tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-88967377672757685612024-02-19T06:43:15.049-08:00AWD Lifed scribehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08242682202760522439noreply@blogger.comBlogger143125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8896737767275768561.post-6851821453506492302023-11-18T06:59:00.000-08:002023-11-18T06:59:04.426-08:00memoir note. "I never met a man I didn't like."<p> When I was a boy we used to travel down the Will Rogers Turnpike from Joplin MO to Tulsa OK, where friends of my parents lived. About half way there was the Will Rogers Rest-stop. At the Rest-stop there was a statue of Will Rogers. At the foot of the statue there was an inscription. "I never met a man I didn't like." </p><p>This inscription entered my mind as a a melody.</p><p><br /></p><p>Ba bum Ba bum</p><p> Ba bum Ba bum Ba</p><p> bum. </p><p><br /></p><p>At the end of the melody, for the period there was a Boop!</p><p><br /></p><p>I nev a man</p><p> er met I did'nt</p><p> like Boop!</p><p><br /></p><p>I believe the reason this entered my brain as a melody was because my deeper mind instantly knew that these words were important and should be remembered. </p><p>So... it stuck with me! And it has been a lifetime to goal to try to live up to Will's words. I have been severely challenged at times to like certain people. But it's a worthwhile goal, and these challenges are worthy. </p><p> </p><p> </p><p><br /></p>d scribehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08242682202760522439noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8896737767275768561.post-76300046720146579372023-11-17T05:31:00.000-08:002023-11-17T05:37:55.173-08:00memoir note<p> I had a vision when I was a kid that I saw a statue deep in the recesses of my own mind. There was no head on the statue. At the foot of the statue it said, "Thou wilt be what thou wilt be." </p><p>I realized even then the incredible double nature of this inscription. On one hand it could mean "thou will it (Wil't) to be what thou will it (Wil't) to be", you will be what you will yourself to be, and that is about self determination. On the other hand it means "thou will be what thou will be", which is closer to something like fate. (<span style="background-color: white; color: #4d5156; font-family: Roboto, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">"wilt" is </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #5f6368; font-family: Roboto, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-weight: bold;">an archaic word</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #4d5156; font-family: Roboto, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">, used in second person singular. E.g. "I will", "Thou wilt") </span>How can both things be true at once? But I knew that the balance was somewhere between the two, that I didn't have to strive, and neither did I NOT have to strive, that I could strive... striveless. </p><p>This doubleness comes back to me with the Rilke poem that ends, "You must change your life." Does this mean you need to change your life, willfully? Or does it mean you must, as in, you don't have a choice?</p><p>I should mention, for fun, that this vision came to me in a meditation lead by the actor that played Starbuck in the hit TV show "Battlestar Galactica". My dad was at a conference selling his Moldevite, and there were workshops. This guy, Dirk Benedict. </p><p>Starbuck lead me to my own future. </p><p>Can't make this stuff up. </p><p>Thou wilt be what thou wilt be.</p>d scribehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08242682202760522439noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8896737767275768561.post-2048748591762831442023-11-17T05:22:00.000-08:002023-11-17T05:22:33.718-08:00Grace (sing along)<p> I had the idea for the whole world to sing along for peace, hoping my invite would go viral. Instead NO ONE CAME. Not one person, not my friends, not my family. I wonder why?</p><p>But though it made me feel ineffectual, it didn't sting. And I can't help but wonder if it was because I let go of it that I was given a kind of grace that far exceeded my plans. When I got to Strawberry Fields there was already a performer there and he was singing "Imagine", the very song I was going to start my sing-along with. This amazed me. I had slipped into grace, which was SOOO much bigger than me, yet included me. </p><p>Kachuk, from Argentina, was the name of the performer. He was very good, and had the crowd singing along. It was almost as if the whole world was ALREADY singing along. I didn't have to help it happen. It was already happening. Or maybe I did have to wish for it, or put myself out there, or something.</p><p>I sang along with Kachuk for a half hour as he went through the Beatles' catalog, watching the people, transported. Then I put the playlist on my headphones, got on my bike and sang along as I rode through the park. It was glorious.</p><p>At one point in the playlist I included John Cage's 4'33'', which, if you don't know, is just 4'33'' of silence. At first it was hard to stop listening to music and listen to the park. I felt a little bored, like I was in absentia or something. But I kept listening, and I heard the sounds of voices. I followed them until I got to a protest, an Israeli protest, hundreds of blue flags. It was the Palestinians that I had been grieving for, but here was the pain of the other side made manifest. And I felt tears welling up. These felt like holy tears, like I had been searching for them. That's what I heard in Cage's silence.</p><p>The thing that I needed was to sing with other people, and to cry, and the way it came to me felt like grace. </p><p>Why can't this same kind of grace be given to those suffering in the Middle East? </p><p>The rest of the bicycle sing-along I was in a rare state of spiritual euphoria, a heightened gem-like flame of being. </p><p>Who does this help, but me? </p><p><br /></p>d scribehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08242682202760522439noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8896737767275768561.post-38819977542723238802023-11-01T04:41:00.001-07:002023-11-01T04:41:03.513-07:00sing along for peace<p> All Saints Day Sing-along for Peace</p><p>So old school hippy I am. And proud of it. I was surprised I got only a few likes and zero RSVPs responses for my invitation to come sing along to all time great peace songs from Beatles to Pink Floyd to Bob Marley to John Cage to Bob Dylan to New Order for Gaza and Israel. Is everyone too busy? Or does it just seem dumb? It's not dumb. It's fun. And it's healing. </p><p>I know that to some people this may seem like an embarrassing old hippy notion. And I guess, sure. But it's fun and healing. I know of which I speak. </p><p>Here's a poem made up of lines from the line-up. Sing along as your read along. </p><p><br /></p><p>Let me take you down</p><p>Cause I'm going to Strawberry Fields.</p><p>I hope someday you'll join us</p><p>And the world will be as one-</p><p>Imagine all the people-</p><p><span face="Roboto, arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-size: 14px;">How I wish, how I wish you were here-</span></p><p><span face="Roboto, arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-size: 14px;">Let them pass all their dirty remarks (One love!)</span></p><p><span face="Roboto, arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-size: 14px;">There is one question I'd really love to ask (One heart!)</span></p><p><span face="Roboto, arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-size: 14px;">Is there a place for the hopeless sinner</span></p><p><span face="Roboto, arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-size: 14px;">Who has hurt all mankind just to save his own beliefs?</span></p><p><span face="Roboto, arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-size: 14px;">Have pity on those whose chances grow thinner-</span></p><p><span face="Roboto, arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-size: 14px;">One more thing!</span></p><p><span face="Roboto, arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-size: 14px;">Let's get together to fight this holy Armageddon (One love!)</span></p><p><span face="Roboto, arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-size: 14px;">So when the man comes there will be no, no doom (One song!)</span></p><p><span face="Roboto, arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-size: 14px;">Saying, "Let's get together and feel alright." Wo wo-wo wo-wo!</span></p><p><span face="Roboto, arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-size: 14px;">Have pity on those whose chances grow thinner-</span></p><p><span face="Roboto, arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-size: 14px;">People have the power-</span></p><p><span face="Roboto, arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-size: 14px;">I was dreaming in my dreaming-</span></p><p><span face="Roboto, arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-size: 14px;">Vengeful aspects became suspect</span></p><p><span face="Roboto, arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-size: 14px;">and bending low as if to hear</span></p><p><span face="Roboto, arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-size: 14px;">the armies ceased advancing</span></p><p><span face="Roboto, arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-size: 14px;">because the people had their ear</span></p><p><span face="Roboto, arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-size: 14px;">and the shepherds and the soldiers</span></p><p><span face="Roboto, arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-size: 14px;">lay beneath the stars</span></p><p><span face="Roboto, arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-size: 14px;">exchanging visions</span></p><p><span face="Roboto, arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-size: 14px;">and laying arms</span></p><p><span face="Roboto, arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-size: 14px;">to waste in the dust</span></p><p><span face="Roboto, arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-size: 14px;">in the form of shining valleys</span></p><p><span face="Roboto, arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-size: 14px;">where the pure air recognized</span></p><p><span face="Roboto, arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-size: 14px;">and my senses newly opened</span></p><p><span face="Roboto, arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-size: 14px;">I awakened to the cry-</span></p><p><span face="Roboto, arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-size: 14px;">People have the power-</span></p><p><span face="Roboto, arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-size: 14px;"><br /></span></p><p><span face="Roboto, arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-size: 14px;">They say every man needs protection</span></p><p><span face="Roboto, arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-size: 14px;">they say that every man must fall</span></p><p><span face="Roboto, arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-size: 14px;">Yet I swear I see my reflection</span></p><p><span face="Roboto, arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-size: 14px;">Somewhere so high above this wall</span></p><p><span face="Roboto, arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-size: 14px;">I see my light come shining</span></p><p><span face="Roboto, arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-size: 14px;">From the West down to the East</span></p><p><span face="Roboto, arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-size: 14px;"><br /></span></p><p><span face="Roboto, arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-size: 14px;">All you need is love (all together now)</span></p><p><span face="Roboto, arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-size: 14px;">All you need is love (everybody)</span></p><p><span face="Roboto, arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-size: 14px;">All you need is love, love</span></p><p><span face="Roboto, arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #202124; font-size: 14px;">Love is all you need.