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Our friend Alarming just introduced me to a painter I’d never come across before, Lyonel Feininger.
At the risk of sounding like a fortune-cookie, life is a voyage of discovery (grasshopper). But it seems that so many of the happiest discoveries are serendipitous–the result of felicity, luck or happenstance. You go looking for China and you find America. A conversation about Krazy Kat leads you to Lyonel Feininger. I found my wife while looking for a kebab shop (and walking into a lampost– don’t ask).
Let’s have poems on unexpected discoveries, happy or otherwise.
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The annals of history and of literature are rich with evocations of drinking and drunkeness: from the Sumerians (whose Ninkasi was the goddess of alcohol) to the ancient Egyptians (surviving 18th dynasty texts mourn the time when, due to old age or death, a person is unable to drink); from the Hebrews ( Wine is a mocker, strong drink is raging Proverbs 20:1) to the Greeks (who created a god, Dionysus, just for sauce-monkeys); from Petronius to Rabelais to Villon to Rimbaud to Dylan Thomas to Kingsley Amis to Mowbray: mankind has always enjoyed its gargle.
Drinking has been hymned by Nordic skalds, Welsh bards, Irish ollaves, cavalier poets, Restoration poets, Georgian poets, Victorian poets, Modernists, Surrealists, Futurists, Dadaists and doggerelists.
I want you to follow in the grand tradition: take up thy cup and lurch. Give us some verse on the demon drink.
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You are getting sleepy… very, very sleepy…you are completely relaxed…you can hear nothing but the sound of my voice…now, go to your nearest ATM and withdraw as much cash as you can…good…put the money in an envelope and post it to: Politely Homicidal c/o Mr. Sophronius Bangrupd Chanzer, The Bank Of Poets and Hornswogglers, Grand Cayman, The Cayman Islands…good…when I count to ten and snap my fingers, you will wake up and write a Ballad about theft.
Theft of any kind: of goods and chattels, of money, of love, of hopes, of dreams or perhaps a ballad addressed to that most persistent and shameless thief of all: time.
8…9…10…snap
And as a special FREE SERVICE from Politely Homicidal Finance (Nigeria) :
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Slander is worse than cannibalism - St. John Chrysostom
Better sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian. - Herman Melville
There is no cannibalism in the British navy, absolutely none, and when I say none, I mean there is a certain amount. - Graham Chapman in a Monty Python sketch
Unable to sleep in the small hours of this morning, I got out of bed and watched the recently released film of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. As a great admirer of McCarthy’s work since first reading Blood Meridian some twenty years ago, I was interested to see if the film-makers had stayed faithful to the book.
I expect the basic storyline is tolerably familiar to most people by now, given the reviews and publicity the film has had. A father and son travel through a bleak, post-apocalyptic landscape. It rains incessantly and everything is broken, shattered and decayed. The sky is a turmoil of ugly chemical colours and giant fires dot the horizon.
It’s 10 years after some unspecified cataclysmic event that has destroyed America (and by implication, the world). All the structures and norms of society have crumbled and gangs of cannibals roam the landscape in search of prey. It’s a bit like Gaza, really, except for the cannibals.
You can tell it’s an American vision of a post-apocalyptic world because everyone has very bad teeth.
So, yes: the film-makers adhered faithfully to the book and it makes for a very grim 110-odd minutes.
But it got me thinking about cannibalism: under what circumstances would I (or any of us) consume human flesh? My instinctive reaction is never: I’d rather starve to death. But would I? Really?
After all, it’s just meat and God knows, I have no objection to being eaten myself once I’m dead: worms or people–eaten is eaten. Clearly, murdering people for food is very wrong but is eating people inherently wrong? Or is it just cultural baggage like our objection to eating insects (considered a delicacy in some cultures)?
Sharpen your teeth, set that missionary-sized pot on the fire and let’s have poems on cannibalism.
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Willie Mitchell (seen above in the studio, with Al Green), who shaped the elegant yet gritty sound of Al Green, Ann Peebles and other stars of soul music as the house producer at Hi Records in the 1960s and ’70s, died Tuesday in Memphis, where he lived. He was 81.
The Willie Mitchell sound — prominent horns, delicately strummed guitars, some sweet organ and a steady, straightforward beat — is instantly recognizable on records by singers like Mr. Green, Ms. Peebles, Syl Johnson and O. V. Wright, and on the instrumentals Mr. Mitchell recorded as a bandleader. Both raw and sensuous, it became Hi’s signature sound as the label rose to prominence with Mr. Green in the 1970s.
Although its legacy has been less celebrated than those of Stax or Sun, two other pioneering record labels that got started in Memphis in the 1950s, Hi was an integral part of the development of the Memphis soul sound, and Mr. Mitchell is widely credited as one of its architects.
“It’s the laziness of the rhythm,” Mr. Mitchell said in Peter Guralnick’s 1986 book Sweet Soul Music: Rhythm and Blues and the Southern Dream of Freedom. “You hear those old lazy horns half a beat behind the music, and you think they’re gonna miss it, and all of a sudden, just so lazy, they come in and start to sway with it. It’s like kind of shucking you, putting you on.”
