It' so flattering when y'all complain that I haven't posted in a while. Really, it is. But if you think you're gonna make me pull a Sally Field, well, you're wrong. (Wink.) I'll just settle for saying, "Thanks for reading." And I mean it.
It's been a month since my last post, so I thought I'd drop a quick blog note to apprise everyone of just what I'm up to. As many of you know, I've been living the high life for a year now. The first six months were funded by Unemployment Insurance. Over the last six months, I've lived off a combination of savings, brokering apartments for my landlord (a free month's rent for every unit I rent out -- so far I've rented three since June), and teaching ESL (English as a Second Language). AND I've temped in various upscale corporate setting, as those of you who've read the "Pippypoo" entry well know. And oh, yeah... the massage thing pops up every once in a while, so to speak.
Christ, reviewing that list makes me realize what a busy little bohemian I can be when I put my mind to things... Such a litany of pursuits, however trivial, is enough to make me reconsider whether I remain qualified for slacker status.
Anyhoo, today I'm plunked in front of yet another Hearst Corporation computer, filling in for some "lifer" Executive Assistant who works for some coot who's apprently so old and important that his business cards no longer contain a job title. John Mack Carter's resume includes having been chairman of American Home Publishing, Editor-in-Chief of Ladies' Home Journal and McCall's, and Associate Editor of my alma mater, Better Homes & Gardens. (I know an alma mater is a school from which one has graduated -- that's exactly what it was for me, since it was my official introduction to the School of Hard Knocks.) Well, how nice for John.
If I hadn't seen the man the last time I was here (temping for the Corporate Treasurer), I'd have no idea what he looks like. He's in Florida today. Just like he was yesterday. For the past two days I've sat at his secretary's desk, answering his phone (which only rings once an hour) and taking care of my personal business both via phone and internet.
Now THIS is a job I could handle.
I love lending a helping hand to the aging icons of industry. I love seeing how major corporations will keep people on salary and fill their lives with perks and benefits simply because they were, once upon a time, productive. It's almost contrary to basic capitalist principle, isn't it? I can't decide if I want to criticize the waste of company dollars or praise the sheer humanitarianism of the situation. So I settle for "sticking it to the man" by wasting some of their dollars myself, and by taking care of all my home office supply needs while I'm here. Anyone need some Scotch tape? A pile of Post-It's?
Meanwhile, I'm back in the FT job search. I'm ready again, not to mention broke. No more savings to live off, save for the precious little IRA I started a few years ago and that I've vowed not to touch. Much.
This time around I'm targeting sales, especially ad sales. If I'd been an eager little advertising beaver when I was at the last FT gig with Veranda magazine, this is exactly the career path I'd have been on. So I've decided to get on it again. My experience qualifies me for it; I'm "priced out" of considering anything new (e.g.: I can't settle for less money), and I actually think I could handle it for a while. The main emphasis is that I would NOT be anyone's "Assistant" anymore. THAT's what made the last two jobs such hell for me. My ego has suffered enough blows. I refuse to put myself in a subservient role again. True, sales is as kiss-ass as jobs come, but in the ad world, Ad Reps are respected. No assistant is respected. Don't even try to get PC on me now. I've had three years of humbling experiences to back up my argument.
What about the ESL, you ask? I'm teaching every weeknight from 7-10pm. It's a great gig but it only pays $12.00/hr!!! I'm paying dues in that field. I need a year's experience in it before any day school takes me seriously. Hence the reason to return to FT sales work while I continue to gain ESL teaching experience PT.
So the slacker is awakening from his slumber. I won't say "the party's over," however. I know myself too well. But I apologize if the blogging slows down. Studies show that when Greg has a FT job, his creativity wanes. Believe me you, I've made it a long-term goal to establish a lifestyle that is balanced between money-grubbing and creative endeavors. But that requires a short-term commitment to wage slavery.
Don't give up on us, baby.
Tuesday, November 22, 2005
Tuesday, October 18, 2005
One of These Days
Hey, Mr. DJ – put a record on, I wanna dance with my past… If I can’t do anything else, then I’ll dedicate my artistic mission toward describing what it’s like to grow up somewhere between the bourgeoise and the rebel… If I can’t seem to make it through to the populace; if I can’t make it to the print presses or the airwaves; then maybe I’ll just have to settle for letting the folks who surf the ‘net know how I feel about how I was raised to feel…
I’m not the only one. Neither are you. If you’re alive enough to read this right here and right now, then you’re one of us. You’re one of those who was raised on the Myth of A Star Is Born. It doesn’t matter of it’s Streisand or Garland you associate with the role. The truth is, if you remember either (or worse, like myself, if you remember both), then the Star in question is none other than yourself.
Rising to fame is the late 20th/early 21st Century equivalent to an immigrant’s arriving from another land, after passing through Eillis Island, onto streets paved with gold. It is the current American mythos. It is the umph upon which the majority of several industries have been thrust, and then built.
Don’t know what I mean? Then take a look-see at American Idol, or So You Think You Can Dance, or even at the mothers of all “Reality” TV: The Real World or Survivor. They encapsulate, in less than 60 minutes (gotta reserve ample time for commercials, after all), the sheer reductivist version of Darwinianism that America likes to call its own.
It’s survival of the fittest, that is. Which equates, in camera-ready terms, to an unspoken unilateral agreement to put to contest only the most beautiful of people. Hence the first line of Darwinian deliniation, in American terms, equals beauty – according to how the camera sees it. (Beauty has, after all, been determined differently according to various variables throughout Western history; i.e.: how one looks whilst lounging along a riverbank or on a chaise, or how one appears on stage.) Don’t tell me Richard Hatch isn’t handsome. True, he might not look like Tom Cruise, but if his nose had cast any unnessecary shadows on that, the first of the screen tests before any of the contestants had landed on the first of the Survivor islands, then you can be damned sure he’d never have gotten the opportunity to saunter around, however robustly, in his birthday suit.
See, these days (ever since the dawn of Hollywood and the utterly critical aspect called depth-of-field), beauty has been determined less by one’s facial features and more by the lack of them. Because features cast shadows, and shadows – in the film/video world – are problems. It started somewhere around Garbo and has continued right up to Pamela Anderson. The former had no features whatsoever, other than what the camera gave her, and the latter? Ditto – except for her “titto’s.” You see, bodily features are just fine. It’s the close up that’s the problem. Unless, of course, you’re utterly featureless. Then it’s no problem at all.
Which is not to say that one can’t possess any physical features whatsoever. Quite the contrary. Coloring is critical (no matter what any make-up or lighting “artist” wants to tell you), as is the shape of one’s head. Lash length is a factor, as is one’s ability to raise one (and only one) eyebrow. And of course, there’s the ever-important head width, and forehead hieght, and jaw structure, and chin size, and then the eventually adjacent neck length. These factors work together in an indescribable and transcendant ability to suggest meaning and context when framed within any of the industry-standard Pythagorean ratios. (“Letterbox” and “pan-and-scan” are the primary two – have a ball looking up these terms, among others, those of you who’ve magically managed to avoid encountering them).
Factors that no longer matter include but are not limited to: height, stature, strength, endurance and – let’s certainly not forget – intellect (the capacity to which one would need in order to memorize an entire script so that one might perform it from beginning to end without ceaseless interruptions and/or retakes). (Note: WEIGHT remains a critical factor, as in, “the less the better.”) Otherwise, today’s cinematic standards of beauty remain identical to that of previous generations.
So, if you’re “on board” for the pursuit of the current American mythos, sooner or later you’re going to have to evaluate yourself on this beauty scale. If you’re lucky enough to be honest enough with yourself not to try to compete with the likes of Cameron Diaz and Antonio Banderas (don’t know why I jumped immediately to the pseudo Latin American talent pool for that comparison, so in the interest of racial equality, let’s also throw in Halle Berry and Denzel Washington; and then Angelina Jolie and Colin Farrel), then you’ll be immediately prompted to recognize yourself as a “character actor.” Good for you. You’ve just joined the ranks of Rhea Perlman and Danny DeVito (who happen to have been married at one point – don’t know if they still are).
I don’t care if you’re an actor, a musician, or even a writer or a fucking painter – at this point in history, America wants all of its celebrities to be pretty. If you’re not pretty, then you’d better be friggin’ funny, like Marty Feldman. Or you’d better be rich. You can be as ugly as you want as long as you’re funny or rich. But no one ever got rich by being ugly (Feldman is no millionaire – he’s not even still alive), and getting rich AND famous is what we’re talking about here… So if you’re ugly and rich and famous by now, that means you’ve been working at it for a good 30 years or so and your time has just come… Kinda like “The Donald.” (So fire me already. I wasn’t even gonna apply.) If you’re just ugly and famous right now, just wait a few months… (Case in point: Every day I see “de plane,” but when’s the last time we saw Tattoo?)
Still willing to pursue today’s American dream? Then you must be talented.
Ha, ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!!!!!!!!!!!!
How nice for you. So one of these days, as they say, your ship will come in. If you just keep plugging along, despite all the odds against you and despite all the cosmetic surgery that your “younger-than’s” and “lesser-than’s” are currently undergoing (not to mention the subsequent contacts that their surgeons will be able to put them in touch with), then you might just be able to make a name for yourself. You might just get through to the populace. And then maybe – after all that work and if the Good Witch of the North just happens to meet you at an art opening or a movie or theatre premiere after she’s downed a few too many Cosmopolitans – you might just become a star. Well, then, of course I apologize for sounding too cynical. Of course you were right in persuing the mythos of our time. Good for you. You beat the odds.
I’m sorry – just who are you again?
I’m not the only one. Neither are you. If you’re alive enough to read this right here and right now, then you’re one of us. You’re one of those who was raised on the Myth of A Star Is Born. It doesn’t matter of it’s Streisand or Garland you associate with the role. The truth is, if you remember either (or worse, like myself, if you remember both), then the Star in question is none other than yourself.
Rising to fame is the late 20th/early 21st Century equivalent to an immigrant’s arriving from another land, after passing through Eillis Island, onto streets paved with gold. It is the current American mythos. It is the umph upon which the majority of several industries have been thrust, and then built.
Don’t know what I mean? Then take a look-see at American Idol, or So You Think You Can Dance, or even at the mothers of all “Reality” TV: The Real World or Survivor. They encapsulate, in less than 60 minutes (gotta reserve ample time for commercials, after all), the sheer reductivist version of Darwinianism that America likes to call its own.
It’s survival of the fittest, that is. Which equates, in camera-ready terms, to an unspoken unilateral agreement to put to contest only the most beautiful of people. Hence the first line of Darwinian deliniation, in American terms, equals beauty – according to how the camera sees it. (Beauty has, after all, been determined differently according to various variables throughout Western history; i.e.: how one looks whilst lounging along a riverbank or on a chaise, or how one appears on stage.) Don’t tell me Richard Hatch isn’t handsome. True, he might not look like Tom Cruise, but if his nose had cast any unnessecary shadows on that, the first of the screen tests before any of the contestants had landed on the first of the Survivor islands, then you can be damned sure he’d never have gotten the opportunity to saunter around, however robustly, in his birthday suit.
See, these days (ever since the dawn of Hollywood and the utterly critical aspect called depth-of-field), beauty has been determined less by one’s facial features and more by the lack of them. Because features cast shadows, and shadows – in the film/video world – are problems. It started somewhere around Garbo and has continued right up to Pamela Anderson. The former had no features whatsoever, other than what the camera gave her, and the latter? Ditto – except for her “titto’s.” You see, bodily features are just fine. It’s the close up that’s the problem. Unless, of course, you’re utterly featureless. Then it’s no problem at all.
Which is not to say that one can’t possess any physical features whatsoever. Quite the contrary. Coloring is critical (no matter what any make-up or lighting “artist” wants to tell you), as is the shape of one’s head. Lash length is a factor, as is one’s ability to raise one (and only one) eyebrow. And of course, there’s the ever-important head width, and forehead hieght, and jaw structure, and chin size, and then the eventually adjacent neck length. These factors work together in an indescribable and transcendant ability to suggest meaning and context when framed within any of the industry-standard Pythagorean ratios. (“Letterbox” and “pan-and-scan” are the primary two – have a ball looking up these terms, among others, those of you who’ve magically managed to avoid encountering them).
Factors that no longer matter include but are not limited to: height, stature, strength, endurance and – let’s certainly not forget – intellect (the capacity to which one would need in order to memorize an entire script so that one might perform it from beginning to end without ceaseless interruptions and/or retakes). (Note: WEIGHT remains a critical factor, as in, “the less the better.”) Otherwise, today’s cinematic standards of beauty remain identical to that of previous generations.
So, if you’re “on board” for the pursuit of the current American mythos, sooner or later you’re going to have to evaluate yourself on this beauty scale. If you’re lucky enough to be honest enough with yourself not to try to compete with the likes of Cameron Diaz and Antonio Banderas (don’t know why I jumped immediately to the pseudo Latin American talent pool for that comparison, so in the interest of racial equality, let’s also throw in Halle Berry and Denzel Washington; and then Angelina Jolie and Colin Farrel), then you’ll be immediately prompted to recognize yourself as a “character actor.” Good for you. You’ve just joined the ranks of Rhea Perlman and Danny DeVito (who happen to have been married at one point – don’t know if they still are).
I don’t care if you’re an actor, a musician, or even a writer or a fucking painter – at this point in history, America wants all of its celebrities to be pretty. If you’re not pretty, then you’d better be friggin’ funny, like Marty Feldman. Or you’d better be rich. You can be as ugly as you want as long as you’re funny or rich. But no one ever got rich by being ugly (Feldman is no millionaire – he’s not even still alive), and getting rich AND famous is what we’re talking about here… So if you’re ugly and rich and famous by now, that means you’ve been working at it for a good 30 years or so and your time has just come… Kinda like “The Donald.” (So fire me already. I wasn’t even gonna apply.) If you’re just ugly and famous right now, just wait a few months… (Case in point: Every day I see “de plane,” but when’s the last time we saw Tattoo?)
Still willing to pursue today’s American dream? Then you must be talented.
Ha, ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!!!!!!!!!!!!
How nice for you. So one of these days, as they say, your ship will come in. If you just keep plugging along, despite all the odds against you and despite all the cosmetic surgery that your “younger-than’s” and “lesser-than’s” are currently undergoing (not to mention the subsequent contacts that their surgeons will be able to put them in touch with), then you might just be able to make a name for yourself. You might just get through to the populace. And then maybe – after all that work and if the Good Witch of the North just happens to meet you at an art opening or a movie or theatre premiere after she’s downed a few too many Cosmopolitans – you might just become a star. Well, then, of course I apologize for sounding too cynical. Of course you were right in persuing the mythos of our time. Good for you. You beat the odds.
I’m sorry – just who are you again?
Wednesday, October 05, 2005
September Mourn
While June, July and August of 2005 will forever in my mind be remembered as one of the best summers I’ve ever had, I must confess, the ensuing September was one of the worst months I’ve ever had. Call it anticlimax if you will, but there’s more to it than that. Much more.
I’ve alluded to and even discussed to some extent my tenuous relationship with my parents. Well, I suppose the time has come to elaborate. And I suppose I’ll start with the terse clinical description that sums up so much of the dynamic: I’m the only child of two ‘50s generation staunch blue-collar-made-white-collar Irish Catholics from Massachusetts. If that doesn’t paint some sort of image, I don’t know what will.
I went to visit said parents during the last week of August – supposedly for a “vacation” from the vacation I’d been indulging in since late May…
If there’s a delicate way to put this, I can’t find it. So I’ll just come out with it. My mother has been sipping her way into a steady, sustained, self-destructive stupor since I came out to her way back during the barely post-Cro Magnon era of the Reagan administration (e.g.: 1987). Yeah, it’s been that long. Grudge much? If you ever feel the need to look up the term “false expectation,” then by all means, do. When you do, you’ll find pictures of both my mother and myself next to the definition. She’s the progenitor and I’m the result.
At first the situation was (pardon the pun) relatively easy to deal with. I’d taken care of that. I’d moved all the way from New England to California. I’d put distance between us. Not just physical distance, but cultural distance, too, as I knew my parents perceived California to be “the land of the fruits and the nuts.” Whenever I heard that experession (as I did, many thousands of times over Walter Cronkite’s delivery of the evening news, TV trays in place; TV dinners upon them), I had two – apparently opposing – reactions. On one hand, I immediately understood my parents’ undercutting reference; but on the other hand, deep inside me, a semi-latent fascination with all matters radical perked up and took notice… I suppose that’s largely how I came to equate California with my eventual freedom.
