Wednesday, October 21, 2020
THE GRIND OF THE GROTTO MOUTHS
Thursday, October 8, 2020
THE LAST GUITAR HERO
Eddie Van Halen, the Last Guitar Hero, has died, age 65, from a long battle with cancer. I will say now that EVH is the man most responsible for saving hard rock from withering away . His guitar innovations changed the way other guitarists approached the instrument. Although I had more or less graduated from rock and considered myself a jazz fan and amateur historian of same such music, and restricted my rock reviewing activities mostly to poets, auteurs with deep seated issues, Van Halen's albums were ones I didn't sell off or give away.
Sunday, October 4, 2020
MORE QUICK AND GLIB ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS FROM QUORA
A query came my way recently which asked a perennial question from the crowd that doesn't "get" poetry: why do people bother to write boring poetry? The question had a tangible snorting contempt to it. For him, I'd wager that he finds all poetry dull, crushingly so. But my answer was this:
Why does anyone make boring art, since you’re asking. The poets who write boring verse are most of the people who fancy themselves word slingers of that sort—quantity diminishes quality. It seems that most of the poems one comes across from new poets in whatever forum—magazine, open reading, workshop, high school newspaper, university press— are pretty much eccentric minds with pedestrian sense of language application who want to capture big ideas, big emotions and big spiritual concepts in pathetically clunky sentences , often choking their best ideas to death with overworked metaphors , unmusical similes and a fatal lack of self awareness as to whether what they spend so much time writing is something an actual reader beyond their circle of friends might want to read. We also suffer from the tone deaf experimenters who want to be abstract, avant garde and boldly innovative who haven’t the slightest idea of how to be interesting in an opaque way. John Ashbery, Bob Perleman, Leslie Scalapino, Gertrude Stein—they were hard to understand as poets go, but they were lively , innovative and striking in their styles and and habits of phrase making, and they are the exceptions to the idea that most avant gard poetry, as such, is abstract for its own sake and therefore useless and a grind. Consider also that there are bored and there fore boring readers of poetry who render judgements that typically amount to “meh”. These folks are a species of glum Gusses and Gussies who might as well be flipping the TV channels .
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Some else asked me a not unreasonable question, was Norman Mailer a misogynists? Mailer was obsessed with a notion of heterosexual masculinity, culled from his idealization of Hemingway and especially D. H. Lawrence. His writings on the subject are fascinating , and his assertions and literary criticism in his polemic “The Prisoner of Sex” are often brilliant and on point as he takes on feminist theories, but with all the force and grace the prose provides, Mailer insisted women take a secondary position in society and in all social relations, secondary to men. He would recount that his nay saying and the insults and violent fantasies were expressions of respect rather than contempt, and perhaps that is what he honestly thought, consciously, he was doing.
All said, though, Mailer seemed rather to be trying to work some matters out in both his social and philosophical ideas, and in his fiction. His attitude regarding the role women play in is a conception of a reality where every player is on an existential path of self-definition constantly prefers the experience and success of the male over the female, with accompanying rationalizations that the advance of women toward an equal social and political status upsets the spiritual ecology . The only thing I can take away from that attitude, expressed and refined for decades, is an active contempt for women, misogyny when all is said.Joyce Carol Oates has some wonderful essays on Mailer that are worth seeking out on this man and his relationship to womankind. Mailer was a writer of large gifts and frequent genius who had issues that make appreciating his best work forever problematic.
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Someone was curious enough to ask me who I thought would win in a debate, right wing pundit Ben Shapiro, or linguist and political activist Noam Chomsky. I sought a responsible tone when I responded like so: We will have to be fair in this theoretical context and add we are imagining a younger Chomsky against Shapiro. Shapiro is bright and quick, of course, but he is an inch deep on most issues and tries to distract opponents with a bunch of hypotheticals that are often effective against less skilled debaters. The master of this technique, the presenter of the gratuitous supposition and linguistic trickery was William F. Buckley, godfather of the New Right and longtime host of the debate program firing line. There is an episode of Firing Line on YouTube where Chomsky is the guest, the subject of discussion being US foreign policy in South East Asia.
Buckley had seriously under estimated Chomsky and his arsenal of techniques to undermine the famed linguist were to no avail; Chomsky is a scholar of the first rank and had thoroughly studied the subject at hand from historical, economic and cultural perspectives, and blended the data in cogent analysis. Chomsky at several points had to correct Buckley as to the facts of the matter at hand. If this were a prize fight, Chomsky would have knocked Buckley out in the first round. Buckley was visibly pissed at having been bested on his own show and for the cameras invited Chomsky back for another discussion. But that invitation was never sent. Sharpiro, remember, is no where near Buckley’s weight division nor skill (to extend the boxing metaphor) . Shapiro going up against Chomsky in a battle of the minds wouldn’t be debate; it would be a human sacrifice.