In 1961 Hi Records, then four years old, signed Mr. Mitchell as a recording artist, and from 1964 to 1969 he scored a number of minor R&B hits, including “Soul Serenade” and “30-60-90.” But he began to make a greater mark as the label’s combination producer and talent scout, bringing in Ms. Peebles and others. (He also produced Bobby Bland’s 1964 album “Ain’t Nothing You Can Do” for another Memphis label, Duke.)
In 1968 Mr. Mitchell was booked to perform at a club in Midland, Tex., with a fledgling singer from Michigan named Al Green as his opening act. On hearing him rehearse, Mr. Mitchell invited Mr. Green to Memphis and promised to make him a star.
Coached by Mr. Mitchell, Mr. Green found his voice, and by 1971 he had reached No. 1 on the pop charts with “Let’s Stay Together.”
Mr. Mitchell’s style proved a perfect canvas for Mr. Green’s finely finessed vocals, and together they made 13 Top 40 hits between 1971 and 1976, when Mr. Green left secular music for gospel and a career as a minister. Mr. Mitchell acquired an ownership stake in Hi in 1970 and remained with the company until it was sold in the late 1970s.
Mr. Green has said that he owes much of his success to Mr. Mitchell, especially his coaching, beginning with their first recording sessions together. “I was trying to sing like Jackie Wilson and Sam Cooke and Wilson Pickett,” Mr. Green said in a 2003 interview, recalling Mr. Mitchell. “He said, ‘Sing like Al Green.’ ”
–NYT, Jan 6, 2010
Let’s have poems on your favourite soul singer. Take it to the bridge…Good God…Hit me..
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Knut Haugland, the last surviving member of the six-man crew that sailed on the Kon-Tiki expedition in 1947, and a leader of the Norwegian resistance who helped carry out one of the most daring acts of sabotage of World War II, died in Oslo on Dec. 25. He was 92. - The New York Times, 4.1.10
I was 9 or 10 years old when I first read Kon-Tiki, Thor Heyerdahl’s account of his attempt to cross the Pacific from South America to the Polynesian islands on a hand-built balsa-wood raft. Heyerdahl wanted to test the practical possibility that people from South America could have settled Polynesia in pre-Columbian times.
The book enthralled me. I suspect Kon-Tiki held a special appeal to small boys, who are generally the most wildly romantic of creatures. But I think it was more than the adventure itself which made the book so satisfying. It was also the knowledge that one could, if minded to, build a raft and cross the Pacific without let or hindrance, leaving schoolmasters, parents and annoying relatives cursing and gnashing their teeth ineffectually in your wake.
I read the book many times over as a boy and though I haven’t read it in some 40 years, it’s stayed with me. Not just the story but the idea of escape: just you and some well chosen mates, a supply of good books and some fishing line and hooks.
Of course, the chances of my emulating my boyhood heroes grow increasingly small with advancing decrepitude and Time’s winged goddamn chariot hurrying near but at the back of my mind, there’s still a small boy’s voice saying: if it all becomes too much, you can just fuck off on a raft, free as a dolphin. That’s been Heyerdahl’s gift to me and so I mark with sadness the passing of the last surviving crew member of that epic voyage.
Hail and farewell, Knut Haugland. You provided the stuff that a lifetime’s dreams were made on.
(Heyerdahl’s Oscar-winning documentary film of the expedition can be seen in its entirety HERE.)
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Well…it’s back to the grind of keeping you ungrateful fuckers amused, I suppose…
They arrange these things better in Morocco. As a descendant of a pal of the Prophet (May God Grant His Luggage Not Be Searched), I was treated with entirely appropriate consideration: Yes, Effendi; No, Effendi; Your wish is my command, Effendi; the King wonders if you might spare him a moment, Effendi…
But it’s back to dealing with riff-raff, who don’t appreciate these important distinctions. Oh, well…my shoulders are broad. My patience is legendary. You’ll miss me when I’m dead (not that I believe I’m going to die: dying is too, too vulgar, my dear. I leave that sort of thing to the likes of Mowbray. In fact, I might even help speed him along to his just reward, i.e. decaying in a hole in the ground).
In the mean time, in between time, ain’t we got…erm, Terza Rima, actually…
Let’s have terza rima on what the future may hold.
Give me time to unpack, settle in and get half a bottle of Calvados down my neck and I’ll do a terza rima myself…
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Noone has ever found a way of avoiding history it is upon us and around us all. The only thing when you look at the cuning vilaninous faces in our class you wonder if history may not soon be worse than ever.
–Nigel Molesworth in Down With Skool by Geoffrey Willans and Ronald Searle (1958)
Worse Than Ever
The past’s a mess, an awful crime
But wait until tomorrow comes:
You’ll beg to travel back in time.
The future’s clumsy, it’s all thumbs
The cards it deals are often crap
And lead to losing tidy sums.
