Sunday, June 24, 2007
Friday, June 15, 2007
Monday, June 11, 2007
Draft for Baudrillard Series monologue
Often they are forced to live in Brooklyn.
But that doesn't stop them.
That's who they are: actors in New York
The money doesn't matter.
The suspense at the end of the Sopranos was "cruel,"
The TV critic said the next day.
I couldn't sleep.
Between that and the Tony awards, it was a Sunday night
Better than the Beatles on Ed Sullivan.
Tony Tony Tony.
My heart was pounding.
I was suspended, sorry for Janice and A.J. especially,
Because they never knew better,
Although they tried for a brief time,
To find meaning.
Christopher tried, too, in AA, before Tony took the chance
To enable death once more, pinching shut the nose of his dying kin.
Taking mushrooms in Vegas didn't last
And therapy enabled him.
Tony needed one more fix of feigned introspection.
The great respect for money
That always suckers would be immigrants,
Thrift-addicted Mennonites, mobsters,
and the Norman Rockwell family;
If they only knew
That they will almost always end up in a diner,
Dread dripping off every onion ring
While they practice pretending,
Acting that everything is all right.
-- Gregoire Melville
Sunday, June 10, 2007
Saturday, June 09, 2007
Friday, June 08, 2007
Entry #6
The Ecstasy of Communication
Jean Baudrillard
We no longer partake of the drama of alienation, but are in the ecstasy of communication. And this ecstasy is obscene. Obscene is that which eliminates the gaze, the image and every representation. Obscenity is not confined to sexuality, because today there is a pornography of information and communication, a pornography of circuits and networks, of functions and objects in their legibility, availability, regulation, forced signification, capacity to perform, connection, polyvalence, their free expression...
It is no longer the obscenity of the hidden, the repressed, the obscure, but that of the visible, the all-too-visible, the more-visible-than-visible; it is the obscenity of that which no longer contains a secret and is entirely soluble in information and communication.
Marx already denounced the obscenity of the commodity... The commodity is legible, as opposed to the object, which never quite reveals its secret, and it manifests its visible essence — its price. [Price] is the locus of transcription of all possible objects: through it, objects communicate — the merchant form is the first great medium of the modern world. But the message which the objects deliver is radically simplified and is always the same — their exchange value. And so, deep down the message has already ceased to exist, it is the medium which imposes itself in its pure circulation. Let us call this ecstasy: the market is an ecstatic form of the circulation of goods, as prostitution and pornography are ecstatic forms of the circulation of sex...
Ecstasy is all functions abolished into one dimension, the dimension of communication. All events, all spaces, all memories are abolished in the sole dimension of information: this is obscene.
Fulano, mengano y zutano
Thursday, June 07, 2007
Wednesday, June 06, 2007
Friday, June 01, 2007
Entry #5
renovations obscure the plaque commemmorating his last residence. I
breathed the air.
Then I went back to Lower East Side, to Ginsberg's place and through
Loisaida, the Puerto Rican area. Wandered into a botanical garden to
spend a while in the shade and read some of Falling Man.
There's a strange tree-sized sculpture, like Watts Towers but made of
stuffed animals and toys and boxes, where a tall student -- from
somewhere in Europe -- was taking notes.
"Do people still read Richard Brautigan?" I asked him, noticing his book.
"He wrote before I was born," he said, "so I thought I should check it out."
It was a Brautigan I'd never seen, recently published posthumously.
It felt good to be in a world with Puerto Rican sculpture, flowers,
trees, and foreign students reading Richard Brautigan.
Entry #4
rediscovering Chelsea and Lower East Side. It is also very 1960s.
One falls into slipstreams of time; suddenly everyone seems to be
wearing T-shirts reading "Harvard Psychedelic Research Team."
Meditation here in the apartment was more silent than ever in C-U.
I walk up the West Side Highway, past meat district, meandering in the
direction of Kerouac's place, when the new Frank Gehry building
loomed. I knew it was in this direction, but I had forgotten. I
circle the building and take pictures.
Kerouac's place is within site of the Gehry.
The galleries and art studios in the industrial streets of west 26th
revealed the European psychedelic show I'd torn from old pages of the
Times. A 3-D room -- wallpaper, floor, furniture, everything --
covered in 3-D. You wear glasses and walk through. As the review
said, it is fun for a minute.
Parks and flowers of Chelsea, then take trains from Penn Station
toward Whitney. I sit in Grand Central Station to unpack my sushi and
peach Snapple, watching people. The Whitney exhibit of the Summer of
Love 40th anniversary reignited memories. I have to tell another
visitor that I own many of these artifacts -- Jerry Rubin books, album
covers, old Oracles. The light shows and the cushioned rooms revive
the experience of going to the Electric Theatre in Chicago. I get a
little dizzy, but only a little, even staring at the swirling mandalas
of light and the James Whitney Lapis movie. Where is Jordan Belson?
