A Trip to the Bronx

Leviticus, at it again: "Peace Is Power. Art Thrives In Peaceful Societies. Art Expresses Power. Commission Original Art!"

Grand Concourse

Valentine Dental

A Yellow Visitor

Albania in Belmont

Old Paint

Music:

In 2015, forty years later, I believe we might finally be ready to address Another Green World.

Luv this ol' skool sound that not 2 old, Sonogram.

Finally: All The Places The New York Times Has Compared To Brooklyn.



Night.

It's Raining in New York

On occasion I ingest extreme amounts of caffeine, typically when under duress or financial strain--i.e., more and more often these days. Since I'm always writing, I amuse myself in reading what I've written in this machine-monster-mode. I imagine it like this, of course:

We have been up all night, my friends and I, beneath mosque lamps whose brass cupolas are bright as our souls, because like them they were illuminated by the internal glow of electric hearts. And trampling underfoot our native sloth on opulent Persian carpets, we have been discussing right up to the limits of logic and scrawling the paper with demented writing.

Our hearts were filled with an immense pride at feeling ourselves standing quite alone, like lighthouses or like the sentinels in an outpost, facing the army of enemy stars encamped in their celestial bivouacs. Alone with the engineers in the infernal stokeholes of great ships, alone with the black spirits which rage in the belly of rogue locomotives, alone with the drunkards beating their wings against the walls. 

Marinetti, 1909 (of course)

Rather than a rage in the belly of rogue locomotives (what an image), I produce a quiet fury of carefully constrained text devoid of much inspiration. It is the absolute inverse of my experience of writing after having had a few drinks (self-aggrandizing, sentimental, offensively saccharine, incoherent), but lacks the inchoate, free beauty I've been struggling to achieve. 

For months, I've been at a loss, when it comes to what I'm writing. A week ago an older friend handed me a copy of Patrick Modiano (in translation). I continue to believe (and have believed for some time) that the greatest insights regarding one's chosen medium are to be had in other mediums (or modes) of art. If you write, consider music, painting, and especially sculpture, dance, and photography. Photography explains art: photographers are a conduit for image, and show us a particular perspective, a particular way of looking at something, of seeing someone or some place. This is what medium is to art: a space in which to fix a particular way of seeing.

Modiano, in afterimage (Chien de printemps in French, Bitch of a Spring/Goddamned Spring, which I prefer), takes us on an iconic walk through Paris: we visit Place de la Concorde, we walk into the gardens of the Champs-Elysées, we stroll down the main boulevards, and in the company of a photographer (Jansen) and a teenager (unnamed). The photographer, in his youth adopted by Robert Capa (of all people), has now adopted our teenage narrator. I'll quote the passage:

A breeze was ruffling the leaves on the trees, and their shade felt cool as Jansen and I walked along the main boulevards. We had come to Place de la Concorde. We went into the gardens of the Champs-Elysées. Jansen took pictures with his Rolleiflex, but I scarcely noticed. He cast a furtive eye on the viewfinder, level with his waist. And yet I knew that each of his photos was perfectly framed. One day, when I expressed surprise at that feigned carelessness, he'd told me you had to "approach things gently and quietly or they pull away."

This passage has been of incredible use, as I attempt to render the nearly indescribably beauty of a ride across the Manhattan Bridge, on the Q, hundreds of feet above the East River, the setting sun illuminating the harbor, the sky, the skyscrapers, and flickering lightly off cars crossing the Brooklyn Bridge: approach things gently and quietly or they pull away. Thank you, obscure relation! Thank you for providing me with the exact chisel I required to cut the nose, the eyes, the face, but might never have found on my own. Modiano's writing reminds me of the films of Michelangelo Antonioni, especially L'Eclisse, The Passenger, and my favorite, L'Avventura. They're slow in pace--dull, almost--sumptuous, textured, layered, and highlight the glory and potential of the image. In L'Aventura, Monica Vitti beauty devastates. While we're on the subject, I want to quickly note a Godard that never fails to elate or animate (the trailer, that is, not the film): Vivre sa vie.

