The Back Yard - A fiction exercise

I look back at this relationship, and I can’t remember how it started. It wasn’t that candle-lit dinner that we watched from the back yard of that house in Sherman Oaks. It’s somehow so poetic to be watching strangers enjoy some intimate moment from their own back yard. That was the moment our relationship got serious, as we clamored over one another to get out of the back yard, falling over a yellow spinning sprinkler. We were already into something by then. You and I got the idea hanging out at the pharmacy. I was behind the counter, and you were there taking forever to buy a case of pastilles. That’s when you stopped being just another face and drooping body that school dragged in front of me every day. I can remember how you used to look. You were pretty new to school, so you hadn’t developed a persona yet. Just in from Canada, you were wearing jeans and a t-shirt. You had a nasty looking cast on your arm, with pins coming out of it and what looked like an intricate pulley system. Of course you weren’t as gaunt as you are now.

So I guess it was a good thing that you didn’t fall on that arm when we were in those peoples’ back yard. You hadn’t been the one who had wanted to do this thing. It was really me pushing you. But, you know it was worth it, because we just sat out there in the darkness, with no real risk of getting caught. You were just getting into one of your Xanax moods. I think that it was when you pulled out the paper bag from your jacket pocket that we had worn out our welcome. The reason, I know you didn’t fall on the arm that was broken at the beginning of the schoolyear was because that was the arm you were using to gingerly hold the bag to your lips as you wheezed into the thing. The crinkling that came with the bag inflating was a lot to deal with. It got me nervous. I was surprised how calm I had been until then.

I remember, you started to wheeze when the people were getting done with their romantic dinner. They had been holding hands across the table, and the man in his red sweater leaned in, slowly, and kissed the woman on the cheek. I remember it looked like he took a bite out of her, because his lips were so drawn and tense at the sides. And the woman, doing her best to look elegant had her hair bobbed in the front and long in the back. She couldn’t hide the sunken cheeks and severe forehead creases of someone who had spent too many hours contemplating spreadsheets and pocketbooks and calendars. The man got up and moved towards the back yard, and you wheezing in my ear was the last thing that I needed, and I decided it was time to go, and I turned and walked right into you in the darkness.

All I can say is thank god for soundproofing. I often think that people like those have soundproofed heads. So we just went out after that. Driving around in your parents’ SUV, we hit up Norms on the West side. It was a long, winding drive, and I sunk into the seat with cold, sweaty palms against my thighs in my pockets. It was a long drive, but that’s why you have a multi-disc changer. It wasn’t so bad, listening to the Rolling Stones live show in the mid-eighties. It was kind of a sad experience actually. Speaking as a Stones nerd, Charlie Watts sounded like he was still in rehab and drumming from inside of an iron lung. But that was just it, we were drumming through our own lives in the iron lung of an absent culture. I think that’s when we pulled over to take a hit from your little plastic bong.

So that’s where it became us relying upon one another. When I needed you to feel like I could do whatever I wanted, even though I never got much farther than sitting in peoples’ back yards. I think that you needed me to remind you that you can take a lead role in a story. All you had to do was be a host to my whimsy. It was so much harder back then to get any traction on the world. When you went home, your house smelled like the same sour disinfectant that it smelled like when your parents bought the place. And you just accompanied them to dinners in front of the television or trips to fine dining in strip malls where your Dad would explain why he picked an Australian wine, and your mother was letting her lazy eye fall all over the room as she chewed through the bottle before dinner arrived.

I was sitting at home at about the same time, just sort of digging my ass into the sofa, slowly growing to be more and more like the dogs, who were in the process of unlearning their training. Since my older brother had graduated and gone off to college in the east, I was pretty well on my own. At this point, things were really starting to unwind and my parents were exploring their personalities, so I was just watching their lives unfold in front of me.

Give me another hit. Now lets go get some food.

Art - a word dogs know and use all the time.

This is what I think art is: art is communing with the mystical world.  No wait, don’t scoff, I’m serious.  Art is mysticism.  Art is the work that certain people do that brings other people into a communal spiritual place that is a broader form of communication in one way or another than the day to day.  It’s spiritual.  So if you can get your audience to step out of their own shoes for a moment, and they don’t just sit there wondering why they are not in their shoes, then you have made good art.

You are still scoffing.

Seriously, I mean, I’ve gotten to a point in which I am pompous enough to go to an art gallery and get insulted by the way that a curator presents an exceedingly pessimistic view of reality, or the way that certain art galleries are filled with people who don’t look at the art.  The worst to me, however, the thing that ticks me off the worst, is when nobody responds to the art.  I mean, I am a pompous, self-diagnosed artist.  But can’t people react to the stuff in front of them?  I mean, half of the art today is so controversial, so overtly provocative, that it takes an act of will to stymie a reaction.  At least for me.

