Category: Urban issues

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The Sidewalk Suplex, and other lessons learned

Another Wednesday, another evening in the city! I’m happy to report that the St. John’s College alumni NYC chapter seminar featured far less formalwear than last week’s JoB gala. The trip was a bit more harrowing than my previous one, since it involved getting to 38th St. during rush hour. I wish I had the patience for mass transit. And the people on it.

Which, in a sense, gets me to the subject of the alumni seminar! Those of you who’ve had to put up with my crap all these years know that St. John’s College (my graduate school, a.k.a. SJC) is based on study of the “Great Books,” and that our seminars consisted of the conversation that spins out of a leading question. Rather than professors, we had “tutors,” and everyone gets referred to as “Mr.” or “Ms.” There was also ritual scarification, but I heard that was only for the undergrads.

Anyway, a month or so ago, I received a card about the upcoming alumni seminar. I hadn’t attended one in five years, for whatever reasons I can muster. But I noticed that this one was

a) on a quickly readable work (Moliere’s comedy The Misanthrope), and

b) being led by one of my favorite tutors (Chester Burke).

Again, if you’ve had dealings with me over the years, you’ve probably heard me ramble about how my two years in Annapolis (1993-1995) were my most formative. Sure, I’ve gained plenty more experience over the years, and a lot of my views have changed as a result, but the foundation of who I am and how I read the world was laid during that span. [Obligatory joke about what else got laid back then, followed by a Dice-like”OH!”.]

The funny thing is, while I consider Mr. Burke to be a strong influence on my life and learning, I never actually had a class with him at St. John’s. No, our relationship consisted of countless hours on the basketball court, plus locker-room shooting of the breeze, and conversation on the way to and from the fieldhouse. In fact, I’m hard pressed to recall an encounter with him that wasn’t somehow related to basketball. I believe the only time we met off campus, it was to attend a Washington Bullets game at the Cap Center. In other words, I viewed much of our relationship through Worthy-esque Rec Specs.

The opportunity to catch up with Mr. Burke — whom I’d last seen in 1995 when he handed me my master’s degree and uttered, “Knicks in 7,” under his breath (unprophetically, since they wound up losing to the Pacers in 6) — was one I couldn’t pass up, even if I was a little disappointed that the seminar was being held at the boardroom of the Theatre Communications Group, rather than Basketball City over at Chelsea Piers.

A bunch of alums met up beforehand at a sushi restaurant, so I got to catch up with Mr. Burke for a bit. The 12-year hiatus in our conversation made it necessary for us to use broad strokes, but that’s one of the ways in which we start to figure out what’s important to us. When you only have a little time to talk, you have to figure out the essentials. Or you have to talk faster than a tweaker with logorrhea, and hope the other person can keep up. But I really did TRY to talk only about the big changes. And so did Mr. Burke, who told me about his new marriage and how he played in a pair of intramural hoops games the day before. He’s in his early 50s, which left me embarrassed that I’ve only picked up a basketball once in the past two years.

For a while, I was the youngest person in our pre-seminar group by at least 10 years. Some of the early arrivals were from early 1980s classes, and one was from the class of 1949. Mr. Burke, in fact, graduated from St. John’s in 1974, which provides more evidence for my thesis that the best career a St. John’s education prepares you for is . . . being a tutor at St. John’s! (According to SJC’s Wikipedia page, it looks like the best-known alumni from the Great Books era are Ahmet Ertegun, Charles “Quiz Show” Van Doren, and the guy who created MacGyver.)

As more alums arrived, I found myself in conversation with someone from the class of 1982, who explained to me how and why George Bush, Sr. may have ordered the murder of Swedish prime minister Olof Palme in 1986. At one point, he said he was having trouble remembering a name; I suggested that the CIA may be shooting a pink laser beam of information into his brain. I think he found that funny. Here’s his website.

Later, one of my oldest friends joined the group. John attended SJC as an undergrad. We haven’t really talked in more than 4 years — a subject I’ve written about before — so we pretty much just acted as though we knew each other, even if we still managed to complete each others’ sentences a couple of times during the seminar.

