Passeggiata

By happenstance I've been reading novels set in Italy.  I spent a good bit of time in Perugia in the summer of 1973, where my boyfriend at the time was studying.  They kept this tradition there (many Italian cities do) of the 'Passeggiata' along the charming Corso Vanucci-- the evening stroll-- in which the entire city seems to participate. We pulled ourselves together every night-- I think I traveled with one or two skimpy cotton dresses in those days-- and felt less touristy and more 'native'.  The whole thing took about 30-45 minutes; the only thing in New York that is comparable is perhaps the annual Museum Mile which is never too crowded, has its own slow momentum, and makes one feel like a  tourist.  Most of the participants ignore the museums... they are crowded... but the presence of people on a thoroughfare changes it.  The architecture softens... the buildings animate. 

My son came up on Sunday and we walked in Central Park... the northern part, the Meer, up through Harlem to Morningside, along Central Park West. I'm not sure if this a post-pandemic phenomenon but there seemed to be a sort of rhythm... simply walking was the focus, not the destination.  I was reminded of Perugia.  We passed people we'd known... we kept going.  Remarkably, I find my memory for faces is better than my son's.  This, I think, is the consequence of this digital age... the zillions of images and the brief instagram-aquaintances; we process and digest people differently.

In the mid-70's I was riding a bus downtown and met a girl.  We struck up not just a conversation but a friendship in the hour or so of traffic congestion... we were both into music... she had a boyfriend who played drums in a band with 2 English guys.. appearing at CBGB's that night-- she was going to the soundcheck...  she gave me a promo single... there on the bus... it was Roxanne, by the Police.  Later I went down to the show... history...

In those days, the magic of New York was the random interaction of total strangers... the rhythm of ricocheting intersections.  I worked at the front desk of a gallery.  People from Andy Warhol to Muhammed Ali came in.  It was astounding.  They spoke to you... they connected.  People waited for meetings and shared things.  I was offered jobs, invitations.  I traveled often in the 1980's. Conversation on airplanes relieved the boredom of overseas flights and the mostly terrible movie selections which were like underserved drive-ins with people walking up and down aisles and blocking the screen. You'd hope for a fascinating seat-mate... it often happened... and in the seven or eight transatlantic hours I've had people unburden, weep, confess, entertain.  Once I sat next to a soldier-- an officer on a flight from Frankfurt who whisked me through Customs like a VIP when I was carrying some problematic painting. 

Another time this very handsome Australian rugby-player with a super athletic body sat by me.. he was funny and charming and we were like intimates when we reached London.  Weeks later, he showed up in New York at one of my gigs.  He'd brought me this gold kangaroo necklace.  I was overwhelmed; it felt like a sort of expectation.  I'd always assumed these random intimacies were like one-night-stands... one-trip excursions.  They were mutually amusing but non-committal.  Not the case.  Somewhere I have a painfully written letter from the Australian.  Apparently he'd been led astray by my gregarious spirit and my airplane MO; New Yorkers take these things with grains of salt.

Walking with my son, I realize I have an enormous social vocabulary... and the numbers of people with whom I've had a meaningful exchange, although brief, has grown.  These things took a break during the pandemic... although the better part of this culture really stopped when people began to choose face-time over social interaction.  The whole society has become a little 'spectrumesque'. Most of the time.. if you stop to ask someone a question, they have earphones on and they have absolutely no idea, until you face them... mostly they reply with 'no worries' or 'no, it's all good'.   

At the gallery where I work Saturdays, there are people-- usually of my age-- who take the time to have a little conversation-- about the work, the installation-- and sometimes they recommend things, they mention a book or a show they've seen... a film.  In the 1970's there seemed to be a common cultural frame of reference.  Everyone knew every new album, every film... I saw everything.  You can still look at the arts listings in a vintage New Yorker or New York magazine... and you get a snapshot of what was.  A synopsis.  This is no longer applicable.  The layers of culture-- of fashion, of food-- it's so complex and impossible to navigate.  My son tells me the '10-best' lists which promise so much clarity are usually a kind of paid advertising.  

Yesterday I jogged to midtown-- saw a great little auction exhibition of work by women artists, mostly from mid-century...  then I stopped at Argosy books, at the NYPL... I discovered a few things there... that led me somewhere else.  Like internet surfing, I suppose... but the tangibles... well, I think they imprint.  A Langston Hughes autobiography I'd always meant to read... there it was, for the taking, at the library... 

On the way back I met a woman who lived in the building where I had my first NYC apartment... she is 77; she must have been 30 back then.  We recognized one another which in itself was serendipitous. She showed me her ceramic work... she'd written several books.  We knew many of the same people.  We stood in the street and talked, exchanged-- yes, intimacies-- maybe slightly inappropriate things about people we knew-- literary agents, writers.  But it was fantastic.  Will we see one another again?  I don't carry a phone-- I don't leave a calling card, as one once did... I don't know... but the random meeting changed my evening trajectory-- what I looked at, what I read... the tiny adjustments one makes, moving forward through a day, which, like the slightest planetary moves, put us on a path toward winter.  Farewell, August 2022.

The (He)art of Things

Speaking with my younger friends, I get an overview of current office culture as it has morphed post-pandemic, and the job market in general.  It's a much more welcoming environment than when I first entered the day-gig world in the mid-70's, fresh out of full-time academia, working as many jobs as necessary to get through some graduate courses.  

My first actual job paid $92/week.  Or maybe that was the take-home... I know I used to forego bus-fare and walk to boost my spartan weekly budget.  There was a recession and employment was scarce.  In the end I'd offered myself for no pay to an art gallery where I craved to just 'sit'.  They accepted, and then kindly gave me a weekly check; I was in workplace heaven.  Besides greeting clients (who ranged from Andy Warhol to Edward Albee), one of my tasks was entering auction estimates into the catalogues.  Prices were listed on separate sheets in those days, and nothing but descriptions were on the pages, with occasional illustrations. Auctions were sort of a dealer's market-- a wholesale meeting place for trade.  But writing-in figures-- and studying results-- 'set' things in my head-- value attached to the invaluable. 

The other part of gallery administration was registering new work. Artists delivered paintings (usually by hand-- personally)... there was a face attached to work.  My job was also logging things in-- you measure, you describe-- you make a label for the back, and an index card for the files.  Sometimes we'd photograph something-- a visual record.  But when things were important, there was a photographer named George Roos.  He did all the work for Sotheby's and had a studio nearby.  With a 4x5 camera he'd make a special skilled color transparency that was as close to the original as possible.  One-- sometimes with 2 or 3 copies.  These would be mailed out to a collector or a museum and then returned.  It was a process; if the prospective buyer was interested, they'd come in for a viewing.  In very special cases a work was shipped on approval.  In this event a card was pulled, put into a different drawer, like a library.  We girls would do research and write up extra information on the cards-- provenance history, exhibitions, etc.  We'd contact institutions and try to procure old pertinent catalogues.  Scholarship was integral. 

Most of us in the art world had a common frame of reference.  We'd studied the masters and knew our contemporaries.  There was a limited number of galleries; at lunch I'd stop by other exhibitions; most 'shops' were on the upper east side in those days.  We knew one another and looked forward to shows with mutual anticipation.  Each place had its own POV... its traditions and its emerging 'stable'.  With every opening, we'd nervously anticipate the arrival of Hilton Kramer or Clement Greenberg.  Their opinions were everything; their critique could make or break an artist's sales.  Galleries depended on their favorable reviews and these were honest and rigorous in their approach. 

Art history studies included connoisseurship.  We went into the rooms of museums, into their basements and storage spaces and looked at things-- signatures, details.  Our final exams involved determining authenticity.  We also learned photography, as a tool.  This was archival photography-- the point being to capture the object as closely as possible to its physical reality.  Flaws, discolorations-- all of these things mattered.  If something was reframed, it had been documented in its original state. 

