by Christopher Heffernan

The cult classic Trout Fishing in America, written by Richard Brautigan and first published in 1967, has been released in a new edition by Mariner Books, a subsidiary of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.  The book has not been published on its own since the early ‘80’s when Houghton Mifflin began packaging Brautigan’s books together in single volume sets with Trout Fishing in America set together with The Pill Versus the Springhill Mine Disaster and In Watermelon Sugar.  The new standalone edition, costing $13.95, and running 112 pages has a warm introduction from former poet laureate Billy Collins but also comes with a startling peculiarity.  For the original edition and the subsequent packaged editions after the covers had been a picture of Brautigan with a woman in front of a blurred statue of Benjamin Franklin.  It may at first seem like it does not matter but the first chapter of the book speaks directly about this cover, so it seems strange that Mariner decided to change the cover to the childlike drawing of a fish that was used for the dedication page and instead put the photo that is the theme of the first chapter called “The Cover for Trout Fishing in America” inside the book, just before the introduction.  Of course the book business demands that as time goes by and tastes change so must covers change but with a post modern tour de force that uses meta as one of its key elements and has the first chapter titled and dealing directly with the cover, it is self defeating to change it. 

The book is divided up into 47 sections or chapters, each with a title, and ranging in length from one page to roughly six.  It is a quick read and a fun read and it is a read you can always go back to as the undercurrents that Brautigan deals with offer a depth that lurks in the back of each chapter and the back of the reader’s mind so that there are always new connections to be made and new feelings to be felt.  The sections are split into different threads and themes with some recurring but with no over all coherent story, making it lyrical.  But this does not make it any less of a novel.  What engages the reader is, first, Brautigan’s prose style; smooth, light, with easily read and digestible sentences that move easily and naturally from one to the other.  Then there is the clash of themes where, here, drama does not build in the character’s lives, it is built in the reader himself as the different images and scenes, descriptions and events constantly push into and pull each other along.  And then there is the aspect of metafiction, fiction that reflects upon itself.  Brautigan takes it and puts in the first chapter and references the cover, as mentioned, a photo taken in front of a Benjamin Franklin statue in a park in San Francisco. 

The self referencing is important as it starts the function of building the book as an experience in the reader.  Good books make reading an experience so that the reader is not following a story but actually having emotional reactions to the work, is actually feeling and creating memories of feeling; so what Brautigan does by opening the book with a discussion of the cover is telling the reader that the event isn’t a story, or the book, but is actually the reader, as the reader must go back and observe the cover and now knows that the author who is now the narrator knows that he is writing a thing and he’s telling you he’s writing it so that like all good metafiction he points out that the thing is not the Thing but is a reflection of it and that the real Thing is life itself.  And then he goes on with the other themes, most particularly the degradation of America, as an optimistic description of the statue of Ben Franklin statue and the word WELCOME facing the four directions, are coupled with bums at a church across the street waiting for free sandwiches.  It is a scene of poverty and a clash with the manufactured image of America that moves throughout the book.  The image is then heightened by a Kafka quote that reads, “I like the Americans because they are healthy and optimistic.”

This degradation through its many facets, the rise of technology, loss of value, loss of a connection with something more natural or organic, etc, runs the length of the book and is paralleled and contrasted with the other large thread that is of pastoral scenes of fishing.  Many of these scenes involve a family, moving around from campsites in America, illustrating the splendor of the country and the depth of its natural beauty while at the same time reinforcing the book with the metaphor for fishing, sustenance, a theme as old as Christ.  What is remarkable about the book is that although Brautigan has forgone classic structure he retained one of the oldest themes, that of life returning life to itself with the symbol of fish.  That this lost connection with nature can be retrieved through fishing.  Over the centuries this theme often involved a redemption, usually of land or character but always in the end of life.  Brautigan knows this but does not state it.  Instead he gives the reader events and description so that instead of being told what the problem is it is made implicit and instead of being told what to do about it the book, being set up as an event itself, activates the reader’s own sympathy or empathy or even urgency.  This is one of the key elements that made it such a hit in the ‘60’s.  It was a true cry, a sign, pointing directly at the clash of technology and nature and that nature was loosing—as Brautigan points out when addressing the camping craze in America that the Coleman lamp has become the beacon of these people and that it is “unholy”; and as he points to the rise of consumerism which is wonderfully illustrated in the section titled “The Cleveland Wrecking Yard.”  In this chapter the narrator finds out about a place that sells streams for trout fishing, that you can go there and build a stream, paying for it by the foot, stock it with fish and even surround it with trees and shrubs and wildlife to make a perfectly manufactured natural setting.  Brautigan’s light style makes these few pages seem almost cutesy as the narrator is picking out what he wants and discusses options as if buying a car with the salesman.  But those Brautigan undercurrents begin to creep up and the astute reader will begin to realize that it is a simple but poignant and strong commentary on, what was at the time, a rising consumerism that is now our everyday way of life.  Though we do not buy trout streams by the foot, almost everything else in our society, including our health and our bodies, has become commodities for profit. 

What stands out in the book, though, as truly astounding, is the relationship that “Trout Fishing in America” has with the reader, that it is a thing, not only the book itself, but in the book “Trout Fishing in America,” exists as an object to be explored, a personification, an event and even an entity unto itself.  Brautigan begins this creation of Trout Fishing in America as an entity right in the second chapter where the narrator wonders about when he first heard about Trout Fishing in America and there is a response after his brief musings by Trout Fishing in America itself.  This sets the stage for Trout Fishing in America not being simply an activity or even a pastoral state of mind to be reached in the tranquility of nature, but an actual entity, running around out there.  It moves, it talks, it does things.  It is at the same time a hotel and a bum named Trout Fishing in America Shorty.  It is all these things and more and Brautigan does not waste his or the reader’s time by trying to define it or explain it so that the reader may on his own grasp it.  This is where his having the book as a true experience comes into play, because it is the event of reading all of the chapters and sections against each other where Trout fishing in America is all of these different things and exists as different things, undefined and explained in their relationships that, in the end, the reader must put it all together into the actual experience, the way that any person who lives through an event puts the pieces together for a full understanding. 

It is not all completely out of bounds.  In the end Brautigan brings the pastoral family of campers to the city and the park in San Francisco with the Franklin statue that starts the book, pinching the whole thing off almost as it had begun.  Here, with their little girl, they come across Trout Fishing in America Shorty who, old and broke and nearing death beckons to the child who at first pays him attention then with a flippancy and frivolity runs away.  It is a scene of contrasts and foils, of warmth and desperation, of family and loneliness that is offered to the reader, so typical of this book and Brautigan, with no implicit meaning other than what the reader can get from it with his own senses.  

Over all the book is short and accessible, easy to read, and easy to read on many levels.  It is an exquisite example of post modernism and a triumph of literary themes and explorations that edge into the prophetic.  It is almost sad that this book is a cult classic, that its association with the 60’s and the counter culture movement has basically trumped its validity as solid work of fiction.  Hopefully, now, enough time has gone by and with the publication of this new edition by itself the up and coming generation of readers will see Trout Fishing in America for what it truly is.

(crowd-sourcing)
Having met David Hammons twenty tears ago (if not more), I know his motto has always been, how to stay ahead of the game.

On a personal level, I’ve always thought of him as someone who never followed trends. His ideas about art have always been something new and different.

              For example, at one point he was selling snowballs on the corner of St. Marks and 2^nd Ave, and at another time he took telephone poles, and placed basketball goals atop the poles, which he showcased in an empty lot in Harlem. He called this piece, Higher Goals.

              Then, at one time, while sitting at an opening at a Gerhard Richter show at the MOMA, David said he wanted to do a show at Tribes. When I asked him what the content would be, David was quiet and said nothing. He instructed me to leave what I had on the wall, and said he would be by the next day.

              The next day he came by, took a newspaper, rubbed it against the wall where the frames were, producing an outline on the wall. This process took him less than an hour. He shook my hand and said, “I’m ready.”

              The next day, Robert Storr, who was the chief curator of contemporary art at the MOMA, and Jack Tilton showed up wanting to know, ‘where was the art. David called it invisible art. Unfortunately for them, there was no art to be taken from the walls.

              It was then six months later that he repeated the same process down at Ace Gallery, leaving the whole space devoid of art objects, with a woman sitting at a computer, next to someone playing the violin. That was the art.