Okay, let’s face it, that’s probably just me.  And I don’t generally stymie my urges to respond, unless some dude in a black jacket tells me to shut up or get out.

But still, somebody has to be out there that says, well, conventions be what they are, I am sufficiently concerned about this video of children having sex that I will try to consider why the artist did this.  I guess its someone like me who just starts talking to the people around him about what the work means and how it makes me feel.  Other people just don’t presuppose anything about the other people milling about in the gallery.  Its just me and the old folks, and occasionally a really strange guy who will continue to follow you around long after the conversation has run its course and you are running away.

Okay, so I can see how this can get weird.  I can see that.  I admit that there is a weirdo factor going on, but I posit that the weirdos will become a less prominent feature of the gallery discussions circuit once it takes off.

Now, I know what you’re thinking, you’re thinking: Robusto, listen, if everybody started talking at a gallery, then it would be impossible to concentrate.  Especially at a place like MoMA (the newly re-opened Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan – worth several looks [take it a floor at a time – that will be six visits at $20 a visit.  {On second thought, just become a member for $70}]).  My response to you is this: I just want you to react to the art.  Let the art become a communication rather than simply a force of nature.  You know, the artist is interpreting the spirit world, they are not the biggest experts on the subject, and if they get you talking, then you stand a chance of getting something out of the experience and sharing it with those around you, which is rarely a bad thing.

Okay, except when you start talking confrontationally to a very large businessman who begins grinding his teeth when you stand next to him, or a woman who has her arms crossed forbiddingly in front of her and a thirty pound handbag dangling from her wrist like a mace.  These are tell-tale signs.

But yeah, just remind yourself that art is spiritual and that it is showing you how to detach yourself from the real world in an interesting new way.  In the case of African art, it often communicates the exact opposite effect, but most of us wouldn’t know that because it is meant for a very specific audience.  So just be amazed by the spooky faces and outlandish masks, and don’t concern yourself with the rituals that give meaning to that artifice.  But wait, isn’t going to the gallery a ritual of sorts?

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmm…

Yeah, I guess, but white walls, people in black jackets and a crowd of distracted strangers don’t get you into the moment quite as much as rhythmic chanting, elaborate masquerades and scarification.

Just some thoughts.

Le photographie

This blogger thing is a pain in the ass. I had some illustrative pictures uploaded, but they were lost. So this is without benefit of visual aids.

Anyhow, I don't so much like reading how i should take pictures and then following the rules, but after doing it, I certainly feel like I have a bit more framework for thinking about framing and picture taking. Its pretty nice. I like the feeling of working through my problems and making progress. I just don't like the feeling of being made into a guinea pig. So I made my girlfriend be my guinea pig.

This project presents my primary dilemma with this class. Do I get all formal and make a project that I am ambivalent about, or do I get personal and make a project that doesn’t conform. I am by nature a perfectionist and a non-planner. No matter what, though, in order to achieve what I want in this sort of class, I have to plan ahead, learn the basic rules of the tools so that the rules don’t confine me, they set me free (hallelujah!!). I am good when I am involved and boring or worse when I use an excuse and opt out. With this project, I didn’t really learn all there was to know about digital photography before I got into the actual project.

I was pretty cocky. I should have been a bit more hen-like. Certain moments found me entering into that strange photographic zen state in which one sees clearly through the view finder, thinks instantaneously about balance and composition and pushes the button at an interesting time.

That was very nice. Often I realized that my best pictures I hadn’t even experienced, because I was so absorbed in what was going on in front of me. Then later, I could look at peoples’ poses and the scenery. It was sort of like the way that people do all sorts of interesting things when they are young and then when they are old they reflect upon those interesting things instead of continuing to do new interesting things. Is photography is aging me prematurely?

This project has gotten me thinking seriously about photography. I should have given more time and taken more pictures without flash or of interesting subjects outside at night. I like to experiment with the camera but the way that I did it, caused me a couple of late nights that I should have not forced myself into. That was bad. What’s worse is that many of my pictures are out of focus. I have to be ready to do my work, not my leisure activities during the day.

