Summer Rooms

'If ever I would leave you,' my mother used to sing, 'it wouldn't be in summer...' but precisely 8 years ago she did just that.  Death has no rules or timeline, and is especially not going to align with poetic or lyrical predictions. Being the one sure consequence of life, it unfortunately informs all of our daily routines, and our higher thoughts. 

Last week's heatwave prompted some air-conditioned time at neighborhood museums.  The most moving pieces in the Rashid Johnson show were the ones that reminded me of death-- of killing and the indelible anxiety of blackness.  The Ben Shahn show-- a mere shadow in popularity-- was riveting for me-- his unique artistic activism which seemed to permeate all layers of injustice.  Of course as a post-mortem show, there is no platform from which he speaks... and in an era of limited media, his voice was not nearly as resonant as a super-star like Rashid in this day and age.  Artists are their own brand of entrepreneurs... the stakes are high and the rewards are massive, if one gets it right.

I also managed to stop by the Art Students League to see the retrospective of historic teachers' work.  It was soulful and quiet-- underwhelming but somehow important.  Unlike the Guggenheim, it is an old building with few upgrades.  One senses the history; it has changed little since I took a class or two in the 1970's. Purely analogue, and most if not all of the artists in this show have passed on. Unlike Rashid-- relatively young for the kind of collectability he has achieved-- their work must speak for them.  What is lost and undocumented does not affect the narrative, and most of these exhibitors will at best present as a kind of jigsaw puzzle missing a few pieces. At worst, they can be misunderstood, like an inventor/genius without a written will whose life's work ends up in a trash bin or a thrift shop.

As opposed to much of the contemporary museum fare, these paintings were 'dressed' down-- in old frames, sometimes made by the artists.  On a flea market wall they'd be hardly distinguishable to an untrained eye. While many of their makers had been in gallery shows and institutional collections, most of them ended up in middle-class homes as 'decor'. Scanning this quiet show, what is undeniable is the intention-- the day to day dedication to practice and technique without short cuts. When one mastered a certain platform, they might probe imagination and inspiration to break through to discover a new style... the organic progression of artistic genius.  These hanging works like the souvenirs of these achievements... not all brilliant but every one quietly embodying a certain skill... and a certain questioning of the basic tenets of illustration which long years of study had required.

Summer months I take in mail and water plants for my vacationing neighbors.  The younger ones generally have cleaning women who do this... but the older couples require my attention.  People my age and older have a higher tolerance for clutter than the new families with recent renovations. There are libraries-- stereo systems and record collections-- file cabinets and stacks of magazines and journals-- souvenirs from years of travel and family albums... furniture and handmade pillows-- knick-knacks-- mantel clocks, andirons, rugs... art. Their apartments tell a story... reveal their age and politics in a way that is comforting.  They are readers and former explorers... they are still, in older age, studying things-- listening. They do not text me but send an occasional email or even a postcard. 

Years ago musicians often stopped by my house-- to play me a new song, or go over arrangements and harmonies for a show.  I took this for granted.  The pandemic silenced us-- aside from that 7 PM clanging and ringing across the city, one respected that there were people who were ill and subdued.  We were solitary. As opposed to those joyful days when we'd crank up our stereo and open the windows, most people now use earbuds and stream their music. 

As a girl almost everyone had a piano-- some a grand Steinway, but most homes-- even poor ones-- had a kind of funky parlor instrument. People sat around and sang. In my house there was old sheet music that got stored in the piano bench.  When you Wish Upon a Star... with the little Jiminy Cricket cartoon on the cover... stands out in memory.  My Mom played and sang-- badly, but there it was... her favorite songs.  Everyone had a hi-fi, with a space for record albums... most families had the same Broadway classics... West Side Story, My Fair Lady...The Music Man.  We knew all the words. It was a kind of commonality.

When my son had his first 'away' playdate, I was told he wandered around the apartment looking for the boy's Mom's guitars. He assumed everyone was a musician like me.  These days guitars are a kind of accessory-- one sees them in department store windows, on the video 'set' of journalist and podcasters... there is often a guitar on a stand... in staged rooms on real estate platforms. 

My home tells a story. No longer do we use sheet music and write out our new songs on staff paper. Even I have a digital synth/piano which I play through headphones... but wandering through my older neighbors', I can almost hear my old Mom's childlike soprano shyly singing these songs to me.  I can smell the old music sheets and see the notes and chords as they were written-- as I taught myself, on the old piano... when life was black and white, when the 'practice' of music was woven into days and nights, and like a kind of religion, I believed in lyrics that promised no one would leave. 

THE ANTI-BARBIE

On the first day of second grade I was sort of the new girl, having skipped a year and moved up into a faster group.  I sat in front of a blond-haired boy who shared his lunch with me on the playground. He was 7 and destined to become a high-school girl-chaser and an incurable romantic, but he'd singled me out (I was all of 6 years old) right there as his primary 'mate'.  