              It was somewhere around this time that I introduced him to Mireia Sentis, who wanted him to do a show in Spain. He had no idea as to what he would show, or how much he could charge the institution. 

              She explained that his show would take place in the Crystal Palace in Madrid, which the Spanish had built to collect flowers from the Philippines. Meanwhile, Mr. Hammons had been invited to produce a show in Poland. He sent them a fax announcing the date of his arrival in Madrid.

              It was right then and there, he hit upon the Idea of the Global Fax Festival. Aside from A Gathering of the Tribes, David contacted an array of other galleries and institutions, which had shown his work over the last twenty odd years.

              And on opening night, during a thunderstorm in Madrid, he had people sending faxes from all over the world. The faxes rained in from fax machines which were suspended from the ceiling of the Crystal Palace, while Butch Morris was performing written and improvised music. The faxing went on for an entire month. That is, whenever artists, writers and musicians dropped by Tribes, we had them shoot a fax over to Madrid. The same was true for the other participating institutions.

Over the course, over 10,000 faxes were received. From those, a book was produced, including over 300 faxes from all over the globe. Some artists whose work can be found in the Global Fax Festival booklet include: Andrew Castrucci, Butch Morris, Sarah Fergisun, Giuseppe Gallo, Jack Tilton, Alecia Romero, Amy Ouzoonian, Amiri Baraka, Stanley Whitney, Elana Oscar, and many others. Pieces include drawings, prints, manifestos, news articles, poetry and more. One piece features a sketch of Dali’s famous mustache. Another is simply the word, BUSH! with the exclamation point illustrated as a noose.

              Originally, when Mr. Hammons got wind that the show would take place in a glass enclosure, he thought it would be a good idea to use sledge hammers and stones to destroy the entire space. But the Spanish government had disagreed. Global fax festival was plan B.

His latest foray; he was invited to do a show in Vienna. He came up with idea of smells. He would fill the space with various odors, and this would be the show.  Mr. Hammons has always been one who thinks of making art out of nothing, and nothing seems to be his forte.

 by Patrick Kosiewicz

From 1972-1975 Miles Davis and a band of warrior musicians
took audiences back to the furthest reaches
of human and earth history
with their elemental, organic, universal, and utterly spontaneous sound.

It began as a return to Africa,
site of the first human revolution,
radiated to the Indus Valley and the jungles of South America,
and then went further back in time
covering the expanses of Pangea, Gondwana, Panthalassa and beyond.

Michael Henderson set off massive tectonic shifts and stirred seas of magma with his bass.
Pulse of life through time and space ran through James Mtume’s hands.
The organic bounce of the biosphere sprang from Pete Cosey’s guitar strings and wah-pedal.
Miles’ horn was a rumble from the earth’s core, a terrifying message from the sky, the breath of man’s eternal state of the blues on this turtle-back world…

Warm mud bubbling up from a primordial land…warm blood running down the leg of primordial mother…the childscape of humankind where people spontaneously adorned themselves with spiraling hats of grass and blazing pigments crushed from earth’s color wheel…the secret dance of cellular procreation…a mass migration of mammoths with birds chattering on their backs…a giant butterfly landing on a naked child’s hand…the lost legends of man and woman told by a horn at a gathering of people around a fire….

Scholarly sources for the earliest planetary and human history abound, but this library of nature’s funk is just as rich a source for one seeking answers to the origins (and future) of man: On the Corner, Dark Magus, Pangea, Agharta, Live- Evil, Get Up With It. There is much that will provide you with radio-carbon-fortified facts and dazzling speculations, but little that will take to you to an original state of mind. The soundscapes in the above-mentioned albums reveal human beings’ deepest beginnings and most distant destinies.

On the Live - Evil album cover you will find a naked, gleaming African earth queen adorned with crimson samurai helmet from the future-past…a wall of archaic Arabic calligraphy that mirrors the topography of a microchip…a woman who is perhaps our ancient Ethiopian mother, perhaps a bronze mother of a future humanity…A people traverse badlands in sky-colored robes, wave of blood and fire with a human face arcing over them…

When this music was being made there was an outcry from critics who wanted Miles to forever inhabit the realms of Kind of Blue, Porgy and Bess, and Miles Smiles (they later praised the music and deemed it ‘ahead of its time’ and so on). These people were very much like some producer who once told Miles to think about slavery when playing his blues, and there are many still who prefer the safe, easily-fathomed Prince of Darkness. But to the brave ones, in the words of Miles: “Pack your toothbrush and your douche bag,” we’re going to Gondwana.

 By: Brian Boyles

“Rex is on his way.”

On the grandstand in front of Gallier Hall, we watch the tail of the Zulu parade pass and the lieutenants of the Krewe of Rex approach. Mayor Ray Nagin speaks into a thin microphone perched over St. Charles Avenue, greeting the citizens who wait and re-fill during the transition. He engages in light banter with the DJ who sits behind us in a booth on the front porch of the hall.

“Damian Porche, your daughter is looking for you,” the DJ announces.
“Parents, watch your kids,” Nagin rejoins. “Kids, watch your parents.”

Nagin’s voice and words are at their most folksy, worn down by fatigue, peppering in many an “It’s all good,” and “Only in New Orleans” through a weary, perhaps winey afternoon as master of ceremonies. With heavy bags under his eyes and his head tilted back in the sunshine, the mayor looks only half-way there. A few minutes later, the DJ searches for the parents of another lost kid, this time one with the last name Nagin. Ray’s face shows no reaction, his eyes hooded as he stares down the avenue at the approaching Rex.

“Here comes Rex, y’all.” A TV truck passes by. “Cox Communications. Those were the days. I didn’t get any grief when I ran Cox Communications. Somebody’s HBO went off, that’s it. City Hall, HBO go off everyday.”

Inside Gallier Hall on Mardi Gras Day, the floors still shine and the purple/gold/green bunting hangs from the chandeliers. A wide hallway leads to the grand portico. The adjoining banquet hall holds round tables and a buffet line. People sit and relax with family and friends at the end of another Carnival season. The noise from the DJ and the crowd outside is muffled, we have more than enough room to spread out in here, and a quiet peace is at hand. On the buffet, servers offer red beans, chili dogs, and chips. I pay $4 for a chili dog, a bag of Zaps, and a bottle of water, and think back to another party in this place.

The Mayor’s Mardi Gras Ball of February 15th, 2007 was a much different affair. Two floors of the hall were filled with free food and drink, with stages set up in three rooms for live bands that played an assortment of Motown hits, New Orleans R&B, and Latin Jazz. Servers passed hors d’oeurves to a guest list dressed to the nines. Like today, the crowd was roughly 90% African-American. The hallways, dining tables, and dance floors were well-peopled. Ed Blakely made his social debut. I met an ex-NBA player. The mayor worked the main room briefly, shaking hands and smiling, a slightly uncomfortable host. New to this scene, I was impressed at the largesse of the party. Electricity was still an issue in many neighborhoods at the time, but Gallier Hall glittered that evening.

Three years later, the grandstand bubbles with assorted staffers, their families, council people, and ticket snatchers like me, most of us in jeans and winter coats. The mayor sports a Saints championship hat and matching letterman jacket. The team never sent him Super Bowl tickets, so he went to the game on the taxpayers’ dime, budget crisis be damned.

Earlier that morning, we watched Nagin cross Simon Bolivar at Jackson Avenue on horseback. He rode with three others at the head of Zulu. They passed with little fanfare, a few waves to the people gathered in the parking lot of the Chicken Mart. Behind them was the real show, the Zulu King and Queen, the loud floats filled with men in blackface, not a few of them white men. The day before, the City awarded an $800,000 grant to the Zulus for a new headquarters on Broad Street, quite a gift for the 100-year old private club. On dilapidated Simon Bolivar in the heart of Central City, coconuts and footballs soared through the air as “Lombardi Gras” finally begot a warm day.

This Carnival was perhaps the first one ever upstaged by another party. One week before Fat Tuesday, the largest crowd in memory lined the streets for a victory parade, braving unseasonable cold to cheer on their world champion New Orleans Saints. The previous Sunday, hell had frozen over as the final seconds ticked away in the Super Bowl. A celebration erupted throughout the city, centered on the French Quarter and open to every person, regardless of race, class, or gender. The greatest violence punished the shoulders and palms of New Orleanians with a million hi-fives and bear hugs. After years of bottled up anger and suspicion, the people exploded together as winners.

