many moons ago, peter smith, head of university arts & lectures, said, 'what's needed is a center of energy.' in terms of the real world, this person provides the drive making things happen, whether it's a product, service, or religion. and, alas, i'm not one of these people. i'm the idea guy. when it comes to mustering community forces, i'm an utter dud.
i've been browsing through the coming jobs war by the ceo of the gallup polling group, jim clifton. usually i shy away from war books, however i figured i'd give this a shot. as usual, the book contains one premise: entrepreneurs needed. the innovative may announce, even begin, a revolution. the audience-builder has to create desire in the hearts of consumers. the author sites many examples of inventions turning into also-rans. i think of the lcd, invented by americans and ridden across the finish line by the japanese.
anybody advising steve j. about phones, music services, and pads, said, 'hey, stevee, these dead territories, why re-invent the wheel.' the rest history. building a better mouse-trap not time wasted. the rats continue to climb aboard a sinking ship, for that is what the gallup guy gallops toward. 'we need thirty percent of the world's smartest to survive. health care killing us. school dropouts, how they going to help pick us up?'
you know, the trouble with starting a business is you have to work all the time. it's so much nicer to collect a paycheck and have another life. mercifully, i've been able to do it. psychics tell me i've had so much responsibility and seen so much destruction, i get a vacation. i'm not sure inventing the device blowing up atlantis qualifies me for an easy time. well, life is not fair. i'll take what i can get.
usually, i've lost my jobs through boredom: bagging groceries, pulling chain for a surveyor, sweeping a dime-store. as long as i can dream while working i'm free. god-forbid i should be supervised! how i got through this lifetime i'm not sure. true, i'm a workaholic when it comes to writing, theater, art, photography. let me drive myself insane, even if i lack the skills and desire to make fame pay.
if you find the entrepreneurs at fault, you'll have to build your own factory for cannonballs. those will always be needed, even if it's been done before. take choreographers for example: www.pbase.com/wwp/dancepics
like most mortals, at seven and eight i started creating categories, putting cats into this one, socks into another, girls into several. i couldn't help myself. the world overwhelmed me with too much information. for example, ten billion stimuli hit our eyes every second. of those we can actively recognize forty and deal with four at most. we create a life day by day, editing out what we fear or doesn't seem useful.
lately i've spent time with two friends devoured by conspiracy theories. these occupy their minds to organize the world. as usual, nefarious political and financial people conspire to get everything, to steal from us, to make us suffer. unfortunately, it's true, though the upper one percent would never agree. 'we're creating job opportunities.'
yet, what's really happening in the minds of my friends? the making sense of the world by adopting a system which keeps their busy minds occupied. and when i watch people pouring over the bible in cafes, i think the same, 'they've reduced life to this particular, very comprehensive and confusing book from which you can justify anything.' luckily, it evades science, economics, anything which might prove even more difficult to assimilate. again, frantic intelligences being absorbed in a complete universe.
any paradigm can be proven true. that's the beauty of it. all you have to do is accept a few basic premises without proof and the rest follows! this, you have to admit, completely ingenious. what it eliminates is doubt, ambiguity, and the hell of independent thought. and, of course, i would like to suggest an alternate route.
CANDLE
Surely you weren't meant
to be born here in this
kitchen, waiting for
the ants. Old Greek poets
sang of dresses falling
from lovely limbs, the moon
bouncing off the water.
Sanskrit sages denied
anyone could resist the
flute of Krishna, tunes
fluttering through the perfumed
leaves. Married women
dropped wedding rings,
shyness, customs, the
husband's heavy sighs,
to slide out the door
into the forest. And if
you find yourself doing
the same, open the poems
of Bhartrihari and drink
the deep silence of the stars,
burn like the candle
you left far behind
watching in the window.
taking in all the evidence: www.pbase.com/wwp/poems
it's painful giving people advice on how to live. they never do what i say. yet i can't stop it. for example, two fellows yesterday, both basically out of jobs, early thirties, upset about what to do next. one burdened by student loans, he can't even imagine what he might want. the other, just fired as the head of a theater in a state of shock. and i couldn't hold myself back, poor guys.
