today's poem: Don't Go to Art School!

Deep embarrassment
ah,
of what a mess I made of my life
(can't you say that better?)
a secret
some know, not many
mostly me
and Emily Dickinson
who knew better
than to try so many things

Everywhere I turn
I see half finished
I see intention
not accomplishment
white trash yard of a life

They were right:
Don't go to art school!

But I didn't!

Still, you thought you should.
thought you'd find yourself
there or somewhere
a commune perhaps
reinventing western civilization

that went well

and now in the mirror
an old man looks back
you read books
written by old men
about old men
lusting after young women
(J. M. Coeztee)

and still
you get a nice buzz
from coffee

full of ideas!
let's go make another mess!

Winter (I)

The winter comes too soon
though we tell each other
it's right on time
hoping our lie
will slow time
and show the gods
we are ready
and unafraid
of whatever comes our way

As the gods of time
eat our children
we dare not start to cry
that's how floods start

"The days are long, and
the years are short"
that's what they told me
when I tried to stay awake
as my son
crawled naked on the floor
in the sunlight
Now
he drives a red car and plays football,
thinks of college

My day's are numbered
My mother is dead
Winter is already here

What rule am I breaking
to be so full of life?

Coetzee

I'm trying to figure out what it is about certain fictional voices that grab me. I know I'm interested in "close in" first person narrators, but the danger is always, once you're inside this person, do you want to be there?

Usually, I don't, though it's the exceptions that interest me.

I'm reading J. M. Coetzee's SLOW MAN now, and not quite finished, so it's a odd time to be writing about it. But the plot doesn't matter. It's nearly all about voice, I'd say even more so than character. What is special about the voice? First I'll tell you what the voice reminds me of and then other voices that are similar but not as compelling.

The voice of Paul Reyment in SLOW MAN is very similar to the main character in Iris Murdoch's novel THE SEA, THE SEA. They are both older, white, Brit (empire), educated, artistic, lonely men who have strong feelings, clear thoughts, but don't hold to a certain philosophical structure (say, Christianity or leftist politics) that color everything. They are intelligent freelancers in life, aware that, given their age, it is highly unlikely that they will ever get answers to the philosophical questions they continue to ask (mostly of themselves) and nearly all the time.

The voice is similar to Philip Roth's (EXIT GHOST) voices and Richard Ford (INDEPENDANCE DAY, and THE LAY OF THE LAND), but much more compelling for me. Roth is irascable, smart, and cranky. Ford is opinionated, human, realistic, and ultimately boring. Neither Roth nor Ford, though highly intelligent, I would call philosophical novelists. A philosophical novelist (or character voice) is one that questions the meaning of life more or less constantly at the same time he or she goes through their series of mishaps that constitute a plot. Some of Graham Greene's characters have this philosophical approach, though it's often in the context of a worldview (shared by many around him) that is crumbling, a worldview that once attempted to explain life. So his becomes a cynical voice--life has no meaning, at least not in THAT (old) sense. Paul Rayment (SLOW MAN) is always questioning at every moment -- what does that mean? is that all there is to (human) life? It might sound irritating, and it is when the narrator is too young-- Holden Caulfield being an exception there. When an older person still questions the meaning of life without falling completely into victimhoood (why did my kids and wife and etc. abandon me?) I find it interesting. The character who steps back, watches his life while remaining totally in it (not "alienated" or depressed) is interesting to me. It's a person who I want to follow. I enjoy seeing/hearing them interact with the mundane events tossed more or less randomly at them.

The device in SLOW MAN of adding a character from an earlier novel (which, oddly, I haven't read yet), Elizabeth Costello, creates a very mild form of magical realism. The characters, Paul and Elizabeth, seem pushed together by (almost) mystical forces but in world where no one particularly believes such mystical forces are possible.

All the voices, Roth, Ford and Coetzee deal with love, unrequited mostly, but only in Coetzee is the yearning elevated to what the Tibetan Buddhist Pema Chodran calls "unrequited love is the heart of the world." Bummer. Can this be true? Only Coetzee's characters (in a completely non-religious style) could contemplate this as a visceral possibility. In other words, like the song Blasphemous Rumors by Depeche Mode, "I think that god's got a sick sense of humor... and when I die, I expect to find him laughing."
Either that or reading Coetzee.

We Deserve Obama

We deserve Obama because there is a chronic sense that "more should be done" about race relations, that the pace of change is not enough. We deserve Obama because most of the population has lost faith in "big business" and capitalism. We deserve Obama because we think Europe is "more civilized" than we are and have solutions for the common welfare that we haven't tried. We deserve Obama because people who believe the military is a noble profession, that the profit motive can be good for all, and charity is an important part of a community have not gone into the teaching profession. We deserve Obama because we have allowed education, particularly at the college level, to succumb to a one-sided point of view, that America is "on the wrong track" and needs to be changed quickly, and radically if necessary. We deserve Obama because we have lost our sense that the military has a clear mission, that it is good at what it does, and deserves not only adequate funding, but our children to serve in it. We deserve Obama because we have failed to show how easy it is to obfuscate blame, allowed the media to replacea analysis with sound bites, and ask so little of our elected officials in terms of deep knowledge and analysis. We deserve Obama because we have allowed the media, in search of ratings, to convince us that we are a nation divided, "red" against "blue," rather than a vast majority mulling about the unexciting center, mixed of opinion. We deserve Obama because our religions have faded in importance in many people's lives, yet we still yearn for the classic virtues of redemption and deity. We deserve Obama because we have allowed our faiths to become politicized, replacing soul with Mother Earth. We deserve Obama because of white collective guilt about slavery, however long in the past, and our inability to rationalize our culture's inability to communicate the necessary skills to people of color. We deserve Obama because we want to be cool, and he is the coolest candidate we've been offered since John F. Kennedy. We deserve Obama because we still don't know what caused the Great Depression and remain unclear about what constituted a mistake and what constituted great leadership in our effort to rise out of that crisis. We deserve Obama because we trust that politicians and central bankers are smart enough to "manage" the key components (interest rates, money supply) of the economy and will do so without bowing to pressure or objective standards beyond manipulation. We deserve Obama because we have caricaturized the core of our system -- the money managers of Wall Street and the CEOs -- as greedy, unpatriotic and essentially a people apart from the common man. We deserve Obama because we believe that new and young is better than cautious and old. We deserve Obama because we have institutionalized the idea that rebellion and radicals are mostly good things, that a Che Guevera T-shirt is cool despite what he actually did. We deserve Obama because we have allowed discourse to coarsened and feel hurt by it and we don't know how to get out of it. We deserve Obama because we are blind to our own snobbism, and we define diveristy to include mostly ourselves. We deserve Obama because we are willing to change everything, even the Constitution if we have to, because we think something must be done, because we are afraid.

the capitalism thing

i'm trying this out here, but i'm thinking about the ANTHROPOLOGY of our culture's relation to capitalism and how (we) may be reaping the rewards/punishments of those attitudes:

1. widespread distrust of capitalism, nostalgia for europe, socialism, etc. promoted tirelessly in (nearly) all schools, and in most mass media (bad guys often businessmen)

2. distrust of "getting ahead" philosophy (the 1950s version and the 1980s yuppie version), but what did we put in its place? "coolness"?

3. lack of attention to the MATH of our culture. (a) calculating interest and principle (b) how the world of finance works. [eg. when banking rules are challenged in Congress, who cares?]

4. Laziness and/or hoping "the government" will fix it. Without much evidence that the government's "fixes" help too much (Amtrak, Post Office) we persist in fantasies that (e.g.) that government-run health care would be a good thing. Now applies to "helping" people "stay in their houses"... we are seduced by good-sounding phrases...

5. Widespread corruption. I see this as (a) Democratic version - forcing the private sector to do the work of government, assuming "leveling up" is the government's work (b) Republican - hoping, against hope, that free market principles can work in a system already hobbled by say a 600 page tax code not to mention Congressional fiats... it aint' that strong! (c) Everyone -- easily passing blame, whether its to the "Bush Administration" or Barney Frank, there's plenty to go along, including Hollywood, and the corporations that don't promote capitalism, but are afraid to be who they are

why write #738

why write

i'm so disappointed in everything
AND in everything i read

life is so disappointing
so few people "get it right"
we're flush
with WORLD VIEWS
suffocating us
forcing us to TAKE SIDES
when no one has even begun
to clarify
why one side is better than another
and
how is it that
each can be a little right
and a lot wrong?

like the revolution comes to kafka's village
who's fighting who?
why?
no time to think, defend
the town
your family
yourself
against them
they might even be your neighbors
(hutu/tutsi)
it's very hard to say who they are
but they're nearby
and angry
isn't that enough?

and the only thing that moves
with regularity
are the seasons
is it fall already?
is my son 16?
(that billy joel song...
it'll be great to see you, dad...
when i can find the time, etc)
though MY dad's been
long dead
my mom freshly dead
if i BELIEVE in an afterlife
does that HELP her
ghost/spirit
or not?

who is wise?

the CHASE

The suits. I admire them. How they know what they're about. How untroubled they are by ideas (like politics, like values, even like family) that Get In The Way. I was there when the two retired financial men tried to answer the question: Why did you start (yet) another company? One guy fumbled around a while, trying to be funny, talking about answering the phone for his wife and listening to her personal trainer or someone from one of her environmental causes was too much for him. But in the end he admitted it: it was the Chase, that's why he was back. What's (a man) without The Chase?

