7312. BELOW THE WATER LINE (pt 47)

BELOW THE WATER LINE

(pt. 47)

There was a stretch of one of our blocks called 'Madison' 

Avenue. Forget the name, I never knew where it came

 from  -  it certainly could not have been the New York 

reference; just would have made no sense, probably 

some developer's daughter was named Madison, 

even though in the 1950's most people didn't have 

that kind of name. No one was 'Madison. If you were 

a girl, mostly you were Jane, Mary, Theresa, Kathy, 

Ellen, Eileen, etc. The era of today's version of names, 

the second and third-tier of reaching for names, was 

not yet prevalent. No Jenna Omega Marcy's here; let 

alone Kamiesha or Whuokavara or Meroiah. I've seen 

them all, way too convoluted and dense. (My father 

always said he'd named me after Gary Cooper. I'd 

think, more than that, it was Gary, Indiana.  Actually, in 

my art-days NYC ways, did exist, was successful, with 

that very funny, self-concocted name, Robert Indiana. 

Then people began naming their personas after places 

too -   more funny stuff. John Denver. There was also 

a Village Voice writer who called himself 'Gary indiana'.

And of course, you always have those fake 'blues' fools, 

made up by white boys strumming a guitar, and always 

named 'Slime'. Kansas City Slim, Memphis Slim, Cranford 

Slim, (he's about 40, white as a sheet, plays at Crossroads 

Bar, in Cranford or Garwood or somewhere. Can't 

successfully blow his nose, but pretends to be a great 

local bluesman. 'All My Troubles, ooh waah'). Everyone 

always wants to be somebody else, I guess, a cute, 

made-up play person with no gravitas, just cool irony.

We kids, we never knew any of this stuff  -  I don't 

know how 'worldly' anyone had to be to mesh well, 

but at that point in our Avenel lives, we weren't. Later, 

people like Phil Posseil, Franky Strohlein, Harry Witt, 

they had garage bands and kick-starter music stuff, 

but at least none of them tried the 'Avenel Slim' 

gimmick. In my own, crafty, cornfield way (what a 

little rubble-strewn, Avenel, hick I was!) I took the 

idea that making great plans, shouting from the 

rooftops about them, mercilessly devoting time and 

energy in making contacts and connections and 

show-and-tell stuff in order to 'prove' the attestation 

that you can be what you say you are, that it can 

 work out, is a fool's game. If there's something 'there', 

it's going to come out one way or the other  -  what 

you instead need to do is make sure you honor that 

 inner code, that responsibility, first, of bringing out 

that which is. Producing, amassing, and working 

'deliberately' and with slow, plodding deliberation, 

the finished work of which you yourself (and only 

you yourself) are conscious of and know-to-feel is 

a'borning within. It really can't be done any other way. 

All the  other stories you hear, the 'sudden' discoveries, 

the accidental and major finds, they don't just happen. 

They've first been prepared for, silently, in hard work 

and drudgery. A Confederacy of Dunces (Toolen) to 

Gone With the Wind (Mitchell), they all have their 

little tales and myths behind them, but in reality 

what they were, outside of anything else, were 

the end-product of steely, plodding, steady 

determination and value and work, within hardships 

and toil, no matter what else. That shines, first 

and foremost, like a diamond in all the dreck 

around it. Don't listen to the noise. It's just noise. 

You must, instead, just say 'I was born for this', 

and do it. That was my viewpoint anyway.

-

Peter Whitaker (Petey) was a  wild, crazy kid 

who used to terrorize everyone, the local girls, 

my sister's  little clique among them, in that 

small, grubby woods behind the old Avenel 

4&5 incinerator (gone now, no more burning 

trash). Yelling at them, screeching, running, 

lofting pebbles and things in their direction. 