In this current world of altered states-- of digital tricks and ubiquitous images-- it seems almost absurd that the value of art has skyrocketed rather than leveled.  The sheer number of works produced-- the masses of artists on all levels, the reams of galleries... it's overwhelming.  My daily email receives an average of 50 announcements from art fairs, galleries, auction houses.  I browse and peruse endlessly, it seems.  Whereas the rarity of works seemed part of the pursuit in former days, universal visibility now seems the status quo.  Millions of views are logged on these platforms; auctions are publicized and people are paid vast sums to celebrate realized prices.  Images are spread like viruses-- the more views the better. Photography is enhanced and backlit... it's often hard to recognize the actual painting after seeing its more photogenic version online. Things are sized, staged, mocked up on virtual living room walls, as though they are 'worn' by some architectural model. Art itself is viewed as not just commodity but an asset class.  Buying has become a kind of competitive sport. Art criticism is sadly tainted by the fact that many publications are supported by paid advertising.  How can one pan the very source of income and support, look the gift-horse in its eye?  Reviews are tempered; taste-makers can be clique-ish and overfed. 

Presentation is everything; one must lust after these things like the latest Birkin bag... possession is for the highest bidder. It baffles me... how the brand of art becomes more expensive... as the images become cheapened and common.  The exclusivity, the rarity-- the intimacy of old collections-- has been violated.  Middlemen and advisers take huge cuts for simply moving merchandise around. Prices escalate; the art world parties on.  

This week I am working a few extra days at the gallery where I spend many Saturday afternoons.  While I have some kind of relationship with the objects here and their narratives, I find myself completely helpless when faced with the various publicity and social media protocols that are prioritized. I find the complications of the numerous inter-office platforms not just baffling but time-consuming. Notations and remarks are shared, conversations and internal information create a digital vine that has my hands tied and my brain on high anxiety.  Dings and bells on my laptop are perpetual interruptions... staff meetings and procedural updates are constant. One wonders how any work gets done... and yet it does

At home, in my non-air conditioned bohemian cave, I am lucky to have a full house of creativity.  A library of music, of books... a selection of instruments ready and waiting for me, and walls lined with the work of mostly artists I have known-- things I cherish and understand, things I have lusted after, logged in with joy, lingered over during my nightly walks up and down the hallway.  They are exclusive-- unique--  my roommates and family-- my intimates, these things.  They have no instagram presence, no online likes, no followers other than my actual houseguests who are fewer and fewer in number these days.  I am old; some of them are even older, yet they greet me with fresh energy; they inspire me.  They matter. Party on, art world. 

Now You See It….

Many years ago I was working at a highbrow art gallery and made my first important sale to a rock star.  As he handed over what was then a small fortune, he asked me, politely, how he could be certain that his new painting was real.  You can't, I assured him; but I can.  I knew.  In those days part of our rigorous art education was connoisseurship-- we looked and studied masterpieces and were tested on deciphering fakes and forgeries from the real deal.  At a certain point, you get a feel for it-- you just 'know', like fresh-baked cookies from the boxed kind, like a green plant from a plastic one.  Guitar collectors search and play and touch and study-- the real musicians just 'know'... they pick up a guitar and it sings its history-- its wooden roots-- the skill of the luthier who lovingly put it together with electronics and bits of material so that its soul matched its beauty.  The best of them, like old paintings,  have passed through one or two owners who played them and loved them-- broke them in and seasoned the wood... they feel experienced, layered.

I was having a vigorous discussion Saturday with a visiting Frenchman about the art market, and out of my mouth came the word Authenticity-- like a sentry, like a pillar or goddess... like one of those lovely intangible names so many girls in the hood proudly wear around gold chains these days--  Destiny, Felicity, Cadence, Chassity (yes, I looked twice at that one... ).  Authenticity, in the end, is what matters, I heard myself saying… not the kind that is guaranteed by a stamp or certificate or committee when you buy a Warhol or a Keith Haring, but the real thing.

Back in the day, there were sketchy galleries on Madison Avenue who sold Picassos, Miros, Chagalls-- with or without signatures; most of these came accompanied by a piece of paper like a pedigree, guaranteeing their authenticity.  None of these galleries are currently in business; their provenance is a sort of black mark on the merchandise, even if it is real.  They reminded me of the papers issued when you bought a certain breed from one of those puppy stores which are also a thing of the past, buried beneath lawsuits and claims.   A guarantee of purity and lineage…  how were we to know this was a grey-market dog?  Would we return it after adopting it into our family?  Of course not.  Imagine the paperwork that comes with religious and historic relics--- Napoleon's penis which is insured for an obscene sum and would auction for far more-- who knows the absolute truth, the DNA nitty-gritty?

Most of us would be horrified if we bought tickets to hear a great rock band and ended up with their lookalikes simulating the music... or if they showed up and played cover songs all night.  We would know.  But the art world-- the quick overnight successes-- do we feel the depth of what they do?  Yes, Jean Michel Basquiat had a kind of genius-- looking at his work was like hearing the young Ramones at CBGB's before anyone told us it was cool.  But too many of us are happy now to hang a poor imitation of his unique style with a bunch of silly text scrawled across the page.  It 'looks' hip-- but it's really just bullshit.  Half the artists showing in galleries are wannabes or followers-- and the audience lacks the time or interest to investigate who their mentors were.  Most people these days get their blues from Eric Clapton, not Lightnin Hopkins or Blind Lemon Jefferson. People in general settle for the 'light' version, take their selfies and go home and watch Netflix.

There are so many awards-- nominations, honors--- a self-proclaimed candidate can produce a roster of accomplishments and offices held.  Is anyone really bothering to certify these things?  Our children play in sports leagues; virtually every child is given a trophy... it's misleading, not democratic-- and gives children the idea that they are the best when they are not even good.  It's a Snakes and Ladders game of fame-- press the right Instagram button, and you are an instant princess-- not that I am bitter about the easy success of the undeserving-- it's just the substitution of this, like artificial sweetener, that leaves a bad taste and ruins the dream.  And in the runway 'walk of fame'... who is bothering to distinguish what is authentic from the rest?  Some of us are.

In this day of fake news, puppet presidents, internet hoaxes, and instant fame, some of us can feel what is authentic, like an old patina-- not a manufactured coating.  You can feel beauty, too-- in people-- even older people who have not had their faces updated-- you can sense a certain grace in their hands, in their eyes when they speak to you: who they were, who they are...  like slow wisdom or a ripening.

When I was a girl, my favorite book was The Prince and the Pauper.  I loved kings and queens in disguise--- even The Princess and the Pea-- the way real heroic nobility and royal kindness shone through rags and tatters.  We no longer have the example of  'good' rulers.  Quite the contrary.  But there are still things out there to be discovered that are badly dressed and brilliant-- or unmarketed,
non-Instagramed, and wonderful.  There is more soul in a couple of the men I hear singing in the train stations than in all the top 40 recordings I can't name.  Talent is no guarantee of success, and too often the best of them drop out.  It's too damned hard.

I still can't get over that da Vinci painting... I mean, when I was ten, my mother took me to see the Mona Lisa on its world tour.  Of course we waited endlessly on a huge line, and we were rushed by the viewing stage... but it was magical.  Yes, it was curtained and 'presented' with theatricality-- but you could breathe its importance-- its quiet beauty.  I had chills... I nearly cried; it was authentic.  But that $450 million painting? It spoke not a word-- no song, no chills, no magic.  It was flat.  Like a bird that choked, or a clown in couture.  It just didn't feel right;  but then there are always those who want to believe in the charlatan, in the false messiah, the doctored unicorn.

For years I tried to imitate my mother's simple yellow cake recipe-- it just never came out tasting right.  I finally gave up and did things from scratch my own way and discovered something else.  I'm not a baker, I'm a bass player.  Of course I definitely have my heroes, and have plenty to learn from the masters, but the last thing I want is to sound like them.  I may never be famous or celebrated, but I'll be myself.  People used to ask my Mom what her secret ingredient was, and she'd laugh it off.  I finally realized it was her hands-- her skill, her unique story, the passion and love she baked in-- her inimitable recipe for authenticity.

Oh what will you give me...

