The Branding of Leonardo

Post-Thanksgiving for me is a calm time-- no more pre-Christmas frenzy in my current state of financial deprivation; my son and I managed to snag the very last tree of the Whole Foods Black Friday Event; it was deemed unsaleable because of a trunk defect-- tall and skinny, it was the one for me, and as it turned out, harbinger I hope it is, the ugly duckling Frasier swanned into utter holiday perfection.  A work of nature's art.

Anyway, with the scent of the forest, I was dared by an old friend to take an entire night 'off' and binge on reality television.  To parallel the US 'marketplace', the Housewives have morphed into a brand rather than the ridiculous parody of what happens when you mix the ingredients of mediocrity, extreme cosmetic prosthetics and Twitter with absolutely no content but scenery-- real estate-- restaurants, bad behavior, etc.  Their share of the store-bought network pie, from the jewelry, cars, homes-- is now huge.  The Kardashians have become a dynasty-- it's like the Partridge family with 21st-century values and portfolios.  Everything is scaled to enormity... and the words 'real' 'reality'.. 'real-real'... are everywhere, reminding us that we are being not just scammed but duped and insulted.  At least the cooking shows have some entertainment value although it baffles me that an audience is so hooked on an experience which depends primarily on the two senses missing from television.  Would we watch a Dylan concert with no audio? Doubtful.

It's been many years that we've overused the term 'really'; as a teenager I doubled it for emphasis... because like so many things, we need these words to prop up and convince.  Authentic-- another one.  Art these days often comes with a certificate, a pedigree or document.  Why?  Because its authenticity, in this sea of mysterious Monopoly money, is uber-questionable.  There used to be a chain of command... things were traceable and there were stamps and marks for ownership.  Things were commissioned-- things were kept in institutions or palaces-- churches.  Yes, things were stolen, occasionally.  But talent was unique and copyists were copyists.  Scholars kept logs of these things, which became catalogue raisonnés.  I studied Art History... connoisseurship and restoration.  It was a responsibility.  We looked and compared, had many hours in museum basements looking at forgeries, copies... comparing to masterpieces.  We discussed and often failed to conclude.

Then money entered the equation.  Art is one of the least regulated businesses.  It is mysterious and incomprehensible for many.  Collectors rely on 'experts' for advice and education.  Besides an important jewel, it is one of the few instances where one man can own something rare and unique.  Priceless, they say.   There is one Mona Lisa.  But we read about scandals-- even catalogue raisonnés where the authors received fees for certificates and inclusion.  The question of authenticity becomes dubious... which only seems to fuel the market further.  Cut to the Leonardo da Vinci sale... the star of the Post-War and Contemporary auction-- does this not, in itself, speak to us?  Okay-- since the $110 million Basquiat, all bets are off.  Wall Street loses and gains many billions each day.  This is the way money moves in a world where the managers make the market and profit either way.  A million dollars has become cheap in Manhattan culture.  Money has grown geometrically for the rich.  The housewives might have begun in apartments, but now they have jets... mansions; the Countess looks poor compared to her friends with the diet margarita-mixes and personal enterprises.  Their twitter audience is massive.  They rub shoulders with the celebrity culture and now our President himself is the greatest American reality show.  His brand and personal wealth will be many multiples of its pre-election worth.  Stupidity reigns and Greed is its Prime Minister.

But seriously... the Salvator Mundi-- it just doesn't look right.  There is a reason this painting was shelved and sold for a mere 45 pounds in my own lifetime.  No one claimed it.  The experts who taught me, way back, are gone. I doubt they would have been fooled. The restorer, from the IFA-- my alma mater, although I dropped out of the program because the ethics of restoration began to worry me.  This is big business now... and piles of crooked money are laundered through the art market-- masses of fakes are certified and authenticated and carry this like a vintage sheepskin.  I owned a Jean Michel Basquiat and a couple of things Andy gave me.  Did they have certificates?  No, they did not need paperwork because they were actually real.  At the time, of course, they were inexpensive.  Unmarketed art is affordable and sometimes very, very good.  There are artists quietly suffering and painting small masterpieces.  For the ultra-rich, this is not sexy.  Hedge funds do not buy a man selling home-goods on the street; they are invested in the geometrics of money.