On the first Friday of that term, a stack of comic books was left on the front stoop outside my house.  A blond boy with a bicycle had delivered this, my neighbor announced.  There must have been fifty or sixty-- the pile was quite as high as the milkbox.  Some Nancy, some Richie Rich-- but mostly Superman, and various other galactic beings and heroes.  As an early reader, I devoured books... took my wagon back and forth to the library where I loaded and unloaded. But comics? I'd never tried these, besides the Sunday strips which never interested me much.

It's sort of a love thing, my mother suggested... and being the youngest and smallest in my class, having a handsome attaché gave me status.  So I delved into Superman-- Bizarro world, kryptonite, Mr Mxyzptlk-- Lois, Jimmy and Clark. Besides Elvis on the car-radio it was my first real foray into pop culture.  It was also my first experience of peer-culture affecting my personal entertainment choices.  And while I spent long afternoons playing at the blond boy's house with his dog and his siblings, he never really seemed that into comics.  He could draw and paint, though, and we made things-- built things, played in the yard.  We were sort of inseparable for years... until I hooked up in the 6th grade with his twin brother. By Middle School, we barely spoke.  And besides occasional childhood Superman episodes and the 1978 movie, I had significantly more interest in rock and roll, folk music and anti-heroes. The only cartoons I indulged in were Robert Crumb-- Edward Gorey-- Beardsley... etc.

So it baffles me that the Marvel Universe has usurped a disproportionate sector of our entertainment bandwidth. Movies, Broadway-- as though the cult of the juvenile has infiltrated.  I guess I can relate to science fiction-- horror, although I'm much more drawn to psychological thrillers and historical bio-pics.  But all this costumery and the characters... with super-powers and fantastic abilities... it's fun to consider, but it's a multi-trillion dollar industry. Yes for children wearing capes on Halloween, even the dolls and figurines... but as grown-up film material?  I'm missing something here.

Sometime in the early 90's I was looking for a new apartment and happened on a loft space filled with massive Lego projects.  This was the home of a sophisticated architect and the structures and ideas were compelling; the sheer volume of tiny blocks was staggering.  But now-- the cult of Lego has exploded.  Movies-- theme parks... and of course one must appeal to parents who accompany their kids and buy the toys that engage the whole family.  Well, it's educational-- the building part-- the geometry, the planning, the engineering factor. But the endless contests... in light of our overwhelming world issues... it seems way too much brain-time is occupied with play.  

While we were all sleeping, or building Lego, watching Spiderman-- galactic fantasy and space wars... our own world is more than a little terrifying and overwhelmed. Was this the point?  Instead of worrying about the new NATO and the Ukrainian cluster bombs, it seems we are all watching Barbie.  We pay to have our brains distracted.  More people will see this movie than vote in the primaries, sadly.  

Apparently sixty-one percent of America does not believe in evolution.  While the scientists were debating this week about the designation of an Anthropocene era, the majority ignores the math. Are these the same people who watch the Marvel films?  Jurassic Park? Are the lines deliberately blurred between reality and fiction? While Hollywood was making all those techno-laced fantasy films,  AI was slipping into our entertainment DNA and only this week the actors have decided it was terrifying enough to shut it all down?

Today I saw a news piece about a new cruise-ship that looked like it was manufactured in Candyland.  The toy-culture rules the seas; five intelligent men boarded an expensive toy (directed by a Playstation controller!) and self-destructed on their way to a sort of deep-sea fantasy-fulfillment.  I also saw a 75 year old woman wearing a pink tulle skirt and a Barbie handbag.  Grown men in suits ride scooters around the city.  They wear T-shirts and uniform replicas just like their own children.  When did this begin? 

The NYPL is commemorating HipHop with new cards to attract users. I got mine this morning... and I already miss the old one.  I wanted to become part of this culture... and yes, I embraced Hip Hop... but now I feel a bit duped, like I traded in an old vintage Renault for a Lego car.  Here I am, an incongruous specimen of mid-century obsolescence-- with my books and my records and my technological illiteracy. 

Text me, my son says... and it sounds as though he is asking me to transform him into verbiage.  There's a kind of poetry in my failure to adjust to the mainstream.  I am not just gig-less but gigabyte-less. To me AI is and always will be the first name of the great artist Ai Weiwei.  Irony?  He seems to understand things.  His Lego version of the Monet Waterlilies was spectacular.  But I digress... a symptom of natural intelligence-- one of the flaws and distractions of not just curiosity but the aging me.  God willing I will not descend into some intellectual childhood and betray my adult values.  Victim or villain, persecuted or culturally excommunicated as I am occasionally by the consequences of my analogue stubbornness, I was surely born this way.