So, I admire them. I think, how could I focus myself more on THE CHASE? What is it I'm actually chasing? Fame? Money? A New York Times review? Sales? A busy business (of art, of writing)?

Is there a "chase" that is about DOING the art more than the CHASE of getting "the world" to like/approve of your art. An internal chase, which for my suits is probably in the bullshit category. But is it? Is that what I am really chasing in myself? In the end, is the chase for the internal creative moment MORE COMPELLING than the chase for a deal well closed, a tidy profit, a back slap from your compatriots and admirers?
And who in the end is the judge? If you LET others judge you, then yes, you are the fool they see. The one who has not corralled the world, not created the OUTCOME DESIRED. A hobbyist, a dilettante, in essence (to these macho men) a "woman" (not a woman-woman but a failed man, a whole different kind of man, pussy, wimp...etc)
I thought it was 1950s ish and then (since I'm hooked on Mad Men) I even told my wife that
yeah, it sounded like Mad Men and then there it was on the episode (when they failed to get the American Airlines account) and they were sitting around dejected and Roger Sterling says to Don Draper, yeah but it's the chase, isn't it (something like that)...
Yeah, it's the chase.

Don Draper vs. Michael Scott

I'm thinking about loneliness (of men/of me) lately.

In the past {ref: reading book on Magellan} men often had no one to keep counsel with. Often they had not even friends to trust. Wives were not "friends and partners" in way they are (supposed to be) today. Great things were accomplished in this loneliness.

Why do I think it should be otherwise?
How lonely was my father?
How lonely are all men?

I'm also thinking about MAD MEN, Don Draper. He's as alone as you can be. His wife is not even a confidante ("why did you let that salesman into MY house?"). He has no friends at work. Probably the closest to a "friend" is his boss Coop who is, well, his boss. Then there are his "lady friends" -- the beatnik -- who he has to share with other men who despise him and the Jewish heiress/businesslady -- who could be his equal but is clearly unenthusiastic about him being married and a goy. If he wasn't so handsome he wouldn't be anywhere near her bed.

What do men get from comraderie? I suspect this is a hidden truth. That "jobs" (I'm thinking blue collar at the moment, construction crews) offer a feeling, however antagonistic in demeanor, of belonging that is somehow unavailable other places. Offices, like in Mad Men, are now too "equal opportunity" for anything like the (mean old) boys' clubs to exist. Men have to be on the look-out, more like Michael Scott (in The Office) who is constantly blundering from one foot-in-the-mouth position to another, unable to navigate what is required of a sensitive office man -- homage to the true mission (capitalism/money) while not offending women, racial minorities, and gays. He's clearly not up to the task and we laugh at him for it. Don Draper on the other hand, lives in the Old World before the rules all changed. His kind is slated for extinction -- the "man's man" --except possibly in the military and even there now he has to deal with women, sexual harrassment, etc.

So, how does the loneliness of Draper compare with the loneliness of Scott? Draper is driven. He wants what he wants as the saying goes. He wants money and power and prestige and any woman he wants. Scott-ostensibly wants the same things -- success, promotion--but he wants love, a partner to share his life with, comraderie and friendship in the office, the love and friendship of his colleagues. In a sense, Scott's needs are impossible to fill, the net he casts is too wide. We see the impossibility of it and we laugh, embarrassed for him. Perhaps he lacks something -- tack, intelligence-- we suspect this, but more likely the reason it's funny is that he is us, the Everyman, who can't get what he wants. Ever.
Draper is almost scary in his drive. We know the shows creators "dislike" the culture they are presenting. This is clear when the entire office is cheering for Nixon over Kennedy. "We" (wink-wink) the audience know that Kennedy (hatless, handsome, young, maverick) won that battle. We (wink-wink) know that the kind of capitalism and manipulation that characterizes Sterling Cooper Advertising is not only a dinosaur, but somehow despicable, heartless, deserving it's extinction.

Still, from our "Michael Scott" offices we (like the Pete Campbell character -- boyish forever) watch Draper's every move. How does he get the women? How does he succeed in business without being a kiss-ass pansy (like Pete, like Scott, like us)?

Why Politics Doesn't Make Sense (to monkeys)

More and more frequently my "answer" to things is merely to invoke the phrase: We're monkeys. Or What do you expect from monkeys?

This answers a lot.
Why people want a strong leader at the same time they want to tear that leader down.
(See monkeys)
Why people want "fairness" over affluence. See: jealousy of others (cheating, stealing) in monkeys
is an emotion that blocks out the reasoning that we're all better off with there are rich people.
This explains socialism and communism's appeal. We are deeply concerned with fairness
much more so than comfort and wealth.
Cliques rule. Families (royal and/or your own), bonds, friends, networks, this is all monkey stuff. It rules. Efforts to contain it, however noble, are ultimately ineffective as we trust what is close, and what we know.
Where fairness and cliques conflict, usually cliques rule by subterfuge.

Panic and fear.
"Fear stimulates my creativity," says Don Draper in Mad Men. This is a monkey thing. We are actually less anxious when we are afraid. This explains why we tend to panic, why we "lean into" fear. A serious panic (war qualifies as does a community hit by disaster) focuses us, actually is less uncomfortable than worrying about what the thing is (ultimately death) that will destroy our momentary happiness.
This explains the appeal of global warming. We "want" there to be worldwide, clear, things to be afraid of. Better yet, there is something YOU CAN DO to prevent it, like buy the right lightbulb. Save the earth at Walgreens.
As a society we are uncomfortable with war. Not all societies are, but "democracies" are
in a perpetual state of not having a (strong enough, right enough) leader no matter who they are. Being perpetually divided we are not in a good position to support small wars. When attacked we are fierce. When we feel like aggressors (bullies) we're likely to be uncomfortable, looking around, who's going to gang up on us?
We profoundly confuse gender. Our rational minds tell us we are equal and "should" be the same, this makes the differences more pronounced and the rifts in society much worse and increases anxiety.
This explains why "women's rights" are not a rallying point in much of the world. Women's rights are a product of a highly organized, modern state, however theoretical they are at all levels. The "patriarch" is the close in leader our monkey bodies expect (tolerate) and are reluctant to cast aside for a "rational" claim of equality.
We are all racists (see "cliques") and modernity casts this as a sin, so we are all and forever sinning to be comfortable around that which we know and uncomfortable around that which we do not know. Again, our rational minds (think seventh grade teacher) tries to "talk us into" overriding the clique impulse but we end up in an uncomfortable zone, halfway there because there is no there to get to.
This explains Obama. (Not to say he might make a fine president. But it explains his appeal.
The discomfort of the middle ground plus the desire for a strong leader.)

Orangs

They want me
to be sad.
No, more sad,
visible sad and outraged
about the orangutans
disappearing
in the march of
heartless capitalism
And I am
sad
yes, I am
how can you not be?
these are babies
furry and strange
babies
but
babies nonetheless.

I am lost
and alone in my
objection
to living
chronically
in sorrow
anger
and hopelessness

Why not cry
for all that's been lost already?
The great mammoths,
the saber tooths.
you think I'm kidding

or callous

think what you like
I am sad in my own way

Cave Wall (facing up to it)

I'm beginning to wonder
if it's over
I mean--
the genius track
modest hopes
for modest interviews
on NPR
modest reviews
in the New York Times

I could call it a medical condition
the ADD and so forth
and/or throw in aging
and the distraction of the internet

the ideas keep coming
(a flow, a leakage
a drainage, a natural thing)
they seem rich
and helpful
perhaps
to someone

but the world moves on
when one doesn't
make one's mark
on the cave wall

Mad Men

What a strange series. It's on the one hand looking back (nostalgically? humourusly? sadly? all of the above?) on a time when "men where men and they were smokin' assholes." What do women get out of this series? Scoffing (laughing? sympathy?) for a earlier, less empowered, but clearly more sexual (?) version of who they are now? It's yes "genius" to set a drama in the age of the Man in the Grey Flannel Suit, when racism and antisemitism were accepted, when the goal
of deceiving the American public about the dangers of smoking occupies the best brains. We are soooo much smarter than them. We know smoking is horrible. We know they are assholes to treat women, black and Jews the way they do. And yet, and yet, we are like alien overlords looking in on the experiment, trying to care about their feelings and yes, being surprised that
men (and women) locked so hopelessly into a pre-progressive era (helping Nixon get elected: omigod!) have feelings we can, well not exactly relate to, but be entertained by.
So in that sense it has some similarities to The Sopranos -- I mean, we never had true sympathy for Tony and his outrageous band of thieves and we scoffed at their "Italian" chintz lifestyles, but still, they managed to pull off, what, six seasons?
Funny how we like to hate our heroes (in the fiction sense). Or we choose heroes that we comfortably feel superior to which relaxes our need to judge everything (we KNOW these folks suck) so we can kick back and in our virtual reality of TV see if the boss nails his secretary.
How shameful!

