13,579. RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,174

 RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,171

(a philippe petit of my own)

A few basic things to rehash:

Back to that entire Philippe Petit

thing, two chapters back, I have

more to add. My son was, at 

that time, about 8 or 9, and

we'd most often catch Philip

during that period when he

was doing 'performances' in

Washington Square Park. For

all I know it was a part of his

community service time, for

his misdemeanor from spanning

the Twin Towers. In any case,

due o the regularity of it all,

he began using, any number 

of times, my young son in his 

act. At this time he wore (Philippe

did), and  performed in a theatrical

top-hat. He strung cable and rope,

nothing substantial, between a

few local park trees nearby, and

sometimes a bench or two. He'd

pass the hat too, and get tips or

whatever. My son was used for

handing up rope, or cable, or the

hat, etc. Philippe would do his

quick little act to the adoring

crowd. He also used one of

those long, balance, poles which

high-wire acrobats use. It was

nearly three times the length of

my son (maybe three times) and

to see the young boy handle the

pole  -  the few times he had to

pass it up, or move it out of the

way at ground-level, was funny. 

Just something I always remember

anyway. Philippe never spoke much,

but he had a cool, Frenchified way

of speaking, and a very unique

face as well. I always enjoyed

that too; plus the knowledge

that here was the guy who some

6 or 7 years back had electrified

NYC and the country with his

weird feat of vaulting the Twin

Towers as he did  -  it all made

for grand presence. Which is easy

to say in a Frenchified way too!

-

When Petit wired between the

two towers, we (I) was nowhere

near NYC, having still at that time

hustled-to-hideout at Columbia

Crossroads and Elmira. To me,

the only real memory of it is,

maybe, Marvin Scott reporting

it all on WOR, from NY, beamed

in. I think it took on even more

of a reality because of that. There

were a lot of other NYC B-level

station newscasters then too,

though I forget the names. One

guy was pretty famous, and I

remember he came out to Elmira

once to participate in some sort

of baseball game or baseball

extravaganza, for fund-raising

something or other, with the

Elmira Pioneers. He was from

CBS channel 2, this guy. The 

Pioneers were Elmira's very 

own minor league baseball 

team, the real stuff. Low-level 

and all, but some names came 

up through  there. They had 

their own little stadium and 

all, and the games were pretty 

cheap, like a buck and a quarter, 

to get in. If this guy's name 

comes back to me, I'll add it 

in. [Jim Jensen]. He's  dead 

now, that much I remember.

-

This made me remember

another thing  -  way back in

High School, Senior Chemistry,

I had this bum-wreck of a

teacher named Robert Andes.

All that guy ever did (this was

1967) was  -  when not talking

about Carbon Chemistry or

extolling the Periodic Table 

of the Elements, was go on

about his infatuation with

some babe newscaster, also

on one of those early channels,

named Pia Lindstrom. It got

really boring.

-

I stepped out tonight, after dark,

and walked these strangely wooded

paths. The wind was howling, yet

again, and the temperature had

plummeted...but, in a Proustian

manner it al reminded me of so 

much else. (Free time, meaning

'time' out of structure, brings forth

things like this. Proust said a

remembered sensation in its

sensory immediacy but temporal

remoteness gives one an experience

outside of normal chronology. 

It was pretty much exactly like

that tonight  -  years, and miles,

apart from all those times in NYC

when I'd be traipsing the streets,

in the very same fashion, in quite

the same weather and wind, and

coming to or from Chumley's  -

where for a time I spend in

inordinate amount of time, and

sometimes money as well. My

sensation was about the same,

even though now I was amidst

trees, water, and what is mostly

ineffectually called 'Nature,'

here. The very same feelings

went racing through me  -  all

those resounds of memory and

place and temporality, of the

lonely times along Barrow and

Bedford Streets when, even

though amidst a crowd or a

group, I stood alone, just

absorbing all that was around

me. I fairly thing I absorbed it

all back then, in the 1990's, so

that I could relive and be brought

back to those selfsame sensations

today and here and now.

-

If I were to tell you that the one

conclusion of my life has come to

this  -  that 'Memories' come first,

and only then 'Reality' follows  -  

would you believe me? Or even

understand me....As, like a Philippe

Petit of my own, I turn time on

its head and undertake my own,

crazy, balancing act?

13,578. THE OUTCOME IS UNIMPORTANT

THE OUTCOME IS 

UNIMPORTANT

I can hang-glide with my dreams;

outcome unimportant as long as I 

land? I notice too many things as

I descend back to earth: The skinned

cat comes out on the porch; the citadel

tower is leaning again; men are once

more marching, without orders. All

things run backwards on this way

down. Descent is what occurs

when one stops trying?