Of course, the other half of lovely writing is clever word-smithing, or sheer delight in the amusement and color and texture of language--as a writer one must exult in language. Take Miss Clack, for example, from Wilkie Collins' Moonstone, which, as you know, I finished just the other day:

I describe this aimless flitting about from one place of residence to another--this insatiate restlessness of body and appalling stagnation of soul--merely with the view to arriving at results. 

Miss Clack will be important to this journal as I will use her name for the name of a troublesome aunt, sister of my mother, who had twins at fifty-two via artificial insemination. We're estranged. She is an utter pill, and accused my mother--her older sister, and remember, this Clack had twins at fifty-two--of attempting to breastfeed the children. This Clack is a doctor. Can you imagine? I talked to a producer recently and mentioned I'm accustomed to managing "big" personalities--"diplomatic, Marcel, unlike you," he said--ah, but it begins at home! Yes, one musn't neglect the important skills one has picked up at home.

When one can appropriately position "insatiate" in a sentence, can help the word to expose itself as it must--one has succeeded as a writer. This emerald of a sentence, tucked into the first third of the Moonstone, is the other half of "approach things gently and quietly or they pull away," when it comes to writing. The inability of most--if not all--contemporary writers to do this characterizes the deplorable state of modern fiction. In English, contemporary writers seem to have lost the ability to do either, and are equally incapable of exulting and softly approaching shade, place, or person. An embarrassing and ignominious predicament!

It's raining in New York. I haven't yet found a ticket to the Mariinsky at BAM--howl, howl, howl, howl! O I'll crack heaven wide open with my laments!

I wish it might snow rather than this endless grey rain.




   

    

West African Dime Novels

West African dime novels and assorted market literature, 1970s, Accra and Lagos

back

detail; "How to be a...NIGERIAN"

Electric Kissing Parties, II

Electric Kissing Parites, I

True Love

I know what you're thinking: where were those Electric Kissing Parties when I was a teenager? 

Happy 68th David

Julie San Juan and I met for drinks in Greenpoint tonight. I met Julie in Puerto Rico, when Brooklyn and J Way and I visited in May of 2014. San Juan was my step back into the United States; prior to this visit, I had lived comfortably in the Yucatan for some time. J Way met Julie, and introduced Brooklyn and I; we were unimpressed. Julie has a valley girl style with new acquaintances, and we're judgmental. We were to be proven wrong, a fact that J Way has brought to my attention several times since. J Way is a delight, a savant full of general naïveté, a real miss who isn't afraid to tap ones knuckles with the ruler when one has stepped out of line. She's become more and more fun as she's aged, and will occasionally make rather colorful comments with an eye to Brooklyn or I, which we adore, of course.

Julie has an uncommon energy and wonderful zest for life. She's a skilled photographer, and entirely a product of good breeding. Though after a few drinks in Greenpoint one might hear her remark: "For some reason Asian people love my photos." Tonight ended with pierogi and borscht; Julie San Juan departs for San Juan tomorrow, and there she will likely be seduced by a mature boriqua of certain standing.

Sidenote: Bryncess and her man were up all night on coke in an attempt to summon Satan. They wound up taking the train to Rockaway Beach around six in the morning and swam in the Atlantic Ocean. It's January. Bryncess is rapidly becoming one of my more exciting friends. Meanwhile, la Chilean has arrived in Thailand, Kim is in the Dominican Republic, and I am in New York, where it is approximately 11 degrees.

The last time I saw Julie San Juan was just a few nights before la Chilena had the furry party. We met for drinks in Grandmother's living room, or Night of Joy, a few blocks from the BQE in $skid row. I rode into Brooklyn on an F train full of unusually attractive passengers, and I'd had time to have a nice look-see, as I'd boarded at 2nd Ave, where that V train to Queens was wont to lurk. We caught up, as people do, and shared tales of life on the edge of many things--we're both almost happy, almost in love, almost famous, and too painfully alive. People say New York has changed, New York has lost its soul, New York is gone. And they're right: New York has changed, because the world has changed. Each day we see more and more the twentieth century fading into the past--after all, we're fifteen years into the twenty-first--and there isn't a thing to be done about it. We mourn it, we tug at our hair and beat our breast, but it fades only further away. In the last century there was witnessed an explosion of culture for the ages, especially in music, and a birth of an urban underclass identity that proved polyvocal, multiethnic, and highly destabilizing and revolutionary.