When I was 16, my parents sent me on one of those international exchange programs.  I chose Mexico where I lived as a native in a rural place in the state of Veracruz.  It was a life-changing time; my host family had never even seen an airplane-- had no electricity or plumbing-- and there was nothing but our common humanity to provide a basis for bonding.  I ate strange food, rose with the roosters, lived simply and without worry.  At the end of my stay, all the students in the Americas met up at an international conference in Mexico City at the soccer stadium, where I was asked to play my guitar and sing something uniquely American.  I performed Universal Soldier in front of a massive audience; I even got an encore.  Racking my brain to find a song promoting world peace and unity, I tried out The Bells of Rhymney but halfway through the second verse realized I didn't know the words.   I choked, left the stage while the announcer mumbled something about la señorita being 'muy despeinada'.

After I met Andy Warhol several years later (he often passed by the gallery where I worked)  I told him the story, as my first public humiliation.  He laughed and said as long as no one filmed it, it wouldn't be held against me.  I wanted to ask him if that might have been my 15 minutes, but he didn't really like questions; he liked answers.  So many years later, I still dread solo gigs, as much as I feel this is as close to my real core, and am somehow compelled to subject myself to this.  I've analyzed and analyzed: who cares if I'm terrible?  Plenty of people are terrible?  Nothing helps, and really, few people care.

I'm not sure if it's my age and impatience, but I've recently found myself reacting with increasing bitterness and cynicism at the state of culture in general.  Music disappoints; I rarely see films or concerts-- I cannot really afford these things anyway.  I know Carnegie Hall lives on, the Philharmonic-- and maybe this is a sad omission but I don't miss them; I have cds and records.  What I do miss is the complete paralyzing excitement of seeing something like the de Kooning women in the 1960's-- Andy's wallpapered room of cows-- the first Graffiti show, early Jean-Michel… Hendrix.  John Lee Hooker-- before I knew about him, or Tim Buckley in the 1960's.  I've wondered if I'm just too old and ruined to see anything with new eyes.

My neighbor is a famous editor and writer.  His work is indisputably important and post-modern.  He is critical of what I do, although he occasionally praises me.  There's a certain snobbery in his circle; contemporary writing has to be tough and terse.  I browsed one of his recent books; one section is just a list of words… difficult words, uncomfortable words outside of most people's reach.  Okay… maybe like a Donald Judd or some minimal sequential thing-- but Judd has a certain universal, unpretentious simplicity.  The literary version is awkward and I hated it.

Personally I know my poetry is flawed; it is human and personal and maybe too emotional.  It is overly confessional and sympathetic, and I want it to be accessible and not difficult.  I think I'm not sure whether at this stage of my life I'd fall in love with Proust again, or be able to read Georges Perec or even Jean Genet with the intensity I gave these so many years ago.  I might be critical of Henry James now, or find Trollope excessive or silly.  I cringe occasionally at Anne Sexton; I worshipped her in the 1970's.  Some of the books my neighbor promotes-- well, they are brilliant, in a way--- but they do not sweep me off my literary feet, and I care little for the characters.  The language doesn't get in my blood.  I want to be better, and I want my heroes to be better, as well.  I am not claiming to be an artist or a great poet, but I do want to be read, and understood.

Again, I am not sure what I am expecting.  I do know that few millennials have the sense of context that my generation was given.  Education has changed; history, aside from phenomena like Hamilton-the-musical, seems less pertinent to this generation.  We used to be able to look at a painting or hear a recording and place it in a timeline; not so, now.  Reading has changed for so many, and the way people perceive music.  They listen to so many things simultaneously, while multi-tasking; even volume has become subjective.  Art seems to play to this audience-- it is rare that I enter a gallery and find quiet simple canvasses.  There are crowds and chatter-- phones and selfies.  There is theatrical lighting and music and there is performance;  at my one and only visit to the new Whitney, there were roving performance artists; they were embarrassing and distracting.  I could not 'hear' the paintings.

But most of all there seems to be this sense of 'self'… I mean, even Andy Warhol had anxiety about his work-- insecurity.  A true artist hears his voice and executes as best he can, but he is never sure-- he has doubt and asks questions.  He knows his work is a process.  This culture seems to be so sure of itself-- so smug and narcissistic.  And a majority of the audience is obedient; they like what they are told to like, they hear what they are given, they wear what they think they should wear, what their 'icons' wear.  This worries me-- the diversion and commercialization of the process.  Art and fashion have become bedfellows; this has energized fashion but cheapened art.  And while I detest the massive cultural joke of Jeff Koons, I am also left cold by the more pretentious, dehumanized, technology-heavy exhibitions.  And there is so much out there-- trillions of images and soundbytes-- so much spectacle-- so many celebrities and events, a million channels.  How can we expect anyone to connect deeply and intimately with ideas the way one reads an old book in a quiet room?  Somewhere in every country, artists are despairing-- important canvasses and books are burning in a digital bonfire.  A sacred tree is surely falling at any given moment in a night forest, and no one will hear.

Still, I have this relentless need to communicate, which I think is the seed of all art, and a certain faith that I may touch even one person, or change something.  I suppose the experience of being dropped into a strange cultural river at 16 taught me a certain lesson… and I am grateful for The Bells of Rhymney, the riveting and beautiful words of a Welsh coal miner who educated himself, which somehow found their way into music and onto my teenage record player and changed my life.

Purple Reign

As the world becomes smaller, information mushrooms, and roads of communication multiply faster than bacteria, generations of cultural phenomena grow smaller and smaller.  Nostalgia is recent and cheap-- songs are recycled and sampled at shorter intervals-- art movements are re-packaged and re-hashed almost as quickly as iPhones become obsolescent.  We download and delete, download and downgrade, download and forget.  Like super-sized boxes of girl-scout cookies, we can't really tell one bite from another, and after all, there is an endless supply of a limited assortment.  What's the point, really?

The whole Warholian joke has become so top-heavy we've forgotten to see the irony in Andy's leavings after all… we're so busy calculating value and counting possessions, we can't see the financial hoax is on us.  Money doesn't seem to be something we laugh about; like dick size, it's something some people obsess over in men's rooms, bedrooms, over lunch and in boardrooms.  It's cheap.  A million dollars is nothing to brag about; a billion-- well, that simply guarantees you a bib in the Wall Street half-marathon.

And what is a 60-million-dollar penthouse in a brand-new phallic glass tower but a place to entertain, to invite designers and decorators to compete for spread, a few walls on which to display your new paintings which are hopefully worth more at market than your apartment which might as well be a hologram?   None of these air-pads existed in the vintage, solid structural versions of real New York we see in old photos and film footage.  They are ghost projections into some future-- air rights become architectural wrongs.

Today I previewed a show of nouveau-grafitti.  Deftly presented, apartment-ready wall-souvenirs which seemed about as impassioned as papier-mâché tacos.  One after the other--the text was vapid, the colors were pastel-pretty, the technique was thin, facile and uninspired, and each whole thing seemed to represent about four minutes of the life of a phone-wielding self-promoter.  Canvas to facebook, to tumbler, to instagram… in less time than an average pop-song.  It wasn't even like I've seen these before.  It was more like something I would never have looked at-- things that didn't deserve a wall-- bad wrappers on generic candy sold in the bus stations of poor countries.  Ready-made Forever-21 art.  Not even kitsch because these people were standing by and taking themselves seriously.  There were prices posted on labels which any reasonable person with an eye might have mistaken for lire or yen.

Of course there were some less wieldy objects, some Banksy-esque garbage-rescues which were decorated or spilled-on or sprayed or mutilated…. a few collages and framed relics…  and then on to the Metropolitan Museum-- my revered house of the art-holy, where one hour before closing, the guards were playing a version of chutes and ladders--- walling off rooms and corralling the tourist crowds into the halls of Greek and Roman, of Oceania and African… I managed to exchange a wink with the Picasso Gertrude Stein who was annoyed at having to compete with the Costume Institute crowds and still wondering how some of her neighbors were getting along politically.  I had a terrible thought that one day in the near future some museum might be hung in order of value.  Descending, ascending… will there be a time when a digital ticker-tape will circle the galleries with daily artist-stock information  and auction results? Or is that someone's conceptual exhibit?

