9809. RUDIMENTS, pt. 34

RUDIMENTS, pt. 44

Making Cars

There might have been a time you

could have caught me dead drunk

myself, say at Peter McManus, on

17th and 7th, I think it is; or

McSorley's, or Hogs, or Sidewalk,

or  -  oh why should I go on. That's

what earlier life is for. We all have

our own nightmares and memories

tucked away in that kangaroo pouch

of heart we all wear. I don't regret

mine; no, actually what I regret is

this modern day and all its crap

and all its people.

-

If you remember, three or four

chapters back, that old Polish guy

with the concentration camp numbers

on his forearm, the guy I'd see each

morning at his corner, well, he never

spoke a word. If there were regrets

or problems, I guess he had absorbed

them all. Internalized the infraction,

in psychological terms, so as to make

something else from it all, whatever

it may have been, in  order to salvage

the life left. Otherwise he'd spend his

time, I guess, just mourning all that

he'd seen. It's a sort of nervous, creative

energy, in spite of all  -  and I'd be willing

to bet it was something he didn't even

know he had or was working with. I

had it too. It was, of course, completely

different from his, and by any comparison

I was a gutter-snipe compared to that

poor man. In my fashion, I'd awakened

one day, like a pilgrim lost, in some

other, magical land I'd only imagined,

or heard about, or dreamed. Nothing I

was brought up with had ever prepared

me for the cauldron of swirling vapor

I'd dropped myself in to; I didn't want

to burn or get scalded. My passport was

still punched 'Origination : Avenel.' And

to where I was going, it didn't yet say.

-

So, whatever time is, that time evolved.

Like a pliable form in a wind-tunnel of

experimentation, I slowly too shape; by

the buffeting and through the streamlining

of what passed over me, that was the

shape I began to take  -  fortunately for

me guided and watched over by, none

other than, myself! Guaranteed payout,

I was hoping. No mistakes and no bad bets.

-

What goes best with alcohol? Why, art, of

course, or so it seemed. Most everyone I

ever met, if not drinking then, needed about

ten minutes to be doing so. It facilitated

everything and made everything easier too:

bravado, carping, complaining. overtalking,

fighting, or brawling at least, loving, and

of course, it always made more drinking

easier. It made men careless and women

slipshod and easy. Art-babes and men with

sticks and brushes. How much American art

going on about me was really just the

resultant smear of Jack Daniels, I never

knew  -  though I could think of a few

painters who may as well have signed their

paintings in that manner. Also, and very

important too, it made Hamptons men who

aimed fast cars at trees perfect shot. A

bulls-eye each time. Death seals careers,

it caps achievement, it outs an end to doubt

and expectation too. Undertakers finalize the

last viewing, so to speak, while the gallery

guys do the same. But they think of it as the

first-viewing instead, in a soon-to-be-long

and growing second life.

-

One time I went up to Ithaca, New York.

Not drunk, I got there with two solid feet.

The rest of the world was on fire; I wasn't

Along the way I was reading Tocqueville,

one of these experiences he wrote about

of his visit all across early America. A

Frenchy's view of the new (old) continent.

Ithaca and that, together, had filled my head

with ideas of new things and what to do.

Whatever the late 60' were, at that point.

The weirdness of Ithaca had embraced it;

Cornell was a tinderbox, people were

rioting and screaming, and the crazies  -

black and white  -  had basically shut the

whole place down, learning be damned,

and up yours. If I felt like anyone right

there and then, it was Thorstein Veblen.

Anyway, Tocqueville's companion in this

travel had written (they were right then

traveling west from Albany : "I was saying

that the whole country is but a forest. I

might add that everywhere a clearing is

to be seen, which is rare enough, that

clearing is a village. They give to these

villages the most celebrated names of

ancient or modern cities, such as Troy,

Rome, Liverpool..." And Ithaca, all

28,000 people of it. A history professor

there, L. Pearce Williams, when asked

what he thought might be the first thing

Tocqueville noticed if he were to return

now (1968) said 'Totalitarian Democracy.'

He meant that America had been taken

over, and that underneath all those false

celebrations of diversity, individualism

and freedom, was a huge mistaken notion.

'Men's main opinions become alike as the

conditions of their lives become alike...

though any one of them could part company

with the rest and work out his own beliefs,

in the end they all concur, unconsciously 

and unintentionally, in a certain number 

of common opinions. It must be rare, in

a democracy for a man suddenly to conceive 

a system of ideas far different from those

accepted by his contemporaries; and I

suppose that, even should such an innovator

arise, he would have great difficulty in

making himself heard to begin with, and 

even more in convincing people."

-

I did used to sit around bars sometimes,

Jonathan Swift's was the best for this, and,

at their grand, old wooden tables, the places 

like Swift's anyway which were set up for 

those sorts of environments, and, nursing 

slow beer after beer, remain for hours, 

reading and writing. This was all, remember,

pre-laptop, pre- computer and smartphone

and ANY of that at all. I'm not sure what 

people do now, if they do anything of that 

sort at all, but all these bar-scene places, 

oddly enough, have mostly been replaced 

with coffee shops, sometimes even more

grand, and with writing tables and all the

other amenities, where people now sit for 

hours at large wooden table, writing and 

typing and otherwise Internet-communicating, 

with coffee after coffee. Same world, 

different world, who knows and who 

cares? (Well anyway, it's not really coffee

after coffee either; it's more like some 

crazy, sweetened, foam drink which 

may or may not even be tan or brown.

Frappa-Cappa Majoretto).

-

Lastly, thinking back over those (fine) times,

all those 1968 drinkers and bar-sitters and the

rest, me included, they were all 'singularities.'

Each was a one, enclosed and pretty much 

private, lost in space or heavy-out on their 

own endeavor, whichever the case may be;

inspecting, experiencing, and understanding 

the time and the world and the big, roiling 

city of the damned (but not damned city?)

by themselves. Not one of them was a joiner.

They rather squeeze you to death than be a

sort of whatever swoon you were undergoing.

That's why people drank. Nowadays, by a certain

form of contrast, everyone's a joiner, wanting

to do something grouped, massed, as a foaming

unit. Whatever are you going to get done that

way? Nothing really, except dilution and 

washing out. Totalitarian democracy,

as someone had put it.