Art, like religion, is suffused with belief.  The art market exists because collectors believe in the value of what is really a few dollars' worth of linen and paint.  It is a symbol, the way this da Vinci has become a symbol, to me, of the way anything can be marketed and deified-- not unlike those TV evangelists.  I hated this painting... found it uber-ironic that the number 45 was still in the figure-- with an additional string of zeroes.  The Christ figure crosses his benediction fingers... he reminds me a little of the king on the new BBC Versailles series-- the handsome and indulgent sovereign who is beginning to get a little fat and just corrupt enough to try to use religion to consolidate power.  Glam piety.

How many scrappy start-ups have gone public and raised a billion dollars overnight-- the market pushes up share prices and investors sell for profit?  Another kind of 'belief'.  Not to mention this is the way they can afford these paintings.  Monopoly money buys hotels, golf courses, mansions and art.  It's a whole network, an incestuous web of artifice and fantastic wealth.  Look at our president.  The Midas asshole of quackery.  The man-who-would-be King, if he could only....

At 3 AM, we watched a back-to-back of My 600-pound Life.  More dubious reality? You can't really make up this kind of thing.  What struck me is these people who consume food all day until they are literally paralyzed--  they are all poor.  They are mostly suffering from some childhood abuse issue... and they are not alone.  They have a partner who loves them-- enables, yes-- that, too.  But they have some kind of love the housewives lack?  The scale of obesity-- well, it maybe parallels the obscene scale of wealth on the other shows... this is a different kind of greed, though... it is some kind of inverted need that becomes desperate and personally destructive.  And they all have TVs.  Large ones.  They are victims of this culture, trying to make their way and failing on a massive scale.

I took a break and went up to Harlem to see what I could buy for $1.  I got 5 pounds of slightly defective but decent tomatoes.  A haul.  On the street I stopped to pick up a penny.  What you want that for, a man asked me as he smoked a butt in the mild night air?  Because it's real, I said.  I know it's real.  And it's free.  And I can trade it in anywhere.  Unlike the Salvator Mundi-- a very large title for a painting that enriched those involved in the deal... but saved no one. Certainly not the world.  My bad, Jesus might say.

The Tracks of Someone Else's Tears

It always seems my girlfriends eventually sync up their short-term relationship tidal clocks.  Things rise and fall, and suddenly they're each and every one slammed and up all night, and it's either a bottle or the phone.  Meanwhile I'm writing a song, and it's versus interruptus.   The words of Joseph Brodsky come to mind: if there is any substitute for love, it is memory.  Not, as they seem to insist, an online-arranged quickie or even a candidate from a  genuine husband-fishing site, or a blind date.  Really, nothing helps.  Memory, at this open-wound point, is painful and punishing.  Maybe notes for later, a revenge-blog--- a tear-producing contest, some really bad television-- okay, a couple of glasses of whatever you have on hand--never music, nor ex-boyfriends, films… not until a couple of layers of new skin have 'set'.

For those of us with some perspective--e.g.,  long-term serious heartbreak,  ribbon-worthy emotional challenges, kids who have had issues, family deaths… any kind of life seems preferable to the devastation of which we have had a peek.  I am no longer fussy about what I eat, and although I draw the line at fast-food coffee, most nights I'll say grace to a minimal plate, and pray for a hot shower and no muggings.  I occasionally wade out into relationship low-tide, but if I'm going to swim, I wear a rubber suit and bring my own oxygen.  Just saying.

