BECOMING
(continued)
Chris Sawyer Lauçanno
Chapter 17 I become a Pianist
My uncle and my mother both took credit for buying me the old Chickering upright. Given the way my mother generally operated at that time, I imagine she probably had the idea but it was my uncle who actually purchased the instrument. I never could get too bothered, though, by the frequent schism between my mother's desires and their fruition as long as someone else was around, usually my uncle or grandparents, to follow through on her good intentions. I bring this up in connection with the piano because for years it was a source of proprietary |
contention between my mother and uncle, with each vying, particularly at public gatherings, to claim responsibility for its appearance in the house.
This battle intensified as their pride in my pianistic prowess swelled, and it became clear that not only was playing piano my greatest amusement, it was also my passion.
I was not a prodigy but I obviously did have some natural ability. My first teacher, a congenial and able woman named Mrs. Kurtz, was a church organist. She taught me every Saturday for an hour in her home. During the week I’d practice, usually for an hour day, often with my mother or uncle sitting next to me on the piano bench, correcting my fingering and pointing out wrong notes. I liked practicing with my uncle the best, for at the end of every practice session he would bring out scores from the great arias and help me decipher the notes. This was always far more interesting than playing “Indian Snake Dance” or “Go Tell Aunt Rhoda.” I practiced the scores even more diligently than my assigned lesson.
My reward was that after I had struggled through an aria for some time, I would get to go into the living room where my uncle would carefully place a record on the stereo and out would come Callas, Tebaldi or Peters, Peerce, Tucker or Björling singing in their celestial voices the same piece that I, at my old beat-up Chickering had just run through. Never ever did they falter; never ever did the pianist hit a wrong note. I would listen intently, with my eyes open, as the sprightly orchestra struck up the first strains of say “Nessun Dorma,” and Björling enunciated in his flawless tenor “Nessun dorma, Tu pure, o, Principessa” or when Callas and Tucker sucked all the air out of the living room in order for “O terra, addio, addio, valle di pianti. Sogno di gaudio che in dolor svanì” to slice open the atmosphere, maybe even the universe. At that moment, I would close my eyes tightly so as to block out the ugly floral couch or gaudy curtains and succumb to being utterly transported to a realm of rapture and vibrancy and the supreme perfection of the human voice rising above the exact accompaniment, the piano tenderly cajoling the strings and horns and woodwinds at once to follow and lead the vocal ascendance to someplace beyond the sun and the moon and even the far-flung stars.
I was apparently progressing fairly well on the piano, for within a year of beginning lessons with Mrs. Kurtz, I suddenly acquired an additional teacher, which is to say, she acquired me.
I came to study piano with Dr. Bousset because my uncle decided I needed more of a challenge. How he found her for me is a mystery but I imagine she was somehow connected to the Denver Symphony or perhaps the Opera. I can’t imagine why else she would have left her native Switzerland to come to Denver. But Switzerland’s loss was my gain.
I believe I was just eight when I began to take half-hour lessons with her two mornings a week before school. I still studied with Mrs. Kurtz on Saturday, but found Dr. Bousset's tutelage far more demanding and intimidating. Consequently, I spent far more time preparing my pieces for her. She decided during my first week of lessons that I would only play Bach. She did promise that I would eventually get to play Mozart but not until I had developed some mastery over fugues and toccatas.
Dr. Bousset was probably in her late 50s but she may well have been older. She had a mane of long flaming red hair, probably dyed, was always heavily made up, reeked of perfume, and in the winter wore a full length raccoon coat she would carefully hang up on a hanger rather than drape over the hook on the door. Her speech was strongly accented, and her voice, probably due to her chain smoking, was quite deep and raspy.
When I saw Marlene Dietrich in Blue Angel a few years later, I recognized Dr. Bousset’s voice and I remember my fingers moving involuntarily. That my fingers would begin moving wasn’t a mystery as that voice was used mainly to instruct or correct me in my playing. Indeed, I don't remember even once having a casual conversation with her. Unlike Mrs. Kurtz who doted on me, and continually proffered encouragement, Dr. Bousset seemed rather not to like me. When I arrived for my lessons she would barely speak; when I played for her, her only words were usually critical; her highest compliment seemed to be a slightly, but only slight “hrumph.”