13,577. BREAKPOINT

BREAKPOINT

Never understanding why, I went

ahead anyway. It was 28 degrees 

by the clock on the siding. Temps

shown also. I wondered who ever

had first mixed the two things.

-

A fistful of sawdust felt a bit

warmer, but not by much  -  than

the open air by the siding; than

the loading dock under the hood.

I guessed it was just cold everywhere

and there was nothing to be done.

-

Fifteen years ago, I'd have had

coffee. Twenty-five years ago,

still a cold beer. The outside air

never mattered for that. Bikers

are dumb in those ways; and the

girls with those terra cotta sweaters,

were always showing nipple. 

-

An old  friend, Claude, once said

to one of them, 'Hey, where do you

girls buy those sweaters with bumps 

in them?' She laughed and said, 

'Nowhere you'd ever be, asshole.'

I guess we all laughed, but, really

I forget.

13,576. MISS DREISING

MISS DREISING

When I was a kid, one of 

my early-on, grade-school 

teachers was a lady named 

Cynthia Dreising. The other

adults called her Cynthia,

but to us she was always

Mist Rising. What a curious

name, though I.

13,575. RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,170

RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,170

(a weak old man)

I picked up a lot of things

over the years, even in the

most inconsequential of ways.

Language things, for sure  -

of the sort that made little

sense, really, but were cool,

and useful too for someone

involved in writing. Like

hyphenated words  -  now

those are something I really

dislike, and to see the dumb

and foul use of hyphenated

words in what's supposed to

called 'poetry,' always bugged

me. I've seen people who would

hyphenate for the sake of doing

so; and I've seen others who

took some perverse pride in

what they wrote and who

adhered so strictly to their

formats and blocs, rhyme

schemes and rhythms that

they hyphenated pluralsitically

in ways more bizarre then the

word I just made up. Same 

with any of those garden-variety, 

mostly female or female the

emotional female wannabee,

cataclysmic, poetry-swoon

writers of 'Sonnets,' whose

rigid formulae strait-jacket

them into tightly linguistics

emotional overdoses.

-

Did you know that Phys-ics is

hyphenated one way, and that

Phy-sique another? Or that

Knowl-edge is hyphenated

after the 'I' and not before it?

Maybe a person can figure that

that stuff our for their own, yet

I rather doubt it and can only

sense that a true dedication

to words and writing  -  and

looking such things up  -  will

have one know about that.

Unlike that 14,00 scribblers

an hour online who submit 

their grain of sand-poetry

to the strainer of boulder-sized-

holes filtering and end up with

the usual drivel about hearts

broken, twisted love, fake

politics and their own far-game

sexuality-cum-attitude. 

(Pun there).

-

As Hayden Carruth noted, a

person correctly chooses

between such words as 

streetcar, street-car, and

street car, without really

thinking of it; since the use

fits the usage. Not the form

itself being twisted to fit. One

doesn't actually 'learn' these

things; they're more or less

genetic and implanted as birth

to denote one as a 'writer' and

another as a 'not writer. 'I myself

have stumbled lots, even with

those basic and silly differences

between lay and lie, or who

and whom. I kind of agreed

with him too, when he put forth

the idea that the logical analysis

of the sort used by lexicographers

(determining the historical meanings

and stylistic attributes of words)

denotes a respect for the human

mind and for humanity in general.

He probably was right and the

'proof,'' as they say, 'is in the

pudding.' Just having to listen to

the manners of speech and the

spoken word today causes a

heart-failure. I've had phone

messages and personal transactions

wherein the usually young most

often (usually) female on the

other end rants and rages swiftly

through whatever it was she was

meant to be uttering, to the extent

that even after three or four

re-listens I'm left with no clue

what she meant to say or had been

babbling on about, And that's

only verbal/oral. God alone,

maybe, knows what that person

writes like. What's even more

amazing to me is that people

actually hire these sorts. Do their

bosses and supervisors have any

idea how they muck things up?

Have the effectiveness quotients

of things verbal  -  in today's mass

stupidity of an oral/screen culture

brought all these thing to a dead

impasse? The constant and then

self-consuming predeliction of 

phones and hand-helds apparently

has taken control of the everyday.

Is there no longer any 'review' of

anything  -  since the doing and

not the result are now paramount?

-

I guess I've just turned into a crank.

