We Can Be Mayors....
In the midst of the World Series, NBA season opening, football Sundays, I am a little obsessed with the mayoral race. Of course my son taught me that in sports, there is a clear winner and something uniquely satisfying about clarity in this complicated world. But in light of the recent gambling scandal, one begins to doubt. Where politics is concerned, we have once again sunk back into petty messaging and accusations. These pertain to the contest, I suppose... but once the voting is over, then the real game begins, and this is worrying.
I took an out-of-town break yesterday and visited the spectacular new art museum at my alma mater. The breathtaking concept of the architecture-- the way the building combined a sense of future with traditional breadth of collecting... was uplifting. Unfortunately, even this project was stained by negative allegations against the architect; still, his design, which was already in progress, is stellar.
Cult of personality, when I was more naive, integrated one's work occasionally with who one was. Now, 'persona' has eclipsed what they actually do. The whole lucrative business of branding bases itself on the concept that a celebrity can convince us to do/buy nearly anything. It's worrying... as though all of America has this teenage brain which is unable to separate fact and reality from fantasy and facade.
Visiting old universities and colleges, the 'scent' of academia is palpable and appealing. I wondered what I'd be if I'd stayed with my art studies, as planned. At this moment, I'd have probably aged out of the new curatorial generation and contented myself with restoring old paintings or regretting not having taken up the bass. Water under the bridge. I did have some great conversations and reminisced about old days and my intimacy with the objects in the former museum building where I occasionally pored over manuscripts and painted treasures in a back room.
Sunday night I watched a Tarkovsky film-- Stalker. It's an extraordinary piece of work with even the film texture a particular choice-- alternating from sepia-tone to rich color-- from depressing, dark reality to a kind of spiritual epiphany. Without doing a movie review, it is both terrifying and then reassuring-- from the ominous post-apocalyptic wasteland to the resilience of the human spirit. The dialogue stands out; it's poetic, philosophical and inspiring. One quote stayed with me 'Passion is nothing but the friction of the soul against the outside world'... something like that, which may actually have been lifted from Herman Hesse.
On the way back from Princeton it was cold and damp... leather jacket weather... but I found myself waiting on a train platform with a young student dressed in a sequined sort of bathing suit with a small skirt-- no sleeves, no jacket-- bare legs with high-heeled white boots. Her flesh was on display; ditto the fact that she did not shave or groom herself anywhere-- an odd combination. She was freezing, on her way to a Sabrina Carpenter concert where she would go directly from the train to the venue. No one really stared at her but in case she needed protection, we struck up a conversation-- about the concert, about her studies. She worked as a valet summers and spent all her money on concert merch. Within minutes another woman appeared -- in a pink satin mini dress-- bare arms, with gold fishnets and the same white boots. They did not know one another. It was extraordinary... the pink dress was studying neuro-biology and had only a bag with books. A coat, she told me, would ruin her outfit. She, too, was shivering.
No judgment. In my day we wore jeans to concerts-- there were few 'followers' or even pussy hats or costume choices, although the Zappa Halloween show was something to see. These girls had the confidence to get on a commuter train-- alone, dressed this way... well, it is Halloween week... but this was something else. Still, I have to concede that their passion, their hero-- white pop-Disney-girlie-dress-up icon, was as valid as my Rolling Stones and Proust and Caspar David Friedrich schoolgirl obsessions.
I fail to understand the current culture of superhero movies, the custom of adults dressing up in costumes, imitating comic books. Is life so terrifying that one needs to arm oneself against it, imagine one can bend reality with these powers and super traits? Superman reversing the spin of the world to reverse time and save his love-- was a novel idea, but the unlikely movie scenarios come one after another, at the expense of what used to be considered the 'art' of film. It seems not just juvenile but absurd. And while I understand little boys wearing sports jerseys and gear to games, I don't 'see' grown men vying for sports jerseys at auctions for millions of dollars-- or even collecting sneakers and dressing up for games. Then I think of the World Cup and there's something legitimately passionate and patriotic about the spectators.
It all comes down to this nagging question in my head: who are we and have we changed? I think we have. I mean, I have to admire these two Princeton students-- not even 20, for committing to their passion...for wearing it in and out of context... like a movement for them, I suppose. The incredibly lucrative marketing of the merchandise-- the commodification of fame-- well, that's another story. In my day star athletes made a tiny fraction of what bench players now command.
Getting back to the elections, I have a harder and harder time deciphering who the candidates are. Their opponents define them by their mistakes and failures; we the voters try to see beyond this to their leadership capabilities and their true commitment. No one at this level is pure. Separating ambition from mission is difficult. I can't help seeing Mamdani in a mirror wearing a superhero cape; he seems too much of that generation to me, and I am also influenced by my son who met him as an aspiring rapper. It worries me.
We are no longer either what we eat, or what we say we are, in politics. Nor are we what we wear, as we learn from the athletes who switch teams and uniforms according to payout. Dressing as Sabrina Carpenter doesn't make us singers or superstars or beautiful, but it does take us a little out of our own reality... and it makes us part of something. Those two women made friends on the train... maybe lifelong friends. That matters.
I am off to the polls at the moment; I am not thrilled with either choice and I am not defined by my vote. I think in my student days-- anticipating my first eligible Presidential election--I WAS that. Despite Watergate, I had belief and conviction... volunteered and worked for them. I was exploring my soul, trying to understand art and uncover my personal 'calling' by experiencing friction with the outside world. Fifty years later-- badly dressed, and certainly not in costume, I'll pick a candidate and tonight I'll watch the World Series, but I'll always take Tarkovsky.
Labels: architecture, elections, football, Mayoral race, NBA, Princeton University art museum, Sabrina Carpenter, sports betting scandal, Stalker, superheroes, Tarkovsky, the art of film, Watergate, World Cup, World Series, Zohran Mamdani

