RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,141
(harsh, rugged, raw, a pt. two)
1967 was a wall. Pretty
much that's all to be said
about it. It was curious time
and a 'new' place of no
bounds. It seemed as if
everyone was jumping on
that bandwagon, which by
1970 was already dead and
over - think of it as a coin.
(I'd say a two-sided coin, but
that seems a bit redundant).
On one side there'd be one
of those happy President's
faces - a smiling jackhammer,
a Kennedy or a Roosevelt,
to represent the silly frivolity
of 1967-68; and on the other
side there'd be some black
gloom something - a bad Abe
Lincoln, say, brooding and
dour and glum. That was
1969-70 and beyond. As
odd as it sounds, that was
fairly well the manner in
which it all came down.
By 1968, even your average
jerk-off high school teacher
was probably with sideburns,
a weird shirt, oddball pants,
and maybe beads! And that
only the guys; God forbid
if Miss Madrigal dropped
a pencil and had to bend
over to pick it up! (I see
London, I see France...).
-
I remember well the many
times I'd become enamored
of something I saw. I was
18, and it was - as I noted -
1967. The world around me, in
all aspects, and most especially
in the pellegration* that was NYC,
was blooming and blossoming
with crazy and raw stuff I'd
never before imagined. Like
that wooden piano 'keyboard'
suddenly transformed into a
baby grand, the new sounds
and the sights conjured by it
were wiping me out, day after
day. I'd had sex before, but all
around me the world had actually
changed into sex; real, fiery, and
crazy. Absolutely every inhibition
that I'd ever been led to was gone:
it was flagrant and fragrant. Girls
on fire everywhere; men and boys
leering and ready and willing and
able. It was a huge, crazy mix.
I often wonder how many kids
came out of that - birthdate of
1968? Fairly well conclusion
that 'conceived by acclimation'
would sum up that cracker-box.
You mix NYC booze and pot, and
other drugs, into it, and there's
no telling wat three-headed
conjuration would arrive. I, in
fact, always felt uncomfortable,
and never achieved my primacy
in that environment. I'd sit about,
brooding, more than anything.
My Mother and all her 'popular
at parties' stuff would have popped
a guy if she'd seen half of the things
I was seeing - no piano-player
needed. Over by my corner at
Tompkins Square Park and 10th
street, the Psychedelicatessan,
which was surely a goofy name
for whatever the nature of that
place was, allowed gloom and
self-fetishism to exist, in that
space, for as long as one chose.
Strange music, incense, 'services,'
girls, food, and occasional
medicine too. A person didn't
exactly have to 'move' in that
milieu at all. The girls at the
Diggers Free Store worked
clothed, but lived naked! over
on e4th or 5th, I forget; but
it was always worth the trip.
Puff the Magic Dragon was
everyone's neighbor and no
words were ever spoken truer
than that.
-
There were layers of everything,
everywhere. over at The Osborne,
which I made mention of before,
the rich lived. Some of them were
way ahead of this curve, but others
there were sill almost Victorian in
their ways and habits - of collecting,
speaking, dining, and finding their
means of entertainment. Along by
57th and Fifth, some of the buildings
were art gallery after art gallery.
The gentry were well served by
that - there's be etchings and
drawings and Ingres and Monets;
most anything could be scapped
up at price-is-right levels. The
super-hip rich were right then
developing their own new class
of culture, much of it still with
us, and the older, languid class
of old-money wealth stayed
ensconced and happy enough
in their old-society ways. It
was all working together - as
if that economic class had a
forged solidarity that could not
be loosened, short of revolution.
If any attempt at talking with
these people was made, it always
came out curious. One gallery, at
the second floor display window,
kept Duke Ellington's white 'practice
piano' (what they called his 'warm
up piano),' in full street display
at all times. The gallery staffs
were haughty and stern; scary and
- for whatever sort of 'job' this was -
highly stylish and staffed by
females always of enormous
beauty, high-class stature, and
some eerily bizarre unapproachability.
-
This was all new to me and strange.
I walked in a vein of hypnotics,
only here or there acknowledging
what it was that was going on
around me. I hate myself now
for living that life of blur then.
I was a fool and a mad man.
My head was still resounding
with the stupid cattle-calls of
home-life escaped from, the
strange strictures of a no-place
upbringing in a no-account
town. Harsh; rugged; raw;
All of that was my new life,
a past history of silent pianos,
dance-hall majorities, unmannered
education and train wrecks
notwithstanding. Nothing was
weaker than my sense of being
weak.
-
As much as any of that went, I
still felt, from within, that I was
chasing something, some form of
myself, in a newer wrapping or layer
that hadn't yet fully developed. That
self-knowledge (perhaps?) was about
the only thing that kept me going, yet
I see now, at this tail-end of a life,
that was all betrayal and probably a
sort of the same mis-representation
as everything else. There wasn't a
God-damned thing special about me.
When I found that out it left me raw.
------
* made-up word, meaning 'Evil
dropping from the skies.'
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