It was therefore quite a surprise when one spring day she rang my mother up to tell her that she thought I was talented enough, even sufficiently dedicated, to audition for a boarding school in Switzerland which had a serious focus on music. If successful, she would ensure that I would receive full scholarship.
The matter was discussed in the house for several days. When asked if I wanted to go, I said I wasn’t sure. It was hard at nine to know anything I wanted except for my mother and father to reunite. I do remember saying I did love the piano but wasn’t sure I loved it that much. What did appeal to me was that the name of the city in Switzerland was like my own: Lausanne. Lauçanno. But even then I didn’t think that was probably a good enough reason to get hauled off across the ocean.
And then on a Sunday afternoon, probably a week after the august Dr. Bousset had made the offer, she appeared at our little suburban home on Quitman Street. Her entrance was dramatic. She was wearing a flowing floral blouse and black trousers and her hair was flying from under a wide-brimmed hat. My grandfather greeted her in German and they immediately began conversing. My mother attempted to bring the conversation back into English but failed for a good while. We all sat there watching her gesticulate, my grandfather nod and exclaim from time to time “Ja ich verstehe. Na sicher. Mein Gott.” Eventually English returned but I have absolutely no recollection of anything further that was said. I do know that no one asked me whether I wanted to go to Lausanne.
As it turned out, Dr. Bousset was one of the piano instructors at the institute. She was returning to Lausanne later in the spring and offered to take me with her, although my family would have to spring for the train fare to New York, then the ship passage, and then for the train to Lausanne and the hotels. Dr. Bousset made it clear that she would never set her painted toes inside a plane. And I would have to return alone. The cost was likely the deal breaker. In the end it was decided—I suppose by my mother—that despite the honor, she felt it best that I not be forced to leave home to embark on a musical career in Europe at such a tender age. I don't remember arguing with her but what I do recollect is that not long after the invitation Dr. Bousset gave me a book of scores of Mozart’s Piano Variations and told me I was ready. She returned to Lausanne a week or so later and I lost a brilliant piano teacher. Perhaps, as well, a brilliant opportunity.
Chapter 18: I become a Son Shadow
Not long after Dr. Bousset failed to convince my family to send me off to boarding school in Switzerland, my mother quit her job and disappeared again to Mexico. This didn’t bother me a whole lot as I still had my uncle and grandparents to dote on me. I actually recall it being fairly tranquil, and as my uncle decided I needed to learn Italian in order to appreciate better Puccini and Verdi and Donizetti, I welcomed this new development. After I practiced, he would give me Italian lessons for a half hour using the same textbook he had used when he was learning. Since it wasn’t all that different from Spanish, I learned quickly. All the aria scores were bilingual and I’d read them over while Merrill or Callas or whoever sang them. Sometimes my uncle would sing, which was a special delight. He had a true Verdi baritone: warm, wide-ranging from bass to tenor, with a tone that seemed to roll at first gently, and then in a tumult through a room and even through the walls.
My mother did miss out on a few minor milestones, probably the most important being that I had to get glasses. It was Mrs. Kurtz who first discovered that I was having difficulty seeing. She was introducing me to a new piece of music. Normally, I could immediately play without much difficulty just about anything she put before me. But on this day I stumbled over several fairly easy bars, hitting a perfect succession of wrong notes. I stopped, pulled myself closer to the piano and started again, but before I could get very far, she pulled me back by the shoulders and asked me, if now, I could still see the score. I couldn't. Not without squinting.
When my uncle arrived to pick me up she remonstrated him for not noticing “I was practically blind.” “Get that young man into an eye doctor, and without further ado,” she commanded my uncle in her most imperious tone. “I will expect him to be wearing spectacles next time he comes for a lesson.”
I was far from pleased at the prospect of having to wear glasses, and after we were out of earshot of Mrs. Kurtz, I pleaded with my uncle not to heed her advice. But my uncle had received his orders, and nothing I could say would persuade him otherwise. And so, within a few days I found myself at the eye doctor, attempting to fake my ability to see. This was, naturally, to no avail for I could not overcome by astute guessing and surreptitious squinting what amounted to a fairly severe case of myopia. Indeed, I could barely read anything out of my right eye. Later that day at the optician’s office I selected some rather hideous black horn-rimmed glasses, the first ones I tried on. It wasn't that I wasn’t vain or disinterested in what glasses I chose to put on my face; on the contrary, I was so repulsed by the idea, let alone the reality of disfiguring my features with any glasses, I had decided in advance that I simply would wear them only to play piano, and therefore chose the ugliest ones I could find as a way of smiting Mrs. Kurtz.