Our culture--and here I return to New York, for New York is the United States in miniature and to an extent the world--has diminished. The world is simply a far less interesting place than it once was--it is smaller, more homogenous, populated less and less with the idiosyncratic and the useless, the beautiful and the damned. Cities are less the swampy mire of crime, vice, and creation which they once were. And this is the case with New York.

However, rest assured, so long as people like Julie and I are around, there will be a struggle to achieve something beautiful, something worth communicating even in the most rudimentary language or form, which this blog aspires to be. We try, we people born just several years too late, we struggle. I do, Julie does.

I'll record what Julie reports from Puerto Rico.

For now:

I'm delighted and grateful to be alive.

I can hardly wait to see the Mariinsky perform Swan Lake at BAM. I had dinner with a Justice (one of the women) on Monday, who described her experience of the Mariinsky as "absolutely one of the highlights of [her] life."

Now, to the point of this entry: Happy 68th, Bowie!

When I think of the gods of popular music, I think of David Bowie. There are others, of course, but Bowie has enjoyed remarkable longevity and remains relevant at 68. He is one of only two or three people I would like to meet whom I haven't yet.

I may, one day, list representative tracks from each of Bowie's albums, along with additional songs I consider to be related, to share similar motifs, to have influenced Bowie (e.g., for the self-titled 1967 debut, we could try Happy Land, and then hear and see the inimitable Marlene Dietrich, who beyond any doubt had a fantastic influence on Bowie). That's rather an enormous undertaking, however, so tonight I'll restrict myself to a few favorites:

Memory of a free festival

Teenage Wildlife

Station to Station

Sound and Vision (Low)

Starman

I'd Rather Be High

Golden Years on Soul Train

and

Heroes


Adieu,

Marcel


 

Back Home

Lower Manhattan from the Promenade

Clark Street

Lionel at Grand Central

Pay close attention

For Woody Allen

Dawn

East River Park

Hipster at Sunrise

Skid$ Row

Tile, Grand Central 

Chrysler

Bank of America/Bryant Park

Friendship

Birdwatching underground

Finally took one of these

First album of 2014: a reevaluation. N'joy.

Loisa Does It

That's a bad pun on Easy Duz It, but I do have to tell about what Loisa did on New Years.

Brookyln (who doesn't believe this journal exists) and I spilled significant ink over how we would spend New Years. I knew it would be for the best to avoid New York--too many out-of-towners, and I don't play the nightlife game as I once did, but still refuse absolutely to spend any money for the privilege of standing on line in the cold, the nightmare of traffic and taxis on New Years, the nightmare of millions of people in Times Square (why?)--no thanks. We determined through indifference that DC would be the best place to spend New Years, and settled on an open bar with nice food and a heated rooftop with twelve or so friends.

Loisa came, of course, as did a friend of Brooklyn's from Philly, Charlie. Loisa doesn't get out much, and when a few weeks ago Brooklyn mentioned she plans to move to Seattle to live with her boyfriend, Loisa burst into tears. Brooklyn and I were shocked, and agreed that this inappropriate behavior had much more to do with Loisa's own loneliness and despair than real concern over Brooklyn departing DC. When Brooklyn told me she planned to move to Seattle, I thought it was wonderful, and I far prefer a lengthy ride in a plane than a lengthy ride on a bus. It will be sad to see less of Brooklyn, of course, but it will also be nice to have an excuse to visit Seattle. I very much want to see Olympic National Park, and have wanted to do so for many years.