Oh, and the night before the Super Bowl, voters elected a new mayor. Lieutenant Governor Mitch Landrieu’s victory in the primary was historic in its decisiveness, its reliance on voters from across the racial divide, and its repudiation of the political disorder of recovery era New Orleans. A white man from a well-known family, Landrieu took all but one of the voting precincts, an obliteration of his opponents that calls into question the future of African-American politics as a functional term. By saying very little about his plans, Landrieu enters office with the promise of energy. That promise was enough to blow away the remains of a status-quo already knee-capped by the storm, its aftermath, and the ineffectual response of city government.

With countless opportunities over the last four years to speak to the collective rebuilding spirit in the city, the mayor stuck his finger in multiple wounds with increasing frequency. The newspaper responded accordingly, running stories about the mayor’s travel plans as if they were more newsworthy than updates on levee progress, allowing its feeble online version to become a forum for hatred, and routinely taking a backseat to blogs at the vanguard of investigative journalism.

As the election approached, Nagin and Police Superintendent Riley whispered that Shadow Government forces controlled the media and levers of power, stopping short of naming names to keep all whites in the realm of suspicion (Riley: “You know, that’s why it’s the shadow government, because you’re not supposed to know. That’s just my opinion.”). The mayor took out an ad on the black radio station WBOK imploring African-Americans to vote with their race or risk losing “the franchise.” As the Saints made their run, the newspaper all but ceased coverage of the election, and gave no serious analysis of its potential outcome or ramifications. Even the political beat writers gave more attention to the mayor’s forecasts of doom than to the actual sentiment among voters. The Saturday morning of the primary, the paper ran just one column on the election, while the website for WWL-TV made no mention at all of an election. Mayor and media locked once more in the grave dance they’ve practiced for years, detached from the citizenry and so unable to serve it. All the while, the body politic shifted under their bumbling feet.

The signs were hardly cryptic: the 2002 election of Nagin, a political outsider without ties to a black political organization; the defeat of Congressman William Jefferson by a little-known Republican outsider; the federal indictment and prosecution of Jefferson and a plethora of black officials, as well as black and white contractors and the burgeoning crisis in Jefferson Parish; the Nagin-sanctioned demolition of the projects, further cementing the dispersal of the African-American vote and perhaps the end of “street money” as an effective election day tool; the upheaval in the public schools and medical sector that displaced the black middle class; the election of white Arnie Fielkow and white Jackie Clarkson to the Council-at-large seats; and the very real disgust with the workings of City Hall. In a poignant end to his confounding career, Nagin was again the last man shouting when the system fell apart. His appeals to division and fear were a final, shaky defense of a political reality he’d helped to destroy. Only 28% of registered African-American voters went to the polls on Feb. 6th, and while the electorate remains 60% African-American, the power apparatus erected around that number has been crumbling for some time.

On St. Charles Avenue, the mayor moves back to the microphone as the King of Rex pulls up on his throne. R. Hunter Pierson, Jr. is another in an endless line of pasty, slightly femme monarchs from this Krewe who “rule the city” for Mardi Gras. With his eyeliner, tights and sequins, and his nasal gentility, he resembles a besotted Dauphine in exile, not a king. Like Nagin, his New Orleans is gone.

Three decades ago, if a black politician complained of a Shadow Government, he might’ve meant a member of Rex. The equation of black political power vs. white business power was a crutch that ensured a place for old-line white aristocrats who contributed little in the way of commercial ambition, instead happy to live off their various inheritances. They paid virtually nothing property tax, rode in old-line parades, and maybe practiced some law. These are the men who for so long kept the doors to their private clubs closed, thus alienating outsiders black and white who might improve the business and social climate of the city. Historically, the integrationist Landrieus were more their enemy than a Cox Cable official, and they haven’t put forth a serious challenger in a mayoral race in a long time.

The white upper crust no longer sits atop a hierarchy that ensures their insulation. The upending of the black/white power equation, the decades-long emigration of aristocratic sons and daughters from Orleans Parish, the post-Katrina influx of young entrepreneurs and social activists, even the dying wheeze of the local paper, all spell the decline of that Shadow Government. Never before has that class of New Orleanians been more unnecessary to the operation and survival of the city. Whatever shred of truth there was in Nagin’s fantasy, it did not lie with the members of Rex.

“We wish you much love, peace, and happiness in the future,” the mayor tells R. Hunter Pearson, Jr. “May your reign today be the reign you have tomorrow. Hail Rex! Hail Rex! Hail Rex! Now drink up.”

Nagin sips his champagne, Rex sips his champagne, and I take a blast of the moonshine I picked up on Jackson Avenue. This is goodbye. Someone hands Rex the microphone.

“Mr. Mayor, I’m just so glad to be here today [feedback squawk] with this wonderful group, and the outpouring from the people of New Orleans. Our city is on a roll like never before.” He really does seem happy, too, and enters into a call-and-response with the crowd. Nagin’s voice on mike is audible in the response.

“I’d like to ask the people here one basic question. What is the best city in the United States?”
New Orleans!

“What is the best city in the world?”
New Orleans!

“What is the best city on the planet?”
New Orleans!

Not just the world, people. The entire planet.

JUST KIDS –Patti Smith

Harper Collins, New York, 2010

279 pps.

Reviewed by Bonny Finberg

     Patti Smith has kept her promise to Robert Mapplethorpe to tell their story. By doing so through the lens of a generation of artists in New York at that time, she’s written our story as well. Her book could be subtitiled: “Talkin’ ‘Bout My Generation,” the Pete Townsend song she covered as if she’d written it herself.

     The book opens when, as a very young girl, Smith sees her first swan gliding then taking flight from the Prairie River in Humboldt Park. The sight of it “generated an urge I had no words for, a desire to speak of the swan…its whiteness the explosive nature of its movement, and the slow beating of its wings.” This prescient moment, almost allegorical, is later played out in her relationship with Robert Mapplethorpe whose place in her life was in some sense that of a fairy godfather, transforming her from insecure, self-effacing duckling to magnificent swan with wings from whose powerful beating rhythm comes an artistry of overwhelming beauty. Ironically, and typical for the times, Smith makes the conscious pledge to herself to support her artist/lover by giving him the freedom of not having to hold a job while she does. She works at various jobs so he can develop his art and afford studio space, while in the evenings, accompanying him on their routine visits to Max’s Kansas City. Their first, decidedly uneventful foray into Max’s was in 1969. Andy Warhol was no longer a regular after being shot by Valerie Solanas, though his second string, so to speak remained. Hanging out in the right places in order to meet the right people, though extremely important to Mapplethorpe is only something Smith does for his sake. She describes her reticence and painful social awkwardness. They start out in the front room near the bar spending their time drinking Cokes and trying to figure out how to work their way into the back room where the art world stars drink and commiserate, engaged in repartee that resembles a Looking Glass version of the Algonquin.

     Despite her self-consciousness in the presence of the royalty holding court in the back room, she rises to the occasion, spurred on by Mapplethorpe’s relentless pursuit of entering their inner circle. After a self-executed haircut, she describes the attention and approval that finally delivers her into the sanctuary of their Mad Tea Party.

     Patti Smith’s early religious training redefined events in clearly revelatory ways. She saw art as her “calling.” Her first confrontation with art was on a family trip to the Philadelphia Art Museum. Like much of Smith’s encounters, this was an epiphany. After a short stint in a factory in South Jersey, where she lived at the time, she left for the bus stop to take the bus to New York. Her mother had given her a white waitress outfit, complete with shoes, to ensure her survival. (They ended up in the bathroom of the first and last restaurant she would ever work in.) The going was rough and she slept in the park and in doorways before finally finding a place in Brooklyn to share. Her first meeting with Mapplethorpe happened while working behind a jewelry counter. It’s the kind of meeting that romantic movies are made of and begins a deep and long relationship that spans over twenty years.

     Among other things, these two were drawn together by their commitment to art as primary over all other pursuits. They shared musical tastes, sometimes playing certain records over and over again, and supported each other’s vision. The happy balance between their differences was maintained by the admiration and recognition of the other’s perspective and method. Smith recalls the snowy Christmas night when, walking in Time Square, they came upon the billboard “WAR IS OVER If you want it. Happy Christmas from John and Yoko.” She remarks that Mapplethorpe was impressed by the idea of artists taking over 42^nd Street. She was struck by the humanity of the statement. “For me it was the message. For Robert the medium.” This was 1969. The end of the Sixties when Smith and Robert both turned 23. With the uncanny certainty and foresight he often shows in this story, Mapplethorpe declares at the beginning of the Seventies: “This is our decade.”