The future is a kind of trap
You’ll gnaw your leg off when you’re caught
And be tomorrow’s gimpy sap.
It’s coming sooner than you thought:
The past’s long gone, today’s too short.
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Seeing as how you contrary bastards won’t write poems about nudes, here’s a last task before I’m rendered incommunicado by the vagaries of Moroccan net protocols.
Write a poem on what might have become of the repulsive infant on the far right of the photo. Suffice to say, the child became a man (of a sort), which just goes to show- there is no justice…
Any form this time, although perhaps an instructive verse parable or morality tale would suit…
Until the new year, compadres…¡buena suerte!
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While I’m still able to log onto wordpress without any problem, I thought I might set you a task to last until the new year. Nude poetry. That is to say, poems about nudes, not poems written whilst nude (though, of course, you must suit yourselves. If you do write your poem in the nude, however, I expect accompanying photos).
The form? Quatrains, of any kind. Elegiac Stanzas or Decasyllabic Quatrains or Ballad Stanzas or…whichever you prefer.
Now get your (or someone else’s) kit off…
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Yes, I admire Rumsfeld a lot. I think he’s absolutely the right man in the right job. I admire Condi Rice too, whom I’ve known for several years, and John Ashcroft, and many others. Even Colin Powell. There’s a lot that’s stand-up about him, even if he sometimes sets my teeth on edge.
But you know who is most admirable? The president himself. He has conducted himself magnificently in office – not just as a wartime leader, but all-around. Someone suggested to me that he’s as good as Reagan. I believe that, actually – and there’s no greater Reagan nut than I. Even Nancy.
– Jay Nordlinger, Editor, The National Review, on Bush, interview on conservative blog Enter Stage Right
Republicans have seldom shied from an embrace of manliness. The New York Times recently ran a report on the new Bush re-election headquarters. It explained that the offices display two large photos: one of President Bush “sweating and looking rugged in a T-shirt and cowboy hat”; another of Ronald Reagan “also looking rugged in a cowboy hat.” And all this was before Arnold Schwarzenegger decided to run for governor of California. Yup, that’s the Republican Party.
Of course, George W. Bush is famous for his “compassionate conservatism.” He is capable of great tenderness of expression, much of it related, no doubt, to his triumph over alcohol and his religious awakening. But Bush as hombre has been the dominant theme of his post-September 11 presidency.
Rich Lowry, editor of National Review, likes to tell a story about Mr. Bush out in Iowa, early in the 2000 presidential campaign. A group of Hell’s Angels rode into town, and Gov. Bush simply waded into them, hugging them, bonding with them, relishing them. –Nordlinger on Bush, in the Wall Sreet Journal
Am I alone in detecting a weird homo-erotic vibe going on here? Nordlinger is, of course, vehemently opposed to ‘Gay Rights’…hmmm.
He simply seeps into your bloodstream. Was there ever a better smile — a smile that lit up several counties around it? When you have been smiled at by Bill Buckley… You have been well and truly smiled at. And the Buckley voice… I must have drunk in thousands of hours of it, all over the world. Sometimes we listened to music together, played on the hi-fi (as Bill would call whatever the device was). We would not speak, or barely speak. Just listen, and sort of commune: with the music, with each other, and with higher things. Those wordless sessions were some of my most prized.
I’d go to Salzburg, and he — feeling somewhat left out — would say, “Say hello to music for me!” I confess — and this is egotistical — I loved being out with him. Out in public with him. You were the recipient of reflected glory. I’d take him to a restaurant, and the maitre d’ would be wide-eyed. He would never look at me the same way again. I loved taking walks with Bill, and took many of them, in various parts of the world — especially in Stamford. He would not necessarily like to talk about politics or policy or history or anything intellectual.
He liked to appreciate: “Isn’t the sky lovely?” “Isn’t that an interesting garden?” “Isn’t it amazing how squirrels scurry?” Once, we were in a Mexican restaurant (New York). As we were coming in, Mr. T. and his entourage were going out. Mr. B. and Mr. T. brushed up against each other. I thought, “Two American legends.”
I loved to hear him speak Spanish — especially in Spanish-speaking countries. He would sometimes say something in French to me, when he wanted to be conspiratorial. He was a big, tall man, and surprisingly strong — I mean, really strong. When he was old and feeble, I saw him lift a heavy table, sitting down — remarkable. His muscles strained. He may have spent much of his life on a seat, writing, but he was damn strong — physically strong. He was a man, not an angel. Actually, he was an angel: a man/angel.
— Nordlinger, on right-wing pseud and faux-patrician William F. Buckley
Isn’t this a lovely piece? Aren’t there an awful lot of words, often used correctly? Don’t you wish they’d just get a room? Isn’t it amazing how many right-wing thinkers are certifiable morons?
