3/8/21: What Happened to Kerouac? (1986) — Suicide by Performance Art #poetry
They just wanted a little attention, baby
They just wanted to get over
They were clever and beautiful boys
Who could turn a ride on a freight train
or later in a speeding car
into
what?
finding romance in the amber waves of grain
and the dirty bustling ports of the new rich nation
and especially the bars and the coffee shops
where they would congregate
arousing and entertaining each other
The world was their mother’s incestuous eyes
and they returned the leer with their prose poetry
They were bums
a beaten generation
and they stumbled upon words
and became the beat generation
personifying a yearning of the academic and professional classes
the boys and girls well educated in the liberal arts
bored and frightened by the world of money
They were the denied cry for freedom of the men in the gray flannel suits
and the girls in the pearls and aprons
They were fallout from the Hiroshima and Nagasaki nuclear bombs
worshipping the moment now that Armageddon was a present possibility
Oh …
so they posed
They wanted to get over
Make it as much as the squares in the skyscrapers did
Useful cultural radicals
with the souls of advertising men
Dancing in front of their approving finger snapping audiences
the ones with the disposable income
they danced like poodles with shaved asses in the circus
They took Walt Whitman and added booze and the Ivy League and General Motors and Hollywood and sex and shock
Shock shock
Freudian obsessions sung out loud without shame
Oh no, the shame was not for natural Oedipal and Electra complexes
The mainstreaming of dysfunction
The outspoken frankness of their poetry pumped oxygen into every room where it was spoken …
No the shame wasn’t for dysfunction
Dysfunction is sexy
People want to fuck dysfunction
The shame was for getting old (or older but for them every second made them old … they were moths dancing on air toward the flame of death … even their laughter was morbid, any ejaculation of joy was a put on, they created the illusion of life as an act of copulation, but their true state, and message was one of post -coital disappointment … Kerouac tried so hard for what he thought was impossible with the knowledge that he’d get tired of it all someday …. every expression of supposed passion was a cover for his essential despair … he was born despairing of life’s possibilities and he ran away from that very life for a brief while, becoming the voice of similarly disappointed generations … generations of excitable meteors oblivious to the stable happiness of the planets naturally adapting to the phases of their moons)
The shame
For not being infinitely interesting
The shame
For having any impulse to satisfy their own creative ambitions
for failing in any second where they didn’t give the audience what it wanted …
Audiences eat performers
Performers are roast beef and the servant at the carving station at the same time
They butcher themselves and hand out the pieces of their rare bloody flesh
to people who are just there to be diverted
Dinner and a show.
I am sure at one point
early on
Jack Kerouac was beautiful and authentic
Charming and smart
and endlessly inventive …
but then he saw it “worked”
and he was doomed
His center was his audience’s edge
In an enlightened world the middle class paying customers would have moved toward Kerouac, and Kerouac would have moved toward the middle class paying customers
Kerouac, the bard of excited youth making love to all of the people and objects that he encountered …
especially loving every energetic erotic word
writing the words, saying the words, reading the words aloud
the pleasure the satisfaction the release of the words
Kerouac found himself in the words
but then never made the transition to living and writing the subsequent phases of life
The paying customers didn’t want that from him
They put his body and soul in formaldehyde — the morgue is the ultimate venue of arrested development
Kerouac became a cultural figure
and stopped being a writer and a man
He was dissected as a precursor of the mentality of flower children and the various revolutions of the sixties
Even his worthwhile writing from when he was actually alive
Before he joined the drunken walking dead
stopped being writing
Kerouac was the symbol of a zeitgeist
An expression of how a generation felt
A Lost Man of the Beat Generation
Kerouac lost art and surrendered himself to mysticism
He united with the All
Kerouac, the apostle of unadulterated individuality
disappeared
Kerouac was a human sacrifice
He introduced one aspect to writing
an invaluable aspect
but then had to die
He courageously cut open a vein
and let the stuff of his very existence pour on the page
but couldn’t transform it
He didn’t want to get to the Promised Land
He was terrified
and when the world proved to be something other than his mother’s desirous eyes
He went home to his mother
and not so slowly died
They wanted him to die
a romantic and tragic death
The customers wanted him to give up on the world the way that they did
They wanted Kerouac to prove to them that it wasn’t possible
Life couldn’t be constant love making
Life couldn’t be a love affair …
every rock tree smokestack bar and boy or girl couldn’t be your beloved
Life couldn’t be that wonderful … oh no
and …
down deep beatniks are the straightest people in the world
authority and social expectation are huge black shadows over their lives
leading to defiance, rebellion, capitulation and surrender
So Kerouac obliged the paying customers
He retreated to his first love at the family homestead in Lowell, Massachusetts
and drank himself to death in the shadow of his mother
The romance of his words turned into something incestuous and perverted and diseased
I never was drawn to Kerouac’s writing
I see its value
but it’s not for me
The other Beat writers were generally more my speed
They aren’t as sexy
but they are more grounded
Those other Beat writers wouldn’t have been possible without Kerouac
and it is not likely that even the very best of them matched his force of nature inspiration
but they finished the job
They lived
They didn’t give up
I don’t criticize Kerouac
I feel badly for him
All good people live and die as martyrs
We all die by our own hand
We choose what is important to us
and we give our existence to those objects of our affection
Kerouac died for some things of great value
but those things would have given him more time
It was the misunderstandings that got him
We kill moments by caring about things that don’t matter
and some of us get stuck in our wayward focus
and the moments become forever
Some of us willfully destroy our being
wishing nothing more than to disappear
and some aren’t so existential
they are just sick
The truly poet is a rock
As natural as a bird singing in a tree outside a window
Un – self – conscious
Getting what she needs
building her nest
getting her food
doing ti her own way
not giving a damn about who is watching
Not trying to enlighten or heal anybody
Not trying to get noticed
Unbothered when she is noticed
Inspiring the world by being herself
In all of her iterations
Jack Kerouac brilliantly expressed what people were feeling at a specific point in time
and said it in a way that interested them
and revolutionized writing itself
He seductively spoke to people in a way that turned them on
but then couldn’t move on
a butterfly pressed in a microscope slide.
Real influence is always unintended
Just write and live and let the world spin on its axis
3/7/21: The Theory of Everything (2014) — Disabled Genius #poetry
Genius is strange and clever, bold enough to raise the ultimate question, confident enough to attempt to explain the essence of everything.
The ordinary are a little dumb, and by virtue of their ignorance, varying degrees of cruel. Christ, that genius of the first order, asked his father to forgive the ordinary because “they know not what they do.” The cross is the disability of genius. The disabled are the sons and daughters of God.
Genius is always lame, at least lame. Lame or worse. The ordinary, and the fate that afflicts ordinary and genius alike, disable genius.
The disability of genius is the purpose of genius.
Genius always inhabits a diseased or broken body, and is always trapped in community with the ordinary.
Genius dies like everybody and everything else. Genius is bound by physical and social realities like everybody and everything else.
Genius is not an escape. There is no refuge in ivory towers or communes of brilliant fellow travelers.
Mankind is a little like an ant colony. Each human being is born with a prescribed task. Some grow things, and some make things, and some fix things, and some discover things like fire.
Genius gets to eat and defecate and procreate like everyone else. All of the pleasures and edifying challenges of life belong as much to the genius as anyone else.
Science and art are in love with each other. Nature and poetry are expressions of one another. Reason and imagination are partners. Creativity and insight are synonyms.
Genius is the frontier of clarity.
There is great challenge in genius and great joy.
If you are reading this you are probably a genius. Geniuses talk to geniuses and expand genius. The attraction between geniuses leads to something like chemical reactions, and somehow these new quasi – molecules are introduced into the body human.
Geniuses are the people, and genius is the field, that brings progress to all mankind
My local paper when I was a little kid, the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, and its evening colleague, the Rochester Times -Union, had a section. along with Business, Sports and Local, called Arts and Ideas. I always went Arts and Ideas first. It seemed like everybody else went for Sports or Business or the Front Page. I became aware that I wanted to be a genius the first day I picked “my” section of the paper.
If you want to be a genius, you are one. Most people just want to fit in. They want to be “normal” like everybody else; but a sizable minority want to be geniuses and with geniuses. This minority knows that there is so much more to know, and enjoys eccentricity.
