Family Ties

Crossing the uptown park today, it occurred that I had neglected my regular walks and visits.  The Reservoir at sunset-- the usual tourists and locals waiting for the golden minutes to coat buildings with rare urban incandescence-- and a tiny jet trail in the sky, like a distant reminder of the newest American war. The water still covered with a clean-ish snow and ice-layer... one wondered where the ducks were hiding.  I'd last seen them squawking and flapping during the New Year's Eve fireworks... trying to process the fear from what they undoubtedly perceived as an attack... sounding a group alarm-- a warning. 

Difficult to process that we are stepping into the third month of this year... the way the future seems accelerated and indifferent, as though it already belongs to someone else and we, the elders, are being ever more quickly left behind. I'm not quite ready to admit that my February has poured its diminished sand into the March glass which is thankfully one of the longer ones.

Just a week ago the geese seemed agitated and aware of the pending blizzard; more than metereologist predictions I trust bird wisdom; after all, in an Olympic season, they have broken all distance and speed records with their migratory skill. 

Weather issues kept us from outdoor rituals and had me watching more of the Milan games than I anticipated. The rewards and heartbreaks of these uber-athletes are not just entertainment. The best among them have a sort of super-power-- a fixation on a personal goal that transcends parameters.  Others have a kind of competitive energy-- occasionally one sees a speed skater look back, the way racehorses and animals do not. There is team spirit, but rarely a tie in these games.

Personally I've never had that competitive edge, although I recently realized, being the second daughter, that my arrival was the single most psychologically affecting factor in my older sister's life. I never quite assessed my own value, the way she undoubtedly knew every measurement, grade, achievement, failure and bank balance. I gave up plenty of allowance, treats, gifts... just to retain her good will.  It was an endless quest which both my cousins and good friends were quick to notice.  My mother, too, often whispered in my ear ('don't tell your sister'), knowing her nature.  

I have girlfriends, as an older woman, whose friendship is everything for me.  Among them, a few whose subtle lack of trust and critical eye betray childhood indoctrination with this archetypal jealousy, for want of a better word. It's Biblical-- it's Classical... Shakespearean and Fairy Tale subject. It's motivating for some-- they've amassed fortunes and risen to the top of their corporate structures.  For me, it has stained what I would have wanted to keep as a sacred bond-- like ducks and geese, caring for one another.  In my world, it began as the simple coveting of things, progressed to tattletales and toxic narratives culminating in manipulating our aged parents and forging a will which deprived my son and me of all due material inheritance.

Does this make people feel better? Is cheating, lying, scheming, declaring war a means to some kind of inner peace?  It is not.  It is a self-consuming fire that burns and at worst motivates people to become Dateline-worthy murderers and felons. It is maybe an accident of simple birth order... or a true sociopathic embedded obsession.  Over and over I listen to our self-Midasized President who has amassed the largest pot of any previous political office-holder. He can't stop comparing himself to his predecessor-- to downgrading and maligning every Biden-authored program or decision. Will it ever be enough, for a man whose insidious ambition should disqualify him from any of the honors he craves?  

I remember reading The Bad Seed as a small girl and worrying. Watching the Olympic ceremonies-- the medal counting and the bestowing of these symbols of greatness (some of them breaking, ironically)... what would our lives be without these competitions... the lists of bank accounts and billionaires, the excessive piling of assets? It's a little alarming.  Even literature-- poetry-- music... must be 'qualified' and categorically numbered.

As the second-born, I came into the world as 'less'.  I would always be younger, less privileged, less skilled.. at least through childhood. I played the game-- I hung back, I let her have the yellow and green M&Ms and the extra brownie. I covered for her indiscretions and bad love affairs.... at my own cost. I remember sitting in the back seat of a 1960's Firebird freezing in my nightgown and robe while my sister had some kind of sexual encounter with a married gym teacher in his toolshed. Did I divulge the cause of my bronchial infection and school absences? No-- I non-judgmentally indulged my Sister-master.  I might still-- today-- if I weren't absolutely prohibited by friends and other family. I would watch my smaller purse open, the pictures come off the wall... the never-satisfied hunger of some deep deranged desire drain my resources.  And still... I feel whole... I feel sorry for the perpetrator.  Not the President... but my sister, who has a bit of that side-eyed bitterness and deep resentment.  It's unfixable.

There are no more disturbing tragedies than the ones in our own family-- no worse missed opportunities of love and protection and alliance.  It is no wonder the world cannot seem to balance itself, to tolerate and allow, to disagree and smile.  I've heard the moon will turn blood-red Tuesday.  Tonight it seemed so innocent and slightly diminished, like a transparent spot on the still-blue eastern sky at sunset.  I rely on her sisterhood-- from the night sky through the Firebird windscreen to her recovery from the pending eclipse-- surely one of a dwindling number I will eventually not total.