On New Year's Eve, Loisa and Charlie began to chat independent of the rest of the group, an occurrence which Brooklyn and I noted. Later, after midnight, Loisa approached us and explained that yes, she was interested in Charlie, that Charlie had asked her if he could kiss her, but that she wasn't sure what to do, was it a good idea, would Brooklyn assure her that Charlie was a good person, a responsible person, a safe person? Yes, Brooklyn could attest to Charlie's good character, and did, but Loisa remained uncertain. The bar closed around two, and Brooklyn, another friend, and I felt it was time to move on to a more crunk venue. We were twenty minutes away, on foot, and it was warm and dry. Brooklyn checked Uber, which had an 8x surge charge. "We should really walk," I said. Brooklyn reaches a stage of intoxication and becomes unreasonable and stubborn, and the more I suggested we walk the more determined she became to order an Uber, I'm sure. Eventually she insisted we take an Uber, and ordered it. This was convenient, because it enabled us to abandon Loisa and Charlie together, which we did. We felt good about it--as friends, we had done right by Loisa, this would be good for her.

The Uber, a ten minute ride at most, was $47. The reward of the stubborn!

The rest of the night was amusing if uneventful. We slept late New Years Day, and met for brunch around two. Loisa appeared, in high spirits, but looking rough. Loisa lives in a lovely home on Capitol Hill. Two floors of a beautiful old DC-style brownstone are hers, with a couple in the garden apartment below. Charlie and Loisa had returned to her apartment around two the night before. Loisa made Charlie promise he didn't have an STD: "Brooklyn is a very close friend of mine and if I catch anything she will do something terrible to you." Brooklyn, as you can imagine, reacted to this with a low shudder.

Loisa and Charlie hear a crash around 5:30 in the morning as well as the sound of rushing water; Loisa believes there is a storm and a tree has fallen on the house (this has occurred twice in the past). But when she looks out into the street, it's not raining. She runs downstairs, and in the living room an enormous piece of the plaster ceiling has fallen, narrowly missing Loisa's beloved guinea pigs, Tom and Jerry.

Sidenote: Loisa has flown with Tom and Jerry. The first time she did this, she had her veterinarian type up and sign a letter stating that these were Loisa's "anxiety animals," and that the guinea pigs must accompany her at all times. Loisa walked through airport security clutching Tom and Jerry. When she arrived at the gate, she walked up to the counter and alerted the flight attendant on duty she would be flying with Tom and Jerry, thinking this was the responsible thing to do. The flight attendant balked, and told Loisa there was no protocol for flying with such animals, and that she would have to speak with her supervisor. Loisa produced the veterinarian's letter, which according to the flight attendant, was useless--Loisa would need a letter from her therapist that stated she was mentally unstable. Loisa burst into tears, clutched Tom and Jerry, and cried, "I am mentally unstable!" Loisa was able to board the flight, and has't had issues flying with Tom and Jerry since.

In the still of the night, Charlie, running around naked, grabs some towels, and both Loisa and Charlie frantically attempt to mop up the mess and assess the damage. Loisa immediately calls a plumber, but it's the crack of dawn on New Years--no one is available. She calls her landlord, a management company--nothing. The downstairs neighbors are nowhere to be found--they're on vacation. Charlie manages to shut off the water, Loisa turns up the heat and turns on some fans, and the two of them spend the next few hours cleaning.

Loisa was in high spirits at brunch. Brooklyn and I made the right decision: Loisa seemed entirely unconcerned with the calamity of the night before. She was pleasant, fun, and alert. If Loisa and Charlie ever end up together, they'll have one hell of a "how we met" story.  

Almost Home

Though I find it difficult to believe, the future has arrived. It's 2015, but when will it really feel as if we're living in the future?

Soul Food Kitchen and Fish Heaven, Bed Stuy

Beautiful LeDroit Park, DC

LeDroit Park

Connecticut Ave/William Howard Taft Bridge, DC

National Cathdral

Sinister, nebulous, opaque, inchoate?

Per my resolutions of 2014, I will begin to highlight links in dark-scarlet bold. 

Moby