Grey Area

I watched Liv Ullman's 2014 production of Miss Julie the other night. It was compelling in a way but also deeply flawed.  Not the play itself-- but the chemistry between the players seemed lacking.  Two very great acting talents... Jessica Chastain, one of my favorites, did as well as she could have, but Colin Farrell was awkward in and out of clothing and spoiled her performance. 

It brought me back to my high school introduction to drama; we are all spoon-fed Shakespeare in middle school in the form of Romeo and Juliet... and we are initiated via Hamlet to more serious theatre and language. But Strindberg?  I remember so well reading this play-- as well as Ibsen and Beckett and even O'Neill.  I'm not sure this is still part of the curriculum.  There is something about experiencing these tragedies when one is discovering one's sexuality but has little opportunity... that makes it all that much more 'dramatic'.

The summer season of Shakespeare in the Park has just begun. People were lining up for tickets at 3 AM yesterday.... it's super popular and for many the plays still have a kind of familiar discovery. I imagine the actors reciting these lines every night, like a kind of repetitive theatrical rite of passage.... somehow Shakespeare holds up. Not that Strindberg did not, although there is the translation issue... and Liv Ullman's cinematographic choices were very good... it was just somehow the delivery. 

Lately I've been reevaluating tastes... the novels I've loved can let me down at this age... some were perhaps innovative enough to feel dated now-- disappointing.  Last week I read an Italian late-80's novel which was raved about in the Paris Review.  While it brought back to life the terrible tragedy of the AIDS crisis, much of it seemed predictable... even the soundtrack seemed clichéd-- Morrissey, Smiths, Pet Shop Boys...One wonders if old crushes would have the same deflated appeal. The films of memory-- some are still brilliant and fun-- others cringeworthy.  

But I'm feeling a bit harsh and judgmental.  Woody Allen has been boring me.  My own massive bedside reading offers a daily struggle to finish a project that seems less worthy than weighty. Yes, I'm aging and jaded. As a kind of social experiment, over the past few months I've stopped coloring my hair.  It's given me an opportunity to see where I physiologically am in this process, and also to experience full-on the agism of our culture. In the mirror I wonder if I am simply a discerning, educated adult, or a cranky old so-and-so. Still on the fence, lol.

One thing that follows me-- color or no color, is the constant ebb and flow of grief... perhaps the universal common denominator.  I have celebrated so many birthdays, so many anniversaries... and yet I have logged a complementary accumulation of 'years since'.  Reunions are celebrated by collegians but more of my 'landmark' occasions have become memorials... observed not by ceremony but often merely the privacy of a simple notation. I had the terrible task of notifying a sector of people about a friend's recent death. Among the replies were two in-absentia emails from children, letting me know the person I contacted had passed.  This is more and more common.

And among the griefs and mortal losses which are unprocessable are the abandonments and relationship dissolutions... those whose spouses or paramours have moved on or given up, who have become unhappy with and less unhappy without, leaving their partner desolate. These narratives are fairly consistent in dramatic production... they are perhaps secondary to death but for some, equally painful.  

Looking harshly in daylight at one's face without makeup, without expression or hair color... one feels a bit more unlovable, a bit obsolete and unappealing. The reality of aging-- one of the natural progressions of life-- has a kind of purpose.  While culture spends a huge market share in its defiance, its reality makes the prospect of an exit just a little more bearable.  We have traded passion for wisdom, hopefully... and the price of a long wonderful warehouse of years is our increasing fragility-- our withering beauty and our vulnerability.  

Are we less sensitive?  We are not.  We don't cry like babies but our griefs pile up like sacks of grain and some days it takes effort to keep things from expressing themselves as tearfulness.  We are quiet, most of us... we have not suicided or overdramatized like Miss Julie but we have assimilated sorrow.  We have faded. 

I can still play rock and roll... I still feel my internal motor rev when I hear the opening chords of AC/DC.  But I am leaning toward listener more than player; I am well aware of my chronology. Will I tough it out and let the greying takes its place?  I actually looked up Liv Ullman who was 76 when she made Miss Julie.  Knowing her persona, she surely accepted her natural hair color and facial processes. She is not just beautiful but glowing with talent even now, at 87.  

My son doesn't like the natural hair; it ages him.  As I said, it's been an experiment. Some people have been kind and complimentary; my very honest girlfriend yesterday told me to run-not-walk to the nearest drugstore and buy any box dye, that she cannot bear to look at me.  Am I mirroring the harsher version of herself? I'll probably concede... for today, I'm still hanging in the grey area. 

