201. ART IMITATES LIFE
You know how, in life, it's
funny about certain things :
for instance, once you
'decide' to park the car,
the car's already as good
as parked. No one ever
mentions that, but intention
here bears so much of the
burden of what gets done.
It's like that everywhere too.
The idea of crime, I'm pretty
sure, is a cry for help; the
criminal wants to be caught,
and the intention of doing the
crime is to bring himself to
justice. 'Someone, take me
in!' Politics, the same way -
all that contorted ranting
and raving over fake things.
It does nothing except add
eventual numbers to the
equation of malice and bad
things : kills your kids in
'wartime'; warps their brains
for the rest of their days; it
gives an allowance then to
the mind-destroying alterations
of rule and power. No one
even blinks.
-
I was never one to take things
at face value - because face
value is false. There are
numerous layers to any one
thing, and as you peel them
back, you learn. The fury of
any story is what - the fury?
Or the story? There's no
answer, just a gob full
of circular conundrums.
Words that cannot be said.
Words that always fail. The
less regular stuff I know, the
better off I am. I don't
want anything of it.
-
Back at Elmira College, I'd
see the artist Gandy Brody.
He was a famous 1950's guy,
NY painter, bohemian, beatnik
crowd, Kenneth Koch, all that.
Or if not then just maybe a
second-tier leftover of all that.
At the college, Gandy was kind
of at sea. When he died at age
51, I was shocked, having
thought he was 60 plus, at
least. That just shows what
stupidity youth knows, really.
It's all relative - any of that
age stuff is. Mindless and
useless. He was, as I said,
kind of nowhere at Elmira
College. I guess he had
gotten a nice contract for
a year or two of residency.
I never knew any of that
stuff, nor even how colleges
give that out. Elmira's Art
Department was one block
over, in a nice, brick building,
all filigree'd and arty itself.
No matter what you were
doing, it was a nice quiet and
restful place, where you
could think, sit back, be
yourself, smell like oil
paints. My kind of place.
The Studio School and
all its painterly aromas used
to do the same for me. Today's
droll and sanitized world has
gotten rid of a lot of that odor;
it's a sloppy smell, of art and
artists. Nobody wants that
around today. They even
want their toilets to smell
like pine trees or lemons. I
figure that's all a woman's
thing; even I can't say that
these days, as I think of it
anyway it's really probably
not even that. Women don't
come up with these sorts of
frou-frou things. It's only a
certain kind of anal man that
does it, and then he gets a
rise out of making sure that
everyone else gets it too. It's
only intention. Gandy used to
walk his dog around - and
on Sundays it was without fail.
You could set your clock by it.
Like Kant or whoever that guy
was who was fastidiously
punctual about his daily walks.
I'd see him, in the mess of all
that crap, and doing whatever,
and we'd just talk. I never let
on to him at all about anything -
not the Studio School, not art
not any of that. I knew all about
him, and the times he came out
of, and some of his work and
thought, but I just let it go. To
think apart, as if we were both
just intention : our cars were
sure to be parked. It gave me
a grand insight to see such a
person. Whatever he was
doing there, I enjoyed seeing.
I never felt any reason to start
filling him in, wrecking his
space, with any of the junky
stuff about myself. It was of
no concern. He was singular.
-
Over the hill from the art studio
area, funny enough, was a biker
bar. I don't think there was much,
if any at all, intermingling back
the between the two crowds. I
was not with either, and I don't
know if college kids drank there;
I didn't know anything about
their habits, nor what and how
anyone drank. But I'd get a kick
out of just the realization that,
in 1973 - a sort of 'last-stand'
years for real, hard-assed honest
'Bikers' - just beyond this silly
hill of art and color and design,
there rested a den of incontinents
who could rip the otherwise
stately heads of that art and
college crowd, had they
chosen to. Again, it was all
intention, If the swords and the
bottles had even gotten started,
there would have been no end
to it. And the funny thing was,
back then, I was a lot more in
Gandy Brodie's world than I
was in theirs.
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