So, when the proper time came (yes, it had to be the “proper” time, as I was still very much New English on the outside), I annouced to my circle of college friends, shortly after graduation, that I was going to move to San Francisco. (Would now be the best time to mention that graduation came with a few thousand bucksaws from my parents, which, I’m sure, they’d envisioned my banking until I needed to buy an engagement ring or put down some money for a home? OK. Consider it mentioned. Yes, I understand how my parents might have come to view this as “insult to injury.”) Of course, the rote repsonse in parts New English back then – and probably still is – “Oh, you’ll be back.”
But I never came back. Even now, almost 20 years later, I still haven’t come back. While I might have returned, finally, to the east coast, I have in no way returned to New England. And despite my disinclination to ever say “never,” I’m pretty sure I can remain honorbaly inclined to say I’ll never go back there. NYC is as close as it gets, baby.
Instead of coming back, I came further out. My 10 years in San Francisco resulted in my evolving from an uptight Irish Catholic prick, albeit an already quite homosexual one, to a radical leftist queer sexworker. (Yes, “sexworker” – that’s what we whores are referred to in more civilized social circles.) And as my consciousness soared, that of my parents remained stagnant at best. Actually, I think it digressed, because I wasn’t there to be “in their face” enough to whittle away at their defenses.
It was easy enough to hide my true self from them whenever I mad my bi-annual trips “home.” After all, I’d been hiding myself from them all my life – and they’d come to expect that – so what difference did it make? But there was a difference. There grew between the three of us an undescribable, inescapable tension. It was as if we lived constantly with the impending threat of an Irish Catholic denial implosion. (No, of course it couldn’t have been an explosion. That would’ve been too explicit.)
By the time my decade in SF was coming to a close, I was coming into my own. I’d broken away from the bourgeois strings of 9-5. I was supporting myself as a sexwoker so that I could write, produce and star in my very own one-man shows. I worked one show to death, playing it at venue after venue until finally I landed a gig at “THE” venue and was written up in several of the Bay Area weeklies – and favorably, I might add. Soon after all this happened, I felt the chill of San Franciso’s glass ceiling, so I knew it was time to move on. It didn’t matter that the rest of the Bay Area had become a warm an nurturing womb. What mattered most was my progression, for better or worse.
So I progressed to Los Angeles, for several reasons, not the least of which was love. Yes, indeed, the cynical whore had found love, in the form of a visual artist from Salt Lake City who’d taken to homesteading in South Central – right around the time of the Rodney Kind riots. How cool is THAT? (Heh.) I rationalized the move in as many self-interested directions as possible, but whenever I got (amidst all the moving and shuffling and sanding and scraping and prepping and painting and repainting and touching up and re-touching) a moment to myself, I realized I’d moved to that god forsaken lot in Los Angeles for love, plain and simple. Hell, I had entered my 30s, so I figured that’s what it was time to do. Settle down and all…
Yeah, I was there to find an agent and maybe do some commercial work. Yeah, I was there to continue playwriting and launch gigs at venues in a bigger pond. And yeah, I did some of that. But most importantly, I was there because I’d found a soul mate.
When I told Mom and Dad about my newfound interest in domestic bliss, they were actually happy. Even if it couldn’t be a wife, I’d at least found a spouse. That’s how they saw the situation. So for a brief while they changed their icy New English tune to one of almost veritable support. In that area, at least. But as for the artsy-fartsy bohemianism? That they still couldn’t handle. See, I’m what most conservative parents might call a “double whammy.” Not only am I gay, but I’m also a bohemian. For real. This ain’t no adolescent phase (much like the queerness wasn’t, either). This is my life. This is moi. This is who and what I am. I’m the rare statistic that parents dread. I didn’t outgrow either phase.
Now, in the interest of ostensible fairness, let’s then hear some sympathy for my folks. All together now: “Awwwwwwww…”
See, the funniest thing about my folks (“funny,” as in deep-dark “weird,” that is – it’s nowhere near funny “ha-ha,” except in the deepest and darkest of ways) is this: They have never been able to think of my gayness as something that has happened to me; they can only perceive it in terms of how it has “happened” to them. For all the “It’s just not a lifestyle I would’ve chosen for you” and “If there was only something we could’ve done to prevent this from happening to you,” notions they might have sent my way, I’ve never once heard from either of them any statement remotely resembling, “Well, if that’s who and what you think you are, then I suppose I’ll have to support that.” Their most compassionate explanations and descriptions have been replete with prejudice and blame. And I don’t, at this point, think I need to spell out exactly against whom they are prejudiced and whom they blame.
So: in a nutshell… Ever since the fall of 1987, immediately after I’d packed everything I could fit into my 1981 VW Jetta and driven across the country to move to SF, my mother has been depressed. She has been so depressed that she developed not only one, not even two, but three types of cancer – each related to her sex and maternity: breast, cervial, and uterine, respectively. And a few years after she’d had several surgeries and “beaten the odds,” dear ol’ Dad came down with prostate cancer.
Now, I’m not one to victim-blame, but am I the only one who sees a weird sort of subconscious, repressed Irish Catholic poetic justice in this picture? Which is not to say, in using the term “poetic justice,” that I think it’s just that my parents have fallen prey to these diseases, but I do – especially as a writer – see a literary pattern of sorts.
Flash forward to the August just passed, the final week during which I visited my parents on “vacation.” Not only did I once again have to face the living image that has become my alcohol-soaked, post-chemo’d Mom – who’s taken to sleeping until 4pm so that she might stay up until 5am sipping white wine from a box and watching Nick at Nite – but I also had to listen to Dear Ol’ Dad’s justifications as to exactly why I was honor-bound to nod and smile whenever she dished out one of her insults (a/k/a, in their heads, “truisms”). In their heads, there’s nothing wrong with our relationship. As it turns out, even though homosexuality never factored into their personal equations, they both hated their mothers. For them, hating one’s mother is status quo. I think that’s the thing they ultimately believe is most radical about me – that I refuse to accept continued abuse from my mother.
But that doesn’t stop her from dishing it out. And it doesn’t stop him from supporting her in doing so. That’s what I learned, during a one-week stay last August back at the homefront. After all these years and after falling under the false assumption that moving “back east” would bring me closer to the parents I’d abandoned almost 20 years ago, I finally came to the realization that I wasn't the only one responsible for our alienated dynamic. In fact, my parents were not only equally to blame for setting up the dynamic, they are apparently quite content with keeping it intact. So when I returned to Brooklyn, after a somewhat longer than brief escape to Party-Party/Never-Never Land, I eventually came (down) to the point of recognizing all this.
Mom hasn’t recovered and most likely never will recover from realizing that I am gay. And her response to the matter has been to take what we Irish like to call “the low road” – denial, anger, and blame. Dad plays the part of the codependent in this case, silently supporting Mom’s behaviors through not making any attempts to change them. Why? Because ultimately he agrees with her position, so he can’t muster up the strength to argue with it.
I am a faggot in my parents’ eyes. As ‘50s generation staunch blue-collar-made-white-collar Irish Catholics from Massachusetts, that’s the only perception available to them. To question that perception would open them up to questioning every other perception that contributes to their sensibility. Like the Roman Catholic church, they espouse to love the sinner but hate the sin.
And that’s a sin I can’t even begin to love any sinner for.
Therein lies the conflict between me and my parents. That’s the reason why I fall into 30-day depressions after each visit I make to Massachusetts. I do my best to recognize that their reaction is not my responsibility; that how they feel about who and what I am ultimately has nothing to do with the essence of who and what I am. But it hurts to visit them. It hurts to see the devastation that the unwillingness to reconsider a sensibility will do to a body (or two, or three, or more – all the way up to a society). THAT’s what pushes me into a chasm of depression. That’s why September was such an awful month for me. And that’s the demon I need to battle next.
“Next!”
I’ve alluded to and even discussed to some extent my tenuous relationship with my parents. Well, I suppose the time has come to elaborate. And I suppose I’ll start with the terse clinical description that sums up so much of the dynamic: I’m the only child of two ‘50s generation staunch blue-collar-made-white-collar Irish Catholics from Massachusetts. If that doesn’t paint some sort of image, I don’t know what will.
I went to visit said parents during the last week of August – supposedly for a “vacation” from the vacation I’d been indulging in since late May…
If there’s a delicate way to put this, I can’t find it. So I’ll just come out with it. My mother has been sipping her way into a steady, sustained, self-destructive stupor since I came out to her way back during the barely post-Cro Magnon era of the Reagan administration (e.g.: 1987). Yeah, it’s been that long. Grudge much? If you ever feel the need to look up the term “false expectation,” then by all means, do. When you do, you’ll find pictures of both my mother and myself next to the definition. She’s the progenitor and I’m the result.
At first the situation was (pardon the pun) relatively easy to deal with. I’d taken care of that. I’d moved all the way from New England to California. I’d put distance between us. Not just physical distance, but cultural distance, too, as I knew my parents perceived California to be “the land of the fruits and the nuts.” Whenever I heard that experession (as I did, many thousands of times over Walter Cronkite’s delivery of the evening news, TV trays in place; TV dinners upon them), I had two – apparently opposing – reactions. On one hand, I immediately understood my parents’ undercutting reference; but on the other hand, deep inside me, a semi-latent fascination with all matters radical perked up and took notice… I suppose that’s largely how I came to equate California with my eventual freedom.
So, when the proper time came (yes, it had to be the “proper” time, as I was still very much New English on the outside), I annouced to my circle of college friends, shortly after graduation, that I was going to move to San Francisco. (Would now be the best time to mention that graduation came with a few thousand bucksaws from my parents, which, I’m sure, they’d envisioned my banking until I needed to buy an engagement ring or put down some money for a home? OK. Consider it mentioned. Yes, I understand how my parents might have come to view this as “insult to injury.”) Of course, the rote repsonse in parts New English back then – and probably still is – “Oh, you’ll be back.”
But I never came back. Even now, almost 20 years later, I still haven’t come back. While I might have returned, finally, to the east coast, I have in no way returned to New England. And despite my disinclination to ever say “never,” I’m pretty sure I can remain honorbaly inclined to say I’ll never go back there. NYC is as close as it gets, baby.
Instead of coming back, I came further out. My 10 years in San Francisco resulted in my evolving from an uptight Irish Catholic prick, albeit an already quite homosexual one, to a radical leftist queer sexworker. (Yes, “sexworker” – that’s what we whores are referred to in more civilized social circles.) And as my consciousness soared, that of my parents remained stagnant at best. Actually, I think it digressed, because I wasn’t there to be “in their face” enough to whittle away at their defenses.
It was easy enough to hide my true self from them whenever I mad my bi-annual trips “home.” After all, I’d been hiding myself from them all my life – and they’d come to expect that – so what difference did it make? But there was a difference. There grew between the three of us an undescribable, inescapable tension. It was as if we lived constantly with the impending threat of an Irish Catholic denial implosion. (No, of course it couldn’t have been an explosion. That would’ve been too explicit.)
By the time my decade in SF was coming to a close, I was coming into my own. I’d broken away from the bourgeois strings of 9-5. I was supporting myself as a sexwoker so that I could write, produce and star in my very own one-man shows. I worked one show to death, playing it at venue after venue until finally I landed a gig at “THE” venue and was written up in several of the Bay Area weeklies – and favorably, I might add. Soon after all this happened, I felt the chill of San Franciso’s glass ceiling, so I knew it was time to move on. It didn’t matter that the rest of the Bay Area had become a warm an nurturing womb. What mattered most was my progression, for better or worse.
So I progressed to Los Angeles, for several reasons, not the least of which was love. Yes, indeed, the cynical whore had found love, in the form of a visual artist from Salt Lake City who’d taken to homesteading in South Central – right around the time of the Rodney Kind riots. How cool is THAT? (Heh.) I rationalized the move in as many self-interested directions as possible, but whenever I got (amidst all the moving and shuffling and sanding and scraping and prepping and painting and repainting and touching up and re-touching) a moment to myself, I realized I’d moved to that god forsaken lot in Los Angeles for love, plain and simple. Hell, I had entered my 30s, so I figured that’s what it was time to do. Settle down and all…
Yeah, I was there to find an agent and maybe do some commercial work. Yeah, I was there to continue playwriting and launch gigs at venues in a bigger pond. And yeah, I did some of that. But most importantly, I was there because I’d found a soul mate.
When I told Mom and Dad about my newfound interest in domestic bliss, they were actually happy. Even if it couldn’t be a wife, I’d at least found a spouse. That’s how they saw the situation. So for a brief while they changed their icy New English tune to one of almost veritable support. In that area, at least. But as for the artsy-fartsy bohemianism? That they still couldn’t handle. See, I’m what most conservative parents might call a “double whammy.” Not only am I gay, but I’m also a bohemian. For real. This ain’t no adolescent phase (much like the queerness wasn’t, either). This is my life. This is moi. This is who and what I am. I’m the rare statistic that parents dread. I didn’t outgrow either phase.
Now, in the interest of ostensible fairness, let’s then hear some sympathy for my folks. All together now: “Awwwwwwww…”
See, the funniest thing about my folks (“funny,” as in deep-dark “weird,” that is – it’s nowhere near funny “ha-ha,” except in the deepest and darkest of ways) is this: They have never been able to think of my gayness as something that has happened to me; they can only perceive it in terms of how it has “happened” to them. For all the “It’s just not a lifestyle I would’ve chosen for you” and “If there was only something we could’ve done to prevent this from happening to you,” notions they might have sent my way, I’ve never once heard from either of them any statement remotely resembling, “Well, if that’s who and what you think you are, then I suppose I’ll have to support that.” Their most compassionate explanations and descriptions have been replete with prejudice and blame. And I don’t, at this point, think I need to spell out exactly against whom they are prejudiced and whom they blame.
So: in a nutshell… Ever since the fall of 1987, immediately after I’d packed everything I could fit into my 1981 VW Jetta and driven across the country to move to SF, my mother has been depressed. She has been so depressed that she developed not only one, not even two, but three types of cancer – each related to her sex and maternity: breast, cervial, and uterine, respectively. And a few years after she’d had several surgeries and “beaten the odds,” dear ol’ Dad came down with prostate cancer.
Now, I’m not one to victim-blame, but am I the only one who sees a weird sort of subconscious, repressed Irish Catholic poetic justice in this picture? Which is not to say, in using the term “poetic justice,” that I think it’s just that my parents have fallen prey to these diseases, but I do – especially as a writer – see a literary pattern of sorts.
Flash forward to the August just passed, the final week during which I visited my parents on “vacation.” Not only did I once again have to face the living image that has become my alcohol-soaked, post-chemo’d Mom – who’s taken to sleeping until 4pm so that she might stay up until 5am sipping white wine from a box and watching Nick at Nite – but I also had to listen to Dear Ol’ Dad’s justifications as to exactly why I was honor-bound to nod and smile whenever she dished out one of her insults (a/k/a, in their heads, “truisms”). In their heads, there’s nothing wrong with our relationship. As it turns out, even though homosexuality never factored into their personal equations, they both hated their mothers. For them, hating one’s mother is status quo. I think that’s the thing they ultimately believe is most radical about me – that I refuse to accept continued abuse from my mother.
But that doesn’t stop her from dishing it out. And it doesn’t stop him from supporting her in doing so. That’s what I learned, during a one-week stay last August back at the homefront. After all these years and after falling under the false assumption that moving “back east” would bring me closer to the parents I’d abandoned almost 20 years ago, I finally came to the realization that I wasn't the only one responsible for our alienated dynamic. In fact, my parents were not only equally to blame for setting up the dynamic, they are apparently quite content with keeping it intact. So when I returned to Brooklyn, after a somewhat longer than brief escape to Party-Party/Never-Never Land, I eventually came (down) to the point of recognizing all this.
Mom hasn’t recovered and most likely never will recover from realizing that I am gay. And her response to the matter has been to take what we Irish like to call “the low road” – denial, anger, and blame. Dad plays the part of the codependent in this case, silently supporting Mom’s behaviors through not making any attempts to change them. Why? Because ultimately he agrees with her position, so he can’t muster up the strength to argue with it.
I am a faggot in my parents’ eyes. As ‘50s generation staunch blue-collar-made-white-collar Irish Catholics from Massachusetts, that’s the only perception available to them. To question that perception would open them up to questioning every other perception that contributes to their sensibility. Like the Roman Catholic church, they espouse to love the sinner but hate the sin.
And that’s a sin I can’t even begin to love any sinner for.