Easter Banksey

I looked over two estate sales today at the auction houses. Michael Crichton… his collection seemed smart and corporate-literate. As though he’d had an advisor, and his own point of view in a way… scientifically collected, with a few impulse-buys. One wonders about these celebrities…doesn’t he have a family, don’t these things have personal value or do they pay tribute by having the public bidding on a piece of their life, in plain view—I mean, it’s not like a piece of Elvis or Marilyn Monroe… does the provenance provide security? I’d feel better with a picture from an artist, someone who knows.

Then there was Nina Abrams… a world-class human. Her ‘collection’ was all over the place, from Picasso and Warhol to stuff made by the school janitor. That makes her a good person. I poked through one of those Christies jumble sales… lives there, the way you see cartons of books in cheap thrift shops… filled first with college texts, then books on investing money, mortgages, then wedding planners, What to Expect When You’re Expecting, Private School Catalogues, then a bunch of novels, self-help and diet books… in the end some books about dying and meditating and Illness as Metaphor… then the carton. Done. My kids won’t even bother putting them in a carton--- they’ve already assured me everything will be in a dumpster next day while they put a cinema-sized flatscreen on the wall with whatever pathetic IRA money I may or may not have left.

Still, I look at the paintings… a few estates with good stuff in crummy frames because they cared about the art, not the décor. I like to find things. The galleries and big sales are riddled with landmines and holes, re-packaged gum wrappers and inflatable toys, but I can still hear some things calling me with a bell-clear voice. Which gets hard amidst all the hype and drama. Noise in our culture. No wonder no one can see straight. We give up listening.

That girl that got herself killed on the 6 train because she jumped down to get her phone… she wasn’t listening. Except for her ringtone. A man who came into the station just after it happened said he saw her arms sticking up—like a mannequin… he thought it was a dummy or a doll— a set maybe. I was in the train behind, cursing and stuck with the other pissed-off passengers until they made an announcement. Then the noise stopped. For a few minutes, anyway.

Yesterday I was on that platform.. like nothing happened… thinking there must have been tiny residual bits of flesh and body that got eaten by the rats. They have no way of judging. In a way this is all the democracy left.

I came out of my friend’s gallery in Chelsea and there was an ambulance--- a body on a gurney, covered-- you get that feeling, that sick feeling—it could be you-- 20 minutes ago that person was looking at a painting and a chandelier fell on their head… or an elevator malfunctioned… or their heart just got sick of the overtime…whatever. Then I realized… someone was directing---it was all being filmed. They were just actors… or it was an art piece… a performance thing… and people were looking, people had had emotion...because they thought it was real. It was drama. Maybe the woman who jumped—she was a drama queen. Or the kid from Yale. What was he saying? The goddamn Empire State Building. Empire Skate my little boy used to say. If you want to end it all, there are better ways. Quiet ways. Ways that don’t risk falling on some 4-year-old future genius or his mother. But these people are not being followed by paparazzi and maybe they just
wanted something. Some interest.

Banks--- they have no interest in you. They only care about rich people. They deduct and deduct and there is no more INTEREST for the customer. They have your money—if you want theirs, pay for it. Something happened since I was 5 and opened up my first little savings account with a book and a lollipop and interest. Now they charge you 50% of your money in fees and give you a pen that lasts long enough to sign a few checks.

My friend is married to a teddy bear. He is Harry Potter and the Pillsbury Doughboy. But here’s the thing: He’s a teddy bear with money. He earns money, he shits money. Apparently.
Sexy guys shit real shit. And sometimes it stinks. Sometimes they shit on your life.

I once had a dog. It wasn’t a poodle but it had soul. It messed stuff up.
In the end these people.. .they’re alone with their poodles and their paid housekeeping-neatness and their stupid well-framed Richard Princes and Bankseys and their money.

Every few weeks lately… I get this feeling, like my personal banks are going to flood along with all these forgotten people who get 10 inches of rain in one day and cresting rivers with no functioning dams and no interest from the banks and insurance companies. … I can feel it rising...

Yesterday the phone rang.. .and it is my best friend—the one that shot heroin and was broke and sleeping on sofas and cried about it, the one that dressed up like an UES woman going to tea and still shot heroin—the one I took for her amnio 4 months pregnant who pretended to be clean and shot up in the Mt. Sinai toilet. That one.

Well, she’s producing rock bands now and getting paid all kinds of money to make them ‘industry-ready’ which basically means she sucks dick and acts like they’re sucking hers. But we know better. Yeah, she buys $500 Starbucks cards and gets driven around the city with $100 take-out bags… but the thing is, what happened to her SINGING? I mean, life sucks unless you are painting or singing. Or whatever. Listening.

She’s got money, she says… like she’s better than I am. Money.. .what is it in the end but a ticket to nothing, to nowhere, because you’re a passenger…you’re the audience. You’re not shit. You eat expensive shit.

You’re getting dark, she says. But I didn’t even get started.