sex sex sex

there are days when i care nothing about anything but sex. sex sex sex. why do art when you can be in bed with someone, touching, being touched? is art better than this? making books for people who don't want them? Now, writing short fiction and poetry for godsakes. jesus. what's all this? why don't i just play? what if the world were ending, what would i do? sex sex sex

Terry Gross and Cormac McCarthy

To garden or not to garden
that is the question
Is it better to sit here
and pretend someone
will find me brilliant
deserving of NPR honors
with their soft,
chortling voices

Where have you been?
Terry Gross will ask
with a wink.
Hiding from us?
Yes, I will say
with a sly grin.
Gardening, I add.
Oh, you garden?
Between writing brilliant novels
which I've hidden away
with instructions to
burn immediately upon my death
And my paintings
locked away
for no one to see
And of course
the poems
verboten to human eyes.

Can I hear one?
Terry will ask
'jes 'lil 'ol moi
and the entire
smarty pants nation?

Aw shucks, OK,
I will say
she glances to the wings
of the sound stage
where Cormac McCarthy,
her next guest,
(the real one)
and why
everyone's here.

Maybe next time
she says.
Thank you so much!

Poet Tied to a Tree

It's worse than any sort of coming out
where they embrace you as brave
and find you a support group

it's worse than returning military
(though they're not spit on anymore)
still, so many say
why did you go?
why did you fight?
but thanks all the same

coming out as a poet

it's worse than homelessness
(all virtual pain though)

I'm a poet now

Oh, yeah, and I'm
Tinkerbell

No, really,
I accept my role
as spokesperson for my heart
in the tradition of tragic fop
a bruised artistic ego
drinking French Roast black
contemplating murder
of a comma

Yes, I am here,
like St. Sebastian
tied loosely to a tree
shirtless
(thank god for my personal trainer)
looking downward
pondering a leaf
while my assistant
hands out arrows
to the crowd

Let's see what kind
of aim these
heartless literati
can muster up

It's called spoiling

I made the young man
a friend of my son's
a sandwich
nearly trembling
with anticipation
of the judgment of our household

Where is the mother? his mother will ask
How nutritious is their food?
And why on earth did they let you
watch Reservoir Dogs?

It's silly, I tell myself,
she/they aren't like this
not really
but still
it's all here in my trembling
why did a guy like me
dare have kids?
where did I think I could sustain
a quarter century of attention?

Though sixteen,
my son hugs me --
I missed you,
he says.
While I wonder
statistically
how many sixteeen year old boys
hug their father like this
Could it be
something might be right here?

I turn to the sunday Times
and it tells me
internal parasites might be a good thing
and nations
with higher gun ownership
have less murders,
nevertheless
debacle is close at hand.

I've watch The Mist now three times
and still hate the ending
(what that father does)
I won't tell you what,
that's called spoiling

Emily Dickinson, Warrior Queen

All poets must be liberal,
believe a better world
and most of all
in education and equity.
It is inevitable, our triumph:
Come, we can do this thing!
Someday, the loving
community will arrive,
green, wholesome,
a flute playing in the meadow!

Until that time,
We poets must unite
to fight the military
and white male owners
of large grey buildings
that employ our people in
demeaning circumstance

Poets unite
to end war
Led by Che, the handsome,
we will storm the bastion
of the Texan
and Neanderthals who
qualify for extinction
(their our fault!)

What would be poetry
without liberalism
We'd have soldiers
gloating over kills
And CEOs
rhapsodizing
deals robbing the poor

Storm the bastions,
oh ye poets
For yours in the kingdom
as has been
promised
by Emily Dickinson,
our warrior queen

Burning Heart

Just when I told her
that a broken heart
was a meaningless phrase
it hit me
how I lied
to make the world
seem more what?
rational
like the enthusiasm
a young therapist
must bring to the job
Let's do this thing!

But they're all wrong
the rationals
sadly, as it might be a better world
if they were not.

My heart is broken.
Ah, there is the phrase
and the image --
long discredited:
non-anatomical heart
spouting flames,
encased in thorny brambles.
You know the one
used frequently
in tattoos.

Maybe it's just the rain
or maybe its
leaving my lover
in a place
far, far away
like they say
when mocking fairy tales

appeal of liberalism is what exactly?

So often when I read a liberal (like the guy in the Wall Street Journal this morning defending John K Galbraith) I am often puzzled: what is the appeal? I read art magazines and the slouchy hipsters say, "Of course our politics are way left...."

Liberal appeal has something to do with partying.
Liberal appeal has something to do with "cool."

I think social tolerance (sex, drugs, drag queens) is part of the explanation. I mean, what's more fun, a liberal frat house orgy or a golf outing? Ok, stereotypes, but the "right" doesn't hold much appeal especially in its non-libertarian (social conservative) mode. They offer work hard and Jesus. Compared to partying and skimming some cream off the Bill Gates empire (man, he wouldn't even notice!) to fund a rave house for the unemployed in Seattle, well, you see what I mean.

Liberal appeal has little to do with economics.

It's economic theories are mostly stagnant and disproven. Old school protectionism, populism, tax (eat) the rich, and let the government do most things hasn't changed much since the 1940s. I don't think liberal "economists" think that much about economics, they think about pollution, what's fair to unions, jobs lost to India, etc. Of course, I'm simplifying and a smart liberal can always make strong arguments: Nafta is a disaster, globalism is a disaster, global warming is a disaster already happening, capitalism causes disaster, even defending democracy (or ourselves) is a disaster. Notice what these have in common? Yes, the word disaster.

Liberal appeal has something to do with our innate fear of disaster.

This one is trickier: why would emphasizing disaster be appealing? Ah, because most people (part of the human condition) FEEL that "disaster" (i.e. death, danger, growing old, losing things) is always close. Denying it by boostering, say, Work hard! or Be Responsible! or even Love Jesus! is not the same as running with a crowd that agrees with you. Damn, life is hard! You think so, too? What do you think we should do about it? Someone should be helping us (raise our kids, find jobs, get educated, get medical care, save us from pesticides), shouldn't they? You think so, too?
You are my tribe!

Inevitably the combination of cool and the reputation for compassion and the somewhat anti-intellectual bent (you don't read? that's cool) make the Democrats, or the left, the party of young people, "hip" people (Hollywood et al), outsiders (like gays, with a chip on their shoulders--I'm not invited in, eh? I'll show you), minorities (promised social justice revenge from Reverend Wrights since childhood), rust belt unemployed, lost mortgagees, the frightened elders (I hate my kids, who is going to take care of me?).... add it all up (oh, I forgot teachers and unionistas) and you have a "party," not so much a party of ideas as a party of, well, disappointment, fear and promises of worldly goods through no effort on your own.

Ah, but I forgot something. The effort on your own reminded me.

Liberal appeal has something to do with the word community.

What does the right have--"gated" (restrictive) communities, country clubs? The left is flush with communities: gay, hispanic, latino, educational, ecological, animal rights, etc. What does the right have? The community of Jesus lovers, businessmen, self starters, crabby ranchers? Doesn't have the same weight. The left promises above all you won't be as lonely as you are now. Something will change. It's not fair to say they aren't willing to work, they do like some kinds of work. They like "trying" to do things like change the way people think, protesting, and
doing for the environment. They are the enthusiastic recyclers, green advocates, organic food buying, bicycle riding... things that help. Not easy things per se. But things that make them feel less lonely, slightly less desperate (you have to do something!) and therefore have an immediate emotional payoff that's harder to get with the right. Given all the work involved in saving the planet, they could even call the right lazy and selfish. Come to think of it, they do.

hard monday (all heil gaia!)

monday mornings are always hard, not in the good way. always i face why do anything other than loll about and look at porn and drink coffee. thank god there's no heavier drugs around. someone said there's something wrong with the human brain (duh) that we need (crave) so much stimulation. but easy to say, hard to do anything about. my friend sits quietly for hours and shaves her head and does it help? a little. everyone says it's money that ought to be my motivator but i have enough of that, so that sucks. why can't i be one of those people who can never get enough money and then i'd have this little office downtown like jeffR with a secretary and lunch dates and gossip about the market and people who think i'm hot shit but NOOOO i had to go and be a fuckin artiste makin' stuff nobody cares about (too smart for the outsiders, too stoopid for the insiders)... but maybe just maybe i am a genius, why not, someone has to be, surely now we are in an age of a new orthodoxy being born. it's something to see, maybe that's why i'm reading about martin luther, if you lived then you would have seen it evolving, quickly, from fuck those asshole popes in rome to shit, the new people are coming after us! i see this happening and it's scary, it's probably not likely to end up in people being burned at the stake anytime soon, but it'll happen, or it's equivalent. all hail gaia! heil gaia? it doesn't look that way not quite yet, it probably needs a few more crises that could be blamed on it.... what would that be short of that movie that proposed INSTANT climate change (this geological time is a bit of a bummer for the ADD world we live in, but never mind... ) party (like in the matrix...) until it's time to kill the unbelievers.