Ignorance is a matter of character, not faulty intellect. The ignorant don’t want to know. Ignorance is the product of indifference.
Genius is a matter of good character, and proportional to ability and opportunity. If you care about someone or something, you want to know about it. That’s good character. A genius will use whatever ability or opportunity that he or she has to achieve something. If you have a massive intellect, are born into a family of intellectuals who nurture you, know of and are admitted into the studies of physics at Oxford, and are married to a woman who loves you and tends to your emotional and physical needs after you are afflicted with a disease that devastates your entire body, you can develop a theory of everything. With more modest means you can still do your part. It is the ordinary who dismiss everyday genius.
Moments of brilliance are all around us
constantly
genius sparks like fireflies
the willfully ignorant ordinary can’t see the flashing lights
but we geniuses do our duty
We recognize and catalogue
the wonders of life.
The woman with down’s syndrome has a genius for kindness and affection …
the brilliant disabled physicist is driven to communicate, to connect
in an act of empathy for the rest of us
The Generosity of Genius
Genius is Love
Genius suffers its disability
but is also carried by unseen hands
When you further God’s purposes
You are lucky
Lucky in so many ways
You live through seasons of stress and strife
Misunderstood even by those who are disposed to understand you
but faith must be tested
Faith without a test isn’t faith at all
It’s just a foregone conclusion
Genius knows
Genius can be lost, you have to persevere
but ultimately
you are awarded an abundance
your struggle ratifies your genius findings, and becomes an inspiration.
Popularizers, like the filmmakers of today’s object of cinematic meditation
Play a role
A kind of bourgeoise pandering
to coax the ordinary toward genius
Technicolor love affairs
Sentimental conflicts
The gossipy drama the ordinary can’t do without in their lifelong project of attempting to avoid true feeling and thought
serves a noble purpose
in introducing genius to the ordinary in an heroic light
Kind of like pictures of God as a muscular old man with a long white beard
something for children
and the childish
Genius can easily become disgusted with, and enraged at the ordinary
but this impatience and anger must be transcended
not to preserve genius
but to preserve genius’ humanity.
So this genius is dismissive of this Hollywood movie
but this genius know that the movie is not for him
It is for the ordinary
The ordinary are in a prison for their sins
Prison can be a venue of rehabilitation
The genius physicist worked very hard to learn new ways to speak
with the assistance of other geniuses
scientists and technicians and therapists
(genius the people, places and things of progress)
an education made necessary by his disability
to communicate with other geniuses
and ultimately the ordinary world.
Here’s the point of faith that every genius knows
the cosmic backdrop behind each specific and peculiar mystery that each member of the genius class explores
and each struggle with fate and the ordinary that each genius fights on the road to his or her discovery
that everything is wonderful
beyond good and bad and dark and light
and genius and ordinary,
and everything is the way it should be.
It’s all OK
It’s all alright
It’s beautiful if your perspective is from an optimal vantage point
We are born to traverse from horizon to horizon
discovering and colonizing the next region of the unending unknown
for still mysterious reasons.
And I, Genius, got caught up in the movie’s love triangle
and I’m moved by the way the genius and his genius ex -wife love their children and each other
I’m touched by the ordinary
Touched by the ordinary?
Brilliant
A vaccination of the ordinary virus never hurt anybody
3/6/21: The Trial of the Chicago 7 — Sorting Out the Mess, Sort of #poetry
The first thing that I notice is the music
So exciting
Addicted to excitement
What fucking lives
Fucking America
1968 and the aftermath was tragic and a mother fucking rush
The ensemble is introduced
The dramatis personae
The historical action figures
Professional acting that hybrid of truth telling and comedy
Conflict
Quick edits — it’s the sixties man
News footage and technicolor dreams
Bloody and sexy — infotainment
and our confused lives ….
If I had to do it over again, I’d go to NYU instead of Notre Dame
I’d go artist instead of professional
I’d go Wynn Handman and the American Place Theater instead of Second City
I’d go novels instead of comic books
I’d go poet instead of performer
Sorting it out
Life and art is about getting to know oneself
Sorting out the mess
Sort of
What excites you versus what makes you deeply happy
Love instead of the blow job
The exposition of the movie ends
The fireworks music stops
and the movie becomes intentionally boring
The government lawyers enter
Government versus nation
Lawyers versus the yippies
Sasha Baron Cohen and Mark Rylance
Actors … I love them … and those two very different actors … inhabiting characters and revealing themselves … in such diffrent ways … and so much the same …
Sorting it out ….
This messy movie
hordes of extras on the courthouse steps
crowds of extras in the courthouse hallways
in the courtroom too
Principals mixing with extras
but each character and each actor
extra and star alike
implying a story
the Day of the Locust
Where’s Waldo
What a feat of engineering this movie is
What a feat of engineering America is
I love these new headphones
I can really hear the sound being mixed for this story of stories
What a feat of engineering this script is
the competing biographies the competing interests
Liberal versus conservative
Old versus young
hawk versus dove
smart versus stupid
moral versus immoral
respectable versus honest
bullying versus defiance
black versus white
the Constitution versus law and order
The Portrait of the Nation as a Young Country
The Nation versus society
Nature versus nurture
What we are told to do
how we react to what we told
sometimes obey sometimes defy
muddling the clear inner voice that will guide us without error
descending into confusion
Why am I appreciating movies more on the second viewing
I was watching the Golden Globes and was reassured
Most of the nominees seemed so dumb and superficial
Almost all were awkward, at least vaguely aware of the ridiculous situation
but Sasha Baron Cohen had grace
and Aaron Sorkin seemed in charge
These guys were entertainers and businessmen making money and getting laid carrying cocaine through airports
blase spoiled brats opening swag bags in luxury hotels
Real competitors
Hard workers
and elbows out street brawlers
Subtly winning their spots
athletes of a sort
and artists
catching lightning out of one out of every hundred bottles
Our souls are mongrels
the human race is a collection fo junkyard dogs
without papers
filthy and cute as hell
Human beings are sources of my disgust and affection
I want to help them and I want to get away from them
It’s easier to look at them now
Now that I finally know myself
Aaron Sorkin has perfected his facility at what he does
for the moment
and so have I
Ah sweet commonality
I can see the world
and know it’s me
but it’s not my ego
When you look with your ego
you see illusion
When you just look
you see …
everything
QAnon must think the Chicago 7 is sexy
Both the movie and the true story people that its based on
Another entry in our menagerie
imagining that you are something that you are not
wanting the feeling
and the applause
without the sacrifice
and the work
creating an image of yourself in a fun house mirror
playing the hero
rebels without a clue
Revolution without purpose
making the Capitol the scene of massive and deadly bar fight
Intoxicated
Addicted to the taste of blood
No truth and naive to consequences
Oppressed by their own sense of entitlement
Driven insane by irrational fears unacknowledged to themselves
Not equipped to deal with life
Unable to think clearly
Unable to think
Brainwashed by forces
that needed pawns in a battle
for nothing
Capricious masters
who want what exactly
No one knows
to maintain their status as kings of nothing?
Sasha Baron Cohen and Abby Hoffman do and did comedy with a purpose
It doesn’t matter whether the war is ended or the movie is a hit
Win a few lose a few
What matters is the in with both feet participation
Going all the way
with all of you
face to face
with all of the world
Yes QAnon finds the Chicago 7 compelling
and a man in a mental hospital says that he is Napoleon
All these levels of consciousness
saints and popes and lawyers and yippies and actors and comedians and cops and cowed and liberated women and rogue cops and good public servants and lovers of peace and the criminally insane and men and women on the street and movie stars and public figures on the front page or the Google News aggregator
aware and confused
lustful and loving
God this movie is full
America is full
you are full
I am full
abundantly full
and full of shit
Fascist 1968 Chicago
Fascist 2021 Red America
Fascist You
Yeah, You
every bit of you that wants to control
even as you bring bags of food to hungry children
and write your little poems
You are Richard J. Daley and Bobby Seale and Ralph Waldo Emerson
and Jesus Christ and Herod
Vader and Skywalker
You fucking dog
You are beautiful and murderous
a police state and a beloved country
an activist and an old man in a recliner
You are conflict
and you are detached peace
accepting all about your past and the world around you
calm and happy
and purring
wonderful.