The Buckley-Chomsky debate can be seen it its entirety on You Tube.
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Sunday, September 27, 2020
YOU IS ANOTHER (walking through the old neighborhoods)
It's all anyone can do, walking the street, balancing yourself on the sidewalk, resisting the urge to fall over because not so suddenly gravity has made you more ungainly and the earth feels as though it had shifted, just ever so little. Not much by the degrees we apply to objects we can hold in our hands and study and move and bounce off a curb or a bedroom wall, but with the earth , so massive, smothered in atmosphere and the burdening force of personal weight, the effect sends the city into a vibrant panic, tall buildings do a shimmer, power lines dance and spark.
On a fine day where you start out not giving a
high fiving fuck about personal health and the state of the arts in the
writerly communities that only invited you to a sequence of heartaches,
heartbreaks and drinking into and past stages of ill health, on a day when your
desire is grasp the intangible and abuse in terms of the intractable, your
knees quake , you knees ache, a pain shoots from the knee cap upward to the
spine and to the jaw, the mouth closes
and the teeth clench as if clamping down on a leather strap during an awkward
shave, molars sinking into a tart, chewy leather, and it is then when the best
arrogant notions and arrangements for making to midnight as a perfect asshole
and king of the city dump go awry.
The meals come off the wagon, you
realize there is nothing in the cupboard
for spare wit and ingenuity, you,
brilliant one and all that , are another victim of circumstances in a
life you didn’t vote to be in. But the good news in all this worry is that you did
not fall to the sidewalk, bust your jaw, and crack your teeth. Through sheer
force of will you shift your weight , project a Kirby hand, arm stretched out,
fingers splayed like the tines of bamboo rake, somehow all these halts your
descent, matters of mathematics and their freaky equations formulated at the
split second of stretch and the theory rushed up the spine to a brain otherwise
asleep with its camouflaged ego for an effective counter force to be indicated
and enforced by powers too awful to dwell on beyond a teasing mention.
You regain your center of being,
the property rights to a kingdom to shake anything off and reduce the conflicts
of personality clashes and enemy gravities to a compact pile of pressed tin,
and as you rise from stumble, as your vision takes in front porches made of
baked red brick and mail boxes marked with the graffiti of traveling men, there
he stands, your sweetie pie, the one in a
million, your very own kryptonite, a blonde beauty with eyes that could
flood the darkest theatre with light enough for lectures , readings and
concerts on the uptake. She stands there, head tilted to the side. You feel
like a specimen swimming about on a smooth glass slide. You cannot, you will
not win.
It's all anyone can do, walking
the street, balancing yourself on the sidewalk, resisting the urge to fall over
because not so suddenly gravity has made you more ungainly and the earth feels
as though it had shifted, just ever so little. Not much by the degrees we apply
to objects we can hold in our hands and study and move and bounce off a curb or
a bedroom wall, but with the earth , so massive, smothered in atmosphere and
the burdening force of personal weight, the effect sends the city into a
vibrant panic, tall buildings do a shimmer, power lines dance and spark.
On a fine day where you start out not giving a
high fiving fuck about personal health and the state of the arts in the
writerly communities that only invited you to a sequence of heartaches,
heartbreaks and drinking into and past stages of ill health, on a day when your
desire is grasp the intangible and abuse in terms of the intractable, your
knees quake , you knees ache, a pain shoots from the knee cap upward to the
spine and to the jaw, the mouth closes
and the teeth clench as if clamping down on a leather strap during an awkward
shave, molars sinking into a tart, chewy leather, and it is then when the best
arrogant notions and arrangements for making to midnight as a perfect asshole
and king of the city dump go awry.
The meals come off the wagon, you
realize there is nothing in the cupboard
for spare wit and ingenuity, you,
brilliant one and all that , are another victim of circumstances in a
life you didn’t vote to be in. But the good news in all this worry is that you did
not fall to the sidewalk, bust your jaw, and crack your teeth. Through sheer
force of will you shift your weight , project a Kirby hand, arm stretched out,
fingers splayed like the tines of bamboo rake, somehow all these halts your descent,
matters of mathematics and their freaky equations formulated at the split
second of stretch and the theory rushed up the spine to a brain otherwise
asleep with its camouflaged ego for an effective counter force to be indicated
and enforced by powers too awful to dwell on beyond a teasing mention.