Saturday evenings at the museum are not really the time for serious contemplation-- kids running around playing tag in the Temple of Dendur, shoppers and baby-toting, eaters and drinkers, gossipers and strollers--- I almost missed the days when the magazines suggested single New Yorkers try to look for mates in these places.  Now nearly everyone was taking selfies and consulting their phones.  At least I didn't pay full price.  In fact, an evening rain-shower kept the emerging crowds hovering beneath the monumental pillars and cornice.  I traded my $2 umbrella for a pair of entry stickers; the couple was thrilled at their good fortune and it saved me from the humiliation of having to fork over a meagre $1 each for the privilege of milling around looking for the open rooms at the tail-end of an exhausting art day.

Home to my cherished neighbors and less cherished new neighbors who seem hell-bent on complaining  constantly about my guitarist and poet guests.  Endless renovations have destroyed the integrity of wall insulation in these old venerable buildings and no one cares that the value of my personal privacy has been destroyed.  Mold might be good for you, I would like to say to them.  Stuff is good.  The fact that your decor is minimal and your bookshelves empty terrifies me.  I may have shoeboxes of old polaroids, like Andy did (thank goodness for the market-- these cannot really be forged or reproduced, only faded)… but they have obese, messy instagrams and tumblers--- terabytes of data and family videos they couldn't watch in six lifetimes.  Money in credit cards and online funds and assets which wouldn't fit in any traditional safe… email and texts enough to fill all the theaters of the future with useless dialogue far away into some eternal digital wasteland.

I have a purple Warhol cow visiting at the moment in my living room.  It occurs to me, as she greets me daily, that she looks a bit old and tired.  Her eyes don't follow me with the same attention as I once thought.  She is tired of her frame, of the black marker signature which has made her an icon rather than a milk producer.  And she is one of many thousands.  She is all over the internet… millions and maybe billions, with the harness and her pink nose--- in various sizes, colors… identical.  Forever 1971, or 65, or 86--- whatever date you choose.  A suitable New York wall-pet without shame or upkeep… a symbol of something that belongs and yet doesn't belong in an urban grass-less home.  At least she is not one of those balloon puppies or hideous Koons vases.  But she's a little ashamed that her legacy has been so perverted and her little joke of multiplicity has become so grotesquely distorted.  Still, she doesn't seem to mind her surroundings and she is a little snobbish on the subject of my embarrassing new neighbors.  She greets them with indifference and not even the slightest moo.  She's definitely vegan,  has an affinity for all things Prince, and unlike me, her roommate, has been to most of the best places in the city.  She's a celebrity, a star.  No lemonade drinkers on my wall, no whitewashed blondes on our turntable.  Cows are apparently rather intelligent and I learned today that they hold grudges for years.  Now I know why I like her so much and what Andy was trying to tell us with his wallpaper.  A-cow.

Smoke and Mirrors

We approach the end of the year all too quickly, it seems… the downhill of December has its momentum, and try as we may, the new year is waiting like a hungry mouth to swallow things we are maybe not ready to let go.  I no longer shop for Christmas-- it's enough to manage basics, my son will maybe bring me a tree;  this is my holiday-- sitting by the colored lights in the semi-dark, collecting inventory moments.  It's been so unseasonably warm-- but there will be a price to pay.  On the news they spoke of a stagnant air mass-- that is an ugly description.  Photos of people in Beijing wearing cheap masks as though this will protect them from breathing in the terrible smog.  For someone who is sad in China, this blur of oppressive air and being confined inside must be unbearable.  I have such a tiny carbon footprint here-- my friends tease me.  No car, no taxis-- I scarcely use a dishwasher.  Still no cell phone-- I am often in semi-darkness, by the glow of my computer, writing-- sometimes the lights of the city outside are enough.  Gigs are bright and loud-- I love them, but I retreat.

Lately I have a sense of my neighbors' proximity-- as though the walls are getting thinner… like I am being invaded, slightly.  I do not know the new people, I do not really want to know the new people-- my old neighbors were interesting-- they were writers and critics and artists, but many have been forced out by an unkind economic pendulum.  Or they have died.  I am hanging in, imagining some young girl in my future helping me pack boxes for who knows what, the way I have done in my past for one or two of them.  But I hear the unfamiliar habits of new people through the walls-- faintly but clearly-- and I feel just a tiny bit less 'safe'.

One of my friends engaged me last night in a discussion about dating and expectations, and partnerships, and love.  For some reason I remembered an episode I'd not thought about for so long.  It was my first art gallery job in New York.  I was maybe 22-- there was a recession, I was on a break from Graduate school, writing another paper, and I got a lucky job in one of the best modern galleries in New York… I'd gone in and volunteered.  I want to work here, I said.  You don't have to pay me and I will work very hard.  So they sat me at the front desk where people like Andy Warhol stopped in every week, and because I was a little pretty and so eager, they spoke to me.  I loved my job.  Someone relieved me for lunch, and I hated to leave my post.  I sorted photographs and copied prices into auction catalogues (they used to come on an addendum which was difficult for the bidder), wrote invitations and worked their old phone system which at the time seemed massively futuristic.  I took home $92 a week.  I also worked at Bloomingdale's on Saturdays and Thursday nights, and after paying rent had barely enough to manage a pack of chicken legs, enough rice and eggs to get through a week-- and my morning roll and butter and coffee from a cheap deli.  The bus.  Often I walked to save the 35 cents.  It was one of those rare gaps in my life where I'd just left a boyfriend to bravely discover the city on my own, and the struggle to 'make it' was difficult but ecstatic.  New York in the 1970's was shedding a skin and changing-- but the aura of the old films was there, and the punks and musicians were simmering in some creative soup of poverty.  We girls depended also on dates to provide a relief meal or two so we could actually afford to go out and hear a band.

Anyway, all the great collectors came in and out of my gallery uptown-- I learned to recognize them; they very unpretentiously in those days gave me their name-- quietly and respectfully, and I would call one of the directors upstairs-- my bosses.  One night I was called upstairs, and asked if I would go to dinner with one of these clients-- a Greek man-- he was handsome and dark and always well-dressed with beautiful shoes--hats and gloves.  Do this, my boss said.  I had only a few cheap cotton dresses, but I wore one of them with my old pearls.  He took me to one of the great French restaurants in New York, and I was a little baffled by the menu… so he ordered for me, and watched while I ate course after course.  The food was incredible-- I was nearly starving from my spartan diet… I felt almost high during dessert.  My dinner companion ate nothing.  He sat and drank some wine, he vaguely watched me, spoke little.

The following week they asked me again to have dinner with him.  Same scenario, another restaurant.  This time he asked me if I wanted to see his place.  For some reason I was not afraid-- I knew my boss expected something and I was curious.  He owned a huge house in the 50's… his flat was on a couple of floors.  Inside it felt like a hotel-- very few things, some over-sized furniture, etc….  he poured himself a drink… he was extremely polite… and asked me if I'd stay the night, sleep with him--  he didn't want sex, just company.  So I agreed.  His bed was enormous, he had these beautiful books on the night tables-- everything was immaculate and there was this faint smell of old leather.  Most of the night he sat up and smoked.  The only vaguely incongruous curiosity was this mirror over the bed on the ceiling, 12 or 14 feet up.  It suggested a past erotic life that didn't make sense. I got used to it; maybe it was there when he bought the place, and it provided some lighting device.  I never commented; he never touched me, and in the morning I went home to change.

Week after week this went on--- he began to tell me he'd lost his wife, somehow-- she was some opera singer…I saw her photo, and she was beautiful.  There had been a little boy-- small fragments of his story revealed themselves.  These were the days before anti-depressants and he was chronically, oppressively sad.  He slept and ate little, he travelled, I knew--- ran some huge family business… and he bought art.  In his sparsely furnished apartments there were great pieces of sculpture and amazing paintings.  He took risks.  He supported new gallery stars.  It was amazing to sleep with these things-- to sense them in the dark, the way I now feel my own unlit paintings at night.  He treated me with formality and respect, even though I was cheaply dressed and so green in so many ways;  he spoke to me with depth and intelligence.  I began to touch him… just a little, at first.  I felt so empathically helpless… I was so eager to somehow please my gallery which was my lifeline-- I had no idea what they expected, but the Director, on these Thursdays, would give me a little wink when he left-- it was our secret.