Tarkovsky Unbound

As the snow began falling last night, I watched Andrei Rublev in its uninterrupted magnificent entirety, grace to TCM which like a kind of benevolent media-goddess allows me to view spectacular things in random offerings at 3 AM.  Reading Tolstoy and Dostoevsky in winter months has been a kind of life-habit for me; the concept of war in frigid landscapes-- the freezing soldiers and the blood-stained snow-- is uber-horrifying.  Given the tensions on the Ukrainian border, the vicious attacks of the Tatars and Russians seemed poignant and relevant.  How greed of all kinds has scarred the dignity of mankind... 

Coming up from the 6 train at Union Square this morning, it occurred to me that it was a day like this when the beloved Charles Otis slipped on the subway stairs at 125th Street and broke his neck.  No battle, no attack... just a random tragic accident that ended his drumming and shortened his story.  No responsibility from the city; apparently, when a snow event is ongoing, there is no accountability for a fall.  Be cautious, drummers and musicians, I whispered under my breath; we cannot afford to lose another.  

It was another day like this that my young father, closed in behind the French doors of the den, covered in newspapers and heavy with the burden of a young family, drank himself into some kind of hospital-worthy state.  I remember piling up some record albums as a step-stool, peering in through the glass door windows at my handsome Dad sprawled on the sofa, high-ball glass in hand, football on the TV console.  Don't bother him, my Mom warned; I was concerned.  My father's parents came from Russia-- one from Ukraine... they settled in upstate farmland and weathered the tough winters with stoicism and bitterness.  Maybe their genetics affected his dark winter heart... they were long gone by the time I was born. 

The blessing of snow, like a consecration-- like temporary forgiveness-- of course reminds us of the joy of cancelled classes, of pond-skating and hill-sledding on a weekday afternoon... hot cocoa and mother-love... bundling up my own son to stand among Christmas trees on Park Avenue and survey a silent city-- the drifts and piles untouched and inviting.   In those days, children prayed for snow.

My older neighbors are more shut in than ever.  They fear falls on the ice, do not navigate well in the crosswalks.  My younger friends fear for my safety.  I am thinking about Ukraine where a friend tells me most of the people are just continuing life obliviously, while I am somehow on high alert.  Part of my sleep-deprived head is still in the medieval monastery with the noble Andrei who refused to speak and paint as penance for the murder he committed, albeit to save an innocent.  

The concept of religion-- the passion and the commitment-- is at heart this allegiance to cause.  The issue of sin seems archaic and irrelevant but our whole culture functions on a level of human blasphemy that is appalling.  The disregard for consequences-- the institutional disregard for the less consequential... when everywhere we are reading about massive financial accumulation, bloated celebrity trivia... it goes on and on.  What did I do after the film?  I watched tennis.  Guilty.  But Andrei, as a symbol of the impassioned and oriented artist, broke my heart.  I had to bring myself a few centuries forward.  

Like so many things, our urban snow episode will have a mere proverbial fifteen minutes of fame before it is blackened and annoying.  Not so on the Ukrainian borders where it will persist and fail to deter the military threat.  I wish Putin could watch Andrei just once this week... I am not sure if these world leaders have permeable hearts and care about art beyond the massive monetary value and national prowess of the Hermitage treasures.  I am not sure whether the churches and frescoes move their emotions the way the old painters intended.  The Botticelli Man of Sorrows achieved 45 million dollars at auction this week; some funds at least will have to be moved.  Was it competitive greed for a prized trophy or true passion?  Tarkovsky gives us long minutes at the end of the film... where he lets us  see the images, in heavenly color... to leave us with some kind of message, some kind of epiphany-- a warning, about killing... about God and man and art and vision.  It seems so simple-- faith and beauty and the choices we make.  The living.  The snow. Amen.

Collections- 2

On the very first day of school I was confused when the teacher announced she was coming around to 'collect' the papers on which we had drawn our self-portraits in crayon.   It baffled me that she wanted to take home our childish work and put it in a box.  My Mom had always given me old candy tins and cigar boxes for my 'collections'.  These I piled up and secured with a rubber band.  Children are natural collectors; my passions were rocks, shells, small rubber dinosaurs and tiny glass animals.  Some children on the block collected insects or worms-- the ambitious ones caught butterflies and pressed them sadly between plastic sheets where they miraculously, unlike other things, retained their beauty although dead.

By second grade, I began to save stamps-- they looked so amazing swimming around in their box, like fragile paper mosaics...  and they were labeled with exotic words and people I'd never seen-- landscapes and fairylands.  Some of them had traveled so far to live in my little room.   On rainy days I'd take the boxes out and look at their contents... I'd line them up and study them one by one-- I'd create little plays and vignettes and move them around, hold them up to the window or shine a flashlight on one and then another.

At school, I began to understand there were other meanings to words.  After all, there was the collection plate on Sundays, the toll collector when we crossed bridges, the trash and bottle collector
who came for pick-ups, and later, the tax collector.  What I don't remember is ever exceeding the limit of my boxes.  I did glue the special shells onto a felt board so I could hang them on the wall... but mostly, my little collections remained happily within the boundaries of their containers.  My father had a stack of Roman coins in a tennis-ball can.  I was not allowed to open this myself, but I often sneaked into his closet and shook it around like a tambourine.