My uncle, I think, was a bit surprised at both my easy acquiescence and choice of eyewear, but since I insisted that these really were the pair I most wanted, he didn't trouble himself with trying to suggest alternatives. A week later when I returned to the optometrist for a fitting, I was even shocked at how truly horrible my choice had been. But I was even more taken aback by how well I could actually see. I knew, as I sat there on the stool staring into the mirror that I would probably end up wearing the monstrosities more often and not just to my piano lesson.
The thought of wearing spectacles in public, however, made me shudder. Maybe I could just get a seeing-eye dog. At least blind people were pitied, not taunted, not jeered at by their peers who immediately, from across the playground would send up shouts of “four eyes” whenever one of their mates showed up with glasses dangling from the bridge of his or her nose.
When my mother emerged from a yellow cab on her return from Mexico after being gone for a month or so, I rushed out of the house to greet her. But before I could even throw my arms around her, she pointed at me, with her face seemingly tied into some sort of special sailor’s knot, and exclaimed: “What happened to you? Those are the most hideous things I’ve ever seen! Take them off your face before you give me a kiss.”
The evening continued as a series of disturbances. My grandparents were obviously not too pleased with her disappearing act; my uncle tried to make peace but with little success. I just sat at the dinner table, squinting until finally I could ask the question that had been plaguing me since my mother departed.
“Is papa coming here? Are we going there?” Through my clouded vision I saw her jerk her head and look directly at me. “No, Christopher. He’s not coming here. And we are not going there. Your papa is no longer in Mexico. He’s gone to France.”
“Why,” I asked. “Because he wanted to,” she said. “When will I see him again?” I asked. “You won’t,” she said and turned her head away.
I may have cried then but probably I waited until I went to bed. I was already nine-years-old after all, and boys didn’t cry anyway.
Chapter 19 I Become a Masturbator
At about the same time I learned that my father would no longer be in my life, I found a diversion. My grandmother, who was having neck pain, bought a vibrator. It was a rather large instrument, shaped something like a revolver. It had several plastic attachments that fitted on the barrel, among them a small, red plastic cone-shaped cup. I don't recall why or how I discovered that this device fit perfectly over the head of my penis, and that when activated, produced an extremely pleasing sensation: a mix of tingling tickles and soothing, reverberating stimulation. I soon became a devotee. Though I don't remember ejaculating--I doubt I was yet producing semen—I must have experienced some sort of ecstatic release for how could I have ever terminated my sessions satisfactorily? I do recollect now that at some point the physical sensation changed from one of euphoria to that of relative disinterest, and that once I had crossed that threshold I found the stimulation annoying.
These explorations of my physicality usually took place in the basement. I definitely had a sense that genital experimentation was, if not exactly forbidden, at least not a matter for openness. Getting the vibrator to the basement and back was not always easy. The stairs were off the kitchen; the vibrator was kept in my grandparents’ bedroom. This meant I had to get down the hall, through the living room and then the kitchen to enter the lower depths. My grandparents were almost always in one of these two rooms, so the task was rarely uncomplicated. At times I'd secrete the pleasure machine in a bag or box filled with toys. In cool or cold weather I'd often conceal it under a jacket. This required first exiting the house to the back door, then reentering and proceeding to the basement. Getting the instrument back to the bedroom was even more fraught with difficulty, since when I emerged from the cellar I could never quite be certain where my grandparents might be. I usually, therefore, would deposit the vibrator in a brown paper bag at the top of the stairs, enter the kitchen, make a quick reconnaissance, and then, depending on what my reconnoitering had discovered, proceed either to retrieve the magical device or else mill about in the kitchen until I could safely replace it.
Surprisingly, I was never once caught. I suppose, given my expertise at surreptitious transport, I could have become a decent shoplifter, but perhaps because these trips to the basement and back were so replete with anxiety, I was never much inclined to practice my skills elsewhere. Besides it was not the acquisition of things that drove me to sneakiness: It was desire. I was willing to put myself at risk to satisfy my physical longings, but purloining mere objects did not seem to warrant the dangers involved in acquiring them. I was not saved from a life of crime because of a moral stance; rather it was fear of being apprehended in the act that deterred me.