You regain your center of being,
the property rights to a kingdom to shake anything off and reduce the conflicts
of personality clashes and enemy gravities to a compact pile of pressed tin,
and as you rise from stumble, as your vision takes in front porches made of
baked red brick and mail boxes marked with the graffiti of traveling men, there
he stands, your sweetie pie, the one in a
million, your very own kryptonite, a blonde beauty with eyes that could
flood the darkest theatre with light enough for lectures , readings and
concerts on the uptake. She stands there, head tilted to the side. You feel
like a specimen swimming about on a smooth glass slide. You cannot, you will
not win.
Monday, September 7, 2020
STERLING MAGEE OF SATAN AND ADAM, RIP
Saturday, September 5, 2020
AYN RAND WAS A TERRIBLE WRITER AND A HORRIBLE HUMAN BEING
LONG WINDED AND GLIB ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS ASKED OF ME ON QUORA
“ (1)…the expression or application of human creative skill and imagination, typically in a visual form such as painting or sculpture, producing works to be appreciated primarily for their beauty or emotional power.
“(2)…the various branches of creative activity, such as painting, music, literature, and dance.”
Thursday, August 27, 2020
THE LONG WINDED
I can assure you, sir, that these things really suck!" -- Don Van Vliet,when selling a vacuum cleaner to Aldous Huxley
Image by mikeable10 |
That something I cannot yet define completely but the feeling comes when you write well and truly of something and know impersonally you have written in that way and those who are paid to read it and report on it do not like the subject so they say it is all a fake, yet you know its value absolutely; or when you do something which people do not consider a serious occupation and yet you know truly, that it is as important and has always been as important as all the things that are in fashion, and when, on the sea, you are alone with it and know that this Gulf Stream you are living with, knowing, learning about, and loving, has moved, as it moves, since before man, and that it has gone by the shoreline of that long, beautiful, unhappy island since before Columbus sighted it and that the things you find out about it, and those that have always lived in it are permanent and of value because that stream will flow, as it has flowed, after the Indians, after the Spaniards, after the British, after the Americans and after all the Cubans and all the systems of governments, the richness, the poverty, the martyrdom, the sacrifice and the venality and the cruelty are all gone as the high-piled scow of garbage, bright-colored, white-flecked, ill-smelling, now tilted on its side, spills off its load into the blue water, turning it a pale green to a depth of four or five fathoms as the load spreads across the surface, the sinkable part going down and the flotsam of palm fronds, corks, bottles, and used electric light globes, seasoned with an occasional condom or a deep floating corset, the torn leaves of a student's exercise book, a well-inflated dog, the occasional rat, the no-longer-distinguished cat; all this well shepherded by the boats of the garbage pickers who pluck their prizes with long poles, as interested, as intelligent, and as accurate as historians; they have the viewpoint; the stream, with no visible flow, takes five loads of this a day when things are going well in La Habana and in ten miles along the coast it is as clear and blue and unimpressed as it was ever before the tug hauled out the scow; and the palm fronds of our victories, the worn light bulbs of our discoveries and the empty condoms of our great loves float with no significance against one single, lasting thing---the stream.
He drove into the spewing smoke of acres of burning truck tires and the planes descended and the transit cranes stood in rows at the marine terminal and he saw billboards for Hertz and Avis and Chevy Blazer, for Marlboro, Continental and Goodyear, and he realized that all the things around him, the planes taking off and landing, the streaking cars, the tires on the cars, the cigarettes that the drivers of the cars were dousing in their ashtrays--all these were on the billboards around him, systematically linked in some self-referring relationship that had a kind of neurotic tightness, an inescapability, as if the billboards were generating reality...
Thursday, August 20, 2020
Briefly, Two Novels by Richard Powers
Staring at the Spines of Some John Updike Titles on a Book Shelf: a very brief appreciation
Tuesday, August 18, 2020
HIGHWAY 61 REVISITED
Everyone seems to start and end at different places, tempos are ragged, sometimes tentative, the pace is bludgeoning, the instruments are often out of tune, and its all glorious,brilliant Dylan in the middle of it all, snarling, burning through his genius and abusing his muse for the greater glory of what would become a definitive record. It is raw and spiky and gives you a perspective that says that there is no proof because there is no pudding.You'd be right, I suppose , in linking Dylan's early cynicism about the motives of people and the institutions they represent to his dalliance of brimstone Christianity. It does seem a natural progression, although I've expanded my view on is SLOW TRAIN COMING album and would equate it closer to the fatalistic Christianity of Flannery O'Connor, a writer who was obsessed with the vision of Christ, the afterlife, as a strange way of thinking that you've cut the spiritual requirements to sit at God's right or left hand,which ever comes first. Her's was a body of thinking about Christianity that was too weird and personal to be of any use to any to anyone except those readers of American Southern fiction who marveled at the writer's skill at imagining the worst while dealing, even in submerged form, on matters of Belief.Her measure of Christian love was a love of Christ himself, not so much for the fellow man.
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