These days, when I visit an art fair or museum, they often ask me-- am I a visitor, a dealer or a collector--  the collector, here, being the preferred tag, because they continue to offer you categories and boxes to check so they can identify your 'area of interest'.  An adult collector is a buyer-- someone who acquires things not just because they are beautiful or interesting, but because they are assumed to have value.  You are not just an audience here, but a necessary participant.  The whole show is for your entertainment, your enticement to support the platform-- to buy, spend money, perpetrate the system.  The wares are a few dollars' worth of canvas and paint, or material-- but pulled from the tall hat of the art gallery, they are transformed into 'art'-- they are labelled not only with a signature and a title, but with a corresponding number of dollars which affects the way you perceive these, after a while.  Of course there is true talent out there, but it is less common among the unending unloading of product.  Imagine the numbers of students finishing art school every year, entering the vast pool of what already exists-- not to mention the posthumous forgotten in overpopulated storage bins.

Despite the galactic numbers of images available on anyone's internet allowing nearly anything to be viewable at any time in your home, the acquisition ambition has never been stronger.  It seems also, each successive generation has a certain nostalgia for objects of the previous generation-- vinyl, vintage leather, watches, jewelry, fashion.   Everyday things, removed from their 'era', are not just collectible but valuable.  Online auctions have grown from primitive eBay beginnings to thousands of high-end auctions which offer anything from old master paintings to cars to grand homes and purchasable islands.  For some items, the more they are traded, the higher the value.  Almost everything is searchable, and eventually find-able.

It's no wonder people become hoarders in this culture.  Things are so available and viewable in numbers-- so easy to 'have' at the click of a button, a PayPal 'confirm'... free shipping, the anticipation-- the arrival.. the joy or disappointment... the perpetual Christmas, the careless cheap collections-- for the ones who find happiness in sheer number, the ones who agonize and painfully decide, the ones who like fickle lovers detest within days the very item they have bought-- the research and storytelling, the 'marketing' of a period or a place-- celebrity provenance... There are people who pay many times the value of an item because it belonged once to Madonna, or Andy Warhol, despite the fact it had little relevance to their life...  it has gained the status of a relic, and is doubly collectible.

The amount of available 'art' on the market is overwhelming.  I grew up thinking I 'knew' every important painting and its location.  Now I can't keep track of the museums opening globally, everyday, in every city... in multiples.  As old collectors die, their holdings are acquired or donated to institutions so we find ready-made collections within collections.  Upcoming artists are promoted and marketed with a vengeance; the Warholian model has been extended-- where he put the soupcan ironically on the canvas, now the art is almost simultaneously produced as skateboards and T-shirts-- coffee mugs and umbrellas-- phone cases and sneakers, toys and souvenirs.  Art advisors and gallerists, like stockbrokers, navigate options for their clients and guarantee their full art wallets remain so.  Artists run their studios like a business, maximizing output, manipulating sales, jumping from gallery to installation to institution, merchandising their product and becoming overnight superstars.  It takes years for a tree to grow tall, but some  seven-figure art is produced in an hour.  It seems wrong.  But the art audience is massive, and buyers are impatient and greedy-- insatiable.  Facile art suits the competitive 'soft' market.  Collecting is epidemic.

The 'look' of contemporary art, to me, has a certain built-in clock.  I can smell obsolescence the way I never trusted those beanie babies children begged for in the 1990's.  It's all too easy-- too facile.  Part of the beauty of being--say, a record collector in the 1960's-- was the chase.  Ask Keith Richards-- how he came to America and went to record shops.  Things were rare-- things were treasured.  They were listened to and looked at and loved, the way I loved the tiny glass animals in my Eldorado box.

I am finished collecting, now.  It is a time in my life to take stock of what I have and look at things.  Besides the art, I'm not sure anyone will appreciate my home 'museum', but I have grown to understand the soul of objects and the words they elicit.  My friends tease me because I still don't have a mobile phone... but I spend many hours outside observing and listening to the city.  I come home and am embraced by modest things I find beautiful and compelling.  It is enough.

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.

Homeward Bound

On the way home last night, I hitched an uptown First Ave bus; it was after midnight-- my card was near-empty but the driver was kind and waved me on.  The ride uptown took nearly ninety minutes.  It seemed every stop was crowded with the down-and-out crowd.  By 34th Street the bus was jammed with passengers-- many of them homeless men and women with oversized carts filled with stuff.  The stench was strong, but the driver patiently rolled out the handicapped ramp and let them all board, mostly without paying.  it occurred to me that they wait for this man-- maybe the beginning of his shift, and they know they can rely on transport, these forgotten untouchables.  Maybe some of them ride all night to stay warm.  A few disputes erupted among cranky territorial passengers, but for the most part people were complacent; many came from the VA hospital, Bellevue… a drunk man kept yelling he needed a hospital… but then he passed out and slept like a baby.  It was a kind of pre-Thanksgiving reality check.