This battle intensified as their pride in my pianistic prowess swelled, and it became clear that not only was playing piano my greatest amusement, it was also my passion.
I was not a prodigy but I obviously did have some natural ability. My first teacher, a congenial and able woman named Mrs. Kurtz, was a church organist. She taught me every Saturday for an hour in her home. During the week I’d practice, usually for an hour day, often with my mother or uncle sitting next to me on the piano bench, correcting my fingering and pointing out wrong notes. I liked practicing with my uncle the best, for at the end of every practice session he would bring out scores from the great arias and help me decipher the notes. This was always far more interesting than playing “Indian Snake Dance” or “Go Tell Aunt Rhoda.” I practiced the scores even more diligently than my assigned lesson.
My reward was that after I had struggled through an aria for some time, I would get to go into the living room where my uncle would carefully place a record on the stereo and out would come Callas, Tebaldi or Peters, Peerce, Tucker or Björling singing in their celestial voices the same piece that I, at my old beat-up Chickering had just run through. Never ever did they falter; never ever did the pianist hit a wrong note. I would listen intently, with my eyes open, as the sprightly orchestra struck up the first strains of say “Nessun Dorma,” and Björling enunciated in his flawless tenor “Nessun dorma, Tu pure, o, Principessa” or when Callas and Tucker sucked all the air out of the living room in order for “O terra, addio, addio, valle di pianti. Sogno di gaudio che in dolor svanì” to slice open the atmosphere, maybe even the universe. At that moment, I would close my eyes tightly so as to block out the ugly floral couch or gaudy curtains and succumb to being utterly transported to a realm of rapture and vibrancy and the supreme perfection of the human voice rising above the exact accompaniment, the piano tenderly cajoling the strings and horns and woodwinds at once to follow and lead the vocal ascendance to someplace beyond the sun and the moon and even the far-flung stars.
I was apparently progressing fairly well on the piano, for within a year of beginning lessons with Mrs. Kurtz, I suddenly acquired an additional teacher, which is to say, she acquired me.
I came to study piano with Dr. Bousset because my uncle decided I needed more of a challenge. How he found her for me is a mystery but I imagine she was somehow connected to the Denver Symphony or perhaps the Opera. I can’t imagine why else she would have left her native Switzerland to come to Denver. But Switzerland’s loss was my gain.
I believe I was just eight when I began to take half-hour lessons with her two mornings a week before school. I still studied with Mrs. Kurtz on Saturday, but found Dr. Bousset's tutelage far more demanding and intimidating. Consequently, I spent far more time preparing my pieces for her. She decided during my first week of lessons that I would only play Bach. She did promise that I would eventually get to play Mozart but not until I had developed some mastery over fugues and toccatas.
Dr. Bousset was probably in her late 50s but she may well have been older. She had a mane of long flaming red hair, probably dyed, was always heavily made up, reeked of perfume, and in the winter wore a full length raccoon coat she would carefully hang up on a hanger rather than drape over the hook on the door. Her speech was strongly accented, and her voice, probably due to her chain smoking, was quite deep and raspy.
When I saw Marlene Dietrich in Blue Angel a few years later, I recognized Dr. Bousset’s voice and I remember my fingers moving involuntarily. That my fingers would begin moving wasn’t a mystery as that voice was used mainly to instruct or correct me in my playing. Indeed, I don't remember even once having a casual conversation with her. Unlike Mrs. Kurtz who doted on me, and continually proffered encouragement, Dr. Bousset seemed rather not to like me. When I arrived for my lessons she would barely speak; when I played for her, her only words were usually critical; her highest compliment seemed to be a slightly, but only slight “hrumph.”
It was therefore quite a surprise when one spring day she rang my mother up to tell her that she thought I was talented enough, even sufficiently dedicated, to audition for a boarding school in Switzerland which had a serious focus on music. If successful, she would ensure that I would receive full scholarship.
The matter was discussed in the house for several days. When asked if I wanted to go, I said I wasn’t sure. It was hard at nine to know anything I wanted except for my mother and father to reunite. I do remember saying I did love the piano but wasn’t sure I loved it that much. What did appeal to me was that the name of the city in Switzerland was like my own: Lausanne. Lauçanno. But even then I didn’t think that was probably a good enough reason to get hauled off across the ocean.
