Friday, June 30, 2017

9696. FIDEL CASTRO'S ONLY SON

FIDEL CASTRO'S ONLY SON
Something nice had held my hand. 
Perhaps a tropical thing or some 
ground-crawling creeper. I didn't
know but I was transfixed.  Fireworks
went off overhead; one or another of
those endless American holidays.
-
Elian Gonzalez, for those who remember,
was forcibly returned to his homeland.
Chiseling gunmen, in American employ,
ripped him from the arms of his uncle.
It's a bad story, and it sill continues.
-
He's probably 35 by now, or older. I don't 
know what he looks like or how he speaks. 
Perhaps he's smart. Perhaps he smokes 
cigars and drives a '56 Chevy along the 
streets of Havana. I just wouldn't know.
-
I never know what anyone wants : stars and
stripes forever, songs and cheers, the star-
spangled banner sung by geeks and eunuchs?
What' America for, if not for that? It's soon
to be the Fourth of July. (Yipee!)

9695. TAKE MY HANGING BASKET, pt. 18

TAKE MY HANGING BASKET
- the Jazz Loft, pt.18, 1967 - 
It always amazed me to realize
how much of this all was 
generational. Things, or rather,
groups come through time like 
tides. A good number of these 
jazz guys, older ones anyway, 
were, in '66 and '67, just a clean 
20 years from having been mustered 
out of their services at the close of
WWII. That's not a lot of time at all,
especially for something like that,
an experience of that depth and
presence. It stays within and is
always processing and growing  -  
I'd figure that was what a lot of these
guys were (still) playing to. Music
was a way out, some fractional
morass, a web of things that grows
inside and wants outlets. What better
way than a crackling new sort of
music  - blow a hole right through
the soul. That was all one fist of a 
generation punching through. As I
said, generational, as even a lot of
those 'beatnik' high-flyers were, the
dark, brooding existential ones, the
early 1950's rejects. As a group, they
all shared, picking up the pieces, mean
or not, of the broken worlds around them.
Same with the Hell's Angels, also right
there  -  they were originally WWII
veteran pilots, fighter-jet guys, on the
lam and trying to put something together
in a crummy post-war world not for them.
There's wasn't music, per se, but instead
a noisy fury of attitude and motorcycle, 
fire and grease. Twenty years behind 
them again, generational, was my own 
brood of shits  -  somehow bizarrely
breaking through and coming in as
1967 hippies. Flower and love, mirth
and lightness. What the hell that was all
about I never knew  -  but I didn't want
any of it touching or rubbing off on me.
I hated that crap. I was dysfunctional
before they'd figured that term out yet.
Now the same creeps are having 50 year
high-school reunions, and bragging about 
it all in their wallpaper smugness.
Hippie Legionnaires.
-
I knew a guy there, Jerry, who swore that
the things he'd seen in his wartime would 
never cross his lips again and that the only
thing that would cross his lips would be his
horn. No women, not food, if he could help
it  -  then he'd joke and say, of course he 
hoped not, wine women and song being
some part of his well-being. And at least
he could laugh, he wasn't a zombie about
it. That's a bit of what you had to watch 
for with these guys  -  they liked to laugh 
and blow things off with each other. It 
was their camaraderie and flippant ways
that kept them running. On the other hand, 
it became the fear of all that any one of 
the dark, quiet and angry ones would 
snap, at any time, and needed to be
watched. For fear of something happening.
The dark monster was always around.
-
There wasn't much of that with the jerk 
kids coming in  -  not to the loft, I mean 
to the hippie outdoor central that Tompkins 
Square Park had become; and Washington 
Square, and ten other places too. All they 
cared about, besides the scoring of a 
stash, any sort of lame recreational drug 
by which they all claimed their Nirvana. 
Not a one of them would have had a real
clue as to the things I was running through. 
They may have thought they saw themselves 
in me, but I would have blasted them to 
disprove the integration  -  and I sure didn't
see myself in them. I had slaved my way
out of the same bullshit situations they
were working their way into. I knew for sure
that I wasn't going back in. My heart and my
mind were elsewhere, and intended to stay 
elsewhere, as long as I had anything
to do with it.
-
In 1956 a guy named Saul Bellow, an
American writer, later of some very great
renown, for a time (they fade, they all fade, 
these reputations), wrote a book which came out
as 'Seize the Day.' A little, skinny book, maybe
120 pages, most. I scored a cop of it for a penny in
one of those silly book-stall places that just sold 
anything that may have been in someone's house
when they died  -  a penny back than as maybe 75 
cents now. For a week or two I carried that
dumb little book everywhere, probably reading it
4 or 5 times. I do that often, like a concentrated
read of, say, a music score, so it gets into my head
and stays there, sings and hums at will. (In fact, I 
still have that copy of the 1961 95 cent, original
Compass Books, by Viking Press, version).
Bellow, and this book, was always just a
major whiz-bang Jewish writer, heavily
themed and indoctrinated with all that myopic
Jew-guilt and persistence about everything,
warts, women, marriage, angst, money,
money problems, betrayal, alienation, ritual,
rites, sex, rabbis, sex, women. Obviously they 
are consumed by this stuff. So is this book. 
The main character, all entwined in conflict 
with his aged father, and some shyster guy 
named Dr. Tamkin. These old Jew guys live
in a long-residence hotel filled with versions
of themselves, over and over. It's all talky, 
and filled with, actually, self-consumptive 
and pretty boring stuff. The son, 'Tommy 
Wilhelm,' (typical fake 'American' name), is
going broke, his ex-wife demanding more and
more, the kids, the father, everyone in forms
of disagreement, Wilhelm takes up with Tamkin, 
giving him his last money to make some sort 
of killing on lard futures and other commodities.
Like I said a few chapters back, typical stuff, these
creeps trying to make money off of others by doing
nothing at all, like the music-contracts guys.
It all falls flat, Tamkin runs off with the dough,
the kid is ruined. Etc. But  -  he says the
following two things, which I loved.  First,
(his crummy sister's an artist): 'Anyway, he
and his sister were generally on the outs and
he didn't often see her paintings. She worked
very hard, but there were fifty thousand people
in New York with paints and brushes, each
practically a law unto himself.  It was the
Tower of Babel in paint.' And, second,
which I really liked, : 'He breathed in the
sugar of pure morning. He heard the long 
phrases of the birds. No enemy wanted
his life.  Wilhelm thought, I will get out of
here. I don't belong in New York any more.
And he sighed like a sleeper.'
                                                                            ..............................the end