Therein lies the conflict between me and my parents. That’s the reason why I fall into 30-day depressions after each visit I make to Massachusetts. I do my best to recognize that their reaction is not my responsibility; that how they feel about who and what I am ultimately has nothing to do with the essence of who and what I am. But it hurts to visit them. It hurts to see the devastation that the unwillingness to reconsider a sensibility will do to a body (or two, or three, or more – all the way up to a society). THAT’s what pushes me into a chasm of depression. That’s why September was such an awful month for me. And that’s the demon I need to battle next.
“Next!”
Saturday, September 03, 2005
Garby ‘Tretch Gaberdine: Revealed!
As some of you know (but most of you don't), I occasionally indulge in fiction. Well, here's a smattering of something that's been needing to come out of me for quite some time... The emergence of my character, Garby 'Tretch Gaberdine, of whom I've been muttering for the past -- what? -- 12 months or so... I hope those of you who've had to endure my utterances will appreciate the solidity of her character as depicted herein.
Garby ‘Tretch Gaberdine: Revealed!
Garby ‘Tretch Gaberdine is not what you’d call a popular girl. At 13, with an overbite that makes beavers jealous -- coupled with an inexplicable series of skin allergies to any fabric known to humankind as “natural” -- Garby’s kamra could hardly be described as anything desirable, much less optimal. Nevertheless, Garby must attend public school, along with the entirety of the upper-middle class, bourgeois progeny that currently exists amidst the Las Vegas populace. (Her mother is a Vegas showgirl, and her father, a successful partner at a law firm -- also Vegas-based.)
She can’t wear Mark Jacobs. She can’t even wear GAP. No, the plight of our heroine, the anti-“anygirl,” is that of outcast. She’s the outcast who has to report to homeroom every morning donning nothing less than double-knit polyester -- or “stretch gaberdine," for short.
It’s not easy to find stretch gaberdine these days. Especially in these days’ styles…
Coupled with her physical issues is Garby’s saddening speech impediment. She’s unable to pronounce either the letter “D” or the letter “S.” No other two letters of the alphabet could have proven more fatal to the girl, whose birth name is “Darby Garby.” (That’s right, “Darby Garby.”) But as our heroine, who mis-pronounces her “D’s” says it, this comes across as "Garby Garby.”
Let me make this easier for you. Picture, if you will, an ugly prepubescent with an overbite that would make beavers jealous, sitting in a schoolyard, wearing nothing but ‘70s polyester (it's the only form that's reliably double-knit), and being approached by the “popular” girls, only to be asked the following:
“So, like, who are you?”
“(G)arby.”
“Garby?”
“Yeah.”
“Is that your first name, or your last?”
“Firt.”
“You mean, your firsssst?”
“Yeah, my firrrrt.”
“Well, then, what’s your last name?”
“Garby.”
“GARBY?”
“Yeah.”
“Your name is Garby GARBY?!?”
“No, no – my name’(t) (G)ARBY Garby.”
“That’s what I said! ‘Garby GARBY?!?’”
“No – no – “
(At this point I hope you’re getting the picture.)
It isn’t long thereafter before anyone at school who asks the poor girl her name runs into this exact sort of frustration. And so, one sunny September afternoon on the playground not that much later than when the previous conversation occurred, the same “popular” girl approached our heroine and pronounced:
“Y’know what? I don’t care what your name is. I’m gonna call you GARBY STRETCH GABERDINE, ‘cuz all you wear is poly-es-ter!”
(To which there were numerous giggles from the gaggle of girls who followed this popular one…)
Our heroine was caught slightly off-guard. She asked, “Huh?”
“You heard me. From now on, your name will be GARBY STRETCH GABERDINE. 'Cuz all you wear is stretch gaberdine!”
“’Garby ‘Tretch Gaberdine?’”
“No, SSSSSS-tretch. SSSSSS-tretch Gaberdine!”
“’T-t-t-‘Tretch?’”
(To which, as you might expect, there arose utter hysteria amidst the gaggle of schoolgirls.)
“That’s right,” their leader concurred, albeit in not a very polite fashion. “’Tretch Gaberdine.’ I swear, can’t you even say, ‘S?’”
But at that point our heroine’s fate had been sealed...
More later... If you can stomach it...
Garby ‘Tretch Gaberdine: Revealed!
Garby ‘Tretch Gaberdine is not what you’d call a popular girl. At 13, with an overbite that makes beavers jealous -- coupled with an inexplicable series of skin allergies to any fabric known to humankind as “natural” -- Garby’s kamra could hardly be described as anything desirable, much less optimal. Nevertheless, Garby must attend public school, along with the entirety of the upper-middle class, bourgeois progeny that currently exists amidst the Las Vegas populace. (Her mother is a Vegas showgirl, and her father, a successful partner at a law firm -- also Vegas-based.)
She can’t wear Mark Jacobs. She can’t even wear GAP. No, the plight of our heroine, the anti-“anygirl,” is that of outcast. She’s the outcast who has to report to homeroom every morning donning nothing less than double-knit polyester -- or “stretch gaberdine," for short.
It’s not easy to find stretch gaberdine these days. Especially in these days’ styles…
Coupled with her physical issues is Garby’s saddening speech impediment. She’s unable to pronounce either the letter “D” or the letter “S.” No other two letters of the alphabet could have proven more fatal to the girl, whose birth name is “Darby Garby.” (That’s right, “Darby Garby.”) But as our heroine, who mis-pronounces her “D’s” says it, this comes across as "Garby Garby.”
Let me make this easier for you. Picture, if you will, an ugly prepubescent with an overbite that would make beavers jealous, sitting in a schoolyard, wearing nothing but ‘70s polyester (it's the only form that's reliably double-knit), and being approached by the “popular” girls, only to be asked the following:
“So, like, who are you?”
“(G)arby.”
“Garby?”
“Yeah.”
“Is that your first name, or your last?”
“Firt.”
“You mean, your firsssst?”
“Yeah, my firrrrt.”
“Well, then, what’s your last name?”
“Garby.”
“GARBY?”
“Yeah.”
“Your name is Garby GARBY?!?”
“No, no – my name’(t) (G)ARBY Garby.”
“That’s what I said! ‘Garby GARBY?!?’”
“No – no – “
(At this point I hope you’re getting the picture.)
It isn’t long thereafter before anyone at school who asks the poor girl her name runs into this exact sort of frustration. And so, one sunny September afternoon on the playground not that much later than when the previous conversation occurred, the same “popular” girl approached our heroine and pronounced:
“Y’know what? I don’t care what your name is. I’m gonna call you GARBY STRETCH GABERDINE, ‘cuz all you wear is poly-es-ter!”
(To which there were numerous giggles from the gaggle of girls who followed this popular one…)
Our heroine was caught slightly off-guard. She asked, “Huh?”
“You heard me. From now on, your name will be GARBY STRETCH GABERDINE. 'Cuz all you wear is stretch gaberdine!”
“’Garby ‘Tretch Gaberdine?’”
“No, SSSSSS-tretch. SSSSSS-tretch Gaberdine!”
“’T-t-t-‘Tretch?’”
(To which, as you might expect, there arose utter hysteria amidst the gaggle of schoolgirls.)
“That’s right,” their leader concurred, albeit in not a very polite fashion. “’Tretch Gaberdine.’ I swear, can’t you even say, ‘S?’”
But at that point our heroine’s fate had been sealed...
More later... If you can stomach it...
Thursday, August 18, 2005
Emerson vs. Me
As many of you know, I keep an old Underwood typewriter on the shelf above my writing station. It isn't just decoration, it's an icon of my raison d'etre, and it's there to remind me of what I came here to do.
Next to it I've hung a postcard that's a transcription of an Emerson quote. It's printed in old-school typewriter font, so it fits not only visually but thematically, since the theme reinforces the motivation for displaying the typewriter. It reads:
Next to it I've hung a postcard that's a transcription of an Emerson quote. It's printed in old-school typewriter font, so it fits not only visually but thematically, since the theme reinforces the motivation for displaying the typewriter. It reads:
To laugh often and much, to win the respect of intellegent people
and the affection of children,
to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends,
to appreciate beauty,
to find the best in others,
to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child or a garden patch...
to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived.
This is to have succeeded!
Well, as much as I love that quote, I couldn't help but update it to suit my own circumstances and needs. True, there's much overlap, but I feel the distinctions are distinct nonetheless. And in so being, they separate me from Emerson; they clarify the subtle differentiations between his modern era and my own postmodern:
To have taken ACTION on at least ONE of your dreams...
To have proven "them" WRONG at least once...
To have KNOWN that you proceed from an INTELLECTUAL yet SPIRITUAL standpoint...
To have LOVED deeply and often...
To have ATTRACTED people from all walks of life without trying,
Yet to have remained FASCINATED with all walks of life all the while...
To see BEAUTY in absolutely EVERYTHING that IS...
To COUNT ON others exhibiting their BEST at SOME POINT...
And to see someone's BEST when they are indeed exhibiting their WORST...
To have chosen to IMPROVE WHAT YOU HAVE rather than CHASE WHAT YOU DON'T...
To have at least ONE person say, "I love you"
who DOESN'T WANT TO GET INTO YOUR PANTS...
THIS, in MY OPINION,
is to be SUCCESSFUL.
Saturday, August 13, 2005
"Pippypoo" (or, My Summer Break with Helen)
As many of you know, I have been “temping” a lot this summer as a means of bringing in cash flow while I study to teach ESL and basically strategize my future while simultaneously really living it up during the hottest months we get here in the boroughs of New York City. I’ve also kept the cash flowing via various other endeavors, such as the tried-and-true “naughty” massage, tutoring inner-city kids who are suffering through summer school, and brokering apartments in my neighborhood. While this list might sound cumbersome to some, and while yet others would perceive the endeavors as downright contradictory (“How could he make all that work?”), I must tell you: I’m the happiest I’ve been in a long, long time.
Greg learned this lesson before, in San Franciso, but apparently Greg has had to learn it again. Greg likes doing several different things at the same time. Greg thrives off variety and the challenge of being self-employed. Greg likes doing many things Part-Time. But Greg does NOT like doing ANYTHING Full-Time. Nothing. Not one thing. Nada. Zilch. Zero. Nuh-uh. Nope. Not even sleeping, eating, drinking, drugging or masturbating. If it has to occur “all the time,” I don’t want any part of it. The only things in my life that I want to occur “all the time” are the basic, primal, involuntary reflexes that keep me alive such as breathing, heartbeating, digeseting and all healthy matters cellular…
Point taken? Good. I’m sure more than half of you are muttering to yourselves, “Well for Chrissake, I knew that!” I know. I know you know. I know you knew. Because I knew. And I think you knew that, too. But my process is my process, and this is how I’ve processed it. I guess I wasn’t destined to learn the lesson only once, swiftly and without sway. Apparently my process involves swaying. And so I swayed.
But (for the time being, at least – and let’s hope this time endures) I’ve swayed back into a position of optimism. I feel as though my basic Maslow Pyramid’s bottom tier, for the NY incarnation, has been solidly laid. And so now we venture on (once again) toward creative fulfillment and self-actualization…
What does this have to do with temping? It’s simple. I’ve rediscovered that I’m happier when I’m juggling several balls (so to speak). And temping, for the time being, is one of those balls. The irony with this ball is, I get most of my temp work from the very same coprporation from which I received last winter’s severance package, which included six months of uncontested Unemployment Insurance. See, I never got “booted” from the entire Hearst Coorporation; I only made “an agreement” with one of their divisions – a magazine called Veranda. As of November 30, 2004, I remain in good standing in the eyes of Hearst’s HR Department, which renders me continuously hire-able – as a temp, a freelancer, or once again as a FT employee.
For some strange reason (most likely my "old school" office etiquette and ability to feign interest in the lives of the white collars), the Hearst Corporation likes having me around from time to time. Since June (when the UI ran out), I have temped for several of the Hearst Corporation’s major muck-a-mucks, including the Treasurer of the Magazine Division (he had a fabulous black-and-white photo of Grace Jones dancing at late-era Studio 54) and none other than Ms. Helen Gurley Brown, founding Editor of Cosmopolitan magazine. I now address you fresh from having returned from her office.
That is where I learned the term “pippypoo.” It is one of Helen’s creations, along with “mouseburger” and “Pussycat.” She knows she didn’t invent “Pussycat,” but she did revolutionize the realm of fabulous salutations when she incorporated it into her everyday nomenclature. She calls everybody “Pussycat,” from her husband (film and theatre proudcer David Brown) to the UPS guy – and she gets away with it.
Helen is now in her early 80s. She remains physically striking, taking tremendous (justifyable) pride in her ability to remain slender and fit. A classic, secure fashion sense ensues from this comfort Helen retains in her own skin. She’s not afraid to still don the stilettos, even of they are of reduced height. But even when she doesn’t, the lines of her dresses remain “A-line” and proper; modern to the core. Helen, like Nancy Reagan, is one brunette who has figured out how to work her assets. (And as she would tell herself, if she were writing this description, “Bravo!”) Red is one of her favorite colors, whether it be represented by her lipstick, her dress, or her accessories.
Ms. Gurley Brown (a/k/a Mrs. David Brown) continues to report to her job as Editor in Chief of the International division of Cosmo. (My high school and college friends might, at this point, be interested to know that we’re not the only ones turning 40 – this year, so is Cosmopolitan.) Her office, modest for someone of her historical stature, is pink, with leopard-print wall-to-wall carpet. There are two original Georgia O’Keefe paintings on the wall, above a loveseat upholstered in pink and pastel florals which houses two embroidered pillows. One of them reads, “I like champagne, caviar and cash.” The other simply states, “Good girls go to heaven. Bad girls go everywhere.” At the entrance to her office is her assistant’s office, where I sat. It houses a copy of each of Helen’s best-sellers. They rest on a display stand, right next to the manual typewriter on which she pounded out her debut, Sex and the Single Girl. Fresh cut flowers abound, in both Helen’s realm and within the realm of her admin, and the folder entitled “Temp Instructions” includes an entire page as to how to keep them watered.
Helen’s office day starts around 10:00am. This gives her assistant ample time to get settled, check Helen’s email (she’s on more lists than she can keep up with, including former Mayor Guliani’s and present Mayor Bloomberg’s), and open her mail. The Cosmo icon receives all sorts of paper postage, mostly consisting of fan letters. She makes a point to respond to each and every fan. If she doesn’t have a lunch engagement, she loads up the Dictaphone with “one-pagers” and critiques of the over 50 International editions of the magazine. (Yes, there is a Croatian version of Cosmo, and a Brazilian/Portugese, and an Indian… Even though the matriarch can’t read any of these languages, she can still provide feedback to her posse of editors based on what she sees in the photos and within the format.) At approximately 3:00pm, after ensuring that her assistant’s workload is sufficient enough to prevent her/him from slacking off, Ms. HGB proceeds to shut her office doors, take off her A-line dress and slip into a robe, and then take a nap on the loveseat. (She removes the cushions for some reason that I was unwilling to inquire about…) She awakens around 3:30, at which time she “plops” an exercise video into her office TV so that she might get as close to 30 minutes of “cardio” and “floor work” as she possibly can before duty recalls her! When she’s finished exercising, she re-opens her doors and resumes business as usual.
While she readily admits that Hearst basically retains her as a figure head, Helen could never be accused of taking the perfunctory route, even though nobody in the world – much less at Hearst – would think any less of her if she did. No, HGB (as we admins so quickly come to refer to her, a by-product of typing it so many times in ALL CAPS followed immediately by our own, lesser-than initials typed in lower case) is the classic workaholic. Just today I had to transcribe in a letter to the legendary ‘50s songstress, Sheila MacRae, the follwing quote: “I am just so happy that I work for a company like Hearst which allows me to continue to report to the office every day. I don’t know what I’d do if I couldn’t work. Probably throw myself out the window or into the river.”
But at 83, Helen is forced to admit that the bulk of her workload is – can you guess? – “pippypoo.”
I adore the word. As a writer, as a queer, and as an overall idiosyncratic nut who forms crushes on sounds, words and utterances – I became immediately enraptured with the term. How blessedly succinct. How utterly descriptive. And how it borders so flirtatiously with the sultry realm of onomatopoeia! A perfect relationship, considering the source.
Pippypoo (n., late 20th Century American Feminist origin, believed to have come from the same woman who informed generations of females that it was OK to insist on having an orgasm during routine heterosexual activity, and who showed them exactly how to do it):
The mundane yet necessary tasks of the aged cultural elite (i.e.: correspondence to ailing Stars from Broadway’s Golden Era; long distance telephone calls to retired diplomats in radically different time zones; posing for photographs with those who can’t wait for you to have a stroke and finally be “out of the picture”).