Anyway, he left the country for an extended time, gave me a beautiful gift from Tiffany which I returned.  I used the money to buy myself a raincoat and a fantastic sewing machine.  In a way it was the most beautiful bargain of my life-- a kind of short story I never told.  It was chastely sexual, it was some kind of love, it was sort of a black pearl inside the shell of my young student existence.  The Director is now deceased, and I feel permission to share this-- one of the privileged fairy-tales-with-no-closure of my past, one of my anti-Sex-in-the-City episodes that shaped and changed me.  Of course I went out and did my wilding and lived with my musicians, and was summarily adopted by this city, my birthplace.  But I realize it put sort of a dark stamp on the concept of marriage as the storybook institution we perceive at 21 or 22… it was another surprising B-side and it left me with a kind of warning, an insight into full-blown adult disappointment and deep heartbreak like a kind of scar.  I can still see his dark hair, the cloud of smoke by the faint light of dawn, hear the early morning midtown traffic, my own dark hair and young face in the mirror above… like a sort of Julio Larraz painting.

These days I feel things in my past-- the warp and weft of my existence around which this tapestry of my life has woven itself.  What I realize is we can sense this 'fabric', but we can't actually see it-- not until it's too late.  I do feel a bit of the unravelling lately-- maybe the deaths, the fear of enemies in the world in a new way-- what can we believe?  The high-pressure air mass gives us sunshine and hope but it is married to the invisible stagnant air which is maybe toxic and dangerous?  My son's friend has a new tattoo to commemorate his Mom's death.  It is a lovely thing… but what about all the tattoos we don't see?

This bird that has come to Prospect Park-- it is a truly extraordinary thing.  Of course I would like to see it, but I also know I'd be part of the crowd there which is running back and forth, trying to follow its little twittery path while it explores its new environment.  I see this as a sign-- a good sign-- that unexpected tiny things of great beauty can happen in our lives, that this supersedes art as it is today, that
a random moment can take our breath away.  Besides, this bird is a loner-- and a male… it seemed to have a little scar on its beak in one of the photos, and if you look closely, its eye-- it is not a young bird.  It knows something.  Maybe it is running away from some sorrow or tragedy--- just flew on a whim, or the distraction of grief distorted its trajectory.  I am certain it has come out of its way to a strange and dangerous city to tell us something, and some of us are hopefully still listening.

Death Without Interruptions

I am trying to make friends with Death.  He has been flirting with way too many of my friends and his recent moves to consummate a few of these relationships have forced me to rethink my strategy.  While we are generally reassured that these incidents come in threes, there was yet a fourth last week.   Admittedly, my 'stepmother' the artist did take her own life.  She cheated Death, in her way, and he did not like that.  He expects to beat you at his game, not have you put yourself in checkmate and deprive him of his victory rush.  So he pulled another trick?  The fact is, he lost count, long ago.  He has way too many fingers.

If you've been reading my essays, you know that I've seen him in Chelsea.  Summer heat doesn't phase Death; under wraps his cold breath gives him away.  He likes the galleries; he's rather vain and is sure to see himself in a painting or two on any given day.  Andy liked to include him-- a shadow, a symbol or a doppelgänger; maybe it pissed him off.  He's in all the trendy fashion houses, in one form or another, and as we all know--- he has great taste in music.  He is a patient lover: he can be violent and cruel, or he can be gentle and invisible.  But he will eventually come to all of us, whether we embrace him or fear him, whether we court him or evade him; he will come.

Personally he fucks with my head.  I feel responsible; I feel guilty and inadequate.  He reminds me of my father who try as I might, does not love me as a daughter.  Okay… my cousin was old--- he was ill and had come to a boundary; his passing was a blessing.  My stepmother?  She feared her end.  She was an artist and she wanted an audience, she wanted recognition; she wanted a guaranteed choir of mourners.  Death taunted her-- held a cruel mirror before her vanity.  She'd once painted for her lovers and now she'd outlived every single one.  I was a lone voice for her; my love and admiration was not enough.  She was cranky and bitter in her last weeks, and the truth is, I was avoiding her.  She scolded me; I reminded her of failure.  Even at the end, she left a small pile of envelopes, and I waited in vain for mine.  No sentimentality; her only request, as always, is for me to disperse her art-- to find collectors, to enhance her legacy.  I am the designated 'sweeper' of her leavings.  Nothing more.  I could have pimped for her. Maybe she would have stuck it out.  Sometimes Death makes you a star; sometimes you don't even make the New York Times obituaries unless you pay.

My lovely drummer who passed…. he used to bring me small trinkets from his trips-- purses, tiny elephants from Thailand, cloth fans and memorabilia.  At some point last year I cleaned my closet and donated bags of these things.  So now I feel guilty.  I searched my closet for a souvenir--- nothing.  I somehow brought this on, with my callow attitude toward his sweetness and sentimentality.  After all, he was young-- who could anticipate I would outlive him?  I am guilty.

And that woman in Chelsea--- it was serendipitous that we had met through a mutual friend.  Who could have conceived that she would chase her dog into the arms of Death in the form of a garbage truck? Her dog?  I forgot to ask.  I doubt he feels guilty.  But I do.  I wish we'd never met.

At my cousin's funeral his children remembered poignant moments.  They were loved, had wonderful lives with and without him.  It was perfect.  I wept.  I thought of my own father-- -the one who can't bear the sound of my voice, the mention of my name-- -for Death knows what reason.  I can't think of a single tender moment.  My sister methodically stole my packet of M & Ms every day for years.  I willingly gave up my toys, my allowance-- I took the blame for every bit of family mischief.  She has the birthright-- whether it is fair or unfair, I am glad to stay out of the family spotlight.  My father owes me an apology.  Besides marrying rock musicians and turning down a Harvard Law scholarship… what did I do to him?  I offended his legacy.  I failed to enhance his family with suitable accomplishments.  I work in bars.  I was a single mother.  This is the 21st century.  But he is ashamed.  I did what I could; I paid him back.  I gave them the art I'd lovingly collected through my friends.  I paid my sister and her husband and put her kids through college while I took an oath of poverty and devotion to music.  I am a Goth nun.  You'd think I blackmailed them.  They have weddings and parties and exchange gifts.  My son got a check for $100 for his combined 21st birthday, Christmas and college graduation.  We have many nights gone hungry  Not even a card.  A folded check in a small envelope.

I have dedicated songs to my father; I post his military accolades on my Facebook page.  I honor him in the only way that I can.  None of this matters.  He will take his hatred to the grave and I will not have a seat at his funeral.  Whatever he thinks I did, I did not do.  Death-- tell him.  Whisper.  I go to funerals, I take care of my friends.  I'm guilty.  I give money to homeless people and split my last-dollar hotdog today with a hungry man in the street.  I never stole from him or lied to him or cheated.  I won all those awards.  I even bought him a computer once with money I won and he complained.  So I give up.  Death, compared to my father, is just.  He spared me a few times-- he's whispered in my ear and sat on my bed through a couple of nights…and mysteriously as he entered, in the morning he was gone.

I finally got the nerve to visit my stepmother's apartment; the very room where she put a plastic bag over her head and inhaled lethal quantities of helium several days ago.  Kind of a stagey exit, but painless and effective.  It looked exactly the same; the bed was made, the Saramago I loaned her on the nightstand, the smell of helium was nowhere.  Death had vanished-- no wagging fingers, no morbid reminders.  Just the art, like an albatross--- like guilt mirrors around the room.  But I'll rise to the challenge.  Death has no wish to participate.  It's too late for dying young, he coolly whispered to me as I lay awake the other night… and then, dressed like the 1961 Elvis, he left the room.