And then on a Sunday afternoon, probably a week after the august Dr. Bousset had made the offer, she appeared at our little suburban home on Quitman Street. Her entrance was dramatic. She was wearing a flowing floral blouse and black trousers and her hair was flying from under a wide-brimmed hat. My grandfather greeted her in German and they immediately began conversing. My mother attempted to bring the conversation back into English but failed for a good while. We all sat there watching her gesticulate, my grandfather nod and exclaim from time to time “Ja ich verstehe. Na sicher. Mein Gott.” Eventually English returned but I have absolutely no recollection of anything further that was said. I do know that no one asked me whether I wanted to go to Lausanne.
As it turned out, Dr. Bousset was one of the piano instructors at the institute. She was returning to Lausanne later in the spring and offered to take me with her, although my family would have to spring for the train fare to New York, then the ship passage, and then for the train to Lausanne and the hotels. Dr. Bousset made it clear that she would never set her painted toes inside a plane. And I would have to return alone. The cost was likely the deal breaker. In the end it was decided—I suppose by my mother—that despite the honor, she felt it best that I not be forced to leave home to embark on a musical career in Europe at such a tender age. I don't remember arguing with her but what I do recollect is that not long after the invitation Dr. Bousset gave me a book of scores of Mozart’s Piano Variations and told me I was ready. She returned to Lausanne a week or so later and I lost a brilliant piano teacher. Perhaps, as well, a brilliant opportunity.
Chapter 18: I become a Son Shadow
Not long after Dr. Bousset failed to convince my family to send me off to boarding school in Switzerland, my mother quit her job and disappeared again to Mexico. This didn’t bother me a whole lot as I still had my uncle and grandparents to dote on me. I actually recall it being fairly tranquil, and as my uncle decided I needed to learn Italian in order to appreciate better Puccini and Verdi and Donizetti, I welcomed this new development. After I practiced, he would give me Italian lessons for a half hour using the same textbook he had used when he was learning. Since it wasn’t all that different from Spanish, I learned quickly. All the aria scores were bilingual and I’d read them over while Merrill or Callas or whoever sang them. Sometimes my uncle would sing, which was a special delight. He had a true Verdi baritone: warm, wide-ranging from bass to tenor, with a tone that seemed to roll at first gently, and then in a tumult through a room and even through the walls.
My mother did miss out on a few minor milestones, probably the most important being that I had to get glasses. It was Mrs. Kurtz who first discovered that I was having difficulty seeing. She was introducing me to a new piece of music. Normally, I could immediately play without much difficulty just about anything she put before me. But on this day I stumbled over several fairly easy bars, hitting a perfect succession of wrong notes. I stopped, pulled myself closer to the piano and started again, but before I could get very far, she pulled me back by the shoulders and asked me, if now, I could still see the score. I couldn't. Not without squinting.
When my uncle arrived to pick me up she remonstrated him for not noticing “I was practically blind.” “Get that young man into an eye doctor, and without further ado,” she commanded my uncle in her most imperious tone. “I will expect him to be wearing spectacles next time he comes for a lesson.”
I was far from pleased at the prospect of having to wear glasses, and after we were out of earshot of Mrs. Kurtz, I pleaded with my uncle not to heed her advice. But my uncle had received his orders, and nothing I could say would persuade him otherwise. And so, within a few days I found myself at the eye doctor, attempting to fake my ability to see. This was, naturally, to no avail for I could not overcome by astute guessing and surreptitious squinting what amounted to a fairly severe case of myopia. Indeed, I could barely read anything out of my right eye. Later that day at the optician’s office I selected some rather hideous black horn-rimmed glasses, the first ones I tried on. It wasn't that I wasn’t vain or disinterested in what glasses I chose to put on my face; on the contrary, I was so repulsed by the idea, let alone the reality of disfiguring my features with any glasses, I had decided in advance that I simply would wear them only to play piano, and therefore chose the ugliest ones I could find as a way of smiting Mrs. Kurtz.
My uncle, I think, was a bit surprised at both my easy acquiescence and choice of eyewear, but since I insisted that these really were the pair I most wanted, he didn't trouble himself with trying to suggest alternatives. A week later when I returned to the optometrist for a fitting, I was even shocked at how truly horrible my choice had been. But I was even more taken aback by how well I could actually see. I knew, as I sat there on the stool staring into the mirror that I would probably end up wearing the monstrosities more often and not just to my piano lesson.