Eventually, we made our way upstairs. John & I lagged behind, helping guide a stone-deaf member of our group out of the restaurant and up to the seminar. By the time we reached the boardroom, two dozen alumni were already gathered, spanning 60 years of SJC classes. I noticed that we were all white, and there was only one woman among us, but this was St. John’s, not Hampshire College, so hey.

The seminar was a pretty intense two-hour take on the play: the nuances of its characters, its word-choices (among our various translations and Mr. Burke’s French edition) and, of course, its plot. It was a great seminar, and I’m sorry that I can’t really provide a ton of details it. Like all good conversations, it was organic, covering a million topics and perspectives. We explored the nature of the Alceste’s misanthropy, the self-centeredness of his love for Celimene, the redemptive vision of love offered up by Eliante, and the utter strangeness of 17th century French court, among other things.

I thought I made a pretty good point about the structure of comedy and how Moliere either missed a great payoff or was trying to make a point about the delusional self-importance of Alceste. It got derailed by the next person who spoke up, and I felt it would’ve been, um, self-important of me to push back to that point. But deep down, I know I was right.

My old pal John had a much better time of things, making excellent points about the play and the growth of two characters, nudging the conversation when it began to go awry, and getting some of the alums to re-ask their questions, in a bid to get them to better grasp what they were trying to say. We hadn’t shared an academic setting since our junior year of high school, so it was nice to see how he explored both the play and the dynamic of the seminar group.

(John also got the biggest laugh of the night when one of the “elder statesmen” talked about how flattery was the key job requirement for the French court in Moliere’s time. John remarked, “God, you are so perceptive! That is the best thing I’ve heard tonight!” It beat out my rendition of Alceste’s pal Philinte defending him, as channeled by Mink La Rouie of Miller’s Crossing: “He’s a right guy! He’s a straight shooter! I know he’s got a mixed reputation, but for a misanthrope he’s got a lot a good qualities!”

(Those goddam eggheads don’t know comedy when they hear it . . .)

That dynamic reminded me of how much I miss those Annapolis days. Living and working where I do, there aren’t many opportunities to talk about books the way we did Wednesday night. I still read an awful lot, but conversation helps bring books — and life — into their fullness.

After the seminar ended, we were to re-gather at a nearby café for a late dinner. Amy was waiting for me at the café, having stayed in the city for dinner with a friend. I wanted to introduce her to Mr. Burke and get a little more time to chat with him, but unfortunately, it was almost 9:30 at that point, and the lot where I was parked was closing at 10:00. So I gathered her up and we headed back to my car, meeting up with a bunch of the alumni who were on the way (I had used my mutant superpower of walking very fast to get out to the café and back before the rest of the crowd had gotten its act together).

I got to introduce Amy & Mr. Burke briefly out on the sidewalk, and John asked us to head back to the café. I explained that the lot was closing, but he wouldn’t take that for an answer. I then said, “We have to get up pretty early tomorrow,” which people never take seriously, even when I add “. . . seriously”. But you try getting up at 5:15am every weekday and see how ready you are for the nightlife, okay?

John wanted to shake hands, but I gave him a hug instead, which led to my near-suplexing, since John’s as big as a bear. Now I know how my wife feels, since I tend to hug her off her feet at least twice a day.

I didn’t take any pictures from the evening, which I’m sure is bumming you out, since you made it this far. Also, there was no tearful reconciliation or anything with my pal John. I wrote him a day after the seminar, but haven’t heard back from him. French comedy beats NYC drama.

I haven’t written to Mr. Burke yet, because I’ve been trying to get this post finished first. Now that I’m at the end, I feel that I’ve failed pretty heinously at describing just what I feel gained by knowing him during my time at SJC. I know I haven’t conveyed that sensation I had that he always heard music in his head, that some of his words were an attempt at translating that divine harmony. I certainly haven’t mentioned his deceptive first-step and the quick release of his jumper. Fortunately, there’s a new generation of students who are getting burned by that very shot.

