12,250. RUDIMENTS, pt. 856

RUDIMENTS, pt. 856

(only on hump day)

My three or four favorite

Shakespeare things, I guess,

were Macbeth, Hamlet, the

Tempest, and King Lear. 

Which presents the problem 

of the Sonnets. What can be

done about them? They're so

easy to like, only because,

like some Hallmark Card or

sentimental education brief,

their very niceness and total

acceptance by everyone makes

them harmless. After a while

people just stop processing.

Like the Bible, it's something

you're supposed to like, no

given, no questions asked, so

most people do. One hundred 

or one hundred fifty years ago

it was more like that; nowadays

three-quarters of the people

wouldn't even know what I'm

talking about. Back then, when

you went to school that was all

part of the stuff you learned. No

more of that, though Shakespeare

has reached that 'reverent' status

which stops all further thought.

The Henry plays, and all that war

and fighting stuff  -  always too

stilted for my taste. I could

never be bothered. If I want

my history, I don't want it in

that form. Dramatized and 

swooned by actors in tights.

All of it quickly becomes more

about them than the play.

-

The same goes with Art, and 

writing and poetry too  -  people 

just stop the processing and do 

the accepting. That's how we 

get museums and auctions and 

art experts and doctors of art 

and people who 'know' all

about it but have never done

it. Jurisprudence itself must

have better labels than that.

I'd rather be a drunk. Each of

these things, long ago, have

been turned into industries.

Drama, stage, art, writing;

every niche that needs being

filled gets filled with names

and categories. The 'Canon.'

Schools fawn all over each other

to teach it, and right now that

teaching list has become so

politically honed that a lot of it

is being cleansed and changed.

Isn't that funny? A changeable

canon  -  because someone's

uncomfortable the author's not

black, not a woman, not from 

the struggling third world, not 

writing about social issues and 

the premise of a dysfunctional, 

modern, time that can only be 

seen in the most immediate and 

'now' ways. I remember, back

in the middle 1970's when Ntozake

Shange had that play running,

'For Colored Girls Who Have

Considered Suicide/When the

Rainbow Is Enuf.' It wasn't a

play, by any means  -  they called

it a performance-poem, or a

'choreopoem.' Poetic monologues

to be 'accompanied' by dance

movements and music. I figured,

right off, 'Whew, what is that?'

It was a tough spot for me, because

firstly I hated that stupid title and

the accompanying graphics chosen

for it. It was allover everything  -

posters, subways cars, billboards

and buses, and I found it really

annoying. At the same time, the

idea of breaking out of format and

trying something new, such as that,

attracted me. As concept. But

the content, to me, failed, and it

wasn't my approach at all. BUT, I

still see it as a big step along the

way to much of the nothingness

we have now.  It's really just

not the stuff of art.

-

What's a punk kid warrior from 

a hoe-down like Avenel know 

anyway? Nothing at all, and 

that was the point. I had none 

of those dumb predilections to

habit and lists and who-is-who,

and because of that I was free. 

To do and think, in Art terms, 

whatever I wished. I never 

burned out, but a few times 

I came close. What saved me

was being a driven man, but 

that too caused a lot of conflict.

I wasn't exactly the most 

practical of guys. I'd often

walk down to Chinatown and

sit in the Mayflower Cafe for

like hours, it was just that cool;

to sort of straighten my head out.

It was the craziest sort of place,

and Chinatown itself was like

a reverse  paroxysm of the rest

of New York. When you got down

there, there was no ideology

about anything, none that you

saw anyway  -  a lot of that stuff

was hidden, and well-hidden too.

The Mayflower itself was kind

of schizoid. You could sit at one

end, the walk-in side, and be in

some plain old shabby shithole

Chinese restaurant. All that tea

and rice and lo mein stuff 

everywhere. Then there was

a fish tank, at corner rear, but if

you didn't know it was there,

you could miss it. It wasn't really

on display in any manner. Alongside

that was a regular counter, like a

stupid American diner, with rich,

black coffee  -  way before all

that special-brew Starbucks crap.

It was just coffee, in one or two

huge vats. People would sit around

all night, donuts, Chinese pastries,

all sorts of weird creamy and

stuffed dough-things, and argue.

About poetry, politics, writing.

The dead, the living, males, females.

Or, special for the haggard skinny

to death Chinese locals, who would

also sit there forever, smoking away

like smokestacks, say nothing at

all except, to another waiter-type,

equally haggard and weird, who'd

then start some Chinese string of

invective never understood by me.

I never knew what in the heck they

were rattling on about, and then

a cook from the rear would step

out, also smoking, and start 

ranting. If you ever saw the

cooks in the back at work, which

I did often, each of them would

be chopping or firing up something

in a wok, and a cigarette would be

dangling, fro each one of them, and

they'd never flick the damn ash.

There's be, I swear, like sometimes 

three-quarters of an, I bet, of ash

on the tip of the cigarette. I never

stared, but neither did I ever know

where those ashes ended up.

Well-seasoned pork-fried-rice?

-

Also, it was like  never saw anyone

leave there  -  it was kind of magical.

People would arrive, and they'd

always fit, but by, say, 10pm, I never

figured out how. Towards the end

there, Ginsberg and those guys

would often be hanging out. If you

read his bios and things now, it's

often mentioned how the Mayflower

Tea parlor (proper name) was his

favorite place. I liked it, yeah, but

I don't know how far I'd walk to

get there. The cigarette smoke

alone was a howling bit mistake.

Back in the cigarette days, Camel

cigarettes used to have a slogan, 

'I'd walk a mile for a Camel.'

Yeah, OK, but maybe only on

hump day (that's what they used

to call Wednesday, in the work

world). Yeah, Chinatown it was.
A friend of mine, I'd see there
often enough, used to say that
'Uptown,we have Mt. Sinai Medical
Center. In Chinatown it's 
Mt. Cyanide!'