Which leads me to wonder: Am I a

week-old man, or a weak, old man?

13,574. WELL I GUESS WE LOST THAT WAR

WELL I GUESS WE 

LOST THAT WAR

Ham sandwiches at the train trestles,

sled dogs in the cave, and a new Mona

Lisa at the top of the stairs. Well, I guess

we lost that war. Again. State of the Union?

Screwed-up. Fucked. And Bass-Ackwards.

13,573. AMETHYST AND PORTOBELLO

AMETHYST AND PORTOBELLO

The words are far apart and the

distance between them vast, but the

one thread that keeps them current

is a running theme : Life with its own

marvelous bellow.

-

Hear the calf moo; see the horse whinny.

13,572. RUDIMENTS, pt.1,169

RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,169

(philip petit and me, pt.1)

Overreach often has dire

consequences. I used to

see it a lot. For instance, 

before I got to NYC, in

196, after high school,

July, I was very suddenly

aware of the difference

in realities  -  between

what had been being

drummed into me, and 

what actually was. What

I saw, what that difference

was, was what I called

'overreach.' The kids I

had been with in school

were all overreaching,

with their concerns for

career, achievement, the

right colleges, proper

placement, etc. They were

making themselves 'done'

before they'd even gotten

into the pot. (The old 'pot,'

as in 'cooking;' Not today's

apparently frolicsome

version of the word).

-

One thing that used to 

occur to me was why no 

one ever just said to a

teacher: 'Show me why

I should believe you, what

you are saying. What  is

the end result of this

knowledge to you?' And

then I'd review what was

apparent  -  house, lawn,

cars, kids, wife or husband,

deadening debts and all

the obligations, and a

noose-locked slavery to

a job purely for the money.

None of it hardly seemed

worth doing.

-

In the innards of NYC, where

I was living, none of that stuff

mattered. Perhaps it was just

the seeding of a criminal class

over the finer sensitivities of

the artists and writers crowd,

but the mix brought forth and

to my attention an entire raft

of people to whom little of

that mattered. I met people

who admitted to their goal in

life being to reach sustenance 

without need of working. A

simple, flat-out statement,

and one spoken with a full 

confidence in achievability.

-

I guessed at some point it

was all about the two very

opposed categories of the

subjective and the objective;

which just as well were the

same categorical conflicts

much present in the modern

writing of that day. The 'New'

Journalism, as it was called  -

Tom Wolfe, Norman Mailer,

Truman Capote, all that. A 

different approach to getting

things done in a sort of half

magazine article/ half fictional

account, with the non-fictional

instructionals thrown in too.

The visuals arts, too, were right

then going through much of that

in the same way, though quite

differently. I've said all this before,

about how the reigning force

within and behind it all ended

up being 'irony.' Or even comical

'irony.' If even your artists and

writers could no  longer be 

serious, but had to operate with 

a wink. what was left of a crummy 

society? It seemed to me that a

subjective approach to things

would have a person 'in there,' 

hard at work and chucking for

results, with, I suppose, the stance

of an activist; a 'doer,' not a taker.

The other, 'objective' stance would

be the stand-offs, those a few steps

back from things. The takers. Those

NOT in the mix. Funny, it was, how

those two designations  -  so seemingly

different  -  actually seemed to have

merged. into the one type of 'urban'

person  -  those 'actively at work

to attain doing nothing.' Passivity

in the employ of Activity?

-

Sometimes I just wanted to give up,

having been little prepared for any

realities of the modern-day street life

presented to me. At which point, I

admittedly went way off-track.

-

One of the acquired skills, from this

all, was balance. Finesse. The strange

way we fight the surge and try to

stay  'up' on whatever form of a

high-wire we've put ourselves 

upon. Philip Petit had

nothing on me.

13,571. BACK TO ORIGINS

BACK  TO ORIGINS

Here we go 'round the

mulberry bush...but not

in a rush, as slow as can 

be. Is this a flower I see

before me? I think that

I shall never see, a sight

as lovely as a tree.

13,570. MY CANTILEVERD RAINBOW

MY CANTILEVERED RAINBOW

Wendell Berry, I ain't. Nor do I care

about much : Living like this is now

parasitical; a loss without even a

chance of gain except through others.

I may gather sticks or small brush,

but the fire never burns and the 

still light diminishes what it 

was meant to enflame.