Minds open up
after temper tantrums
Fathers let go of their sons
after fistfights
Equilibrium follows nervous breakdowns
There is no arc to the universe
It runs serpentine
incited by heroes and villains, noble and unholy fools, our true and dark hearts, and our inspired and perverse imaginations.
The movie ends with the temporary triumph of love and justice in the soul of the people,
and title cards about oppression exposed, wise electorates, sell -out to greed and random accidental death, and the suicide of a complex man.
3/4/21: Miles Davis, Birth of the Cool (2019) — The Agony and The Ecstasy #poetry
Miles Davis told the musicians in his band that he didn’t want them to play what they know. He wanted them to play what they don’t know. The art is in how you deal with the new. Miles Davis wanted deep music, no bullshit — nothing phoned in — something immediate — of the moment. I identify with much in Miles Davis’ story. That isn’t a grandiose statement. I watched this well made documentary twice. I see in the film a universal story. The movie is a work of art about being an artist. So, of course I see myself in Miles Davis. I’m an artist. I see myself in all artists.
These pieces about movies that I have been writing recently are not reviews or book reports. I am communicating what I feel when I watch the movie. That’s why there is the hash tag poetry. I’m self-conscious about this. I don’t want people to misunderstand. I am not just disseminating information on a blog. I’m not just sharing my opinions. I’m making art. The theme of this piece is what an artist goes through. It’s hard. The danger for audiences is to just see the joy, and to either sentimentalize that joy or envy it. Of course, the shallow view doesn’t do justice to the artist, but it also mutes the power of the art. Art gets its meaning from the struggle of the artist. Art has its meaning in the context of the the artist’s life and life in general. If you don’t get that, you don’t get art.
Miles Davis’ inner life consisted of bitter memories, feelings of loss, and regret and obsessive ideation about music. An artist needs pain — the wounds of abuse and injustice, and failure — failure in life, love and art. Pain is the driver of the creative process. Agony compels the artist to create something different.
Art opens the creative person up — away from the racism, away from the hick town, away from envy and oppression. The creation of art is followed by a hangover. The artist crashes back to earth. The dark world is depressing, it is too harsh of a contrast to the world of intellect and beauty that the artist finds in his art. Miles Davis made friends with Picasso and Jean Paul Sartre in Paris, and then got on a plane and returned to St. Louis, and was surrounded by white trash crackers. He started shooting heroin right away.
Popular culture loves stories of victory over pain — triumph. Beat the drugs, get away from the ignorant fools and live ever after in a state of happy creativity. The artist knows all of that is fairy tale bullshit. The artist has the courage to feel life’s pain, accept his own demons and soar with his art.
Dreams mixed with shit.
Miles Davis was privileged and oppressed. This is the formula of art. Privileged — born to a wealthy family, talented and touched by genius. Oppressed — his father beat his mother, tormented by racists and racism. Privilege made solitude possible, oppression made solitude desirable. There … in his loneliness, an open space existed. Nature abhors that vacuum like all of the other vacuums, and nature filled the void with art.
The artist becomes strange, different from most others. He is really only recognized as a human being by other artists. Only another artist implicitly understands what an artist goes through — the highs and the lows. Well-meaning non -artists need the artist’s human experience explained to them, I say that without condescension. There is nothing to condescend about. I don’t understand what all sorts of people go through, so I listen to them. Artists live the same lives that you do, but in a much more intense, concentrated and complicated way. Art is not a vocational choice. A life of art (or in tragic cases, the blocked avoidance of art) is pre-determined at birth. An artist can’t help the way he or she is. If you love an artist, you should want to know.
Jazz was born partly as a reaction to the minstrel show. Jazz musicians are not entertainers, shuffling and mugging and people pleasing. “All I ever wanted to do was communicate what I feel though music,” said Miles Davis. That need to be real, and to share what you are going through with other people is the essence of an artist.
Miles Davis was angry and anti -social. These demons furthered his art. They protected him in all of his sensitivity in the world most often called “real”, and they created a need inside of him to express what he experienced so deeply. An artist doesn’t have a career. Miles Davis was influential. His art radiated beyond his alienation and brought musicians, business people and audience to him. An artist’s success is different than anyone else’s. Miles Davis didn’t try to be a star. His life and times were open to his brilliance. He was very much like Van Gogh, but with a major difference. Miles Davis was popular when he was breathing.
Miles Davis said, “If anybody wants to keep creating, you have to be about change.” Van Gogh followed the changes of his own soul and synchronized those changes with the changes of nature. Miles Davis did that too, but he also changed with society. The improvisational impulse of Miles Davis’ jazz was the ingredient that added timely relevance to his expression of eternity.
He also said that he always was the same way. Constancy in change. It’s a paradox. He always had his own way of doing things. He got himself a classical education at Juliard, and hung out at Jazz clubs on 52nd Street. Individuality, openness, exploration, the attraction to the unknown, and the almost scientific drive to understand the essence of the moment …
Jazz was serious … car accidents and depression, recording contracts, girlfriends and wives, beatings by racist cops, repetition of his father’s sins of spousal abuse … sad and dark … and all the while … Miles Davis” jazz pushed the boundaries of art … the agony and the ecstasy … hated by those afraid of natural change, the preservers of the lie of the status quo …
NO ENTERTAINING
Miles Davis came up with a sound that was a manifestation of who he was, and when he changed, he came up with a new sound … project after project after project. Birth of the Cool was an early project, it melded classical music and jazz. Later in his life he would draw and paint. Miles Davis loved being in Paris when he was young, and loved the way he was treated. He associated with fine French artists and intellectuals who treated him as an equal. Later Miles Davis walked with equality in America as a black man who wouldn’t take any shit. Much later near the end of his life he kept reaching for a new sound, and associated with American artists like Quincy Jones and Prince.
Miles Davis said, “When God punishes you, it’s not that you don’t get everything that you want … you get everything that you want and there is no time left.” That flame of dissatisfaction … right now I am struggling with the art of connecting … do you ask, do you hold back … do you search … do you wait for opportunity and then hungrily pounce … Miles Davis connected so well … the human is a fool and the artist transforms foolishness into answers through exploration and discovery … I will figure this out, this and maybe a few or several more aspects of my art, one after another, relieving my suffering with every answer, and finally I will get all that I want … and then I will get sick and die …
3/2/21: The Rick Blog Annotated Part Eight and 1/2, 2/24/21 to 2/28/21, More “Not About the Movies”: #writing #poetry #essay
2/24/21: What the Constitution Means to Me (2020) — The Death of Performance #poetry
Until December of 2017
the opportunity to perform
on a stage
in front of people
practically alone
with devoted disciples in supporting roles
but mostly me
armed with pages and pages of essays and poetry
always more than time and attention spans would allow
prepared to improvise (be occasionally funny)
and to play act (be mainly profound and deep)
with my character on stage being a slightly amplified version of myself,
these opportunities to perform
excited me …
until December 2017 …
I tried to perform one last time
before an audience of friends,
early on in the evening
I just sat down
and started reading
The acting died
I kept on improvising
and got off some good riffs and lines
but after the show
I forgot all of the bon mots
and returned to the writing.