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A Gala Night is About All I Can Handle

Last night’s “black tie optional” event turned out to be pretty slanted toward tuxedos. Rocking the black suit, white shirt and silver tie, I feared that I’d be mistaken for a waiter. Fortunately, the waitstaff wore Nehru jackets

Even so, I felt pretty out of place among the tuxes and bespoke suits. I thought that it’d be nice to get suits made sometime, but realized that I’d prefer to blow my money on high-end gin, too many books, and the NFL’s HD package.

Anyway, the drive into NYC was smooth, even though the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree lighting was going on that evening. Figuring that traffic would build close to my Columbus Circle destination, I decided to get off the West Side Highway at 79th, park at a garage near West End Ave., and walk the 19 blocks down to the Mandarin.

On the way, I passed Lincoln Center, which had its own (much smaller) tree on display. I liked the colors, so I insist you must, too!

And while we’re at it, here’s a photo of the sunset in NJ, as I cruised down the West Side. The view was absolutely spectacular as I came off the George Washington Bridge, but taking a picture from that ramp would’ve been impossible:

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The Man Who Wasn’t There, or The Mystery of Pittsburgh

Saturday night before my San Diego trip, we watched Andy Warhol: The Complete Picture, a documentary I had TiVo’d off the Ovation channel a few weeks ago. Neither Amy nor I like Warhol’s work particularly, but I’ve long been fascinated by his place in the contemporary intersection of art, commerce and celebrity, so we gave it a try.

I think discussions of Warhol’s work tend to center more on “the art world” than on art per se, and whether he was perpetrating a massive fraud on such. Unfortunately, I’m not versed enough in art history to give you guys a real critique of Warhol; I’m sure some of you have enough knowledge of it to beat any of my assertions to death on the rocks of my ignorance. Since the documentary raised enough questions about Warhol as a person, I’m gonna follow that lead.

The early stages of the movie — chronicling Warhol’s family history in Pittsburgh, his work as a commercial artist in NYC, and the rise and significance of pop art — tease out a number of elements that hint at the “boy behind the myth.” Perhaps it was a simplification of his formative years, but at least it yields a singular idea of who Warhol was. It’s a straightforward story, described mostly by his brothers, of a kid who was overly attached to his mother and didn’t really fit in at school.

(Note: I’m really want to see a documentary about the lives of his two brothers. It seems that they knew their brother was an artist in New York City, but had no clue as to how famous he was. One is filmed in a Harley-Davidson trucker cap, and it seems that he and Andy talked often, if not daily. At his death, Andy left each of the brothers $250,000, but his estate ended up valued around $600 million. No word on how they felt about that.)

What piqued my interested was the explicability of that young Warhol as contrasted with the ambivalence of the later edition(s).

Once Warhol becomes famous, there’s an explosion in the number of perspectives on him — understandably, since many more people knew him — but the figure they describe becomes much less clear. The more material there is, the less it makes for a coherent picture. This phenomenon seems to arise partly from the nature of the interviewees — artists and hangers-on, in a particularly drug-addled era — and partly from some elusive aspect of Warhol himself. The more they had to say, the less of a Warhol there was. I found myself wondering how this multiplicity of self paralleled one of his main forms of art: silk-screening. Do these prints, meaningful in their repetition and reduction, tell us something significant about the life of this artist?

Watching the documentary, I kept trying to resolve this issue of identity, especially as Warhol becomes a stand-in for the concept of celebrity and fame throughout the ’70s and ’80s. One of the interviewees talks about watching O.J. Simpson’s low-speed chase in 1994 and how similar it was to Warhol’s movie Empire, which consists of eight hours of a static shot of the Empire State Building.

Flipping through websites like the Superficial, I wonder what he would’ve made of today’s celebrities — even the marginally talented ones — who are followed by dozens of photographers every time they step outside. I suppose Paris Hilton, famous for being famous, would’ve made perfect sense to him. But that “everyone will be famous for 15 minutes” aspect of Warhol doesn’t describe him.

What perplexes me about this is the fact that Warhol was an obsessive recorder of his activities, a “recording angel.” One of the interviewees considered this an attempt at staving off death; that is, by accreting so many moments, they can never really be lost (there’s a reason I call this blog Virtual Memories). The downside of such voluminous recording is that the task of sorting through it all becomes overwhelming. And, as Kierkegaard tells us, we need to be able to forget. (I think he said that.)