The New After-Math

I am approaching another of those age milestones which prompts assessment-inventory mode.  In one sense I have exactly the life I want—no apparent routine, no apparent ‘boss’ or structure except the pressure of time itself-- plenty of creative ceiling.  The fact that I have very little income, cannot master that Wall Street math that makes millions out of air, and spend inordinate amounts of time devising Rube-Goldberg-worthy schemes to manage, is quite a challenge, some days.  I concede this life of spontaneity, as one gets older, is comprised of myriads of loose ends—things I collect, daily-- thoughts, projects, ideas, inspiration.  Then there are the stray people I take on, the fact that I give time to the insane unemployed physicist in Starbucks, the Holocaust survivor who nags me to at least hear her memoirs because there is neither time nor sufficient megabytes to write it out;  to the blogger with no blog, the dog-savers and ex-junkie poets, and to my friends--- few as they are, now, the good ones.  Not to mention kids, who wouldn’t even know my birthday without facebook, and they are too busy or too guilty or whatever. 

I know now that no one will ever pay me back, and that as I begin to melt more into the fabric of what is the forgotten class of people--- the has-beens and middle-aged-- no one really wants to listen.  I am succumbing to the alarming fact that I go to the library and besides the re-packaged classics whose recent translations are often offensive and colloquial and wrong, the new books—even the New York Times top 10 of the year--- well, they are generally a literary disappointment.  Do these authors feel like failures?  Do they realize that the Housewives of Atlanta are winning?  That Warholian fame has become cheapened beyond his prediction and 15 digital nano-minutes might be all there is.  That the old has been shoveled up and piled on dumpsters not because it is useless and obsolete but because it was real and had a shelf-life, and value has become something the hedge funds determine to accommodate their maximum bonus pyramid.  

My life has resonance, I try to console myself, as I leave the grocery store practically empty-handed.  I attend few gallery openings--- not because I don’t have suitable clothing, but because most shows are just an idea—of course, some are executed with enormous gestures and presented with unprecedented chic décor-ready props, but although they ‘look’ good--- as fashion on the runway often does, it is unabashedly deja-deja-vu for me, and the models, lovely as they are, ‘wear’ the idea, but do not give it real content.

I recently was really taken by photographs of an art-piece done years ago by a window-dresser who actually went a little ‘outside the box’.  They were from the 1970’s—she’d actually created pulp-fiction-type drama within the store display windows--- with guns, intrusive characters… even a plaster hand that protruded from the actual store window---‘Help’ it was saying…’I am crossing the line between reality and advertisement, of theatre and solicitation.’  The artist then placed the mannequins in real situations--- dressed and still—in cafes, one even on the steps of the Metropolitan Museum where she sat—all dressed up and nowhere to go… alone, in the wind, among the then-small crowds who went to museums which were still, in the 1970’s, for art and not spectacle.  I remember the windows.  They were important.  But now I realize they were a sort of foreshadowing. 

Even the 1970’s still had some credibility, some sense.  There were still typewriters and land phones.  The people who brought the news on TV had side-parts and narrow ties and dark suits and spoke extemporaneously with unadorned style and used words properly.  They had something to say-- and when they didn't speak--- well, that was a statement in itself.   How many Anderson Cooper reports would it take to weigh in with Walter Cronkite removing his glasses in 1963?  The old journalists weren’t reading prompters and chatting about pop-stars who can’t sing and football stars with fake girlfriends because none of that was invented and people with no talent stayed home or worked in a cupcake factory and hummed to themselves while they wrapped their kids’ lunch sandwiches in waxed paper.   Some of them even smoked while they did this. 

So now, maybe the mannequins are the art… the clothing--- well,  the packaging--- the ‘carrot’… another public company on the stockmarket because commodities are no longer wheat and corn and coffee—these are altered and manipulated, and futured-out.  Now there are handbags and cellphones which move the markets-- accessories-- and yes, there are worthless ideas--- like facebook--- like Zinga and instagram--- ideas which are mysteriously bankable and which put solid-gold spoons in the mouths of the Goldman Sachs Babies, and the finest sushi on their conference tables, billions of monopoly dollars in every greedy bank account. Web-ideas trying desperately to convince us we are not loose ends--- we are connected, we are touching… we are blogging and we can see Beyonce from our desk, we can tweet her and we can tweet Carmelo Anthony and Ashton Kutscher and we can see what jacket they are wearing, and we can see their baby pictures and their girlfriend’s bikini butt and her spray tan.

I am realizing today that fringe is what happens to the loose ends—when they are gathered.  At the edge of the fabric.  I am not even sure my loose-ends of books and poems and songs are that cohesive.  Maybe I am not even fringe-worthy.  After all there is a fringe-festival and although I attended one or two events years back, I now process it as the ‘cringe’ festival.  I am not speaking virtual or tongue-in-cheek fringe, I am speaking threads and knots and speaker-wire and guitar-chords and lyrics—lyrics that float and haunt and define me, first lines of books I can still remember—these things did exist, these things made me the disorganized and obsolete person I am, on the verge of extinction, without a human-loving society to protect us and find us and tag us and make sure we are not being stoned to death or slightly abused by our neighbors who shop online for their Jimmy Choos and live in glass houses with no books and speak too loud on their phones in Starbucks and misuse the word ‘of’ even in newscasts.  We, the real-time newly unpublishable, who type and write and think and refuse to lipsynch… who hear the sound of one hand clapping and the still-silent voice in some loose-ended non-linear universe with far more resonance.  We are listening, we are counting...

Kerb Your Enthusiasm

Some mornings I wake up to a strangely un-urban quiet and I wonder, ever since 9/11, has 'it' happened... has my city been wiped out and I am a lone survivor... and I look over at my old clock radio, and there is still electricity... and my phone works... and I can hear the birds now... but I step out into the day with this sense of being newly baptized or finding out no, it is not cancer... and I vow to keep this attitude--- of grace and awe and innocence-- despite the nasty/smelly/greedy meanness I am bound to encounter on my daily route.

I have caught myself several times this week muttering expletives under my breath when someone shoves me aside to get on the bus first or runs a red light and clips my guitar case as I jump back onto the kerb.  When did I become this impatient old crank and how far will it go?  My friends have been leaking bad language, sneering and frowning and growling more than usual.  Is it the humidity?  The Republicans? When does cynicism become malevolence?  In an election year when name-calling and one-downmanhip seem to be the standards of our leadership?

Wasn't there a 'luxury tax' in our old Monopoly games?  We paid it, if the dice brought us there; we went to jail and paid our fines.  We paid extra for houses and hotels on expensive blocks, as I recall.  Have they changed the game to parallel the Bush-era tax cuts?  Not that I know, but I no longer care about games.  After a brief 1981 flirtation with Space Invaders I checked out.  I hate computer games and God knows I still don't have a cell phone.

But some nights I feel I am a stranger in a strange land.  I don't 'fit in' the way I used to... I am eavesdropping more than participating, but in a way I am mentally participating while my fellow urban occupants seem to be mutually eavesdropping.  I see things in three dimensions--- not just as they are, but with their history, framed by time-shadows of meaning.  My life is vintage now-- which for me doesn't mean just aged, but suffused with long-simmered flavor.

I watched an episode of Gallery Girls.  Yes, I confess... okay, I was writing and multi-tasking while I watched--- there was not nearly enough 'meat' to warrant just sitting there-- but there it was, unlike any version of the actual art world I have known, but like most reality TV, styled and watered down with some kind of Kool-Aid-like silly additive.

But Jane Holzer was there, looking substantial and vintage-y, and a little kind.  She was always kind, I think.  And I suppose Bravo shows are a viable variation of Warhol-lite.  Andy might have approved.
At 6 AM after a night of musical drama (I mean the kind that happens among band members), I turned on a TCM film called 'Pressure Point'-- one of those low-budget black and white tough early 60's pieces that resemble theatre more than cinema.  The direction was sparse and brilliant, the acting was breathtaking and razor-sharp.  Bobby Darin--- wasn't he a pop-star? He was like verbal spitfire, and Sidney Poitier's portrayal of a prison psychiatrist treating a bigoted Nazi psychotic prisoner-- was not just heroic but godlike.  There was a story, with political 'weight'... and there was a soliloquy.  There was passion and meaning and a message.  So what happened to our culture?  And why are these micro-talents on TV and in music and film so massively wealthy and poorly iconic to our under-informed young people?