I no longer wanted to be a slightly amplified version of myself
(did I ever actually want that? Was I just on stage to try to be popular? to make friends? to be recognized? to be validated as a success? was I just performing because my father approved of little about me except the fact that I made him laugh? was I disabled by a tendency not to let go of dead things? had I grown beyond my time as an actor and become something much more — a writer — but I wanted to hold onto my supposed gift and was holding myself back? did I need the predictable disapproval that attended the applause so I could avoid getting on with it and get stuck in rebelling against a mentality that had no real power over me except the power that I gave it? did I want to teach, to help, to take care of other people and neglect my essential nature? Performing for me was the three temptations of the Buddha — fear (of being alone, away from the tribe’s campfire — a free and solitary heart, mind and soul — avoidance of the ultimate risk), desire (popularity and fun), and social duty (I had to be of service) … the answer to all of the questions posed here in this parenthetical aside is YES … YES, YES, YES … )
No, I no longer wanted to be a slightly amplified version of myself
even for an hour
Heid Schreck is smart
like me
She writes from personal experience
like me
connected to social and political realities that affect us all
like me …
The personal writing forms
essay and memoir and poetry,
The personal performance forms
stand – up and the one person stage show
are all dead things
I know it
and Heidi Schreck doesn’t know it
fully
but she is getting there
at times her jokes deconstruct theatricality
lampoon the artifice
characters are shed
and in moments
Heidi Schreck just stands before the audience
Solidly
and looks the audience in the eye
and just talks
and in those moments Heidi Schreck is very emotional
and none of the feeling
is an act
As the show goes on
performance almost drops away
but it is still a play
a play tries to persuade you
Heidi Schreck’s show has some great ideas in it
prophetic feminism
empathy
equality
the rule of law
and more …
but higher art isn’t trying to convince you of anything
Not persuasion
but influence
I was moved when Paula and I drove through Utah
Stunned by its dignity and beauty
Inspired by its grandeur
Utah didn’t try to convince me of anything
I am an artist
I am a species unto myself
I will not be burdened by your social requirements
You are free to ignore me
but if my art touches you
it and you have functioned the way all persons, places and things that connect in creation
behave
Performance manipulates reality in an attempt to make it more palatable and accessible
Entertainment is like coaxing a frightened child
This is the reason that entertainment is so often used for propaganda or sales purposes
I like Heidi Schreck and I like her show
But …
I’m sick of the bullshit
I’m sick of the teacher’s tricks to keep the audience engaged
I’m sick of the bribery
Jokes, so they’ll sit still for the demanding stuff
the emotionally and intellectually demanding stuff
I’m not criticizing Heidi Schreck
She doesn’t have to be sick of what sickens me
She is performing a service
I just feel
in my own work
and in listening to hers
held back by all of the neediness
the performer and the audience are co -dependent
Heidi Schreck and her audience mirror each other with frozen smiles
We can just sit with each other
we can “be” in proximity to each other
we can share our humor and pain and insight with each other
without the burden of entertainment
Some might say that entertaining is our method of providing hospitality to one another
it is simply a gesture of affection and even respect
and I might even agree
but performance has overwhelmed everything
Can’t we just talk to one another?
And openly regard each other in silence?
Yes and yes.
I love the premise of Heidi Schreck’s filmed stage show
the connecting of the personal and the Constitutional
that’s like the premise of my writing
the concentric circles of the individual and the world
Emotion and reason and meaning
Magnificent
Sincere
Sincere
Sincere
Heidi Schreck speaks on a stage of matters of great importance to her
and her very presence communicates a truth beyond her words
Her presence doesn’t need the cute jokes
and the play acting
Improvisation, stand – up and play acting are dead …
all that theater has become is dead
everything theater has become before people stood up by the fire and talked in front of other people who just listened
all writing genres are dead
fiction, essay, poetry, memoir …
all dead
just me
and you
and Heidi Schreck
and our words
and our presences
and the force fields between us …
Postscript — Heidi Schreck’s is cliched “We must fight to keep our democracy every day” when it performs, pretends and persuades, and sophomoric when it relies on audience participation and questions — the usual outcome of improvisation … this show is a block of marble with something important inside of and a lot of unneeded rock in the way …
Copyright 2021 Richard Thomas
My Last Performance … after the entertainer and the teacher died (after this show), the writing got better …. http://www.richardsteventhomas.wordpress.com and the talking got better whenever and wherever I talk …
2/24/21: The Founder (2016) — Have Something No One Else Has, Identify and Target a Market Segment, and Brand It #poetry
You have to know what you want to do
and that should be the thing you are best at
if the thing is what you want to do
and the thing that you are best at
you will have something unique to offer
guaranteed
You take your thing
and put it into the world
the push and pull of Mother Earth
helps harden and shape the thing
and you have your widget
Which you refine
you figure it out
You learn about your thing by doing it
and it gets really good …
Now what?
You have to do something which is counter -intuitive to everything you have done so far
Doing and developing your thing is an inward occupation
Now you have to connect it the wider world
People in your tiny locale know what you can do
but what about all of the people who would like your thing
need your thing
want your thing?
The mistake many pure hearts make
is to think that selling their widget will ruin it
But holy marketing is not sales
You don’t have to force your thing on anybody
You
or more likely someone else
who has gifts different than yours
can identify and target a segment of the population
and speak directly to them
completely free of any manipulation
You (and your new partner)
can just let people know what you have to offer
If you build it
and you let the right people know that
it is out there
they will come
And how are you going to let them know?
You have to do it in a simple way
A poem that describes all of your poetry …
a poem about your widget
To review —
you have a great thing no one else has,
you identify who would like it, want it, need it
and you tell them about it …
and your thing is in the world …
Now, The Founder is about the corruption of our simple formula
stealing a good idea
and compromising it
reaching for a bigger market segment that you deserve
and lying about what you have
Art and connection and communication
corrupted by sales
But The Founder is also about the real thing
underneath the betrayal
The McDonald Brothers made the art
created the thing
and Ray Kroc did the marketing and branding
The Brothers and Kroc were all holy visionaries
They were united in creativity
but Kroc was corrupted in terms of
values
Kroc introduced the McDonald Brothers to
Original Sin
Founders are original
in all things
good
and evil.
But imagine
all of that grace
that grace at the inception of McDonald’s
combined with love and respect
between the partners
and for the clientele …
imagine a Ray Kroc in his prime
after the Fall of the American Dream
like, in say, 2021 …
A man or woman of our new age
an innovator
who has turned Corporate Social Responsibility
into an existential mission
committed to self -sufficiency
feasting guests
and the Will of God
In the 1950s or 1960s, my vision of the fulfillment of visions
would only live in the province of dreamers
but I believe in history
and People
Change.
I need an agent/manager
for my writing and teaching and talking
A writer can’t approach a reader
A teacher can’t approach a student
A talker can’t approach a listener.
It just doesn’t work that way
We can do this
the right way
and checking all of the boxes.
I know my people are out there
the people beyond my personal friends
I just don’t know where they are and how to let them know.
That’s where you come in.
Copyright 2021 Richard Thomas
2/25/21: It Takes a Lunatic (2019) — Artists are Outsiders, an Inventory #poetry
From Ray Kroc to Wynn Handman
Two founders in different worlds
One from Heaven, one from Purgatory
Yesterday was Kroc’s day
a day of separating the art from the chaff
The day of the businessman
Golden nuggets panned from a sewer …
Today considers another way
Wynn Handman is an artist with some entrepreneurial skills
in service of a more divine purpose
than business
Wynn Handman made a better product than business
and nurtured more souls than any church
The practical and the spiritual taken care of
with none of the bullshit
A CEO who didn’t worry about the bottom line. and completely focused on production
A Spiritual Leader unconcerned with his own authority, attentive to his charges’ souls
A Founder of an Institution who was not an institutionalist
In 2002 Wynn Handman closed The American Place Theater
He did not sell it
He did not strategize to keep it going
His thoughts never involved meeting a payroll
and yet he and his theater thrived
and when it was over it was over
But the trace …
theaters leave a trace
We need stories
and we need the biographies of the people who tell them
Today is Wynn Handman day
The day of the new thing …
I need people like Wynn Handman in my life
Sure they are rare
But They exist
He is an upper case example
representative of several lower case lives
“Outsider art” is a redundant phrase
“Community of outsiders” is a contradictory phrase
But contradictions exist …
and redundancies can illuminate.
Some people live in reality
concerned with things like justice and truth
and meaning
and are not so much about success and money …
some people are driven by purpose
instead of ambition …
some people are true to themselves
and in so being
are true to the world …
Some people aspire less to be great
than to foster greatness
Some people are the strong arms of industry
Some special people are the hands of God,
the workers on the frontier of creation …
Some people are models for the future …
Artists are:
outspoken
idealists who don’t have their idealism calcify to violence
intellectual
crazy
honest
unconcerned with winning
teachers
people who open doors for others
people who understand that “styles change but truth doesn’t”
people who see the nuance of every individual
and the universality of all experience …
Artists are non – hierarchical beings
Artists are kind and gentle
who clearly see human equality
Artists main purpose is the fostering of humanity and human beings’ highest potentials
Artists are concerned with those most important things that most people see as unimportant.