The thought of wearing spectacles in public, however, made me shudder. Maybe I could just get a seeing-eye dog. At least blind people were pitied, not taunted, not jeered at by their peers who immediately, from across the playground would send up shouts of “four eyes” whenever one of their mates showed up with glasses dangling from the bridge of his or her nose.
When my mother emerged from a yellow cab on her return from Mexico after being gone for a month or so, I rushed out of the house to greet her. But before I could even throw my arms around her, she pointed at me, with her face seemingly tied into some sort of special sailor’s knot, and exclaimed: “What happened to you? Those are the most hideous things I’ve ever seen! Take them off your face before you give me a kiss.”
The evening continued as a series of disturbances. My grandparents were obviously not too pleased with her disappearing act; my uncle tried to make peace but with little success. I just sat at the dinner table, squinting until finally I could ask the question that had been plaguing me since my mother departed.
“Is papa coming here? Are we going there?” Through my clouded vision I saw her jerk her head and look directly at me. “No, Christopher. He’s not coming here. And we are not going there. Your papa is no longer in Mexico. He’s gone to France.”
“Why,” I asked. “Because he wanted to,” she said. “When will I see him again?” I asked. “You won’t,” she said and turned her head away.
I may have cried then but probably I waited until I went to bed. I was already nine-years-old after all, and boys didn’t cry anyway.
Chapter 19 I Become a Masturbator
At about the same time I learned that my father would no longer be in my life, I found a diversion. My grandmother, who was having neck pain, bought a vibrator. It was a rather large instrument, shaped something like a revolver. It had several plastic attachments that fitted on the barrel, among them a small, red plastic cone-shaped cup. I don't recall why or how I discovered that this device fit perfectly over the head of my penis, and that when activated, produced an extremely pleasing sensation: a mix of tingling tickles and soothing, reverberating stimulation. I soon became a devotee. Though I don't remember ejaculating--I doubt I was yet producing semen—I must have experienced some sort of ecstatic release for how could I have ever terminated my sessions satisfactorily? I do recollect now that at some point the physical sensation changed from one of euphoria to that of relative disinterest, and that once I had crossed that threshold I found the stimulation annoying.
These explorations of my physicality usually took place in the basement. I definitely had a sense that genital experimentation was, if not exactly forbidden, at least not a matter for openness. Getting the vibrator to the basement and back was not always easy. The stairs were off the kitchen; the vibrator was kept in my grandparents’ bedroom. This meant I had to get down the hall, through the living room and then the kitchen to enter the lower depths. My grandparents were almost always in one of these two rooms, so the task was rarely uncomplicated. At times I'd secrete the pleasure machine in a bag or box filled with toys. In cool or cold weather I'd often conceal it under a jacket. This required first exiting the house to the back door, then reentering and proceeding to the basement. Getting the instrument back to the bedroom was even more fraught with difficulty, since when I emerged from the cellar I could never quite be certain where my grandparents might be. I usually, therefore, would deposit the vibrator in a brown paper bag at the top of the stairs, enter the kitchen, make a quick reconnaissance, and then, depending on what my reconnoitering had discovered, proceed either to retrieve the magical device or else mill about in the kitchen until I could safely replace it.
Surprisingly, I was never once caught. I suppose, given my expertise at surreptitious transport, I could have become a decent shoplifter, but perhaps because these trips to the basement and back were so replete with anxiety, I was never much inclined to practice my skills elsewhere. Besides it was not the acquisition of things that drove me to sneakiness: It was desire. I was willing to put myself at risk to satisfy my physical longings, but purloining mere objects did not seem to warrant the dangers involved in acquiring them. I was not saved from a life of crime because of a moral stance; rather it was fear of being apprehended in the act that deterred me.
NOTE BENE: Alyscamps Press in Paris, published the most recent chapbook by Chris Sawyer-Lauçanno, Just Words: Homage to Roman Jakobson, based on notes he kept when he was under Jakobson's tutelage as a graduate student. These were later discovered by the author's granddaughter when sorting through items to go to UC Santa Barbara as part of Sawyer-Lauçanno's archives there.
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