13,569. THE SMOLDERING WRECKAGE OF BETTERTOWN BLUES

THE SMOLDERING WRECKAGE 

OF BETTERTOWN BLUES

Primarily, nothing ever happens that

wasn't pre-ordained. We all know

that. Some President will die, the

toastmasters will talk, The Pope

will skip Communion, and maybe

even old Joe Stalin and Margaret

Thatcher will dine together; to

talk sense to a better Magistrate

then anyone else can find.

-

I once sat watch over some stolen

money. Thirty-one thousand dollars,

to be exact. It was in two bank bags

made of a canvas I'd never seen

before : creamy white, thin-gauge,

and a tiny bit shiny too. I guess they

figure all that our ahead; you'd not

want those kinds of bags to burst.

-

The two guards, black guys acting

big with little guns, had been clonked

on the head, knocked out, by Henry

Hymes, at the second Newark stop

along New Jersey Railroad Avenue.

Yes, weird name, but that's really

what it's called. A trestle street,

adjoining the railroad above, and 

made from huge brown stones.

They much have built it long ago,

when they lifted the railroad through.

Things were done differently then.

-

Both guys were out cold, on the

curb outside their armored car.

There's a spot there where the

Salvation Army has a big building,

and a used-goods store right next to

it, across the way. They come and go

with cash all day, receipts and money.

The armored car guys come, pretty

regularly and on time. Foolishly.

-

If you ever read a book called

'American Pastoral,' by Philip Roth,

there's a really great reconciliation 

scene that takes place right near here, 

at the stone wall. The main guy, Swede

Lvov, finally finds his criminal, runaway,

terrorist daughter, and they have this

torrid scene right here. Worth a read.

Maybe moreso for me, since I know

the spot, and did a crime of my own

right here too. Really something.

-

I call it 'Bettertown,' because we're

all trying to get there; but no one

ever really does. Take my word.

13,568. INCOMPLETION

INCOMPLETION 

Go ahead then, complain. But

you'd better make it good. The

thin light from the semblance

of the sky you talk about is 

now so long and over.

-

I was born in a cave, and my

mother, in attendance then,

always swore it was a cavern.

If there's a difference, please

tell me now. All my father

ever said was it was the last

available dump they found.

-

Corn Flakes and Rabelais.

For my growing years that

was about it. Yes. Corn

Flakes and Rabelais.

13,567. SWITCHING SIDES AND PLATES

 SWITCHING SIDES AND PLATES

You missed it. And there was

nothing there. No deep distinction

that I can make. Why to bother by

awakening all frazzled? Life is but 

a dream; or it's been told that way.

-

Two half measures, I suppose, can

add up to something done right?

Not sure how that works. But in

any case, when I take my stance

it's probably opposed to yours.

-

Many years before this, and I do

mean many, along Canal Street

was the Tea Water Pump and

St. John's Park. Railroads came,

and Commodore Vanderbilt too,

and took all that away. Now? 

-

No one knows the difference 

between what I'm talking about 

and a sick, bad, dream of 

all that is gone.

13,566. AMALGAMATE

ALMALGAMATE

And at  the mineshaft the

men were gathering agate.

I never got the connection,

If any. My mind was onto

other things by then : items

of no less import. I watched

the smashing crane bring

down its force on rock. I

watched trees fall. Thinking

of little but silence, for which

I divinely wished.

-

What to do but shrug. There

is no rare, Shakespearean mass

for me to plug; bringing down

rain from skies on high; metal

fragments, maybe, from Heaven.

Some get the gist, some don't.

13,565. ALL DAMNED TO MY CONTENTMENT

ALL DAMNED TO 

MY CONTENTMENT

If there was a frog beneath my shirt,

at the center of my chest, it would

look like my beating heart. You could

think so anyway. If there was a lamp

atop my head, shining, it could look

like a brilliant idea coming forth. You

could think so, anyway. 

-

As it is, this lousy walkup on 23rd,

patterned after nothing so much as

defeat, is due to come down by the

wrecking ball soon. Not knowing

where I'll be after that, nothing else

much matters. Across the way, already,

they are detaching doors and windows.

-

I remember so many things  -  patterned,

like designs upon a fancy shirt, or even

the plain patterns of flannel. They each

have their color and hue  -  here flame,

their plain. Why does one life, I now

wonder, bring forth such a mix?

13,564. RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,168

RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,168

(art, pt. 2)

"It seems that the fundamental

experience of being alive is a

gothic and grotesque experience.

It really is a frightening place.

