RUDIMENTS, pt. 856
(only on hump day)
My three or four favorite
Shakespeare things, I guess,
were Macbeth, Hamlet, the
Tempest, and King Lear.
Which presents the problem
of the Sonnets. What can be
done about them? They're so
easy to like, only because,
like some Hallmark Card or
sentimental education brief,
their very niceness and total
acceptance by everyone makes
them harmless. After a while
people just stop processing.
Like the Bible, it's something
you're supposed to like, no
given, no questions asked, so
most people do. One hundred
or one hundred fifty years ago
it was more like that; nowadays
three-quarters of the people
wouldn't even know what I'm
talking about. Back then, when
you went to school that was all
part of the stuff you learned. No
more of that, though Shakespeare
has reached that 'reverent' status
which stops all further thought.
The Henry plays, and all that war
and fighting stuff - always too
stilted for my taste. I could
never be bothered. If I want
my history, I don't want it in
that form. Dramatized and
swooned by actors in tights.
All of it quickly becomes more
about them than the play.
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The same goes with Art, and
writing and poetry too - people
just stop the processing and do
the accepting. That's how we
get museums and auctions and
art experts and doctors of art
and people who 'know' all
about it but have never done
it. Jurisprudence itself must
have better labels than that.
I'd rather be a drunk. Each of
these things, long ago, have
been turned into industries.
Drama, stage, art, writing;
every niche that needs being
filled gets filled with names
and categories. The 'Canon.'
Schools fawn all over each other
to teach it, and right now that
teaching list has become so
politically honed that a lot of it
is being cleansed and changed.
Isn't that funny? A changeable
canon - because someone's
uncomfortable the author's not
black, not a woman, not from
the struggling third world, not
writing about social issues and
the premise of a dysfunctional,
modern, time that can only be
seen in the most immediate and
'now' ways. I remember, back
in the middle 1970's when Ntozake
Shange had that play running,
'For Colored Girls Who Have
Considered Suicide/When the
Rainbow Is Enuf.' It wasn't a
play, by any means - they called
it a performance-poem, or a
'choreopoem.' Poetic monologues
to be 'accompanied' by dance
movements and music. I figured,
right off, 'Whew, what is that?'
It was a tough spot for me, because
firstly I hated that stupid title and
the accompanying graphics chosen
for it. It was allover everything -
posters, subways cars, billboards
and buses, and I found it really
annoying. At the same time, the
idea of breaking out of format and
trying something new, such as that,
attracted me. As concept. But
the content, to me, failed, and it
wasn't my approach at all. BUT, I
still see it as a big step along the
way to much of the nothingness
we have now. It's really just
not the stuff of art.
-
What's a punk kid warrior from
a hoe-down like Avenel know
anyway? Nothing at all, and
that was the point. I had none
of those dumb predilections to
habit and lists and who-is-who,
and because of that I was free.
To do and think, in Art terms,
whatever I wished. I never
burned out, but a few times
I came close. What saved me
was being a driven man, but
that too caused a lot of conflict.
I wasn't exactly the most
practical of guys. I'd often
walk down to Chinatown and
sit in the Mayflower Cafe for
like hours, it was just that cool;
to sort of straighten my head out.
It was the craziest sort of place,
and Chinatown itself was like
a reverse paroxysm of the rest
of New York. When you got down
there, there was no ideology
about anything, none that you
saw anyway - a lot of that stuff
was hidden, and well-hidden too.
The Mayflower itself was kind
of schizoid. You could sit at one
end, the walk-in side, and be in
some plain old shabby shithole
Chinese restaurant. All that tea
and rice and lo mein stuff
everywhere. Then there was
a fish tank, at corner rear, but if
you didn't know it was there,
you could miss it. It wasn't really
on display in any manner. Alongside
that was a regular counter, like a
stupid American diner, with rich,
black coffee - way before all
that special-brew Starbucks crap.
It was just coffee, in one or two
huge vats. People would sit around
all night, donuts, Chinese pastries,
all sorts of weird creamy and
stuffed dough-things, and argue.
About poetry, politics, writing.
The dead, the living, males, females.
Or, special for the haggard skinny
to death Chinese locals, who would
also sit there forever, smoking away
like smokestacks, say nothing at
all except, to another waiter-type,
equally haggard and weird, who'd
then start some Chinese string of
invective never understood by me.
I never knew what in the heck they
were rattling on about, and then
a cook from the rear would step
out, also smoking, and start
ranting. If you ever saw the
cooks in the back at work, which
I did often, each of them would
be chopping or firing up something
in a wok, and a cigarette would be
dangling, fro each one of them, and
they'd never flick the damn ash.
There's be, I swear, like sometimes
three-quarters of an, I bet, of ash
on the tip of the cigarette. I never
stared, but neither did I ever know
where those ashes ended up.
Well-seasoned pork-fried-rice?
-
Also, it was like never saw anyone
leave there - it was kind of magical.
People would arrive, and they'd
always fit, but by, say, 10pm, I never
figured out how. Towards the end
there, Ginsberg and those guys
would often be hanging out. If you
read his bios and things now, it's
often mentioned how the Mayflower
Tea parlor (proper name) was his
favorite place. I liked it, yeah, but
I don't know how far I'd walk to
get there. The cigarette smoke
alone was a howling bit mistake.
Back in the cigarette days, Camel
cigarettes used to have a slogan,
'I'd walk a mile for a Camel.'
Yeah, OK, but maybe only on
hump day (that's what they used
to call Wednesday, in the work
world). Yeah, Chinatown it was.
A friend of mine, I'd see there
often enough, used to say that
'Uptown,we have Mt. Sinai Medical
Center. In Chinatown it's
Mt. Cyanide!'