I am starting to think about the idea that photography steals the soul. This might account for the way that people tend to cringe or at least brace themselves into a pose when they know they are being photographed. It also reflects in part why people are so haggard in this country, because we live in such a capture-happy culture, people are on guard and security and cleanliness obsessed. The world has to be just right, the world is a dangerous place where anything can and will be used against you by political and emotional terrorists. As Loudon Wainwright sang (probably quoting someone else), people are all dying to be on T.V., to escape being free. It’s all very Erich Fromm. So, that is my rationalization for taking the second option. I wanted to consider the interactions between myself and the people around me. It could have just been that I was shy, but I don’t like to think that. Instead, I was boldly confronting myself by using the impersonal, aggressive action of photography and learning to use it humanely.

My girlfriend turned out to be a perfect case for this study. I started out very clinically following her around and making her stop what she was doing and pose for me. In the process, I began to grate on her nerves. Eventually, for the photography as well as other items on the proverbial laundry list, she got mad at me. She chewed me out for being hyper-critical, and then we got into an absurd kind of fight in which we don’t yell at one another, she just pretends that I am not there at all, makes plans to leave and hang out with someone else, then we make up after I tell her I will try to be a better person in the way she wants me to be better.

I must admit that the fight was mostly about things other than photography, but for my being in a coldly photographic frame of mind: distanced from subject, observing, non-committal. That mindset really made the fight bigger. In the end, I wound up taking more humane, more loving and careful pictures of her, during the fight and once we had made up. It turns out that taking good pictures can be done, but you need to put in the work and focus to do it. I guess it is nice to know that people can change, at least in the short term.

Time Management

It's after 2 PM and I haven't had breakfast yet. Bah humbug.

Anyhow, last night my love and I went to a benefit concert for Katrina victims put on by the New Yorker. It was an amazing concert. Great actors and writers read from the writings of other great writers, or occasionally, their own writing. Also, many New York and New Orleans-based musicians gave performances. I can't believe it cost $50 a ticket. It was a really heartfelt play at a synthesized race politics. Still, the sea of faces was immaculately white at the intermission. The performers were an interesting mix, but in general there was an awkward line, the white New York of Lou Reed, and the black New Orleans of Buckwheat Zydeco. The black performers really pleased the white crowd - albeit with flares of racial tension provided by the incomparable Toni Morrison, reading Flannery O'Connor, Lou Reed, Kevin Kline singing from a black man's perspective and Terrence Howard, reading Mark Twain as though Mr. Clemens were a negro himself.

While I was in a meandering line for the scant lavatorial resources at The Town Hall, I wrote the following about my ambivalence towards the event:

So many and so expectant are the faces waiting to be entertained by these performers. That we may, in the dark hall, blend together our white and their black. And in return for their propulsion of this admixture, we give them our money to help rebuild.

Forgive me, I am tired and in lined between a man in hemmed-in jeans for the bathroom. I am amidst town hall, historic and brimming with the mottled shadows of aging white faces. Those shadows, now being stretched away, are held in fineries and cradled to ease in civility, until they rest, face and fold as one, in dream if not in waking.


When Kevin Kline played the piano and sang "they're trying to wash us away", he played with our heartstrings and our frayed nerves, because there was the distinct sense that he was taking on a black perspective to show camaraderie, but also in the spirit of blending, of empathy in the vortex of racial ambivalence. After all, is the face of New Orleans, or for that matter, the whole area, white or black? I can tell you that despite the audience at The Town Hall, the face of New York is a shade far darker than ivory.

But the music was amazing. Buckwheat Zydeco was my favorite and a fitting final act to a show all about how necessary it is for white people to work through the slog of division to do something good for people with all that they have. When Buckwheat called out "are you having a good time?" it was a high-spirited demand, because if the people in this crowd weren't having a good time, then there was little hope for those who weren't so regaled with such luxurious entertainments.

The show reminded me that I had always wanted to go to New Orleans, and that without the spirit of New Orleans, there would be very little fun in America. After all, the confrontational, hot energy of New Orleans, its expanded realm of possibilities and its ability to function amidst the urban and social decay that so fills America is what gives all of America's manmade diversions their gloire. Disneyland, Vegas, Memphis, even Hollywood are all fed by the antic energy and moral amorphousness that has been bred for generations in New Orleans, the impossible city. Like America's great artists, New Orleans is a city that has thrived in evading the fact that all that very little stands between life and death, between high times and doldrums. And we could all use that knowledge better in this country right now. After all, who knows how much longer we will be a great power in the world? Lets enjoy it and make great things before the storm clouds come and we have to run for shelter.

It's 3 now and still no breakfast.

Presenting, the love of my life

This woman is the greatest!!



She is very brave as well.


If she looks haggard, I assure you it is all due to my influence, and a little bit from law school.



For the record, thus begins my faceless portrait of my girlfriend.