When I was young, I used to visit my friend's grandparents in the same building where I now live.  It was a little far uptown to be fashionable, in those days-- a great old turn-of-the-century prewar with a grand lobby but no doormen or luxury services.  Their space was massive-- lofty-- with skylights and high ceilings, and resembled my imagined version of a successful European artist's studio c. 1900. It stretched from one end of the building to another, with huge windows onto upper Madison Avenue.  Sparsely furnished, there were plenty of loungey sofas and reading chairs with quaint lamps-- tables and ashtrays-- window-seats and desks.  As they were part of an important publishing firm, they entertained writers and intellectuals; there were books everywhere… yards and yards of shelves, and piles and piles of treasured volumes, magazines, journals.  The radiators clanked in winter; in summer, in those pre-air-conditioned years, the top floor was sweltering.  The park was half a block away, and there was often a breeze on the roof, if you climbed up at evening.  It was a source of gossip and rumors-- secrets were exchanged here, a few inappropriate relationships, many drunken dinner debates-- a million cigarettes, deals inked and stories begun.

The sprawling apartment-- undecorated and decorous as it was, felt like the heart of adult New York.  This was what I would be when I grew up and got old--  a host-- a home-conversationalist in a book-lined room alive with  dialogue and energy-- ideas and excitement-- like a sort of club whose membership required no dress-code or mindset, but a passion for literature and art.  But more than anything-- it was a home.  You knew where you were when you were there; you could wander and browse, sit and lose yourself in a poem or look out the window… but you felt 'embraced'.

Thirty-five years later, I bought into their building-- a funky back-door apartment in need of renovation but with the pedigree and bone structure that had become part of my Manhattan dream.   It was cheap and a little dilapidated, but I was a young single Mom and felt so empowered to have bought what would really be my own true home.  My first Thanksgiving was blessed, for so many reasons… but I felt the tradition of that building, even though the publishing family had died long before, and that grand space had been divided into smaller units.  There were neighbors who had grown old in this place that seemed magical to me;  there were senior couples with piles of books and great art and they welcomed me into their homes with the often shabby old chintz curtains and the beautiful but worn Persian rugs; they spoke the cultured and human language of old New York; they had ideas-- they loved music-- they wrote, still read Latin and Greek, many of them… they treated their neighbors with kindness and generosity.

In those years the old building had a single employee: a superintendent who'd been born here… he was in his 60's, had raised his family in the ground floor rear unit.  He painted, polished brass, cleaned the old marble.  The rest of us chipped in and tended the garden, had lobby parties-- we were a true cooperative in the old sense-- a group of tenants who all cherished our home, who seemed to agree that our space and privacy were sacred.  Our individual priorities included maintaining a low public profile, modest monthly fees, a non-pretentious simplicity of style.  The architecture spoke for itself-- a quiet, old elegance, without luxury.  They welcomed me-- financially limited as I was, because they knew I was happy to be part of this lifestyle.

It took years to fill what seemed like a massive space to me-- to furnish it with my books, the art I've collected over the years, the finds and objects, the old furniture I've gathered at random auctions… It is quite full now-- my instruments, the things I love… I have quite everything I ever longed for as a young woman… and yet I am no longer content and secure the way I was twenty years ago.  In the early 90's, I helped a senior woman in my building-- Jane, was her name-- to pack up her spartan belongings.  Regretfully, she told me she had intended to die in this apartment, but her very modest pension from years of brilliant editorial work no longer covered rising maintenance costs.  I recognized so many of the wonderful books we carefully piled into these boxes like relics from a life well-lived and no longer valued.  The economy had changed,  New York had undergone a massive progressive facelift; the Wall Street culture had created a greed-bubble that has not just priced most of us out of the market, but has altered the rank-and-file New York City human profile.

While Jane was forced to move in with her son somewhere out of state, I find myself living on $3 a day most weeks--- having given up all luxuries including the subway, some days, in favor of walking, rice-based meals… my entire annual clothing allowance is less than some people spend on lunch.  Haircuts… movies… vacations… a day at the beach… have been so long left behind… but these days I dare not buy myself even a coffee.  Until last night's ride, I have been plagued with my annual Thanksgiving dinner anxiety-- putting on a brave face while calculating how I will pull together the meal on a skeletal budget, how it will set me back.  But turning the key into my place-- like a souvenir-shop of my life, a three-dimensional photo-album of memories-- I realized I was 'home' and the idea of these people on the bus having nowhere to 'let down' just seemed tragic and inhuman.

In recent years young bankers and hedge-fund managers have recognized my old building as the potential cash cow they envisioned. These families renovate, destroy, combine, disregard… and then sell. They have way more space than anyone requires; they are rarely home and they have no observable sentimental possessions or books. They have architects and designers, and mostly photoshoot-ready but soulless apartments.  The ghosts of former tenants and the spirits in old walls and floors sigh and creak at night.  The old radiators still bang, although they will manage to eradicate these eventually.  They have forced doormen and lobby improvements-- fancy elevators. They have usurped the great old roof with their equipment and air systems. Even as the smallest shareholder,  monthly costs nearly exceed my very humble income as a musician/poet.  My slender spending habits have become emaciated.  And tonight, as I listen to the soft roar that is New York City seep through my leaky windows, I wonder if these people feel 'home'.  As in home-less.