He was just all crazy-energy, angry and 

vociferous, and really present and up-front 

about it. That little patch of trees went right up 

to Inman Ave.  -  he was often in there, like a 

wild, jungle-animal, just going at any person 

or group (of kids, I guess) who short-cutted 

through there. It's funny how 'Developers' go  -  

they use up the land needed by them, and then 

at all the endings or little oddments of triangle 

or leftover space they just leave things; so that, 

 upon arrival, one can often still get a glimpse of 

the scrub-woods or grassy and weeded lots and 

places which once stood. They go unused, that 

is until others begin getting the idea that they can 

dump or leave refuse or park a truck or wagon 

there. These little forgotten spots, in a most intensely 

human fashion, and one which I've always loved to 

see  -  because they act as witness to the Human 

presence, the primitive habit within us and which 

has never left us, tribally, archaically and almost 

intuitively by survival  -  eventually get worn paths 

through and upon the areas people walk  -  usually 

 cut-angles, shortcuts, straight-line paths through

 or even around things. The human propensity 

both for habit/repeat and for walking/travel come 

to the fore. This is the primitive, wild world within 

us coming out. Even a 'Developer' cannot stop 

that. Peter Whitaker, it always seemed to me  -  

wild-child, crazy kid  -  somehow was able, as 

an 8 year old, to dwell perfectly within that  -  

he was the wild wolf, somehow, of that small 

patch of woods. He'd run around screaming 

and yelling, verbally accosting people,a wail, 

a shout, 'I'll kill you!' 'I can rip your arms out!' 

'This is my forest!'  -  and then, one day, after 

he had this horrible accident, and after a long 

recovery, he became quiet, reserved, no one 

knew what to do. Here's the little tale of Pete 

Whitaker : He'd walk around, eventually, with 

a blind-person cane, and glasses, never speaking. 

It became pretty sad  -  strange at first, but then 

just sad, to see a completely transformed and 

silenced blind kid where before this wild-child 

 had been. No one ever really spoke of it. I knew 

we never really did  -  among my sisters and her 

friends, it became legendary, Before all this, I 

knew him pretty well. Then, when he had his 

accident and returned months later blind, he 

was a totally different person. During this time, 

his father was the Museum of Natural History 

archeological and archeology digs safari guy. 

He'd go on trips and come back with bones, 

essentially. He was particular and precise. Odd 

fellow. I don't remember, or can't, if this stuff 

was after or before my train accident ocurring. 

He and his family went to Florida for a vacation 

(obviously Petey was the child, of whom I'm 

speaking. I mention the father only as father)  -  

back then, I don't know if there was Disneyland 

and all that crap, but they went to 'Florida'. He 

fell, from high atop a diving board, to the concrete 

below, really tragic, and came back, months later, 

blind  -  with a big scar and stuff on his skull, but 

otherwise OK. As I've also said, it completely 

changed him, totally, personality wise. I suppose 

this was about 1957. Perhaps second grade for 

me. And then, frankly, it wasn't but by maybe age 

10, that I seem to have lost all awareness, touch 

and contact of him. from a kid on Monica Court 

named Robert Noon. We were all wee friends 

(across the street from Jimmy Englert, and next 

from Dennis McCaffery). That as well goes for 

Robert Noon  -  early on, again at about age 7, 

he invited me to a party in his basement  -  his 

 birthday or something. It was , to my recollection, 

another one of those very very first times I'd been 

 invited to and went to something like this, alone 

and on my own. I was frightened to death. I 

remember freezing in place behind a cellar 

support post, while all others around me talked 

and went on like friends. It was almost sad, 

 especially now as I look back. I remember 

there was a girl there too, also from Madison 

Ave., Jeanette Small, I think was her name. 

I was totally infatuated with her. And she had 

an older sister too. But I didn't move, just was 

completely out of it and probably anti-social. 

I was a lame youth. Madison Ave, that little 

strip of a block adjacent to the newly-built 

church was a weird street too  -  a real bunch 

 of oddities lived there. It was a small, straight 

line of a  street, connected to the new church 

building. As a street, it always seemed lifeless 

and dull, with nothing ever happening  -  anyone 

we 'met' from that street, friended or whatever, 

it was never 'on' that street; they were always 

someplace else, or else on ours. I often sensed, 

somehow, that that street was probably a last, 

leftover opportunity for the developer to get 

another twelve homes in on the plans  -  a 

last, straight-line of a street, connecting to a 

 pre-existing section leading Avenel Street, 

and, of course, as well the safety of the two 

churches (Catholic and Presbyterian, already 

there). It worked, yes, but the street just never 

came to life. It's funny when things are artificial 

 contexts,  put-together pastiches of place; 

nothing which ever grew over time or took on 

a natural 'rhythm' of the people who lived there, 

amidst streams and woods and shallows. 