i'm waiting for the islamics to say the green movement is anti-god. I'd love that! that would be so funny. damn, then we'd have to go to war for them, for gore, for mother earth! maybe the missing pieces. what if they deliberately messed with the "earth" (axis? magnetic fields? something) to bring on armageddon quicker. funny funny.

rejection crusoe

rejection
what does one do
with it

what do the greeks say?
there's a book
around here
somewhere

Youtube world
unfamous are dross
99.9% of us
sucking up
dragging around
malls
dolling up
muscling up

handsome Che
send us out into the fields!
give us uniforms
guns
a purpose

ah, it's all coming
has come before
will come again

what would it be like
if electro-pulses
silenced us all
robinson crusoe
then it would mean something
this work
we do
for ourselves

alone

My Poetic History

In high school, which is as far back as I care to go at the moment I was keen on poetry. Not only the classics (taught “old school” in an all boys Christian Brothers of Ireland school in a Detroit suburb), but as soon as I caught wind of the Beats I was onto them. I remember having a thing for Yevtushenko though I’m not sure how much the fact that he was Russian (i.e. it was rebellious to like him during the Cold War) impacted my taste. Of course I liked e. e. cummings (he ruined my capitalization for life), but when Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s “Coney Island of the Mind” came out, I thought, wow, I’m a beatnik. Ginsberg came a bit later, but in high school (I graduated in 1968) I was clearly affiliated with the Beats and even went to the local coffee house, The Raven, to hear folk music like Jim and Jean, and Tom Rush (the second or third string folk rockers).

So all of this, and on top of it, Theatre of the Absurd (Ionesco et al), existentialist film (Bergman), and Simon and Garfunkel.
Okay.

When I went to the U of Michigan I met my mentor, RG, anthropology grad student, filmmaker, and poet (prose-poetry) in the Black Mountain school which included Charles Olson (as king) and Robert Duncan (also Robert Kelly…oh, hell, here’s the Wiki entry

Projective verse

In 1950, Olson published his seminal essay, Projective Verse. In this, he called for a poetry of "open field" composition to replace traditional closed poetic forms with an improvised form that should reflect exactly the content of the poem. This form was to be based on the line, and each line was to be a unit of breath and of utterance. The content was to consist of "one perception immediately and directly (leading) to a further perception". This essay was to become a kind of de facto manifesto for the Black Mountain poets. One of the effects of narrowing the unit of structure in the poem down to what could fit within an utterance was that the Black Mountain poets developed a distinctive style of poetic diction (e.g. "yr" for "your").

The main Black Mountain poets

In addition to Olson, the poets most closely associated with Black Mountain include Larry Eigner, Robert Duncan, Ed Dorn, Paul Blackburn, Hilda Morley, John Wieners, Joel Oppenheimer, Denise Levertov, Jonathan Williams and Robert Creeley. Creeley worked as a teacher and editor of the Black Mountain Review for two years, moving to San Francisco in 1957. There, he acted as a link between the Black Mountain poets and the Beats, many of whom he had published in the review. Also, the appearance in 1960 of Donald Allen's anthology The New American Poetry 1945-1960 (which divides the poets included in its pages into various schools) was crucial: it established a legacy and promoted the influence of the Black Mountain poets worldwide.

Okay.

So RG took me in as an apprentice, mainly as a filmmaker in the Black Mountain approved personal style of Brakhage et al. I began to read and try to understand the poets they liked and try to learn why they hated the “Academic” poets like Donald Hall (T.S. Elliott). Wiki doesn’t have a entry for the Academics, and I never knew exactly why someone was included in one school or another. For example, Ezra Pound (despite his embarrassing anti-Semitism) was ‘good’, an early forerunner of Olson. T.S. Elliott was ‘bad’; Blake was good, probably because he was a ‘visionary’ of some kind (visionaries were good, though surrealists were bad.) Yeats was good, only sort of because he rhymed which was bad generally (this was pre-rap). The Beats and hippies including Ginsberg were ‘bad’ (though Gary Snyder snuck in as good, go figure). As far as I could understand it, good and bad had something to do with bad being personal (confessional was the worst sin) and the good, or projective verse, had something to do with line being motivated by breath and all that. It seemed to me was that the Black Mountaineers (or projectivists) thought of poetry as an investigative tool to understand humans and culture.

So, actually, they were the academics, the ones that wanted the poem to mean something, to give insight into say the history of Gloucester MA (Olson’s “thing”) and how that relates to the rest of the world. They were against overt mysticism (if assisted by drugs like the Beats) but friendly toward “bookish” mysticism that had people reading primary texts of Theosophy and the various Books of the Dead, etc.
from Olson:

“… if (the poet) is contained within his nature as he is participant in the larger force, he will be able to listen, and his hearing through himself will give him secrets objects share. And by an inverse law his shapes will make their own way. It is in this sense that the projective act, which is the artist's act in the larger field of objects, leads to dimensions larger than the man...I would hazard the guess that, if projective verse is practiced long enough, is driven ahead hard enough, along the course I think it dictates, verse again can carry much larger material than it has carried in our language since the Elizabethans. But it can't be jumped. We are only at its beginnings.... “

Clear? Not to me either, but smart for sure!

Right in the middle of this apprenticeship, I met J who years later I married. She came with her own knapsack full of poetry. Unfortunately (for RG and for me) J was enamored of the ‘confessionals’ like Anne Sexton (and Sylvia Plath and even Gertrude Stein). Making a long story short, RG and his poet wife disapproved of J’s influence and we all went about bringing her into the apprenticeship of Black Mountain wannabes. Even the dancers that J liked were “not approved” though inexplicably Carolee Schneeman (Meat Joy, 1964, and Fuses, 1967) was a good guy, though her work was to my eye as wild as anything the unapproved Happening artists like Kaprow were up to. Nevertheless, we (J and I) struggled on to accept the teachings of RG.

Jumping ahead, I had a falling out with RG mainly because I felt he wanted people basically to follow him, and to do this you had to be an academic (preferable in anthropology or geography as English was hopeless corrupt by the “academics”) and NOT a hippie. At the time (circa 1970) I wanted more than anything else to BE a hippie and the tension resulted in RG “letting me go.” I did feel fired and it upset me. I was left with my degree in Geography, but oh well.

Now I’m getting to my poetry story. I never recovered my love of poetry. I felt that my inner software (if you will) for making and appreciating was damaged by Richard’s good guys vs bad guys. I neither rejected it completely, nor tried to “make it my own” like some of my friends did after I introduced them to it.

There is one other influence. In the late 1980’s I came once again in contact with a “movement,” this time it was the Men’s Movement whose kingpin was Robert Bly. Robert had HIS own list of good and bad. Good was “from the heart” (usually connected to indigenous cultures, antagonistic to “amerika”), often political (anti-war left of course), often international (Spanish poets and the god Rumi). Everyone in the movement adopted Robert’s love of Rumi and steered clear of his dislikes, including me. In my “small group” (the Mud Lake Men, another story) I began to write poetry (once again) and read it to the group. It was approved as I made sure it had (1) something to do with fathers, especially father-grief issues as highlighted by Bly in Iron John and/or (2) an affinity with Native American or tribal cultures. After all, we were drummers were we not?

I had another falling out (I do that a lot). This time it was because (again) I felt artistically stifled by a group who “all loved Rumi”… and who were in the process of molding their tastes to Robert’s dictats. They liked and disliked as he directed.

After my second falling out with a “movement” I steered clear of poetry. I still felt oddly anti-intellectual even “dumb” because, unlike some of my friends, I never REALLY understood Olson. J understood him better than me. Whatever my artistic skills were, they weren’t clear as they related to poetry. Robert Kelly was R’s mentor and Clayton Eshleman his friend. I avoided reading poetry in the New Yorker or literary magazines out of fear that I wouldn’t know what I liked and/or a fear that still, underneath, I was a goddam academic (or oh god confessional) poet this would show up in my taste. Friends went on to like Sharon Olds and others, but I steered clear, though not entirely unappreciative of their skills

I’m not all that “fearful” about liking the “wrong” thing in fiction (I don’t care) or in the world of graphics, painting and other fine arts. There, too, I don’t care what others think of my choices. But somehow, in poetry, I feel damaged. Poetry abuse. Or something.
So now I write poetry and dare not show anyone.
Weird, huh?

following exceprt from Wikipedia

World War II and after

After the war, a number of new poets and poetic movements emerged. John Berryman (1914–1972) and Robert Lowell (1917–1977) were the leading lights in what was to become known as the confessional movement, which was to have a strong influence on later poets like Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) and Anne Sexton (1928–1974). Both Berryman and Lowell were closely acquainted with modernism, but were mainly interested in exploring their own experiences as subject matter and a style that Lowell referred to as "cooked", that is consciously and carefully crafted.

