Endless conversations. They’d be up all hours chewing over Breughel’s eccentric realism, or the way Dvorak’s harmonies (whether Bohemian or Iowan) lit a path for Stravinsky or or Berg or his Scott Joplin. Periodically, Gavin would suggest that Gnostic mystics understood Christ better than he understood himself, or anyway that self as reported in the gospels. Gavin even quoted recently-found texts to prove it. Or they’d jointly admire the purity of shape and engineering acumen of a Brunelleschi dome. Gavin often demonstrated Dante’s command of a host of Italian vernaculars—more of the man’s catholic command of dialects.
Even movies. Scott admired the way certain directors would throw some “mythical s**t” into popular fare and got Gavin to see it. “Like in ‘Field of Dreams,’ the obsession w