I give up…you can’t parody this stuff…
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AFOOT and light-hearted, I take to the open road,
Healthy, free, the world before me,
The long brown path before me, leading wherever I choose.Henceforth I ask not good-fortune—I myself am good fortune;
Henceforth I whimper no more, postpone no more, need nothing,
Strong and content, I travel the open road.The earth—that is sufficient;
I do not want the constellations any nearer;
I know they are very well where they are;
I know they suffice for those who belong to them.
–from Song of the Open Road by Walt Whitman
I’m taking my family circus on the road until the new year and don’t expect I’ll be around much until then. Let me wish you all an enjoyable holiday season and a happy new year. It’ll be a year in January since I started this blog as a reaction to the constant and arbitrary deletions on the Guardian blogs.
Since then, it seems to have taken on a life of its own. It’s given me a great deal of pleasure for which I thank you all and I hope it’s afforded you all some passing amusement as well. I hope the coming year treats you and yours as well as the year past has treated me and mine.
Until the new year, be well.
Affectionately, Mishari
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The ‘season of mists and mellow fruitfulness‘ is upon us and already there’s a sharpness and snap to the weather. It’s especially noticeable if, like me, you’re a keen cyclist. I have to wear gloves now, lest my hands solidify into lumpish, claw-like appendages.
I’ve always detested hats and caps and refused to wear them, despite being assured by innumerable people that ‘…you lose 50% (60%, 70%, 80%…) of your body heat through your head‘. I always viewed this assertion with suspicion and it’s now been comprehensively debunked.
The main hazard of winter riding, aside from the hordes of atrocious drivers who no more belong behind the wheel of a car than in the cockpit of an F-16, is ice. Especially treacherous to riders like me, whose bikes roll on performance slicks. But as Aunt Dahlia’s excitable French chef Anatole was wont to remark, ‘…I can take a few smooths with a rough.’ I take a tumble now and again but I just pick myself up, dust myself off and start all over again.
Say…that’s kind of catchy. I could make a song out of that. And speaking of songs, it’s time for you lot to get your mukluks on, slather your face with seal-blubber, hitch up the dog-team and deliver a Sonnet on winter…mush, you Huskies.
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Write a dogg poem for our friend Zéphirine over at psuedstuff, you idle sons of bitches…go on…fetch…(and before any of you impudent bastards points out that I haven’t written one yet, I’m waiting for my Muse to return with the stick I threw…so there).
Honestly, people work like dogs to give you a bone to gnaw on and you just want to lie by the fire scratching your fleas. Get on with it before I start hitting people on their noses with a rolled-up newspaper.
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Given the highly entertaining spell of inclement weather in a paper cup over on Poem Of The Week, ( a quick précis: Eliot was a great poet. No, he was an upper-class poseur. The Wasteland is a great poem. No, it’s a tool of Capitalist oppression. No, it’s a great poem. Rubbish, it’s a piece of pretentious cack foisted on a gullible proletariat. Christopher Hitchens says it’s the most over-rated poem of the 20th century. Ah, the old argument from authority. No, the fallacy only arises if Hitchens is cited as infallible…und so weiter), I thought this would be a good time for Eliot parodies. Mind you, it’s always a good time for Eliot parodies. Let’s breed lilacs out of the dead whatsit….
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The Love Song Of J. Alfred Mowbray
Penso che un sogno così non ritorni mai più.
Mi dipingevo le mani e la faccia di blu.
Poi d’improvviso venivo dal vento rapito
E incominciavo a volare nel cielo infinito.Volare, Oh!, Oh!,
Cantare, Oh!, Oh!, Oh!, Oh!
Nel blu, dipinto di blu,
Felice de stare lassù.Let’s fuck off then, you and me
When the evening is flat on its back
Like an out-patient hammered on crack
Let’s sling our hooks and piss-off
Down the Old Kent Road, hotels and cafes
And such-like gaffs.
Oh, don’t ask ‘Who the fuck?”
Let’s just drop in on the cluck.In the boozer, the birds come and go
Talking about some dago painter.Foggy out, innit? Must be the weather.
Fancy some tea and toast?
Fuck me, it’s them birds again
Still yakking about that Italian.Whodjoo mean, my hair’s getting thin?
Cheeky bastard.Fancy a coffee? Pass the spoon.
Is that music in the other room?Ragged claws? Silent seas?
You’re talking in riddles, mate.Well, what did you mean, then?
Lazarus, my arse.Yeah, werl, we’re all getting old, mate.
You should buy shorter trousers.Part your hair behind? Behind what?
Make up your bleedin’ mind:
Do you want a peach
Or a day at the sea-side?
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Lydia oh Lydia, say have you met Lydia,
Lydia, the Tattooed Lady.
She has eyes that folks adore so,
And a torso even more so.Lydia oh Lydia, that encyclopidia,
Oh Lydia the Queen of Tattoo.
On her back is the Battle of Waterloo.
Beside it the wreck of the Hesperus, too.
And proudly above waves the Red, White, and Blue,
You can learn a lot from Lydia.