That was three-quarters of a century ago, and 

the same thing has happened ten million times 

over since  -  hills and valleys combined. 

People defend it all by saying it provided 

life and place for kids and families and 

 generations. OK, so what if it did? That's 

like the same people who speak of how all 

those pigs and cows brutally slaughtered 

for meat and the rest should be thankful 

to us because at least, because of it, they 

lived. If we had no need for them as 

slaughter-product, they'd never 

have been given a life.

-

Whatever, I can't let, or won't let, this stuff drive 

me crazy. It easily could do so. I have to preserve 

myself, and to do that I have to stop dwelling 

 on things of this nature. Supposedly  -  but that's 

like telling Cezanne to stop making harsh and 

angular lines in portraying his world. Funny thing 

about Cezanne actually -  a very weird and telling 

view, which startled me and had my total 

understanding as soon as I read it  -  Paul 

Cezanne had a feel for artifice. The 'greenness', 

say, of a painting was meant to show the 

greenness : everything in the picture was treated 

with the same importance or lack of importance, 

every slab or flick of color mattered as much as 

every other, that's how the painting made its shapes, 

and how it mattered that it was a painting  -  

something made. Cezanne had wanted people 

who saw it to see how it was formed out of paint, 

made of color, made of surface, before they even 

thought about trees or a lake. Artifice was what 

made the place in the picture  -  as well as the 

picture  -  truly alive. That way, through Cezanne, 

we knew it was telling us no lies, it was 

not deluding us, it was real.

-

That stunned me, privately anyway  -  it drove 

right to the heart and matter of what  I was 

searching for. All my work and art, I knew then, 

would have to be detailed and made so as to 

present the trueness of the 'represented' reality 

with which I was working. All these homes and 

places, all these silly places like Avenel, what 

suburban, low-class domesticated and developed 

woods and vales they were, they themselves, 

unwittingly and in ignorance, were nothing more 

than artifice. They were being built as artifice, 

yet people took them seriously, as if for real. 

Years later, through Pop Art and all that crap, the

idea of, the irony of, 'Artifice' as concept would

make people millions. It would self-manufacture 

an art industry, one of perverts and doyennes, 

sleazeballs and puppeteers, who would cling to 

and hang onto the mess they created, the muck 

and the mire of their own entrails -  all those Brillo 

boxes and naked kisses, those splash paintings 

and big dots and rocket ships and spaghetti-headed 

people : Robert Indiana, Larry Poons, Robert 

Rauschenberg : worked; it worked because, 

again, they were doing it at one level  -  with a 

philosophical underpinning, an art-history 

referential  imperative behind it, but those 

viewing it, the know-nothings, the society folk, 

the hipsters viewing, buying, gawking, partying 

to it, they knew little of that behind-the-scene 

theorizing. They were as ignorant as newspapers. 

My take on all this pretty much settled upon the 

idea of the 'artifact'  -  I guess, in my way. 

It's part of where I got stalled. I found myself 

unable to deal with the, let's call it, 'fakery' 

(artifice) needed to seem to care about, and 

play the form-game with, those people in 

position who made or broke the personages 

of their dumb little industry of Art. Just couldn't 

do it, for myself, or with them. Merchandising 

one's self, it always seemed to me, was not 

doing one's 'art'; the time spent was lost. And 

rearing it's own ugly head, in the midst of all 

this, was 'irony', that very dreaded disease. 

American culture at that point, having caught 

up to its own gist and presence, had begun 

merchandising itself, fully aware of the 'wink-wink' 

aspect of the self-referential and anti-historical 

(through play) ironic aspect, from that point on, 

of everything it did. Rainy Day Woman #12 & 35, 

anything by the Beatles, any Dean Martin Celebrity 

Roast, any TV  cavalcade of star-studded humor, 

Laugh-In to Carol Burnett, Pop Art to dance and 

theater, song and speech  -  all had turned to a 

wickedly broad sense of irony, inimical to itself 

and all of art history at the same time. Inbred. 

Going nowhere. Dedicated to the dollar. 

Exploited by jewel-mongers, media thieves

 and disingenuous moguls. Fake art.