</span></p><p><br /></p><p><span face="Roboto, arial, sans-serif" style="color: #202124;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 14px;">Everybody's talking 'bout</span></span></p><p><span face="Roboto, arial, sans-serif" style="color: #202124;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 14px;">this-ism, that-ism, is-m, is-m, is-m</span></span></p><p><span face="Roboto, arial, sans-serif" style="color: #202124;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 14px;">All we are saying is give peace a chance.</span></span></p><p><span face="Roboto, arial, sans-serif" style="color: #202124;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 14px;"><br /></span></span></p><p><span face="Roboto, arial, sans-serif" style="color: #202124;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 14px;"><br /></span></span></p><p><br /></p>d scribehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08242682202760522439noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8896737767275768561.post-44665130493781006332023-10-28T20:45:00.000-07:002023-10-28T20:45:08.540-07:00Bach's Chaconne into Faure's Requiem <p> A day worth remembering. Wake up a little hungover from playing a killer practice set for the Next Waltz with the Flynndiggers in Schupback gardens. Playing with those guys under a full moon is campfire song bliss. They are so good. Witchita Lineman into Neil Young was transcendent. </p><p>After some coffee I graded "new" Canterbury Tales from the sophomores, got through a half a dozen. Then cleaned and went to buy candy for the Halloween party at the park. (The kids have to bring a bag of candy to be admitted to the party.) Then I played a couple hours of tennis with Gabriel. Super fun. </p><p>After tennis went to the park's halloween party. The Ferriers won group costume. They went the extra mile and actually built a security fence like they have in the movie. Nice.</p><p>Afterwards I went home and did some more grading, and read a few Emily Dickinson poems. I'm up to 590 something. Just one banger after another. I spend some time on Prowlingbee's blog commenting on the poems I've just read. I also start Middlemarch, because it is Emily's favorite novel, as well as my favorite novelist's favorite novel (Proust, don't you know.) So how could I not. The first paragraph features these great lines,</p><p><span style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 16px;">"Her passionate, ideal nature demanded an epic life: what were many-volumed romances of chivalry and the social conquests of a brilliant girl to her? Her flame quickly burned up that light fuel; and, fed from within, soared after some illimitable satisfaction, some object which would never justify weariness, which would reconcile self-despair with the rapturous consciousness of life beyond self."</span></p><p>Finally the family went to eat at a Dominican restaurant in Brooklyn, Puerto Viejo. Good. Fun to see all the costumed Brooklynites out and about too </p><p><br /></p><p>From there we went to see a performance of Bach's Chaconne by Doori Na and Faure's Requiem at Co-cathedral of St. Joseph. Two of my favorite pieces of music. They did this incredible thing where the last note of the mind-blowing Chaconne was synced up with the first note of The Requiem, followed by singers walking down the aisles beside us toward the altar. I teared up from the pure beauty of it. </p><p>Then home to watch an episode of "Only Murders In the Building", a show we are loving.</p><p>Full day of a full life. </p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>d scribehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08242682202760522439noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8896737767275768561.post-40538050006505605482023-09-19T17:51:00.004-07:002023-09-19T17:51:32.629-07:009/18/23<p> Still alive...55! (to the tune of Van Hagar's "I can't drive 55!")</p><p><br /></p><p>If I were to write this on FB it would be too public, but if I write it here, it's too invisible. What's the compromise? Write it here, edit it, and then put it up there? </p><p>The students keep asking for a memoir. Really? But then I think why not. My life has been so full of stories, weird and wonderful stories. Why not write them down? Make a book?</p><p>But there is so little conflict in my life. Don't you need conflict for a good memoir? Can you have an interesting memoir if you just keep saying how great things are? Maybe the trick is to dive into the details and just never mention superlatives. Just describe them being great and let haters hate. (See, that's great, the way I just subconsciously rhymed hate with great, but if I SAY it's great, then I'm inviting hate, so therefore I'm doing it parenthetically in order to qualify it.)</p><p>Oh my Gertrude.</p><p>Okay, so let's start now. I'm 55. </p><p>I feel like I'm living in the Matrix. I suppose I should take the red pill and see what's behind the curtain. But at heart I don't believe in that whole red pill / blue pill thing. At least not in the paranoid way the Wachowski sisters do. </p><p>What's behind the matrix is not AI, as the movie suggests. I believe it's something else, something that can be found in the word itself. You take MA and then you combine that with the feminine ending TRIX to give it even more motherness. It's not just a MA, it's a MA TRIX. </p><p>That woman who is the fortune teller in the movie "The Matrix"? the one who gave Neo the cookie? That's closer to the real Matrix than any AI is. </p><p>But here's why I think I'm living in it. Get this: last week my (impossibly?) beautiful wife was leaving a work party and had to go back in to get something she'd left behind. She gets into a conversation with a work friend, Angela, who then asks her if she wants 2 FREE tickets to see Willy Nelson and Bob Weir on Sunday IN QUEENS, at Forest Hills Stadium, a short train ride from my home. Sunday just so happened to be my birthday. Now, if you asked me who the one living person I would most like to see in concert would be, I would say Willy Nelson. So, though I know it's a stretch, it feels as if the universe, the Matrix, God, Goddess, what have you, just handed Genevieve a pair of tickets for us to go see the show I would most like to see in a venue near our home. And to add a cherry on top of the cherry, who will be opening up for Willy and joining him on stage? Bob Weir. A note on Bob Weir. He was always my least favorite member of the Grateful Dead. But I've been coming around, largely due to his last solo album, The River. He's aging beautifully. My buddy Quinn says he'll take him over Jerry Garcia, just for his staying power. Anyway, he was the perfect opener.</p><p>It seems too good to be true right? It's a very specific kind of abundance. Unasked for. You may shrug it off. It seems almost everybody shrugs these kinds of things off. Am I over-excited by all this do you think? Or is everybody else under-excited? Sometimes I think we have an epidemic of apathy on our modern hands. As Louis CK says, everything is amazing and no one is happy. It's puzzling.</p><p>There is a lot I could say about the show itself. Willy Nelson is one of the greatest song writers alive, one of the greatest that's ever lived. He wrote "Crazy"! He wrote "Good Hearted Woman"! He wrote "I am the Forest"! But he's also got a voice that is in indelible, old as the hills, softly feminine, roughly masculine, unmistakable. And his guitar playing too is something else. There is no guitar sound like that, no picker quite so surprising and on point. </p><p>One thing that helped make this show special was that Willy did a couple Hank Williams songs. When he started into Williams' "Move it on over" I about fell on over. Earlier that day Quinn and I were cleaning up QUIP, carting stuff from Sunnyside Gardens Park to Spaeth. Quinn turned on the radio to WKRC and "Move it on over" was playing. We both sang happily along. So when Willy layed into it later that night it was a head shaker. I often have uncanny coincidences involving my friend Quinn. Sofia has coined the word "Quinncidence" to mark those occasions. She Quinned it you could say. This was my second crazy Quincidence in the last week. </p><p>Let me add a quick digression here, because the last coincidence is worth quickly writing about too. It happened last Sunday, a week prior, at a gallery in the Lower East Side. My friend, the poet Greg Fuchs, was having a 20th wedding anniversary party. I met Greg in San Francisco. He also lived in New Orleans. As I was leaving the party Greg's wife Alison introduced me to a guy named Philip. I said, how d'ya do? We talked and somehow the conversation came around to the appropriate age to send kids on the subway. Philip said he had a friend that lived in Sunnyside Queens and she was 15 and now taking the subway to school. He said, she's kind of tall though, so she seems older. I looked at him funny. What's her name? I asked. Helen, he said. Helen...O'sullivan? Yes, he said. Helen is Quinn's daughter. So you know Quinn? I asked. Yep, he said, I work with him at Spaeth. But I thought you said you lived in New Orleans? I'm here on a short term job. So then, how do you know Greg? From New Orleans. </p><p>So...I met a guy from New Orleans at a party in Manhattan that knows both the friend I met in San Francisco and my friend from Sunnyside? Quite a quinncidence. Matrix?</p><p>Anyway to get back to the Hank Williams songs. I was wondering why Willy was doing them. I had forgotten, until I saw it posted today, that yesterday was Hank Williams birthday. He would have been 100! That must be why they were playing it on the radio too.</p><p>Another digression. September 17 is also William Carlos Williams' birthday. The poet Elinor Nauen once told me that because my birthday was September 17th too, I was a Williams brother, somewhere between Hank Williams and William Carlos Williams. I'll take that. My aesthetic is in the middle space of that Venn Diagram. </p><p>Imagine if Hank was still alive. 100 and playing Forest Hills</p><p>I think I might take Willy over Hank though. Equally great songwriters, but Willy is a Buddha. </p><p>Okay, so that's Saturday. </p><p>That doesn't even get into QUIP, which happened the day before, on Saturday. I guess I have to go into that now. But I'm so tired. Maybe tomorrow. </p><p>Okay, so yeah. Matrix pulled out the stops for the birthday boy. Thanks Ma. </p>d scribehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08242682202760522439noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8896737767275768561.post-32854717055872044652018-05-17T06:33:00.002-07:002018-05-17T06:33:40.803-07:00Queen OprahI can barely write poetry anymore.<br />
<br />
I just want to write to remember.<br />
<br />
I'm happy to be on the side of women overcoming their limitations<br />
and I'm happy to be on the side of African Americans overcoming their limitations.<br />
<br />
I'm hoping it's all going toward no limitations based on differences.<br />
Just being. Names and categories be damned.<br />
<br />
But in the meantime, I'm going to vote for the black woman.<br />
<br />
Even if it's Oprah. Maybe especially if it's Oprah.<br />
<br />
Come on Mama, let's dance.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />d scribehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08242682202760522439noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8896737767275768561.post-5820595143687377682018-05-15T18:21:00.002-07:002018-05-15T18:21:17.519-07:00perfect day, here and now1. Took my mom and Bruce on a tour of new school, St. Francis Prep.<br />
<br />
2. Teaching Gwendolyn Brooks We Real Cool at LaGuardia, having a revelation about the poem, a 180 degree turn, after 20 years of thinking I knew it. Then reading the best of the class's Golden Shovel poems. Kids blowing my mind with their poems. Then looking at Keats with them. Lots of one on one conversations in the room about KEATS!!! with kids that don't normally read anything. Looking them in the eye as I talk to them. Learning from them. Thou still unravished bride of quietness. Ideal class.<br />
<br />
3. Watching both my girls, 6 and 8, erupt in peals of laughter over dinner.<br />
<br />
d scribehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08242682202760522439noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8896737767275768561.post-55964226236938222562017-09-17T15:22:00.001-07:002017-09-17T15:22:25.876-07:00nyc date night with mom<div style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">
