RUDIMENTS, pt. 979
('a raucous, waxy blob')
Reaching pinnacles is never
that easy. Nor is recalling
them afterwards. The struggle
takes your mind off things, and
just catches you up. It was like
that for me. There are a thousand
things I try to recreate, and some
come easily, others not.
-
My first visit into the Electric
Circus was not that memorable.
I can't even recall when it was;
I'd guess late Winter, 1967, or
maybe Jan/ Feb of '68. I'd gone
in with that Andy Bonamo guy
I've written of, and it was, let's
say, a business trip. He was
vending 'pharmaceuticals.'
Certainly nothing out of the
ordinary with that; it's how
we lived. That little hovel I
was in, as I've said, was not
supported by money; rent was
paid in other ways. Andy was
the chief magician of all this.
St. Mark's Place, in its original
representation, was a ghetto
street, made up of, mostly, it
seemed, old-line Poles. By
this time 1967, the turmoil was
that it was all in upheaval. The
neighborhood, so to speak, was
changing. The old-line Polish
and Slavic immigrants, by then
in their 70's and 80's, were dying
off. Their places were being taken
by, I want to say, 'hippies' but
that's not true. I'll put it another
way, as I saw it. Their places were
being taken by Long Island.
-
That sounds ridiculous and you'll
surely say, 'Huh? What's he mean?'
What I mean is that outside real
estate interests had by then taken
over. Most of these walkups and
apartment places were by this time
owned by outside landowners,
landlords, and real estate people
who lived off-site; Long Island.
They did little to upkeep these
places, and were more intent on
having the old people pass, and
re-enter the new mix renting the
same junk to kids wandering in,
often at twice the rate. What was
left of the community that had
been there was slowly fading.
The Electric Circus itself had
once, just a few years back, been
a Polish Community Center,
a Polish Community Center,
something called The Dom. That
was all over, and now it was
lightshows, pounding music,
rock concerts, bands and weird,
drug-induced frenzies by a
new influx of very busy, yet
often lethargic, kids. And what
made it even weirder, was that
the old still lived on - every so
often there'd be old-world
religious festivals and processions,
crazy things like blessings of
pets, or food. These old Euro
types would stand in line, outside
the one or two churches along
the way, with their pets, or holding
their pets - cats in cages, birds
in cages too, and plenty of dogs,
to have them blessed inside - to
be sprinkled, with some holy
waters, after some prayers. It
went the same way with food.
They'd line up with baskets, filled
with food. Also to be blessed. I
was never able to figure it out,
and had never before seen that.
It was ethnic, and seemed naively
stupid to me; but what did I know?
Maybe it was vital.
-
All the while this went on, the
live of the street itself was taking
place on an entirely different
level - the two had no connection
with each other and it was just
crazy, and incongruous too. Old
Polish and Russian ladies, in their
long coats and babushkas at their
heads, sauntering along a street
filled with young kids, in better
weather, wearing rags, or nearly
nothing or tattered, suggestive
garments bespeaking a carefree,
distant atmosphere, one without
any of that heavy grief and guilt
and consciousness that had almost
locked these streets in place for the
previous 25 years. There was still
a lot of real anguish and sorrow
there - the war dead, the camps,
the survivors, the old, decimated
families, all and each living on,
surviving, with that memory
(surely as a 'reverse' pinnacle
to my mention at the start).
There was death and grief and
sadness, and these kids had
no part of it at all. They, like
the landlords letting the places
rot, were now outsiders, from
somewhere else, yet there
nonetheless.
-
It's very difficult to explain, today,
what the mid 1960's were like, or
what they presented to someone
in their late teens anyway. It was
a multi-level affair, at all times:
The remnants and the scattered
survivors of WWII were still
around, often, as here, still in
some form of shock over what
had occurred, the proverbial 'New
York' Jewish survivor took root
in that period, from the later
1940's. These old folks were still
around, usually arrayed silently
and morosely along park benches,
staring our as they wiled away
their time. They were usually
well-dressed, with their canes
and top hats and caps. Ladies
in dresses. lots of dark clothing
and colors. There was just a
real sadness still haunting them,
while, it seemed, the rest of
America was rolling along on
its ribald, silly way. Disney and
suburbia, tied together somehow,
in a fantasy-land. I always thought
that these people, representing
the old world, knew what was
passing them by would also leave
them behind. That world was gone.
It was sad to see, but no mention
was made. And that was but ONE
aspect - other aspects of the more
'modern' day that presented themselves
was the ongoing acceleration of the
Vietnam War, churning through
males of the era, fearsomely trying
to use them up for no real purpose;
The opposition to all of that, with
its sometimes violent ways; the
societal changes underway - kids
and hippies, spirited and flighty
people with, it seemed, few cares.
-
No one I ever met had a care or a
concern over nay of this, if they
even were aware of it at all. All
those sit-ins and be-ins and marches
and anti-war proclamations were
just an empty energy being put to
some use. It probably could have
been anything. Cesar Chavez. The
organizing of mill workers. The
factors of incarceration and prison
reform (eventually, Attica). All
that was out there, but the focal
points and lenses had not yet
come together to magnify them
as causes. A lot things were just
air-head, foolish kids, groping
around for something to find
meaning in. Hippie kids, and
fishnet stockings. Sex on the
half-shell. There was no way
of translating any of that back
into a new reality; it was all
too haphazard. The resultant
mishmash, like the noise I
witnessed in The Electric Circus,
was just a raucous, waxy-blob;
a light show of nothingness.
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