Superficial Sighs
--
“Goodbye” said Norma Jeane to Arthur at the airport, without her usual flying kiss. The couple, impressive and sought-after artistes in their respective worlds were used to being apart, but lately, with each separation, Norma Jeane had begun to feel increasingly as though she barely knew Arthur at all. She remembered the profound feeling when she had first seen him, across a swimming pool in the gloaming. The scene still transfixed her like a still life water color that late afternoon. His grace stood out, even at that Hollywood party amidst some of the finest lookers of her day.
It was years before they would see each other again, but one day she found herself at one of his plays in New York, and when he walked onstage with the cast for their final bow, to her it was as If sunshine was poking through the curtains after a long winter.
They began dating. And then married.
At the wedding, she remembered being surprised at how many of Arthur’s literary peers she had never met before. Decorated actress as she was, she was no stranger to old acquaintances crawling out of the woodwork, but something in her had expected different from his crowd.
Her expectations continued to be upended. In their brief courtship they were inseparable, their lives in harmony with each other’s, like shells upon the shore, ebbing and flowing together in the same tide. A tide that roared with the passion they shared. But now that they were married she began to see the other shells clamoring to share the tide with them. She saw them first at the wedding, but then began to see them everywhere.
They whispered about her.
Arthur and Norma were losing phase. As the whispering built into a crescendo
in Arthur’s brain, he soon found himself never knowing which to cling to: his wife, or the whispers about his wife.
He thought back to that morning in their Los Angeles home before his final flight to New York. They sat and drank their coffee, scarcely a word exchanged between them, couched in their indifference. Him reading Robert Frost, her Emily Dickinson. The silence occasionally punctured by her sighs. What his publisher called her “superficial sighs”. He knew they had sunk to the border of each other’s lives.
That was the day he could no longer tolerate the whispers. He had written her a letter on the plane and sent it when he landed in New York:
“Norma, we are verses out of rhythm, couplets out of rhyme.” They had gone their separate ways, never to see each other again. Until today.
The next few years had been hard and lonely for them both. Loneliness was tough, and today of all days he could never understand why he hadn’t reach out to her in those years. There was so much he would have done differently, so much he wanted to say. But all Arthur Miller had left was a dangling conversation, for before him lay, in a casket, Norma Jean Mortenson, better known as Marilyn Monroe. All the paper’s had to say that morning was “Marilyn was found in the nude”.
And it seems to me you lived your life
Like a candle in the wind
Never knowing who to cling to
When the rain set in
And I would’ve liked to know you
But I was just a kid
Your candle burned out long before
Your legend ever did
This rather oddly worded piece is a pastiche of 3 (or maybe 4) works of art that touched me in various ways. The prose is influenced by 2 songs, The Dangling Conversation by Simon & Garfunkel about a relationship that has fallen apart and Candle in the Wind by Elton John, an ode to Marilyn Monroe. The words are constructed from the lyrics of these songs, in a kind of inversion of an erasure poem, which is a poem created by selectively blotting out words from a piece of prose till those that remain form a poem. The story is taken primarily from a movie called My Week With Marilyn that tells the story of an affair Marilyn Monroe had with a stage hand named Colin Clark when she went to England to film The Prince and the Showgirl with Sir Laurence Olivier. Though the central plot of the movie is Marilyn and Colin’s dalliance, for my piece I have borrowed more from its depiction of the strained relationship between Marilyn and her third and final husband, Arthur Miller, author of Death of a Salesman. After watching the movie I was fascinated with the story and read about her life and relationship with Miller on Wikipedia (the 4th work of art from which this is derived) and other parts of the interwebs. Using the movie and some of what I read online I decided to write a work of speculative fiction that is a version of what might have happened in their marriage: that Miller, buffeted by the press and his peers, constantly questioned their union, a union between him, a “New York intellectual” and well-respected playwright, and a “Hollywood starlet”. He quickly loses grip of the real woman he is in love with, who is an artiste in every respect as much as he is, and a chasm, a “dangling conversation” develops between them, and their marriage falls apart. He is left reflecting on all of this as he sits at her funeral and tells their story. I was taken by the idea of reinventing circumstances that lead to Simon & Garfunkel and Elton John and Bernie Taubin respectively to write The Dangling Conversation and Candle in the Wind. Below is the story again, with the lines that mirror lyrics from the two songs highlighted, as well as the lyrics of, and links to the songs themselves.
“Goodbye” said Norma Jeane to Arthur at the airport, without her usual flying kiss. The couple, impressive and sought-after artistes in their respective worlds were used to being apart, but lately, with each separation, Norma Jeane had begun to feel increasingly as though she barely knew Arthur at all. She remembered the profound feeling when she had first seen him, across a swimming pool in the gloaming. The scene still transfixed her like a still life water color that late afternoon. His grace stood out, even at that Hollywood party amidst some of the finest lookers of her day.