My mom is in town so I took her to a party at NYU's Skirball called "Aunts Is Dance", a free event, with several dance performances and a Free Boutique. The idea of the Free Boutique is that you bring something to the party to give away, and in return you shop among the other things people have contributed. It's a great idea. I forgot to bring something to add to the boutique, so I ran around SoHo until I came across the Magic shop, went in and bought several 7 sided magic dice and a pack of Magic cards to add to the mix. </div>
<div style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">
On the way back to the theater I stopped to get a coffee. The barista had her back to me as I approached the counter. Then she spun around in a dramatic manner, put her chin on her hand and said, "What can I do for you, fine sir?" I said, "Wow, that's the best greeting by a barista I've ever gotten." She said, "I do what I can. I'm a professional." As a tip I gave her one of the 7-sided dice I bought. She said, "I always wanted one of these! Can I give you a hug?" Sure, so she came around the corner and gave me a big hug. "Sugar for my coffee," I said. Then the other barista, watching the whole thing, came out and gave me a card for a free coffee. Score.</div>
<div style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">
I went back to the Free Boutique and picked out a gift for Gen and the girls, then we went into the space. </div>
<div style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">
The first dance performance we saw was a naked woman in a superman flying position across the bottom rungs of a ladder. It was such an elegantly beautiful arrangement that it took a moment to take in the piece's implications. She continued to work her way around the ladder and strike poses in a sculptural and evocative way.</div>
<div style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">
There were several other performances in this vein around the lobby and basement of the theater, but you couldn't go into the main theater itself. On the walls were monitors showing the performance inside the theater, a lone woman dancing on the stage, to an empty audience. We were all watching her from the lobby. </div>
<div style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">
After the performances DJ br0nz3 g0dd3ss came out and everyone danced, we were inspired. </div>
<div style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">
IFC was around the corner so we went to see a movie, "Columbus," a film about architecture and family relationships, among other things, set in in Columbus, Indiana. It was so good that it made me fall in love with cinema all over again, the way great cinema can make you fall in love with life. There was just one sublime moment after another. Definitely see it on the big screen if you get a chance. </div>
<div style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">
Finally we wrapped the night up by sharing a midnight Ramen and Sapporo at a local joint. My mom had never had Ramen before. She loved it. </div>
<div style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">
A great date night with mom. </div>
d scribehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08242682202760522439noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8896737767275768561.post-78895143855752452652017-09-07T14:30:00.000-07:002017-09-07T18:47:51.679-07:00todayGood first day of teaching at LaGuardia Community College. 30 or more kids waiting behind each elevator when I got there, so I took the stairs. Huge building, halls that seemed to go on forever.<br />
<br />
Good kids. Queenstastic mix of African, Indian, Nepalese, French, Filipino. Attentive, soft spoken. And my hearing's shot too, so I had to ask them to repeat themselves a lot. It was kind of comic, especially when I would misunderstand them. "Did you say you liked Coldplay?" "Noooo. Opia!"<br />
<br />
I asked them their favorite movies, books and music. Half of the movies I knew. Maybe quarter of the music artists. And most of them did not have a single book they liked, or else they spouted something they were made to read in HS. Most of these kids don't read books.<br />
<br />
Lord of the Flies came up as one woman's favorite book and I asked her if she bought the premise. She said, "It could happen." She mentioned the controversy surrounding the new adaptation, explained the book is meant to be a criticism of masculinity, but the boy roles are all played by girls in the adaptation, so it's not true to the book. Then I asked if the gender switch was conceived by a man, and she said yes. "Sounds like maybe the dude's got issues?" Good discussion.<br />
<br />
Another student said he only read articles. Like what? "Like recently an article on DACA." A hot button topic. My guess is a few of these kids are personally affected. "And on Irma too." We talked about the hurricane that was, as we spoke, devastating the Carribbean, how it is the largest Atlantic hurricane ever recorded. One student spoke up and said, "There are two hurricanes behind that one too." Again, I had the sense that more than one student had families that were being affected. There was a moment of tense and solemn silence in the room.<br />
<br />
After introductions I had them write a Golden Shovel poem, Terrance Hayes' invented form named after a Gwendowlyn Brooks line, wherein he takes a short poem and embeds each successive word into the last line of a new poem. I used the Brooks poem the form was named after, "The Pool Players. Seven at the Golden Shovel." I look forward to reading them.<br />
<br />
Then we read and discussed Hayes' own Golden Shovel of the same poem, which lead to, among other things, a discussion of the terms "catharsis" and "synaesthesia," which none of the students had heard of before.<br />
<br />
As I was writing the poem on the board, with my terrible handwriting, I told (myself) them the story of serving Muhammad Ali roomservice and how he showed his greatness by taking a full minute to perfectly sign his check with hands shaking from Parkinson's disease. How I was still learning that lesson. Badly.<br />
<br />
Finally I gave them their assignment, to pick a song they like that seems to say something important and write 5 or 6 sentences about what the song is saying, what it means, trying to locate an argument if they can.<br />
<br />
Not that you asked.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
I had them <br />
<br />
Students super polite and listening. My hearing is worse.d scribehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08242682202760522439noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8896737767275768561.post-77951847096014746602017-07-22T21:59:00.000-07:002017-07-22T21:59:05.015-07:00quip<div style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">
<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px;">
QUIP</div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
(for Man)</div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
So many dirigibles of musical windwaves<br />wallowed in the breeze tonight<br />sunnyside up like poet trees<br />hands of wood<br />wooden wands<br />wandering the ways<br />for centuries in the future<br />of already eternity</div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
(In this space several verses were lost,<br />which ended<br />I believe<br />with<br />I'm moving away from myself)</div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
I'm all the way on the spectrum,<br />or was, or can be, in a dream last night<br />I was clapping along to Zenen Zeferino<br />and Julia Del Palacio, both of whom I am<br />in love with, I mean those names alone<br />make me swoon.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
And Oh My Goddess<br />Paolo Javier was there<br />By far the youngest ever<br />Queens Poet Laureate<br />a wizard with words<br />His second child still on the way</div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
He graced our play<br />with his name</div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
Paolo Javier</div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
Say it all night</div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
Radio Jarocho too, the way Julia<br />said it, rolling the rrrrs, rrrradiohairrrrocho,<br />the blue dress, the voice aloft & loose<br />in the wisps of rain on the last refrain<br />we couldn't believe it was true. Through.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
Richard Joo was there and Quinn O'Sullivan<br />Marco Battisto and Diana Dimutru<br />The representatives were out in force<br />Jaime Sweetman rocking that sweet Liverpudlian brogue,<br />plus Argentinian, Indian, Morrocan tongues too, to name a few.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
So many blessings in diguise, especially that moment<br />when the sound went awry -feedback on the monitors- and Julia<br />decided to take the band off the system,<br />walked off the stage and into the crowd<br />circled everyone around her and played sans sound</div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
the sudden intimacy, everyone clapping,<br />every one completely under the spell of the evening<br />as if the feeback was just for that</div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
And then, there it was, the coup de grace</div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
The rhythms of Julia's feet<br />dancing with Amoa's djimbe</div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
Amoa from Akoko Nante<br />the band that played previously<br />came back up for the encore</div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
the two cultures riffing rhythmically<br />back and forth in perfect synchrony</div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
Amoa from Akoko Nante</div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
Say it with me</div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
Say it outloud</div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
Amoa from Akoko Nante<br />Julia Del Palacio<br />and Zenen Zeferino</div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; display: inline; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-top: 6px;">
More pleasing words you will not find</div>
</div>
<div style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">
<br /></div>
d scribehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08242682202760522439noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8896737767275768561.post-88055373617705628522017-04-24T18:09:00.001-07:002017-04-24T18:09:10.771-07:00<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">April 25</span></div>
