Tuesday, July 5, 2016

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.


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