9694. MEMORY

MEMORY
In a tempest:
The jagged carnival,
where people shrug along,
about solid, in their riff-raff
way. All are here tonight for a
free concert, of sorts. This town's
pretty big on noise.

9693. CALPERS AND CALLFETTO

CALPERS AND CALFETTO
LANDSCAPING
Some men were lining the driveway with
flowers : dreading the moment, watching
for something while a lean cat crawled 
among the blooms they'd just put down.
There had to be a language for this, yet
they didn't know it, as they scat-talked
to each other in their Mexican tongue.
-
Which never shuts up. Which does just
rattle on. Still another slams the truck
door where a radio blasts  -  words and
music only known to them. I sit back,
for myself, and think about gun control
and deportation and the wall; any of those
current issues we define thing by.
-
If one of them was wounded, I guess I'd help;
or if one had a child, falling down, I'd go
and give assistance  -  the wife walking by
muttering thanks, or gracias, or whatever.
-
There has no be no inclination for the 
declination of the power that's the force 
of a heart, and, as difficult as it all might be, 
we sink or swim in this together. I can't
say more for, in this case, here, I surprise
even myself with these considerations.

Thursday, June 29, 2017

9692. DRY HOLLOW

DRY HOLLOW
There's an ivory town in Ohio called Nathan.
I went there once on a sled and stayed two
years, studying Virgil. Catullus. Ovid.
Now I've forgotten everything I've ever
learned about anything at all. It's supposed
to be a Paradise, doing that  -  clearing the
mind, open-sledding, running free.
I'm a zen master. Yes, that's me.

9691. A BIT OF A DEARTH

A BIT OF A DEARTH
There are a lot of things going around :
Pretty much, you name it, it's there -
disease, rumor, innuendo, sickness 
and death all together. There are
chartists and amortization tables
and things of that nature  -  they
watch all this stuff. Burning a candle
dispenses a flame, but they search for
smoke. It's a dead giveaway for dead
giveaways. Actuarial tables, telling
me on what day I should be dying.
-
Just outside Trenton, there's a real river of
fire; or, well, stream, meandering brook,
whatever the small things are called.
They used to smelt iron there, in the old
industrial revolution days, when Trenton
made and the world really did take. 
Locomotives, steamboats, overland
wagons, wooden sticks and boxes for
matches, ladies undergarments.
Roebling, wire-rope, steel magnates
coming into town for a week, staying
at one of the grand hotels, to make deals.
-
And probably to check out ladies undergarments
again  -  once for business and once for pleasure.
Double your pleasure, double your fun. Life's
twice as good with Doublemint Gum. I want
to think that's how glum advertising began.
Forced into a necessity with no way out,
with that small river of fire coursing by.