In contrast, the Beat poets, who included such figures as Jack Kerouac (1922–1969), Allen Ginsberg (1926–1997), Gregory Corso (1930–2001), Gary Snyder (born 1930), Diane Di Prima (born 1934), Denise Levertov (1923–1997), and Lawrence Ferlinghetti (born 1919), were distinctly raw. Reflecting, sometimes in an extreme form, the more open, relaxed and searching society of the 1950s and 1960s, the Beats pushed the boundaries of the American idiom in the direction of demotic speech perhaps further than any other group.

Around the same time, the Black Mountain poets, under the leadership of Charles Olson (1910–1970), were working at Black Mountain College. These poets were exploring the possibilities of open form but in a much more programmatic way than the Beats. The main poets involved were Robert Creeley (1926–2005), Robert Duncan (1919–1988), and Ed Dorn (1929–1999). They based their approach to poetry on Olson's 1950 essay Projective Verse, in which he called for a form based on the line, a line based on human breath and a mode of writing based on perceptions juxtaposed so that one perception leads directly to another.

Jerome Rothenberg (born 1931) is well-known for his work in ethnopoetics, but he was also the coiner of the term "deep image". Deep image poetry is inspired by the symbolist theory of correspondences. Other poets who worked with deep image include Robert Kelly (born 1935), Diane Wakoski (born 1937) and Clayton Eshleman (born 1935).

During this time frame you also had major independent voices who defied links to well known poetic movements and forms. Robert Bly became famous for Iron John: A Book About Men and arguably a cultural phenom for liberating American men to be sensitive to their gentler selves.

Good for you! (Why I don't like socialism)

I don't like socialism
because I don't like
Mark
and he's a socialist

And not just because
he's an immature,
narcissist-perfectionist
who treats women like it's
1971 and the menfolk
are planning the revolution
and need coffee and sandwiches.

I don't like Mark
not because
he wants to protect our nation's
food supply, or
that he's outraged about
so many things
(so many!)
though mostly
about food.


Good for you!
I think
like you'd say out loud
to a child
Good for you!

Mark wouldn't hesitate to rule
in the name of the people
if given the scepter.
He's ready with
controls and mandates
and government inspection
by brand new agencies
(not the old and corrupt!)
staffed with his buddies
from a utopian village
in Wisconsin

He knows exactly
who needs
reigning in,
confrontation,
confiscatory tax rates.

It's good to know
the enemy
though I suspect
his parents
living in a gated community
still using microwaves
and scoffing
at his fears of power lines
offer something
by way of explanation

about art (for michael lewis)

Dear Mr. Lewis,

I enjoyed your editorial in the Wall Street Journal. It is clear and, though I am familiar with the theme, it's important to keep pointing out how messed up art (and especially art schools) are today.

The young woman's "miscarriage art" is merely a natural progression of "deathart," though I liked how you poked fun at her slightly out of date deconstructionism (or whatever she might call it).

My wife was a professional avante-garde dancer (Trisha Brown's group) and I am a painter and novelist. Like all parents we have cheered our kids' (draw! act! play music!) creativity in their pre-college education, though I cringe at the thought that one of my sons may actually want to go to art school. Despite having spent a lot of time being angry at my own father's discouragement of my interest in art, I can't help feeling like him now as I suggest to my sons: how about a field related to theater, like, um, marketing?

I have friends that teach art in colleges, The Art Institute of Chicago, among others. Knee-jerk left wingers all, I recently heard one actually berate the "politically correct environment" among the teachers who won't allow any discussion of beauty (hopelessly old fashioned concept) but concern themselves with their mission to "save the planet" -- a do-gooder variation of death art (the earth is dying, how can you care about beauty over recycling?).

The reason I'm writing is that I have yet to see someone connect the dots between (1) art schools and their deathartists and dated deconstructionism, and (2) museums that have educated the "masses" away from pleasing lifeart, and (3) the decline of the "middle class" art buying market.

My premise (as an "old fashioned painter") is that the average person has been alienated from art by all these theories (mostly recycling endlessly) that art is about upsetting the bourgeoise, shaking us out of our stupor, etc. This has not happened in music, for example, where people "like what they like" and are rarely intimidated that they should like something more edgy or political.

People don't buy art anymore unless they're (1) serious collectors [and though I know a fair number of wealthy people I know none of these]; (2) "tough" contrarians -- who like what they like [flower, clowns, landscapes, etc.]. The "market" for thoughtful, contemporary, but non-deathart is very small partially because people have been "shamed" to stuff their taste. It's either "high brow" (global, deathart, environmental and political art) or "low brow" (art fairs, Walmart art factory, etc.).

Did people ever really support painters like the fabled streets of Paris where you could once buy a Picasso? I suspect middle and upper class people used to buy art. My parents, God bless their souls, actually bought art on the streets of Paris in the 1960s, but it the faux-impressionist landscapes and cityscapes deeply embarrassed this young "rebel" who idolized Andy Warhol and, yes, Duchamp.

There is a contrarian movement proudly calling themselves Lowbrow (or Pop Surrealist, etc.). Juxtapoz Magazine seems key in this, though I personally like only a small percentage of what they capture under their net, which includes graffiti and tattoos. I think it's somewhat of a good sign that some of music's I like what I like will spill over into art, though I could do without all the "rebel edge" that this worlds seems to think is its core.

In any case, keep up the good work. I've ordered one of Mr. Rieff's books.

by what extreme hubris

by what extreme hubris dare i take on the meaning of life? i could just as easily ask why others don't. actually i find it hard to understand how and why people take anything on hearsay, even
"science". many think (would think if i let them see the depth of it) this is a sign of anger, or rebellion, or some kind of psychological malfunctioning that (with help) one could be "free" of.
they are probably right in one sense, that this mental "freedom" (skepticism?) is the kind of thing that brought us Das Kapital, Mein Kampf and did Fritz Perls write a book? it's probably like "ancient greece" (a fantasy, what do we know?) where guys in robes roamed around (lusting after boys, don't get me started) philosophizing about the world.

i am sensitive to belief systems. an allergy perhaps like william gibson's protagonist in PATTERN RECOGNITION
allergic to logos. ha. funny funny.
what i see all around me is how people's BELIEFS impact their views of the world and how
(mostly) "we" live safely INSIDE that system. I take the nun (she's in my family, she's real)...
she is adamant about knowing God, Jesus, the Bible, afterlife, etc. As a result she is strong and "happy"... even a recent article were a bunch of atheists were studying religion (via utopias) came to the conclusion that the stricter the religion the longer-lasting the communal enterprise. IE. this is WHY fundamentalism is "winning"... and WHY liberal-democracy-capitalism has a hard time "fighting" belief systems. Capitalism simply WORKS THE BEST, but it's hard to sell and hard to understand. it's counter-intuitive. people don't like free trade. people want their "king" (country) to protect them. or lie to them (China). life is nearly intolerable if you think EVERYONE is out to get you, as in some people's view of capitalism (vs., say, the image of a big bartering market).
i end up inevitably in politics because i see old fashioned religions having a waning influence. the conservative impulse they once protected is now rife with social justice, global warming, environmentalism, etc, all adjunct pseudo scientific belief systems that support "fascism" (as in liberal fascism, progressivism)...
we don't really like freedom all that much, that's what it comes down to

but one thing
life (evolution for the believers) is on the side of freedom. yes. life is always changes. has no loyalty to pattern (weather, species, etc). it's amorally in favor of change and even more -- "it" has given us access to the blueprint. the earth is warmed by a yellow DWARF star, on it's way out. millioins, billions of years? yes, we can't fathom those, but not only that, more personally we see NO ONE SURVIVES DEATH... whoops, i mean outside of the afterlife and Fortean Times magazine. The blueprint is given to us.

and what do we do with it?
like spiders, we weave a sticky beautiful web and try to catch things
to eat

;-)

Loneliness and the Left

Sometimes, often, I wonder what motivates someone to be a leftie. I assume the "conventional wisdom" that the left people are smart. Smart means observant. A smart person should be able to see that leftism doesn't work, that regulation doesn't make us freer, that protection does not protect, that equality never happens. But yet, no observation of "reality" penetrates. So what is it?