–from Lydia the Tattooed Lady by Harold Arlen and E.Y. ‘Yip’ Harburg
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It was in Tahiti, in July of 1769, that Captain James Cook first recorded his observations of the indigenous body modification. His notes are the first known use (by an Occidental) of the word tattoo. In the ship’s log, Cook recorded this entry: Both sexes paint their Bodys, Tattow, as it is called in their Language. This is done by inlaying the Colour of Black under their skins, in such a manner as to be indelible.
Cook added: This method of Tattowing I shall now describe…As this is a painful operation, especially the Tattowing of their Buttocks, it is performed but once in their Lifetimes.
The practice is, of course, far older than Cook knew.
Tattooing has been a Eurasian custom since Neolithic times. Ötzi the Iceman (discovered in 1991 in the Schnalstal glacier between Austria and Italy and dated circa 3300 BCE) bears 57 tattoos.
The Man of Pazyryk (c. 500 BCE), a Scythian chieftain extracted from the permafrost of Altaï, is tattooed with an extensive and detailed range of fish, monsters and a series of dots that lined up along the spinal column and around the right ankle
Pre-Christian Germanic, Celtic and other central and northern European tribes were often heavily tattooed, according to surviving accounts. The Picts were famously tattooed (or scarified) with elaborate dark blue woad (or possibly copper for the blue tone) designs. Julius Caesar described these tattoos in Book V of his Gallic Wars (54 BCE).
The Arab traveller Ahmad ibn Fadlan also wrote of his encounter with the Scandinavian Rus’ tribe in the early 10th century, describing them as tattooed from fingernails to neck with dark blue tree patterns and other figures.
According to Robert Graves in The Greek Myths, tattooing was common amongst certain religious groups in the ancient Mediterranean world, which may have contributed to the prohibition of tattooing in Leviticus. However, during the classic Greek period, tattooing was only common among slaves.
Tattooing for spiritual and decorative purposes in Japan is thought to extend back to at least the Jōmon or Paleolithic period (approximately 10,000 BCE) and was widespread during various periods for both the Japanese and the native Ainu. Chinese visitors observed and remarked on the tattoos in Japan (300 BCE).
Between 1603 – 1868 Japanese tattooing was only practiced by the ukiyo-e (The floating world culture). Generally firemen, manual workers and prostitutes wore tattoos which communicated their status. Between 1720 – 1870 Criminals were tattooed as a visible mark of punishment, this actually replaced having ears and noses removed. A criminal would receive a single ring on their arm for each crime committed.
Tattoos are now utterly commonplace. No longer the mark of the criminal, the outcast, the outsider; no longer the province of the sailor, the biker, the junkie. I have one myself (acquired at the age of 19) as I imagine do many of you.
So let’s have poems on the subject of ‘body art’. No particular form this time. Just get out your needles and ink and prick a pattern…
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I can’t remember when I first became aware of David Foster Wallace. Sometime in the mid-90’s, I think. I was immediately on my guard. Triple names usually bode ill: Lee Harvey Oswald, John Wilkes Booth, Mary Joe Kopechne, David Lee Roth, Bozo The Clown…QED. That was strike one.
Then there was the picture of DFW that I kept coming across. A fleshy-faced tax-payer who looked like he hadn’t missed many meals, gazing soulfully/sulkily to one side, a do-rag covering his tonsure.
On a Glock-wielding, South Central Blood flashing bejeweled fangs and furiously throwing cryptic gang signs, a do-rag looks risible enough. On a podgy, middle-class white-boy, it’s an absurdity too far and kicks my immune system into overdrive.
What’s the subtext here? Is it a nod to gangster chic? A show of solidarity with Rosie the Riveter? Is he auditioning for a pirate movie? Actually, you know what? I don’t give a shit. Do-rag = Douche bag…erm..probably. Strike two.
Then there was the hype. People whose judgement I respect less than my cat’s were pumping out hysterical encomiums at a rate that made me suspect they were being paid by the syllable. People kept comparing DFW to Pynchon. “The heir to Thomas Pynchon,” wrote Douglas Kennedy. Strike three. Yerrrr ouuuttt…
Let me explain. As a young man in the late 60’s and early 70’s, I gravitated towards the ‘hippie’ sub-culture. I was by no means a natural hippy. I was not a pacifist. I did not eschew aggression.
In fact, I was a bit of a thug. I did not think that Sgt. Pepper was a palimpsest containing a hidden guide to The Meaning Of Life. I did not believe that ‘bad vibes’ were as destructive as napalm and I flat-out laughed at the notion that The Grateful Dead knew anything that I didn’t.
In those days and in those circles, there were three sacred texts: The Lord of the Rings; The Teachings of Don Juan and Gravity’s Rainbow.
The first, I’d read and loved as a 10 year-old. When I tried to re-read it in my late teens, just to see what all those hippie numb-skulls were channeling, I discovered that I’d developed a powerful allergy to elves, magic rings, wizards and all the rest of the Middle Earth bullshit that the incontinent Tolkien churned out at such length. And yet, countless hippies looked to LOTR as some sort of blueprint for a lost Elysium, a world that we could (given enough Lebanese hash, Afghan sheepskin coats and patchouli oil) reconstruct in England’s green and pleasant land.