As many of you who know me well “well know,” upon hearing the word – first from Ms. HGB herself and then on the illustrious Dictaphone upon which she dictates all of her correspondence and from which I learned the exact nature of her current responsibilities – I couldn’t help but repeat it. And repeat it, and repeat it, and repeat it… Thank the gods the old gal’s hearing is going. She probably only heard one out of every ten “pippypoos” I blurted whilst fulfilling my duties as a conscientious temp.
Type a letter, say “pippypooh.” Type a label, say “pippypooh.” Answer the phone and – well, you have to behave then, but as soon as you hang up? Say “pippypooh!” Talk about the perfect office helper’s little helper. I had a blast. I had the time of my life. True, it was “pippypooh,” but at least everybody within earshot knew it. Nothing soothes like certainty, no matter how seemingly insignificant. And if there’s one thing of which everybody in the offices of Cosmopolitan’s International Editions is now certain, it’s that, for the past five business days, I’ve been conducting “pippypoo.”
But I was happy to do it. Nay, I was thrilled to do it. I was thrilled to be in the presence of someone so disciplined, so determined, and so accomplished. And every minute of each of those five business days, I held in the back of my head the New-Agey notion (borrowed from some Eastern philosophy, I’m sure) that we only encounter those who we are karmically ready to emulate – if we’re up to the challenge. So I therefore obvioulsy couldn’t help but wonder exactly what the universe was trying to tell me, what with being faced with such presence but yet, at the same time, with such “pippypoo.”
At 5:00 today (Friday), Helen approached my desk so that she might sign my timesheet and say Goodbye. And when she did so, she told me, “Well, Greg, I’m absolutely thrilled at your ability to translate my dictation and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed having you here. I think you’re my new best friend.” At which point I shook her hand and assured her that the whole experience had been thoroughly enjoyable for me, too. Then I told her that I was a writer, too, and I was eager to get on with whatever fate New York had in store for me. She told me to send her some pages for critique because, as much as she’d like to have me back to work for her, she had a feeling I had bigger and better things in store.
Not a bad way to spend one’s summer break, eh? Even if it was just “pippypoo.”
Greg learned this lesson before, in San Franciso, but apparently Greg has had to learn it again. Greg likes doing several different things at the same time. Greg thrives off variety and the challenge of being self-employed. Greg likes doing many things Part-Time. But Greg does NOT like doing ANYTHING Full-Time. Nothing. Not one thing. Nada. Zilch. Zero. Nuh-uh. Nope. Not even sleeping, eating, drinking, drugging or masturbating. If it has to occur “all the time,” I don’t want any part of it. The only things in my life that I want to occur “all the time” are the basic, primal, involuntary reflexes that keep me alive such as breathing, heartbeating, digeseting and all healthy matters cellular…
Point taken? Good. I’m sure more than half of you are muttering to yourselves, “Well for Chrissake, I knew that!” I know. I know you know. I know you knew. Because I knew. And I think you knew that, too. But my process is my process, and this is how I’ve processed it. I guess I wasn’t destined to learn the lesson only once, swiftly and without sway. Apparently my process involves swaying. And so I swayed.
But (for the time being, at least – and let’s hope this time endures) I’ve swayed back into a position of optimism. I feel as though my basic Maslow Pyramid’s bottom tier, for the NY incarnation, has been solidly laid. And so now we venture on (once again) toward creative fulfillment and self-actualization…
What does this have to do with temping? It’s simple. I’ve rediscovered that I’m happier when I’m juggling several balls (so to speak). And temping, for the time being, is one of those balls. The irony with this ball is, I get most of my temp work from the very same coprporation from which I received last winter’s severance package, which included six months of uncontested Unemployment Insurance. See, I never got “booted” from the entire Hearst Coorporation; I only made “an agreement” with one of their divisions – a magazine called Veranda. As of November 30, 2004, I remain in good standing in the eyes of Hearst’s HR Department, which renders me continuously hire-able – as a temp, a freelancer, or once again as a FT employee.
For some strange reason (most likely my "old school" office etiquette and ability to feign interest in the lives of the white collars), the Hearst Corporation likes having me around from time to time. Since June (when the UI ran out), I have temped for several of the Hearst Corporation’s major muck-a-mucks, including the Treasurer of the Magazine Division (he had a fabulous black-and-white photo of Grace Jones dancing at late-era Studio 54) and none other than Ms. Helen Gurley Brown, founding Editor of Cosmopolitan magazine. I now address you fresh from having returned from her office.
That is where I learned the term “pippypoo.” It is one of Helen’s creations, along with “mouseburger” and “Pussycat.” She knows she didn’t invent “Pussycat,” but she did revolutionize the realm of fabulous salutations when she incorporated it into her everyday nomenclature. She calls everybody “Pussycat,” from her husband (film and theatre proudcer David Brown) to the UPS guy – and she gets away with it.
Helen is now in her early 80s. She remains physically striking, taking tremendous (justifyable) pride in her ability to remain slender and fit. A classic, secure fashion sense ensues from this comfort Helen retains in her own skin. She’s not afraid to still don the stilettos, even of they are of reduced height. But even when she doesn’t, the lines of her dresses remain “A-line” and proper; modern to the core. Helen, like Nancy Reagan, is one brunette who has figured out how to work her assets. (And as she would tell herself, if she were writing this description, “Bravo!”) Red is one of her favorite colors, whether it be represented by her lipstick, her dress, or her accessories.
Ms. Gurley Brown (a/k/a Mrs. David Brown) continues to report to her job as Editor in Chief of the International division of Cosmo. (My high school and college friends might, at this point, be interested to know that we’re not the only ones turning 40 – this year, so is Cosmopolitan.) Her office, modest for someone of her historical stature, is pink, with leopard-print wall-to-wall carpet. There are two original Georgia O’Keefe paintings on the wall, above a loveseat upholstered in pink and pastel florals which houses two embroidered pillows. One of them reads, “I like champagne, caviar and cash.” The other simply states, “Good girls go to heaven. Bad girls go everywhere.” At the entrance to her office is her assistant’s office, where I sat. It houses a copy of each of Helen’s best-sellers. They rest on a display stand, right next to the manual typewriter on which she pounded out her debut, Sex and the Single Girl. Fresh cut flowers abound, in both Helen’s realm and within the realm of her admin, and the folder entitled “Temp Instructions” includes an entire page as to how to keep them watered.
Helen’s office day starts around 10:00am. This gives her assistant ample time to get settled, check Helen’s email (she’s on more lists than she can keep up with, including former Mayor Guliani’s and present Mayor Bloomberg’s), and open her mail. The Cosmo icon receives all sorts of paper postage, mostly consisting of fan letters. She makes a point to respond to each and every fan. If she doesn’t have a lunch engagement, she loads up the Dictaphone with “one-pagers” and critiques of the over 50 International editions of the magazine. (Yes, there is a Croatian version of Cosmo, and a Brazilian/Portugese, and an Indian… Even though the matriarch can’t read any of these languages, she can still provide feedback to her posse of editors based on what she sees in the photos and within the format.) At approximately 3:00pm, after ensuring that her assistant’s workload is sufficient enough to prevent her/him from slacking off, Ms. HGB proceeds to shut her office doors, take off her A-line dress and slip into a robe, and then take a nap on the loveseat. (She removes the cushions for some reason that I was unwilling to inquire about…) She awakens around 3:30, at which time she “plops” an exercise video into her office TV so that she might get as close to 30 minutes of “cardio” and “floor work” as she possibly can before duty recalls her! When she’s finished exercising, she re-opens her doors and resumes business as usual.
While she readily admits that Hearst basically retains her as a figure head, Helen could never be accused of taking the perfunctory route, even though nobody in the world – much less at Hearst – would think any less of her if she did. No, HGB (as we admins so quickly come to refer to her, a by-product of typing it so many times in ALL CAPS followed immediately by our own, lesser-than initials typed in lower case) is the classic workaholic. Just today I had to transcribe in a letter to the legendary ‘50s songstress, Sheila MacRae, the follwing quote: “I am just so happy that I work for a company like Hearst which allows me to continue to report to the office every day. I don’t know what I’d do if I couldn’t work. Probably throw myself out the window or into the river.”
But at 83, Helen is forced to admit that the bulk of her workload is – can you guess? – “pippypoo.”
I adore the word. As a writer, as a queer, and as an overall idiosyncratic nut who forms crushes on sounds, words and utterances – I became immediately enraptured with the term. How blessedly succinct. How utterly descriptive. And how it borders so flirtatiously with the sultry realm of onomatopoeia! A perfect relationship, considering the source.
Pippypoo (n., late 20th Century American Feminist origin, believed to have come from the same woman who informed generations of females that it was OK to insist on having an orgasm during routine heterosexual activity, and who showed them exactly how to do it):
The mundane yet necessary tasks of the aged cultural elite (i.e.: correspondence to ailing Stars from Broadway’s Golden Era; long distance telephone calls to retired diplomats in radically different time zones; posing for photographs with those who can’t wait for you to have a stroke and finally be “out of the picture”).
As many of you who know me well “well know,” upon hearing the word – first from Ms. HGB herself and then on the illustrious Dictaphone upon which she dictates all of her correspondence and from which I learned the exact nature of her current responsibilities – I couldn’t help but repeat it. And repeat it, and repeat it, and repeat it… Thank the gods the old gal’s hearing is going. She probably only heard one out of every ten “pippypoos” I blurted whilst fulfilling my duties as a conscientious temp.
Type a letter, say “pippypooh.” Type a label, say “pippypooh.” Answer the phone and – well, you have to behave then, but as soon as you hang up? Say “pippypooh!” Talk about the perfect office helper’s little helper. I had a blast. I had the time of my life. True, it was “pippypooh,” but at least everybody within earshot knew it. Nothing soothes like certainty, no matter how seemingly insignificant. And if there’s one thing of which everybody in the offices of Cosmopolitan’s International Editions is now certain, it’s that, for the past five business days, I’ve been conducting “pippypoo.”
But I was happy to do it. Nay, I was thrilled to do it. I was thrilled to be in the presence of someone so disciplined, so determined, and so accomplished. And every minute of each of those five business days, I held in the back of my head the New-Agey notion (borrowed from some Eastern philosophy, I’m sure) that we only encounter those who we are karmically ready to emulate – if we’re up to the challenge. So I therefore obvioulsy couldn’t help but wonder exactly what the universe was trying to tell me, what with being faced with such presence but yet, at the same time, with such “pippypoo.”
At 5:00 today (Friday), Helen approached my desk so that she might sign my timesheet and say Goodbye. And when she did so, she told me, “Well, Greg, I’m absolutely thrilled at your ability to translate my dictation and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed having you here. I think you’re my new best friend.” At which point I shook her hand and assured her that the whole experience had been thoroughly enjoyable for me, too. Then I told her that I was a writer, too, and I was eager to get on with whatever fate New York had in store for me. She told me to send her some pages for critique because, as much as she’d like to have me back to work for her, she had a feeling I had bigger and better things in store.
Not a bad way to spend one’s summer break, eh? Even if it was just “pippypoo.”
Tuesday, July 19, 2005
Context (from Both Sides Now)
Somewhere between the fantasy of who I’d like to be and the consequences of behaving as I do lies my true identity. I’m not sure exactly who that is, but I have a feeling I’d be a bit disappointed if I were to see him through the eyes of those around me. I know we’re not supposed to concern ourselves with other people’s perceptions, and I know that to compare oneself to others inevitably results in either envy or a sense of superiority – but, human as I am, I can’t help but do it. I can’t help but compare myself to everyone around me in a never-ending attempt at defining myself.
It’s like when you don’t know what a word you’ve stumbled across means, and you’re too lazy to look it up. So you rely on the second-best method of determining definition. You fall back onto context. Just read all the words around it, you tell yourself, and you’ll get a sense of what that pesky little unknown word means. Read the sentence as many times as it takes. If that doesn’t work, then read the whole paragraph – and maybe even the whole page – again and again. And in the event you don’t wind up with an idea as to what that pesky little word means, keep doing this. Do this again and again until you’re so familiar with everything around your question that you no longer actually question the question, but you start to question everything around it. Such is the nature of identity politics.
Ironically, we poor souls who have to search for self-definition by context are the lucky ones. Since we don’t have a ready-made sound byte that sums up our role in society, we have to look within the cracks. From time to time I’ve had the (mis)fortune of having a label: gay, queer, radical faerie, whore, party boy… But eventually, in accordance with the edict, “As soon as you define yourself as something, you’ve outlived it,” my labels have worn thin.
So I like to joke that “I’ve looked at _____ from both sides now.” (Fill in the blank. Gay, queer, radical faerie, party boy…) Which is to say that, even when I had a label to latch onto, I was still perouzing the context.
I’m not too sure if I can ever adequately describe the deflation that came with my recognizing that queer politics were ultimately identity politics, and that I just plain couldn’t anymore put much stock into a political (sub)structure that was based upon the notion of identity. Sure, all politics eventually boil down to an assertion of some identity (take, for example, America’s beloved preamble, “We, the people…” -- I mean, just who are “the people?”), but minority politics in particular rely on identities that are utterly not self-imposed. Minority politics are the politics of the “others,” and the others couldn’t exist without the powerstructure they’re trying to deconstruct, which defines their very “other-ness.” In fact, as queer politics have been so accurate in asserting, even the powerstructure relies upon everything that it is not to assert whatever it is. (E.g.: heterosexuality, instead of defining itself by what it is, insists upon defining iteslf by what it isn’t – as uttered by the straight male mantra, “I’m not gay.” ) Sleep only with members of the oppostite sex and you're surely hetero. But sleep with a member of your own sex, even once, and you're potentially gay forever -- no matter how much you might want to write it off as an "experiment." Is the converse the same for homosexuals? Hardly. Once gay, forever gay -- even if one starts bopping members of the opposite sex.
Shifty business, this business of identity. In a way, the minorities have it easier than those struggling to exist within the powerstructure. Once declared as black, Latin, Asian, female, gay, handicapped or any other multitude of sub-strata, one’s identity is sealed, as an ostensible “lesser-than.” And what are they “lesser” than? The powerstructure that so precariously defines itself by not being whatever it is that comprises its minorities.
PHEW! Am I the only one who’s getting tired of this misery-fest? Am I the only one who wants to reach beyond complaining about how bad it is to be “us” and strive to be whatever it is we – the human race – might be?
Despite my unfashionable intentions, the fashionable “lesser-than’s” proceed to construct entire identites and subsequent political movements based upon said identities – and for some reason, as far as I can see, they stop looking for any definition (or more importanly, context) beyond that which has labeled them “lesser-than.”
Somewhere between the fantasy of who these people think they are and the consequences of how they behave lies their true identity. Somewhere between the fantasy of who I’d like to be and the consequences of how I behave lies my true identity. My true identity, for now. Within this context. Which is a swimming-pool of minority politics. Which is a cesspool of identity politics.
I’m not destined to be a popular man. I’m not the next voice of the queer movement. I’m just a kooky white homosexual guy who’s been described as being “too smart for his own good.” That phrase fascinates me, because I’ve yet to truly understand what it means. It feels like a curse of some sort.
So if you want to know why I rely on sex, drugs and escapism, maybe now you have a better idea. Somewhere between my ideal self and the essence of my hedonism lies the man I might someday be. If only I could identify him. For a time.
It’s like when you don’t know what a word you’ve stumbled across means, and you’re too lazy to look it up. So you rely on the second-best method of determining definition. You fall back onto context. Just read all the words around it, you tell yourself, and you’ll get a sense of what that pesky little unknown word means. Read the sentence as many times as it takes. If that doesn’t work, then read the whole paragraph – and maybe even the whole page – again and again. And in the event you don’t wind up with an idea as to what that pesky little word means, keep doing this. Do this again and again until you’re so familiar with everything around your question that you no longer actually question the question, but you start to question everything around it. Such is the nature of identity politics.
Ironically, we poor souls who have to search for self-definition by context are the lucky ones. Since we don’t have a ready-made sound byte that sums up our role in society, we have to look within the cracks. From time to time I’ve had the (mis)fortune of having a label: gay, queer, radical faerie, whore, party boy… But eventually, in accordance with the edict, “As soon as you define yourself as something, you’ve outlived it,” my labels have worn thin.
So I like to joke that “I’ve looked at _____ from both sides now.” (Fill in the blank. Gay, queer, radical faerie, party boy…) Which is to say that, even when I had a label to latch onto, I was still perouzing the context.