I think I found what it is.
It is loneliness.
Isn't the right as lonely as the left? Generally, no. The religious right are the least lonely of all, they have Jesus. They have God. What's to be lonely about? The libertarians, embittered in a sense, accept their loneliness: Leave me alone! they say. They are the disappointed and the misanthropic. They "see" (observe) how "help" does not help and say the less the better.
The rest of the right is in the middle, some God (but not too much), some "leave me alone" (in their mocked "gated communities"). The left calls this selfish, but they see themselves as tribal.

Now let's go back to the left.
Mostly the left is secular. I know this isn't totally true, but I suspect the gods or God that support the left are somehow less present and comforting than the God on the right. The irreligous man/woman is vulnerable. They want to belong. They are disppointed in family (who isn't?). They want community, though they see even the smallest committee is generally a kind of hell. They want peace, dialogue with the enemy, at almost any price. They are conflicted enough, angry enough, sad enough, who needs a war on top of it? Most of all they crave something large and functioning that they can trust. Where else to go but the government?
Despite its profusion of dysfunction departments: ex-soldiers can't get medical care, FEMA flubs Katrina, financial oversight a mess, tax law at 63,000 pages of code, etc. they are undaunted in their belief that, no matter how bad, a government-run health care system has to be BETTER than what we have now. They have very little evidence for this. The biggest factor in this belief in government comes from the fact that it is the last place to turn for this feeling of not being alone. Call it family or community, it's a projection of our desire to be protected.
It's why populations rarely kick out dictators. Somewhere in their hearts, they want the guy to succeed, they want him to prove others wrong. He is a good guy, mostly good. Sure he steals a little, a lot, but he loves the people. And they usually have some evidence (eg. health care in Cuba).

Death and Love (poem)

They say aging
is getting in touch with
what is it they say?
I can't remember

I know some things it's not
it's not giving up on lust
(but it moves into dream)
it's not giving up on joy
(it embitters like dark chocolate)
it's not even the memory loss
(file dumps on Fights Past)

What it is then?

The snow comes again
this time in April
proving everyone wrong
But it is white and soft
like the first snow of November

And I saw, good,
I had no plans today
anyway
Other than
allowing time to
pass through me

Paradox (poem)

It occured to me
in a horrid flash of truth
I hate them, well,
dislike them anyway
now
People
like the magazine
only the real ones
walking around

Hate
is too strong a word
but faux extroversion
the last flash
has given way
to a codgerism of death
turtle shell
snapping turtle
armored and defiant
prehistoric
burying (her) eggs
on the side of the dirt road
How can you tell her?
She's too defiant to care....

She is me, as the Jungians say,
she is my dream and I'm her
nightmare
humans and their road graters,
me as guilty as the next

How can this be --
can this "hating people" as you say
be a form of liberation?
a kabbalahistic sephiroth,
ultimately for teaching purposes
as one climbs
(vainly, pathetically)
up the so-called Tree of Life

But I like it
Try it on like a fedora in a thrift store
is this me?
I look around at them
but it is not hate that I feel
not hate
something else
something more philosophical
(not pity either)

Does one, can one "feel" wisdom
"in her mind/body" she always says
like the rest of us, one day,
may catch up

In my mind/body the feeling
is paradox
an insight into a chuckling god
We love freedom
We hate freedom
Anything where there is strong feelings
whatsoever
it applies.
Try it:
love, parents, pets, work,
vehicles, technology, art,
America
You see

You may now explore this
sephiroth
We call it
aging

St Peter's Gate (poem)

It's beginning to get to me.
the rejections. the inability to finish things.
the "ADD" like symptoms
exacerbating....
waiting for fame to come to me...
and it's passed me by
(the man waits for the bus
the bus don't come 'round here no 'mo)

what is gracefully bowing out?

i see why the retired die now.
if there is no one wanting what they have
(not even the wisdom we once wanted
from our elders)
what's the point in taking more
food&air from the children?

yet
i am fierce
more critical than ever
more
seer of the dangers
everywhere
from the well meaning
globalists of both stripes
all stripes
all who have the answer
the undulating of
our monkey angel natures
(yeah yeah god)

answers come and go

but they hold up a device
we never had this!
before
no?
they called it a hand tool once
way back

the loss of memory
a partial blessing
you remember the coffee
only
not all the petty squables
of "family" and Family and
all that...

the notorious crankiness of the aging
is this is
st peter's gate?

To write or paint, that is the question (timed)

The smart lady at the arts center who reminded me of Angelica Huston (when do I tell her this? will she "like" that she is like Angelica Huston, how could you not like being compared to an intelligent and elegant--though old--star?).... says I see 300 "artists" (my quotes) a year and, well, she says, you have to choose.
Choose? I ask.
Basically she says between writing and painting.
Oh, I say (thinking Schnabel, thinking... generally renaissance and a little F-U in there, too).
I don't see people making it who don't choose.

So here's the thing.
I've been thinking writing is my MAIN THING for about 16 or so years (I judge by Nic's age).
Sixteen years. What do I have to "show" for it? I have two FINISHED but UNPUBLISHED novels, and one short story published and one contest won. I have (perhaps) over a hundred rejections, mostly from agents (some of whom actually read stuff) but also from publishers. No one is exactly and particularly interested in publising my work.

So we go to the college counselor (for Nic) and she says colleges are interested in (his) parents. Hmm. I think, damn, an unpublished (read: wanabe) novelist and a "sunday (if popsurreal) painter." Poor Nic. Poor me! What a nothing-to-show-for-it-life. Damn.

So combining that with (her name is Kathleen not Angelica)'s question... choose? the Red Pill or the Blue Pill. (red state, blue state, ha ha).
And I think I should just F-ing pay Ian his $30,000 "pound of fleshala" and get my book
published. People don't ask if you made sales (or they do but you can be vague "getting better" you can say) they ask if it was published. Hmm.
Am I desperate or what?
[It's not surprisingly the money, I have the money. Will i feel shame, or feel "ripped off" when and if Ian's enterprise (a) folds or (b) is discredited by Poets'nWriters?]
I don't know.

What are the arguments:
I am actually enjoying writing now more than ever, though what I am writing is "more" experimental and despite a fantasy that it MAY appeal to Dave Eggers (please please please make me a knight in your empire!) it will APPEAL LESS to serious agents who was serious easy to place books. I mean, literary is hard enough, but "experimental"... sheesh.
So it's not likely that my "luck" such as it has been will change by THIS PEICE I AM WRITING. To top it off, I am beginning to wonder if my FINISHED novels truly reflect the best "who" I am , or (sorry MW) have they been too compromised by this project: PLEASE NEW YORK?


There are argments for making painting my "main" thing:

timed writing 031803

liberal fascism continues to reverberate in my thinking. it's not that i think the book is SOOOO great, it's flawed in many ways.
what the reverberation is all about (i think) has to do with
(a) what we hear on the news
and
(b) who is the enemy
let's take (a), though they're related. Obama, for example. his speech defending his nutso minister has to cast an enemy and who does he look for -- corporate america!
what goldberg is saying is that 1. corporations are not and have never been truly right wing (i.e. free market capitalists).... they are ostensibly about wealth creation (the show of ceo pay extravagance) but are now, have been and will always be involved in the world of partnering with government (ie fascism/ new deal). they do this sometimes as "good guys" (liberal corporations held in high regard for their support of liberal causes from environmentalism to gay marriage) and sometimes as "bad guys" -- ie. big tobacco who ultimately partnered with government to use their evil products to support states' general funds. (all with very little cognizance from the general public of the multiple ironies involved).

so "the enemy" (ie. the corporations -- how can free marketers be an enemy? they have no power) are ALREAY COOPERATING WITH GOVERNMENT and the WHOLE ARGUMENT either from the "left" (extreme would be nationalization -- from schools to health care) or the "right" (mcCain, i guess, getting them to do cap and trade on CO2 for example) is really all an argument about a degree of overtness in this "cooperation" which goldberg calls fascism.
so
what's the bottom line for me personally?
it's all a sham
there is NO ONE advocating free markets
it's all about leaning in one direction or another
at least economically

(i suppose you could still say there are differences in foreign policy, as obama is likely to extend his "we are all victims" philosophy to embrace the 'legit' grievances of terrorists.. thus
we are less likely to engage in aggressive wars or world policing, which means iran will get the bomb and china and others less hobbled by public opinion will rise in the world.)

the other thing
do i have to choose between writing and painting??
huh?

