10,908. RUDIMENTS, pt. 350

RUDIMENTS, pt. 350

Making Cars

Had I been born a deaf mute,

I probably would have been

better able to communicate

with others. It was really that

bad. Most of what people said,

I didn't understand, because I

didn't understand, or share,

their presuppositons and

assumptions about things.

My life was like playing

at charades. Man, I hated

that game. My sensitivities,

it seemed, were sharper-honed

that everyone around me. There

was, as a for instance, this little

piece of wall and stairway, way

downtown, at the rear of the

graveyard at Trinity Church.

Probably 20,000 people would

pass by it in a day, probably

more, and never look up; never

notice, never value, never dote,

never understand. There's this

little cherub carving, set into

the wall of the walkway. No 

one (not even then, in 1967)

ever looked up to see it or 

care about it. When I first 

saw it and read about about 

it, my heart near to leapt out

from my chest. Blundering

reprobates all about me  -  

knowing nothing of anything

but type and food and money.

This was also the burial site

of Alexander Hamilton, and

Robert Fulton. Banker, and

steamship inventor, respectively.

One need not revere either; 

I don't care, but they ARE

America. Sorry. The little 

cherub is from some sister-church 

in London somewhere and it

was rescued from the fire there,

as valued as ever  -  designed by

Christopher Wren  -  and installed

here, in NYC, America. [St.

Mary-Le-Bow; "The cherub
above is a gift to Trinity Church
from the Church of St. Mary-le-Bow
in London, which was designed by
Sir Christopher Wren in 1680 and
was destroyed in an air raid on
May 10, 1941. The cherub
survived the bombing and
was presented to Trinity
Church on June 11, 1964").
Did/Does anyone care? No.

Each time I passed it, and

oftentimes it was out of my 

way, I made good notice of

its import and placement. 

My thinking was that the

overall tenor of NYCity,

whatever it may have been,

had never really been

tampered with. All those

Amercan artist types of

whom I'd read and who I

was seeing and learning from

at the Studio School, they all

had existed within a certain

closed form of wild, American

freedom  -  to extol, to yell and

be brash, to experiment. I knew

where that had gotten everyone,

and, overall, I wasn't that

impressed. The British guys, 

on the other hand (some were

mentioned in the previous

chapter), had lived through 

and faced off the adverse 

conditions of postwar London,

which for them turned out

to be propitious for their

creativity, and work-inducing.

'The city had been badly bombed,

so short-term studio rentals

were cheap. With rationing still

in effect, starving artists went no

hungrier than anyone else. Peace

then reconnected Britain to the

rest of Europe, and revived

engagement with Modern

painting. What ensued was a

delayed detonation of creativity. 

In late 1945, so many students

flocked to the Chamberwell

School of Art in London that

the municipality had to provide

extra buses...' Well you get the

idea. Whatever the cultural

climate there, as opposed to

where I was, had made a very

different sort of character. 

Artist. Creator. They both 

spoke, in their ways, the 

same language, but so, 

so differently.

-

I had come through whatever 

had strengthened me  -  and 

it all put me in some other 

strait. I did NOT want to 

make alliances, nor join 

any 'forces' of movement.

I just wanted to learn and 

explore, and create. Which 

is what I did.

-

Avenel had never afforded us

too much in the way of anything

above the ordinary. The best part

of my days somehow were spent,

about 6th grade on, with a few

strange fellows. One new friend

I met lived at 25 Chase Avenue,

and it was the same time as 'Car

54, Where Are You,' was a new

and current first or second season

show. He blurted out his address

to me one day, as we were leaving

school, and surprising even myself,

I managed to invent right there on

the spot a means for myself to

not forget his address. I said to

myself, 'Car 25, Chase!' as if

investing myself, for memory

purposes, right into the stupidities

of both Tootie AND Muldoon,

the dumb-ass cops on the show.

It worked, and I never forgot his

address. It was only years later that

I did learn that the ancient Chinese

and ancient explorers had used pretty

much the same means to remember

all the (new) and startling things

their travels and discoveries were

bringing them. [The book is 'The

Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci' -

by one Jonathan Spence]. This

Italian explorer guy, in China, a

monk of course (they were really

big back then) invents fictional

rooms or imaginary palaces in

his mind and, through memory

techniques, furnishes them by

filling them up, one by one, in

every precise location, with the

things he seen experienced,

touched, and learned. He then

uses the practice to impress upon

his hosts the superiority of the

Western Culture he represented

to the Chinese culture they did.

(I'm skimming here, don't take

my word, get the book, read it).

Another friend of mine, in 6th

grade, one Peter Tolendino, spent

nearly the entire year immersed

in reading a book called 'God Is

My Co-Pilot.' Now that one

threw me because I was unable

to ascertain what he was about,

or the book. Religion? A fighter

pilot shooting down enemy

aircraft over, I think it was, the

South Pacific? Huh? God 

taking sides? (Yes, it was 

about the Flying Tigers, 

flying wartime supplies 

'over the hump' in China

and Burma. later also a 

USA wartime propaganda 

film on the same subject.

All drivel). In any case, 

the incidentals weren't 

important to me, but Peter

took all this as revered holy

writ. None of this mattered; my

friends were just temporary

passages along the way to

somewhere else. I'm simply

indicating here what it was

I came up through  -  a junk 

town, with a railroad running

through it, but not a railroad 

town in any sense. They'd 

taken all that town-centeredness 

away when they destroyed the 

center section of town, razing 

the heart of the place, taking 

down the old depot, the old 

lending-library within the 

depot, the sitting room, and

the entire 'feel' for place and 

sense. At least if it had been
a railway town it would have
been cool. If there had been a 

memory- palace set-up of 

old Avenel, boy would I 

have loved seeing it. As

it was, tearing the heart 

of the place out left us with 

a nasty  lumber yard in the 

train depot's place, a trench 

cut through the center

of town, to sink the roadway 

in the most hideous and 

unimaginative fashion, 

destroying civic center, 

small stores and businesses 

on either  side, and 

abandoning the whole 

place to the poor vicissitudes 

of auto, truck and factory.

We got industry. We got 

roadways. We got poor 

drainage sewers. They 

threw up whatever they 

could to fill the gap and

keep people's attention 

elsewhere. So be it. In 

the 1950's and 60's, which 

was even funnier, we got 

teen guys in their little 

hot-rod cars creaming their 

pants over the echo-chamber 

sounds they could get by

rolling off the accelerator in

third gear while cruising

beneath the 'underpass.'

Now that was high-style.
All these years later, all of 
them, I finally achieved myself.
An artist. A writer and the rest  
be humped. And I get now a
bunch of limp-wrist mannequins
stealing money and raking it all
in under the pretense of providing
an 'Arts Center' in the dead-false
middle of a shit-hole place like this,
so they can perform and stage
their panty-waist musical
bullshit programs and claim 'Art' 
for Avenel. How's that saying go,
'a prophet is not without honor 
except in his own home town.'

-

And that's what the place

offered. Sinister,  low 

versions of high-relief 

mental forms of vandalism, 

enough to screw up any 

local boy's life indeed.

I was so thankful I got 

out when I did, before the 

whole place got to be what 

it is now. A-bombable,

for sure, and with God 

as my co-pilot. Thanks, 

Peter, and thanks, Al.

-

*Close enough to 'abominable' as well.