None of us feels that we are

entirely normal." I guess that

summation is one for the record 

books, and I know that when I

read it it scored deeply. Certain

things do. One time I had two

friends, in a relationship for a

really long time. Motorcycle

people. (I'm trying to tie this

all in, and maybe I'll succeed,

maybe not, shortly, with the

same 'Art' theme as the previous

chapter. Also, let me point out

that, even though it's in quotes,

I altered that quotation by 

leaving out 'on Earth'  -  as in 

"...the fundamental experience

of being alive on Earth." It

struck me as being needlessly 

redundant). They had finally

decided to get married, and

went on a motorcycle trip to

Las Vegas, to be married there.

While there, on the motorcycle,

they had a road accident wherein

they ran broadside into a screaming

ambulance that was crossing their

path. She was killed. He was banged

up, but fine. Who was at fault, if

alcohol or speeding was involved,

I never found out, but the tragic

aspects remained and it was all

eventually taken care of too.

-

My point is, (I think), artfully if 

that episode was the premise of a

book or an adventure film or an

episode of some cop show or 

somesuch, it could possible have

been construed as 'artfully' perfect.

Art and creativity have always had a

way of subsuming the human aspects

of sadness or tragedy into the more

vast premises which they deal with

in relating or telling tales. In the

late 1700's, I guess, many a widow

or survivor was able to (perhaps)

recognize their husband or family

member in those tableauxs of

battle, shipwreck, or disaster?

-

As the turtle who had been 

attacked by a gang of snails said, 

'It all happened so fast.' Once the

triumphal vale of psychology and

self-awareness took over  -  as I see

it  -  Art lost all those old designations.

It was no longer necessary at all to be

able to see, say, any Heinrich Bloch

in a battle scene, or the grimace of

Amelia Avellina in  the approaching

storm  -  photography and all the

new ways of visual messaging had

taken all that over. Art went inside.

The great maw of the individual 

psyche surpassed, for a 'modern'

man, any necessity for true, accurate,

and detail-oriented representation.

Even things recognizable had changed

their appearances and somehow all

doors had opened to the artful play

and flow of a sort of interpretative

dance within the world of color and

line and space. I've often believed

that sort of joyousness was why

Humankind was created anyway,

in Eden, a total Republic of Creation.

In the Blakean sense (William Blake,

1757-1827) it was all again lost

at the Fall and replaced by his

imposing Gods 'Nobodaddy' and

'Urizen' ('Your Reason') who then

shackled Mankind within the pearly

limit of guilt, doubt, repetition,

rules, order, measurement and

limitation. Art was the escape.

-

Wars and rumors of war, of course,

by day and night frittered away the

'good' inherent in all recouping of

those old possibilities, and the world

was encased by the same systems and

logic we have to day. 'Scrabble players

don't suppose that spelling words is

significant; what's significant is the 

assembling of words from a limited

array of letters. Chess players don't

think about capturing kings and rooks;

they think about strategies for capturing

kings and rooks.' No painter, on the

same level, imagined that eliminating

perspective, instead of re-telling the 

story of a battle or flood, was inherently

virtuous. No one really thought the

picture plane was a prime place in

itself. They were, instead, drawn to

the game of eliminating everything

else and then finding out what was

left and how to communicate it. The

'dignity' of an abstracted art lies in

the intersection of the obviousness

of its motifs and the complexity of

its motives. What I here call the

'psychology;' of the art   -  which

brings out the endless possibilities

of the truer Humanity of the artist,

who punches now his or her way

outward from the encroaching 

shroud of dark reason and negative

expectation by which the rest  of

life has been overtaken.

-

We are everywhere else locked in

place. Art becomes both the key

AND the exiting. Past a certain 

point  -  a a difficult point to achieve,

yes  -  it hardly matters what is done,

as long as 'something' is done.

13,563. WEATHER REPORT

WEATHER REPORT

I have a makeshift campsite tent-post

for a shelter that will never hold up.

-

You cannot hear my words because

your ears are plugged? No. Not that.

-

It is all the wind in the trees blocking

the sounds of everything else. 

-

This lean-to will not last another storm.

13,582. KINDLING

KINDLING

As much as I remain determined, 

I  cannot any longer hold twigs 

in my hands. Only fiercer flames

from larger wood are in my future 

forest. There's no manipulation

like the movement of flames.

-

Coke bottle glasses and revolving

doors. Women with handbags made

of fake leather. Kids running street

games in the middle of a highway

lanes. Who knows how things go?

13,561. DON'T BE DELICIOUS, BE DETERMINED

 DON'T BE DELICIOUS, 

BE DETERMINED

The curtain comes down on the ladle;

something spells soup on the alphabet

floor. I can't determine what is anymore.