<b id="docs-internal-guid-d8b6a8a3-a2a5-824b-e811-ceb214358411" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The days go by, and so much is so banal: getting things done, watching something stupid on TV. But then there are those moments, where your daughters tell you that you are the best dad ever, or you’re holding them, or making them laugh and it is anything but banal. I’m thinking this morning about something Sofia asked, “How did God form?” Something she said she’d been thinking about for a long time and had a feeling she would be thinking about for a long time to come. I posted this on FB and a rastafarian friend responded that God was energy that had always been here and always would. That makes intuitive sense, but also just makes the head spin faster. How could something just always be? It makes being alive so poignant somehow, the more you think about it. And I’m thinking about it extra hard because I’m listening to an esoteric book, “You Are The Universe,” which talks about many things, including different theories for how the universe formed, and especially how many perfectly precise “accidents” had to occur for us to be here, to form anything at all, to form DNA for instance, and how odd it is that we can reason all of this out. It just leaves you with a sense of awe. Hard to get any housework done when you stop and try to take in eternity. You feel so impossibly small and impossibly large at the same time. Like at some level the universe points to you as a culmination. And sometimes I feel like that, like I’m grooving with everything. But also I’m an idiot who can barely function in life, not to mention infinitesimally small in comparison to this city, let alone the planet and the billions of stars beyond us.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">***</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">One member of my family was complaining about another member of my family, and I’m listening, and I’m wondering if all of this complaining is necessary. Suddenly I remember a line from a Trevor Hall song I heard recently, “D</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">on't you carry stones in your bowl of light.” I like that idea, that any resentment or upset you carry is like carrying stones. But immediately after I had that thought a line from the song I was listening to, the Byrds’ “Turn! Turn! Turn!”, jumped out at me... “[there is] </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">a time to cast away stones, a time to gather stones together.”</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Amazing timing. I’m a writer, so always fitting words together, stitching them into meaning, and it’s hard to ignore the precision of the timing of these words in a moment like this. I’m having a thought that is a judgment, “this person is complaining and these complaints are like carrying stones.” And the radio immediately answers me with, “there’s a time to cast away stones, a time to gather stones together.” I’d never even considered these lyrics before. What the hell does casting away stones and gathering them together even mean? But now here they were, a clear and direct response to my thoughts: don’t judge the complainer. Maybe it’s time to gather these stones together? Maybe it’s time to do something about the problem? </span></div>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It’s a good example of how quick witted and full of wisdom the universe can be if you are listening. </span></div>
d scribehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08242682202760522439noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8896737767275768561.post-9914471532369376132017-03-29T07:37:00.000-07:002017-03-29T07:37:12.077-07:00TO BE SAVED FOR (FROM) THERAPY<div style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">
panic attack?</div>
<div style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">
not sure what this is?</div>
<div style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">
not sure about anything.</div>
<div style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">
my heart is beating fast. i'm afraid.</div>
<div style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">
can't tell if this physical or spiritual.</div>
<div style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">
the two conflate. can't tell if I'm afraid because of my heart. or that I can't feel my face or that I feel as if I"m dying, or if I feel as if I"m dying because I'm afraid. Afraid of losing of my family. </div>
<div style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">
Afraid of being irrelevent. Afraid of the anger of Genevieve. Afraid of disappointing her. Afraid of being pathetic. Afraid of not mattering. </div>
<div style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">
Am I dying because I'm afraid or afraid because I'm dying.</div>
<div style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">
Unbearably painful words from the woman I love. I honestly am not sure I could survive without her. People always think that and they're fine. But my body is rebelling. My face is numb. My shoulders. My heart is beating too fast. </div>
<div style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">
It ry to slow down my breath. No good. better. a little better. </div>
<div style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">
i open the computer and a cat sound is let out, from a cartoon the girls were watching, and I'm freaking out again. I'm not sound. I'm not solid. I'm not together. My wife is killing me, although it is not her, it is me, because I'm the master of my feelings. </div>
<div style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">
I need to write her a long letter telling her where I'm coming from. </div>
<div style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">
We are in dire straights. </div>
<div style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">
Like Mark Knopfler. </div>
<div style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">
Not funny.</div>
<div style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">
I feel slightly better. </div>
<div style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">
I need to get stronger.</div>
<div style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">
I need a job.</div>
<div style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">
I need to feel self-esteem. </div>
<div style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">
I need to be loved.</div>
<div style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">
My daughters love me. </div>
<div style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">
My wife hates me.</div>
<div style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">
She opposite of loves me.</div>
<div style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">
And I'm so sad for her. I love her so much that I'm sad for her for not being able to love me. </div>
<div style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">
I disgust her. And the part of me that she makes feel disgusting hates her for making me feeling that way. I'm responsible for how I feel, but how do I not crack under the gaze of her disgust. How do I just sit there and take it? </div>
<div style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">
My body is asking for something, but I don't know what I can do for it. Besides meditate. Besides somehow finding a real job, one that can support a family. </div>
<div style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">
I can't be the stay at home dad. the stay at home mom. </div>
d scribehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08242682202760522439noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8896737767275768561.post-74018602655644875782017-03-20T19:29:00.001-07:002017-03-20T19:29:09.107-07:00The private things are publicThese private things are public. And vice versa.<br />
<br />
The way Emily took absolute care<br />
<br />
for nobody.<br />
<br />
Follow the rhythm, the little chot to triot,<br />
the snow dope,<br />
fallen branches inside startled asks, ask.<br />
<br />
Awkward foundations.<br />
<br />
Hat eaten in flower stem phlegm,<br />
my forte.<br />
<br />
Catch up in the not gang,<br />
sun of a gland,<br />
a forgotten land inside supper,<br />
toddler anchor father feeling,<br />
something arcane usurping the brain.<br />
<br />
it's too easy to complain.<br />
<br />
The answer comes with the refrain<br />
the way we take it all in,<br />
the way Saul took his salt.<br />
Don't believe the witch of Endor,<br />
Lay it down on the floor, Saul,<br />
bring it up through the rear.<br />
<br />
It's Saul, good.<br />
<br />
Funnel several onions through opinions<br />
about such and such<br />
rich cousin in Chesapeak Bay,<br />
a verbal abuse in non complete,<br />
every issue, the late Ramiro Musato,<br />
a track called Embara,<br />
coming to the Oriental Theater November 8,<br />
the radio took over.d scribehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08242682202760522439noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8896737767275768561.post-28499974579181343962017-03-04T20:11:00.002-08:002017-03-04T20:11:17.897-08:00paley media centerToday I went with the fam to MOMA. While Genevieve checked out the fantastic Picabia exhibit (which I'd already seen) I took the girls down to MOMA's children's art center. But it was closed for some reason. What to do? I did a quick search and found out the Paley Media Center was just around the corner. I hadn't heard of it before, but glad we found it. You can go for free, for an hour and half, and watch anything in their library, which basically comprises the entire history of TV. Sofia watched The Powerpuff Girls, Lucia watched Strawberry Shortcake and I watched, first, Andy Kaufman on David Letterman, then the first Steve Martin HBO special (still funny,) then Martha Graham's Appalachian Spring from 1957 on PBS (She was 64 by then and could still move in such surprising ways, and with so much grace) and ended my session by watching a CBS News special from 1967 called "Inside Pop" in which Leonard Bernstein explains the new music to the older generation:<br />
<div>
<br clear="all" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;" /><div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">
"As with so many of these pop songs, the implication is, and<i> strongly</i>, that this is not at all the way things ought to be. Just as the Beatles' song, "Paperback Writer," implies in its satirical way all the corruption of our lives. Their anti-hero, the paperback writer has written a book he's trying to sell and he sings, "<span style="font-family: roboto, arial, sans-serif;">It's a thousand pages, give or take a few. </span><span style="font-family: roboto, arial, sans-serif;">I'll be writing more in a week or two. </span><span style="font-family: roboto, arial, sans-serif;">I could make it longer if you like the style. </span><span style="font-family: roboto, arial, sans-serif;">I can change it 'round, a</span><span style="font-family: roboto, arial, sans-serif;">nd I want to be a paperback writer." In other words, prostitution. I'll do anything to sell that book. The implication is clear. In fact the message in most of these songs IS delivered by implication. This is one of our teenagers' strongest weapons. It amounts almost to a private language. But this use of implication produces another effect as well, something bordering on poetry. Many of the lyrics, in their oblique allusions and way out metaphors are beginning to sound like real poetry. And protected by this armor of poetry our young lyricists can say just about anything they care to. And they DO care. They care about civil rights, about sexual freedom, about peace. They talk about alienation, mysticism and drugs. The lyrics of Bob Dylan alone would make a bombshell of a book of social criticism. You know those ominous lines of his, "Something is happening and you don't know what it is, do you, Mr. Jones?" You know who Mr. Jones is, don't you? Us. And the lyrics of "Along Comes Mary" I have been informed by its author, 22 year old Tanden Almer, is not about a girl named Mary at all, but about Mary Jane, which is a literal translation of Marijuana. And a staggering piece of verse it is. But mostly they talk about love, as all songwriters have since time began. Only this time it's either a cool kind of love, or a frankly sexual love, or, and this is most important, universal love, a mystic oriental concept that is presumably available through meditation or withdrawl from the establishment or most readily, through drugs. Now what does all this mean? I think it's all part of a historic revolution, one that has been going on for 50 years, only now these young people have gotten control of a mass medium, the phonograph record, and the music on the records with its noise and its cool messages may make us uneasy, but we must take it seriously, as both a sympton and a generator of this revolution. We must listen to it, and to its makers, this new breed of young people with long hair and fanciful clothing. Perhaps by learning something about them, we can learn something about our own future."</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: roboto, arial, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: roboto, arial, sans-serif;">Touching. And funny.</span></div>
<div class="gmail_signature" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">
</div>
</div>
d scribehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08242682202760522439noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8896737767275768561.post-21707543843106711242017-02-09T14:53:00.001-08:002017-04-12T11:32:37.664-07:00garbanzo beans (of matthew's proper cake)garbanzo bean (of matthew's proper cake) a la bean spasms <br>
<br>
Pointing Out The Moon<br>
1.<br>
<br>
Today Alex Cory visiting, we read Elizabeth Bishop's "Moth-man" on the