Artist have some formative experience
that outwardly may seem quite mundane …
that experience introduces the artist to his or her inner life
and that inner life leads the artist every day thereafter.
This is what makes an artist an outsider.
The artist is not of society
The artist makes odd decisions
he or she is mistaken as a lunatic
but the artist is highly rational
He or she does what makes sense in order to fulfill his or her destiny
on the outer reaches of human consciousness
Artists have to find one another
They have to band together to do their work
Consciousness is a strange thing
It exists within us
and outside of us
and artists connect with one another
with tightropes of consciousness
Precariously balancing themselves
as they gingerly step toward each other
High above the chaos of the circus of everyday life below
Artists: Experiment Aren’t afraid to fail Know Sacredness Are Lucky Come into money so that they can keep going. Well intentioned young people, And people committed to justice and a better world
are drawn to artists.
Artists are Inclusive … Artists Figure out ways to bypass the critics Artists Have a sense of mission Artists Nurture new voices. Artists Judge others art by the art itself not the prominence of the writers. Artists Do what they want to do Out of the mainstream. Artists Don’t fit into mainstream jobs. The artists job is being oneself.
Personal note — I came up in Second City, a theater conflicted between commerce and art. Commerce ultimately won every day. I would have been better off as a young actor in Wynn Handman’s class who submitted one person plays to his theater. But if I followed that path, I’d have nothing to write about now. Now I need a place to share my processed life, and this documentary about Wynn Handman is a map. Wynn Handman is a 20th century figure, but his work and path are eternal matters. The qualities of Wynn Handman are the qualities of new people who will enter my life, and the best qualities of the people in my life already.
The American Place Theater closed in 2002 or thereabouts, but its soul lives in different people and institutions.
Artists are not for profit, like Handman and The American Place Theater — yet they thrive. Show business is no place for an artist.
The American Place Theater’s first production was produced by Wynn Handman, was written by the poet Robert Lowell, directed by the British satirist Jonathan Miller, and starred the fine actor Frank Langella and the African – American actor Roscoe Lee Browne at a time black actors didn’t work much, and a cast of African -American actors in supporting roles. Poetry, political and social inclusion, intellectual and spiritual fire and beautiful acting! How much more achievement is in this show than merely being a hit …
I am not being romantic in my viewing of this movie — I know this is a real thing, not mere sentiment. I saw that artist part of my teachers and directors at Second City. I have caught glimpses — never sustained — of the art that The American Place did consistently. My whole life has been an Exodus to the Promised Land described in this movie about Wynn Handman.
Nothing stopped Wynn Handman from doing anything that he wanted to do.
Sam Shepard wrote plays and read them in apartments or bars or anywhere he could … that’s what my blog is … that’s where I am … the pandemic is waning and the world is calling me …
An artist doesn’t make choices for the money or the praise …
I never have, but I have suffered too much from criticism
I know now that if you are really doing something you will be criticized
“To speak your mind is subversive by definition, and unsettling by definition, and thought provoking by definition”
“Why have your work assessed by people from the outside … “
The insiders are outside of the outside
If you play the mainstream game, you never do anything …
Action changes things …
Wynn Hnadman accepted himself as an outsider, he “always did”
Me too
When you are creating you can’t be thinking about how it is going over …
Improvisational theater has a tenet of working beyond the approval or disapproval of the audience, but rarely if ever honors that value …
Wynn Handman honored that value
I think the world is turning toward Wynn Handman and away from Second City
Conservatives are crass businessmen like Ray Kroc
Moderates are wishy washy like Second City
wanting to be a positive force — within reason, but profits come first
Conservatives and moderates look like louts and fools
Those idealistic young people. and their older counterparts who love justice and mercy and love
who want the best for us all
and every one of us
That is who my writing and talking is for
Our lives are blueprints for those who walk beside us and after us
We are called to be examples
Artists are unique beings who can’t be replicated
Each and particular every artist points to the same thing
Eternity is the glue …
The artist lives in the past, present and future
simultaneously …
Leaps of true faith
always find soft landings …
and don’t mess with Mr. InBetween …
Copyright 2021 Richard Thomas
2/26/21: Wyeth (2018) — Recipe Ingredients of Art #poetry
“Art is truth (pause) plus memory.” Andrew Wyeth
Art is child – like
Art is self – involved
Art is imagined stories
Art considers the images of popular culture
Art is interested in what you can do with almost nothing
Art studies the relation between figures and a background
Art follows matriculation through a strict curriculum of experience and experimentation
Art must involve repetitive work
Art is reflective of the artist’s temperament and the locales and activities of the artist’s life
Art dreams for itself. Art doesn’t repeat the old dreams of others.
Art squarely faces light and dark, life and death
Art is a collaboration between the artist and the person or people that love and understand him or her
Art learns technical expertise
Art is made in quiet and solitude
Art transcends romance and drama
Art paints the artist’s life
Art takes experience and mixes it with the world and comes up with meaning
Art is drawn to simplicity
Art knows that reality is constant, and that it is our understanding that transforms
Art shares what the artist sees and expands the consciousness of the world
Art is contained, the artist protects him or herself in obscure places; the artist looks for places where he or she can observe, unmolested or distracted
In art, the artist forgets him or herself, even when doing a self -portrait; in art, artist and world become one; in art, the artist disappears and becomes all people, all places and all time and space — every time thing person place; in art chronology becomes eternity
Art knows that style changes but truth doesn’t
Art is made in the artist’s own world, a world created by the artist as much as the art; the artist must have a world where he or she is deaf to praise or criticism or success or failure or humiliation or popularity
“Art is truth (pause) plus memory.” Andrew Wyeth
A particular piece of art’s audience is comprised of people who can see the piece’s truth and memory
Art is a vibration, a resonance
Art? You just do it
The artist plus the object of your contemplation equals art, a new thing
Art is confident; an artist keeps his own counsel; an artist makes all assessments of his or her own work
Art is always more articulate than its artist
Art is made when the artist works alone; the artist encounters his or her audience only when the piece is done
Art is made by artists; artists are artists twenty -four hours a day
“Art is truth (pause) plus memory.” Andrew Wyeth
“Art is truth (pause) plus memory.” Andrew Wyeth
“Art is truth (pause) plus memory.” Andrew Wyeth
Love plus truth equals universal
Art releases the open audience’s own truth and memory
“I’m really painting my own life.” Andrew Wyeth
Copyright 2021 Richard Thomas
2/28/21: Pretend It’s a City (2021) — Martin Scorsese’s Impressionistic Film Love Poem about Contemporary New York #poetry
I didn’t like this Netflix series the first time that I watched it. I was very unimpressed with Fran Leibowitz, who I saw as a former writer of limited ability who gave up writing, and succeeded at a boutique business making banal observations as a local personality in New York City — not funny enough to be a comedian, not deep enough to be a writer. My father once saw the comedian Rita Rudner perform in Las Vegas years ago. He said she was great. I asked if Rudner was funny. My father said, no — but she worked “clean”. Rita Rudner was reassuring comfort food for middle class Catholic parents from Rochester, New York. Rita Rudner honored Dad’s world view. Fran Leibowitz performs the same service for successful Manhattanites. All Manhattanites are survivors. To come to New York, and to stay there is an achievement and a struggle. Fran Leibowitz doesn’t say anything that challenges the New York dream or doesn’t implicitly honor the hard work, grit and determination required to not only prosper in New York City, but also to simply navigate the tasks and challenges of every day life there.
Martin Scorsese seems to be endlessly amused by Fran Leibowitz in Pretend It’s a City, and he has been ridiculed about it in the media. At first I agreed with the critique. But now I get it. Scorsese regards Fran Leibowitz, and what she represents with unconditional love. I think the trick to Pretend It’s a City, is to not watch the show through the lens of Fran Leibowitz’s constant verbal narrative, but rather to view it more from the perspective of Scorsese’s non -linear visual and musical poem. This is Scorsese’s picture not Fran Leibowitz’.
