RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,217
(josef and anni albers)
I guess that at some point, in
and through all of our lives, we
come face to face with the fact
that most of this country is made
up of abnormal BS. I've lived in
the city, the deep country, the
plain old country, and suburbia,
and many of the viewpoints I've
amassed grow from those places
and experiences - which remain
as vivid to me today as ever,
with some far outpacing others.
For the most part I've reveled
and advanced in this life with
a credible content of whimsy,
learning and joy. Mostly.
-
The content part never much
mattered because it could be
changed at any point. Life sort
of flavors itself all along the
way and - in much the same
way as a box of Good n' Plenty,
you can shake it and mix it up
but you're still dealing with the
same two, colorated, forms of
the same old sugary crap.
In so many ways it's all just
a scenario of pick and choose
amidst the good and the plenty.
Weird how that works. We are,
at all times, and often without
even knowing it, underway with
a character-building project for
ourselves. For each of us.
Different.
-
I try to think back to those days
of walking the NYC streets and I
see now that in so many ways it
was a gift; something presented
to me as a stage-set in which I'd
been let into the prop-room so as
to see what was there, what
costumes and effects were being
presented to me. It was a darker
and 'griftier' room for sure, one
where noir figures in half-stooped
poses stared down at the ground;
where a cigarette and a grubby
jackets were incidental necessities,
and one in which talk - glib, idle,
groundless - was much more
prevalent. The world was a mass
of movement; a pavement on the run.
-
If you think of confusion, think this:
Josef Albers was a German artist -
as was his wife Anni. They arrived
to the US about 1933, fleeing the
Nazi Germany occurrences. Josef
knew very little/none English, and
his wife Anni acted, as best she could,
as interpreter for him. He and she
were hired, immediately upon arrival,
as faculty members of the newly
formed and 'experimental' Black
Mountain College, in North Carolina.
In spite of any language difficulties,
they prospered there, both teaching
and living. In constructing this new
'American' apparati of living. Josef
had major problems with the language.
He could never understand, for instance,
the meaning or pronunciation of almost
every word, and she too was often
enough baffled in her own way by
the irregularity of American usage.
So, imagine if you will, that added
dimension of such a blank wall of
confusion in the face of a new land,
a new language, and a transplanted
German idea of 'America' - previously
grounded, of course, in its urban form
but now presented in a strangely hick
and rural North Carolinian form. He,
using the logic of German speaking,
for instance, could never understand
why 'future' did not mean the simple
opposite of 'pasture.' At another time,
in a local, country-fair aspect of things,
Albers was perplexed by hearing a
man ogling the passing girls, utter
the phrase, I'd like to 'dip my stick
inside her.' (That being the erroneously
heard cinammon stick/apple cider offer
advertised on the nearby booth). These
are the effects of a plain and logical
form of Americanism-in-context, but
as you see when even ever so slightly
removed from proper context, they can
be seen otherwise as strange outcrops
of a new land and a new formation.
I wonder where we each would be,
as well, in, say, India, putting 'motor
oil' on our 'cake,' or somesuch odd
and foreign infraction. As he put it,
at age 45, it was 'Too late to learn
a new flexibility of the mouth.'
-
-
It was never within my means to
portray properly the influx of all this
rattling around; the noise of living
made by the huge resound of the
world around me. I regaled in silence
more than any noise, and I realized,
as well, that 'Humanity' drove itself
towards noise, plain and simple. How
does a person fit into that mix? The
din, the sound, versus the paradoxical
need for the most simple of silences
just to think. it often got treacherous.
-
I found, as I progressed, that I more
and more needed less and less with
which to go on. I somehow sensed
right off that the 'business' world
wasn't for me. Nor could I ever
understand any of the usual crap
about 'going to college to major
in Business' - whatever that was
meant to get across. Diddly-squat
'Junior Colleges' - a big thing back
than on about the same par with
todays diluted versions of ersatz
community-colleges offering
2-year degrees in what's politely
called 'Criminal Justice' or 'Medical
Coding' - all muddle-headed
versions of paying for taking up
space in exchange for a piece of
paper that says you took up space.
MBA's abound on the zig-zag ship
of dirty commerce. That was, for
sure, the far-distant polar opposite
of anything I cared about. My world
was the streets, and my business
dealings, in 1967, consisted mostly
in the 'companionship' of a trite
and erroneous drug-dealing guy
who lunged at his dealings with a
spiteful glee and then somehow
betrayed his whole scene.
MBA indeed!
-
As Albers would put it, in his
journal, about the English language :
"Get very mad at the English
language...so disorderly...so
illogical....'Ja, es macht wirklich
wild-manchmal-' that's why I am
so slow to learn.'
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