7, noting wherein she points out the differences between the real and
fake moon. Then went to MOMA and watched the first 15 minutes of Enter
The Dragon, in red stained glass font, Bruce Lee says the finger
pointing at the moon is not the moon. Going upstairs and catching as
much as we can of Picabia's catch as catch can moon. And then wandering
over to Chelsea to watch Moonlight at the Angelika theater, so sweet. All so so sweet.<br>
<br>
note perfet timing for Enter The Dragon. 4pm. "Accidentally" walked in the wrong door and it was the film department of MOMA and it was just starting. And it was perfect, sooo gooood. That's the kind of thing that happens if the cake is proper. <br>
<br>
<br>
2. Kith & Kin reading. Was deeply into the now of the music as we played for an audience of 21 at the SculptureCenter, with Bob Rosenthal reading his wonderful Ode to Agism. Then afterward one of the readers, Annabel Lee tells Tyler and I that she published Ted Berrigan's Train Ride, which is an important book for both of us. And Ted's son Edmund was sitting right next to us. Tyler even wrote a paper on the book in college.d scribehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08242682202760522439noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8896737767275768561.post-84021067101450255492016-12-06T10:26:00.000-08:002016-12-06T10:26:14.848-08:00banksy chase<div class="gmail-_1mf gmail-_1mj">
<span><span>as submitted to the NY Times Lifestyle section </span></span></div>
<div class="gmail-_1mf gmail-_1mj">
<span><span> </span></span></div>
<div class="gmail-_1mf gmail-_1mj">
<span><span> </span></span></div>
<div class="gmail-_1mf gmail-_1mj">
<span><span>The Queens Banksy Chase </span></span></div>
<div class="gmail-">
<div class="gmail-_1mf gmail-_1mj">
<span><br /></span></div>
</div>
<div class="gmail-">
<div class="gmail-_1mf gmail-_1mj">
<span><span>On
the morning of Oct 15th, 2013 my wife Genevieve sent me a text, letting
me know that Banksy was in the midst of doing a residency in New York
city and that I should check it out. I googled and found out that Banksy
was half way through a 31 day long self-imposed residency in NYC for
the month of October. Every day of October Banksy was putting up a new
piece somewhere in one of the five Boroughs. It was a project epic in
scope, even for Banksy.</span></span></div>
</div>
<div class="gmail-">
<div class="gmail-_1mf gmail-_1mj">
<span><br /></span></div>
</div>
<div class="gmail-">
<div class="gmail-_1mf gmail-_1mj">
<span><span>The
day before Genevieve tipped me off, Banksy had made international news
for the 14th piece of the residency, a prank he pulled off in Central
Park. He set up a stand, among all the other stands, selling his prints
for cheap, which were subsequently ignored by droves of tourists. Nobody
knew they were originals, worth tens of thousands of dollars each. It
was wryly funny and critical of the capitalistic culture of value, two
qualities I'd come to expect from Banksy.</span></span></div>
</div>
<div class="gmail-">
<div class="gmail-_1mf gmail-_1mj">
<span><br /></span></div>
</div>
<div class="gmail-">
<div class="gmail-_1mf gmail-_1mj">
<span><span>I
was curious about where the 15th piece was going to be that day, so I
began to google deeper. I found out that one had been done just that
morning at 68th Street and 38th Avenue in Jackson Heights. It was within
walking distance! I sprang into action immediately. I did the hundred
and one things needed to get the girls ready to go out the door, got
them both in the double stroller and rolled.</span></span></div>
</div>
<div class="gmail-">
<div class="gmail-_1mf gmail-_1mj">
<span><br /></span></div>
</div>
<div class="gmail-">
<div class="gmail-_1mf gmail-_1mj">
<span><span>The
girls are Lucia and Sofia, then ages 3 and 4. Little did they care
about going to see a fresh Banksy, but they were always happy to go for a
ride. I pushed the stroller up 39th Avenue to Roosevelt, then up
Roosevelt to 68th. Roosevelt is directly under the 7 Train for
approximately 75 blocks, which creates a very long tunnel effect. My
neighbor Stephen Nickson calls Roosevelt Avenue a tunnel of diversity,
as hundreds of businesses of all different cultural backgrounds line the
blocks under the tracks. This was the avenue we walked down for 18
blocks that morning in order to witness a a brand new Banksy piece.</span></span></div>
</div>
<div class="gmail-">
<div class="gmail-_1mf gmail-_1mj">
<span><br /></span></div>
</div>
<div class="gmail-">
<div class="gmail-_1mf gmail-_1mj">
<span><span>We
were still new to these environs. We had just moved from Boulder
Colorado to Queens NY. After ten years in Boulder, NYC is quite a
change, almost like living in another country. The skies are bigger in
Colorado, and so are the vistas. The smells, sights and sounds are
radically different. The people are much less ethnically diverse in
Colorado, and they also operate on a much lower vibrational level,
baritone, even bass. In New York most people are working tenor or
soprano levels. New Yorkers walk about twice as fast as people from
Colorado. It's exhilarating, but exhausting. But you build up the
stamina, just like in Colorado you build your lungs to acclimate to the
altitude.</span></span></div>
</div>
<div class="gmail-">
<div class="gmail-_1mf gmail-_1mj">
<span><br /></span></div>
</div>
<div class="gmail-">
<div class="gmail-_1mf gmail-_1mj">
<span><span>The
downside is no joke though. A NYC dentist told us that teeth grinding
is common problem here. Stress is a killer. You have to learn to manage
it. Time goes by quicker here, so you have to find ways to slow it down.
Otherwise you will age much faster.</span></span></div>
</div>
<div class="gmail-">
<div class="gmail-_1mf gmail-_1mj">
<span><br /></span></div>
</div>
<div class="gmail-">
<div class="gmail-_1mf gmail-_1mj">
<span><span>On
the other hand, contrary to expectations, we found the people in New
York to be more neighborly than those in Colorado. We knew more
neighbors in the first two weeks of moving into our apartment in Queens
than we did after ten years of living in Boulder. The density of people
here creates countless small communities, entirely based upon proximity
and need.</span></span></div>
</div>
<div class="gmail-">
<div class="gmail-_1mf gmail-_1mj">
<span><br /></span></div>
</div>
<div class="gmail-">
<div class="gmail-_1mf gmail-_1mj">
<span><span>I
quickly began to appreciate what Queens and NYC had to offer. Just
prior to the Banksy residency I had been reading Jonathem Lethem's
fresh-off-the-press novel, "Dissident Gardens," about Sunnyside Queens
in the 1940s through to the 1970s, from back when it was a communist
cell through to the folk, beatnik and hippy years. I was also taking
walks and bike rides everyday, exploring even the graveyards. You could
say I was steeping myself in Queens.</span></span></div>
</div>
<div class="gmail-">
<div class="gmail-_1mf gmail-_1mj">
<span><br /></span></div>
</div>
<div class="gmail-">
<div class="gmail-_1mf gmail-_1mj">
<span><span>Three
days prior to Genevieve's Banksy tip, on October 12th, I had gone with
several of the gardeners I had met from the Sunny Gardens Community
Garden, located behind our communal Sunnyside Gardens Park, to see
Lethem read from "Dissident Gardens" at the Sunnyside Community Center.
(That's a lot of community in once sentence.) After the reading I told
the gardeners that they were the real Dissident Gardens, which got a
good laugh. But it was true. Lethem was using Sunnyside Gardens in his
novel as a kind of metaphor of defeat; the open backyards of the ideal
planned community were now fenced in, the dream was long gone. But
that's fiction for you. The truth is more complicated; far from gone,
the socialist dream is still alive and growing in Sunnyside Gardens and
the amazing park to which it was attached.</span></span></div>
</div>
<div class="gmail-">
<div class="gmail-_1mf gmail-_1mj">
<span><br /></span></div>
</div>
<div class="gmail-">
<div class="gmail-_1mf gmail-_1mj">
<span><span>So
now here we were, walking up Roosevelt with a stroller, as if dropped
in a Lethem novel set in real time, about to see this fresh masterpiece
from Banksy, in the middle of his already legendary month long residency
in NYC. There was a palpable sense of history to the whole thing.</span></span></div>
</div>
<div class="gmail-">
<div class="gmail-_1mf gmail-_1mj">
<span><br /></span></div>
</div>
<div class="gmail-">
<div class="gmail-_1mf gmail-_1mj">
<span><span>I
pushed the stroller off of Roosevelt and up 68th. There was a little
bodega on the corner of 38th Avenue and 68th and we could see some
people crowded around the back, staring at the rear wall. Bingo! There
it was, still fresh, still unmarred. It immediately shone with that
mysterious aura of great art.</span></span></div>
</div>
<div class="gmail-">
<div class="gmail-_1mf gmail-_1mj">
<span><br /></span></div>
</div>
<div class="gmail-">
<div class="gmail-_1mf gmail-_1mj">
<span><span>An
hour later this art would be tagged by local hooligans. This was a
recurring problem for fans of Banksy, because in the local tagger's eyes
Banksy was stepping on territory. The local taggers were defending
their so-called turf, which seemed petty to me, in light of Banksy's
gift, but, on the other hand, it added an exciting element to the sport
of the hunt, because it made it that much sweeter to get try to see the
piece and get a good shot of it before it could be trashed.</span></span></div>
</div>
<div class="gmail-">
<div class="gmail-_1mf gmail-_1mj">
<span><br /></span></div>
</div>
<div class="gmail-">
<div class="gmail-_1mf gmail-_1mj">
<span><span>We
just made it in time, this time, but it was a close one. An hour later
and this piece would be tagged by Topic, then Team Robbo and finally
Problem Child. Problem Child! The local punk taggers add something
indelible to a Banksy piece in the process of destroying it.<br /></span></span></div>
</div>
<div class="gmail-">
<div class="gmail-_1mf gmail-_1mj">
<span><span>Over
the next 2 weeks of the residency we would witness more fresh pieces
just in the nick of time before they were destroyed, and three of those
times we arrived even as they were being destroyed. It was a race
between my stroller/subway skills with my toddlers in tow and the punk
taggers. And victories were sweet.</span></span></div>
</div>
<div class="gmail-">
<div class="gmail-_1mf gmail-_1mj">
<span><br /></span></div>
</div>
<div class="gmail-">
<div class="gmail-_1mf gmail-_1mj">
<span><span>The
text of that first piece we saw on October 15 in Queens reads, “What we
do in life echoes in Eternity." Next to the words there was the life
size stencil of a man who is scrubbing the graffiti off the wall,
erasing the word "Eternity." </span></span></div>
</div>
<div class="gmail-">
<div class="gmail-_1mf gmail-_1mj">
<span><br /></span></div>
</div>
<div class="gmail-">
<div class="gmail-_1mf gmail-_1mj">
<span><span>The
quote is from Russel Crowe's Maximus in the movie Gladiator, and it is a
variation from the original by Marcus Aurelius, the Roman emperor and
philosopher, which is commonly translated as, “What we do now echoes in
eternity.” For Banksy, to take a pop culture quote from a cheesy
Hollywood movie (one that happens to be both terrible and great) which
is in turn a quote, an echo, from hardcore western world Roman history,
is a mark of his style. In that way he is in the tradition of the pop
artist, marrying the highbrow to the low, and consequently, the elite to
the common, the rich to the poor. </span></span></div>
</div>
<div class="gmail-">
<div class="gmail-_1mf gmail-_1mj">
<span><br /></span></div>
</div>
<div class="gmail-">
<div class="gmail-_1mf gmail-_1mj">
<span><span>At
first the piece struck me as a simultaneous celebration of both the
work of the artist, which somehow pushes out into eternity, and a
critique of the critics who deface art. But as with most Banksy pieces
the meaning of the work was even more layered and resonant than it first
appeared.</span></span></div>
</div>
<div class="gmail-">
<div class="gmail-_1mf gmail-_1mj">
<span><br /></span></div>
</div>
<div class="gmail-">
<div class="gmail-_1mf gmail-_1mj">
<span><span>This
was a temporary piece of street art that was paradoxically about
longevity, and that's why I loved the picture I was able to take of the
girls standing in front of it, caught in that fleeting eternal moment.