     Smith and Mapplethorpe’s days at the Hotel Chelsea provide one of the most compelling and evocative aspects of this book. Their time spent with Harry Smith, encounters with William Burroughs, Viva, Candy Darling and scores of others are funny and insightful. Even when Smith was not on intimate terms with some of these well known artists, her observations from her perch on a couch in the lobby opens a window into a time when the New York art world was an accessible, diverse universe for anyone with eyes and ears. She is privy to Shirley Clarke, Diane Arbus and Jonas Meekas, as they each pass through the lobby. Viva enters like an unapproachable diva in order to intimidate Stanley Bard, then owner of the Chelsea, so as to distract him from the fact of her outstanding rent.

     An interesting revelation about Smith here is that she was not so much the wild child that her stage persona suggested. She drank little, if at all, and never smoked dope. In fact, her descriptions of Mapplethorpe and Harry Smith readying to go out after smoking a joint is pretty funny. They try on various outfits and look for keys while she, having thrown some simple but hip outfit together, sits waiting impatiently. It isn’t until much later that after having smoked herself that she thinks back and understands their distraction.

     Smith’s development as a poet/performer informs some of the most fascinating sections. Her meeting with Lenny Kaye and their first performance at St. Mark’s Church Poetry Project is a Punk version of “A Star is Born” without the tragedy. There is little evidence here of struggling to become famous. It seemed that all who knew her were pushing her to go public. Once she did, she inspired adulation from the outset, and never stopped. She continues to give radioactive performances all over the globe.

     The larger part of this book covers a time of cheap all-night diners and five and dime stores full of cheap housewares, toys and kitsch that could be recycled into art objects. I’d forgotten some of these places until I read them in these pages: Benedict’s, Child’s, Lamston’s. It was a time when we made our own greeting cards and gifts by hand and paid rent that equaled about one week’s salary. It was New York at a time when you might have to struggle to survive and do your art, whereas now it seems more necessary to sacrifice your art in order to survive. It was a place where misfits from everywhere else could co-exist, if cynically, with those who came to make their fortune. You met people in the street or the park and were friends for life. You could work for two weeks as a waitress at Max’s (even if only in the front room where people got their own drinks and stiffed the waitress as I sadly learned) and make enough money for a cheap (illegal) charter flight to Europe. Pot was $15 an ounce.

     It all sounds so idyllic even in the writing of it here. Of course, being in your twenties and thirties makes any decade “the” decade. But this was before the AIDS epidemic, Rudy Giuliani, overdevelopment and, of course, 9/ll. So many were lost — people and places. But thanks to Patti Smith’s detailed records from journals and notebooks, photographs and drawings, we have them here for all time.

Michael

I first saw Michael Jackson leading the Jackson 5, live at the Michigan State Fair in 1971. The fair was just outside of Detroit and must have been a gig agreed upon before the Jackson 5 blew up. I say that because State Fairs are notorious for having the all and sundry with not a few “Rubes” as the Carney’s would shout out whenever there was trouble. The crowd, located in a tight outdoor arrangement, was as wide a range of people you’d ever want to be around. Michael, at a touchingly tender age, was admirably professional — as were they all. They had been greeted wildly and then listen to with devoted attention. The Jackson 5 were on a small riser, playing up into the audience that sat in a bleacher arrangement, the kind of seating from which you’d watch a softball game. And indeed it was in a field that ranged off in all directions. Behind the rear of the stage was a very broad expanse that served as broad back road and storage areas for the Fair

But they put on a full show, totally up to par. Towards the end of the set I noticed various members of the Jackson 5 slipping off. Michael was the last. As he walked off the other non-Jackson 5 musicians kept playing. There was a lot of movement in the audience, I was not quite sure what was happening until I looked up into the distance and saw the Jackson 5 running at full tilt being pursued by not a few fans. Up ahead of the 5 was, of all things, an armored truck, the kind that picked up cash from businesses and banks. It lumbered at a steady speed. It became clear after a moment that the armored Brinks-type truck was not going to stop. And then, that the 5 were running for in. And they made it, one by one, every one running at top speed. The last one was Michael. He was the smallest with the shortest legs, but he ran like a track star, and nary a hair on his head was touched by the pursuing fans as he jumped up into the truck and it sped off with its precious cargo.

At first I was puzzled by the use of the armored truck, but it would hit me sooner than later that the Jackson 5 were indeed the equivalent of cash money, of the highest denominations.

It was said on some commentary on his recent death that he was in debt $400 million. Well, he will make that back all right. In no time.

Someone so boyish to die so young. Certainly, if his life appeared as a fantasy to those who followed him, certainly anyone who appreciated Black music, R&B, pop music, anyone who danced as a serious part of their life, anyone who was involved in the huge explosion of Black popular music inspired by and often accompanied by rap and hip hop — that Michael was the man.

I remember Quincy Jones remarking that while they worked on “The Wiz” the Black theatrical musical version of that famous film, The Wizard of Oz, Michael knew everyone’s lines, all the songs, and was up to date on other inner and outer aspects of the production.

It would be after that liaison that Quincy Jones and Michael Jackson formed a partnership that resulted in two classic long-playing records: “The Wall ” and “Thriller.” while the former, done with the Jacksons doing harmonies and vocals and some instrumentation, it was clear that Michael, with his voice having seemingly magically matured from a shrieking kid, into a get down adult, he possessed a range of pure intonation and a natural vibrato that would be the envy of any singer.

The success of Thriller is a story in and of itself. That stellar production of Quincy Jones remains and continues to build as one of the greatest studio productions of the 20th Century. So much so that from when it was a big hit, through many dance parties, up until the requisite memorial overplay, I never tire of hearing this work. I knew a woman. Bunny Hull, who sang in the chorus on a couple of the songs. She was famous in my heart because of the beautiful harmonies she contributed to on that great work, She was a protégé of, Thelma Houston (“Don’t Leave Me That Way”) and pointed up the fact that L. A., Hollywood, was a big family with everybody pretty much knowing each other, from degrees of separation to connections at any kind of party, reception, screening, performance, get together, dinner, church and funeral. For Black people it was a family thing if only by vibe alone.

I remember helping a lawyer friend interview some folks about a legal situation involving Michael. I came through that with the distinct impression tha t Michael, as a child, had probably been molested by one of the parties (not a family member) to that particular lawsuit that ended up not going forward.

But it made me think back to how Michael as a child, as a boy, was so on point emotionally about feelings he was definitely too young to really appreciate – in my mind – as in the ballad, “Who’s Loving you,” recorded when Michael was 7 years old.

Since you been away, don’t you know I sit around with my head hanging down, And I wonder who’s loving you

Hearing him sing that song, a slow drag favorite of my teen years by Smokey Robinson, by a now comparatively forgotten singer who was overshadowed by Michael in his cover version. It seemed to come together that somehow this young perfectionist had found a way, perhaps a difficult way, to these adult feelings.

Because, indeed, he was like an elf, a boy elf, singing these beautiful adult songs in such an understanding way, to the same adults who adored him if only for rendering their emotions of love and loss so clearly.

I loved it when Quincy Jones referred to Michael as his little brother. That’s what the Jacksons became to me, to us, part of that extended family, somewhat dysfunctional, totally talented to the point of brilliance, yet deeply human, vulnerable, valiant.

I listened to the BBC and NPR’s utterly horrible programming in the immediate aftermath of Michael’s death. Both relying on the immediate staff and in house talent (that have few if any Blacks) these outfits, put together the worst type of bunk you would expect from them. The British (and I don’t understand why they all up in our business anyway these days) found some former music editor who was now in another department – finance, I think—who did an absolute horrid job of it. True to the Murdock doctrine they tried to make much of the legal difficulties he encountered with some of the boys he loved to host. For Michael, a boy who had no childhood, this Neverland/Peter Pan thing was a sad attempt to relive the boy’s life he had missed. I remember a revelation from one of the accusing boy’s parents who was so concerned about a quick and formidable financial settlement that it made me wonder about the origins of those complaints.

Could COINTELPRO still be alive and well?