Liberal Fascism Take 2

Dear Jonah Goldberg,

The thing that is most interesting about (your) book is that it's a shift in my thinking.
Quickly: my background is radical-left in college (mostly to get girls), then married a liberal (not a reader) and drifted back to my "ethnic" conservative (catholic) goldwater roots. I live in a hyper-blue state (MN) and 95% of the people I know are variations on knee-jerk liberals.
That said:
I learned in my radical days that "fascism" is the worst thing in the world, especially in its Nazi form. I learned that the left was (DESPITE Stalin, Mao, Castro... ) the "farthest thing" from fascism because fascism was a phenomenon of the RIGHT. This meant (mainly) that it had something to do with corporations (having and/or sharing power) and an intolerant minority (in the German version the Aryans, in the "Bush" version the wealthy, the corporate, the Republican blue bloods).
So, in "connecting" the history of progressivism to fascism you actually clarify some things and
confuse others for me.
The clarification is this: ah, so that's why every time I get close to the core beliefs of the hyper-liberals I "feel" the fascist boot even though, say, some lesbians I know say they are afraid of Bush rounding them up and putting them into camps! Get close to an environmentalist, a smart growth advocate, an animal rights activist, an anti-globalist, and there it is: we should ALL do it THIS WAY. Or Else.
This was one of the things that turned me off to the hippie movement, the "guilt" at the Co-op, you didn't have to work, but if you didn't you got the evil eye.
So, I get it that underneath the Nice is the jackboot if you will.
What's harder to get is that no one is the "opposite" of fascist, not even the most libertarian
(or anarchist) person you can find. We all are about degrees of fascism, degrees of controlling our neighbor.
OK. Fine.
I would probably look next to a sociobiological explanation: that in our (monkey) genes somewhere is a craving for a strong leader (troupe leader, king, beloved leader, etc.) There is a way we (as monkeys) feel comfortable with a strong leader and are willing to forgive their (many) foibles.
OK. I can accept that, too.
What you're saying is that conservatives (generally) lean toward one type of control, liberals another. As conservatives, we are used to being called fascists, and know this is hyperbole of the adolescent mind. Liberals (apparently) are quite incensed about being dirtied by ANY connection to the ugliness of Nazism, I suspect mostly for the Holocaust, and some for their militarism. But what if a Mussolini (non anti-Semite) had "conquered" Europe and won, and turned it into an "EU-ish" version of the Soviet Empire. Wouldn't the liberals be looking at that with envy? I suspect so, even as the real EU slouches its way in that direction now.

Timed 031408

liberal fascism
still reeling from this. my thoughts are that everyone craves a strong leader, we "pretend"
in various ways that we don't. We kill kings, and eschew royalty, but we turn around and make "new" royalty -- celebrities, musicians, sports figures, a few creatives...
We LIKE (enjoy, are used to... ) the feeling of being not required to make it to the top. Others are already there. We pretend we don't even WANT to be there (but play the lottery, in hopes... that we will).
We are full of contradictions.
If you really believed that you could (pull yourself up from your bootstaps into the meritocracy) it would be daunting. That's why we make fun of (japanese parents trying to their kids into the right preschool) we don't really BELIEVE "we" could make it. we like the idea that there are a ton of reasons we can't.
When a reporter asked Keith Richards what he thought about the Vietnam War, he said
"What the fuck are you asking ME for?"
He knew his place. He was a rocker, a musician, he was NOT EDUCATED as a policy wonk.
Today, does anyone do this?
No, every celeb (think F.A.G. from Team America)
has an opinion
they MIGHT BE slightly more sophisticated than "War is bad for children and other living things" but probably not.



INTO THE WILD... though i watched the movie on fastforward, it seemed that it was more
forgiving of the kid than the book. sure he lost some weight, but he "accomplished" his mission to live in the wild. IF IT HADN'T BEEN FOR A MINOR MISCALCULATION THAT THE RIVER WOULD BECOME IMPASSABLE he would have sauntered out, thin, but "changed", sure to be "happier" than his (stupid rich) parents.
I remember in the book there was more of a tone that this kid was arrogant to think he could go into the wildnerness unprepared. it was disrespectful of the people that lived there. sure, there was some of this in the movie (the trucker, his last ride, takes pity on him and hands him a pair of rubber boots) but i think Monsieur Penn was more on the side of the kid's nobility than Junger who seemed to be saying look what kind of kids we've made -- angry and stupid.
Maybe it's different for Penn, he had to deal with the family (obviously they had to be grieving their loss) and casting the kid as heroic but making "one critical mistake" was the kinder way to go.
I thought it didn't have the bite of the book.

Timed Writing 011308

it's a weird life. what would i do if i got famous. what would i do (different) if the money were mine? that's interesting question. am i still financially in-sex-ure after all these years? i don't really think that's it. i think it's looking at my kids' faces.... disappointment, anger... (about imaginary divorce)... it would all be SO much easier if their mother (my wife) got the bug up her butt to take a lover, preferably a woman that would make it all so... so... what? new agey weird. but then i'd get the kids and i'd have to explain to them that daddy's decided to date men.
shit. makes you wish you never left the city. need to be surrounded my urban eccentrics. where's smart growth when you need it?
ha.

the work.
in my hermitage all going well. Darger With Money, ha.
Howard Hughes with a paint brush and a word processing program. that would have been interesting, huh? what would he have SAID.
(still, the celebrity art sites aren't all that interesting other than IMAGINING guy's like pearce brosnan with a sunday afternoon beret on...) still --
[martin mull's were seriously "progressive" works]
still -

i'm finding a way into the characterization of Marion (Sontag). I'm having to steal from Land somewhere else
which is fine
not sure i'll ever get to that. back to that.
i'm sort of despairing on the CULTURE WALLS... like the MN book awards, the "left" if you will has so FIRMY grasbed the (steering) wheel of culture. everywhere you look. everywhere.
i can't even tell my secretary-helper that i'm not a leftie
everyone assumes
if you're "nice" and "creative" and wear blue jeans you are a leftie...

reading a lot about mussolini now. how he wasn't (at first) a racist, how he and hitler didn't really care for each other, how hitler never really had a coherent philosophy, but he knew how to speak and rile people up.
took a break to visit the national review online's liberal fascism blog
ok the timer went off
whew
long live add
is there ADD in heaven?
does god have ADD?

HOW TO MAKE CHARACTERS 20 min

I'm really torn on how to get the background stories for my characters. i'm BALKING at MW'S "make a dossier" thing, why?
--because if it feels arbitrary then I can't remember it
--because he suggested it

I could use the LOST method and just develop stories via "flashbacks" (ie. just chapters about their lives)
I think this is promising.
but torn between
"making it up" -- what would susan sontag's life be like
(some leftover baggage from earlier attempts to flesh out her life... lurking like ghosts)

i got this other idea that these "people" could all be ASPECTS of moi, like Jungian
dreams
they're all you...
ah, big surprise
voice over at the end of lost -- and they were all connected as carbon based life forms...
(if we're carbon based isn't calling co2 a pollutant self-hating?)
ha
aspects of me....
hmm
does that generate?
or
is it "tony soprano AS VISUALIZED by moi.

another approach is to do it
GRAPHICALLY
(PORTRAIT-CHART)
or graphic novel-ish

should i start with marion?

Timed Writing 031208

wow
what's going on?
a definite stretch of
"too much househusband"
writing's been weird. uneven. how to i reign it in? if i'm using the "painting model" what's the equivalent of looking at it a lot?
printing it out? making an ongoing book?
what?

interesting reading LIBERAL FASCISM. even embarrassed to show J the cover, that's it's too strident, too "rush limbaugh" (feminazi)... namecalling that closes down communication.
having said that
it's a fascinating story
about WHY "we" have a hard time understanding fascism, because it's inaccurate to
call it "right wing"
the logic is this-- (not wholly unfounded) that the "right" likes CONTROL (ie. moral majority sort of non-libertarianism) and generally favors MILITARY (solutions) as in paranoia, everyone's out to get us (where the left of today favors "talking" the therapy approach)
so it's not totally nuts to call fascism right wing as these are components.

still
economically there is NOTHING like capitalism or freedom
and there is a disdain for rules of government (today more associated with the left as in
"disenfranchisement" and stolen elections, etc.)

the guts of his argument is that fascism is a "state religion" and a lot of the personality cult stuff we're seeing around Obama now is very reminiscent of the "strong leader" (craving) that SEEMS to be the ultimate appeal of fascism. [He does mention that we MIGHT be hard-wired to want a "king" which makes the whole argument about the evolution of democracy cast in a strange light]...
nevetheless
it does explain the APPEAL of liberalism. i often "don't get it" where they get their ENERGY from. they want (intrusive) rules that can be enforced only they want them to be THEIR rules (organic food to mass transit)...
also
historically
the left has been the pro-sex party (even today with the Elliot Spitzer scandal breaking, a lot of people are using the "clinton defense" hey, it's ONLY sex. grow up, etc.).
[the vignette comes to mind of IlDuce asking the women of Italy to send him their wedding rings to help pay off Italy's war fines. whoa.]
Putin and the russians have always had this sort of double standard ("free and equal" women but the men prove their right to rule through virility, ie. fucking (over) women)
in any case
the history of the early progressive movement and the amount of admiration so many had for mussolini and fascism
[wonder how ezra pound got blamed for it. the story i always heard was that he was 'crazy' as well as talented and that's why he ended up supporting fascism and being anti-semitic) BUT
many famous writers (ts elliot) were anti-semitic and still we read them and revere them as moderns. pound got 'pounded' because he stuck to his like of mussolini which was shared (PRIOR to WWII) by a vast number of america's leading "progressive" intellectuals.

my book cover was damaged
i'm sure it was from a seattle based warehouse rat (doing his part).. i HOPE my second book (i rationalized buying one mostly to see if i'm caught up in an amazon conspiracy)
is also damaged.