Somehow the girls looked as if they belonged in that scene too. The
colors of their clothes even matched. I had extemporaneously captured a
moment of their youth that spoke to eternity. It struck me that just by
being alive the girls were erasing the foreverness of eternity, that our
lives themselves, by being finite, were, paradoxically, small erasures
of timelessness.</span></span></div>
</div>
<div class="gmail-">
<div class="gmail-_1mf gmail-_1mj">
<span><br /></span></div>
</div>
<div class="gmail-">
<div class="gmail-_1mf gmail-_1mj">
<span><span>But
it also occurred to me just then that, not unlike figurative art, the
girls are a literal embodiment of something that I have done in life
that will echo toward eternity, i.e. having children. I liked being able
to frame this thought in such a perfect way. Later we framed the shot
of the girls and gave it to my father as a gift. My girls are, after
all, also an eternal echo of something he did in his life, echoes of an
echo.</span></span></div>
</div>
<div class="gmail-">
<div class="gmail-_1mf gmail-_1mj">
<span><br /></span></div>
</div>
<div class="gmail-">
<div class="gmail-_1mf gmail-_1mj">
<span><span>But
there was another surprise twist to this artwork that unveiled itself
only recently. A few weeks ago some Australian friends were staying with
us. They saw the picture of the girls in front of the tag and
recognized the font in which Banksy had chosen to write "Eternity."</span></span></div>
</div>
<div class="gmail-">
<div class="gmail-_1mf gmail-_1mj">
<span><br /></span></div>
</div>
<div class="gmail-">
<div class="gmail-_1mf gmail-_1mj">
<span><span>They
told us the story behind it. It turns out that Arthur Malcolm Stace,
otherwise known as Mr. Eternity, was an Australian eccentric and
soldier, a reformed alcoholic and thief who converted to Christianity
and spread his message by writing the word "Eternity" in copperplate
font with chalk on footpaths in and around Sydney for about 35 years,
from 1932 to 1967. (The first tagger?) Later on Wikipedia I found out
that in an interview Stace said, "Eternity went ringing through my brain
and suddenly I began crying and felt a powerful call from the Lord to
write Eternity." Stace was illiterate and could hardly write his own
name legibly, but, he said, "the word 'Eternity' came out smoothly, in a
beautiful copperplate script. I couldn't understand it, and I still
can't."</span></span></div>
</div>
<div class="gmail-">
<div class="gmail-_1mf gmail-_1mj">
<span><br /></span></div>
</div>
<div class="gmail-">
<div class="gmail-_1mf gmail-_1mj">
<span><span>He
was breaking Sydney's laws, of course, and he narrowly avoided arrest
about twenty-four times. Each time he was caught, he responded with,
"But I had permission from a higher source."</span></span></div>
</div>
<div class="gmail-">
<div class="gmail-_1mf gmail-_1mj">
<span><br /></span></div>
</div>
<div class="gmail-">
<div class="gmail-_1mf gmail-_1mj">
<span><span>It
is estimated that Stace wrote the word around 500,000 times. Only one
survives, found years later, poetically, in a bell tower above Sydney's
Post Office. One out of half a million! But now there was another one,
in Queens, as if from beyond the grave, an exact copy of the divinely
inspired original script. Banksy is literally echoing Eternity.</span></span></div>
</div>
<div class="gmail-">
<div class="gmail-_1mf gmail-_1mj">
<span><br /></span></div>
</div>
<div class="gmail-">
<div class="gmail-_1mf gmail-_1mj">
<span><span>Echoes
are everywhere. Banksy's work echoes Stace's, i.e. "Permission from a
higher source." The story of Mr. Eternity provides a rich allegory to
this piece, but is so subtly presented as to be nearly hidden. It's for
Banksy himself, first, an homage to his forebearer, Mr. Eternity, but
it's for the rest of us too, an Easter Egg to be discovered later. </span></span></div>
</div>
<div class="gmail-">
<div class="gmail-_1mf gmail-_1mj">
<span><br /></span></div>
</div>
<div class="gmail-">
<div class="gmail-_1mf gmail-_1mj">
<span><span>This
quality of Banksy's work can also be seen in the way his overnight
graffiti art stick-ups around the five boroughs that month became like
hidden treasures to be stumbled upon and discovered by the the residents
of the city. Whole neighborhoods were caught up in the fun. And on that
morning a Jackson Heights bodega owner found himself in possession of a
piece of art that was worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, if he
could only find a way to remove it from the building and sell it.</span></span></div>
</div>
<div class="gmail-">
<div class="gmail-_1mf gmail-_1mj">
<span><br /></span></div>
</div>
<div class="gmail-">
<div class="gmail-_1mf gmail-_1mj">
<span><span>I
turned the stroller around and pushed the girls back home. I remember
that the fall breeze was brisk, but the sun was bright and lit up a
thousand interesting faces on Roosevelt Ave. (Queens' faces are some of
the most interesting faces on earth. Da Vinci would have a field day
here.) It was an auspicious first day of the Chase. And the moment is
still echoing now, will be for a long time, maybe even on into my
children's children. Every day, for the rest of October, there awaited a
new adventure from Banksy, which would take us on an incredible
treasure hunt throughout the other 4 boroughs of NYC. </span></span></div>
</div>
<div class="gmail-">
<div class="gmail-_1mf gmail-_1mj">
<span><br /></span></div>
</div>
<div class="gmail-">
<div class="gmail-_1mf gmail-_1mj">
<span><span>The
last piece of the month, on October 31st, was also in Queens, and also
within walking distance. We got there just in time to spy it across
highway 495. It was Banksy's signature on the side of a building. At
first it looked just like it was done in an old school Queens-style
bubble letter tag, super simple and understated. But as you looked a
little closer you could see that the letters were 3-D. They were
balloons made in the shape of a bubble font, as if the bubble font had
bubbled out, popped out into the shape it originally mimicked. It was a
reverse tromp-leoil. This was Banksy both paying homage to the locals
and one-upping them at the same time. It was also a clever way to sign
the entire month long "residency," his love letter to the city.</span></span></div>
</div>
<div class="gmail-">
<div class="gmail-_1mf gmail-_1mj">
<span><br /></span></div>
</div>
<div class="gmail-">
<div class="gmail-_1mf gmail-_1mj">
<span><span>I
took a shot of the girls sitting on the overpass guard rail, the
bubble-letter Banksy signature hovering between them in the distance,
and then we looked for a way to cross the highway to get a closer look.
By the time we made it across the highway and found the building the
piece was already gone! In that short 5 minutes some kids had put up a
ladder and pulled it down. Meanwhile the NYPD had arrived on the scene
and caught up to the kids before they could take off with the partially
deflated letters. There were several bystanders watching the show,
mostly fellow Banksy chasers, some of which I had come to know in the
last few weeks. The cops let the kids go, but they put the bubble-letter
Banksy in the back of a police van. Presumably they still have it now.
It's worth a fortune.</span></span></div>
</div>
d scribehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08242682202760522439noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8896737767275768561.post-72953997188920138112016-10-18T05:44:00.000-07:002016-10-18T05:44:40.434-07:00passage from Tournier<br />
'One day I say him finishing the portrait of a woman. She was neither young nor beautiful nor rich. But there was something radiant in her eyes, her faint smile, her whole face. <br />
<br />
"Yesterday," Assur said to me, "I went to the Prophet's Fountain, the one fed by a wretched Persian wheel. The flow is meager and intermittent, so each time it starts up there's a good deal of pushing a shoving. At the back of the crowd a feeble old man was waiting with a tin cup trembling in his hand, and there wasn't a chance that he'd ever be able to fill it. But then this woman, who had just filled an amphora with great difficulty, went over and shared her water with him.<br />
<br />
"It was nothing. An infinitesimal gesture of friendship among the desperately poor -people among whom sublime and abominable deeds are done every day. What was unforgettable was the woman's expression from the moment when she caught sight of the old man to the time when she gave him his water and left him. I carried that face away with me in my memory, and then, concentrating to keep it alive in me as long as possible, I did this drawing. What is it? A fugitive glimmer of love in a harsh existence. A moment of grace in a pitiless world. That rare and precious moment when the likeness sustains and justifies the image."<br />
<br />
"I realize that what I am after is quite a revolution. I sometimes wonder if a more profound revolution is even conceivable. That's why I'm so patient, because I understand what resistance and persecution artists have to contend with. There's very little hope of winning out. But it's that bit of hope that I live for."' Michel Tournier, from The Four Wisemen <br />
<br />d scribehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08242682202760522439noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8896737767275768561.post-88143915791408322182016-09-20T18:31:00.001-07:002016-09-20T18:31:17.710-07:00Thanks to MierleToday had a root canal and had to file taxes. 2 of my least favorite things. Yet after experiencing and thinking about Mierle Ukules "Maintainance Art" show we saw Sunday, I had a much better attitude about it than usual. The show (at the Queens Museum) has the cumulative effect of somehow getting you excited about taking care of business as a way of living art.<br />
<br />
It's as if you were a sanitation worker, and she were saying to you, "Thank you for keeping this city alive."d scribehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08242682202760522439noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8896737767275768561.post-82982164120807451632016-09-18T11:03:00.000-07:002016-09-18T19:10:00.152-07:0048 a new peakMy 48th birthday weekend was as if I had imagined it myself, but better.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
A hard lost tennis game to Kevin in the morning.<br />
<br />
And then spend the day preparing for party. Around 4:30pm friends come to the park. <br />
<br />
And other friends and family. Dexter brings a bottle of Hudson Valley Bourbon. Best bourbon I've ever tasted, with a burnt caramel flavor, wood smoke. Pass it around. Get a magic 8 Ball from one of them, KC Trommer, Lilla brings a peach tort from patisserie, Amy brings a peach pie, Cristina brings fancy snacks and socks, Therese a painting of a hummingbird, Catherine a handle of rum, Nonna and Papa some delicious boursin cheese, Marco oak aged beer, Quinn guitar strings, picks and a pear, Tyler and Karen, wine and a watermelon: and more I'm forgetting suffice to say superabundance.<br />
<br />