I imagine how much is left out, how much of the 1960s remains to be
revived, how hard it is to recreate a context. Even listening to
Jefferson Airplane's Saturday Afternoon on the museum headphones
doesn't quite jump start the feeling.
I want to buy HIPPIES USE SIDE DOOR sign in the gift shop, but resist.
Lee and I chat on the phone; I give her a tour of the gift shop. It
hardly feels like one travels anymore, with cell phones keeping
everyone at hand.
The water fountains in the Whitney are all broken. I asked for a cup
of water from the cafeteria; the guard encouraged me.
Roland Barthes and Jean Baudrillard are also available in the gift
shop. I should look up Jurgen Habermas on Amazon.
John Waters left the exhibit at the same time as I did. I asked for
his autograph as a way to say hello. We discussed briefly The Brig,
which he seemed to recall from 1963. Then I headed out to see the
last showing of Bruno Dumont's Flanders at the Cinema Village on 12th
Street. While I waited in a slick mini burger place, Stand, eating
slowly by the open window, drinking peach guava tea smoothie, up walks
John Waters again. I told him I wasn't stalking him. I gave him my
Baudrillard blog address, since I use film clips from Female Trouble
and Desperate Living on some of the clips. He promised not to sue me.
"But New Line might," he added.
The 6 train stalled; we were crushed like sardines. A mild exchange
of harsh words occurred between two men because of the crowding, but
no one could even raise their arms in any event. A young black guy
smiled at me. What can you do? he seemed to say. Two Guatemalans
discussed cement and badly made stairways, apparently a project they
worked on.
At home, I called Henry and Ernie. Ernie was golfing and couldn't
talk. Henry was trying to figure out his school papers. "You should
become a school administrator in L.A.," I encouraged him.
Entry #3
Clinton Street in the Lower East Side for the revival of the Living
Theatre production of The Brig. This part of town is like the old New
York, street activity, dressed down, the old and arty scene, like the
60s almost.
Many people wear flip-flops throughout the city. It is a fad here as
everywhere.
You pay what you want at The Brig. I pay $7. A woman with an accent
I can't decipher says she will have to stand next to me, since she had
been waiting in the wrong line behind me earlier. She does. We make
small talk. I imagine possibilities, if I were otherwise disposed.
In the lobby, she and I leave the waiting line for the espresso and
tea bar, where the clerk gives me my $2 coffee for free because he
can't make change.
I feel like Banksy, Matthew Barney, Julian Beck and probably Richard
Brautigan combined.
The Brig is more choreographed than scripted, the rigidity and
dehumanization of military prison still powerful, staccato, and in the
second act, when they "sterilize" the barracks, the blur of harsh
simultaneous shouting or orders and the throwing of soapy water and
stomping feet makes for a strong delirium. Again, I sat in the front
row, next to a young, thin tattooed man. We discuss his tattoos and
my interest in having Mayan symbols put on my inside forearm.
"That was my first one," he says. "It didn't hurt. Do you still go
to Central America?" It turns out he lives in Costa Rica and is
developing an isolated residential area. He gives me his card. I
will write him.
Judith Malina, the founder of the Living Theatre, who turned 80 this
year, her black mane of hair flowing wildly and her smile wide, sits
next to us and still takes notes on the performance. I ask for her
autograph. She and the author of the play come on stage for curtain
calls, although there is no curtain, just barbed wire and chain link
fence. There is a party following the performance. "Beer and music,"
one of the performers shouts.
I walk home, through the Village, Washington Square Park, and know
what Dylan meant by a life that is "positively 4th Street."
Entry #2
Bought my subway seven-day pass for $24.
Meandering through the theatre district en route to MOMA, I pass the
Gershwin Theatre where Wicked is playing, and it happens to be the
time when people sign up for the lottery. I sign up, explaining in
Spanish to a tall and elegant woman from Lima that she need not pay in
advance. I continue to MOMA, buy my ticket for the rare screening of
Warhold's Chelsea Girls, and return for the Wicked drawing. Two
hundred people are waiting, mostly young girls. My name is the first
called. The woman from Lima also is chosen. I felt guilty since it
was not planned, but the front row seat suited me fine. Beautiful
show, but as New York magazine rated the long-running show with a
"recommended" star but said, "Curiously unsatisfying, unless you are a
young girl." That's a little harsh. The performances and the wit
(and the proximity to the players) suited me fine. I peer over the
edge to see the orchestra working at their craft, wearing black
t-shirts mostly, tuning up, content.
I may be bad at poker, but luck serves me well in New York. Maybe
living in the States is not so bad. One can be poor and live
otherwise, if you want. It must come at some cost to the rest of the
world.
I think in Spanish. I talk to strangers and we have things to talk about.
Entry #1
newspaper, quiet. Hundreds of channels of television, all remain
dark.
Manhattan is my monastery. I eat small elegant meals, spring herb
salad and a fried egg, with A-1 sauce and a chunk of watermelon, some
pine nuts Mark left behind in the refrigerator.
What noise comes from the street is anonymous, undisturbing.