There is some George Segal movie on from the 70's and this is New York, the way I remember it… before clothing advertised things.. when even rich people's apartments were comfortable and slightly messy and filled with things... when hair was not perfect and women had wrinkles and the buildings looked habitable and a little dirty.  I realize I am of a dying or defeated generation here-- hanging in, holding on to what I know and love-- my building, my old guitars… sentiment...

Things change-- I know this, and not all change is bad. But this Wall Street generation changed the rules for many of us who thought we had secured some kind of tranquility for our older age.  Our trusted annuities and medical plans have been up-ended, our modest pensions have been diminished and decent healthcare is precarious and prohibitive.  I naively bought shares in a wonderful institution, only to find myself a tiny minimized partner in a corporation with an agenda of money and attitudes and little regard for human values and the great cultural mesh upon which this city was founded.

I will be home for Thanksgiving, and I will try to forge onward and resist what feels like a tidal insult to everything I am.  My neighbors will never share a bus ride like the First Ave. M15 at 2 AM; they don't want to see or smell this kind of thing, and they seem to enjoy the demolition of old walls as much as they enjoy their indulgent vacations.  They will grow old, too-- not as gracefully as this building has, and maybe one day they will discover nostalgia or homesickness-- that nothing is ever as precious as that which has been lost.   By then I'll be sharing a cigarette with the old ghosts on the stairs while, God willing, someone might be enjoying a home-cooked turkey in what will always be the old rooms with the book-lined walls.

Hunters and Collectors

Like most writers, or maybe preachers… there's a running sort of monologue in my head… I walk, I ride subways… and this undervoice, this commentary… usurps my ear, and occasionally escapes in a snide remark that I swear I am not responsible for… my 'writerless' companion, my simultaneously better and evil twin.  I am a collector-- of voices, of snapshots I will never take-- and she is the critic, the mouth--even when I look down at the sidewalk, she reminds me, she spooks and taunts me…

I still pick up change… tiny treasures on the street intrigue me-- someone else's accident that intersects with my random existence-- the cosmic coincidence thing.  Something I've noticed: people in Harlem don't pick up coins.  Like that woman on the train that brushed herself off when she realized some silver had leaked out… and yet, these Fifth Ave. eccentrics in my hood-- with doormen and drivers--- they will stoop for a dime….maybe not a penny, but a dime.  That's their boundary.  Me?  I'll investigate a worthless earring, an old book, a penny.

For some reason on my walk today I thought about the story of some artist in Chicago-- a Henry Darger type--- or maybe it actually was Henry himself who was a hoarder of great renown, and the quintessential undiscovered artist.  Anyway, he saved up bits of string, and wound them into a ball which eventually, like some Magritte fantasy, dwarfed everything else in the room, made it impossible to enter or leave-- essentially 'ate' his world.

Henry died of stomach cancer; among the thousands of items in his apartment-- including the incredible, magical artwork and writings--  were hundreds of empty Pepto Bismol bottles.  He was a collector.  Most artists, I have noticed, are collectors.  We find treasures where others do not; we create art out of people's leftovers and leavings.  We see heaven in an empty bottle, Jesus in a synchronicitous song lyric, relief and comfort in an old poem.  For some of us, there are levels of discretion-- a bit of filtering that maybe true geniuses like Henry lacked.

On the other side of the field there are those who give things up-- those for whom loss is simply a non-notable occurrence--- like a meal.  In fact, these people probably couldn't tell you what they had for lunch.  I admire their lack of sentimentality-- their efficiency.  They are like a cup with a hole--- everything passes through, they acquire and delete in equal measure, they do not mourn or notice the things that keep me awake nights.  They try not to feel; some of them are extremely successful and clever.  Maybe they have figured out how loss is the end product of this life, in a way, and have learned how to manage this.  Waste management.  They are like dogs, in a way.  They wag their tale when they are being acknowledged, but they don't worry about their death-- or yours.

So I am a collector-- an intellectual hoarder, in a way.  I am obsessed with people like Henry Darger who died in abject hoarder-poverty while art collectors today fight over his fragile artwork, because he had the passion and imagination to create a bizarre and unique world in which he apparently 'fit'.  I pick up coins because I am intrigued by the cycle of life and possessions and the fact that maybe my dead ex-boyfriend might have once held this 1959 penny and used it to buy cigarettes he smoked in bed with me while we laughed and lived in our series of strange tableaus which have become now like an old photo-album that never existed but I am able to browse without technology at any moment.  These thoughts inform my life and my beliefs.