-

Here is the cracker you'd left on the chair;

for me? I wondered, and then I wondered

anew  -  why was it there?

13,560. RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,167

RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,167

(art, pt. 1)

More thought than anything else,

my own exclusive intrusion into

this enchanter's domain has always

had something to do with mesmerizing

others. Maybe. In the long history of

what's been done, 'Art' has traveled,

and transcended. We have now entered,

in a seeming lockstep, a realm where

Art has degenerated to trash; to forms

of 'behavioral therapy'; and to such

momentous decline that today (honestly)

I saw an ad for 'the first music done by

an infant in utero.' (I want to ask, 'If it

was twins, would it be a cast album?).

-

The world has succumbed to trash; it

used to be within only our waterways

and along highways. Then it went to

audacious roadside billboards, shopping

plazas and parking lots. Now it's just 

everywhere and graffiti itself has

been re-termed 'Art'  -  and, of course,

that has somehow been done by the

usual forms of 'social engineers' who 

plan and categorize and label the

acceptable things, which are then 

allowed to wend their way into the

fabric of everyday life. That doesn't

advance 'graffiti' into any higher

realm of art status, of course, but

it does bring art down to the scabbier

levels of the social fabric. Which

then takes it to the streets, to babble

and bleed right where they live, and

gains acceptance by those who, as 

agents, inspect and grant acceptance

to poverty, degradation, sexual

perversity, mind-numbing subtraction

from quality-of-the-essence wellness

and the least admirable qualities of

post-intellectual lifestyles.

-

It has been said, and I learned it thusly,

that the best Art is done by those under

conditions of adversity. I question that,

now, totally. I remember once going to

an art exhibit, in about 1970, at the Met

or somewhere, and a friend, along with

us, with very little art consciousness,

went through the rooms with us  -  all

those Vermeers and Giottos and Monets

and Manets and Valezquezes and the rest.

We then went to another floor, where the

featured art was titled as 'Nazi War Drawings.'

Meaning 'Art' done by camp inmates.

He was enthralled, and thought it was

great  -  and only later did we tell him

that it had been a special 'side' exhibit

of camp-prisoner art. He was under the

impression that it was part of the more

general canon of traditional, accepted,

art. Of the sort people swoon over.

That always stuck with me. Curiously.

-

One thing about 'Art' as it is taught,

in Art History anyway, is that it's often

encoded, instead of as just Art, as an

'encoded political cartooning or as

social history in pictures.' It ought to

be viewed as by a person 'moved'

by it, rather than by someone who

encapsulates what he or she sees into

a pre-ordained format of category,

style, or scene. That's very difficult

to do. I've never really known what

a 'philistine' was, or what was meant 

by it, derogatorily, when addresses to

someone who partakes of art as a

'part-time' or Sunday endeavor. It

reeks of elitism, to be able to call

someone out for that.

-

Goya painted demons. Bosch and

Breughel painted oddities of fantastic

presence. Others painted battle scenes,

royal portraits, the vast and heavy

interiors -  Vuillard, Matisse. It was

all done, those old formats and now

encyclopedia-ized styles, in another

world and one that no longer exists.

The 'modern' idea, after TV, movies,

photography and the rest had superseded

much of the role painting once had,

was that, or became, that 'modern 

painting, having ceased to be

illustrative, ought to be decorative.'

(Instead, I guess, though that stark

word was left out). The old jobs

or portraying bank presidents,

battle scenes, landscapes, showing

off the manor house, and the

faint and bucolic forms of a 

dwindling 'Nature' with its

horses, farms, barns  and

windmills, having been turned

over to photography and the

movies, left to painting what

painting still did well, and that

was to paint.

-

I don't really wish to belabor

all of this, but I want to say that

the axis of 'Freud/Marx' did change

everything about painting and about 

art. Once the psychological angle

was introduced into the realm of

art and creativity, all the other aspects

fell away  -  or should have. The Left,

the political movement of Marx, we

can see, did also step in and agenda-ize

much of 'Art'  -  often enough just

turning into the social- realism of

WPA stuff as well as the theatrical

Soviet realism of collectives and

farms and military bumbling; red

sashes and furious coats of arms!

Now, almost a hundred years on

as well, we have even de-calculated

all that and ended up with piles

of bricks, or squats of dung, being

called art. Put into our own social

services of propaganda foolishness

and high-style, often gay as well,

frippery. It's a different world and

we are, surely, adrift in a different

and very de-centralized, place.