'go to saudi arabia for a year and pay off your debt.' 'figure out how to get to england and establish a career.' my god, these are big chunks to swallow. everything seems incredibly beyond reach when you're depressed. and you may be down in the dumps unexpectedly, me for example. this week a 200 dollar brake job on my truck turned into a 1000 dollar one. i offered to give the cashier at the car dealer my blood instead of cash. she didn't go for it.
okay, let's break this down into bites. at five years old you liked to dress up, 'who shall i be today?' you're on the edge, slaving as a cook, but you can do it. salvation army's just a block away. acquire an outlandish wardrobe and be a drag queen at breakfast, join the local people doing mad fashion shows. and as for you, having had england as your playpen at five, you can start stealing english silver from antique stores and eat off it every evening. be a thief of time.
He did not dare touch the coffin
a passion in glass
a lesson in perfection
He
did not dare hope
for anything so living
as love
in the flesh
He satisfied himself with eyes
Imagine
the shock of the dropping
the cracking of the coffin
Snow White
jarred awake from the land
of her dreams
into his
We think of ourselves as victims
yes
that's a good beginning
victims
Everything done to us
birth was done to us
nobody asked
death was done to us
we resisted
personally
Eyes were done to us
and noses
socks and shoes
we didn't ask to live
in houses and pants
streets were done to us
circuses and cotton candy
beer and brothels came to us without our asking
We took them
we took it all
what else were we supposed to do
the androids have been asking for you: www.pbase.com/wwp/android2
this comes as an incredible shock to someone who wrote his first good play at 23 about van gogh and gauguin in the south of france. mainly, cause like most of his generation, he accepted van gogh as the image of christ, sacrificing himself for the beauty of art.
here's a quote from the news: In Van Gogh: The Life, a 976page doorstop published this week, Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith say it's more likely that the celebrated Dutch post-Impressionist painter was the victim of an accidental shooting. The suspected perpetrators: a couple of teenage bullies obsessed with American cowboys and playing with a gun, and protected on his deathbed by van Gogh claiming an act of suicide.
oddly, in a way this makes him more of a saint, refusing to disclose the identity of his killers in order to protect them. yet, any disturbance to our view of an icon unsettling, to say the least. t0 those who wish to believe in the artist as hero, especially the artists themselves, this comes as a blow. we've always prided ourselves on suffering until dead when we're discovered.
with the myth exploded, how can we continue to live in 9 by 10 rooms, storing our drawings and manuscripts in a rented storage space (me)? true, had van gogh lived another year he'd have found himself celebrated and paid as a painter, the saintly image discarded. and who was it said, 'many have quit just as they were about to succeed?'
let's face it, the art-world overwhelmed by the productive slaving in their studios. once they could have made chairs, pewter dishes, walking canes. alas, these occupations have gone the way of horse-drawn buggies. everyday i look through design and art books at the bookstore over my cafe americano. and for all the liberation of post-modernism, the power of a van gogh and gauguin missing.
duchamp created the copy of the copy as artifact, and his command incredible prices. television cannibalized the movies and history. starting in 1950 every attempt at art a facsimile of the past. what has artistic freedom done to us? confused the whole picture!
van gogh and gauguin in the south of france: www.pbase.com/wwp/flame
and that was part of my original intent. we moved thirty times by the time i graduated high school, age 16. and it included two years in the utah desert and two years in germany. this formed a habit it never occured to me to kill. i unconsciously followed a family tradition, all the while telling myself, 'a poet has to be a citizen of the world.'
we re-create memories. turns out they don't really exist. this makes having a pile of shards quite exciting. for example, the day i received the telegram telling me my father died unexpectedly. after calling my mother, i said to myself, 'i'm going to enjoy this day.' yes, we think once our parents gone, we'll be free of them. i've been wrong both times.
i wandered over to the berlin zoo. looking at captured animals in the grey light couldn't have cheered me up. and i recall a cheap eating house where clients feasted at communal tables. what i remember: the wire-rimmed glasses of the fellow sitting opposite me. actually, my stunned state didn't allow much reflection.
or the day bali finally turned sour for me. a german guy told me it would, after awhile. the ceremonies which had been bright and exotic, lost all their color. the garbage in the gutters overshadowed the kids painting florid pictures. i'd overstayed my welcome, my senses surfeited, the pimples of the populace now showing through.