Parentally speaking,  I'm way more unhinged when kids are upset-- for whatever reason.  It may be co-dependence, it may be hyper-mothering-- but there's that extra-sensory ghost of guilt hovering whenever our own offspring are flirting with the language of failure.  Every love relationship has a sort of death-throe-- even the healthy ones shed a skin and eventually morph into something less passionate and desperate; but when our kids are in flux, somehow the smoky nightmare of a child's suicide haunts me.  They are so fragile-- so unprepared, and it is my fault for sending them out into the world with plenty of warm sweaters and a decent education but an underdressed tender heart.

So I listen, and I empathize, because I have now let this little thread of fear weave itself into my night--- the kind that makes us prick up our ears at the sound of a siren and dread the local news.

Two stories that diluted my girlfriend-empathy and haunted my weekend--(besides the Weight Watchers poster-boy governor who had the amazing idea to handle his bridge and tunnel politics with the same solution his personal GI surgeon used on his gut).  One was the uptown oncologist who maybe let go of his son's hand for a second--- a split second-- and we all know how boys hate to hold hands especially when they've just been to their after school sports program or a peer playdate…  and the other was the 4-year-old boy who by some utter lapse in the system was helplessly left in the hands of sick sadistic monsters who were ironically paid by some agency for the opportunity of torturing this child literally to death and who had managed while still alive to remark to a witness that ' he's not sure about God'.  And still, being starved, burned, beaten and abused--- no one, including his birth mother and her posse band of lawyers--- was protesting until the cameras were turned on and the little coffin was being prepared.

Personally I remember 2 incidents that really threw me: once, I left my baby boy with his Grandma for about 2 hours and when I returned, she was weeping and blurted out---'he's not going to make it…'
I quickly realized she was referring to her 80-year old cardiac-compromised brother.  But for a brief moment, the bottom dropped out of my life and this simultaneous self-loathing and matricidal passion came up like a tidal undertow.  The second was one of those middle-of-the-night phone calls during rough teenage years, with a teary voice on the other end (my son's best friend) hysterically sobbing 'I can't tell you--- it's just too bad…' and me collapsing on the floor in grief and shock… and then barely hearing the next most beautiful words I have ever heard '... in jail'.  Still, for those seconds, twice--- I felt I could almost know the devastation of this very worst parental punishment.  But not quite.

We are each the center of our universe and for most of us our own personal grief is larger than any empathic sorrow we can feel for massive devastations and tragedies.  There are fires and typhoons and mutilations and war and genocide and earthquakes.  And here we sit in our little for the most part warm rooms-- worrying about stock portfolios, arthritic pets, bills-- crying over a broken relationship.   On the news disappointing retail sales numbers get slightly more time than these 2 children-- one well-cared, well-dressed and carefree-- the other a victim of suffering and abuse-- both innocent-- both just here-- 4 days ago-- -and now gone-- irreversibly, devastatingly, terminally and hopelessly absent; one leaving a father forever damaged, and the other leaving all of us with a hopeless sense that we have failed.  And I sit here, grateful that my own has survived another day, that this siren waxing and waning outside is not   for one of 'mine'-- not yet, anyway…  and feeling somehow guilty and sad and slightly fortunate at the same time.

And somehow, in some horrific version of television irony...I clearly hear, from my machine which is now airing some early morning repeat of some 'Pathetic Reality' show-- because this is what they are, these endlessly regurgitated variations on a revolting cheap theme-show yawn-- a woman saying 'Girl...Jesus might be okay as a companion, but you can't fuck him' (bleeped, of course--- but not so that you can't hear it).

I am a so-called rock-chick.  I have seen and done many things that have made my own mother compelled to distance herself.  So what misplaced, disinherited genetic morality trait has brought me to feel today like I have been sliced in half and dared to throw my lot in with some Solomon who has failed to step in to tell me or anyone else in this culture what to do about it?  Come back, Joseph Brodsky, and give us another option.

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.