Martin Bashear, a brown Brit who now is main man at ABC’s Nightline gave Jackson his due when he said that when he shot a documentary of Michael a few years ago that he never got any hint that there might have been any improprieties. That Michael was a gentleman in an almost classical way. And, he also pointed out, Michael had been acquitted of any charges in a court of law. Certainly part of the denial of Black folks right of citizenship is the denial of verdicts in courts of law from O. J. Simpson to Michael. Jackson The press and some of the public know what the jurors did not – that these men were guilty, if only by accusation. Something like a secret tribunal, the likes we witness in foreign policy and recently on the books in national law that challenge basic constitutional rights.

Michael Jackson is associated with so many music categories: Bubble gum music, the beginning of the boy group trend (New Edition, Boyz 2 Men, New Kids on the Block) Michael blew up along with hip hop. His connection to that movement was so clear to me. I remember seeing early videos of MC Hammer. He was just dancing. Sometimes alone, or with a partner, or a small group; they would just be dancing to the music and you could see and feel all that energy coming forward, building. So it was not surprising that MC Hammer would connect with hip hop and build such a formidable fortress from just, essentially, jamming to the music.

Michael put his dancing more and more forward in his performance. Dance is what unites all that Black music, it is the currency of exchange the universal fluid. Michael as a dancer became a wonderment. Praise by Fred Astaire did not mean a lot to a good many B lack folks, as it did mean a lot to a good many. But for Michael he had long been acknowledged as a preeminent dancer, of unusual class. I liked it when I heard someone say how he always ordered a dance floor to be installed in his hotel suites when he was on tour or simply moving his residence around all over the world. Dance for Michael was serious business.

Thank God he took dancing so seriously. Indeed it is at the core of the musical realm. I always laugh when I hear critics of hip hop complain. They do not dance to the music. If they loved dancing and have ever been at a party where there was a great DJ driving the crowd towards dance ecstasy, mixing R&B, Dancehall, Disco and hip hop then they would have known something else. Something that was at the heart of Michael’s song writing and star persona and master Quincy Jones’s most excellent musicianship and exquisite arrangements.

That there is a place where you can go that is so divine that it can hardly be spoken of — but it can be sung, and played and danced to, and if it is high enough then you are there. And you will never forget the feeling of that deeply mystical realm. That ecstatic place Michael is most associated with, and will always be.

© David Henderson 2009. All Rights Reserved

    by

    Bonny Finberg

    While the bombs fell between the 20^th and 21^st of April 1944, people prayed at the feet of the Crucifixion at Sacre Coeur. Montmartre was spared. I can’t help but feel it was their collective prayer that saved them rather than the stilled heart of a dead man, as full of grace as he might have been. There was no one then to pray for his salvation. He was betrayed. No one saw it coming.

I followed the Stations of the Cross, its brilliant mosaic transforming what must have been a messy business into a spectacle for the eyes. From the gleaming dome above, Le Seigneur, all cleaned up and risen from the tomb, bestows his blessing, substantiating triumph over death.

Once a year his betrayal is re-enacted. We all know what’s going to happen but we can’t do anything to reverse it. We can elevate it to sacrifice, feel better about the comparatively small betrayals we commit. We are all Judas. Only Jesus is the savior. His message was simple: Save yourself. But a game of telephone was in operation, and the road to dogma is paved with competing intentions.

Did he really die for our sins, or was he merely being consistent? Here, you can own another’s pain without having to really suffer it. You can be protected and forgiven. All human misery is swept under the shade of an ancient oak whose acorn happened to fall on good soil. 

A martyr chooses death. Jesus’ Passion might have been an unfortunate political accident. Or else Judas helped to ensure He carried out his destiny. Most of us die for no reason. Insight might come early or not at all. We may live rich, complex lives that are woven into a larger, ongoing narrative. Or we may be easily forgotten. How many bibles have gone unwritten?

    *

    Asylum

    At the entrance, security guards scan the crowd. A man directs people to the side aisles or the pews, depending on whether they’re coming to pray or coming to look. He repeatedly puts his finger to his lips—sshhhh! They have lots to see and say. Some are in awe. Some are making arrangements for later when they’ll go for moules frites.  Scowling, he continues shushing, pointing to his head to remind them to remove their hats, shaking his finger at the one-eyed monsters to put their cameras away. He protects the Sacred Heart with the authority vested in him by the Holy Fathers who take his confession and hand him the Eucharist. The end is always near. You try to see it coming.

    *

    Passion

    I thought the services would start at 5:30, so I was seated in the second row by 5:25. But this is Good Friday not a routine Vespers service. After an hour, a nun in a white robe and black wimple walks out to the front of the apse and sets up a microphone. She moves like an actress playing a nun. Men in lab coats come out and place the sacred objects and texts. A short, plump woman in a white lab coat appears with a rag and feather duster and tidies up. They have a brief conversation and walk back behind the apse. A handyman walks on, front left, with keys and a tape measure hanging out of his pocket. He looks around and walks off, leaving behind an odor of lubricating oil.  Another half hour goes by. The pews are filling up.

    A Black priest in a white robe comes out. There is anticipation, especially in the first two rows, where those who came earliest have been sitting longest. But then, behind the priest is the cleaning woman again. They file off to the right. Some people are talking, others are praying. Some of the ones praying tell the ones who are talking to be quiet. An irritable exchange erupts between the two women next to me, who have been chattering away, and the woman behind, who chastises them. A woman many rows back is talking loudly. People are trying to quiet her. She becomes increasingly belligerent and it slowly becomes apparent that she is not in her right mind. A few people smile indulgently. Two nuns come out and hand out the texts for the mass. Another ten minutes pass. The nuns come out and take their seats on the sides and the noise subsides a little. Another twenty minutes pass.

    I read the whole four pages of the mass. My eyelids fall closed and I drift into a mild state of meditation. The woman next to me stands suddenly. I jump up from my seat, surprised at my own reflex and realize that, although I never thought it possible, I have been hypnotized.  The procession has begun.

    A cardinal and three priests are in front. One of the priests is old and feeble. All kneel down and prostrate themselves before the marble Crucifix. When they stand, the two on the outside pull the old one up by his elbows. He stumbles to his feet, a tuft of white hair sticking up from his head. The angelic voices of the nuns sing about the Royal Kingdom of Heaven. I sing along, following the printed text, in exalted French. The Passion is read by three priests. The cardinal speaks the words of Jesus in a deep, commanding voice. We all stand and the nuns sing, in crystalline harmony, the adoration of the Wooden Cross:

    Voici le bois de la Croix

    qui porte le Salut du monde,

    Venez, Adorons!

    Here is the wood of the Cross

    that carries the Salvation of the world,

    Come, let us adore it.

    The Wooden Cross, carved in olive wood, is carried from the back by a procession of robed men.  When they reach the apse they hold it vertically so the priests and altar boys can each in turn come forward to kiss it. After each kiss, a priest wipes the spot clean with a handkerchief. 

    Then the nuns line up. They kiss the naked Jesus all over his stretched out body, under his ribs, his armpit, his thighs, his hands, his feet. They know how much he suffered for them, how much he loves them. And they love him back. The priest swabs each kiss with his handkerchief.

    After this the pews empty into the aisles. The line is slow and as I come nearer my eyes are ineluctably drawn to the loincloth. I sense a nudge from the devil but head for the foot. The priest points to the blank surface of the cross, indicating where I must kiss it, shouting, “Le pied! Le pied!”—and I begin to think my eyes have betrayed me. Or the priest has read my mind. I am convinced he is able to see transgressions before they happen. I walk past his finger and put my lips to the exquisitely carved toe, the tendons strained in agonized submission.

    The nuns sing:

O Croix, buisson ardent de la Revelation,

Vigne au Sang vermeil, Olivier de benediction,

O Croix, bois d’ombre et defraicheur ou murmure L’Esprit, nous t’adorons!

O Cross, burning bush of the Revelation,

Vineyard of ruby Blood, Olive Tree of benediction,

O Cross, dark and faded wood where the Spirit whispers, we adore you.

    Words so holy even the metaphors are Capitalized.

    *

    Walking back from the church I notice signs hanging outside many apartment windows that read, Vendu. The word ‘vendu’ means ‘sold.’ It also means ‘traitor.’  This seems serendipitous. We find ourselves inhabiting a world where the structures we’ve trusted to protect us have betrayed us. Time and space have become commodities beyond our means—The weak may inherit the earth, but the traitors have the best real estate. So at least here, in Paris, you’re safe from traitors if you pay attention to the signs.