I admire this film greatly, and envy its sense of place. I am not from any place. I identify with nowhere. I feel like a visitor everywhere that I go. I’ve lived in Chicago more than anywhere else, maybe 30 years or so of my 65 on the earth. I like Chicago, but I’ll probably never write a poem about it. I lived in New York City for several years and I loved it in a kind of idealized Woody Allen-esque romantic way. For $17 a week I could get a subway pass in New York and take what I’d call “a trip around the world”. New York has everything civilization or nature has to offer except mountains and deserts — if someone knows of a mountain or desert in New York City, please drop me a line. But I never participated in the drama of the everyday New Yorker. I never saw it as an inner necessity to make it there. I never felt a commitment to stay there. Paula and I went to new York for a week a few summers ago. We saw shows and museums and ate at great restaurants and walked the City’s dramatic streets and had a ball. Please don’t put me in the nice place to visit category. I think New York is a great place to live. I just don’t live there.
Maybe Scorsese also cannot fully inhabit New York. He’s too removed — too big a deal — to experience any city, even a city as non plussed by celebrity as New York, as an ordinary citizen. Fran Leibowitz traverses through the streets of New York on foot, and by cab and train. Martin Scorsese levitates over New York. Maybe his lonely remove of international success and achievement is the source of the slight note of desperation in Scorsese’s raucous laughter for every banality that escapes Fran Leibowitz’s mouth in this movie. Scorsese is a poet. Poets are passionate about the ordinary. Scorsese hasn’t been ordinary for decades, and never will be ordinary again. I think he misses the feeling.
I have much more admiration for Scorsese’s view of New York than Woody Allen’s. Romance is an adolescent thing. Few figures are less romantic than Fran Leibowitz, and Fran Leibowitz is who Martin Scorsese loves. I started out disliking Pretend It’s a City, and now I think it is a better movie about New York than Annie Hall …
Fran Leibowitz says very early in Pretend It’s a City that she “used to be a writer”
Now she just talks
Talk could be an art form
It isn’t for Fran Leibowitz
The art in Pretend It’s a City
is made by Martin Scorsese
Fran Leibowitz talks mainly in monologues
Occasionally she answers questions
Martin Scorsese views Fran Leibowitz as the personification of contemporary New York City
so he made an episodic film essay about contemporary New York
Images of New York
and included Fran Leibowitz’s opinions and emotional reactions
Scorsese shows us how New York looks today
Fran Leibowitz tells how New York feels
and Scorsese frames the words
like Studs Terkel did
but Scorsese transcends Studs Terkel
He gets the oral history
and then he mixes in the cultural history
and adds the music and the architecture
and makes a layer cake of the pretend city
New York is frustrated and indefatigable
New Yorkers feel powerless as they move through the all powerful city that they built
Scorsese loves, and is endlessly amused by the Dr. Frankensteins, New Yorkers, and the monster City that they have created
The monster is terrible and beautiful
and inhabited by ghosts
of old and superior arts and music and culture and economies
What is most monstrous and lovely about New York
is that the City is never finished
New York is a cauldron of aspiration
everything from high art to high greed
New York is a tribe of strivers
the skyscraper under construction is the perfect metaphor for the soul of the New Yorker …
Later in the series, Leibowitz and Scorsese maintain a commitment to a New York City now in hospice
They see that greed is altering the character of New York City
57th Street is mimicking the awful architecture of Dubai
Money has overwhelmed and erased
the life that New Yorkers bravely sacrificed to live
New York’s Success is morphing into a cause of death
all concrete things eventually become abstractions
and ironically I am now as much a New Yorker from my perch in Chicago
as Scorsese and Leibowitz from their Manhattan homes
Gershwin is dead
but his music remains
and belongs to the world.
Scorsese’s poem about his city
becomes about everywhere
and everything
and I smile
because after Marty and Fran look at New York’s terminal condition
they consider their own mortality
Things change
Most moments are banalities
and we are all going to die
but art remains …
and even with the inescapable realty that we all eventually die
life is more important than art!
(I am not afraid of living or dying, success or failure …. I am afraid of my suffering and the suffering of people that I life … and down to earth Fran Leibowitz is a comfort to me — just like my Dad and Rita Rudner — and I can see the even greater appeal that she has for someone like Scorsese … )
So much better than Woody Allen’s romance and worry about dying
and the movie doesn’t try to impress critics or audiences
Thanks, Marty
Fran Leibowitz has grown on me …
OK, another revision
Her talk isn’t art
but her presence while she is talking
or walking
or smoking
or eating and drinking
is an art
Fran Leibowitz is New York
she is unapologetic and bold
she’s contrary
she’s spends a lot of time alone …
and she thirstily chatters — parched for human connection …
She needs the sound of her voice — and she needs to see another person or other persons listening …
Writing didn’t suit her as she got older …
she needs performance
but she doesn’t put on an act …
Fran Leibowitz is a master of asserting herself into the world …
She reads books, she doesn’t write them
and she talks …
Scorsese made this movie so that his seventeen year old daughter will know who Fran Leibowitz (and what New York City) was
and that this woman and that town will live on in his daughter after their passing
No matter where his daughter goes, or how the rest of the world changes …
2/28/21: Pretend It’s a City (2021) — Martin Scorsese’s Impressionistic Film Love Poem about Contemporary New York #poetry
I didn’t like this Netflix series the first time that I watched it. I was very unimpressed with Fran Leibowitz, who I saw as a former writer of limited ability who gave up writing, and succeeded at a boutique business making banal observations as a local personality in New York City — not funny enough to be a comedian, not deep enough to be a writer. My father once saw the comedian Rita Rudner perform in Las Vegas years ago. He said she was great. I asked if Rudner was funny. My father said, no — but she worked “clean”. Rita Rudner was reassuring comfort food for middle class Catholic parents from Rochester, New York. Rita Rudner honored Dad’s world view. Fran Leibowitz performs the same service for successful Manhattanites. All Manhattanites are survivors. To come to New York, and to stay there is an achievement and a struggle. Fran Leibowitz doesn’t say anything that challenges the New York dream or doesn’t implicitly honor the hard work, grit and determination required to not only prosper in New York City, but also to simply navigate the tasks and challenges of every day life there.
Martin Scorsese seems to be endlessly amused by Fran Leibowitz in Pretend It’s a City, and he has been ridiculed about it in the media. At first I agreed with the critique. But now I get it. Scorsese regards Fran Leibowitz, and what she represents with unconditional love. I think the trick to Pretend It’s a City, is to not watch the show through the lens of Fran Leibowitz’s constant verbal narrative, but rather to view it more from the perspective of Scorsese’s non -linear visual and musical poem. This is Scorsese’s picture not Fran Leibowitz’.
I admire this film greatly, and envy its sense of place. I am not from any place. I identify with nowhere. I feel like a visitor everywhere that I go. I’ve lived in Chicago more than anywhere else, maybe 30 years or so of my 65 on the earth. I like Chicago, but I’ll probably never write a poem about it. I lived in New York City for several years and I loved it in a kind of idealized Woody Allen-esque romantic way. For $17 a week I could get a subway pass in New York and take what I’d call “a trip around the world”. New York has everything civilization or nature has to offer except mountains and deserts — if someone knows of a mountain or desert in New York City, please drop me a line. But I never participated in the drama of the everyday New Yorker. I never saw it as an inner necessity to make it there. I never felt a commitment to stay there. Paula and I went to new York for a week a few summers ago. We saw shows and museums and ate at great restaurants and walked the City’s dramatic streets and had a ball. Please don’t put me in the nice place to visit category. I think New York is a great place to live. I just don’t live there.
Maybe Scorsese also cannot fully inhabit New York. He’s too removed — too big a deal — to experience any city, even a city as non plussed by celebrity as New York, as an ordinary citizen. Fran Leibowitz traverses through the streets of New York on foot, and by cab and train. Martin Scorsese levitates over New York. Maybe his lonely remove of international success and achievement is the source of the slight note of desperation in Scorsese’s raucous laughter for every banality that escapes Fran Leibowitz’s mouth in this movie. Scorsese is a poet. Poets are passionate about the ordinary. Scorsese hasn’t been ordinary for decades, and never will be ordinary again. I think he misses the feeling.