Super-placebo

Mild weather may be diluting February doldrums, but for the hardcore winter sufferers, it's like getting the placebo instead of a bad drug.
I'm no football fan, so Superbowl Sunday for me is a version of a Valentine's Day with no date, but it was almost impossible, in New York City, not to catch some epidemic enthusiasm and old-fashioned American spirit. Not to mention the betting, the bars... for so many, it was better than New Year's eve.. .then the parade... and then the cleanup, and the post-gig let-down. So what is there to look forward to now...I guess baseball season, and we've got Jeremy Lin to distract us from the insufferable Republican bickering. To me, we have the placebo candidates; maybe I'm jaded and old, but the whole election process feels like an audition for Student Model Congress. Or maybe the latest Bravo reality show. Nothing is real-- even the hair dye and lock enhancement. I'm beginning to miss Ronald Reagan.

For the hard-core sports-addicted, the die-hard Giants fans, what can we offer for a 2-day hangover? My son broke up with his girlfriend Superbowl Friday. The game was a bit of a drug for him, but it was like watching through gauze in black and white. Of course I don't have HD and my TV is so small and pathetic, I can hardly distinguish players running around. So I thought about how here I am, sitting in front of the smallish set like a good 1950's-style American, bonding with the non-political majority, trying to enjoy the commercials, trying not to hate Madonna as much as I do, thinking ironically about Whitney's Star Spangled Banner rendition so many years back, not realizing that footage was to haunt me just a few brief weeks later.

But I also thought about non-celebrity people-- how someone was maybe getting married or engaged, someone was about to receive a cancer diagnosis, someone was having a baby, her husband cursing the timing...someone was maybe even losing a baby, burying a pet, tending to a demented spouse or parent, cooking dinner, changing diapers, dying. Someone was robbing the apartment of a family watching the game at a party. Someone was killing. Someone somewhere was being murdered. And underneath my window, to bring me out of my reverie, some kids were outside throwing a football around, unable to keep their dream on hold even long enough to watch the goddam game.

At 5 AM, we'd all binged on the recaps, recaps of recaps, reruns, interviews, repeats of interviews... some were sleeping, dreaming, sleeping it off, having drunk casual sex with a fellow reveller... whatever. Giselle had dissed the team, Donald Trump had come out on her side, Tom looked a little down, but how bad can life be when your consolation prize is the Sports Illustrated cover girl. I didn't even enjoy the game, but I was feeling the slump.

I was in my apartment remembering how it felt when your boyfriend cheats on you, and you obsess all night and finally at 5 AM when you swear you can see the premonition of blue light in the dawn sky, you breathe. You think--- they've done it--- they've maybe done it twice or even three times, and they're asleep, and beginning to anticipate how to greet the morning-after. To slink out, sheepish...to kiss and swear eternal love, to play over their phone messages and regret. To decide how to lie. To lie. Somehow, just knowing it was over gave me a tiny sense of relief. Maybe they felt bad. Whatever; they never feel as bad as I do.

I tried to communicate this thought to my son, but he wasn't buying. Middle-aged insight isn't appealing to a 22-year old. Pain is personal, as most of us have learned. We process it, feel it, medicate or invite it, as we choose. Maybe the only real personal freedom left to us. What I'd really like to tell him is that maybe loneliness is the beginning of something... that so much of life is like the back of a car getting smaller as it drives irreversibly down the road of our past, and we can only helplessly witness this in our present. That maybe some of life is running after that car, or turning around and refusing to watch it.

One day he'll look back and this particular Superbowl, the Giants victory, will be weighted with sadness and loneliness. For Whitney Houston's daughter-- -God knows if she liked football, or will know Cruz who grew up in Newark, her Mom's home town... she will think... my Mom was still here, maybe acting crazy or erratic--- but she was here. I could have told her not to get into that car, I could have emptied the tank of gas.

Maybe these people don't think the way I do... maybe they don't like songs like Mary Jane's Last Dance or say things like 'when blue suede shoes meant something'. Maybe they just talk it out and don't ride the train all night inventing lyrics and looking for the car with the most homeless sleepers so I can absorb their stench and their shadow because I've earned exactly that.