More photos to come, including labels.

Digi-bashing

http://www.planetdan.net/pics/misc/georgie.htm

Welcome to the digital mudslinging era. In this joyous era, one can take out one's frustration on replicas of the public leaders who fail our litmus test for taking responsibility for their actions. The only real reason I don't enjoy this website as much as I could is because I start thinking about how much I am like Bush: I don't really let myself work too hard, I don't make many sacrifices for my ideals. I am constantly thinking about how much I am like Bush in that i take regular vacations and am unwilling to do menial labor just because my family members say that I should to "get my feet wet". I am always wondering "wet with what?" Either way, the big difference between Bush and me is that while he is trapped/hiding in an oppressively religious/ socially darwinistic social circle, I am much freer. I am living the life I have chosen, taking a few of the consequences and aware that there are more to come. I don't know what Bush is aware of, but I can tell you this. From the way he behaves, he isn't very interested in actually becoming the decision maker in his life, and I couldn't live with myself if I weren't at least trying to be that person in my life. Even if I were a cripled person who couldn't speak or eat, I would try and liberate myself. If not physically, then mentally.

Perhaps that is what is so existentially communicated by the above website. Bush is a person who has learned how not to be crushed by the many blows that his position is subject to. In fact, his administration has helped him take as few lumps in life as possible. Every time he gets hit, he bounces away, usually babbling a few words, and looks for a hiding place. When people say Bush is stupid, I am very concerned because he lives by a principle that people in this country, especialy the well-educated, tend to hold higher than booksmarts: protect ya neck.

Parents, this is why kids listen to hip-hop: better advice for the world of competitive freakonomics. In this society, the media is the best sort of parent for kids not at the top of the social hierarchy, because, as Marshall McLuhan said - media is a numbing agent. Numbness is a fine option in lieu of parents who can't or don't protect their children, ease their pain, or help them recognze that there in the painful world there are some great things worth getting to on your own, with your own will still intact.

If you enjoy lifting digi-Bush and flinging him away like a damp rag (as you can do at the above link by clicking and dragging), I urge you to consider one thing: if we don't find a way to keep this country a fun and exciting place, then we are going to have one more bush-like president after another. Because while we are cyber-beating digi-Bush, he is out there perhaps in the oval office, going about his degenerate business. So go dig reality.

Peace.

I had an elaborate posting to put up, but let's cut the sentimental doodoo. I am writing to all those people out there who have lived by someone else's taste and know that they have their own.

I am writing to all those people who feel like they want to take part in reality, but don't get much of a chance because reality only gives them a cramped pigeon hole to work with.

Mainly, I am writing to the people out there who are themselves, not lost or hiding in the shell of another personality, just themselves. As my lady delight puts it: "you know, A PERSON."

I am well on my way to becoming a full grown person, but for the moment, I am just Robusto. And Iam trying to figure out a few things.

For instance, is it me or is the end of the world being taken all too seriously as an option for the future? I mean, its a funny joke to say the world's coming to an end, but what's the point of getting all serious about it? If you are going to do something to keep the world from being miserable to live in, that's great. Just keep the end of the world a joke, as in the following:

A cat, a mouse and a dog walk into a five star restaurant. The maitre di sees them and says " good evening sir and madam, dinner for three? And the dog says, no thanks, the world is about to end.

This is much funnier, in my oppinion, than the alternate version in which the cat kills the mouse, the dog kills the cat, the Maitre Di kills the dog and a person at a nearby table says "I didn't know there would be a buffet tonight!"

Another thing: people are very defensive nowadays, especially white people. It's good to do things that remind people that they can still talk to one another, smile in each other's presence, and even laugh. I would love to see more flat-brimmed cap and jersey (or mock army fatigue) wearing African American males between the ages of 18 and 35 laughing and smiling on the subway, talking to balding white males of the same age bracket who is causing this laughter and smiling, and sharing in it. I would also love to see white businessmen from the ages of 45-65, wearing pinstriped suits, cologne and fancy watches that they are compulsively checking decide at certain points to try to entertain the people around them. They could do this by smiling, starting up conversations, or even a small dance. If one of them carried a jaw harp in his breast pocket, this would not be a problem. Unfortunately, their watches are very needy, apparently. I would love to see more Chinese tourists reaching out to shake the hands of white people on the street. I would love to hear women in transparent sunglasses, with glossy, streaked, straightened hair and cleverly sliced up clothing from the age of 15-45 talking about how when the sun rises over the mountains in Alberta, the Earth seems to open up and their hearts once again awaken to the shivering thrill of morning.

I think that will be the hip thing next year.