at the centre of his own swirling hurricane.
Then, “Brahms?”
It all changed.
Allen Ginsberg knew himself, he was a poet, a poet in love.
Lucien Carr wasn’t a God, he was a worshipper of the God that Allen Ginsberg became, the hurtling wind, swirling around the epicentre.
The change was scary, the almost flip that “Brahms?” brought to their lives.
“Brahms?”
One word. Not even an introduction. Just one word.
“Brahms?”
Even before that though there was, “On a Sunday afternoon when the shudders are down and the proletariat possesses the street in a kind of dumb torpor, there are certain thoroughfares which remind one of nothing less than a big cancerous cock laid open longitudinally.”
Allen wasn’t a believer of love at first sight but who cares what he believes because we know it to be true. This was love at first sight, or maybe even entrancement at first sight.
The introduction into dirty, rhythmic, screw you, poetry is what Allen Ginsberg needed. It wasn’t pretty, it wasn’t necessary, it wasn’t beautiful, but it was still poetry.
This is what leads to “Brahms?”
But “Brahms?” Is the turning point, the pivotal moment in their relationship.
Allen’s voice, from the doorway of Lucien’s room, “Brahms?”
And it’s not as if Lucien fell then, he wasn’t even sure when he fell for Allen but it couldn’t have been until after “Be careful, you are not in Wonderland.” Until after the boat, until after Allen sacrificed so much for him, for Lucien.
It was nice to know that there was someone out there who didn’t just want Lucien but someone who believed in Lucien.
“Brahms?” Changed everything for those two.
“Brahms?” In their soul, like an echo.
“Brahms?”
“Brahms?”
“Brahms?”
Like an echo in Lucien’s mind. What would he have done differently now that he knows what happened after?
Would he change anything?
Those months, that year before “Now I know what you felt.” It was freeing, liberating, Lucien loved it. He might not remember every drugged up, drunk, high moment of it but he remembers what counts.
“Brahms?”
He remembers Allen’s face, in the library. Beautiful and flushed, hiding behind the bookshelf with some girls mouth on his cock. His striking blue eyes met Lucien’s as the moment ended so beautifully and perfect.
“Brahms?”
Lucien remembers, on the bank of the Hudson, right before “Now I know what you felt.” Allen turning to him, his soft hand on Lucien’s cheek, then his lips on Lucien’s. It was like the culmination of forever, the Big Bang, a Supernova, all in one moment.
“Brahms?”
Lucien remembers Allen pulling away and he remembers wanting, more than anything, for those lips to touch his again. So they did. Then a shout from Jack and it all ended. Lucien wasn’t ready for anything of this magnitude. He wasn’t ready to relinquish his God status.
So, “Ten pages on Spengler’s Decline of the West. Due tomorrow.” Lucien does what was done to him, turns love into manipulation.
“Brahms?”
It’s not like Lucien has much else to do in prison besides remembering. So he tried to remember the things he couldn’t remember. He tries to remember being so drunk that he crawled into bed next to Allen. He tries to remember nights laying on the floor of his room listening to music and reciting poetry until their faces hurt from laughing at the mistakes their sloppy mouths would make.
“Brahms?”
It was such a simple beginning for such a long story, such a long adventure.
“Brahms?”
Lucien sighed, looking up at the white, popcorned, ceiling of his cell. He stared at the bars, at the fascinating decor and tried not to think of the one person that meant anything to him. He tried not to remember the simplicity of being with him, the fire in his veins that felt like an echo of whatever he had felt for, “Now I know what you felt.”
It was hard to purposely ignore something that was such a part of him. It is hard to purposely ignore anything, but, to purposely ignore something that means so much, Lucien found it to be an impossible task.
“Brahms?”
“Brahms?”
“Brahms?”
“Brahms?”
It was just one word.
Just one word and now Lucien was in prison thinking about, “Brahms?”
He thinks even further, trying his hardest not to but the memory came to the forefront of his memory and wouldn't leave.
Lucien remembers, “Be careful, you are not in Wonderland. I’ve heard the strange madness long growing in your soul. But you are fortunate in your ignorance, in your isolation. You who have suffered, find where love hides. Give, share, lose—lest we die, unbloomed.”
The poem Ginsey wrote was obviously about him. It was so obvious, but Lucien didn’t want it to be, he couldn’t fathom someone thinking this way about him. Lucien was a God back then, he knows this now.
He is also intimately aware that he relinquished his status, he became a simple worshipper at the alter that is Allen Ginsberg. Lucien wanted to refuse this reality but couldn’t find it in himself to do so, Ginsey deserved this honour and Lucien wasn’t going to take that simple thing away from those eyes, that pale skin, that perfect hair, those sweaters over his stupid collard shirts, the soft hands and the scar through the centre of his right one.
He couldn’t take that away from, “Brahms?”