Last week I was offered a job.  Not a gig or a session, or even a writing assignment-- but a curatorial job, from the old life for which I was highly trained.  This corporate collector-- with maybe a billion dollar stockade of contemporary art--- had decided in a crisis that nothing he acquired over the last twenty years had any value for him.  He had decided to turn back the clock and sense his art the way he used to, when paintings were important, and not valued as investment-- when he used my guidance to buy younger under-acknowledged artists (like Henry Darger, at the beginning).  Of course I refused--- me, the starving musician/poet, the poster child for under-consumption, the author of the virtual and incredible guide to NYC on $4 a day.

So the guy calls me back, asks me to meet him for dinner, which I turn down, because I am so inappropriately clothed for the kind of places he frequents.  A coffee, maybe, I agree to-- -and he wants to come to my apartment next-- to see my 'stuff'… and he is now offering me what any normal person could not refuse-- I could fix my teeth, and buy a new apartment with this kind of money.  The job description: to sort through and find the true gems, to disperse the hundreds of useless overvalued works of art, to start clean with a Disneyland budget and buy whatever I valued.  And for all the women I ever advise-- if you want a guy to fall in love with you, just ignore him-- he'll go nuts if he's a narcissistic egomaniac-- the guy is now laying out offers of seven figures…. and I swear, it not only doesn't tempt me--- it makes me kind of sick.  I am terrible at Waste Management, I explain…. and the very reason I am a commodity for him is also the explanation for why I can never do this.

Okay.  I admit it was a little flattering.  It was a little tiny bit affirmative and really who can I confide in except my writerless companion who was making all kinds of obscene dissing remarks about the guy none of which made it past my throat, but maybe made the vision of that cash a little more suffocating.  Having to walk into galleries and watching the calculating Directors of Art Madness suck up to me in my used jeans.  Having a kind of power.  Having desperate artists with eviction notices beg me… but most of all, the fear of losing my voice, of losing my Dargeresque ambition.  Having been baptized into the religion of poverty-- and it is a kind of religion-- it requires faith and strength and compassion and charity and resistance… I just couldn't sell out.  Not for sushi, not for my teeth, not for whatever  costume or bejeweled truffle soup the art world has become.  I can look, I can think and feel and listen and collect what wanders irresistibly into my world where I am King and slave and secretary and CEO and have just enough discipline to know when my emotional ball of string is beginning to block the view.  Amen.

HIJACKED!

Does anyone else out there besides chickens and rabbits live in a coop? In the old days this was a democratic sort of housing arrangement whereby homeowners were able to own and maintain their building in a way that benefited individual residents and provided group protection in the form of insurance, tax benefits, and a bit of control over quality of life. The Board or governing body was democratically elected and voluntarily bound to make decisions in the best interest of the group. Coop stood for co-operative. Cooperation. Working Together. Old-fashioned values. Recycling protocol. Safety issues. Owner control of service contracts. Grass-roots ownership of the ‘company’ stock. Economy. Volunteer gardening, architectural advice, in-house counsel. A bit of urban Utopia.

Welcome to the 21st century where any semblance of grass-roots values has been mowed down by the breed of greedy Pacmen who make clever financial decisions for our country. Take the sub-prime mortgage scheme. What a novel idea. I’m surprised none of these inventive people were nominated for the Nobel prize because this was a truly visionary concept, was it not? To offer the less fortunate of us the opportunity to live briefly in a fairy-tale version of their life for absolutely no money down, while the giggling bankers pocketed commissions on both ends of these loans?

In fact, one of these men has made enough money with these fantasy commissions to buy up not one or two but many, many apartments in my building which he has combined and extended into a living space billions of times larger than his brain. Sadly, now that these loans are being called in, the clever architects seem to be hiding. Everyone seems to have passed the buck. So it lands in the lap of the overburdened, nearly-obsolete middle-class taxpayer--you and me. The new American camels.

And have these meddlesome middlemen lost their homes… or even their jobs? Negative. Layoffs are for the non-monied. For the camels, rabbits and chickens. These guys were clever enough to have invested their profits. Too late for the whistle-blowers and us horrified old-school honest mortgage-payers. They are my neighbors now. In the newly converted one-syllable version of ‘Coop’, because that is what they have made of their honest, democratic, considerate, cooperative neighbors from the 20th century. And in a great distortion of the old system, the largest and fattest of the neighbors have the most votes, so the rest of us must eat our cake with a generous dusty layer of sawdust and plaster from endless renovations while they are temporarily renting in quiet buildings. Or vacationing with their buddies in Dubai and Anguilla. Or living temporarily with their rich parents on Park Avenue in buildings which would never have allowed the sort of ‘coup’ they have pulled in mine.