It was considered a work of profound philosophical and moral depth (a notion so preposterous that anyone who entertained it for a nano-second was revealed as a cretin).
But the Great Cretin Drought of 1971 that I longed for never happened and I lost count of the hippies who introduced themselves as ‘Bilbo’, ‘Frodo’ or ‘Gandalf’. This last was especially popular. I must have met a hundred lank-haired, cape-wearing nincompoops who called themselves ‘Gandalf’ and they were all of a piece. They attempted to cultivate an air of command, of hidden powers; they practiced a piercing gaze that made them appear psychotic. Mostly, however, what they did was take drugs, spout ill-considered drivel and try to persuade hippy girls that their powers extended to the bedroom.
I was more successful in that respect (seriously, dude…did you think I was hanging around for the high-quality conversation?). I would gaze into some girl’s eyes, contrive to look sorely troubled and moved and say, “You’re like Galadriel…”. The saps loved it. They yearned to be Elven princesses and were happy to consider me Aragorn son of Arathorn son of Kiddieporn, wielder of The Sword That Was Broken But Was Sent Back To Customer Services For Fixing. Christ…the things we do for sex, eh, boys?
The second holy scripture was Castenada’s The Teachings Of Don Juan, a book of half-baked mystical mumbo-jumbo, the illegitimate love-child of Madam Blavatsky and Speedy Gonzales. It was a volume so eye-wateringly moronic, so super-charged with utter meaninglessness that a 10 minute speed scan gave me all I needed to know. I became so adept at faux-mystical blather a la Don Juan that I was widely regarded as a ‘deep thinker’. The horror, the horror…
The third sacred text was Gravity’s Rainbow. I read it. I loathed it. I loathed it for its self-indulgence and its leaden ‘humour’ but most of all, I loathed it because people I held in contempt loved it.
I seem to have digressed. Fuck it. It’s my blog. I’ll digress if I want to. My point is that comparing DFW to Pynchon was not going to win me over. And so, for these many years past, I’ve managed to avoid reading a single word of DFW’s. Until a week ago.
Browsing the stock in a local charity shop, I came across a volume by DFW called Consider The Lobster and Other Essays. Out of curiosity, I picked it up. I opened it at random and found myself reading an essay entitled Authority and American Usage. Sucker punched. Me, I mean.
As a man who’s owned the Complete OED and Mencken’s The American Language for 30 years; a man who used to turn eagerly to William Safire’s On Language column in the NYT Sunday Magazine every week; a man who wants to scream every time some half-wit journalist or politician uses the phrase ‘fit for purpose’, nothing could have been better calculated to draw me in.
I bought the book and have just finished reading it. Honour demands that I make a public apology to the shade of David Foster Wallace. Forgive me. I let my prejudices get in the way of my judgement. You were an extraordinarily fine writer.
Now I’ll have to read his fiction. I’d appreciate it if any of you have any recommendations to make. Should I just go straight to Infinite Jest or start at the beginning and work through his fiction?
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Charles Seliger, whose small-scale, jewel-like paintings of imaginary natural forms made him the most idiosyncratic of the first-generation Abstract Expressionists, died in Manhattan on Oct. 1. He was 83 and lived in Westchester County, N.Y.
The cause was a stroke, said his son Robert.
While fellow artists like Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning created high drama with drips and bravura brushwork on billboard-size canvases, Mr. Seliger conjured up his own private worlds on canvases, and later Masonite boards, that rarely exceeded the dimensions of a cafeteria tray.
Strongly influenced by the Surrealists and the idea of automatism — the belief that the artist’s undirected hand could reach deep into the unconscious — he layered skeins of fine, interlaced lines and overlapping luminous forms that suggested microscopic views of human tissue or plant specimens, land masses seen from an airplane or undiscovered worlds exploding into being.
These poetic explorations, increasingly complex and refined, carried him through a career that lasted more than 60 years.
“He was the last link to the Abstract Expressionist movement,” said the art historian Francis V. O’Connor, the author of “Charles Seliger: Redefining Abstract Expressionism” (2003). “He was the last artist fully committed to the methodology of Surrealism and psychic automatism, which he developed in a carefully thought-out way.”
Charles Marvin Zekowski was born on June 3, 1926, in Manhattan. His parents divorced when he was 2, and at 14 he adopted his mother’s maiden name. His childhood was chaotic, as he and his mother, destitute, hopped from one residence to another in New York, New Jersey and Maryland.
He began painting and drawing as a child and, after moving to Jersey City in 1940 and discovering a copy of Amédée Ozenfant’s “Foundations of Modern Art,” experimented with the styles of Aubrey Beardsley, Persian miniatures and Cubism. He dropped out of high school in the 10th grade and found work tinting photographs at a studio in Manhattan.