              © Bonny Finberg, 2005, Paris

SUNDAY, July 5,   3 - 5:30 pm 
Paul Pinto:

My Very Special Recital

Gathering of the Tribes
285 E 3 St., 2nd Fl., (Bet C & D)
(212) 674–3778 info@tribes.org
Coordinated by patrick brennan & Steve Cannon

http://www.sonispheric.net/IdeaKitchen.html
http://www.myspace.com/ideakitchen

1st Sunday of each month 3 — 5:30 pm
a new guest composer each month

the project

This is an unfunded musician initiative for musicians & interested listeners to create one setting where musicians can share ideas & learn from each other, where compositional ideas get worked out in a public domain among a variety of personalities & dispositions. For listeners, this is about demystifying music & is especially oriented toward dispelling attitudes that creative & original musics are somehow “hard” to listen to.
invitation to composers

invitation to composers

“Composer” here means anybody who invents a way to generate music. This includes, alongside notated & head composition, methods & strategies for coordinating live composition (AKA improvising)

If you have something different for musicians to play, &, even more importantly, if it’s something that addresses how musicians might conceive & hear music differently, please contact patrick brennan at ideakitchenmusicmusic@gmail.com with your proposal.

invitation to players

Bring your instruments. Bring your music stands. If notated music is involved, parts & scores can be downloaded in advance from the webpage whenever possible.

equipment

At Tribes there’s some space, electricity, chairs & an upright piano. Percussion, amplifiers, music stands — are bring-your-own.

format

The first 1/2 hour, from 3 till 3:30 is available for each guest composer to perform with whatever musicians if she/he chooses. The exchanges with musicians would run from 3:30 -5:30 (or from 3 without a performance)

Paul Pinto: My Very Special Recital

An exploratory exploration of atunal longfibreous recitation, for strings, electronics, a reciter and the will to succeed

 This is my second “Special Recital” - a series of works which explore a sort of amateur music-making and identifying the “performer” rather than the “musician”. My Very Special Recital draws inspiration from open mic nights, Suzuki practice, feng shui, kung fu, Haydn string quartets, meditation and quantum mechanics.

 The linking element: At the start of this project, I knew very little about these things. The work begins as the reciter approaches each as a novice and by the end of the 40 minute work, an amateur.

 The premiere performance at the Gathering of the Tribes Gallery is part of the Idea Kitchen series and is an open workshop for this work-in-progress.

 New York native, Paul Pinto is quickly making himself known in the avant-garde music circles of the metro area as a “cutting-edge” composer, an exciting performer and founding director of the city’s freshest classical ensemble, thingNY. He led the premiere performances of several works of his peers and the noteworthy Scottish premieres of Gerard Grisey’s Partiels and his own ballet Miseke. The successful performances of the latter led to its DVD and CD recording and distribution throughout Great Britain by Learning and Teaching Scotland. Recently, Paul has collaborated with a diverse group of artists including Pauline Oliveros, the Panoply Laboratory, the Berkshire Choral Festival, animator Dan Pinto, Ken Silverman, Thomas Piercy and Pinky Weitzman, and his music has been performed by the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, the Cuarteto Latinoamericano, the Royal Scottish Academy Chamber Chorus, ensemble loadbang, the Carnegie Mellon Concert Chorus and of course, thingNY. On June 20, ADDDDDDDDD (an opera written with the other composers of thingNY) will premiere at the Tank in New York. In July, Paul will curate the Comformer Perposers Series (a monthly laboratory for experimental composers) at the University of the Streets.                   

www.paulpinto.bravehost.com

by: Susanne Lee

Postcards from Beijing

Walls

My husband finally makes it to the Great Wall on his 3rd Beijing trip.  We negotiate with the driver from our hotel: 4 hours for $100 US in a Mercedes with seatbelts and air con, absolute necessities for the reckless drivers and the heat.
We stop at a roadside produce stand to pick up some bottled water and some of the ubiquitous watermelon.  Hardly any tourists come this way, to this China, the one not a part of the economic miracles.
The owner sizes the three of us up and asks me, as he points to my son & husband
“Are you their translator?”
I pause.  This is a new question.
“His mother and his wife.”  Son and husband wave to him, while eating watermelon.
“Your father, Chinese?”  Of course, he would want to claim my paternal lineage.
“Both.”  The man laughs, shocked.  My ability to shift from Mandarin to English dazzled him.

The Mutianyu section of the wall is much less crowded than Badaling, where most tourist buses go.  There’s hardly anyone there; we go because it was the only day it didn’t reach 100F.  We pause to take in the views and once we reach the end of the restored section, we ignore that sign and explore beyond where bricks, crumbled stones and dirt mark the remains of the wall.

On my first visit, I took the local bus with Chinese tourists to Badaling.  Besides the stunning vista and the bus driver’s insistence that I try basi juzi, candied tangerines, I remember that idiot tourist in hot pants and heels.

Duck

Duck tastes great after scaling the Wall.  We ask our driver go to the modern lean duck joint where I go brave & sample duck brain.
Another day, I must have traditional fatty style duck at the huge place off the main street, Wangfujing.  While waiting for our table, we watch a video loop of foreign dignitaries from the 70s chowing down on duck wrapped in thin bread.

My husband and I ate in the people’s side in the days of dual currency in the 80s.  There were no frills for the masses, but the food came from the same kitchen.  The locals admired his skill with chopsticks by toasting him.

Learning

Beida, or Peking University, is the epitome of higher education, a place full of dreams of success and mobility.  A uniformed guard with a bayonet stands at the entrance.  Notions of freedom of expression, questioning authority, challenging ideas?  Absolutely, not here.

The colleague of a friend meets us.  In her 20s, and a product of China’s one child policy, she is blissfully oblivious to 6/4, the Cultural Revolution, and mouths a string of government platitudes.  We end up talking about fashion and cosmetics on ebay.  Wow, propaganda really worked.
Peasants and workers bring their children to the campus where they pose them for a picture, believing something might rub off, working a bit of magic, as if  “one day, Xiao wang, you can come here.”
Mothers

I meet Professor Ding Ziling, a professor at RenDa, short for Ren Min Da Xue, Peoples’ University.  Her strength and grace strike me.  She is human rights activist and has sought government accountability for the shooting of its citizens on June 4th 1989.  She is eloquent and a passionate spokeswoman for the Tiananmen Mothers, a group of women whose children died that night.  The government would like her and her group to disappear and through age, they will.  Before I ever met her, I wrote many letters to Congress on her behalf.

For Professor Ding, the personal and the political are forever linked.  Her high school-aged son was shot that night.  Transformed by both her grief and rage at the government, she started the Mothers’ Movement.  She takes me to her son’s room where we talk.  Her statement, “I had him when I was 36,” lingers.

Students

In the waning days of the occupation of Tiananmen Square is thinning out and many students have returned to their campuses.  Wuer Kaixi, the charismatic Uighur student who has chastised then premier Li peng, had been in hiding, comes to see the Goddess of Liberty, a sculpture created by local art students.  He is a thin good looking kid.  I speak to him briefly on the street.  He says, “The people are behind us.”  Hundreds of exhilarated students leave their tents on the Square, and run after him, on Chang An, the grand avenue in front of the Forbidden City.

I would meet him after his escape from China, months later in New York, along with Desmond Tutu at an upper east side fundraiser, where I make the faux pas of calling Tutu by his first name.

Their handlers appear and shuffle us writers out a side door before the human rights activists are led to the tigers: tight-faced impeccably coiffed and painted Park Avenue matrons for a meet and greet.

Firsts

On my first trip, I am one of the few solo travelers.  One July afternoon, I meet a group of local college students and we toss a Frisbee in Tiananmen Square.

I discuss Shakespeare with a young teacher.  I ask her if she wants a postcard from San Francisco.  Reluctant initially, she then, writes her address in my book and in a sudden change of heart, neatly tears out that handwritten rectangle.  It’s the post-Cultural Revolution paranoia that caused her fear of traceable Western contact.

I stay in a dorm room at a hostel.  The other women guests adopt me since I am alone and dub me, “Xiao Li,” Little Lee.  When I start coughing, the hotel manager immediately sends me off to the infirmary, where the nurse on duty laughs, I tell her I had just come from Guangzhou, “You Southerners can’t take the heat.”  I get packets of lozenges and herbal tea.