It was years before they would see each other again, but one day she found herself at one of his plays in New York, and when he walked onstage with the cast for their final bow, to her it
was as If sunshine was poking through the curtains after a long winter. They began dating. And then married.
At the wedding, she remembered being surprised at how many of Arthur’s literary peers she had never met before. Decorated actress as she was, she was no stranger to old acquaintances crawling out of the woodwork, but something in her had expected different from his crowd.
Her expectations continued to be upended. In their brief courtship they were inseparable, their lives in harmony with each other’s, like shells upon the shore, ebbing and flowing together in the same tide. A tide that roared with the passion they shared. But now that they were married she began to see the other shells clamoring to share the tide with them. She saw them first at the wedding, but then began to see them everywhere.
They whispered about her.
Arthur and Norma were losing phase. As the whispering built into a crescendo
in Arthur’s brain, he soon found himself never knowing which to cling to: his wife, or the whispers about his wife.
He thought back to that morning in their Los Angeles home before his final flight to New York. They sat and drank their coffee, scarcely a word exchanged between them, couched in their indifference. Him reading Robert Frost, her Emily Dickinson. The silence occasionally punctured by her sighs. What his publisher called her “superficial sighs”. He knew they had sunk to the border of each other’s lives.
That was the day he could no longer tolerate the whispers. He had written her a letter on the plane and sent it when he landed in New York:
“Norma, we are verses out of rhythm, couplets out of rhyme.” They had gone their separate ways, never to see each other again. Until today.
The next few years had been hard and lonely for them both. Loneliness was tough, and today of all days he could never understand why he hadn’t reach out to her in those years. There was so much he would have done differently, so much he wanted to say. But all Arthur Miller had left was a dangling conversation, for before him lay, in a casket, Norma Jean Mortenson, better known as Marilyn Monroe. All the paper’s had to say that morning was “Marilyn was found in the nude”.
And it seems to me you lived your life
Like a candle in the wind
Never knowing who to cling to
When the rain set in
And I would’ve liked to know you
But I was just a kid
Your candle burned out long before
Your legend ever did
The Dangling Conversation
Simon & Garfunkel
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nntOYUODSV0
It’s a still life water color
Of a now late afternoon
As the sun shines through the curtained lace
And shadows wash the room
And we sit and drink our coffee
Couched in our indifference
Like shells upon the shore
You can hear the ocean roar
In the dangling conversation
And the superficial sighs
The borders of our lives
And you read your Emily Dickinson
And I my Robert Frost
And we note our place with bookmarkers
That measure what we’ve lost
Like a poem poorly written
We are verses out of rhythm
Couplets out of rhyme
In syncopated time
And the dangling conversation
And the superficial sighs
Are the borders of our lives
Yes, we speak of things that matter
With words that must be said
“Can analysis be worthwhile?”
“Is the theater really dead?”
And how the room is softly faded
And I only kiss your shadow
I cannot feel your hand
You’re a stranger now unto me
Lost in the dangling conversation
And the superficial sighs
In the borders of our lives
Candle in the Wind
Elton John & Bernie Taubin
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NoOhnrjdYOc
Goodbye, Norma Jeane
Though I never knew you at all
You had the grace to hold yourself
While those around you crawled
They crawled out of the woodwork
And they whispered into your brain
They set you on the treadmill
And they made you change your name
And it seems to me you lived your life
Like a candle in the wind
Never knowing who to cling to
When the rain set in
And I would’ve liked to know you
But I was just a kid
Your candle burned out long before
Your legend ever did
Loneliness was tough
The toughest role you ever played
Hollywood created a superstar
And pain was the price you paid
And even when you died
Oh, the press still hounded you
All the papers had to say
Was that Marilyn was found in the nude
And it seems to me you lived your life
Like a candle in the wind
Never knowing who to cling to
When the rain set in
And I would’ve liked to know you
But I was just a kid
Your candle burned out long before
Your legend ever did
Goodbye, Norma Jeane
Though I never knew you at all
You had the grace to hold yourself
While those around you crawled
Goodbye, Norma Jeane
From the young man in the 22nd row
Who sees you as something more than sexual
More than just our Marilyn Monroe
And it seems to me you lived your life
Like a candle in the wind
Never knowing who to cling to
When the rain set in
And I would’ve liked to know you
But I was just a kid
Your candle burned out long before
Your legend ever did
Your candle burned out long before
Your legend ever did
