10,906. RUDIMENTS, pt. 349

RUDIMENTS, pt. 349

Making Cars

There was some funny

stuff I had to work my

way through in the middle

and then later, 1960's. The

art world, in which I was

most interested, had just

about turned itself inside out

and over, or was underway still

doing so. There were flash-fires

everywhere, over Art, about

Art and painting, and people

and styles. By the time any

of that was over, I felt more

confused, and violated too.

At least my norms. But, when

one came right down to it,

walking along the streets,

in the sorts of miserable

situations I was always

getting myself into, it was

more like 'who the hell cares?'

But I forced myself to care,

because I sensed that if I

acquiesced to that feeling

once, and then again, it

would never come back.

The whole thing was that

ephemeral. All around me,

the most troubling aspects of

it came forth  -  mainly, I saw,

a whole lot of homosexuality,

which (sorry, boys) I just

couldn't get myself into. I had,

on the other hand, nothing

against a certain level of

promiscuity on the distaff

side, but that wasn't a real

winner for me either. I wasn't

macho, wasn't a big guy, wasn't

much at throwing my 'weight'

around and counting conquests.

Stupid me, all I ever did was

fall for people's hearts, not parts.

-

It was funny. I was a small-scale

scoundrel, right after the seminary,

having to hang it out for the

remainder of that last year in

the local Woodbridge squid

High School. I had achieved

my own sought-for sense of

satori, and was quite willing to
operate from that, or non-operate

as it were. They, of course, would

have nothing of that. It became

a regular running battle. Let's

say I didn't 'integrate' well,

Martin Luther King being around

or not, and my resistance wasn't
very well accepted or taken to.

That school was an acidic dump.

I had been thrown back into a

regressive mixture of pomp and

circumstance that I nether wished

for nor believed in. So I straggled

through any number of really bad

months. Cold and snow, rain and

hail. School-bus permutations and

simply just walking the tracks to

and from school. That's how I

ended up, when I was there. The

fact was that I hardly needed but

a few credits to graduate  -  their

learning and accreditation scale I

guessed having been slower than

mine, so I slummed. I threw attitude.

What did they know  -  geeks,

and winos, and a bunch of jumpy

girls with perky blouses.

-

The biggest offense I had to deal

with  -  and there were many  - 

was the to-the-core offense of

seeing an art teacher (Frank

Gubernat) who certainly should

have known better, and sensed the

intuitive aspects of me far more

wisely, act as the chief main

enforcer of the sickening strictures

of the 'Administration' (Lou Gabriel,

a rotund Santa Claus shape of a jerk;

and John Stanaitis, a probably also

perverted nazi no-brain). Gubernat

ran the hallway in his 'wing' (how

pathetic these grown men must

have been in their little thought

corrals). He was always throwing

me out of the line, rejected for

the school day for hair, shoes,

clothing, belongings, attitude

and whatever. A real jerk. Their

solution, even in 1966, was to

send their ward home for the 

day or to come back when 'right,'

or have that person simply sit

in some office chair for five 

hours, to leave. This was like

brig-thinking, military stupidity.

I hope they're all dead now, and,

thankfully, they probably are.

-

What I ever had to do withe them

or they with me remained always

beyond my comprehension. These

were barbecue and baseball people, 

snots of adult age and format. I

wanted nothing to do with it. All

they were doing was producing

cannon-fodder for Vietnam, tidy

little house-wife types for the annals

of motherhood, and Broadway

play attendees with a little 'cultural'

money later on. My disgust was

unbridled, and those three goons

were just the start of it. The

school still stands, sinking yet

in its quagmire'd oasis of shit.

-

Even writing this crap now is pathetic,

a looking back into deep, dark space

long after the spacecraft has reignited

engines, banked and turned and headed

off into its other rendezvous (plural)

with Time, Space, Being, Meaning, 

Lore, Myth, Fragmentation, Logic,

and (perhaps) Fact  -  which is in

reality just its own crazy scrim of

fractious, hanging stars falling deep

through the darkness of vapid and

void space, time, and energy, making

new things up as it all rolls along.
Stephen Hawking, where are you now?

- 

In the 1960's the royal College 

of Art (Britain) produced a 

remarkable crop of painters, 

including the Ohio transplant 

R. J. Kitaj (to be pronounced

'Kitay'), and the prodigious 
David Hockney.  Balthus. Francis 
Bacon.  Point of fact was, you could 

be in America, and not even really
know of these people unless you
studied and sought and got out of
all that media-mush that was
playing around with art at the 
time. Crummy steel forged in
the really bad media-mills of
Time/Life. Once you got to it,
this was not American art 

any longer  -  the entire New 

York School era having closed 

in upon itself and been broken 

into by the stranger likes of 

Pop, Op, and Conceptual

Art, or their beginnings.  New 

things were breaking out 

everywhere. No one concentrated,

unless you were deeply involved 

in whichever part of all this was 

yours, on the overall essentials 

of building decent art. The world

has somehow become one, big

paparazzi flashbulb, an exposure 

to a sort of creepy lightheartedness

and fluff  -  the in crowd, with 

the happy people, then chartering 

their odd cross-sexuality slowly

into thee mainstream as 'Art' 

and as 'Culture'  -  from Jerome 

Robbins to Leonard Bernstein 

to Truman Capote, one weird 

act followed the other. It was

fun and new and brash. Every

name we know now as old-hat

and probably passe, in those days

was first passing the lips of the

cocktail crowd. I was, from the

sidelines, caught up in a lot of

that; just watching, to see how it

was done and manufactured and

presented. I realized it was a

culture 'Industry,' and to so many

it was a new line of work, in fact,

their factory. Artforum, Art in 

America, Art Illustrated, American

Artist, Mainstreams of  Modern 

Art, by John Canaday. I'd

page through endless art 

magazines, see things, visit

galleries, read books, and try 

to produce. In much the same way

as I used the word 'promiscuous'

before, that was me in the art 

world. Like a girl constantly 

having sex but wishing NOT 

to get pregnant with

any one thing.
-
I've always realized that if a 
person misunderstands Life, 
in its essential points, the game's 
up. That's  why people stand around, 
vacant. Holding hoses and picking 
crabgrass out of lawns. We are born  -  
God-given, that  - with the eyes, ears, 
and open mind to put something 
together from the magical raw
material given to us. If we
insist on not catching on, and
doing nothing with all that, there
really can be hell to pay.  And
this time, it's not just a flash-fire
like the ones I mentioned 
here at the start.