I’m not too sure if I can ever adequately describe the deflation that came with my recognizing that queer politics were ultimately identity politics, and that I just plain couldn’t anymore put much stock into a political (sub)structure that was based upon the notion of identity. Sure, all politics eventually boil down to an assertion of some identity (take, for example, America’s beloved preamble, “We, the people…” -- I mean, just who are “the people?”), but minority politics in particular rely on identities that are utterly not self-imposed. Minority politics are the politics of the “others,” and the others couldn’t exist without the powerstructure they’re trying to deconstruct, which defines their very “other-ness.” In fact, as queer politics have been so accurate in asserting, even the powerstructure relies upon everything that it is not to assert whatever it is. (E.g.: heterosexuality, instead of defining itself by what it is, insists upon defining iteslf by what it isn’t – as uttered by the straight male mantra, “I’m not gay.” ) Sleep only with members of the oppostite sex and you're surely hetero. But sleep with a member of your own sex, even once, and you're potentially gay forever -- no matter how much you might want to write it off as an "experiment." Is the converse the same for homosexuals? Hardly. Once gay, forever gay -- even if one starts bopping members of the opposite sex.
Shifty business, this business of identity. In a way, the minorities have it easier than those struggling to exist within the powerstructure. Once declared as black, Latin, Asian, female, gay, handicapped or any other multitude of sub-strata, one’s identity is sealed, as an ostensible “lesser-than.” And what are they “lesser” than? The powerstructure that so precariously defines itself by not being whatever it is that comprises its minorities.
PHEW! Am I the only one who’s getting tired of this misery-fest? Am I the only one who wants to reach beyond complaining about how bad it is to be “us” and strive to be whatever it is we – the human race – might be?
Despite my unfashionable intentions, the fashionable “lesser-than’s” proceed to construct entire identites and subsequent political movements based upon said identities – and for some reason, as far as I can see, they stop looking for any definition (or more importanly, context) beyond that which has labeled them “lesser-than.”
Somewhere between the fantasy of who these people think they are and the consequences of how they behave lies their true identity. Somewhere between the fantasy of who I’d like to be and the consequences of how I behave lies my true identity. My true identity, for now. Within this context. Which is a swimming-pool of minority politics. Which is a cesspool of identity politics.
I’m not destined to be a popular man. I’m not the next voice of the queer movement. I’m just a kooky white homosexual guy who’s been described as being “too smart for his own good.” That phrase fascinates me, because I’ve yet to truly understand what it means. It feels like a curse of some sort.
So if you want to know why I rely on sex, drugs and escapism, maybe now you have a better idea. Somewhere between my ideal self and the essence of my hedonism lies the man I might someday be. If only I could identify him. For a time.
Sunday, July 17, 2005
Why Can't I Be THEM?
Successful people have no problem perpetuating whatever it is that makes them successful. Famous people don’t hesitate to create whatever they’re compelled to create. Geniuses, from what I’ve been able to conclude, have no choice but to indulge in obsessing on whatever it is they’re geniuses “at.”
I want to be either successful, famous, or a genius. I want to concern myself with only whatever my talents dictate I should be concerned – and nothing else.
Successful people would tell me that’s impossible – that I’d still have to make time for the gym, the diet, and all the other minutia that make up everyday life. Famous people would agree, but they'd probably be incapable of not reminding me that they no longer needed to tend to the minutia (they only need to focus - and I mean focus - on the gym and the diet). Only Geniuses would understand what I was trying to say, if only they were able to. But they’re too concerned with whatever they’re geniuses “at,” so they couldn’t possibly understand anything other than whatever it is they’re so busy understanding.
So what I’m presently blaming for my lack of achieving more, as a writer, is my bourgeois upbringing. I’ve been fighting it all my life. It’s probably less of a surprise to those of you who know me well than it is to me, because it shows so much on the outside while I continue to battle it on the inside. I’m addicted to comfort. I’m addicted to domestic stability. It’s a comfort and a stability the likes of which probably don’t even register on the “comfort/stability” scale compared to the sensibilities of the people I went to high school and college with, and it’s a comfort and stability that only requires a net monthly income of $2,500 (put THAT in your bourgeois hat and smoke it!), but it’s a requisite comfort/stability element nonetheless. And my biggest problem is that I will not allow myself to indulge in artistic endeavors until that utterly self-imposed level of “security” has been attained. (Thank you very fucking much, Dr. Maslow!) I’ve attained it before, but I lose it every time I move to a new town.
Some artists can live in other people’s homes. Some artists can remain with their parents. Some artists can move to a new city and immediately begin pursuing their art, because they don’t concern themselves with where or to what capacity they might be living. They surf from couch to couch or they land shares with one to several roommates and from that point on they stop worrying about their standard of living. They just live - apparently because they’re alive - and that’s all the attention they pay to the matter of living.
I’m not like that. I’m bourgeois as hell. I’ve gotta have a place that I can call my own. And that place has to look nice. It has to have style, even if that style is 20th Century American bohemian. And most importantly, that place has to be filled with intention. And by “intention,” I mean love.
When I spackle, sand and paint a corner – I’m making love to it. When I spend five hours at the paint store, staring at chips and matching color schemes, I’m deliberating my future. I’m sensitive to my environment. I notice my walls, my ceiling, and my floors every day. That, I suppose, is the bourgeois in me. (Or is it the artist in me? My personal jury is still “out.” But for the sake of this argument, that’s the bourgeois in me.) I was raised in a modest yet impeccable home, and to this day I strive to maintain a homefront – as modest as it might be – that is impeccable.
My obsessions are bi-polar. My obsessions are torn. My obsessions are at odds with each other – until they’ve had enough time to sort themselves out. This is my process. I know this because I’ve lived it four times (Portland [Maine], San Francisco, Los Angeles, and now New York). The bourgeois part of me will not set the artistic side of me free until the apartment has been obtained, the walls have been painted, and every last detail pertaining to the day-to-day living in that apartment has been established. This includes determining where the cleaning supplies go; where the pots and pans are stored; and where the monthly bills are received, paid, and subsequently filed. Once all these aspects of day-to-day living are secured, they are never changed. (One dear friend in LA commented that, during seven years of residence there, I never even moved the coasters on the coffee table once I’d determined where they were to be placed.) Such is the nature of my bourgeois side. I’m too fussy to tolerate surfing couches. I’m too middle-class to endure not having my own slice of middle-class life.
Regardless, I don’t ask for much. As middle-class as I am, I’m not desperate for a mortgage or an SUV. I only desire my own peculiar bohemian corner of the world. And I never fail to get it. But doing so, especially when it comes in the form of moving from one metropolitan area to another, costs. It costs money, time – and effort. The effort I put into putting myself up in a new town always detracts from my ability to crank out the art. That’s what makes me a bourgeois bohemian. That’s why I had to build a bed loft, a bar, and paint all my walls before I could start this blog.
Well, within the definitions I set forth when I began this psycho-babble, I suppose that would place me within the realm of the successful. It’s an eventual "successful," but I think I possess certain present elements of success nonetheless. Successful people are the ones who are concerned with the big picture as well as the minutia. I don’t have any problem "compelling myself into producing whatever it is I produce” – once my domicile has been adequately established.
So I’m probably not going to be famous, and I’m certainly no genius.
Hmm. "Successful?” Guess I’ll take it. In due (bourgeois) time. It’s not as if the famous and the geniuses don’t pay for their lots in life in their own, particular ways. Nobody escapes this life free of the requirements this life imposes on us – even if it’s as basic as wiping our asses. Find me a genius who doesn’t have to do that, and I’ll show you Stephen Hawking. You wanna be him?
I don’t.
(Sorry I even started this.)
I want to be either successful, famous, or a genius. I want to concern myself with only whatever my talents dictate I should be concerned – and nothing else.
Successful people would tell me that’s impossible – that I’d still have to make time for the gym, the diet, and all the other minutia that make up everyday life. Famous people would agree, but they'd probably be incapable of not reminding me that they no longer needed to tend to the minutia (they only need to focus - and I mean focus - on the gym and the diet). Only Geniuses would understand what I was trying to say, if only they were able to. But they’re too concerned with whatever they’re geniuses “at,” so they couldn’t possibly understand anything other than whatever it is they’re so busy understanding.
So what I’m presently blaming for my lack of achieving more, as a writer, is my bourgeois upbringing. I’ve been fighting it all my life. It’s probably less of a surprise to those of you who know me well than it is to me, because it shows so much on the outside while I continue to battle it on the inside. I’m addicted to comfort. I’m addicted to domestic stability. It’s a comfort and a stability the likes of which probably don’t even register on the “comfort/stability” scale compared to the sensibilities of the people I went to high school and college with, and it’s a comfort and stability that only requires a net monthly income of $2,500 (put THAT in your bourgeois hat and smoke it!), but it’s a requisite comfort/stability element nonetheless. And my biggest problem is that I will not allow myself to indulge in artistic endeavors until that utterly self-imposed level of “security” has been attained. (Thank you very fucking much, Dr. Maslow!) I’ve attained it before, but I lose it every time I move to a new town.
Some artists can live in other people’s homes. Some artists can remain with their parents. Some artists can move to a new city and immediately begin pursuing their art, because they don’t concern themselves with where or to what capacity they might be living. They surf from couch to couch or they land shares with one to several roommates and from that point on they stop worrying about their standard of living. They just live - apparently because they’re alive - and that’s all the attention they pay to the matter of living.
I’m not like that. I’m bourgeois as hell. I’ve gotta have a place that I can call my own. And that place has to look nice. It has to have style, even if that style is 20th Century American bohemian. And most importantly, that place has to be filled with intention. And by “intention,” I mean love.
When I spackle, sand and paint a corner – I’m making love to it. When I spend five hours at the paint store, staring at chips and matching color schemes, I’m deliberating my future. I’m sensitive to my environment. I notice my walls, my ceiling, and my floors every day. That, I suppose, is the bourgeois in me. (Or is it the artist in me? My personal jury is still “out.” But for the sake of this argument, that’s the bourgeois in me.) I was raised in a modest yet impeccable home, and to this day I strive to maintain a homefront – as modest as it might be – that is impeccable.
My obsessions are bi-polar. My obsessions are torn. My obsessions are at odds with each other – until they’ve had enough time to sort themselves out. This is my process. I know this because I’ve lived it four times (Portland [Maine], San Francisco, Los Angeles, and now New York). The bourgeois part of me will not set the artistic side of me free until the apartment has been obtained, the walls have been painted, and every last detail pertaining to the day-to-day living in that apartment has been established. This includes determining where the cleaning supplies go; where the pots and pans are stored; and where the monthly bills are received, paid, and subsequently filed. Once all these aspects of day-to-day living are secured, they are never changed. (One dear friend in LA commented that, during seven years of residence there, I never even moved the coasters on the coffee table once I’d determined where they were to be placed.) Such is the nature of my bourgeois side. I’m too fussy to tolerate surfing couches. I’m too middle-class to endure not having my own slice of middle-class life.
Regardless, I don’t ask for much. As middle-class as I am, I’m not desperate for a mortgage or an SUV. I only desire my own peculiar bohemian corner of the world. And I never fail to get it. But doing so, especially when it comes in the form of moving from one metropolitan area to another, costs. It costs money, time – and effort. The effort I put into putting myself up in a new town always detracts from my ability to crank out the art. That’s what makes me a bourgeois bohemian. That’s why I had to build a bed loft, a bar, and paint all my walls before I could start this blog.
Well, within the definitions I set forth when I began this psycho-babble, I suppose that would place me within the realm of the successful. It’s an eventual "successful," but I think I possess certain present elements of success nonetheless. Successful people are the ones who are concerned with the big picture as well as the minutia. I don’t have any problem "compelling myself into producing whatever it is I produce” – once my domicile has been adequately established.
So I’m probably not going to be famous, and I’m certainly no genius.
Hmm. "Successful?” Guess I’ll take it. In due (bourgeois) time. It’s not as if the famous and the geniuses don’t pay for their lots in life in their own, particular ways. Nobody escapes this life free of the requirements this life imposes on us – even if it’s as basic as wiping our asses. Find me a genius who doesn’t have to do that, and I’ll show you Stephen Hawking. You wanna be him?
I don’t.
(Sorry I even started this.)
Tuesday, July 05, 2005
Schadenfreude (Ger.)
Sooner or later this topic had to come up. Based on the feedback I’ve gotten from many of you – both written and verbal – it appears that one of the main attractions to my new blog is nothing less than what is defined and described by one of Avenue Q’s songs: “Schadenfreude.” To those of you who have seen the show, I toss an immediate “Well, then, fuck you...” (Even though I completely agreee.) And for those of you who haven’t seen it, let me preface all this with the exact same statement, just to get it out of the way.
Schadenfreude, as Webster* defines it, is “enjoyment obtained from the troubles of others.” As Avenue Q elaborates, the phenomenon can be illustrated as such:
Schadenfreude, as Webster* defines it, is “enjoyment obtained from the troubles of others.” As Avenue Q elaborates, the phenomenon can be illustrated as such:
D'ja ever clap when a waitress falls and drops a tray of glasses?
Yeah...
And ain't it fun to watch figure skaters falling on their asses?
Sure!
And don'tcha feel all warm and cozy,Watching people out in the rain!
You bet!
That's… Schadenfreude! People taking pleasure in your pain!
Oh, Schadenfreude, huh? What's that, some kinda Nazi word?
Yup! It's German for "happiness at the misfortune of others!"
Apparently, the reason my audience (however small it may be) finds my blog entries entertaining is none other than the same reason these actors like to watch skaters fall on their asses. My “40+-but-still-a-bohemian” life, as astute as I would like to portray its observations to be, is basically nothing more than something that helps those who didn’t make the same mistakes I did feel good about having made the decisions they made. It’s an outlet and a penance all at once. Just click onto it and you can feel guilty and repentant simultaneously.
I kid the audience. It’s not that severe. But you have to admit – as many of you have already admitted – that reading about my life somehow informs your perceptions of your own lives. I don’t mind telling you, that’s exactly what I’m aiming for. If I have to suffer a little bit of, “Christ, I’m glad that’s not me living that way!” to get my point across, well then – So be it.
I have the unlucky karma of being an artist. I call it unlucky not because it’s particularly difficult to identify as an artist, but because, as present sociological influences would have it, artists are not considered to be at all successful unless they achieve fame. You don’t hear folks, at this point in history, referring to doctors, lawyers, scientists or professors as being “unsuccessful” simply because they haven’t managed to become famous doctors, lawyers, scientists or professors. Rather, our present society tends to automatically look upon anyone who pursues and actualizes any of these professions as “successful,” by the sheer virtue of the individual’s ability to actualize the profession. Not so for the artist.
The artist, in our present society, is viewed as a rebel and a virtual derelict. S/he is accused of being “lazy” because s/he is not willing to dedicate the time and effort that it takes to become “sucessful” in another, more “legitimate,” profession. Instead, the artist pursues the virtually insane objective of creating something out of nothing – for no apparent reason other than the will and desire to create. Unless fame is achieved, there is no high-paying profession that justifies the artists’ endeavors. Even if the artist pursues an advanced degree, there is no certainty that s/he will be able to earn enough as an artist to pay off his or her student loans. At least doctors or lawyers can commence payments upon entering their respective fields, regardless of how many other “dues” they must “pay” before attaining full professional status.
So the Schadenfreude for y’all, whenever you tune into Moore and More, is in watching my lazy, crazy artistic life unfold. Part of your interest (and you can’t deny it because many of you have already admitted it) is in reassuring yourselves that you made the “right” decisions in your lives – decisions that led you far away from having to deal with any of the extreme (albeit self-imposed, I know) shit that I have to deal with.
Well, that’s exactly what I want you to do. That’s exactly what I want you to think. Not that you’re superior because you made certain decisions that I didn’t – but that there is an obvious difference between our respective approaches to life. I’m an emotional exhibitionist. I wear my life on my sleeve. I think that’s a big part of my artistic mission. I think it’s a big part of the reason I’m here, on this planet. If we have to trivialize my karma by calling it Schadenfreude, well then – like I’ve already said – So be it.
But bear in mind: there’s a certain freedom a waitress who’s just dropped a tray of dishes has. There’s a particular kind of liberty a skater who’s just fallen on her ass possesses. It’s freedom from the fear of falling. Those of us who have just fallen have nothing to fear; we have only to look forward to getting up and starting over. Those of us who’ve been coasting all the while, however, remain consumed with the fear of falling – often to the point of paralysis. These people just let momentum carry them along, hoping to be able to blame it if ever they happen to fall. But momentum’s a funny thing, because it’s self-imposed. We can’t blame our momentum for anything, because we create it.