And because they now occupy the most space here, besides being the loudest, they now occupy the pivotal majority seats on the Board. Is this because they were democratically elected? I would compare our coop elections to the Al Gore Florida vote-count. It was a behind-the-curtains manipulation, with bribes and telephone calls. A few threats, although, of course, we are unable to mention these now, because our management company keeps us in check. They as well stand to profit from the in-house transfers of shares, roof-right purchases, mortgage arrangements vis-a-vis these financial wizards. And other secret arrangements we are not allowed to know about, because we are the chickens and rabbits in the coop and we are not allowed to view the books or see the checks which they have written to one another with our money. Their personal architects have now been contracted to renovate the lobby. Referrals in this business are always appreciated with a generous commission. Their contractors, as well, who hire illegal Chinese laborers who receive a tiny fraction of union wages and who continue to use ropes and home-made pulleys to create unending noise in our courtyard where all of the second-class tenants live. Because this is the new American way. And if we complain, they might decide to build a luxury hotel on our poor old coop-roof. Or a parking garage. A casino. Their architects tell them this is ‘feasible’. No matter that our ceilings are caving in and our pipes bursting from their existing renovations. Not their problem. Nor their expense. We-the-oldtimers must pay for their errors. They are busy selling themselves the air-rights for next-to-nothing, so they can make Wall-Street-scale profits and keep them for themselves. And come to think of it, wasn't 'feasible' the descriptive adjective used by 9 of 10 board-certified plastic-surgeons as they prepared to swipe the credit card just before Kanye West's late mother's recent procedure? For those who didn't ace their SAT's, 'feasible' is nowhere a synonym for responsible, safe, reliable or recommended.

They have even drilled through our 100-year-old brick wall to put windows in our landmarked building. Of course this was in the courtyard. The management does not take the calls of chickens and rabbits. Do you remember the 1990’s when there was a general shake-down of corrupt coop management, with exposure of kickbacks and padded service contracts? These were days of relative innocence, because this has now become the norm. This is the way the 21st century does business. Every single contracted professional is now in the pocket of these people whose only motive in life is: you guessed it---profit. This is their own personal fantasy corporation. They are the CEOs, the Chairmen of the Board, the young monied overdressed and spoiled who had the fortune to have ‘come of age’ in the Reagan Era, and superimposed these values on the rest of us who remember the assassination of John F. Kennedy and listened to Bob Dylan and Jimi Hendrix in small clubs. Who swore we would change the world. And that we would fight for peace and equality. That we would listen. That we would not harm or disturb our neighbors in the name of greed. Doesn’t this sound familiar? Like a constitutional right? Like one of the Ten Commandments? Like something from any one of the Gospels? Does anyone read?

Not. Welcome to America in the 21st century.

Help, I say. My building has been hijacked. It is being flown by disrespectful and inconsiderate terrorists that enjoy driving the seated majority into a nightmarish destination that was not mentioned on the tickets we carefully purchased not so many years ago with our hard and honestly-earned dollars. Not the inflated devalued excessive amounts our new pilots have paid with their disproportionate profits of disgrace. And here is the thing. We want our plane back. We the people. But we are seatbelted and tied. Quiet, the hijackers say. You are bothering us. We are busy flying with $100-a-barrel oil directly to the pot of gold in which we are also heavily invested.

Does anyone remember John Galt?

Midsummer Night's Dream

Did you ever listen to Swedish rap music? It’s a kind of paradox. A little like Swedish blues. How much is there to moan about in this beautiful country where health care is universal and excellent elder care is a priority; where a year of first-class childcare costs less than a monthly metrocard? It’s a good thing I can’t understand the lyrics because they’d probably be parroting the negativity and anger of American hip-hop, the way Europeans all used to wear our styles, play our music, and consume our toxic TV sitcoms like M&Ms. Maybe. Maybe not.

Because this summer, in Sweden, I noticed a small difference. American music isn’t quite all over the charts the way it used to be. On the national news, violence in Iraq is on the roster, but mostly, besides the emigration of Beckham, there is little mention of the US. In financial news one hears relentlessly how the dollar, day by day, is hitting new lows. Besides always-buoyant sales of Springsteen and Dylan tickets, and the omnipresent CBGBs and Ramones T-shirts, I now observe more of Stockholm in New York than America in Stockholm.

And more than anything, you notice Swedish quality of service. In the metro, in cafes, at petrol stations--- there are young, stylish people doing these low-level jobs with dignity. They are kind, open-faced—happy to help. They do not expect and often will not accept gratuities. Generally there is not this intense competitive drive to make a hedge-fund fortune because success and happiness in these countries has more to do with deep-seated values than a brand-new mansion in the Hamptons. It is still cool to play music and be good. And except for the very insecure nouveau-trendy in Stockholm, dress is casually stylish but not excessive. Besides young Goths, one rarely sees any of the conspicuous make-up which New York women seem to require these days.

I spent a whole evening talking to a quasi-famous aging punk rocker. He does construction during the day-- supports a family, plays music at night. He likes it that way. He talks about socialized medicine, criticizes the American system, understands little its obsession with money. Like many Swedes, he is so great-looking that it hurts…he is completely unaffected, scarcely notices the gorgeous women that lean on his stage…is glad for the 8 month paid paternity-leave he was granted for each of his 3 kids. Was happy to reminisce about the New York scene with me, walked me cordially back to my hotel-room like a gentleman.