9690. I WAS WIRY, I WAS WILLOW

I WAS WIRY, I WAS WILLOW
And the directory called me Tony; or it
at least referred to me as Tony in the
listing of tenant names. So I guess I
was also tony. I'm not sure what any 
of that means, but here's how it goes.
Just today, I hired my wealth management
agent. He goes my the name of Mario,
and just got out of jail. The first thing 
I asked him was if he'd passed go.

Wednesday, June 28, 2017

9689. TAKE MY HANGING BASKET, pt. 17

TAKE MY HANGING BASKET
-the Jazz Loft, pt. 17, 1967 - 
I walked around a lot, with big
thoughts. I'd walk up, from 8th,
to wherever I was headed  -  each
different direction, any old adventure.
The districts of the lofts and studios, 
west teens and 20's, they held the 
most interest  to me  -  as I said
previously, a step into a ways back 
of time. When things were different.
I never got much into the present day,
and those that did, who could calmly 
swim in that new ocean, they just sort
of most often bugged me.
-
The main thing, the big word, 
was 'vile'. I thought of that and 
from that point on the rest of 
life became fairly easy. It's a 
quiet concept, 'vile.' One that 
covers the entire, vile, world. 
And that's all it is. I think that's 
what the jazz loft guys had realized 
too  -   one big, vile world hardly 
worth connecting to. And they 
took it all out in jazz-music, of 
their own sort. The Studio School 
people, as nice as they were and 
as important and serene as they 
kept things, were of a different 
nature. As part of the 'other' 
world, in their way, they kept 
the other veneer -  a niceness, 
a business-like happiness, the 
sort of office-decor decorum 
you find in places with clerks 
and registrar-rooms and people 
keeping track of things. It's just 
different, a something different. 
I guess I had to admit, the world 
was breaking their way, certainly 
not mine, nor the jazz guys' 
way either. You have to separate 
the word 'vile' from the negatives 
that attach themselves to it. 
That's all just human thought, 
running on. The difference, 
in fact, is pretty easy to discern  
-  too easy, maybe too simple : 
'Art,' nice. Badass 1960's black-guy 
jazz, bad. All these years later - 
now -  the little facts of the matter 
are the same, it's just the big 
quantities which are different. 
Hordes of toady touristy types, 
swarming the Trevi Fountain, 
say, without a clue. I mean the 
steely packs of idiots, straight 
out of central casting for some 
crowd scene in a new version of 
'The Blob.' This time in American 
colored-clothing, little phone-cameras, 
fat bellies and asses, luggage and 
stupid clothing and shirts. Adornments. 
Wives and husbands, kids and clowns. 
Yes, everywhere, as if the disinterred 
bodies of every cheesy street-character 
mime and cat-walker from the 1960's
has arisen from the dead and taken 
to the world. 'We go here, and we 
go there, and next we go to that.' 
Vile figments of nasty consumers, 
worldwide gainers ruining the world
 they seek to see. It's a paradox of 
the unknown, by the unknown. 
Maybe that's a good definition of 
'vile.' And then they get back, return
home, and know nothing again.
-
Oftentimes, really, I just wanted 
to starve to death. Maybe. Working 
through the streets I often had a 
death wish larger than the Grand 
Canyon  -  all around me were 
the chances. Drugs. Jumping from 
any tall building. Grabbing a gun 
and blowing my brains out. A million 
things to just jump in front of, trains, 
buses, subway cars. Sometimes it was 
all I could do to stay living. Not that 
it really mattered. On one hand, 'The
Blob.' On the other, 'The Living Dead.'
But I stuck to it, to something, just in
order to survive. Why wander all those
dumb years in the wilderness just to throw
it all away now? That's what I'd tell myself.
There had to be an answer to the riddle
facing me. I kept returning to the source,
as if I was some archaeologist at a dig
whereat I kept moving too far afield 
with my little hammer and shovel and,
once realizing it, moves back in closer
to the initial point of the dig's start.
Otherwise you just end up searching
for completely other things than what 
you initially had set out for. Sidetracked?
-
As it turned out, I kept it well enough in one
piece to outlast it all myself.  It's a relatively
easy task. There were dark moments, and a
few dangerous times, but mostly it all turned
out for the good. I compartmentalized pretty
good too  -  I had one or two friends, like my
sometimes sidekick Jim Tomberg (again, 
material I've covered real well in previous 
episodes of other accounts). Jim was a
ham-fisted brawler, a strong but heavy
drinker, and a metal-sculptor. My travels
and times with him consisted of lots of
very cool things  -   train rides out to 
Brooklyn scrap yards to find, buy and 
somehow come back with, his odd little,
and not so little sometimes, pieces of
steel and things for his welding and 
sculpturing projects. Always a crazy trip,
and I never knew what was coming  -  
booze, brawn, outlandish stunts along 
the way and, inevitably, his (nearly 
always) middle-aged female pick-up.
I figured them for that anyway. If I was
18, he was 28 or 30, and he'd always
somehow wind up dragging home a 
40-year old. He had exquisite taste in
railroad and subway women. Sometimes 
I'd mutter, virile, not vile. He never did
have too much to do with Art, in that
sense of proper and fussy. He didn't know
it, but he was more akin to those jazz guys
than he'd ever imagine.