I have much more admiration for Scorsese’s view of New York than Woody Allen’s. Romance is an adolescent thing. Few figures are less romantic than Fran Leibowitz, and Fran Leibowitz is who Martin Scorsese loves. I started out disliking Pretend It’s a City, and now I think it is a better movie about New York than Annie Hall …
Fran Leibowitz says very early in Pretend It’s a City that she “used to be a writer”
Now she just talks
Talk could be an art form
It isn’t for Fran Leibowitz
The art in Pretend It’s a City
is made by Martin Scorsese
Fran Leibowitz talks mainly in monologues
Occasionally she answers questions
Martin Scorsese views Fran Leibowitz as the personification of contemporary New York City
so he made an episodic film essay about contemporary New York
Images of New York
and included Fran Leibowitz’s opinions and emotional reactions
Scorsese shows us how New York looks today
Fran Leibowitz tells how New York feels
and Scorsese frames the words
like Studs Terkel did
but Scorsese transcends Studs Terkel
He gets the oral history
and then he mixes in the cultural history
and adds the music and the architecture
and makes a layer cake of the pretend city
New York is frustrated and indefatigable
New Yorkers feel powerless as they move through the all powerful city that they built
Scorsese loves, and is endlessly amused by the Dr. Frankensteins, New Yorkers, and the monster City that they have created
The monster is terrible and beautiful
and inhabited by ghosts
of old and superior arts and music and culture and economies
What is most monstrous and lovely about New York
is that the City is never finished
New York is a cauldron of aspiration
everything from high art to high greed
New York is a tribe of strivers
the skyscraper under construction is the perfect metaphor for the soul of the New Yorker …
Later in the series, Leibowitz and Scorsese maintain a commitment to a New York City now in hospice
They see that greed is altering the character of New York City
57th Street is mimicking the awful architecture of Dubai
Money has overwhelmed and erased
the life that New Yorkers bravely sacrificed to live
New York’s Success is morphing into a cause of death
all concrete things eventually become abstractions
and ironically I am now as much a New Yorker from my perch in Chicago
as Scorsese and Leibowitz from their Manhattan homes
Gershwin is dead
but his music remains
and belongs to the world.
Scorsese’s poem about his city
becomes about everywhere
and everything
and I smile
because after Marty and Fran look at New York’s terminal condition
they consider their own mortality
Things change
Most moments are banalities
and we are all going to die
but art remains …
and even with the inescapable realty that we all eventually die
life is more important than art!
(I am not afraid of living or dying, success or failure …. I am afraid of my suffering and the suffering of people that I life … and down to earth Fran Leibowitz is a comfort to me — just like my Dad and Rita Rudner — and I can see the even greater appeal that she has for someone like Scorsese … )
So much better than Woody Allen’s romance and worry about dying
and the movie doesn’t try to impress critics or audiences
Thanks, Marty
Fran Leibowitz has grown on me …
OK, another revision
Her talk isn’t art
but her presence while she is talking
or walking
or smoking
or eating and drinking
is an art
Fran Leibowitz is New York
she is unapologetic and bold
she’s contrary
she’s spends a lot of time alone …
and she thirstily chatters — parched for human connection …
She needs the sound of her voice — and she needs to see another person or other persons listening …
Writing didn’t suit her as she got older …
she needs performance
but she doesn’t put on an act …
Fran Leibowitz is a master of asserting herself into the world …
She reads books, she doesn’t write them
and she talks …
Scorsese made this movie so that his seventeen year old daughter will know who Fran Leibowitz (and what New York City) was
and that this woman and that town will live on in his daughter after their passing
No matter where his daughter goes, or how the rest of the world changes …
2/26/21: Wyeth (2018) — Recipe Ingredients of Art #poetry
“Art is truth (pause) plus memory.” Andrew Wyeth
Art is child – like
Art is self – involved
Art is imagined stories
Art considers the images of popular culture
Art is interested in what you can do with almost nothing
Art studies the relation between figures and a background
Art follows matriculation through a strict curriculum of experience and experimentation
Art must involve repetitive work
Art is reflective of the artist’s temperament and the locales and activities of the artist’s life
Art dreams for itself. Art doesn’t repeat the old dreams of others.
Art squarely faces light and dark, life and death
Art is a collaboration between the artist and the person or people that love and understand him or her
Art learns technical expertise
Art is made in quiet and solitude
Art transcends romance and drama
Art paints the artist’s life
Art takes experience and mixes it with the world and comes up with meaning
Art is drawn to simplicity
Art knows that reality is constant, and that it is our understanding that transforms
Art shares what the artist sees and expands the consciousness of the world
Art is contained, the artist protects him or herself in obscure places; the artist looks for places where he or she can observe, unmolested or distracted
In art, the artist forgets him or herself, even when doing a self -portrait; in art, artist and world become one; in art, the artist disappears and becomes all people, all places and all time and space — every time thing person place; in art chronology becomes eternity
Art knows that style changes but truth doesn’t
Art is made in the artist’s own world, a world created by the artist as much as the art; the artist must have a world where he or she is deaf to praise or criticism or success or failure or humiliation or popularity
“Art is truth (pause) plus memory.” Andrew Wyeth
A particular piece of art’s audience is comprised of people who can see the piece’s truth and memory
Art is a vibration, a resonance
Art? You just do it
The artist plus the object of your contemplation equals art, a new thing
Art is confident; an artist keeps his own counsel; an artist makes all assessments of his or her own work
Art is always more articulate than its artist
Art is made when the artist works alone; the artist encounters his or her audience only when the piece is done
Art is made by artists; artists are artists twenty -four hours a day
“Art is truth (pause) plus memory.” Andrew Wyeth
“Art is truth (pause) plus memory.” Andrew Wyeth
“Art is truth (pause) plus memory.” Andrew Wyeth
Love plus truth equals universal
Art releases the open audience’s own truth and memory
2/25/21: It Takes a Lunatic (2019) — Artists are Outsiders, an Inventory #poetry
From Ray Kroc to Wynn Handman
Two founders in different worlds
One from Heaven, one from Purgatory
Yesterday was Kroc’s day
a day of separating the art from the chaff
The day of the businessman
Golden nuggets panned from a sewer …
Today considers another way
Wynn Handman is an artist with some entrepreneurial skills
in service of a more divine purpose
than business
Wynn Handman made a better product than business
and nurtured more souls than any church
The practical and the spiritual taken care of
with none of the bullshit
A CEO who didn’t worry about the bottom line. and completely focused on production
A Spiritual Leader unconcerned with his own authority, attentive to his charges’ souls
A Founder of an Institution who was not an institutionalist
In 2002 Wynn Handman closed The American Place Theater
He did not sell it
He did not strategize to keep it going
His thoughts never involved meeting a payroll
and yet he and his theater thrived
and when it was over it was over
But the trace …
theaters leave a trace
We need stories
and we need the biographies of the people who tell them
Today is Wynn Handman day
The day of the new thing …
I need people like Wynn Handman in my life
Sure they are rare
But They exist
He is an upper case example
representative of several lower case lives
“Outsider art” is a redundant phrase
“Community of outsiders” is a contradictory phrase
But contradictions exist …
and redundancies can illuminate.
Some people live in reality
concerned with things like justice and truth
and meaning
and are not so much about success and money …
some people are driven by purpose
instead of ambition …
some people are true to themselves
and in so being
are true to the world …
Some people aspire less to be great
than to foster greatness
Some people are the strong arms of industry
Some special people are the hands of God,
the workers on the frontier of creation …
Some people are models for the future …
Artists are:
outspoken
idealists who don’t have their idealism calcify to violence
intellectual
crazy
honest
unconcerned with winning
teachers
people who open doors for others
people who understand that “styles change but truth doesn’t”
people who see the nuance of every individual
and the universality of all experience …
Artists are non – hierarchical beings
Artists are kind and gentle
who clearly see human equality
Artists main purpose is the fostering of humanity and human beings’ highest potentials
Artists are concerned with those most important things that most people see as unimportant.
Artist have some formative experience
that outwardly may seem quite mundane …
that experience introduces the artist to his or her inner life
and that inner life leads the artist every day thereafter.
This is what makes an artist an outsider.