I suppose if one is brought up on an exclusive diet of boxed breakfast cereal, Rice Krispies begins to resemble a healthy choice.  Watching Bill Clinton speak tonight, I grew nostalgic for the 1990's.  Jesus, next to the lame pickings at the conventions (Michelle Obama aside--- you are a sister!), he was oratorial and convincing.  I'd follow the guy to any local bar not to mention the polling booth.  I do like Obama, but liking the man and putting him at the helm of a 300,000,000 passenger ship are different.  And Romney--- this guy couldn't get himself on a decent ballot in any past but now, with the lack of viable competition, he's a contender.  A Mormon president.  Who's next?  Tom Cruise?  These are dangerous thoughts.

Has anyone read Paul Krugman's column this week?  The question should be 'has EVERYONE' read this?  Are people informed at all?  Are they listening and/or thinking or just chilling and watching another political reality show?   Because the lack of enthusiasm is contagious.  Thank the south for Bill Clinton tonight... he had a little of last night's Poitier passion and he got the crowd on their feet.  But will anyone get this country on its feet?  Are we too lazy to stand up and walk, to do more than hit the remote buttons a few times... ?   Of course I love Tom Petty but is this song really the energizing anthem we need?  Am I willing to give something up for my political cause?  Do I have anything left to give?  Is there anyone out there or is it all just television?

My first really vivid Presidential memory was of course Kennedy.  In that era we needed to see family portraits and outings; there was serious dealmaking going on behind the scenes-- international manipulations and villainous politicos.  There was sex and bourbon and blood and foreign intrigue.
Now we don't need to see nice family footage.  We need some rolled up sleeves and some tough talk and bone-breaking conviction and some fight.  Not nasty quips and accusatory twitters and assinine exaggerations about fish-catching and marathon running.  I feel like people are placing bets rather than voting their beliefs.  Is this an election or a Superbowl?  I'd hate to base the outcome on the ratings, but I'll wager the football audience exceeds the voter count. Come on, my fellow Democrats... let's play some Offense before it's too late.

Scream 4

Having been subjected to an EL-AL-worthy screening at Sotheby's this week, I was taken past lines of docile-looking policemen to the 10th floor where Munch's 'Scream' was on display along with other stealthfully framed art-nuggets.  Nuggets, because some of them seemed quite literally to glow in the simulated daylight.  I have to admit that I was not just a little disappointed.  I have been to Oslo, seen the Thielska in Stockholm many times, and this crayon version, despite the hype and the staging and the 'poem' underneath--- well, it didn't knock me out.  In fact, I couldn't really 'hear' it.

Okay.  I wandered around, admired the glossy Picasso and the Gauguin, both of which looked freshly painted or maybe repackaged.  The clever frames, and the combination lighting--- a little seductive, but you definitely know you are not in any museum.  It is more like an upscale 'store'-- Prada or Armani-- or Harry Winston.  The whole scene-- with the well-dressed employees, their precocious formality and sly solicitous condescension,  resembled not merely a 'set' but a bit of a 'set-up'?

In fact, watching the actual sale, there was a distinct scent of staginess.  The auctioneer's comments  seemed scripted, the waving hands like a scene from Wall Street 4.  In a debt-fueled catastrophic world economy, zeros seem almost arbitrary and fictional.  I mean, who are these people--- and why are they here, abusing and distorting the art market, and who really cares?  I'm sick of seeing super-sized engagement rings and Vera Wang weddings.  How many hedge-fund-financed apartments have I visited lately with the required Richard Prince Nurse, the Damian Hirst, the Jeff Koons hideosity, the stock Warhol, Twombly, Richter... ad nauseam?  Even the Double-Elvis which used to excite me--- it all seemed like wall-treatment, not art.  It's oversized, and overdone, and --well, it feels downright cheap to me.  What happened to small pictures that draw you in-- paintings done in squalid damp studios in absinthy nights of unrequited passion, of wet lamplight and shadowy women behind doorways?  Something intimate and personal?  Something only you could own?  A painting on the wall that seduces-- every night-- like a kind of visual Sheherezade?

Honestly, it is not sour grapes.   I will venture that even the Basquiat Boxer didn't inspire me.  It all looked rather flat and frankly I don't want to own these things.  Okay, I am jaded and have seen 35 years of auctions now--- London, Paris,  especially New York.  I coveted these things when they were new and affordable.  I even invested, in those days, when Apple stock was a shot in the dark at $22.00.  But today the Scream felt like some Michelin Man version of what I used to admire.  A cartoon.  I do not want Mickey Mouse on my wall, diamond dust or not.  I have maybe outgrown these over-used pop-icons.  I'm sick of seeing Elvis and the Beatles and too-many Marilyns.   In a gallery in dark cold Norway where the 19th century seems a bit closer, the Scream has some authority, some meaning.  But here at Sotheby's among the well-dressed-- and the captions and the overweighted catalogue descriptions- it just looked a little Casper-esque.   Maybe the Warhol version would work for me-- and at 1/20th of the price and an extra layer of irony, it would seem a bargain.

Besides, it is Scream 1(?) of 4.  Did Hitchcock do Psycho 2?  He did not.  The shepherd who screamed 'Wolf' too many times? Remember the anecdote about the British philatelist who bought two of the rarest and priciest airmail stamps in UK history?  He immediately destroyed one.

How many of these artists at auction would make it today?  Would anyone pay attention to a Bonnard or a Delvaux or a Twombly unless he got raves in the Wall Street Journal and a one-man show at Gagosian's Basel booth?  Would Gagosian recognize a badly-dressed true artist on the street with his artwork?  Would anyone do a studio visit to someone who lives in a basement flat and has a vision?  Unlikely.  A certain amount of creativity in our culture has to do with reinforcement--- with  reward and recognition and then the courage or motivation to go on.  Not to mention money.  All of which taints the artist in a way--- too hard not to want to please, or to displease for attention, or to shock the audience or-- better yet, jolt oneself into some kind of artistic epiphany because the average collector maybe spends more time on Madison Ave at Saint Ambroeus having a morning latte or savoring the pretty amazing hot chocolate.  Imagine these people unable to distinguish between a bottle of Two-Buck Chuck and a fine Chateau Lafite except by pricetag,  especially if you switch up the bottles.  Well, there you have the art market, for some.  

My own mirror dates me with no mercy.  But I, unlike these 9-figured paintings, never expected to be timeless.  One of my photographer friends made a comment today--- he picked up a book on The Lost Vanguard of Russian art and remarked 'I never get tired of looking at these'.  A thumbs up for him.  And yes-- a few of these things in our lives: the NYC post-storm sunset-- the moon over the East River--- my wall of books-- the face of someone we truly love-- some of my pictures, like small deep windows,  the soul of the artist mixed with my own now from so many hours of intimate 'seeing'.

Still, personally, I like my music loud and my art quiet.

The Blue Tent

On Prince Street there is a blue tent. They are trying to excavate a basement, to find some terrible remnant, some closure, but this will not happen, not unless they are deluding themselves, because whatever they find, whatever they choose to believe they found, they will never find the moment.

All over Manhattan today there are tents to shelter the Tribeca film-goers as they enter venues. Maybe this is closer to an excavation: the documentaries will dig and probe, onscreen actors will speak and confess, rage and make love, expose and deceive... but this is still all just a 2-dimensional conversion of something. The festival ticket-holders will view endless footage of stopped time: stories with closure, stories without closure, but still that moment is not viewable, is not rated, is not fathomable no matter how many feet of concrete will be invaded.

There are people here, and not even especially here, who substitute blood for ketchup, who are stalked by monsters that defy mortality and statistics, who are hungry beyond platefuls and rich beyond human need. Some of them walk among us while they are 'hovering'.  Their stories are entertainment. For some reason, the recent parade of contemporary horror films on cable seems to have plateau-ed at Halloween frequency. What is the meaning of this? We have plenty of on-demand Mad Men, Breaking Bad, 24-hour Law and Order; does not local news satisfy the voracious appetites of those who want to see cutting, stalking, fear, blood and guts on the sidewalk, child molesters, kidnappers and baby-killers?  Apparently Secret Service scandals do not even register on the meters of predatory minds which have been stroked by Quentin Tarantino and Eli Roth.