In 1943 he met Jimmy Ernst, the son of the Surrealist artist Max Ernst, and through him began meeting and showing with the dominant figures of the Abstract Expressionist movement at the 67 Gallery and later at Peggy Guggenheim’s Art of This Century Gallery, which gave him his first one-man show in 1945, when he was still in his teens.
His painting “Cerebral Landscape” was included in an influential traveling exhibition of Abstract Expressionists that originated at the David Porter Gallery in Washington in 1945.
In an artistic statement for the exhibition, Mr. Seliger wrote: “I want to apostrophize micro-reality. I want to tear the skin from life, and, peering closely, paint what I see. I want my brain to become a magnifying lens for the infinite minutiae forming reality. Growth is the poetry of all art.”
Mr. Seliger got off to a fast start. In 1946 the Museum of Modern Art bought “Natural History: Form Within Rock” for its permanent collection, and in 1948 he was given his first important museum exhibition, at the De Young Memorial Museum in San Francisco. A year later he joined the prestigious Willard Gallery, where his fellow artists included Mark Tobey and Lyonel Feininger.
In 1948 he married Ruth Lewin, who died in 1975. In addition to his son Robert, of Winchester, Mass., he is survived by his wife, the former Lenore Klebanow; another son, Mark, of Auburn, Mass.; and two grandchildren.
For the next six decades Mr. Seliger worked steadily and slowly, producing no more than 10 paintings a year but always showing and always represented by major dealers, most recently the Michael Rosenfeld Gallery on 57th Street, where he had a solo show last fall. At the same time he maintained a full-time job at Commercial Decal, a china company in Mount Vernon, N.Y., where he started out as a decal artist and retired in 1993 as executive vice president.
Mr. Seliger’s earliest paintings, often depicting botanical forms and insects, fused small areas of color in a manner suggestive of stained-glass windows. Later he intensified his focus, concentrating on all-over compositions of intricate tracery and linked patches of color. Often he drew spidery lines and dots with a Leroy pen, normally used for blueprints, which he filled with thinned paint, and applied paint with a single-hair brush.
He read voraciously, and it showed. “He was extraordinarily erudite,” Mr. O’Connor said. “Apart from Motherwell, the Abstract Expressionists only knew themselves and their own art, but he knew history, literature, art and even science. One of his first works was an homage to Erasmus Darwin, the grandfather of Charles.”
In 1986 the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, which owns more than 20 works by Mr. Seliger, presented a retrospective exhibition of his work. In 2003 he received the Pollock-Krasner Foundation’s Lee Krasner Award.
Beginning in 1952 Mr. Seliger recorded, in a minute hand, his observations about the art world, his thoughts on painting and the technical details of his works in progress in slim notebooks. In 2005 he donated all 148 volumes of his journals to the Morgan Library & Museum.
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Actually, come to think of it, art and artists should provide a wealth of inspiration, so let’s have villanelles on Art and/or Artists.
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Pig: • noun 1. a domesticated mammal with sparse bristly hair and a flat snout, kept for its meat. 2. a wild animal related to the domestic pig. 3. informal a greedy, dirty, or unpleasant person. 4. informal, derogatory a police officer. 5. an oblong mass of iron or lead from a smelting furnace.
–Concise Oxford English Dictionary
Pigs have acquired an unenviable reputation. Their name is synonymous with greed, lust, filth and disease. Jews and Muslims abominate them as an article of faith and the rest of us aren’t terribly keen.
But it wasn’t always thus:
The Pig was held sacred by the ancient Cretans, because Jupiter was suckled by a sow; it was immolated in the mysteries of Eleusis; was sacrificed to Hercules, to Venus, the Lares, and all those who sought relief from bodily ailments. –Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase & Fable, 1894 Edition
And so we come to our friend Alarming’s (and The Whalley Range All Stars’) Giant Inflatable Electric Euro Pig:
Politely Homicidal is going to break with tradition and encourage you to swinishness (I can hear some mutters of “…I thought swinishness was Politely Homicidal tradition” but I’m going to ignore the nameless malcontent [Mowbray]). Get your trotters in the trough and root out some verses in honour of Alarming’s splendid Euro Pig.
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My call for Chants Royal inspired our friend Zéphirine to gift us with this witty, charming, cunningly wrought gem. The lightly mocking, conversational tone is hard enough to inject into so structured a poetic form. To maintain that tone over five long rhyming stanzas demands extraordinary finesse. Happily for us, Zéphirine has that finesse in abundance.
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A recently published study has revealed that women have 237 reasons for having sex.
Gentlemen, who have pondered on the cause
Of women’s passions, and what lies behind
Those sudden freezes and less frequent thaws,
Why Friday’s vamp is Monday’s disinclined;
If you were thinking that you’d maybe missed
Some hidden motives – reasons must exist
Could you but find them – ones that would pertain
To why we sometimes do, sometimes abstain,
Experts have now an answer to supply:
It’s quite precise – there are, so they maintain
Two hundred and thirty seven reasons why.It seems we women long to get our claws
On one of two types. Only two now, mind!