Strikes me that 3 of the neighborhood friends, Justin, Tyler and KC I also happen to know through poetry circles, Venn Diagram bonanza, friends, parents with kids the same age as ours <br />
<br />
Big jazz band plays for an hour. For awhile I throw the giant frisbee into the air so that it comes back to myself, as if I was playing catch with the sky, while dozens of kids swirl around me trying to catch it too.<br />
<br />
Then after jazz the Brooklyn Raga Collective plays raga versions of Beatles and Led Zeppelin, with the great Pyeng Threadgill singing. (She's the daughter of jazz great Henry Threadgill who just won a pulitzer!) I danced with Lucia in front of the crowd and she was great. It was the highlight of a night filled with highlights. <br />
<br />
Then my favorite new band The Flushing Remonstrance played soundtracks to old experimental films, including George Meliers' Trip To The Moon.<br />
<br />
Followed by old Felix The Cat Cartoons. 10pm and the girls are lying on me while we watch cartoons outside with neighbors, friends and family. Perfect warm night with a cool breeze. Full harvest moon! No bugs!<br />
<br />
Better than I could've imagined, like when Whitman says, " O public road! I say back, I am not afraid to leave you-yet I love you; You express me better than I can express myselr; You shall be more to me than my poem."<br />
<br />
Or when Seamus Heaney says "ANd hat happens next is amusic that you never would have known to listen for." <br />
<br />
End the evening drinking port that brother-in-law Matthew brought me from Portugal, Dow special reserve. Best port I've ever had, with distinct flavor of strawberry, raspberry, plum and chocolate. And eating peach tort from patisserie from Lila.<br />
<br />
That's the life!<br />
<br />
Not to mention lots of love from Genevieve. My favorite.<br />
<br />
EDIT:<br />
<br />
Friday night watched Popstar: Never stop never stopping" in bed with Gen, loved it.<br />
<br />
Sunday, Dobogiallo style doubles tennis tournament in the park (can you believe this park?) as a relief for earthquake in Italy.<br />
<br />
Then off to see the opening of Mierle Laderman Ukules at the Queens Museum, thanks to a tip from Noel Black. Gen and I were so tired after epic night at park and doubles tournament that neither of us really wanted to go. But we rallied and so glad we did. So great. So inspiring. And doubly great to meet her! Lucia got an autograph.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
My 48th birthday was better than what I could've imagined.<br />
<br />
When I blew out my birthday candles it seemed a sacrilege to wish<br />
<br />
for anything, for anything beyond the moment itself. I just blew. No wishes... <br />
<br />
Friday night watched "Popstar: Never stop never stopping" in bed with Gen. Laughed.<br />
<br />
Then a hard lost tennis game to Kevin in the morning. Would rather lose than win.<br />
<br />
And then spend the day preparing for party.<br />
<br />
Around 4:30pm friends and family come to the Sunnyside Gardens. <br />
<br />
Dexter brings a bottle of Hudson Valley
Bourbon.<br />
<br />
Best bourbon I've ever tasted, with a burnt caramel flavor,
wood smoke.<br />
<br />
Pass it around. Get a magic 8 Ball from KC
Trommer,<br />
<br />
Lilla brings a peach tort from patisserie, Amy brings a peach
pie,<br />
<br />
Cristina brings fancy snacks and socks, Therese a painting of a
hummingbird,<br />
<br />
Catherine a handle of rum, Nonna and Papa some delicious
boursin cheese,<br />
<br />
Marco oak aged beer, Quinn guitar strings, picks and a
pear,<br />
<br />
Tyler and Karen, wine and a watermelon: and more I'm forgetting<br />
<br />
suffice to say it was superabundance.<br />
<br />
Strikes me that 3 of the
neighborhood friends, Justin, Tyler and KC<br />
<br />
I also happen to know
through poetry circles, Venn Diagram bonanza: <br />
<br />
friends, parents with kids
the same age as ours and poets. 3!<br />
<br />
Just so happens that Flicks and Jazz in the Garden is scheduled on my birthday.<br />
<br />
Hard not to take things like this personally. Because it <i>feels</i> personal. <br />
<br />
Big band jazz plays for an hour. Meanwhile I throw a giant frisbee<br />
<br />
into the air so it comes back
to myself, as if I was playing catch with the sky,<br />
<br />
while dozens of kids
swirl around me trying to catch it too.<br />
<br />
After the big band
jazz the Brooklyn Raga Collective plays versions<br />
<br />
of Beatles and Led
Zeppelin, with the great Pyeng Threadgill singing. <br />
<br />
(She's the daughter
of jazz great Henry Threadgill who just won a pulitzer.)<br />
<br />
I danced with
Lucia in front of the crowd and she was so fantastic!<br />
<br />
It was the highlight of a
night filled with highlights. <br />
<br />
Then my favorite new
band The Flushing Remonstrance<br />
<br />
played soundtracks to old experimental
films,<br />
<br />
including George Melies' Trip To The Moon.<br />
<br />
Followed
by old Felix The Cat Cartoons.<br />
<br />
10pm and the girls are both lying on me comfortably<br />
<br />
while
we watch cartoons outside in the park. Perfect.<br />
<br />
A wild Austrian neighborhood kid named Hans is hanging around my neck too.<br />
<br />
I hardly know him, but it seems natural, and no one, least me, objects. <br />
<br />
It was warm night too, with a cool breeze. Full harvest moon! No bugs!<br />
<br />
Yes, better
than I could've imagined, like when Whitman says, " O public road!<br />
<br />
I
say back, I am not afraid to leave you-yet I love you; You express me
better<br />
<br />
than I can express myself; You shall be more to me than my poem."<br />
<br />
The night expressed me better than I could've expressed myself. <br />
<br />
Or when Seamus Heaney says "And what happens next is a music<br />
<br />
that you never would have known to listen for." <br />
\<br />
We end Saturday evening drinking port that brother-in-law Matthew<br />
<br />
brought me by hand from
Portugal, Dow special reserve. Best port I've ever had,<br />
<br />
with distinct
flavor of strawberry, raspberry, plum and chocolate.<br />
<br />
Pairing it with Lilla's peach
tort. Now that's the life!<br />
<br />
Sunday, the weekend extends still further with a Doppio Giallo style doubles<br />
<br />
tennis tournament in the park (can you believe this park?)<br />
<br />
as a relief for earthquake in Italy. I'm curious what Doppio Giallo means<br />
<br />
and Carlo says it means Double Mystery. But isn't Giallo mean yellow<br />
<br />
I ask? Carlo says yes, but yellow in Italian also means mystery.<br />
<br />
Do you know why I ask? But he doesn't. So now we have a giallo<br />
<br />
giallo, why is mystery the color yellow? Afterward
off to see the opening<br />
<br />
of Mierle Laderman Ukules at the Queens Museum,
thanks to a tip<br />
<br />
from our friend Noel Black. Gen and I were so tired after epic
night at park<br />
<br />
and the doubles tournament that neither of us really wanted to
go,<br />
<br />
but we rallied! And so glad we did. Such a great show. So inspiring.<br />
<br />
And
doubly great that we got to meet her! Lucia even got an autograph.<br />
<br />
Now thoroughly tired, and pinching myself to see if this a dream I go to sleep. <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />d scribehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08242682202760522439noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8896737767275768561.post-66384018350461585042016-08-20T21:40:00.002-07:002016-08-20T21:40:15.751-07:00366Incredibly in sync dance with Diandra at Matthew and Monica's house in front of fire place. Hard to believe how synchronized a dance can be, how expressive, how mutually creative. Kept me up too late, but well worth it. An unexpected (and needed) gift from a personal God.d scribehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08242682202760522439noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8896737767275768561.post-41995161698582935972016-08-20T21:34:00.003-07:002016-08-20T21:34:33.269-07:00Golden to Arvada to Denver to Boulder to LovelandWoke up at Matthew's place in Golden<br />
<br />
went to Marley's game<br />
girls play on nearby playground zip line for hour<br />
<br />
then Disc golf with Jeff and Matt: six under...<br />
<br />
then Lunch in Denver, sushi burritoes<br />
<br />
dancing with girls to Wonderlic at Skyline park.<br />
<br />
then to Diandra's new flower shop. Girls get bows. Check out what's become of D Note. See the mouth of logo is only thing left.<br />
<br />
Then off to Boulder to see Carmen under the bandshell. Girls drinking fresh squeezed watermelon cherry lemonade. All of us perfectly happy for that minute. Carmen! Free! Outside in the Mountains!<br />
<br />
Quick stop afterward to see Tom Peters at the Beat Bookstore on Pearl Street Mall turns into half hour. He berates kids, nervous whole time, begrudges them even the pennies they find on the floor. Complains about everyone, from personal friends of mine, to parents who don't watch their children, Then guilts me into buying two books. One was homage to Phil Whalen book. Not a terrible purchase by any means, just a bit rich right now.<br />
<br />
Back to Loveland.<br />
<br />
d scribehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08242682202760522439noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8896737767275768561.post-69227257427804620322016-08-10T01:56:00.001-07:002016-08-10T01:57:00.004-07:00DreamAt a concert Gen sent me to. Band called hoohawhow (Robert hoohaw.) bored. He was phoning it in. Turn to girl next tome and tell her this is third time I've heard this song today, (arrowsmith cover used for Walmart olympics commercial.) <span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Girl's got a sparkle in her eye. S</span>he gives me her Blanket. It's Made out of some sort of sea material. Crackly. Retains its warmth. She remembers my name. I had forgetten hers. Or that I had even given them mine. Intermission. I take blanket and move to the back of <span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;">venue. Another woman pulls blanket away, Jewish. She just wants to look at it she says. She tells me she's attracted to it, and that the blanket was curious about her, it was "sniffing" her leg. I'm intrigued. Then same woman has taken her seat again and she's listening to a man on a radio. I overhear. He tells her, "you have to pretend to believe until you feel engaged." I interject, shout back, "that's excellent advice!" Then he says, "thanks for calling in, listener, </span><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;">you've been listening to Small Table on KCCR, please join us again next week." I decide I want to write all of this down. I ask the girl behind me for a pen, the one in front of me for paper. She only has a few sheets left, but offers anyway. No no, I tell her. I look around and ask someone who has a lot. But then I need a hard surface so I grab the book of boy sitting next to me. Young crowd. He says that's my book. I say I just need it for a writing surface. He is nerdy and shy and says, ok, he says, and then, that's a really good book, I think you'd like it. short stories. He points out the author's name. Thanks I'm always looking for something to read, I tell him, but I'm lying. I take note of the name anyway. Looks Scandinavian Wahr, or something like that. The cover has glowing moons on black. Cool cover I tell him. I start to write everything down. At which point I wake up and grab my phone and write everything down. </span><div><div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div></div></div>d scribehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08242682202760522439noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8896737767275768561.post-28443289625743241902016-06-18T21:56:00.001-07:002016-06-18T21:56:19.874-07:00Plan of actionfirst 2 #cousinrich productions both got off the ground on this same day. <div><br></div><div>Fischer set a date to record. And Dantex sent me their first script. Which is worthy of the endeavor. </div><div><br></div><div>Next stop Peace Club. First rule of Peace Club. Everyone talk about Peace Club. </div><div><br></div><div>First project. Oysters in the Hudson. </div><div><br></div><div>Cousin rich also launches:</div><div><br></div><div>World's Fair Festival </div><div><br></div><div>Sound&Vision Film Festival</div><div><br></div><div>(Start small and manageable. Slow growth. Sparks will catch in NY. In NY you can be a new man.