Free Write 030708

meeting with the philosopher JD
author and authority are related -- what kind of author-ity does your (author) need? who is the author, you are the author.
in animals, do they think of others. yes, predators--concealment, they are aware that the gnu doesn't see me (the lion), "I" am concealed, my concealment is helpful to my goal (dinner)

the main issue is
when you are in the creative phase how useful is it to have access to YOUR VERSION of objectivity, i.e. what you are writing is a GOOD WRITE ah, but is it also a GOOD READ?
when and if do you engage that question
and how

in my painting, it's immediate and visceral. it's DO I LIKE LOOKING AT THAT (MORE). Am I intrugued by what I'm doing?
(yes)
Do I worry/wonder about how it's going to appear to others?
yes, in a way. it would be nice to SHARE DELIGHT, but, on the other hand, when john said i should be "less dark"... however gently he said it... i felt uninterested, angry, misunderstood. this has always been the confusion and when i did "commercial art" it was horrible. i could never handle the difference between what PLEASED ME and what THEY WANTED. in that arena there was an objective measure (money/ client pleasure) ... the most LOGICAL way to "win" that game was get all the money.. hire people to do what clients wanted and become a CEO.
anyway.
now i'm in the situation of the non-insane outsider artist. the work is compellingly interesting to ME, but i have no ideas if it will be (a) interesting -- well, i have some evidence from arist friends that it is "interesting", (b) interesting ENOUGH to SELL it and (c) i have the further issue that I am not all that interested in SELLING, though i LIKE the idea of having a show, a party, and being "SOLD OUT"...

I told JD somewhat tentatively that what he told me last week about atemporality (in films, like la vie en rose and klimt) and our whole discussion Picasso was PRAGMATIC and helpful. he said he LIKED pragmatic (surprise, surprise) that it's root (greek?) is the same root as "practice" and "ascetic" (not sure how ascetic is related). pragmatic (program?) is about a program. i have a program
funny: 12 step PROGRAM
(pogrom... the perversion)
back to the issue of THINGS GOING THROUGH YOU... the root of phenomenon is about
SOMETHING APPEARING (ghosts, muses...) spirits of the dead working through you

new book
DANGEROUS IDEAS
love and hate it.
Csikszentmihalyi's was bad. a standard academic/unconscious marxist "why does profit have to matter so much?" not dangerous, unless you count the MILLIONS DEAD from marx's fantasies.
i rather liked Jared Diamond's input, somewhat politically incorrect -- where did we get the fantasy that aboriginal man was anything but "savage" (ie hard on each other, hard on the environment)...
the more dangerous idea is that the Rousseauian notion of "noble savage" (see INTO THE WILD) is now "noble nature" (even to the extent that wouldn't it be nice to read a book about us NOT BEING HERE?) no, but... don't get me started.
noble (sweet kind cuddly) nature is (waa-waa) being 'powuted' by CO2 etc. waa-waa.
we are once again planetary bullies.... (poow widdo powa beaw)

Timed Writing 0300508

The trick I think is to (I don't know why but I think of one of the few 'smart' things Lindy Hough "was allowed" to say) which was, simply, do you value your thoughts?
Does it really come down to this?
and if this is soooo great then isn't the internet diarrhea of the mind supposedly "good"?

Hmm,
I don't know.
Most people's thoughts are NOT that interesting.
why?
because (hello Mr. Gurdjieff) are somewhat unconscious of where their thoughts come from. Oh, I don't mean the "family of origin" piece, i'm totally burned out on that (you're a republican because your alcoholic father was a republican and this is some kind of loyalty, while I am a democrat despite the fact that my dysfunctional family was also democrat. huh?)
i think what did me in on all that
was that i saw "prejudices" (unconsciousness) running rampant under the guise
of
"science" -- psychologists armed with the new universal theory of disfunction (everyone has been abused)
"myth" the influence of Joseph Campbell and Robert Bly -- that there is a "mythic" way of thinking that goes something like this: "I (fill in important person's name here) like Rumi's poetry so Rumi must be somehow "important" to "our time".... if I follow (MY) intuition it will lead me (BACK) to a (neo) tribalism that seems to resemble early hippie imaginings of utopia, however, I am not culture-bound, but you are."

i think in the end that's why I "returned" to conservatism.
the conservatives have no real sense that IMMINENT (and/or total or global) WORLD IMPROVEMENT is (merely) accessible via (environmentalism, progressivism, et al) and that
WERE THEY TO JUST GIVE US A CHANCE it could all be different.
conservatives believe that human nature isn't easy to change
is very very tricky, a combination of greed and compassion, (good and evil)
they also don't easily panic
they tend to respect history (more)... and see there is a history of panic

I am thinking of the skeptics take on the Koran

"Is it more logical to believe that an angel of god dictated these words to a merchant soldier or a talented, possibly epileptic man digested and reworked the myths and legends common to his time and level of learning, calling it something new."

um, let me see.

I am thinking a lot of Miranda July. Perhaps I should make her a character in my new novel.

Dave Eggers : where we should invade next. it's no error that in the end his position is more yippie (?) than contrarian. he's clearly left -- war is bad, old white general can and should be deposed via laughter (first then maybe a Che style execution)
I'm not sure you could do what he's doing without being left.
contrarians have difficulty leading people.
they're too thoughtful.
etc.
yadda yadda
is my 5 minutes up yet

Timed Writing 030408

amy hempel
ok so chuckP likes her. i wanted to see his "roots" it could just as easily have been hemingway, but no, amy hempel. why did i think she lived here? anyway she doesn't. but she DOES live in an exurban locale not unlike where I live now and she has a lot of involvement with her dog. a sign of a "good book as soon as i open it and read a little i think of people i could send it to, like greg or elizabethG... would my book club think her too fey -- feminine, short stories--? do i care? she reminds me a bit of miranda july (see TIN HOUSE: FANTASTIC WOMEN) though MJ is clearly "out there" (i mean anyone with performance art and film in their resume... maybe i should claim that! LOL... king charlatan's game etc.

miranda july
thinking about (did i dream about her?)miranda july a lot. what should i do with our connection? write her a letter? wouldn't i just be another marginally sane fan... like, um, our cats were neutered at the same place... wanna have coffee? funny. i want in some way to "betray" her dad/parents... like ha ha i know your secret you really HATE them that's why you changed you name to JULY. i understand I too was injured by them, yadda yadda. but that's all nasty and silly and a waste of time.
maybe i can transform all this into a PIECE of writing, not unlike BEING JOHN MALKOVICH but i mean could it be called BEING MIRANDA JULY.. a memwaaa? who would be on my side? LOL.
more later
oh, one more thing it's funny that gregH was the one who told me about her parents etc.
he's such a strange one in my life.
in a way i admire him -- rigorously independant, long suffering (traveling salesman), hard-as-nails inner core (philosophy of crystal with a pulsing heart--what am i ginsberg?)
mostly he's one of the few people (like elizG) who "get" something about life... sorry i don't put dear J in this category as she believes in things -- that, um, we are here all improvising, it's funny and tragic and inclusive and no one really cares what you think anyway so why not be independant and contrarian...
i don't know
what do i know

memory lane(s)
gregH kept saying what am I tom graetz? like he's jogging my memory (how did he know i watch LOST's "explanatory" CONTACT... no, CONTROL (?) last night all about time travel, and dreamt about it...
tom graetz was a social challenge in 4? 5? 6th? grade? fat, ugly, he decided he "liked" me and was also mean and a bully. one time (when???) he pinched me very hard. he demanded to be my friend. my mom told me to be nice to him, thanks mom. i told him i didn't want to be his friend. not sure when where or how this happened, but it did. some kind of turning point or other -- i don't HAVE to "give myself" (HELLO richard adams and ABUSE therapy) to anyone who wants me. I can say NO.
why is greg bringing him up now?


LOST
in a way, relief. ah, it's all "sci-fi" (dr who) stuff. goofy machines that make rats travel in time. and strange islands and geeky science boy/men and scary industrialists (penny's dad)...
it's going to have comic-like explanations...
i could cry

PHIBro
i could write and write about this. my memory has been jogged.
gary wickham, bill ridgeway, dave bancel (the guy who died), ron vance, the secretaries -- the guitar gal and the black lady -- pam -- who named her kid Krystal or something.
the boss in cowboy boots, the perfume salesman,
jan juras, the mine, hammond lead (the old man) dan briedegan (east penn batteries)



greg hengesbaugh and tom graetz



alice and palahniuk