9688. IN TERMS I CAN UNDERSTAND

IN TERMS I CAN UNDERSTAND
The witch hazel never works, and the
annoyance goes on : on the side of the
Graybar Building they have cables which
support an entryway, and on those cables
are numerous, nicely sculpted, metal rats.
Probably thirty-thousand and more people
pass beneath them each day, and no one
ever notices : it's a comical quirk, I figure,
thrown in by the architect and most likely
with the approval of the people owning the
building. On Lexington Avenue, it's the
Graybar Building and no one mentions 
the rats. I never know : In terms I can
understand, is it the rats over-running
the people, or (isn't it) the people
over-running the rats?

Tuesday, June 27, 2017

9687. TAKE MY HANGING BASKET, pt.16

TAKE MY HANGING BASKET
- the Jazz Loft, pt. 16, 1967 -
I always figured for something to come along,
one way or the other; so I just rolled ahead.
Inherent in the deal I'd made with myself
was the idea that as long as I applied myself
towards a goal of learning and creativity, as
long as I could 'back up' whatever it was I
was doing, thinking or undergoing, it was 
OK. I wanted no falsity, no compromise.
Lo, these many years later, it's brought me
to this pass  -  which is good. Had I ever
tried to explain this or even bring it up 
to any of these guys, it would have been a
non-starter, not even within their language.
So it was always easier just to remain 
by myself, silent, sort of, and solitary.
-
I used to wonder if any of this little
microcosm of things that I was being
exposed to was, likewise, going on all 
over and in other places of the city. If there
were loft groups and crazy bunches of
musicians and creative types doing this
sort of thing all over the place? And there 
were, that was pretty apparent and obvious  
-  and now, in reading anything back from  
those old days, I can see the message clearly 
spread : that was what NYC was all about,
that overwhelming creative push, and it
was going on everywhere. There were so
many iterations of it, I think that's where I'd
get tripped up. Layers. Strata. Everyone going
on all at once. It was pretty incredible. Really,
the only 'artsy' thing I never dealt with at
all was dance. I had a friend or two who
got all caught up in dance. One of them, a
friend on my periphery, was the least likely
to have that interest, but he did and when
he started bringing it up to me all the time I
got perplexed. I just could not share any of
the attributes he was claiming for and about
dance. Modern dance, interpretive dance, etc.
At the time there were layers of dance groups
and an entire avant-garde of dance itself.
Martha Graham had a grand dance history,
Twyla Tharp, Merce Cunningham, to name
but a few. The entire Beatnik thing always
had its cliched black-leotard skinny girls
dance cult. It was part of that dealt, plus, of
course, the silent undercurrent of gay and 
male dancers  -  all those stage stars and 
Broadway choreograph people. But I just
never went there. I asked my friend about
it all once saying like, 'What's the deal with
your interest in all this ballet and dance stuff?'
I was really curious and just seeking an 
answer. It turned out, and I figure it was a 
cop-out answer on his part anyway, that he had 
an 8 or 9 year old daughter that I hadn't
known about, custody with the mother,
and his every-other weekend thing with
her, based  -  he said  -  on her interest in
it, pretty much rotated around dance  - 
recital, performances, shows and all that.
-
I guess there were attempts at dance-to-jazz
things. I never caught any, not cared. Nor 
did I ever see any of the jazz guys show an 
interest in that sort of thing. It seems to me 
that it's only when what I call 'culture-vultures' 
get involved that all this troublesome overlapping 
of arts begins to happen.  Otherwise, before that, 
it's just the simple dedication and drive of the 
people doing the art that makes it what it is. It's 
that whole purity thing, and it's like that everywhere. 
There's an entire outside race  -  I ain't saying and 
you must know what I mean  -  it's on you, not me  -  
that then always wants to jump in, do nothing, 
ride the coattails, extend crooked and cheap,
dirty contracts taking advantage of the artist,
setting up gigs and appearances, shows and 
the rest, and then walking off with the exorbitant 
profits of another's labor. It's always been like 
that, and that's how all this jazz crap, and art 
too, operated. Shysters and con men making 
coin of the labors of others. I learned that
quickly, and all these guys knew about it too.
Race, in this case, superseded color.