At least we sources of Schadenfreude recognize our own responsibility for the predicaments we’ve created. At least our embarrassment allows us to clearly see the exact nature of our situations. And the funny thing is, we’re laughing, too. We’re laughing, and we’re pointing right back at ya’. So if it makes you feel better to read, beloved audience, then by all means – keep reading. It sure makes me feel better to keep writing. After all, what have I got to lose?
*Go to http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?book=Dictionary&va=schadenfreude for pronunciation (esp. if you're wired for sound).
Saturday, June 25, 2005
I Woke Up this Mornin' and I Got Myself a Beer
Well, I woke up this mornin’ and I got myself a beer-
I woke up this mornin’ and I got myself a beer-
The future’s uncertain and the end is always near…
-- J. Morrison, with The Doors
I’m sick of listening to people blame addiction for their lack of accomplishment. In my field (which is art, whether that be visual, performative, musical, or literary), addiction has only served to SERVE the most famous artists/writers of the 20th century.
Let’s take pop music, as an example, and from that let's take Jim Morrison -- the first to be quoted herein -- and examine exactly what I’m saying. Jim Morrison. One of the sexiest, shortest-lived pop musicians of the ‘60s. Heavily into drugs and equally into 19th-Century Romantic poetry (or vice-versa), Morrison has gone down in American Top 40 history as one of the saddest icons since Elvis. But despite the fact that he died before (and younger than) The King, he had more to say. We can chalk that up to his fascination with Rimbaud and Verlaine, who managed, in between their volatile attempts at defining homosexual male love, to etch out some pretty raunchy-yet-perfect odes to the nitty-gritty physical aspects of homo-sapiel [sic] existence. Am I saying Morrison was queer? Hell, no. But did he learn about love from homosexuals? Indeed, he did. You figure out what the difference is; I’m too tired of having to draw such distinctions. Funny thing about Morrison, though – despite his reputation for indulging in mescalin, acid and other hallucinogens – his real Jones was for booze, as described by the previously enscribed quote. I mean, of all things to reach for early in the a.m. during the mid-1960's... a BEER?!?
Tired of lying in the sunshine,
Staying home to watch the rain –
But you were young and life was long,
And there was time to kill today…
-- Pink Floyd, Dark Side of the Moon
There’s only time to kill, regardless of how despondent one’s adolescent nature might be, when there are drugs around. Otherwise, the adolescent grows bored. Once s/he tires of contemplation and its sister – masturbation – the adolescent needs some chemical compound in order to retain his/her complacency. For early 20th Century generations that drug was alcohol. But as the industrial revolution evolved into the technological revolution, the urge to expand consciousness evolved, relatively. Relativity, even though having been around since way before Morrison's day, caught up with the majority sometime during Floyd's day. In so doing, it relegated the booze buzz to an almost insignificant status. Sure, getting drunk was always a safe option (after all, isn’t that what Mom and Dad did?), but it didn’t exactly provide one with "options." It had become merely a steam valve.
So in order to effectively contemplate post-cocktail generation existence, one needed – at the very least – marijuana. Marijuana led entire generations into the lifestyle of complacency. Pot made “nothing happen.” Heck, it still does… But the pot mindest not only put Pink Floyd on the map, it also put them in the same league as the literary and filmatic masterpiece as The Wizard of Oz. And that was no easy feat. Just try to compare “All you touch and all you see/Is all your life will ever be” with “There’s no place like home.” That’s a pretty deep equation. But to this day, stoners will commence the Oz video with the Dark Side album, in order to compare how precisely each introduces its introduction, conflicts its conflict, and then struggles to resolve its respective resolutions -- simultaneously, if one's audio/visual cueing is right. I don't know about you, but I can't envision any member of the cocktail generation going to such extremes to prove a point that's ultimately not a point at all, but just a buzz. (Nah, that's the kind of thing only a stoner would do...)
She don’t lie,
She don’t lie,
She don’t lie –
Cocaine.
-- Eric Clapton
How much more explicit could he have made our entry into the ‘80’s? As much as his rock fans wanted to proclaim that “Disco was for fags,” they couldn’t help but pick up on the fad Studio 54 made so popular. And it wasn't just popular with the pop artists. It was popular with everyone in search of a higher high. Didn’t coke provide it? (Doesn’t it still, wherever it’s still available?) ‘Nough said ‘bout that... 'Cept that, of course, She still don't lie...
Clean shirt, new shoes
And I don't know where I'm goin' to
Silk suit, black tie
I don't need a reason why
They come runnin' just as fast as they can
'Coz every girl's crazy 'bout a sharp dressed man.
-- ZZ Top
And so came the ‘80s. So what if this song, just like Clapton’s, came out in the late ‘70’s? There’s no difference. All that matters to our present argument is that, somewhere in the late ‘70s, substance left and superficiality entered the scene. How ironic, in an argument about substances. But it's true. Somewhere during the late '70s, between when Led Zeppelin was contemplating "Houses of the Holy" and when Liza was spreading Herpes at '54, the fashionable "substance" became an utter lack of substance. It became superficiality. And it has been ever since, no matter which drugs we've subsequently ingested. (Ecstacy? Speed? -- they only help us stay "in the moment," which, unfortunately, consistently turns out not to be much of a moment at all).
What does this have to do with addiction? Not much, if we’re referring to dependence on some chemical compound. But if we’re talking about the re-direction of more than two entire generations onto the feel-good Jones of Consumerism, then there’s our Hard Rock Genesis. Oh, what a coincidence. (And you thought it was all Calvin Kein’s fault…) It was around the time ZZ came out with their hits that the Hard Rock Café chain became infamous as a hot spot for tourists traveling from just about anywhere in the Western world to anywhere else within. That whole conglomerate happened for the sake of a "sharp-dressed man." Or, in lieu of that, for the sake of "a pair of cheap sunglasses…"
So what am I getting at? I’m getting at the heart of late 20th-Century/early 21st Century American existence, as foretold and described within the confines of its pop musical culture. I’m getting at how we’ve been obsessed – if "we" describes us as one of the many who’ve been living in the first of the “three worlds” circa 1965 – with one substance or another. And even though the substances of fashion have changed slightly as the decades have progressed, the truth is, pop culture has wanted nothing less than to get us hooked on something. Pop culture has led us, as far back as we can trace, to favor one mood-altering path or another. In the long run, that path has proven to be nothing less than pop culture itself.
Well, it’s bungle in the jungle
And that’s all right by me.
-- Jethro Tull
Which eventually leads us to:
This is not my beautiful house!
-- David Byrne and The Talking Heads
So just where have YOU been living? If your domicile is absolutely free of alcohol, pot, mescalin/acid, cocaine/speed, or consumerist label-lust, then by all means, I want to hear from you. If you honestly think your lifestyle doesn’t serve some addiction to something, then I really want to hear from you. ‘Cuz I think that, in the end, we’re all addicted to something. Lately, I’ve witnessed a bunch of folks addicted to addiction. They all sit around in circles made up of other people addicted to their same addictions and talk abaout how they’re no longer going to succumb to their addictions. All the while, they drink coffee and smoke cigarettes – not only like both chemicals are going out of style – but as if neither chemical was indeed addictive. So where do you stand? What are you hooked on?
If you consider yourself “not hooked,” then, like I said, I really want to hear from you. Because I’m willing to toss this entire hypothesis out the window. I really am. Show me a person who's not hooked on something and bam! -- out goes this entire mental trajectory. But in the meantime, as the personal ads say, "ISO addicted individuals. Please be into any sort of chemical dependency and/or be admittedly hooked on commerce. Or in lieu of those things, be hooked on getting unhooked."
Life; addiction. Addiction; life. Would Darwin have defined either without the other?
Personally, I don't blame my addiction(s) for my lack of accomplishment. I just blame fate. If I'd have had Morrison's photogenics, or Pink Floyd's orchestrations, or ZZ Top's long beards, or even David Byrne's RISD pedigree (all at the right time in the right place, you see), I imagine I'd still have been just as much an addict -- only more famous.
Like they are.
[Ed's Note: This was composed, in exact sequence, while listening to New York's "only classic rock station." The author had no idea which songs would be played or within what order; he was merely responding to the stimulus.]
I woke up this mornin’ and I got myself a beer-
The future’s uncertain and the end is always near…
-- J. Morrison, with The Doors
I’m sick of listening to people blame addiction for their lack of accomplishment. In my field (which is art, whether that be visual, performative, musical, or literary), addiction has only served to SERVE the most famous artists/writers of the 20th century.
Let’s take pop music, as an example, and from that let's take Jim Morrison -- the first to be quoted herein -- and examine exactly what I’m saying. Jim Morrison. One of the sexiest, shortest-lived pop musicians of the ‘60s. Heavily into drugs and equally into 19th-Century Romantic poetry (or vice-versa), Morrison has gone down in American Top 40 history as one of the saddest icons since Elvis. But despite the fact that he died before (and younger than) The King, he had more to say. We can chalk that up to his fascination with Rimbaud and Verlaine, who managed, in between their volatile attempts at defining homosexual male love, to etch out some pretty raunchy-yet-perfect odes to the nitty-gritty physical aspects of homo-sapiel [sic] existence. Am I saying Morrison was queer? Hell, no. But did he learn about love from homosexuals? Indeed, he did. You figure out what the difference is; I’m too tired of having to draw such distinctions. Funny thing about Morrison, though – despite his reputation for indulging in mescalin, acid and other hallucinogens – his real Jones was for booze, as described by the previously enscribed quote. I mean, of all things to reach for early in the a.m. during the mid-1960's... a BEER?!?
Tired of lying in the sunshine,
Staying home to watch the rain –
But you were young and life was long,
And there was time to kill today…
-- Pink Floyd, Dark Side of the Moon
There’s only time to kill, regardless of how despondent one’s adolescent nature might be, when there are drugs around. Otherwise, the adolescent grows bored. Once s/he tires of contemplation and its sister – masturbation – the adolescent needs some chemical compound in order to retain his/her complacency. For early 20th Century generations that drug was alcohol. But as the industrial revolution evolved into the technological revolution, the urge to expand consciousness evolved, relatively. Relativity, even though having been around since way before Morrison's day, caught up with the majority sometime during Floyd's day. In so doing, it relegated the booze buzz to an almost insignificant status. Sure, getting drunk was always a safe option (after all, isn’t that what Mom and Dad did?), but it didn’t exactly provide one with "options." It had become merely a steam valve.
So in order to effectively contemplate post-cocktail generation existence, one needed – at the very least – marijuana. Marijuana led entire generations into the lifestyle of complacency. Pot made “nothing happen.” Heck, it still does… But the pot mindest not only put Pink Floyd on the map, it also put them in the same league as the literary and filmatic masterpiece as The Wizard of Oz. And that was no easy feat. Just try to compare “All you touch and all you see/Is all your life will ever be” with “There’s no place like home.” That’s a pretty deep equation. But to this day, stoners will commence the Oz video with the Dark Side album, in order to compare how precisely each introduces its introduction, conflicts its conflict, and then struggles to resolve its respective resolutions -- simultaneously, if one's audio/visual cueing is right. I don't know about you, but I can't envision any member of the cocktail generation going to such extremes to prove a point that's ultimately not a point at all, but just a buzz. (Nah, that's the kind of thing only a stoner would do...)
She don’t lie,
She don’t lie,
She don’t lie –
Cocaine.
-- Eric Clapton
How much more explicit could he have made our entry into the ‘80’s? As much as his rock fans wanted to proclaim that “Disco was for fags,” they couldn’t help but pick up on the fad Studio 54 made so popular. And it wasn't just popular with the pop artists. It was popular with everyone in search of a higher high. Didn’t coke provide it? (Doesn’t it still, wherever it’s still available?) ‘Nough said ‘bout that... 'Cept that, of course, She still don't lie...
Clean shirt, new shoes
And I don't know where I'm goin' to
Silk suit, black tie
I don't need a reason why
They come runnin' just as fast as they can
'Coz every girl's crazy 'bout a sharp dressed man.
-- ZZ Top
And so came the ‘80s. So what if this song, just like Clapton’s, came out in the late ‘70’s? There’s no difference. All that matters to our present argument is that, somewhere in the late ‘70s, substance left and superficiality entered the scene. How ironic, in an argument about substances. But it's true. Somewhere during the late '70s, between when Led Zeppelin was contemplating "Houses of the Holy" and when Liza was spreading Herpes at '54, the fashionable "substance" became an utter lack of substance. It became superficiality. And it has been ever since, no matter which drugs we've subsequently ingested. (Ecstacy? Speed? -- they only help us stay "in the moment," which, unfortunately, consistently turns out not to be much of a moment at all).
What does this have to do with addiction? Not much, if we’re referring to dependence on some chemical compound. But if we’re talking about the re-direction of more than two entire generations onto the feel-good Jones of Consumerism, then there’s our Hard Rock Genesis. Oh, what a coincidence. (And you thought it was all Calvin Kein’s fault…) It was around the time ZZ came out with their hits that the Hard Rock Café chain became infamous as a hot spot for tourists traveling from just about anywhere in the Western world to anywhere else within. That whole conglomerate happened for the sake of a "sharp-dressed man." Or, in lieu of that, for the sake of "a pair of cheap sunglasses…"
So what am I getting at? I’m getting at the heart of late 20th-Century/early 21st Century American existence, as foretold and described within the confines of its pop musical culture. I’m getting at how we’ve been obsessed – if "we" describes us as one of the many who’ve been living in the first of the “three worlds” circa 1965 – with one substance or another. And even though the substances of fashion have changed slightly as the decades have progressed, the truth is, pop culture has wanted nothing less than to get us hooked on something. Pop culture has led us, as far back as we can trace, to favor one mood-altering path or another. In the long run, that path has proven to be nothing less than pop culture itself.
Well, it’s bungle in the jungle
And that’s all right by me.
-- Jethro Tull
Which eventually leads us to:
This is not my beautiful house!
-- David Byrne and The Talking Heads
So just where have YOU been living? If your domicile is absolutely free of alcohol, pot, mescalin/acid, cocaine/speed, or consumerist label-lust, then by all means, I want to hear from you. If you honestly think your lifestyle doesn’t serve some addiction to something, then I really want to hear from you. ‘Cuz I think that, in the end, we’re all addicted to something. Lately, I’ve witnessed a bunch of folks addicted to addiction. They all sit around in circles made up of other people addicted to their same addictions and talk abaout how they’re no longer going to succumb to their addictions. All the while, they drink coffee and smoke cigarettes – not only like both chemicals are going out of style – but as if neither chemical was indeed addictive. So where do you stand? What are you hooked on?
If you consider yourself “not hooked,” then, like I said, I really want to hear from you. Because I’m willing to toss this entire hypothesis out the window. I really am. Show me a person who's not hooked on something and bam! -- out goes this entire mental trajectory. But in the meantime, as the personal ads say, "ISO addicted individuals. Please be into any sort of chemical dependency and/or be admittedly hooked on commerce. Or in lieu of those things, be hooked on getting unhooked."
Life; addiction. Addiction; life. Would Darwin have defined either without the other?
Personally, I don't blame my addiction(s) for my lack of accomplishment. I just blame fate. If I'd have had Morrison's photogenics, or Pink Floyd's orchestrations, or ZZ Top's long beards, or even David Byrne's RISD pedigree (all at the right time in the right place, you see), I imagine I'd still have been just as much an addict -- only more famous.
Like they are.
[Ed's Note: This was composed, in exact sequence, while listening to New York's "only classic rock station." The author had no idea which songs would be played or within what order; he was merely responding to the stimulus.]
Tuesday, June 21, 2005
The Matter of Closets
A blog thing is a weird thing. It brings up many issues. Mainly, “How honest to be?” Or, “How much to recount?” Or if the answer to that question is, “Everything,” then, “How detailed is ‘Everything?’” Sooner or later, every attempt at coming out leads to another closet door.
I’ve been analyzing my own closet structure over the past 10 years, and I’ve come to two main conclusions about it:
1) The more I “out-ed” myself, the more I threw myself back into some closet;
2) The more I tried to eliminate closets from my own life, the more I
created them for those around me (e.g.: those whom I professed to love).
I certainly don’t mean to use these statements as a defense for remaining closeted, despite how it might appear. But the law of opposites, as it would appear, applies just as much to matters of coming out as it does to any other action/reaction. It’s simply a matter of physics.
