One should never know too precisely whom one has married *

Being the artist’s husband is not the only hat I wear. During the course of a day such as today I am in fact many people. One thing I hadn’t expected to be today however was the recipient of two separate phone calls from two different people, both of whom I know very well, and both of whom I introduced to the other several years ago. I discovered later that they were phoning to inform me that they were about to get married. To each other. On Friday. (Amazing.) I remember when I first introduced them. I can even remember warning the man with a smile to do no wrong. I don’t remember thinking in the course of the introduction of what I should have thought, which is that every such moment is loaded, every such event can lead to something profound, and that no matter what I say to either of them, we are in the deep and rolling laps of the gods. Now, of course, I wonder with another smile: What have I done? Actually, matchmaking is far too grand a title for what I have done, but I have acted as a kind of joy-enabler. Yep. Joy-enabler. That’s the word. I wonder if they knew when they first set eyes on each other that further down the road they would be marrying in arguably the most famous registry office in the capital, where everyone from Judy Garland to Patrick Veira has been tied. And what exactly happens, I still wonder, when two people meet like that and two previous futures become one? Is it – can we make that leap? - like seeing great art? (I remember my first glimpse of Michelangelo's’s Pieta at St Peter’s: that was like falling in love.) Or is it like brushing away a fly, only to discover it was a bee, and that the bee has in fact stung you? (No, I’ll stick to the art analogy.) Kiefer does it for me. Clemente. Rothko. Beuys. It’s funny: it’s always the spiritual ones. Anyway, as I was saying, there were these other hats to wear in the course of the day. I was checking to see if there was news on a wonderful book project I’d really like to do. I was in touch with someone else about the war-zone: some facts I needed confirmed. I was firing off messages on items relating to earlier conversations about film. I was pondering calling the (literary) agent. But each time I went off on one of these largely work-related tangents, I kept coming back to this startling image of my two friends getting hitched. OK, it’s not completely out of the blue. But it is still remarkable. I was telling the artist about it. I was trying to explain how good it was they were getting married. Deep down, I was trying to explain the importance of marriage. I forgot for a moment about us. How funny is that?
*Friedrich Nietzsche