Ah, but we must pay heed, not look for flaws,
The Experts have us females well defined.
Their theories must not lightly be dismissed
For they are Experts and should not be dissed.
Type Number One may often be quite plain
But it’s his income which we ascertain
Is bound to put a twinkle in our eye.
Remember there are (although it sounds inane)
Two hundred and thirty seven reasons why.We drool at sight of a pre-nuptial clause
As Mr Ugly keeps us wined and dined.
And Mister Rich could look a bit like Jaws
He’d still find girls willing, though unrefined.
It seems we ladies simply can’t resist
Someone who brings some diamonds to a tryst.
A resource benefit, the term mundane
Describes the man and not his private plane,
The Experts say we really won’t be shy –
Platinum cards remind us yet again:
Two hundred and thirty seven reasons why.The other type we like as paramours
Won’t surprise anyone who isn’t blind:
Young Master Gorgeous makes us drop our drawers.
(No mention’s made of Handsome and Rich combined,
The Experts perhaps unable to enlist
Respondents who were willing to assist –
Speechless that they had managed to attain
Both cute companion and financial gain,
These lucky girls could only smirk and sigh).
In scientific detail, lists contain
Two hundred and thirty seven reasons why.They cite some motives which draw no applause,
Revenge and spite, betrayal most unkind,
And some which make you think they clutched at straws:
To get the lawn mown, have they lost their mind?
Of course, there’s always being Brahms and Liszt,
Believing that you’ve got to, now you’ve kissed,
The sort of thinking which can leave a jane
Pushing a pram containing Baby Wayne.
Enough! These foolish rules I must decry!
These Experts have a shortage in the brain:
“Two hundred and thirty seven reasons why.”ENVOI
So, gentlemen, this speculation’s vain –
To save you from an ill-advised campaign
Here is a simple method to apply:
Just say you love us, then, with care, explain
Two hundred and thirty seven reasons why.
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The task this week is a little more demanding than usual and I’ll understand if you don’t feel up to it. I want a Chant Royal on the subject of carnal pleasures. Obviously, it would be presumptuous of me to advise you. I’m in no position to offer advice…but I know a man who is:
By all means sing of love but, if you do,
Please make a rare old proper hullabaloo:
When ladies ask How much do you love me?
The Christian answer is cosi-cosi;
But poets are not celibate divines:
Had Dante said so, who would read his lines?
Be subtle, various, ornamental, clever,
And do not listen to those critics ever
Whose crude provincial gullets crave in books
Plain cooking made still plainer by plain cooks
As though the Muse preferred her half-wit sons:
Good poets have a weakness for bad puns.–from The Truest Poetry is the most Feigning by W.H. Auden
Clearly, this is a challenge beyond the abilities of the rabble of free-verse merchants who infest the on-line world (and the ‘real’ world, for that matter). This requires a degree of craftsmanship far beyond such footlers and poodle-fakers. Which is why I’m certain that if anyone can rise to the challenge, it’s you lot. And surely, after all, you can do better than this?:
Poets Are Not Celibate Divines
Poets are not celibate divines;
And should you hear a poet say:
“Not for me choice meats and wines,
I must to work; No time for play.”
Note the poet’s tone and eyes:
A poet speaking thus? He lies;
A poet’s no stranger to desire;
He burns within, a steady fire
And only flesh can douse the flame
Flesh that’s bought or flesh for hire:
To feed the senses is no shame.And after all, what man declines
The chance to brighten up a day?
The Gods are mute and their designs
Are some remote and strange ballet;
Did not the preacher himself advise
Eat, drink and be merry? He was wise.
No puzzle here, no need to enquire,
No need to be shifty, to plot, conspire;
No need to seek to place the blame;
Take her to your bed–retire:
To feed the senses is no shame.And should love lead to pleasing lines
Be grateful, let the donkeys bray;
We worship all at different shrines
If bed is where you choose to pray
Indulgent Gods will not chastise:
It’s only eunuchs they despise,
The monk and pious, sweaty friar;
The priestess and the canting prior;
The grasping burgher, his sour dame;
These provoke a just God’s ire:
To feed the senses is no shame.Equip yourself with concubines
From deep Afric and far Cathay;
For work makes blunt but love refines;
Hear your heart and then obey;
Douse your head in wine, baptise
And let the font be women’s thighs;
Of those, what man can ever tire?
Let them be your funeral pyre,
A soft and lovely picture frame
(though the world may hang you higher):
To feed the senses is no shame.In the stars you’ll see the signs,
The portents all point out the way;
When you must burst the flesh confines
And go from world of light to grey;
It comes to all, this grim demise
But see how love such fate defies
And scorns that damned celestial choir
That would make every rake a liar;
With your hands and lips proclaim
That life contains all you require:
To feed the senses is no shame.ENVOI
Poets, sometimes you misfire
Erase a verse (or poem entire);
The universe will wipe your name,
‘Til then, whatever may transpire:
To feed the senses is no shame.