I remember sitting in my infant son's room on a cold January Sunday night, listening to that sweet calm breathing, inhaling the indescribable intoxicating scent of baby, rocking in his chair. I was not marveling at the super-sized 45 point lead the 49-ers had secured over the Broncos. I had no inkling then that for years I'd find myself sharing this night with my growing son, being educated about rushing yards, incompletes, tight ends, penalties and flags. Instead I was wondering about where my husband was sleeping, whether it was important that I know, waiting for it to be over, wanting the placebo-- the way he had the placebo, always... but knowing I'd never take it, because I'd always need it straight up, with the shadows and the curtains and the morning afters and the endless cars driving away down the road.

Lebron in the City

Forget the oil spill, the World Cup, Lindsay Lohan’s expiring Get–out-of-Jail-Free card…. Here’s … Lebron. Not only does his sheer stature occupy serious pixel real estate on your TV, but now his management has decided to play with prime –time TV in a new game where the odds are interesting gambling sites a good deal more than the recent play-offs.

Maybe he’s jealous that Lamar Odum is picking up an extra paycheck from the Kardashian show, or maybe he felt jilted that he wasn’t invited to the televised wedding. Suddenly the traditional meaning of ‘game’ is no longer enough… there has to be a press angle, a reality show. For a player who has the potential status of a Michael Jordan, this kind of publicity seems somehow unfitting… but now there is Hitchcock-worthy suspense, a media-spin signing competition with huge ESPN resonance, and no doubt advertising time is beginning to rival superbowl minutes.

The current boy-King is currently in Greenwich--- not a traditionally homey place for black people, unless, of course, you are a Knickerbocker or a Yankee star. This is hedge-fund territory, a town of no malls and many Ferraris, maybe the country’s largest per-capita wine cellar acreage.

Anyway, we will sit looking at our cellphones and take our place in an audience larger than that of any recent presidential address for a one-hour extension of a pronouncement which could at best be slowed down to a 30-second sentence, including family and professional appreciation. What will he be wearing? Armani? Tommy Hilfiger? Will it be blue and orange? Tommy has done these colors-- lives in Greenwich, along with Alan Houston, David Cone….getting warmer? Will he be holding his child, standing with his wife? Will she be wearing a hat? Will Mrs. Obama’s favorite designer be making an emergency trip to Greenwich? What does Mrs. James look like anyway and will she be signing up for the newest version of Housewives of Greenwich?

The suspense is killing me. Not. But speaking of TV, I was forced to sit in front of the set to witness one of those Project Art-star episodes, produced by the fashion-savvy Sarah Jessica Parker who is Bravo-friendly and not well-known for her art expertise. And Simon de Pury…. Was it not enough for Phillips to have sold out to a champagne company…now they belong to a Russian conglomerate whose ruthless retail philosophy has little to do with art but much ado about marketing? The Warholian joke has long been exhausted, and besides the numerous PBS documentaries and the prayer that the computer age will improve the art of television, there is little compatibility between art and the TV runway. Mr. de Pury looks and acts ridiculous and the so-called gallerists are over-styled and pathetically a-philosophical. The Brooklyn Museum must be more desperate than during the 1970’s.

I was frankly baffled by the thought process of each and every one of the ‘artists’, and found one of the bottom-3 pieces very slightly better than the signature work of the visiting art-star of the week whose work is a sad and sorry example of what passes today as bankable and collectible. Bring on the Russian influence--- the grunting sexy tennis stars and the botoxed new breed of Spies--- the litigious girlfriends and models, the histrionic drama-queen skating stars and dancers.

What happened to Tolstoy and Chekhov, Gontcharova and El Lissitsky? Okay, Chagall moved to Paris. What next… Lebron in Moscow? Something suspiciously Russian about all the drama… the Nets have gone Russian… Chelsea… but not many Nets players in Connecticut… So could it be that the Knicks are about to be bought? We’ll be watching at 9 PM… which is 2 AM Greenwich time? The one that’s closer to Moscow.