Even though there are mountains of tapes, I think the documentary only has one brief segment of Warhol’s voice: after his mother’s death in 1972, he calls his brother and tells him that he won’t be coming out for the funeral and that she would’ve wanted the cheapest arrangements possible. Occurring near the end of the film, it’s a perplexing choice. The only time we get “the man” in his own words, he’s essentially tossing his mom into a cheap pine box. (He was buried next to his parents at the “Byzantine Catholic Cemetery.” According to Wikipedia, he was buried in a solid bronze casket with gold-plated rails and white upholstery. And, of course, a platinum wig.)

As Virtual Memories go, I saved the answering machine tape of my dad informing me of his mother’s death. I’m not sure why I did that, but the likeliest reason was because of the emotion in my dad’s voice. Warhol, on the other hand, could almost be making a call to a caterer, for all the feeling he shows on that tape.

Far be it from me to judge how someone relates to his family. Cutting off his family and excising his past would’ve been explicable — I’ve known enough artists and poseurs who’ve followed that route — but that’s not who he was. Warhol kept his mom with him in NYC from around 1949 to 1971 or so. There’s a cute anecdote about how some visitors to his apartment assumed this elderly woman with the heavy accent was Warhol’s cleaning lady.

I know this is getting all over the place, but that’s what I’m trying to get at, this electron-cloud of self. The movie portrays a man who starts out somewhat “normal” and winds up bifurcating over and over into a range of human experience that no one can put a finger on. While this isn’t such an extreme phenomenon — I’ve written about the impossibility of biography before — it raises the question of whether there was an “essential” Warhol behind all the mysteries.

Far too early, the documentary mentions how Truman Capote once described Warhol as a “Sphinx without a secret.” I thought it was an ingenious metaphor for the man. When I looked up the phrase, I found out that Oscar Wilde used it first.

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“And obscure as that heaven of the Jews”

(There’s a slideshow. Try that instead.)

I really did try. I went to shul on Erev Rosh Hashanah, back to the temple where I attended Hebrew school as a kid. I hadn’t been inside since 2001. There were about 18-20 people in attendance. Most everyone was celebrating the new year at home; there would be plenty more people on Thursday. Before services began, I heard one of the men say, “I should feel sorry for him? Why? We’re all in this together.” It felt like a credo.

A new rabbi had started at the temple a week or so earlier. I imagine it was daunting for her. Sure, I’ll likely have to give a short speech in front of 200 or so conference attendees on Tuesday morning, but they won’t be looking to me for any sorta spiritual guidance. Or so I hope.

Before the services began, I felt out of place. I mean, I hadn’t really been in shul this decade, and remembered almost nothing of the prayers. Still, I found I was able to follow along with the Hebrew pretty well, and the melodies of the prayers were still embedded in my brain, in the same section where I recently uncovered Glenn Campbell’s version of Southern Nights.

Anyway, the new rabbi started off alright. She called us all to the front of the seats, since there were so few of us and it would feel more intimate this way. We prayed, we sang, we read responsively: it was a celebration, bitches.

Then she gave her prayer/wishes-for-the-new year, in which she called for “action” in Darfur, offered her sympathy to the Palestinian people, and condemned Dick Cheney for leaking Valerie Plame’s identity. I thought, “Y’know, you could just wish for justice and peace in our time, and you’d probably sound a lot better.” It bothered me that she’d use the pulpit as a bully pulpit.

Exasperated, I rolled my eyes. It was then that I noticed I was seated beside the temple’s memoriam board, a wall display of small brass plaques with names and dates of death. I started reading over the names carefully, fearing who I’d find there. My friend Mandy’s dad was on the board, dead in 1993. Rabbi Sprinzen, who taught me, dead since the late 1980s.

I was midway through the board’s third column, when I saw the plaque for Saul Kohn. He died Sept. 1 2005, a month before Rosh Hashanah, and sixty years after being freed from Auschwitz.

I hadn’t seen Mr. Kohn in 10 years, back at the time when I’d at least occasionally go to shul. I knew he’d be listed among the dead, because otherwise he’d have walked up to me outside the temple, greeted me with a smile and handshake, and implored me to sit with him during services.