The artist is not of society
The artist makes odd decisions
he or she is mistaken as a lunatic
but the artist is highly rational
He or she does what makes sense in order to fulfill his or her destiny
on the outer reaches of human consciousness
Artists have to find one another
They have to band together to do their work
Consciousness is a strange thing
It exists within us
and outside of us
and artists connect with one another
with tightropes of consciousness
Precariously balancing themselves
as they gingerly step toward each other
High above the chaos of the circus of everyday life below
Artists: Experiment Aren’t afraid to fail Know Sacredness Are Lucky Come into money so that they can keep going. Well intentioned young people, And people committed to justice and a better world
are drawn to artists.
Artists are Inclusive … Artists Figure out ways to bypass the critics Artists Have a sense of mission Artists Nurture new voices. Artists Judge others art by the art itself not the prominence of the writers. Artists Do what they want to do Out of the mainstream. Artists Don’t fit into mainstream jobs. The artists job is being oneself.
Personal note — I came up in Second City, a theater conflicted between commerce and art. Commerce ultimately won every day. I would have been better off as a young actor in Wynn Handman’s class who submitted one person plays to his theater. But if I followed that path, I’d have nothing to write about now. Now I need a place to share my processed life, and this documentary about Wynn Handman is a map. Wynn Handman is a 20th century figure, but his work and path are eternal matters. The qualities of Wynn Handman are the qualities of new people who will enter my life, and the best qualities of the people in my life already.
The American Place Theater closed in 2002 or thereabouts, but its soul lives in different people and institutions.
Artists are not for profit, like Handman and The American Place Theater — yet they thrive. Show business is no place for an artist.
The American Place Theater’s first production was produced by Wynn Handman, was written by the poet Robert Lowell, directed by the British satirist Jonathan Miller, and starred the fine actor Frank Langella and the African – American actor Roscoe Lee Browne at a time black actors didn’t work much, and a cast of African -American actors in supporting roles. Poetry, political and social inclusion, intellectual and spiritual fire and beautiful acting! How much more achievement is in this show than merely being a hit …
I am not being romantic in my viewing of this movie — I know this is a real thing, not mere sentiment. I saw that artist part of my teachers and directors at Second City. I have caught glimpses — never sustained — of the art that The American Place did consistently. My whole life has been an Exodus to the Promised Land described in this movie about Wynn Handman.
Nothing stopped Wynn Handman from doing anything that he wanted to do.
Sam Shepard wrote plays and read them in apartments or bars or anywhere he could … that’s what my blog is … that’s where I am … the pandemic is waning and the world is calling me …
An artist doesn’t make choices for the money or the praise …
I never have, but I have suffered too much from criticism
I know now that if you are really doing something you will be criticized
“To speak your mind is subversive by definition, and unsettling by definition, and thought provoking by definition”
“Why have your work assessed by people from the outside … “
The insiders are outside of the outside
If you play the mainstream game, you never do anything …
Action changes things …
Wynn Hnadman accepted himself as an outsider, he “always did”
Me too
When you are creating you can’t be thinking about how it is going over …
Improvisational theater has a tenet of working beyond the approval or disapproval of the audience, but rarely if ever honors that value …
Wynn Handman honored that value
I think the world is turning toward Wynn Handman and away from Second City
Conservatives are crass businessmen like Ray Kroc
Moderates are wishy washy like Second City
wanting to be a positive force — within reason, but profits come first
2/24/21: What the Constitution Means to Me (2020) — The Death of Performance #poetry
Until December of 2017
the opportunity to perform
on a stage
in front of people
practically alone
with devoted disciples in supporting roles
but mostly me
armed with pages and pages of essays and poetry
always more than time and attention spans would allow
prepared to improvise (be occasionally funny)
and to play act (be mainly profound and deep)
with my character on stage being a slightly amplified version of myself,
these opportunities to perform
excited me …
until December 2017 …
I tried to perform one last time
before an audience of friends,
early on in the evening
I just sat down
and started reading
The acting died
I kept on improvising
and got off some good riffs and lines
but after the show
I forgot all of the bon mots
and returned to the writing.
I no longer wanted to be a slightly amplified version of myself
(did I ever actually want that? Was I just on stage to try to be popular? to make friends? to be recognized? to be validated as a success? was I just performing because my father approved of little about me except the fact that I made him laugh? was I disabled by a tendency not to let go of dead things? had I grown beyond my time as an actor and become something much more — a writer — but I wanted to hold onto my supposed gift and was holding myself back? did I need the predictable disapproval that attended the applause so I could avoid getting on with it and get stuck in rebelling against a mentality that had no real power over me except the power that I gave it? did I want to teach, to help, to take care of other people and neglect my essential nature? Performing for me was the three temptations of the Buddha — fear (of being alone, away from the tribe’s campfire — a free and solitary heart, mind and soul — avoidance of the ultimate risk), desire (popularity and fun), and social duty (I had to be of service) … the answer to all of the questions posed here in this parenthetical aside is YES … YES, YES, YES … )
No, I no longer wanted to be a slightly amplified version of myself
even for an hour
Heid Schreck is smart
like me
She writes from personal experience
like me
connected to social and political realities that affect us all
like me …
The personal writing forms
essay and memoir and poetry,
The personal performance forms
stand – up and the one person stage show
are all dead things
I know it
and Heidi Schreck doesn’t know it
fully
but she is getting there
at times her jokes deconstruct theatricality
lampoon the artifice
characters are shed
and in moments
Heidi Schreck just stands before the audience
Solidly
and looks the audience in the eye
and just talks
and in those moments Heidi Schreck is very emotional
and none of the feeling
is an act
As the show goes on
performance almost drops away
but it is still a play
a play tries to persuade you
Heidi Schreck’s show has some great ideas in it
prophetic feminism
empathy
equality
the rule of law
and more …
but higher art isn’t trying to convince you of anything
Not persuasion
but influence
I was moved when Paula and I drove through Utah
Stunned by its dignity and beauty
Inspired by its grandeur
Utah didn’t try to convince me of anything
I am an artist
I am a species unto myself
I will not be burdened by your social requirements
You are free to ignore me
but if my art touches you
it and you have functioned the way all persons, places and things that connect in creation
behave
Performance manipulates reality in an attempt to make it more palatable and accessible
Entertainment is like coaxing a frightened child
This is the reason that entertainment is so often used for propaganda or sales purposes
I like Heidi Schreck and I like her show
But …
I’m sick of the bullshit
I’m sick of the teacher’s tricks to keep the audience engaged
I’m sick of the bribery
Jokes, so they’ll sit still for the demanding stuff
the emotionally and intellectually demanding stuff
I’m not criticizing Heidi Schreck
She doesn’t have to be sick of what sickens me
She is performing a service
I just feel
in my own work
and in listening to hers
held back by all of the neediness
the performer and the audience are co -dependent
Heidi Schreck and her audience mirror each other with frozen smiles
We can just sit with each other
we can “be” in proximity to each other
we can share our humor and pain and insight with each other
without the burden of entertainment
Some might say that entertaining is our method of providing hospitality to one another
it is simply a gesture of affection and even respect
and I might even agree
but performance has overwhelmed everything
Can’t we just talk to one another?
And openly regard each other in silence?
Yes and yes.
I love the premise of Heidi Schreck’s filmed stage show
the connecting of the personal and the Constitutional
that’s like the premise of my writing
the concentric circles of the individual and the world
Emotion and reason and meaning
Magnificent
Sincere
Sincere
Sincere
Heidi Schreck speaks on a stage of matters of great importance to her
and her very presence communicates a truth beyond her words
Her presence doesn’t need the cute jokes
and the play acting
Improvisation, stand – up and play acting are dead …
all that theater has become is dead
everything theater has become before people stood up by the fire and talked in front of other people who just listened
all writing genres are dead
fiction, essay, poetry, memoir …
all dead
just me
and you
and Heidi Schreck
and our words
and our presences
and the force fields between us …
Postscript — Heidi Schreck’s is cliched “We must fight to keep our democracy every day” when it performs, pretends and persuades, and sophomoric when it relies on audience participation and questions — the usual outcome of improvisation … this show is a block of marble with something important inside of and a lot of unneeded rock in the way …
Copyright 2021 Richard Thomas
My Last Performance … after the entertainer and the teacher died (after this show), the writing got better …. http://www.richardsteventhomas.wordpress.com and the talking got better whenever and wherever I talk …
