RUDIMENTS, pt. 374
Making Cars
I've always had the tension;
some said I had the tension
of talent, others the opposite.
I never believed either and
just kept to myself. Some said
I was a waste, needed an agent,
someone to talk for me then.
Right. Yeah. Sure. Find me
the person, and I'll open the
door. Otherwise, work beckons.
I'm an isolated character here.
All I get are other people's
noises - swimming pool filters
and hedge-trimmer things and
lawnmowers and powertools
humming. Rome wasn't built
in a day? At this rate they'll
never get started.
-
Humans makes pictures that
tend to be views of things about
five feet above the ground looking
out horizontally. I like very fast
moving insects flying all around,
and I wonder what their view is
from moment to moment. There
are still some times when I get
the feel of being on a motorcycle
again, brazenly cracking through
space on a single, inclined axis.
All they do really is want to make
noise too. Like an insect also.
-
One time, during the time
of the street riots in Newark,
which spread down into
Plainfield and Elizabeth some
too, I guess it was sometime
in the early sixties, I forget :
it was Summer. High Summer.
I was hanging around, at
home. Maybe I have the time
all mixed up. My mind plays
tricks. A pack of motorcycles
came 'roaring' down my street,
having turned in from Route
One in one direction or the other,
north or south. I didn't know
anything about their direction
or destination or origin either,
but their presence and blast
and blaze, rippling down the
street, a few abreast, like
strange filthy soldiers from
some metal Hell, captivated
me, and whether they were
on riot patrol, escaping from
the kill, or out to get it, either
way, they took a piece of me
with them. It really couldn't
have been much anyway -
there was nothing to where
they were going, just the
stupid end of the block;
a lumber yard, and a turn
at the underpass, which
would basically bring them
right back to Route One
pretty much, unless they
knew where they were
going. Taverns, bars,
whorehouses and pizza
joints notwithstanding,
there wasn''t much else
here for them. Maybe they
just wanted seating at
Montecalvo's Mayfair.
-
The eighteenth-century
Neapolitan scholar, Vico,
established various organic
phases in human society.
First, Chaos. Then Theocracy.
Then Aristocracy. Then Democracy.
But as republics tend to then
become imperial and tyrannous,
they collapse and we're back to
Chaos, and to its child, Theocracy,
and we start a new cycle. Yes,
currently the imperial United
States is headed for the exit, which
isn't so bad, unless there's then a
serious outbreak of chaos - at
which point, friends, head for
the hills, and a new age of
religion will be upon us : The
harsh rule of the Theocrats,
like Islam, beheadings, wars
and terror, and all the usual
righteous blather, here and
abroad. God again, recall, then
comes back on 'our' side; that
meddlesome giant redux,
over and over again.
-
The writer Stephen Crane has
written : 'An artist, I think, is
nothing but a powerful memory
that can move itself through
certain experiences sideways...'
That's an interesting way of
putting it, sort of the idea that
Memory owes allegiance to no
real time or place. It gets on,
with us, into us, wherever it is
we enter. And wherever it is
we enter, by it, for ourselves,
1940 1990 or, for today's new
kids, 2015, that point becomes
the central base-line, if you will,
from which our central references
flow. It's different for each of us.
It thereby taints and favors any
idea of 'memory' that we only
'think' is in place. Whether it's
Avenel or New York City or
Grand Tappinger Falls, Iowa,
someone is always working with
their own, unique, solitary, and
individual version of that time
and that place. In such a realm,
we are all fictions and the time
nor the place really little matter.
The memory becomes the reality.
Dorothy in Oz would have said
in no better. It's a wonder we
can even communicate with
each other.
-
Here's a telling moment, locally,
and one I still remember well.
Laurence Harbor, Hazlet, or
whatever it is - there was this
place, in 1997, called 'Renaissance.'
A new but ugly banquet hall,
reception center on the side of
Rt. 35. It's still there, now called
'Arden Hills' or some dumb name,
and fancied up some too, or at
least it looks freshened up. It's
used for weddings, socials,
receptions, and local high-school
proms. In 1997, one of the local
high-schools used it as a prom
site and somehow this girl named
Melissa Drexler attended, quite
pregnant, evidently (?), and in
the course of the event, delivered
of her infant (the newspapers
didn't say how, nor anything
about the mess or the cord or the
child). But, anyway, she dumped
the kid in a trash can (it died) and
went right back into the prom
and - the accounts say - 'gave
birth to a baby in the bathroom
at her high school prom, put it in
the trash, and went out to ask the
deejay to play a song by Metallica,
for her boyfriend. 'The baby is dead.'
I leave you with that fine image
of moral chaos, asking you, not to
take sides, but just to realize the
millions of different 'memory-stops'
we all get on at, or off from.
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