What do I mean when I say that “The more I ‘out-ed’ myself, the more I threw myself back into some closet?” It’s pretty simple, really. I refer you to Portland, Maine in 1987. The already “out” Greg (that is, “out” to everyone from his lover to his college friends – his parents suspect but will not allow themselves to believe), surrenders the bulk of his worldly possessions and packs what little remains into a 1985 VW Jetta. His sole intent? To move to San Francisco. San Francisco, even to this day, reeks of homosexual innuendo. But in 1987, especially to the New English, it equated to “screaming.”
Was I, at that point in 1987, “out” to my parents? No. But what with having lived with a male lover for the previous three years and taking the $5,000 graduation gift they’d given me (in hopes I’d find a bride and settle down somewhere in Massachusetts) in order to transplant myself in Gay Mecca, it would be safe to say that the writing was on the wall. In other words, I took a gay situation and made it gay-er. Ergo, one closet opened into another. In essence, I “outed” myself onto a higher “out” plane, without ever bothering to actually “come out.” Even if I had told my folks the basics, the mere fact that I was moving to SF upped the ante, to the point where just being “out” wouldn’t have been enough. I could, after all, have remained in New England and pursued an assimilationist gay existence. (The lover. The brownstone. The labradors and the flannel…) But nooooooo,,,
I had to be gay-er than gay. I had to move to Gay Mecca. And would that THAT had been enough, but still it wasn’t.
I never intended – consciously, that is – for my SF karma to result in such extremes. All I remember is knowing I had to be surrounded by my own kind. And by “my own kind” I don’t just mean those who prefer to fuck members of the same sex. No, what – or should I say “whom” – I needed to be around were not only other gays, but other homosexuals who fought for their civil rights and, at that time in particular, their right to self-test experimental AIDS treatments. I suppose the whole AIDS factor was ultimately random, but its randomness never bore out over its reality in the eyes of my generation. Random or not, it was real, and it had to be dealt with. Hence, I was welcomed to my next closet: that of the AIDS activist.
It was around the time I commenced my activism that the dike (pardon the pun) between myself and my family finally cracked. And nowhere around was there a butch with a big enough finger to stop the flow. In 1988, at the dawn of the Larry Kramer/ACT-UP era, I “came out” to my parents.
They didn’t take it well. Dad withdrew into denial and Mom asserted that I could be converted, “If only [I] cared enough to…”
Despite my parents’ reactions, breaking open the preliminary closet door didn’t serve to be very satisfying to me. I had by then already crossed deep into the heart of SF counter-culture. Not only was I an activist, but I was also discovering my artistic sensibility. Sure, I had been creative all through high school and college, but this time, I was declaring my creativity/bohemianism as a lifestyle and not just an adolescent phase. I surrounded myself with other artists who actually made their living as artists. Up until then, that concept had been unimaginable to me. It was utterly liberating to be immersed in the subculture. But on the other hand, the subculture became yet another closet to confront.
My parents knew I was gay. So what? What did that mean, in their tiny little suburban world? The “gay” they envisioned from what they were able to pick up via mainstream media not only didn’t equate with the kind of “gay” I had become, it was downright sugar-coated compared to my reality. And even though it only served to hurt them more, I made damn sure my parents knew what a Radical Leftist Queer I had become. I was trying to make sure one closet phase wouldn’t lead to another. (Heck, being an activist was chic in those days, so it was the least I could do.)
But as fate would have it, one closet phase did lead to another. It wasn’t a mandatory evolution, by any means. In fact, it was pretty extreme, even when compared to the extremism with which I had surrounded myself. To this day, I don’t know which came first – my extremism or my extreme desire to live extremely. Regardless, have I ever “come out” to my parents as a prostitute? Oh, come now. There’s only so much a parent can handle, and believe me you, they haven’t been able to handle what I’ve dished out so far – so why would I dish out any more?
At the time of this writing, I’m 41. That makes my parents 71 each. 71 friggin’ years old, each with their own respective version of reproductive/genital cancer: prostate for Dad, and breast/cervical/uterine for Dear ol’ Mom. Now, would YOU want to tell the proud recipients of such diagnoses that their only son is not only a homosexual, but a homosexual whore? If indeed you possess that cruel a streak in your spine, then God help you. As cruel a streak as I have, and as much as the adolescent in me would like to hurt them, I simply can’t imagine wanting to hurt them that much. I mean, Enough already!
Would they – could they – ever understand that I consider my practice to be a vocation? Could they ever comprehend that some of us view sex for pay as a necessary component to human society? Would they ever be able to wrap their brains around the idea that I am content in my status? Probably not.
I had seen how tough it had been on my lovers, my boyfriends and even my friends to admit freely that I was a whore. No matter how much they wanted to be OK with it (and even though they really were OK with it), I saw how my baggage became their baggage, strictly by association. My justifications became their justifications, and suddenly, by the mere desire of my being “out” as a whore, my lovers, boyfriends and friends were placed in a defensive position. I didn’t like that. I was OK whenever I had to do the defending, but I didn’t wish having to be so defensive on anyone in my social circle.
That’s when it hit me, for sure. As “out” as I proclaimed to be, there was one closet I would have to retain.
And despite over 15 years of struggling to prevent closets, I still remain in one. I suppose there are always secrets we need to keep from our parents. I love the metaphor that is “growing gray.” It’s nature’s way of making us see the grays, after an entire adolescence and young adulthood of fighting to make things black and white. That was the story of my young adulthood. The struggle to live closet-free was nothing less than an attempt to live life either totally black or totally white. It doesn’t matter which, because they’re both extremes, and everyday life doesn’t exist along the extremes. Sooner or later life (like water, or air, or anything in the physical realm) seeks equilibrium.
When I look back on my young adulthood, now that I’m middle-aged, I can see how black and white I made everything out to be. But as much as I hated closets, I never opened to my parents the closet of my sexual extremism. Why bother? As the grays began to emerge in my hair, I learned to see the grays of coping with parents. They’d struggled enough just to come to terms with my homosexuality. As much as I’d rather they’d have come a lot further into acceptance (PS: they didn’t; it was awful), I had to accept that they could only come as far as they could come. There was no pushing them.
After realizing that, I finally realized all I was fighting was MY journey. And I came to realize that just living it is enough. I don’t need to throw it in my parents’ faces to justify it. All I have to do is live it.
That’s not being “closeted,” it’s being wise. Or at the very least, it’s being compassionate.
So Why the Sudden Slip into th' Brogue???
All I know is this (and I know I’ve said it before): Writing’s hard.
Writing’s as hard as painting. It’s as hard as sculpting. It’s as hard as any language, inculding – if I might say so – mathematics. Sure, all those practices are difficult. But tell me, is there anything more difficult than jottin' down exactly what we’re tryin' t'say’?
Math has something to fall back on. So do painting and sculpting. It’s not that they’re not difficult, but they’re easier in that, if one ha'n’t executed 'em precisely, a flaw shows right then and there.
With writing, even if one hasn’t executed it precisely, well, it can slip past you. It can slip past you ‘til you figure out to back up and not let it slip past you again. Writing’ll slip past you, my friend, ‘lest ‘yer well aware what it’s up to…
And just what is it up to? Well, quite honestly, writing’s up to no good. It’s up to no good a‘tal. Writing, my dear friend, wants t’convince ya. It wants t’convince ya it’s a solid line of reasoning – Nay – the ONLY line of reasoning. At least, the only line of reasoning that matters, at that time, at that place, when and where you’re readin’ it.
Poem, novel, dialogue or historical account – they’re all propoganda in the end. Don’t let the artists tell ya they’re reaching for something higher. Lord knows they want to. They want to picture themselves as something different from the historians, but they’re not. Truth be known, they’re lesser-than. ‘Cuz they’re the ones who wanna trick whole generations into thinkin’ their stories are acutal history. At least the historians attempt such a haughty claim from the start. The writers (God bless ‘em and Satan curse ‘em), attempt it blindly, not recognizing their own guilt. Christ help ‘em, but they don’t see their own sins.
Writers, Lord God have pity on their souls, think they’re speakin’ the truth. But if there’s anyone the lot o' ya should be wary of, it h’aint the historians. It’d be the writers. Writers are evil. Writers want nothing less than your souls. That’s what makes ‘em so sure they’re speakin’ the truth. ‘Cuz the truth, we’ve all been told, is s’posed t’set ya free.
Free y’er mind up to a writer and lose y’er soul. It’s that simple.
Thanks f’er readin'.
Writing’s as hard as painting. It’s as hard as sculpting. It’s as hard as any language, inculding – if I might say so – mathematics. Sure, all those practices are difficult. But tell me, is there anything more difficult than jottin' down exactly what we’re tryin' t'say’?
Math has something to fall back on. So do painting and sculpting. It’s not that they’re not difficult, but they’re easier in that, if one ha'n’t executed 'em precisely, a flaw shows right then and there.
With writing, even if one hasn’t executed it precisely, well, it can slip past you. It can slip past you ‘til you figure out to back up and not let it slip past you again. Writing’ll slip past you, my friend, ‘lest ‘yer well aware what it’s up to…
And just what is it up to? Well, quite honestly, writing’s up to no good. It’s up to no good a‘tal. Writing, my dear friend, wants t’convince ya. It wants t’convince ya it’s a solid line of reasoning – Nay – the ONLY line of reasoning. At least, the only line of reasoning that matters, at that time, at that place, when and where you’re readin’ it.
Poem, novel, dialogue or historical account – they’re all propoganda in the end. Don’t let the artists tell ya they’re reaching for something higher. Lord knows they want to. They want to picture themselves as something different from the historians, but they’re not. Truth be known, they’re lesser-than. ‘Cuz they’re the ones who wanna trick whole generations into thinkin’ their stories are acutal history. At least the historians attempt such a haughty claim from the start. The writers (God bless ‘em and Satan curse ‘em), attempt it blindly, not recognizing their own guilt. Christ help ‘em, but they don’t see their own sins.
Writers, Lord God have pity on their souls, think they’re speakin’ the truth. But if there’s anyone the lot o' ya should be wary of, it h’aint the historians. It’d be the writers. Writers are evil. Writers want nothing less than your souls. That’s what makes ‘em so sure they’re speakin’ the truth. ‘Cuz the truth, we’ve all been told, is s’posed t’set ya free.
Free y’er mind up to a writer and lose y’er soul. It’s that simple.
Thanks f’er readin'.
Thursday, June 16, 2005
A Minor Slip-Up
Well, I’ve done something I didn’t think – post-SF consciousness-raising, that is – I’d ever do again. I pulled a regular “bitch fest” in front of, and directed toward, one of the boys I “dated” during my recent six months of escapist endeavors…
This one is 27. A vegetarian hippy with parents from Santa Cruz or some such Berkeley-esque Northern CA environment. We spent exactly one passionate, coke-inspired night (and subsequent day) together two months ago, during which time we professed our uncanny mutual attraction. I can’t speak for him, but I meant everything I said, even if the coke did make it easier to say. Not only was I genuinely attracted to him, but I was also relieved to run into somebody else with Northern CA consciousness. I thought I’d found a new friend. But he never called me, even after I went through the trouble of looking him up at his trendy Manhattan restaurant job one Saturday night so that I might slip him my number. (He had left me his, but it had been disconnected. Should that have been my first warning? I remember thinking so. So I got busy with my life, and forgot about him.)
But then I saw him tonight on the way home from the Met, quite unexpectedly, as I was walking along Lorimer on my way toward Grand and beyond. Saw him dead-on, with no potential for looking away as if I hadn’t noticed him. Ditto for him. I saw it in his eyes. I saw him, and he saw me, plain and simple. It was startling for both of us. For me, because I’d just shaken off some other boy who wanted me to take him home and fuck him, and for him, well, just because, I guess. We weren’t passing each other, we were walking in the same direction. I had felt his presence and turned around. That’s how I saw him. I wonder if I’d have turned around if it had been anyone else?
“How ya doin’?” he asked as he approached me. He didn’t take the time to stop, and I didn’t take the time to stand still. Suddenly we were walking together. He was on his way to get cigarettes.
“Me?,” I asked, “I’m doin’ fine. Always have, always will.” I waited a few beats. We kept walking. The store was still a few yards away. I felt no need to hold back. I blurted, “Sorry I didn’t return your calls, but I DIDN’T GET ANY.”
He looked at me sheepishly. “I just got a new phone,” he said. “I haven’t had one all this time.”
“Mmm,” I grunted. And I stepped in front of him, and turned to face him – stopping him in his tracks.
I lifted my middle finger to my nose and sniffed it. Then I stuck it under his nose. He didn’t know what to make of the gesture, but he took a whiff anyway.
“Smell it?,” I asked.
“Smell what?”
“That’s someone else’s ass,” I assured him. It was no lie. I had been fingering the boy who wanted me to take him home and fuck him for close to an hour before I worked up the excuse of needing to walk the dog.
He became visibly disgusted. He resumed walking.
I followed him into the corner store. He bought some cigs, quite uncomfortable all the while. When he had completed his transaction he tried to brush me off with a “Well, it was good to see you,” but I confronted him once more.
“You don’t get it, do you?” I asked. “I wasn’t faking when I said I wanted to see you again. How come no call? I went out of my way to give you my number. The ball was in your court. You knew it.”
“I told you, I didn’t have a phone, and I’ve been real busy…”
“Bullshit. I’ve been busy, too. But if it’d been up to me to call you, then you could’ve been sure I’d a’ found a pay phone. Or something. I don’t mean to come across as some needy faggot whining, ‘Why did’t you call?,’ but I need you to know – I wanted to see you again. And I rarely feel that way. I told you that.”
“Well, yeah,” he admitted, “but when we parted I felt like you left it as ‘just friends’ and I thought we’d talked extensively about how I’m the marrying kind.”
“You mentioned it,” I told him, “but there was hardly anything extensive about it.”
He disagreed.
“So THAT’s why you did’t call,” I said.
“Well, yeah.”
“Then that’s what you should’ve had the balls to say a few minutes ago.”
I saw the whites of his eyes. He had no way out, and he knew it.
“Look,” he said, “I adore you. But there’s obviously not gonna be any way we can make it work.”
I asked, “Because you want monogamy?”
“Well, yeah.”
“That’s all I was trying to get you to say. That’s fine with me. I’ll be alright. Always have been.”
And with that, I turned on my heel and walked away from him, never once looking back. I walked home, thinking the entire time about how weird it had been to see him, right out of the blue, after I’d mentally put the entire scenario regarding him to rest. I couldn’t help but repeat – over and over – my mantra, “Gay male monogamy is not only impossible, it’s superfluous,” but at the same time, part of me was wishing him luck. Christ knows he’ll need it.
This one is 27. A vegetarian hippy with parents from Santa Cruz or some such Berkeley-esque Northern CA environment. We spent exactly one passionate, coke-inspired night (and subsequent day) together two months ago, during which time we professed our uncanny mutual attraction. I can’t speak for him, but I meant everything I said, even if the coke did make it easier to say. Not only was I genuinely attracted to him, but I was also relieved to run into somebody else with Northern CA consciousness. I thought I’d found a new friend. But he never called me, even after I went through the trouble of looking him up at his trendy Manhattan restaurant job one Saturday night so that I might slip him my number. (He had left me his, but it had been disconnected. Should that have been my first warning? I remember thinking so. So I got busy with my life, and forgot about him.)
But then I saw him tonight on the way home from the Met, quite unexpectedly, as I was walking along Lorimer on my way toward Grand and beyond. Saw him dead-on, with no potential for looking away as if I hadn’t noticed him. Ditto for him. I saw it in his eyes. I saw him, and he saw me, plain and simple. It was startling for both of us. For me, because I’d just shaken off some other boy who wanted me to take him home and fuck him, and for him, well, just because, I guess. We weren’t passing each other, we were walking in the same direction. I had felt his presence and turned around. That’s how I saw him. I wonder if I’d have turned around if it had been anyone else?
“How ya doin’?” he asked as he approached me. He didn’t take the time to stop, and I didn’t take the time to stand still. Suddenly we were walking together. He was on his way to get cigarettes.
“Me?,” I asked, “I’m doin’ fine. Always have, always will.” I waited a few beats. We kept walking. The store was still a few yards away. I felt no need to hold back. I blurted, “Sorry I didn’t return your calls, but I DIDN’T GET ANY.”
He looked at me sheepishly. “I just got a new phone,” he said. “I haven’t had one all this time.”
“Mmm,” I grunted. And I stepped in front of him, and turned to face him – stopping him in his tracks.
I lifted my middle finger to my nose and sniffed it. Then I stuck it under his nose. He didn’t know what to make of the gesture, but he took a whiff anyway.
“Smell it?,” I asked.
“Smell what?”