My last night I met a tall, long-haired beautiful man with a weathered leather jacket and the air of a woodsman. For his living, this guy paints murals. Not just any murals—he decorates the walls of an old Swedish iron-mine north of the Arctic Circle—miles of them-- 1500 meters below ground, so the miners—in the long, dark, frigid winters, will have beauty and light around them while they work. For this he is paid a stipend by the government. A character out of an unwritten Michael Ondaatje novel. He knew about music, too..about poetry, about art. The Guinness book of records lists the world’s deepest painting as some cave, maybe 1100 meters down. So why not correct them, one of my bandmembers asks? He laughs, nods his head and says in Swedish something like ‘You crazy Americans.’ Tonight I am looking at his work online. He is painting his dream, half a mile beneath the midnight summer sun. Miles to go.

Floors below me, in the tunnels of New York, I pray someone is still risking arrest to spray his version of a dream on some wall. That the dreamers will paint faster and further than the MTA workers hired to remove their work. That all the young, shivering or sweating artists who came here with any dream will not wilt and die in the face of the greed and excess and false gentrification which has become my great city. That lack of acknowledgment will not cause them to pack their few belongings and move on to a place like Sweden. It is tempting.

Intervention, anyone?

My friend called me this morning—the one with the Biotech stock. Well, now that the stock seems to be at the end of its ride, the greedy investors who bought in at the crest are initiating a lawsuit, because that is the American way. Pass the buck, blame someone else. If these same righteous stockbusters had made their 80 percent and cashed out, they’d be sitting in the Hamptons with their sweating martini glasses, giving a little tilted head to the less fortunate.

But the new American way is…put your money down; if you’re unlucky and the wheel passes you by, there’s always the post-mortem lawsuit. It is the adult wealth-version of a tantrum. When things don’t go your manipulative way, kick and scream and stamp your feet, but don’t let anyone see this—you are too sophisticated. Hire a corporate lawyer. He will get rich and will even maybe give you a small kickback or open an account at your firm and you will get an annual 2% of their fat earnings. 2% of the monopoly money, that is, because remember this company has no profit, no viable product. Nevermind; its maybe 80 million shares have changed hands so many times now their trading statistics begin to rival the NYC rat-to-human ratio.

So what fuels this frenzy? Not the good-old American quest for profit, the healthy motor that drove our economy for years. It’s the massive Epidemic of Greed. The whole American culture is now a culture of addiction; we’ve admitted this. Overeating, overspending, overcollecting. The new American obese…and now you can get your stomach stapled off and develop another addiction. The addiction is secondary; the disease is primary. And it progresses from Greed to full-blown Addiction to Greed. These Wall Street guys are no longer content to reap reasonable growth statistics. Profits must be not even double-digit, but triple digit. Yes…why not? 200 percent return. Don’t just invest; pour your money into this machine and like alchemy it multiplies. Ahh, yes…double-percentage growth in a single day; this is what they like to see. Like crack addicts… heading ever-upward into the infinite realm of ‘more’. Supersize me, they say. Supersize my portfolio or I’ll sue.

I checked out the Richard Serras last night. Okay, he is a mainstream contemporary artist. I quite liked his work in the 60’s; those leather belts are awesome, the plinths, the thrown lead pieces— the lead and neon contrast, delicate steel planes leaning precariously like a house of cards. This took courage, a concept. It was real art. An acknowledged nod to Michael Heizer who really tipped the scales by using earth as his medium—the scale, the concept…awesome. And walking through the Serra curved walls was cool—the rough oxidized surfaces, like an industrial post-minimal 21st century scrap-metal version of a garden maze. Even though they were begging for a New York 21st century dose of graffiti to make them real. In fact, I put my money on someone daring to do that, although the crowds will be massive and the opportunity for a little unobserved subversive spraying will be rare. Because this show has been marketed-to-the-max as an event. Everyone who is anyone, and especially everyone who is no one will be there. The media has insured that. Even though just 3 short fiscal years ago you couldn’t give away a Richard Serra. Lot after lot passed at auction. Even though half the benefactors last night couldn’t tell the art from the bar.

But I couldn’t help thinking, as I navigated the rusty metal paths, feeling human and dwarfed… that somewhere among these corporate sponsors was one who is wrapping his head around the idea of taking this home. Like having a real tiger in your backyard, a trophy wife who won’t behave, the hugest of the football-field-sized houses in the Hamptons. Measuring. Supersizing. Owning.

Going up the escalator I am badly dressed and invisible. I looked down on these poor wealthy people, pitying that they will be forced to pay not 8 but maybe 9 figures of Monopoly money for these hunks of pitted steel which were maybe forged from scrap…while David Rockefeller only paid 5 figures for true timeless masterpieces, and had the wisdom to sell some off now, to take advantage of the supersized greed while he helps the poor and sick or the future generation of artists. Maybe.

Hanging in one of the stairwells was a great Baselitz…a man who understands painting. A great one… monumental but not massive. Like most of his work, pricey but in this context underappreciated..and with his edgy and smart sense of the art-viewing audience, upside-down.