If you want to learn more about his life from the people who knew him and loved him, download this PDF. (It’s about 3mb.) I think it’ll give you a better impression than I could of what he meant to the community and what he tried to do with his life after Auschwitz.

I left temple that night wondering what’s going to happen when all the survivors have died? When I asked my brother for his impressions of Mr. Kohn — he knew him much better than I did — he asked the same question.

I woke up Thursday and decided I’d find a different way to celebrate the new year. I spent the morning writing to a number of friends and family whom I’d lost contact with in recent months, and then I headed into NYC to do something I’d never done before: walk across the Brooklyn Bridge.

Because of the hassles of getting to the city from where I live, I rarely go over into Brooklyn. So my buddy Mark, who lived in Brooklyn for years before moving up to Harlem, offered to be my tour guide (no “Virgil to my Dante” references for this trip). He told me that he’s walked across all the pedestrian-permitted bridges in the city, and was astonished to find that I’d never crossed any but the GWB.

Mark — not Jewish, but a public school teacher, hence his availability on Rosh Hashanah — led me on a merry jaunt through the borough and back into lower Manhattan. His knowledge of the area was virtually encyclopedic, and he enjoyed showing off the view from the Brooklyn Heights Promenade, Henry Miller’s home, the statue of Fiorello LaGuardia, and a million other sights.

I didn’t talk with Mark about Saul Kohn, but we did talk about Jewish contributions to American culture and learning. Mark waxed rhapsodic, putting me to shame with his knowledge of Jews. Discussing a different topic, I remarked, “It’s amazing that, despite the massive lacunae in my reading, people still think I’m smart as shit.”

I’m always happy to learn, but I try to take in so much that it all overlaps, like this brick palimpsest.

Palimpsest

It was an impossibly lovely day to walk across the bridge: warm, dry, breezy and almost cloudless. The views were gorgeous. I was afraid the time of year, the beautiful weather, the lower Manhattan skyline, and the footsteps across the bridge would put me in mind of 9/11, but I felt very present-tense, and maybe even future-comfortable.

We parted around Madison Square Park, and I waited for my wife to finish work and some shopping, so we could ferry back to NJ, pick up the car, and get home. And that was my happy new year.

(I did warn you to go straight to the slideshow, didn’t I? It has plenty of neat details about our walk through Brooklyn.)

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I will kick Norman Spinrad square in the nuts

After work on Tuesday, I headed into NYC to attend my buddy Paul Di Filippo’s reading at the South Street Seaport Museum. It was the kickoff of the 19th season of the New York Review of Science Fiction’s reading series. Paul, who came down from Providence for the event, did a great job with a charming story called “iCity”. It’s about competitive urban planning, the fickleness of public taste, and the use of ‘sensate substrate’ to build just about anything.

I got to the venue about an hour early, so as to avoid traffic from the Yankees game. I meandered around the area and took a couple of pix, but it’s nowhere near as photogenic as the swathes of Toronto we saw this weekend. Talk about urban planning: I don’t really understand the Fulton St. part of the Seaport. See, it’s a quaint, nautically-themed cobblestone street . . . populated by Gap, Talbot’s and Abercrombie & Fitch stores. This stretch is riddled with tourists, which leaves me to figure out exactly why visitors who make the relatively inconvenient jaunt to this part of Manhattan would want to shop at the same stores they have in their own towns: “I can’t believe we’ve come to the famous South Street Seaport all the way from Nebraska! Now let’s get some Pizzeria Uno!”

I guess stores that sell anchors and sailor hats would hardly stay in business, but still. Here’s a picture from out on the pier:

Sailing into the financial district

Anyway, as mentioned, Paul’s story was a hoot. Amy — who took the subway over after work — concluded she needs to start reading some of Paul’s collections. We have a bunch of them on the shelves downstairs, along with a novel or two of his, so she’ll have plenty of choices.

During the intermission, we caught up with Paul and his partner Deb Newton, along with SF legend Barry Malzberg and his wife Joyce. We told Paul & Deb that we’ll definitely get up to Providence to see them sometime soon, especially now that we know Tim Horton’s has opened some locations up there.