The concierge, who is in his 20s and also shares my last name, teaches me advanced Chinese phrases, when he is not sneaking off with his girlfriend.

Old

Casey, my 7 year old son describes the hutong, the wandering maze of old streets linking ancient courtyards, as a “neighborhood from long ago.”  Seeing how the hutong have been demolished for the Olympics makes me nostalgic for the alleyways I wandered through on previous trips, little corners where old men smoked, women hung laundry from sticks, hole in the wall joints served hearty noodles.
We are both absorbed by the transience of water calligraphy done by older gentlemen with huge brushes on cement parks.  They appraise each other’s works and then, the words disappear.

Palaces
Casey is disappointed at the summer palace. Empress Cixi’s marble boat is now forbidden to visitors, so a snapshot from across the way must do.

On my first trip, I met a lady wearing round wire rimmed glasses, bobbed grey hair, a crochet bag dangling from her wrist and we spent the afternoon together.  She took me to her haunts, nimbly navigating the Summer Palace, where Manchu emperors fled the oppressive Beijing summers and periodically dropped English words into our conversation, “economics” “history,” learned from pre-Communist university days.

After she left, I climbed Cixi’s boat and meet a group of young PLA (that’s People’s Liberation Army) soldiers on leave.  Jolly and talkative, they decided that I could not be Chinese, but from Mian Dian, which the concierge translates for me, Burma.
Eat

On Autumn, I finally got to taste Tanghulu, candied crab apples on a stick and my husband and I sample moon cakes filled with lotus and sesame.  On our recent trip, Casey lives on noodles, handed-pulled and served in a spicy meat sauce.  At the night markets, I eat fried quail eggs on stick. After the worst version of tapioca tea in the entire world, Casey and I erase the flavor from our taste buds and share a Coca-cola, something I never drink in the States, but always crave overseas.

Spectacle

The Canadian friends of Beijing composed the ditty, “Good luck, Beizhing,” for China’s earlier unsuccessful Olympic bid.  When did that become the official pronunciation?  Folks, it’s Bay JING!  That has been a pet peeve and would be my chant during the games.

My friend Wong and I are watching the Olympic Opening Ceremony, directed by Zhang Yimou.

My friend from Hong Kong, Sam, says Zhang makes “Chinese movies for gwailo” (Cantonese for Westerners).  Zhang is the master of La Choy Cinema, gooey, sweet stuff that leaves you hungry and unsatisfied.  It all fits together neatly; the casts of thousands, martial choreography, over the top colors from Hero, and Curse of the Golden Flower (besides its display of Gong Li’s breasts) were just Zhang’s dress rehearsal for opening night.

Wong concludes that we were watching, “Triumph of the Will.”

***
Susanne Lee’s nonfiction on diverse subjects as Hong Kong Cinema, surrealism and blood sausage in Spain, and mehndi in Delhi has appeared in The Village Voice, Konch, SLAM and Giant Robot.  Her recent story, Vol de Nuit, appears in Pow Wow: American Short Fiction from Then to Now, edited by Ishmael Reed & Carla Blank (Da Capo Press).

Recently, while visiting the Los Gatos Museum of Art, I came across the work of Latino Torelli, an Italian painter now residing in Oakland, Ca.. The museum in association with the Los Gatos Art Association produces the Annual Open Juried Show, an organization comprised of bay area artists, Torelli’s painting, “Alley by the Portal, Oakland”, caught my eye, tucked neatly as you please, in a downstairs corner of the museum’s gallery; not a large painting , 24” by 24” , but one reminiscent of De Kooning’s work with its loose abstract qualities, buttery soft pinks and beigey palette . In following up my intense interest of this relatively unknown painter’s work, I contacted Torelli to arrange a meeting. He was very accommodating and personable with a slight no nonsense edge. Not suffering fools easily, Torelli grilled me to see what I was about and then we got down to business. 
Born in 1939 in Tuscany, Italy, Latino Torelli started painting in his teens. Influenced by his country’s rich heritage, Giotto, the 15^th century painters and his aunt’s urging, at age 13 he tried his hand. Suggestable and not too involved with painting in his youth he went on to study geology and hydrology earning a PH.D from the University of Illinois in 1973. After working for a water resources company in Italy, Torelli did some sheep farming in Umbria, 20 years to be exact. Torelli resumed painting in 2002 after the death of his first wife, his daughter’s urging and a relocation to the US.

Latino Torelli received an award for “The Columbia River At the Bridge of I-97” in 2007 from LGAA and when interviewed by newsletter editor, Kevin Kasik, Torelli  answered with  “how do I respond to the juror’s (Marian Parmenter) calling me a serious painter? – I guess that’s the best part of it. I just think of myself as a guy who paints, not a painter. After this prize maybe they can call me a painter.”  Torelli, no different than any painter worth their weight in paint, states: “The only thing is it must be coherent, always coherent.” Torelli, an interesting combination of philosopher and scientist spouts Spinoza’s theory of intuitive knowledge: to see things sub specie aeternitatis. Torelli also likens painting to transubstantiation: “In painting, space, light and time are the holy trinity. In a given painting we can only address a particular configuration of this truth. But if we do it right we hint to its essence, Eternity.” 

Torelli tells me he paints quickly as he says he can only paint for 2 hours at a time; the tension is too much for him.   “When I’m done with that one, I never put my brush on it again. Never on a dry surface; only in the moment, wet into wet.” “I try to be as free of  intentions as I can in order to make a good painting. When your intent is to make a good painting you never do.”  Torelli uses a light effortless coat of paint, not much struggle.  At first glance the paintings appear to be thick, dense but on a closer look they have an almost transparent quality, veils. Torelli exhibits some of Matisse’s qualities of an unbroken line of ease especially in his rare figurative piece such as, “Soon’s Garden” from 2004. A charming painting of a friend with his signature creams, beiges and peachy pinks as in her jacket with black hair and pants for contrast. The whitish yellow surface where Soon sits in her little garden chair bring to mind Van Gogh’s lively brushstrokes. Torelli paints on masonite, all 24 “ by 24” for the no nonsense reason that that is the size of the masonite sheets when divided into 8 squares. Torelli states that in Italy the sheets are a little larger so his paintings are 28 “ by 28” there, but of course! He states that the square gives him the right ratio between height and depth. “I mostly paint from the tip of my feet”, he quips and  “rectangular paintings are rare, only for self portraits”. Torelli works out of his apartment in Oakland , Ca in a cramped space but then for an artist space is a state of mind. I witnessed his new body of work, which is an extreme departure from the landscapes. But Torelli informs me it is all of the same thing to him and done simultaneously in his search for unity, unity coming in different colors and styles. The new work being of a flat coverage of one color each with a small tilted square strategically placed. For Torelli this tiny square afloat on a bed of color represents mankind’s struggle with dualism and perhaps his own, linking his disparate styles and ideas or subject/object together and presenting them as one. Torelli has an ongoing wrestling match or should I say fascination with dualism. Sounds pretty Human, All Too Human, to me. Torelli suffers the pangs of guilt over yearning to show the body of his work in a retrospective and then he says he will ‘hang it up’; I hope he quashes those demons.

Torelli tells me he paints only on the spot and “Red 23^rd” from 2003  “spoke to him of mortality”. A dilapidated piece of land between Potrero Hill and the S.F. bay; a whitish gray street atop an undercoat of pink, an oft used starting point for so many of Torelli’s paintings; stark whitish grey posts standing firmly atop the pink . The painting has a filled up luscious quality in spite of its bleak subject matter. 

Notable for me ,“Pine Trees at Albinia”, also from 2003; a forest of windblown trees with delicate bluish grey sky and one large pine tree in the foreground sitting atop a bank of creamy tan with dark brown overlaid every which way giving an energy to the scene; askew posts alongside  keeping the picture upright. Torelli adds a clear green to his beige palette in this one. 
   “ Painting is just being there. When you’re somewhere painting, what you see makes you live and you make live what you see. “   Latino Torelli

Neila Mezynski

Colson Whitehead

Doubleday

Reviewed by Sarah Goodwin-Nguyen

It’s fun to compare Colson Whitehead’s SAG HARBOR to another recent novel

about the life of a teenaged preppie, specifically PREP by Curtis Sittenfeld. Interestingly, the narrators of both novels are now in their adulthood, looking back at themselves as teenagers. However, PREP’s protagonist, Lee Fiora, is a Midwestern-Caucasion girl on scholarship in a New England boarding school, while SAG HARBOR’s Benji Cooper is an African-American boy who attends a mostly white prep school near his Manhattan home.