There are ticket-holders this week who would maybe prefer to watch the spectacle on Prince Street, like a real-time NCIS episode. So what are they looking for? If I were the parent, and I admit my heart would be pounding as I heard pneumatic drills...what possible truth will they want? Will breaking concrete reveal the movie of what it is they fear, or believe? Or perhaps it will show an accident gone wrong-- a bad decision, guilt and shame, that their child never suffered, that the murderer was kind, that he served cookies, that Etan is a 40-year old man somewhere in Idaho whose memory was whitewashed by an endless car-ride and a Christian life with potato cultivators and he is quite alive and well and looking distractedly past a photo in the Idaho Statesman of a blue tent on Prince Street in far-away Manhattan on page 11 as he eats his Captain Crunch with farm-fresh milk.

The unbearable endless freight train of not just death in our lives, but inexplicable suffering--- disease, war-wounds, bone-crushing crashes and building collapses, elevator decapitations...is this not enough? There must be a word in German for vicarious horror/pleasure in someone else's crippling pain, because this parade of on-screen horror seems downright competitive and not always in the name of art, although I do appreciate the irony of gratuitous violence in-- well, say Tarantino, to be conservative.

But this is not about film criticism. It is not about the nepotism and celebrity cult of the film festivals which, like everything else, for the most part have lost their 'edge' and who can really organize a successful event without the kind of 'bait' our culture requires? Writerless here has not purchased a Broadway ticket in so long, I wouldn't know what they look like. I have, I confess, skulked out of a musical at intermission,and I still maintain that real art takes away your appetite, so the success and culinary sophistication of concessions testify in my defense.  I am not buying.

There are cultures still where after a day of labor, and food, one lies down with one's mate or lover and enacts something. Or picks up an instrument and plays something we Americans find folksy and charming. Something real. Not myriads of self-promoting pro-tools users' musical products and digital emetics, but something maybe not meant for an audience. A message. Love. Something like that. Something to someone who is not online or texting but under an old quilt naked. Not Victoria's Secret naked either. Are we all immune to this stuff here? Have we externalized love, and the ingredients of art into something marketable and ripe for reproduction? Something that won't lose in the translation? Because it seems to me that anything of value loses in the translation, in the publicity phase, which maybe means that true art must be the tree that falls in the woods, or maybe I mean the conception of art, but we are all allowed to celebrate the baby.  And life, too... the horror of life, like the torment of Etan Patz's parents who were condemned to suffer some mythical fate of endless searching and missing, and how the theatre of the blue tent on Prince Street will not affect this myth because it is part of the artistic program of their life. Yes, art, like love, can be cruel. Picasso was endlessly cruel. Joseph Beuys, Chris Burden, Tony Oursler, even Warhol some will say (but I believe it was fear of cruelty).

So some of the films are cheap versions of life. Some of them are beautiful and important. Some of life is cheap. Beauty is unfathomable--- it sometimes comes with intelligence and soul and sometimes it is painfully disappointing and superficial, but beautiful nevertheless. Moments disintegrate; the concept of art and beauty does not, but our lives no longer take these things into account. We are inundated. By the good, the bad, the ugly, the horrific, the unbearablyfragile, the unapproachable. Most of us, in this culture, hoard the digital souvenirs. We parade and display them. We stockpile against future pain and loss, our Facebook fortresses will assure that we won't be ugly and old and alone. We have a Timeline. We can change our profile and our digital face.

Not. As my kids used to say. Not. But I will stay alive and create and try to spend a really naked night under an old quilt with only the passing traffic as soundtrack and say under my breath, because poetry is maybe not meant to be spoken-- quote that is, because to invent seems pretentious and narcissistic in a moment of intimacy, "while we are mortal, my love, to you nothing will be denied".

Trash and Vaudeville

At any given moment, assume one of your friends is depressed, one is having a nervous breakdown or terminal writer’s block or suddenly can’t get it up to have stage fright; one has a broken limb or appendicitis, or crippling tinnitus. Some weeks these crises align and your phone rings off the hook at 4 AM, those of you who are pathetic enough to still have one.

So I have a new diagnosis for virtually everything, including cancer and anxiety: Lethal Procrastination. Another expression for Life-as-we-know-it. Just having a diagnosis, for the hypochondriacs and drama queens among my callers--- is a little relief.

My Super has a Hummer. I am dumping coins onto my bureau, looking for the larger ones so I can make my monthly maintenance payment without a penalty, and my super who can barely speak any kind of language commonly understood in New York City has a free apartment on a posh street, a pretty great looking wife, an iPhone and a Hummer.

Nevermind that the main itinerary of this car is from side to side of our street to avoid city parking penalties, and maybe an occasional run to Home Depot. He no longer ‘does’ garbage or plumbing or cleans or much of anything but move the Hummer around and make calls on his coop-sponsored iPhone to union plumbers and maintenance men whose bills have caused my monthly maintenance to exceed my monthly income. Oh, he also opens envelopes at Christmas.

Speaking of trash... he has an aversion to this. But for me, Tuesday and Thursday nights on the sanitary Upper East Side are like archaeological documentaries. I, like my mentor Andy, am secretly fascinated by the ironic dichotomy of what some people need and others discard. By the way people eat sandwiches-- -what they leave, what they cut off, what they take home for their dogs, what they spill out, what they pick up. Their wives and girlfriends. The oreo cream-lickers, the potato-skin peelers, the bone suckers, the slurpers, plate-cleaners, cigarette stubbers. The confusion. The fact that my neighbors spent 6 million on re-finishing their perfect apartment and then hired an art consultant who spent another 6 million buying a celebrity artist’s ‘ready-made’ which is essentially something the guy found in the trash and glued onto something else he found. Points for the artist. Zero points for the people on the 2nd floor who paid $150,000 for some uninspired Grafitti from a Phillips’ auction when they could for $50 have hired our own doorman who has style and spends his nights tagging city landmarks and is quite famous in his ‘hood.

As often happens in middle age, I’ve lost my fashion footing. Besides being able to distinguish leather from vinyl, I can scarcely tell Forever 21 from Balenciaga. Well. Okay... not Balenciaga. But is it the case that some high-fashion does take inspiration from strippers and prostitutes? Plastic surgeons do. Jeff Koons and Richard Prince do. Editorial make-up and hair do, occasionally. Underwear. So if trash is on the mannequins, does it not follow that the real deal is in the trash? Old wood, art deco stoves, hand-made glass door handles. Books. Vinyl. Wagner boxsets. These things are on the sidewalk in the new regulation clear-plastic bags. Everyone loves a bargain; especially we New Yorkers, where on any given block you might see 10-30 'sale' signs, from groceries to services to clothing. But on Tuesday and Thursday nights curbside, your plastic and money are no good. These deals are unsullied by commerce, lucre, mark-ups and markdowns. They all bear the celestial pricetag. Free.

Of course the homeless and the professional bottle-collectors are well-aware of my neighbors’ failure to distinguish value, and they are hard at work on Tuesday and Thursday nights. There are even trucks to collect the furniture for resale and refinishing ---the stuff may even end up tarted up or further distressed at Urban Archaeology or one of those cavernous crammed trendy shops on Houston Street where a young couple or a design-star contestant will re-purchase some ‘vintage’ and spend a great sum to have it white-glove-delivered to some Manhattan loft.

Remember in Warhol’s movie, the shoes Holly Woodlawn got from the garbage? The ones that slickly dressed yuppie-guy tried to procure from her? In my senility I get them confused with the ones Beyonce was wearing on her last red-carpet appearance.

The Bi- and Tri-Cycle of Life. Stuff. Junk. New garbage. Crumpled cash. Trash. Vintage. Trash. Crash. I miss Andy. I could have gifted him my newly-chiseled Jenny-Holzeresque future-vintage recycled grave marker. He might not have perished so prematurely of Lethal Procrastination. Perhaps the fermented will indeed inherit the earth.