8369. THINGS ARE DIFFERENT NOW, #105

105. MAMA'S BOYS

I guess I mentioned magic : that

old black magic that you weave

so well. I don't know who wrote

that, but it was in my head often

enough down there, an old, middle

of the road song, nothing to do

with rock and roll or hippie culture.

But all this streetside Jewish stuff

always kept it current. It all

appeared a lot like that to me -

a magic zone, or, anyway, a zone

of magic where anyone part of

the club could call anything

whatever they wished and

magically have it be so. I'd

never faced or dealt with any

Jewish culture before. My

piano teacher, I've made

mention  -  not here but in

'Leaving It All Again'  -  was

strict Jewish, living in her little

Claire Avenue house, alone with

her mother. Totally natty, with a

spectacular, overwrought neatness;

morgue-like almost. Chopin's

Funeral March as background

music. Jewish culture was zany.

They were small, set, dark, and

silent, yet, at the other extreme,

as loud and raucous, foul and

filthy as could be. My Franz Kafka

to your Lenny Bruce. The funniest

Jewish joke I ever heard, in fact,

I heard right there: three Jew guys,

going on and on about how great

they fucked their wives, stallions

all. A contest for the next morning

-  go home, throw your wife down,

screw her brains out, and see who

can make her scream the longest.

Next day, first guy - 'went home,

got her at the kitchen table, tore

her clothes off, she screamed for

20 minutes.' Next guy, 'got home

we ate, had some wine, she got

undressed, I took her on the couch,

she moaned and screamed for

forty-five minutes. Great sex!'

Third guy ' that's nothing! I went

home, grabbed her, fucked her

hard,  wiped my dick on the

curtains when we were done,

and she's still screaming!' Yep

Jewish humor, man. A real riot.

-

I spent lots of my time in New

York, those early days, taking

advantage of the 24-hour warm

weather, nay hot. It's the best

way to learn, I've heard tell, that

total immersion. I took in every

hour that I could, aimless, by

some respects, yet in reality so

far from 'aimless' as to be

laughable. There are numerous

things, right off, that I grew to

dislike: people who went about

saying stuff like, 'It's been a long

day, I gotta' get some sleep.' Yes,

OK -  I always understood that,

but little did I often do it. Too

much to miss out on. Another

really annoying thing that was

beginning to happen back then,

not too much, because remotes

and networking hadn't really

started yet, but bars began to

showcase TV's. Even the most

crummy, little black and whites.

They'd put up some shelf or

pedestal somewhere and all

of a sudden they'd have

plopped a TV on it. Always

on, no matter what  -  sports,

some fool news guy going on

and on, dramas or soap operas.

All the worst crud you could

think of. And then when remotes

started coming out, you'd get

some little bartender creep

ruling the roost about what

to watch, and you're suddenly

stuck in a roomful of Red Sox

drunks, or whatever. School

allegiances. Euro-nations stuff.

Like I cared. I began realizing

'what was happening here?' when

even the dark and quiet sanctuary

of bars was being invaded by the

inconsolable crotch-twitchings

(or maybe cross-stitchings) of

advertising over and above any

need whatsoever. Cry in your

beers, burp-brothers everywhere.

The war is coming home to you

as the sanctimonious continue to

fight for your America.

-

Yes, I was despairing; despairing

of ever being an artist who could

make any sense of peace with the

modern world. It wasn't like,

with music, Hendrix, Dylan, all

those types to whom it was all

pretty much flash-in-the-pan

good-luck pyrotechnics. I'm

meaning to say, yeah, they're

stuff is still around, it wasn't

meaningless in that sense, but

there was at the same a

nameless 1960's air of junk

and exploitation about it. All

that crap was around, I sort

of watched it all with one eye.

It wasn't any Adagio For Strings,

believe me. All that pop-music

stuff was hype, and it was

destructive too; still is. To minds

that matter, to the reality of

creative development. That

was junk-culture art, music,

trite and slap-happy no matter

what was said. Funny thing was,

that entire burgeoning hippie

culture stuff, it was all Jewish

too. All those guys behind the

scenes, they were all Jews,

the usual coterie of entertainment

and managerial, after-the-money

types. It can be denied, but there's

no denying any of it. Get the

list of names, go down it,

and tell me. I could just never

figure it out  - a lot of those guys,

they'd be around, hippie as all

bullshit get out, but if you turned

them over, they were Jewish like

cats. Zolly Yanofsky, Mark Rudd,

Bob Zimmerman, Ginsberg, 

Kupferberg, that's just a few. The

entire hippie world was a perversion,

and a lie too, I found out, most all of

and propagated by mama-worshiping 

young Jewish guys living out their 

crisis-moments, of growing up 

and out, by simply projecting it 

out onto the culture-at-large 

around them, and functionally 

weakening it so they could

best their problems.  It was

some pretty serious shit,

actually, and people

died over it.

-
Well, you take things apart, you
learn how they run, you check out
the specs, and then you just better
hope you know how to put it all
back together. Up to a point, that 
was my life, but for me too it was all
black magic. Why? because I had
learned how to do all this at once.
In the same open moment of my time,
I was dismantling, reviewing, inspecting, 
noting, and (trying to be) putting it all
back together too, in some form of a
working, sensible semblance of human
 order which at least would allow me
to let others think I was one of them.
It was a slow, deliberate, and very kept
piece of work, all this, which took and
demanded most all of my time. The
work of a master merchant. The
Jeweler with the magnifier loupe on
his eye. Always inspecting, 
and always looking.