Physical Graffiti

I'm feeling like one of those cartoon characters, hoisting myself onto the ledge of the deep well of September, having clawed my way up walls with no footholds, no light… the tarry residue of recent events stuck to my skin, matting my hair, coating the bottom of the pit with the purgatorial sludge of beyond-my-control.

For those of us who have been watching the PBS Vietnam documentary, we are somehow haunted by the resonance of the messages-- or the absence of message-- in those events which both brought us together and split us apart.  History and hindsight are crucial to understanding.  Lack of transparency, skewed communications, mixed motives all contributed to the catastrophe that was this war.  These lessons are surely not absorbed or understood by our current Lego-esque president who is tragically under-qualified for most any position of leadership.  We saw various styles of politicians; were often betrayed by those we trusted most.

Besides the personal losses of recent days, the political climate, natural disasters and tragedies have made our lives that much less 'safe', our nights that much more sleepless.  Despite the news that the average American's income has risen, I find my artistic friends more encumbered than ever with impossible rents, dwindling income, constantly inflating everyday expenses.  I have down-sized virtually everything-- buy nothing at this point except cheap food on sale at varieties of markets.  It requires vigilance and time to glean the necessary information, and miles of walking to achieve the smallest victory over the relentless threat of poverty like an enemy ambush, waiting to take me down.

I do not miss the tiny luxuries-- a coffee in a cafe, occasional sushi box, new boots-- and manage to find museums and exhibitions without fees, but in this time of desperate global need I feel humiliated that I cannot contribute.  I'm no longer young and able-bodied enough to be part of some rescue or rehab coalition, and I have little to offer but my cheap grief, no matter how heartfelt.  'You ain't changin' no lives here, baby,' my local homeless man reminds me when I sacrifice an occasional quarter into his cup.  It's humiliating.

So I'm especially offended by the grotesque luxury culture that seems to be a sort of status quo among way too many Americans, whether they can afford it or not.  Because I was gifted a privileged education, I did rub shoulders and trade licks with some of these people in my past.  They make fun of me and occasionally offer me money; when they show up at gigs I buy them a drink.  I do accept payment for my books and cds.  But last week one who happens to be building some new residence of palatial proportions called me up and told me he's thinking about buying a urinal.  'You mean like the Duchamp, I asked in utter disbelief, realizing that for a split second I registered 'unicorn'?'  'No,' he replied, 'I'm not that sophisticated.  But for my billiards room (contiguous to the cigar bar)... I thought it would be a hoot. '  So I laid into him… about how I knew plenty of guys I could get to provide poolroom atmosphere and men's room grit, who would grind out their cigarette butts on his mahogany floors and stink up the place with street-sweat and the poetics of ghetto-slang and give him credibility.  Not to forget the gender ramifications, etc.  He can always rely on me for a 'dressing down', as he called it.

I hung up and in my head began to rack up the unpaid debt people like Banksy owe Duchamp.  For me there was one urinal.  He did not keep on repeating himself and was incredibly clever and inventive.  I remembered walking with another friend, passing one of those exquisitely quilted walls layered with various random graffiti souvenirs and posters-- rippings and peelings that rival any great Ab Ex museum painting for beauty and depth.  My friend wanted to remove one of the particularly brilliant postings and have it framed for his collection. We argued.  Next day I went back and sure enough, it had been skillfully excised like the work of some plastic surgeon.

It's not enough that these people have made LVMH and Ferrari massive billionaire brands… that they own and own and renovate and build and collect.  They now must own what was made by and meant for everyone-- especially the poor among us who don't have the same access to visual artistic stimulation.  Basquiat has become the quintessential collectible of these inner sanctums and massive living rooms.  The Basquiat I knew who threw his gut and brain onto old doors and walls… is now the ultimate status symbol.  Duane Hanson used to make facsimile sculptures of homeless people-- like his wink to these collectors.  In my old art dealing days I placed one of his Museum Guards in a huge Park Avenue foyer.  A sort of joke, but with another meaning that boded ill for private art fantasies.  A version of Jean Michel is rolling in his grave, while the worse version feels flattered.  Andy, too.  Fortunately for me, there are so few museum shows I really regret missing lately; it seems these institutions have bowed to the culture of Instagram and popularity.  Art galleries are filled with stuff that seems amateurish and shallow.  But I'm a cranky old no one.  What do I own?

On top of my plate of cheap rice this week has been the disgraceful intrusion of a lone hater with a fake name, hiding behind a pretentious Facebook profile and slandering and posting accusations and falsehoods.  I play music… I go home.  I write books and columns, I give my poetry away almost daily.   I worry about how to pay my monthly maintenance; I stretch dollars and perform tiny economic acrobatics.  It is distressing and discouraging.  For three days I cannot shake the image and repeated accounts from the Vietnam documentary about the hills-- the bloody, senseless military operations to occupy a hill-- causing massive casualties and deaths… and then… the hills are abandoned-- like a wicked game, like the ultimate Sisyphean war tale.   And then my stalker-- attempting to level the tiny reward of my creative inner conflict, like a grenade of hatred.  I am haunted; I am angry.  I own this.

The 18-hour series ended with the anthemic 'Let It Be' playing over the final credits.  Somehow this infuriated me.  Let it be?  A message of apathy and concession after reliving the whole disengorging saga of the 1960's?  The Beatles?  Let Puerto Rico be, as President Lego would do?  Let Mexico be? Let the rich eat cake and the poor starve?  Let the current pop culture undermine history and prioritize sacred museum space with the products of fashion and commerce while they discard the true foundations and sacrifices that constitute art?  Not me.  I will fight.  I will resist… old and weak as I am, I will try to express my contempt for what is morally hideous and grieve for the poor under-acknowledged saints and martyrs of this abysmal culture whose memory grows shorter and shorter, dimmer and dimmer… fade to black.

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.