i figured in old-age i'd like a lot of memories, and how true it's become, as long as i can leave out nostalgia or the desire to change anything, like the time the girl in amsterdam finally agreed to make love with me and i'd gotten so angry i took my revenge by walking out. how stupid can you be! or the bleak goodbye to renate before she committed suicide.
in a good mood you can choose the high times, leave out the turbulent stomach or the aching back carrying a pack. often i simply remember a street corner in bangkok, a weary museum guard in istanbul, the look of bottecelli under glass. each gives me a thrill. i was there. i saw it all. and with a little editing the past charmed and bright.
the planning for a trip, the memories a few days after, this is all you really want. the actual journey full of potholes. and once you get home, the photos gradually replace the adventure. yes, you traveled the world. doing it on the cheap, you got down with the people more than once too often. these aspects of the facts can be deleted. the young save up a wealth of magical details, hitching through ireland and crossing the border into guatemala, photos of wanted guerillas all over the guards' walls, as they fingered high-powered rifles, staring at you.
finding your true self? d.h. lawrence would never agree. 'which self, i am many selves?' perfectly true, within limits. as i've stated many times before, only brain damage does our present personality in. otherwise, we tend to lope along at the same speed, especially without the intervention of fate.
everyday i get a new inspiration. i'll go back to kyoto, berlin, mexico city, and after a few peeks at travel books over coffee, i'm almost instantly disinclined. guess it's like the love mafia: once you've been disillusioned you can't overlook the pimples, bad-breath, scuffed shoes. passion now impossible in this situation.
the same with cities and countries. india spoiled me for india and russia for russia. in sri lanka i stumbled on an incredible ceremony worshiping a tree: candles, incense, singing. the next day i returned to find ashes and silence. so, when i romanticize berlin, i forget the gaffitti. in vancouver it was the claustrophobia and madness caused by the closed bay. even new york city has suffered a sea-change, the fountain of my youth.
and where i've lived for the past thirty years? that's a laugh. absolutely no romance. plenty of friends, but otherwise... i guess it's a matter of who wants to be trapped with a lover in the same town? cynical, but realistic, though reality certainly over-rated.
the palm ultimately goes to paris, the tattered cliche. i can't explain why it's worked. one morning in the 60's i did arrive on the train early, april stores opening, sidewalks being washed, the sun warm, the windows sparkling. perhaps that cast a glow. i met miriam on the plane. hand-patsy, one thing led to another, finally a hotel room with a window on notre dame. and toshiko, met in london, pursued to paris, kissed under the eiffel tower, a marriage proposal sent to japan politely refused, 'i didn't know you felt that way.'
people flirt in the subway. young ladies, gracious grand dames. you can actually talk with them. now that i'm wrinkled and stooped, i wonder what kind of a reception i'd get? i'm cat-sitting next month for my friend Q as she flies to france. maybe she'll be able to tell me. at the very least, i won't look at guide books to paris tomorrow. i've been disappointed enough for one week. my paris self, where are you?
let's look again: http://www.pbase.com/wwp/1970
as i was packing up to leave the lookout, a rather frail and thin fellow with a short, black beard spoke up from the bottom of the stairs. 'hi'. i told him the floor wet with mopping. he said, 'okay,' only he didn't go. he acted like we knew each other. who the hell?
i had planned to leave within the hour, felt impatient, yet invited him up. we stood waiting for the floor to dry. finally, i realized this the lookout who'd retired last year. we'd worked thirty years together and met but once. ah, the voice. no wonder i knew without knowing.
we got to talking. would he take his trailer south? he seemed in no hurry to leave, and i thought, 'this is very auspicious and remarkable. likely, we'd never meet again, he turning 75, me not far behind.' he pulled off the cap to his camera. i asked, 'have you gotten back to painting?' 'been thinking about it.' 'you could put your stuff on the web.' he paused and pondered. 'i can't think of why i'd want to do that.'
my god, i had a shock. doesn't everyone want their work known, to be known, to give pleasure? evidently, he created out of the urge to do so, no other reason necessary. i'd never met such a being, not in our world of celebrity and hype, not to mention my own maniacal urge to be invisible but recognized. maybe this was the message he had for me.
you don't need a reason, you're just stuck with this restlessness, get used to it. where have i said this before? i've always said everything, it led me to a dead-end and now all i can do is look at picture-books like a child. hmm, let's ask the rabbi. http://www.pbase.com/wwp/rabbi