“That’s someone else’s ass,” I assured him. It was no lie. I had been fingering the boy who wanted me to take him home and fuck him for close to an hour before I worked up the excuse of needing to walk the dog.
He became visibly disgusted. He resumed walking.
I followed him into the corner store. He bought some cigs, quite uncomfortable all the while. When he had completed his transaction he tried to brush me off with a “Well, it was good to see you,” but I confronted him once more.
“You don’t get it, do you?” I asked. “I wasn’t faking when I said I wanted to see you again. How come no call? I went out of my way to give you my number. The ball was in your court. You knew it.”
“I told you, I didn’t have a phone, and I’ve been real busy…”
“Bullshit. I’ve been busy, too. But if it’d been up to me to call you, then you could’ve been sure I’d a’ found a pay phone. Or something. I don’t mean to come across as some needy faggot whining, ‘Why did’t you call?,’ but I need you to know – I wanted to see you again. And I rarely feel that way. I told you that.”
“Well, yeah,” he admitted, “but when we parted I felt like you left it as ‘just friends’ and I thought we’d talked extensively about how I’m the marrying kind.”
“You mentioned it,” I told him, “but there was hardly anything extensive about it.”
He disagreed.
“So THAT’s why you did’t call,” I said.
“Well, yeah.”
“Then that’s what you should’ve had the balls to say a few minutes ago.”
I saw the whites of his eyes. He had no way out, and he knew it.
“Look,” he said, “I adore you. But there’s obviously not gonna be any way we can make it work.”
I asked, “Because you want monogamy?”
“Well, yeah.”
“That’s all I was trying to get you to say. That’s fine with me. I’ll be alright. Always have been.”
And with that, I turned on my heel and walked away from him, never once looking back. I walked home, thinking the entire time about how weird it had been to see him, right out of the blue, after I’d mentally put the entire scenario regarding him to rest. I couldn’t help but repeat – over and over – my mantra, “Gay male monogamy is not only impossible, it’s superfluous,” but at the same time, part of me was wishing him luck. Christ knows he’ll need it.
Wednesday, June 15, 2005
Poem for a Commercial Website
Fuck This!
All I did was t’click on t’some link,
But Lo! an' Behold, said link is a FINK.
If all I'd a' wanted was t' spend my eve'
Clickin' more links an' spreadin' 'net seed,
Then I'd a' gone right fer it – right from th' start,
And click'd ont'a some por-no-graphic web's heart!
-- G. O’Neill
All I did was t’click on t’some link,
But Lo! an' Behold, said link is a FINK.
If all I'd a' wanted was t' spend my eve'
Clickin' more links an' spreadin' 'net seed,
Then I'd a' gone right fer it – right from th' start,
And click'd ont'a some por-no-graphic web's heart!
-- G. O’Neill
Sunday, June 05, 2005
Me an' Billy Joe
{Editor’s Note: Hey, Kids! For a multi-dimensional experience available to you only through this fabulous medium called the Internet, you can click on any of these following links to accompany the prose you’re about to read! (Or not… Or not…)}
[Accopmaniment only: (Best to click it into another window altogether, to start the music before you start reading. If you can get the music to play while you read, you've accomplished the mission. Windows users, right click the link. When music begins, click onto previous window with blog text and let the games begin! Mac users, you should be smart enough to figure this out yourselves...)
And PS, PS: This one's 'sposed 'ta be in an American Southern Accent, not the Brogue of subsequent posts.]
http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache:9G5NO9c-BmsJ:users.cis.net/sammy/billyjoe.htm++%22Tallahatchie+%22&hl=en
Lyrics only:
http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache:11qft-jvmMEJ:www.swopnet.com/music/ode_to_bj.html++%22ode+to+billy+joe%22&hl=en
More Lyrics:
http://www.geocities.com/odetobobbiegentry/lyric/lotbj.htm]
06/03/05:
Seems like me an’ Billly Joe McAllister’s got a lot in common. Mainly, that’d be today’s date.
See, June’s a funny time f’er me. Not funny Ha-Ha!, but funny strange. Funny strange ‘cuz it’s the time a’ year when I was born. Or should I say, done born… An’ there ain’t no time stranger than the time y’er bein’ born… Save, maybe, f’er the time y’er ‘bout ‘ta die…
But me an’ Billy Joe, y’see, we done both, th’ same time.
No, y’er right: I wa’n’t born June 3rd. But guess’d I did do that day? That’d be the very day in June, 2003, that I done touched down ‘n JFK – t’ start a new life in New York City. Now whaddya thinka that?
That Bill Joe, y’know – he w’an’t jus’ coverin’ up a pregnancy. He was coverin’ up his own self. His own damn bisexual, pregnancy-inducing self…
There’s so much more to pop culture than we can ever imagine. But why imagine? We’re too busy living it. When the music alarm went off this morning at 6:00am, and I heard the Classic Rock DJ announcing that today was, in fact, the anniversary of Billy Joe’s infamous transcendance, well – I jus’ couldn’t help but wonder why I felt such a connection. But now I wonder no more. Birth, death. Rebirth, redeath. Ain’t it all the same in th’ long run?
But y’all don’t need to worry ‘bout me throwing myself off no Tallahatchie Bridge. Jus’ bear’n mind: June’s a prime time f’er folks like me an’ good ol’ Billy Joe. It’s a prime time – f’er either makin’ it or losin’ it alt'gether…
An’ I done chose t’ make it.
[Accopmaniment only: (Best to click it into another window altogether, to start the music before you start reading. If you can get the music to play while you read, you've accomplished the mission. Windows users, right click the link. When music begins, click onto previous window with blog text and let the games begin! Mac users, you should be smart enough to figure this out yourselves...)
And PS, PS: This one's 'sposed 'ta be in an American Southern Accent, not the Brogue of subsequent posts.]
http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache:9G5NO9c-BmsJ:users.cis.net/sammy/billyjoe.htm++%22Tallahatchie+%22&hl=en
Lyrics only:
http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache:11qft-jvmMEJ:www.swopnet.com/music/ode_to_bj.html++%22ode+to+billy+joe%22&hl=en
More Lyrics:
http://www.geocities.com/odetobobbiegentry/lyric/lotbj.htm]
06/03/05:
Seems like me an’ Billly Joe McAllister’s got a lot in common. Mainly, that’d be today’s date.
See, June’s a funny time f’er me. Not funny Ha-Ha!, but funny strange. Funny strange ‘cuz it’s the time a’ year when I was born. Or should I say, done born… An’ there ain’t no time stranger than the time y’er bein’ born… Save, maybe, f’er the time y’er ‘bout ‘ta die…
But me an’ Billy Joe, y’see, we done both, th’ same time.
No, y’er right: I wa’n’t born June 3rd. But guess’d I did do that day? That’d be the very day in June, 2003, that I done touched down ‘n JFK – t’ start a new life in New York City. Now whaddya thinka that?
That Bill Joe, y’know – he w’an’t jus’ coverin’ up a pregnancy. He was coverin’ up his own self. His own damn bisexual, pregnancy-inducing self…
There’s so much more to pop culture than we can ever imagine. But why imagine? We’re too busy living it. When the music alarm went off this morning at 6:00am, and I heard the Classic Rock DJ announcing that today was, in fact, the anniversary of Billy Joe’s infamous transcendance, well – I jus’ couldn’t help but wonder why I felt such a connection. But now I wonder no more. Birth, death. Rebirth, redeath. Ain’t it all the same in th’ long run?
But y’all don’t need to worry ‘bout me throwing myself off no Tallahatchie Bridge. Jus’ bear’n mind: June’s a prime time f’er folks like me an’ good ol’ Billy Joe. It’s a prime time – f’er either makin’ it or losin’ it alt'gether…
An’ I done chose t’ make it.
Friday, May 27, 2005
Playing Favorites
Scoff if you will, or mock, or just plain laugh. But I consider myself to be an artist. I know the term “artist” has, for whatever curious reasons, come to pertain mainly to those who work in the visual realms (such as painting, sculpting, or even photography and film), but the fact is: An artist is someone who conceptualizes and then actualizes something abstract.
It’s abstraction that separates the artist from the craftsperson. For even though throughout the ages architects and scientists have occasionally wanted to argue that they, too, are artists, the fact eventuallly surfaces that those vocations result in something concrete – if even in nothing more than a mathematical equation. A building or a bridge, an equation or a formula – all of these are technically concrete in the final analysis of a concrete world. The former might be more obviously concrete, but the latter, after careful examination, proves to be equally sturdy.
What’s the difference between the abstraction of an artwork and that of a mathematical equation? It’s quite simple, really. As abstract as a mathematical equation might be, it represents something actual. It posits itself as a manifestation of reality. It claims to portray, in terms we humans cannot see, something that is real – and which therefore affects (if not dominates) our physical realm. And if there’s anything we humans value to the point of not questioning, it’s our physical realm.
The abstraction of art, on the other hand, exists merely for the sake of its own abstraction. A much simpler way to put this is, art exists simply for the sake of its own existence. The thing about art is, in the long run, there is never any practical need for it to ever be created.
Portraiture is often used as an example against this argument. Portraiture, it is argued, is “representational.” The term “representation,” therefore, is understood to convey an innate realism which is subsequently understood to imply a lack of interpretation or political agenda. But if this argument is true, then why don’t all portraits – from ancient times up until the contemporary – have a photographic exactness? They don’t. They couldn’t. Until the photographic lens was invented, humanity had to rely upon the human lens, which could never exist separate from the politics of its own perception. Even the ostensible precision of the Renaissance grid, despite its revolutionary ability to depict exact perspective, came with its own political baggage. So, too, for that matter, does modern photography, and filmography, and videography. In the world of visual arts, there is no such thing as true artistic objectivity, no matter how precise a medium might be in capturing the proportions of its subjects.
Similarly, performing artists are often accused of not having to create from the abstract. Music, dance choreograpy, actors’ lines and stage directions are acclaimed (from the critics’ point of view) as concrete instructions from which virtually “anyone with sufficient training” could bring to life the composer’s/playwright’s intentions. But it’s a funny thing. We rarely, if ever, see these critics on stage, interpreting what they say is so easy to interpret.
And what of the composers and playwrights? They’re the brave souls who created something from the blank page, just as their musicians and actors must bring to life the music and words that rest upon the pages of those once-blank scripts. Each and every one of these artists, for lack of a better term, is bringing the abstract to fruition. (Probably, incidentally, for little to no pay.)
All of which is to reiterate: Art exists simply for its own sake. This can’t be said about other human endeavors. That is, it cannot be said about intentional, conscious endeavors. The majority of human endeavors are concerned with cause and effect. More pecisely, they’re concerned with survival. Breathing, eating, digesting, sleeping – even impregnation – these activities could technically be, and have been, argued as having intentional components, but as history proves, they are in fact habitual. The same must be said for labor, government and even war. Most human endeavors strive for results. Most of the desired results are physical, monetary, or political. In other words, most human endeavor is practical. But even though artistic endeavor also strives for some sort of result, the intended result -- no matter how practical -- is rarely practical. Art prefers to engage emotion. Art, for better or worse, doesn’t care what it stands to profit; it merely wants to remind us that we’re alive.
Entertainment strives for popularity and profit; Propoganda strives for political influence; but Art strives only for itself.
Within that social context, it’s only the crazy person who persues art. It’s only the dreamer who makes something out of nothing – for nothing. Nothing, that is, other than the sake of creating. Artists want little more than to create. Despite the best of their practical intentions (if they become encumbered by them), artists only wish to make something from nothing. If the feedback they receive sounds like, “Well, isn’t that great?” Well, then, all right! And if the feedback is more like, “That sucks!” Well, then, isn’t that all right, too?
In the long run, is there anything that exists that doesn’t make some sort of statement? Are we so self-absorbed a species that we can’t see meaning in anything? In everything?
That’s what artists are trying to tell us. That’s why I play favorites. I favor the artists. Not because I am one, but because without them, we might just lose sight of our very own God-liness. After all, there isn’t a culture we’ve discovered so far that hasn’t acknowledged this state of recognition; this state of awe; this very concept of existence for its very own sake. If there’s anything we know about humanity, after all this time and all this study, it’s that we all have an inherent appreciation for that from which we came, no matter how we perceive it – and a mutual respect for our own precarious condition.
And the most concise declaration of that realization is, at best and universally, enunciated by art.
It’s abstraction that separates the artist from the craftsperson. For even though throughout the ages architects and scientists have occasionally wanted to argue that they, too, are artists, the fact eventuallly surfaces that those vocations result in something concrete – if even in nothing more than a mathematical equation. A building or a bridge, an equation or a formula – all of these are technically concrete in the final analysis of a concrete world. The former might be more obviously concrete, but the latter, after careful examination, proves to be equally sturdy.
What’s the difference between the abstraction of an artwork and that of a mathematical equation? It’s quite simple, really. As abstract as a mathematical equation might be, it represents something actual. It posits itself as a manifestation of reality. It claims to portray, in terms we humans cannot see, something that is real – and which therefore affects (if not dominates) our physical realm. And if there’s anything we humans value to the point of not questioning, it’s our physical realm.
The abstraction of art, on the other hand, exists merely for the sake of its own abstraction. A much simpler way to put this is, art exists simply for the sake of its own existence. The thing about art is, in the long run, there is never any practical need for it to ever be created.
Portraiture is often used as an example against this argument. Portraiture, it is argued, is “representational.” The term “representation,” therefore, is understood to convey an innate realism which is subsequently understood to imply a lack of interpretation or political agenda. But if this argument is true, then why don’t all portraits – from ancient times up until the contemporary – have a photographic exactness? They don’t. They couldn’t. Until the photographic lens was invented, humanity had to rely upon the human lens, which could never exist separate from the politics of its own perception. Even the ostensible precision of the Renaissance grid, despite its revolutionary ability to depict exact perspective, came with its own political baggage. So, too, for that matter, does modern photography, and filmography, and videography. In the world of visual arts, there is no such thing as true artistic objectivity, no matter how precise a medium might be in capturing the proportions of its subjects.
Similarly, performing artists are often accused of not having to create from the abstract. Music, dance choreograpy, actors’ lines and stage directions are acclaimed (from the critics’ point of view) as concrete instructions from which virtually “anyone with sufficient training” could bring to life the composer’s/playwright’s intentions. But it’s a funny thing. We rarely, if ever, see these critics on stage, interpreting what they say is so easy to interpret.
And what of the composers and playwrights? They’re the brave souls who created something from the blank page, just as their musicians and actors must bring to life the music and words that rest upon the pages of those once-blank scripts. Each and every one of these artists, for lack of a better term, is bringing the abstract to fruition. (Probably, incidentally, for little to no pay.)
All of which is to reiterate: Art exists simply for its own sake. This can’t be said about other human endeavors. That is, it cannot be said about intentional, conscious endeavors. The majority of human endeavors are concerned with cause and effect. More pecisely, they’re concerned with survival. Breathing, eating, digesting, sleeping – even impregnation – these activities could technically be, and have been, argued as having intentional components, but as history proves, they are in fact habitual. The same must be said for labor, government and even war. Most human endeavors strive for results. Most of the desired results are physical, monetary, or political. In other words, most human endeavor is practical. But even though artistic endeavor also strives for some sort of result, the intended result -- no matter how practical -- is rarely practical. Art prefers to engage emotion. Art, for better or worse, doesn’t care what it stands to profit; it merely wants to remind us that we’re alive.
Entertainment strives for popularity and profit; Propoganda strives for political influence; but Art strives only for itself.
Within that social context, it’s only the crazy person who persues art. It’s only the dreamer who makes something out of nothing – for nothing. Nothing, that is, other than the sake of creating. Artists want little more than to create. Despite the best of their practical intentions (if they become encumbered by them), artists only wish to make something from nothing. If the feedback they receive sounds like, “Well, isn’t that great?” Well, then, all right! And if the feedback is more like, “That sucks!” Well, then, isn’t that all right, too?
In the long run, is there anything that exists that doesn’t make some sort of statement? Are we so self-absorbed a species that we can’t see meaning in anything? In everything?
That’s what artists are trying to tell us. That’s why I play favorites. I favor the artists. Not because I am one, but because without them, we might just lose sight of our very own God-liness. After all, there isn’t a culture we’ve discovered so far that hasn’t acknowledged this state of recognition; this state of awe; this very concept of existence for its very own sake. If there’s anything we know about humanity, after all this time and all this study, it’s that we all have an inherent appreciation for that from which we came, no matter how we perceive it – and a mutual respect for our own precarious condition.
And the most concise declaration of that realization is, at best and universally, enunciated by art.
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