RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,178
(curious beginnings to everything)
I once knew a guy, a Frenchman.
In NYC. He was there, like me,
doing his 'Art' thing - having
fled the somehow provincial
Parisian/French art scene for
the higher focal-point, crazy-raw,
later 1960's NYC art scene. In
that, he was sadly mistaken, but
I never let on, nor tell him, that
he was about 25 years too late. It
wouldn't have really mattered
anyway, because he was actually
more partial NOT to that older
artworld of dirty, old New York,
but instead the glitzier, wild and
crazy, Dadaist-oriented fringe of
what was later becoming or known
as 'Pop Art.' A sort of Dada school
in its own, peculiarly-rummaged
clothing.
-
No matter, and as we often enough
sat around kind of art-schmoozing
with each other - talking ideas and
things through, each of us learning
from and ferreting out information
from, each other's personal lives
and histories, we glean odd things
from each other.. If I was 20 years
old, I'd guess he was 30. One of the
things he told me, in that funny
manner we had of exchanging info
about what we saw as 'America,'
was that of its 'scale' being of
something that he could never
quite grasp or fathom, in his
European-oriented sensibility. I
remember his story of how he
and his wife, also French, after
being in New York for a while
got a car so as to drive from
New York to California and they
had bought a large picnic basket
and filled it with all the 'wonderful'
things they could get in the many
delicatessens of NYC. They figured
they'd 'picnic' somewhere along
the way. After 10 days of driving,
some 4,000 meandering miles later,
they'd never found a place to picnic.
-
Maybe they just weren't looking
in the right places, or maybe they
were just too fussy in their tastes
about where to stop, but he blamed
it all on scale, saying something
like, 'The countryside is enormous,
the country is enormous; automobiles
are enormous, everything is enormous!'
It was, frankly, a viewpoint I'd not
ever thought about or shared - my
own version of 'American' comprising
perhaps 100 miles in three directions
and a seacoast to the east, and, truth
be told, if I had ever a yen to stop
somewhere, I'd stop. I certainly
didn't have that bucolic reverence
to any sainted 'picnic grounds'
criteria that needed to be met. And,
besides, I've always liked those
old, grimy, truckstops anyway.
-
Maybe one had to be foreign, or
French, or something like that, to
hold those sensibilities. I never
knew. Whenever I'd see photos of
those old, French, rather charming,
row homes and small domiciles -
British ones too, for that matter -
I always loved them. Instead of
knowing 'America' as something
wide and broad and expansive, all
I'd ever really experienced was the
ticky-tack rows of same-looking
little boxes somehow called Cape
Cods, or even later, the 'Split-Levels'
that were planted all in rows on
and over every small bit of open
land, making a mish-mash of
what I supposed was once a pretty
grand country. All 'Natural' aspects
to it, including picnic station, had
long before been sacrificed to the
ridiculous Gods of commerce and
oil, manufacture and consumption.
I saw no grand scale anywhere,
except maybe for the headache
quotient and decimation factors.
-
As if, yes, we were talking two
different languages (I knew only
a little French, but hated speaking
it - all that weird tongue-making
soft sounds, etc. - and he was real
good with his English, which he
treated almost as if it was German;
that harsh, hammering sound), we
each viewed the spectacle of
'America' totally different. The
problem was, I could offer nothing
back, not ever having visited his
land. I read somewhere that by not
traveling 'abroad,' a person cheapens
their own life and never really
experiences anything other than
his or her own environment. I
figured that was mostly just some
rich dude talking - so conveniently
leaving out the plight that poor people
find themselves in, without the
resources to make those sorts of
glib trips and travels. The phrase
used was like 'A person who does
not travel is like someone who holds
a large book in his hand, but only
reads one page.' Well, I guess I
could say, to that, 'You had to be
there to get the right idea' but
my whole point was the NOT
being there; so forget that.
-
Maybe it's more as if 'Life is a
closet' and if you never step out
of that closet it's probably just
because you don't have he physical
attributes or correct clothing and
resources to venture out. Which
is where, instead, a very rich
internal and intellectual life
comes into play. I've always
had that at least, and I guess
I've still never really ventured
out (but there really are 'curious'
beginnings to everything, if
one doesn't run out of....time?).
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