RUDIMENTS, pt. 645
('wartime drawings')
Sweaty, glossy magazine face.
That's what I always felt my
life drawings came out like, and
it was nothing I ever enjoyed.
The Studio School was gigantic
big on life drawing, and the
prevailing style, which I often
tried but disliked, was a sort of
jagged charcoal slash and line
of 'image' broken into a bit of
a tortured, fragmented pictorial
space, kind of in the same was
that any extreme Cezanne has
that jagged broken-space look.
It was sort of as if time and
space, as visuals, were breaking
up before your eyes. It never
did a thing for me, and, in
addition, it seemed to make a
useless premise over having
any unrobed girl or guy curled
around up front as the model
for this. There was little of a
climatic- relationship that I
ever saw. plus I kind of hated
that 'smudge' that charcoal
always gave everything. To
stare anyway, at some naked
babe, often a same person
you'd probably see in the
hallway later, clothed and
acting as if nothing had
happened, all seemed without
cause OR effect to me. I hated
also the critique of a roving
art-instructor actually going
over your lines and smudges,
telling you what was right,
or not right. Art school was
sure funny place like that. A
bit of 'classical' posing, in
the sometime equivalent of
an old, ratty subway station.
It left everything up to the
imagination - which is where
my trouble kept coming from.
Seeing Mary J. Jonas naked.
I had somehow been brought
up that that wasn't right. Go
figure the fuzz on that peach.
-
For the rest of it all, I got by
real well. My one friend there,
Ed Rudolph, he used to sit on
the window perch we had,
waiting around before yet
another Morton Feldman
music lecture (they were
numerous and often long
and meandering), and he'd
be paging through my
drawing book and stuff
(it seemed like it was always
open season for me; everyone
always pawing and asking),
and say that I always drew
like it was wartime. At first
I wasn't sure what he meant,
so I asked. He meant to refer
to wartime, in action - like
bombs and debris flying,
things collapsing and
toppling, etc. Alas, he was
sure misreading my feeble
attempts at the female body
being rendered. So he said,
'Yeah, if you ever find one
of those, send her to me.'
Ed went back to San Francisco
eventually after that, and became
an early version of 'video-artist.'
Way back then that whole thing
was a totally new idea. I lost
track of Ed years ago, last
address being 313, I think it
was, Missouri Street, San
Francisco CA. There was
another California guy too,
but I can't remember much
about him; he was much
different than Ed Rudolph,
and Jim Tomberg too.
California guys are all varied,
I suppose; but compared to
lumberjack Tomberg, this
other guy was a Cinderella
twit. A weird name too, like
Tristam or Sheldon or Jay.
I kept receiving things
from the San Francisco Art
Institute, and probably should
have just gone there. I had
acceptance - but the real
problem I had, and this meant
much to me, was that all the
photos and things I'd see of
the place, everything was old
Spanish, stucco, plaza, villa,
and that kind of look, even
though it was right in the
basic center of San Francisco,
which probably figures. But, in
addition, it had all that light and
color. I sensed, and right off,
that there'd be none of that NYC
shadow and darkness, moldy
corners of moist legend and
all those mysteries of the recent
years of art and literature and
turmoil and sweat. It was like
pitting Mark Rothko's suicide
against a Mickey Mouse cartoon.
I really wanted none of it. None
of California was me. Period.
In 1976, when I finally did get
out there, weirdly enough, (and
I still can't figure out why) I
didn't even go to the Art Institute,
not even for a look-see. That's
how much my mind had moved
on from previous preoccupations.
I had my hands full with New
York, and that was happiness
enough for me.
-
I'd grown up in darkness, in
shadow and shade, and that's the
way I wanted it kept. I only liked
the mysterious types of girls; all
those wispy, Beach Boys blonde
babes, all smiling and grinning,
meant nothing to me. It was
tiresome before it started and
the New York selection of rank
and cranky, dark and swarthy,
mean and low, females were
more my style. Venom, not
denim.
-
My problem was always my
lowly station in life. None of
it ever seemed right; for all that
was in my head, none of it was
translatable into movement or
travel, or any 'official' endeavors.
I was born a stupid, poor, and
probably miserable, son-of-a-bitch,
and never broke out. maybe I should
have or could have, but I didn't.
I'd have loved to see old Paris,
or Budapest or Berlin; any of that
stuff; tracking down the Dublin
of Joyce, the London of Blake,
and all that. I had no help. There
was never anything to reach out
to. Which is why Mercedes Matter
loomed so highly for me. A lot
of that's just mystery-train stuff,
and I leave it at that. Can you
imagine my problems? I was
a twisted scalpel, as a kid,
in a house where, probably,
the most important thing
was 'Liquid Pledge.'
-
You've got to think how easy it
could have been for me to go
off-track and stay there. The
crazy-house beckoned. As
gunny as it is, you don't think
of a place like Bellevue as a
place for short-termers, but
their mental-wards had a
pretty active in and out
doorway, and it swung both
ways. If the 'disease' of the
1950's and 1940's was, maybe,
alcohol and marijuana, by
the later 60's it was 'insanity'
that was a number one stepping
stone to doom. A number of
people went over the cliff and
never came back. At the same
time, so many others came back,
and went again, and came back,
and went again, that it all was,
by itself, enough to drive a
person crazy. A complete
circularity.
-
For me, fight, fight, was the
order of the day, I'd mix
cultures, just to break it up,
and found many exotic locales
in Chinatown that answered to
nothing of the American world.
The Mayflower Cafe, for instance,
was more just a shithole Chinese
Restaurant, but with a strong-coffee
counter and great ceramic mugs.
You could eat like a master maniac
for like a buck eighty-five; piles
of lo mein, hot sauce, dumplings,
a bucket of rice, and all the tea or
coffee you could piss away. The
service was adroit and quick.
No extraneous matters, no
questions asked, no gimmicks.
In 1968, it was still a half-redoubt
of some of the older beatnik guys.
Ginsberg was there lots; his
favorite joint, I was told. (That's
a pun/joke. He liked his weed).
The old, skinny guys who passed
for 'waiters' there were the same
3 guys, it always seemed. They'd
stand around, a smoker dangling
off their lips - with even the fat
guy cooking at the stove and woks
lopping ashes off his cigarettes and
right into the blends. The bathroom
area usually reeked, and had old
and worn out Batman stickers on
it, and some graffiti too. There were
maybe 6 or 8 small tables, for two,
maybe three, and one or two large
tables over at the back by the fish
tank, for little groups; like the crazy
beat guys. No alcohol, but I'm
sure it was brought in, and there
were, as well, a whole wall of
baked pastries and Chinese stuff.
The whole place was down, 4 or
5 steps below sidewalk, but you
could see up and out - people
passing, the same one or two
beggars Chinese beggars lurking.
Basement doorways, and weird
alleys and alcoves, accessible and
all perfect Tong War locales. All
of Chinatown, to an American
walking through, was invisible.
You knew stuff was going on,
things a'flutter and objects
flying, but you'd see nothing
of it. Just messes everywhere.
Like a wartime drawing!
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