Whereas the reader of PREP inhabits the mind of a girl unable to “be herself” in a hostile adolescent environment, SAG HARBOR takes place in a situation where Benji feels most himself. You see, this isn’t about Benji’s life at school; it takes place in an all-black beach community in the Hamptons where Benji’s family spends summers . Though we get glimpses of Benji’s life in prep school, it seems far away and irrelevant (the way school often feels to a kid on summer break.)

Most readers will recognize themselves at fifteen in Benji. Like many fifteen-year-olds, Benji is socially awkward, too fond of junk food, and vulnerable to peer pressure. Benji will reach a few milestones that summer, such as getting his braces off and making out with a girl. He will learn a little bit about himself, and will become a little more the man he’s going to be. SAG HARBOR is not as cuttingly observant or bittersweet as PREP, relying instead on the narrator’s mostly amusing anecdotes about trying to score beer, buddy up to the guys with cars, and avoid losing an eye to a bee-bee gun.

That is not to say that SAG HARBOR doesn’t have its dark moments. Benji’s father is a drunk who is often verbally and sometimes physically abusive. Benji and his younger brother are left alone in the Hampton house for weeks at a time (it is assumed that the community will look after them;) the boys’ young lives are overshadowed by parental neglect. A surprise encounter with Benji’s estranged older sister, Elena, is particularly painful, as Elena’s hip, wise soul plays a foil to Benji’ sadly apathetic mother.

Sometimes Whitehead’s exuberant writing lingers too long and with too much hyperbole on minutiae. For example, here’s Whitehead’s narrator describing his younger self’s love for Coca-Cola: “How could one not be charmed by the effervescent joviality of a tall glass of the stuff–the manic activity of the bubbles, popping, reforming, popping anew, sliding up the inside of the glass to freedom, as if the beverage were actually, miraculously, caffeinated on itself. That tart first sip, preferably with ice knocking against the lips for an added sensory flourish, that stunned the brain into total recall of pleasure, of all the Cokes consumed before and all those impending Cokes, the long line of satisfaction underpinning a life.”

Overzealous rants aside, SAG HARBOR offers a convincing picture of what it was like growing up black in the eighties. Benj’s opinions on television, music, and clothes are a funky time-capsule of pop culture of the era. At first, Benji can only compare his life of affluence to the poor African-American families portrayed on shows like Good Times and Baby, I’m Back, noting “Me and Reggie and Elena tuned in, making room on the couch to verify that we didn’t exist.” Finally, The Cosby Show: “Who are these people? We said: People we know.”

There is little chance of SAG HARBOR joining the cannon of great coming-of-age literature in the vein of CATCHER IN THE RYE. Though Benji encounters some racism and bigotry in his life, SAG HARBOR is not about confronting these issues. Nor does it need to be: it is enough that Whitehead has given African-American youth a genuine, likeable voice in the character of Benji. This is really how teenaged boys think, act, and speak–and it isn’t always pretty or politically correct. There are inevitable moments of violence as Benji and his friends struggle with their identities as young black men, but none of them fall so far as to be unredeemable.

Overall, SAG HARBOR is a perfect light summer read with just enough depth to engage. It succeeds in reminding us of teenaged summers when anything seemed possible. You were sure you could change your life simply by wearing a new style of clothes, and you still had plenty of time to get everything right.

Max Bond Memorial / Cooper Union / May 12, 2009 /Remarks by Alice M. Greenwald

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I am deeply honored to speak today on behalf of my colleagues at the National September 11 Memorial & Museum, in celebration of the life and legacy of Max Bond.

When I arrived in New York in the spring of 2006 to take on the directorship of the Memorial Museum, I found myself surrounded by architects.  We had architects for the Memorial, landscape architects for the Memorial Plaza, architects for the Museum Pavilion, and architects for the below-grade Museum.  Even a disproportionate number of my colleagues at the Foundation had been trained as architects, had long worked on various architectural projects, had parents and siblings who were architects, or were married to architects!   And, I’m not exaggerating!

As I began to orient myself to the many challenges of this project and tried to become fluent in the language of “architect-speak,” one individual stood out among the many impressive characters in our midst.  And, that was Max Bond.

At that time, we were all deeply involved in the Section 106 process: a conscientious effort to hear from a variety of consulting parties regarding this project’s proposed approach to the Federally-mandated preservation of landmark-status historical and archaeological assets at the World Trade Center site.   To say that these meetings were intense, passionate, and contentious, is putting it mildly.  But, inevitably, in the midst of the fury and the debate, Max would speak, and in his soft-spoken, gentlemanly manner, would zero in on the key issues, elevate the discussion, and move it forward in a productive fashion.  His was the voice of calm and reason, and when Max spoke, everyone listened.  This project is the better off for it.

Max’s personal commitment to our effort was palpable.  My colleagues speak of the gravitas with which he accorded the Museum program; how he could envision – even early on – the potential power of the visitor experience in this space; and, how he consistently rose above conflicting priorities of the multiple design teams to advocate for the greatness of the project as a whole.  Max had an unpretentious but keen and powerful intelligence.  He simply commanded your respect without demanding it.

When people speak about Max, they inevitably use words like “gentlemanly,” “courtly,” “gracious,” “elegant.”  And, these are all accurate descriptors.  But, I want to focus on another aspect of Max’s persona:  his fierce advocacy for the interweaving of civil and human rights into the social fabric of a city; his fundamental commitment, through his art and chosen profession, to the promotion of social responsibility.

Eighteen months ago, in conjunction with a nationally-touring exhibition about the Memorial, I traveled to Birmingham, Alabama, where I spent the better part of an afternoon at the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute.  There, an elegant building designed by Max Bond houses powerful exhibitions, a library, and meeting spaces dedicated to the history of the American civil rights movement, all meant to spur reflection on the imperative of fostering civil and human rights worldwide.

At the BCRI, you walk through a comprehensive exhibition that takes you from the Jim Crow South, through the violent suppression of the non-violent marches and anti-segregation protests that took place in Birmingham, led by the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. and Baptist minister and head of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth.  Eventually, the path of the exhibition leads to a moment of powerful immediacy, with the screening of the historic film footage of Dr. King’s exalted “I have a Dream” speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. 

As you exit the core exhibition, elevated by the resounding words of promise you have just heard, you come into a light-filled room whose windows look out across the street to a city park on one side, and a church on the other.  The park, it turns out, was the location of the incredibly brutal treatment of young protesters at the hands of the Birmingham Police, who used high-pressure water jets and police dogs to attack hundreds of school students participating in the “Children’s Crusade” of May 1963. 

And, the church is the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, where on September 15 of that same year, four little girls attending Sunday School were murdered when a bomb ripped through the church basement.  Within a year of that act of terror, President Johnson would secure passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

In a surprising and understated way, the very building at the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute becomes a lens onto the world:   admonishing us not to forget, and demanding that we place memory at the heart of our commitment to making change in the world.

The great Civil War historian, David Blight, has written about a conversation he had with Rev. Shuttlesworth some years ago, when they were both part of a committee planning the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati.  Rev. Shuttlesworth, who listened quietly to an impassioned debate about how and whether a museum about slavery might be progressive and uplifting, spoke up at the very end of the meeting and only when asked what he had been thinking about so intently.  He said, matter-of-factly, “if you don’t tell it like it was, it can never be as it ought to be.”

I believe that Max Bond told it like it was…so that we might not just build impressive buildings, but so we might all continue to build a world defined by justice, inclusion, and mutual respect.  And, he told it not only in Birmingham, but in Atlanta at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change, and someday soon, right here in New York, at the National September 11 Memorial Museum. 

These buildings bear the stamp of the man who conceived them.  They are never strident, but always insistent.  They are not loud, but they are always on point.  They demand our attention and focus us on what matters.

And, they remind us of the privilege – and it has been my privilege – of having shared challenges and achievements, tragedy and triumph, with a true and gracious, one-of-a-kind gentleman: Max Bond.

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Max and Me by Jean Carey Bond

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