</div><div><br></div><div>Free teacher</div><div><br></div><div>And Sound&Vision </div><div><br></div><div><br></div>d scribehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08242682202760522439noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8896737767275768561.post-9941891541671484422016-06-08T19:49:00.001-07:002016-06-09T14:09:37.551-07:00Good VibrationsDear Brian and Sheri,<br />
<br />
This letter goes out to you. Because every good one needs one. I wrote that last sentence partly because of Emily Dickinson. But that's another story. She's good at riddles. I know you don't much care for them. One means missive and one means you.<br />
<br />
That's enough of that. But it's important as we shall see.<br />
<br />
So today I watched Love and Mercy, the biopic of Brian Wilson starring my old crush, John Cusack, someone I fashioned myself after, in a fashion. That last fact is just one small significant thing in the whole thing. Also that you are Brian, too.<br />
<br />
It was an okay movie, better than most really. Weird disconnect between the younger Brian, who was awesomely played by Paul Dano, and the older one, played by John Cusack, who had somehow turned into a mash-up between John and Brian. (In some alternative version John plays me.)<br />
<br />
Four films really, one about the music, and one about abuse, madness and recovery. And a third about gurus and psychologists manipulating the weak for their own gain. And a love story to boot.<br />
<br />
I enjoyed all of them, but the one about the music was my favorite. I learned a lot about the music.<br />
<br />
And I realized after watching it, that I have somehow never listened to Smiley Smile, which is weird, because I love weird, and I love The Beach Boys and this is the weirdest of the Beach Boys albums.<br />
<br />
So I listened to it while doing the dishes tonight. It's so silly and funny, but also so carefully wrought and, ultimately, sublime. It starts with a little minute long musical vignette stating the theme of the album; to remember, all day and night, to whistle.<br />
<br />
Then the album continues with a meditation on heroes and villains, the good and bad. And, already, stories are unfolding and categories are starting to unravel.<br />
<br />
Then the album gets super silly and fun with a child-like love song to vegetables. But really, what could be more profound?<br />
<br />
Then it stays silly with "Fall breaks and Back to Winter (Woody Woodpecker Symphony)" which is one I want to think about more, what the title means, but my instant take is dark music made light, or light music made dark. Cartoon winter gloom. But mostly this is just an instrumental aperitif.<br />
<br />
"She's Going Bald" ramps up the ridiculous, and also seems to be a shout out to The Beatles. The movie points out that Brian felt he was in competition with John Lennon and the boys (Another John I heavily relate to.) And you can feel the John Lennon in this song with both the playfulness of the lyrics, the way it runs through styles, even through early Beatlesque blues, with John's irreverent humor, and depth, as it seems to say something about the importance of a woman's hair, and the tragedy of its loss. Which, though sgrounded and visceral, is also symbolic of loss of beauty, even life. But like in the previous song, when fall was breaking back to winter, the music keeps it light, and, in fact, hilarious.<br />
<br />
But then comes a sweet one, for me. "Little Pad."<br />
<br />
"If I only had a little pad in Hawaii."<br />
<br />
It starts with the boys cutting up, laughing in the studio, singing the song in goofy voices, but then gets a little more serious, and pretty, the fantasy starting to come through.<br />
<br />
Of course I couldn't help but think of your wedding in Hawaii. NOT TO MENTION THE FACT THAT MIKE EFFING LOVE WAS THERE AND SINGING SONGS FOR YOU! That's some super thick glue right there. And of course Mike Love is one of the "villains" in the "movie", a foil to Brian's hero. Though he's made out to be a villain, really, you totally understand where he is coming from. Brian was so far in his own world that Mike Love (Make Love?) was no longer part of the equation, just a voice. After all, it was supposed to be The Beach Boys, not The Beach Boy. <br />
<br />
"dit du du, da da da do do, dim duh did doo<br />
did did did doo dim duh dum did doo doo do<br />
By the sea that's where I'll build a pad in Hawaii"<br />
<br />
and I could hear Mike Love singing this, in my imagination, on your wedding night, as you make love. On the beach, in the rain, not a cloud in the sky. Or was that me?<br />
<br />
And I could picture your pad there. Though somehow it hasn't been built yet.<br />
<br />
And then the next song came on. Good Vibrations. And all the sudden this funny weird silly album became, by dint of that one song alone, one of the greatest albums ever made. Because this song is so undeniably great, one of the great masterpieces of art. Wave after wave of hooks, and musically like nothing ever heard before, kettle drums and theramin aflare, and the balanced harmony of the whole.<br />
<br />
But best of all, for this listener, that one line, "Gotta keep those loving good vibrations happening with her."<br />
<br />
This is THE mantra. The only mantra one needs. The single greatest line of music ever written in my opinion, where words and music coalesce. I used this line to raise both of my daughters. And to ease my marriage. I have sung this line to my girls, and myself, hundreds of times when they were upset. And I still do. Over and over again. It was not only my protection against slipping into bad vibrations myself, but a reminder that I had to keep the good vibrations going for them, at all cost. And what better way to keep good vibrations happening than through music? The key is in the music, the key to the whole deal, to joy, was in this one line framed in this one exceedingly great song, which is in turn framed in this great album, which is is in turn framed by the entire ouvre of Brain Wilson.<br />
<br />
Writing "Brain Wilson" was a typo. Bu it reminds me of when you accidentally wrote your name as "brain" in the drying sidewalk cement between your house and mine on Goddard Street in Overland Park KS. Haha. You made a mistake and then signed it "Brain." That's such good irony. I never realized how good until writing this right now. It further reminds me of when your son found a feather and you told him to blow it off his hand and make a wish. Then you asked him what he wished for and he said "To have the feather back."<br />
<br />
Maybe it wasn't a typo after all, writing brain?<br />
<br />
So listen to rest of the album. The next song With Me Tonight<br />
<br />
The way I broke your heart very literally<br />
This ghost haunts me more than it should be<br />
I'm not gonna walk away or turn my head in shame<br />
I never thought it could kill me<br />
<br />
A clean slate, one more day further away<br />
I want you, you don't want me<br />
My mistake for wasting yours and mine<br />
I want you but will you stay with me today, with me today?<br />
<br />
Just let me make some time to take it back a little<br />
The way you smile shines the heavens above me<br />
I'm never gonna let you go, I want you all the time<br />
<br />
I've gotta prove you can trust me."<br />
<br />Oh the depth of those lyrics, I can't believe I've never listened to some of these songs before tonight.<br />
<br />
The next song I HAVE heard though. Wind Chimes.<br />
<br />
"Hanging down from my window, those are my wind chimes."<br />
<br />
It all comes back to the vibrations. To the beautiful sounds. The song moves from "tears rolling down my cheek" and turns toward the peaceful sounds of the wind chimes and then the peace turns into playfulness by the end of the song, and we're okay again. Healing through sound. Ends with various voices singing, "Tingling," culminating in a goofy voice soaked in heavy reverb, and fades into light tinkling voices harmonizing at a low volume. <br />
<br />
Then the album ends Wonderfully, of course. Very pretty,<br />
<br />
<b>"Wonderful"</b><br />
<br />
<div>
She belongs there, left with her liberty<br />
Never known as a non-believer<br />
She laughs and stays in the<br />
Won- won- wonderful<br />
<br />
She knew how to gather the forest when<br />
God reached softly and moved her body<br />
One golden locket quite young<br />
And loving her mother and father<br />
<br />
Farther down the path was a mystery<br />
Through the recess the chalk and numbers<br />
A boy bumped into her<br />
</div>
<div>
Won- won- won- wonderful<br />
<br />
Hey bobba reba<br />
----Everybody should<br />
Wa bobba lee<br />
Just start collecting<br />
Hey bobba reba<br />
Oh yeah<br />
Wa bobba lee<br />
Kept a-comin on<br />
Hey bobba<br />
Just to be a cool guy<br />
Hey bobba<br />
He bobba reba<br />
Don't think you're God<br />
He bobba reba<br />
Vibrations<br />
Go for a ride<br />
Wa bobba lee<br />
Just go for a<br />
He bobba reba<br />
Just keep goin<br />
Wa bobba lee<br />
Said it<br />
Just keep goin'<br />
Hey bobba<br />
All you gotta do is<br />
Hey bobba<br />
Cool it vibrations<br />
He bobba reba<br />
Ah just gotta do i <br />
<br />
She'll return in love with her liberty<br />
Never known as a non-believer<br />
She'll smile and thank God<br />
For one won- won- wonderful"</div>
<div>
</div>
<div>
Just listen to the album though. It's all there in the music. And more. <br />
<br />
Love,<br />
<br />
Adam </div>
<div>
</div>
<div>
</div>
<br />
<br />
<br />d scribehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08242682202760522439noreply@blogger.com0