88. UNCLE HORACE
One thing to note, or a way of
pointing it out anyway, was how
amazing I found it to be living
amidst people I'd only read about
before. Not everyone goes through
that - most people, maybe, read
about Uncle Horace in an old
sports page their mother saved,
or something, and there, before
them, is some rickety old man
introduced as Uncle Horace,
from Utah, or somewhere, their
mother's oldest brother, who ran a
hundred-yard return back in 1951
for the University of Kitchagoomie
or something like that. This was all
different. For me : I was living with
legends, the artist and the writers
I'd learned about. Here, here it was,
at the White Horse, that the poet
Dylan Thomas had gagged himself
Dylan Thomas had gagged himself
near to death in his drunken, poetic
stupidity and, along the way, passed
out, collapsed, to die right over there,
at St. Vincent's. This here IS where
Auden lives, over there is the home
of Marcel Duchamp, here Dorothy
Day, there Andy Warhol, and there
Allen Ginsberg too. I won't say the
list was endless, but after a while I
had enough names and presences,
most certainly, to fill your pockets
and bloomers too, with, sweetheart.
And you didn't even need to know
who they all were, because they
were part of me. Part of me just
like that Wednesday evening
mid-week mad smog was, the
gushing of all those cars belching
their smoke and grime on the
Eighth Street windows of time.
I had, for all practical purposes,
located and stilled, or killed
even, that old me - the Avenel
one of limited references,
improper schooling, dazed
lookings out to the world, and
replaced it properly with the
one I wanted. Like Moses,
I had gone to the mountaintop
I'd been called to, and I'd come
back scarred, but filled with
message and portent and
meaning. Now, if I could
only get the rabble to stop
worshiping that damned
golden calf.
-
It's a very different thing,
and a hard to explain one
as well, to experience such
an environment from the
inside out. You can read
about Paris and all the
ex-patriot American writers
who'd been there, but you
still haven't experienced it.
This was enthralling, it was
an open environment that
just sucked me in - lines
and words and verbs and
actions, everywhere
swirling. How to explain
it? Everything was
swirling alive. I'd go
home now and then,
bus or train, no reason
but mostly to see my
girlfriend let's say, and
once I arrived I'd realize
everything was dead. The
streets were dead, windows
and stores and houses,
schools and factories and
lumberyards, cars and
lawnmowers and sheds
and driveways. All dead.
There was nowhere to go.
Nothing a'foot, except envy
and hostility. Something
strange, everywhere, and
no longer to my liking one
bit. If that was 'America', I
wanted none of it. I'd scurry
back to the city, and feel
alive, at least, and know
and experience all else as
alive, vibrant, real, and
working. If THAT was
America, I'm there! It
seemed as if every person,
guy, girl, man or woman,
whatever their back-stories
and situations, were more
to me in a second than
two hours with anything
on that vast 'other' side of
the tunnels and the bridges.
Different meanings and
different situations, all.
-
Everywhere I went, the vast
'old' was still around. I was in
the building in which Stuart
the building in which Stuart
Davis, the artist, took a
stipend from - Gertrude
Vanderbilt Whitney and
Juliana Force purchasing
two of his paintings, back
then, to get him started on his
way to Paris - when my place right
here was the newly-opened 1918
here was the newly-opened 1918
'Whitney Studio Club,' taking
in artists from the recently
disbanded Henri school
(artists around the artist
Robert Henri), Edward
Hopper among them. Well,
that's where I was, and that's
the place I was living.
Incredible. This 'history
lends special resonance' to
my days. The spiritual
forbears and the wickedly
racking ghosts of the sounds
and sights I'd see in those
weird basement rooms and
cubbies. Everything was
there, all together and as
at once. It was not 'at once',
of course - because the
spectral time which carries
these things does not have
'moments' of linearity as
we know it, just, instead,
overlaps, scrims, and
suggested pictures.
-
It's all, in fact, overlap.
One other thing I realized
was that, in that traditional
arts there was no separation
between sorts. Writing, painting,
poetry, prose, plays, dance,
photography, drawing, etching,
graphics, sculpture, they all
went together. It was only the
bullshit merchant-world that
put distinctions and made the
differentiations between them,
so they could fill in the blanks
with their filthy lucre. (This
goes for then. I know nothing
of the 'now', when all things
in the arts have become
confessional, trite, pompous,
rash, and stupid. Filled with a
preening pomposity and irony,
and, as well, a monolithic political
culture and a 'correctness' so
blatant it would still kill Jesus).
Unfortunately, since the days of
my yore, that's what 'art-schools'
as well have become : rational
underpinnings for merely a
'successful career'. Might as
well be jaded too. Forget any
of that 'muscularity' in paint,
of the Jackson Pollock days.
-
I was convinced there was
another world, and I was right,
and I knew it. Milton Resnick,
famed artist, had given me his
three thin volumes of poetry
written in Amsterdam,
Rotterdam, Hamburg, and
Paris too. It reiterated for me
the crossover of the arts, again,
into each other. David Hare,
famed artist, would show me
his things, and writing and
drawings too, and I knew there
was a one-soul crossover into
everything together; the vast
and creative melange of another
form of existence - which I
was convinced and determined
to grab and stay with. And I
did, and I had. Right up the
street from me, a few doors
off, had been The Jumble Club,
and across from that, Romany
Mary's, Wilentz's Eighth
Street Bookstore. In the other
direction had been Hans Hoffman's
little studio art-school grouping,
and the 10th Street artists and
their insular but groundbreaking
gallery scene. The present
was in the past, for me, and
vice-versa, and the
rest be damned.
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