Then the intermission ended, and our nightmare began.

The second reader for the evening was Norman Spinrad. I’d read Little Heroes, one of his novels, around the end of my high school days (1988/89), shortly before I started keeping this list. I think I learned about him from a mention in Bruce Sterling’s Mirrorshades anthology — which is also where I first read something by Paul — earlier that year.

I don’t recall what Spinrad’s reputation was at that time. I hadn’t heard his name in a bazillion years, but when I saw that he was on the bill with Paul, I was curious as to what he’s been up to. After last night, I’m now curious as to how he’s avoided being beaten to death by angry audiences.

He began by rambling through some unfunny, huckster-riffic spiel about a machine that allows people to program their own dreams. Now, I once described The Triplets of Belleville as “being inside another person’s dreams. Unfortunately, that person is very boring.” But I had no idea how bad it could get.

Spinrad spent the next 40-45 minutes reading us a “G-rated” dream. The ‘dream’ was uninteresting, overlong, rendered in utterly lifeless prose. I’m not making this up: it was about (I think) a crippled girl at a prom, who transforms into a butterfly, a hummingbird, a raven, a condor, some sorta flying bicycle person, a dragon, and sweetJesusItotallylosttrack. It was narrated in the second person, which made it sorta like Bright Lights, Big City, except even less fun and without the cocaine.

I mean, I give myself credit for sticking with it as long as I did. Virtually the entire crowd of two dozen was . . . despondent. We weren’t exactly slack-jawed with disbelief. I mean, sure, that was part of it. But the sheer length of the reading meant that we recovered from the tension that accompanies shock — even the shock of badness — and headed on into stultification. His only bit of dialogue, some rhyming by a wise old black woman, would have been offensive if we were left capable of ire.

The interminability of it all grew to the point at which an older member of the audience with some sorta Parkinsonian tremor actually stopped trembling. We assumed — okay, hoped — he’d just fallen asleep. I looked around to see if anyone was “into” the performance, but we were in the back row and all I saw were slack shoulders, and some heads hanging low. One guy was bouncing his head off the back of the chair in front of him.

We were a million miles from iCity.

But this didn’t stop our intrepid reader, who continued to relate this never-ending mess of prose. At some point in the reading, I sent a text message to Amy’s phone that read, “At least we have each other.” On the way back to the car, she likened the experience to an undergraduate creative writing class, remarking, “Just because you think your dreams are interesting, it doesn’t mean anyone else should have to suffer through them.” I pointed out that I recently blogged about dreaming of eight-dollar bills, but she thought that was funny.

When Spinrad finished/stopped, I didn’t know how to react. To applaud would signal that we knew the reading was over, but it could also give him encouragement and leave him thinking that this inane, boring ramble was somehow good. Most members of the audience began applauding, but even then the nightmare wouldn’t end.

No, the host of the evening, Jim Freund, politely commented on dreams as Spinrad walked away from the podium. This was enough to start the man pontificating about what he’s “trying to do” with this writing, exploring the “nature of dreams” or somesuch. Spinrad rambled on about lucid dreaming for a while, then headed back to the podium and said, “Can I tell a story?”

Amy quietly said, “Um, no. You proved that already.”

It was late by the time Spinrad got done explaining how an editor objected to his use of the second person. “He told me, ‘You can’t write in the second person!'”

I followed Amy’s lead and muttered, “I’m not so sure you can handle the first or third person, either.”

We had to head back to NJ, even though I would’ve liked to spend some more time with Paul & Deb. I suppose now we’ll have to get up there. Might even stay overnight, if it means we can score some of that Timmy’s coffee the next morning.

Anyway, you were a good sport for putting up with this whole darn thing. The lesson is, if you see Norman Spinrad on the bill for a reading, run in the other direction. Or kick him in the nuts.

Oh, and here’s another picture, from Water St.:

I have no idea what these numbers signify

(Note: none of this should imply that older writers are batshit coots who should be avoided. As exhibit A, I offer up one of my first-ever posts, about a mindblowing reading by William Gass at the 92nd St. Y.)