09 December 2014

On the Always-Already of American Racism: Not all black people are criminals. Not all cops are bad.



The text tells us: Not all cops are bad. Not all black people are criminals. Not all white people are racist.

We read this well-meaning text. Of course, we don't want to resort to labeling; of course we don't. But when you think about the news, and perhaps your own limited personal experience, doesn't it seem like the ratio of bad cops to good cops is much higher than the ratio of black criminals to... wait a second, this series of statements is a racist construction to begin with.

The categories offered are cops, black people, and white people, and bad cops, criminals, and racists; and this set-up already contains the subliminal, implicit suggestion that cops aren't black (statistically, this is not even possible, not anymore, but from a macro-perspective, unfortunately, it might as well be true) and--much more insidious--it suggests that blacks are criminals, even while it is trying to say exactly the opposite. If you want to tease this apart on your own--if you even can tease, or tweeze--these awful things apart, try to distinguish the difference between not all criminals are black and not all blacks are criminals

Now, to really complicate this even further, if you look at the ratio of the white population, as such, in the United States, to the population of the incarcerated who happen to be white and then look at ratio of the population of black people in the U.S. to the population of those black people incarcerated, you will not only find that most of the incarcerated are black, but that the ratio of black prisoners to white prisoners is much higher than the ratio of white cops to black cops. Does this suggest that black people are naturally, genetically drawn to crime? You are an idiot if you think so. But when the front lines of the criminal justice system proves itself to be mostly white and the actions that are articulated as crimes ensnare and incarcerate mostly those proven to be black, it should give one pause. Unless, of course, all criminals are black, except not all of them are. What a generous designation it is, this not-all....

For the record, I happen to believe that all white people--and I'm speaking primarily of white people in the United States--are racist, but, though the brand of American Racism is special, we certainly aren't unique in the world in this regard. The sinister presence of Racism in our psychological, logical, linguistic, cultural make-up exists in us as individuals through the systemic status and quality of Racism in this country, where it has had a long, complex, and implicit history, and through the signal placement of white people within that structure, within those relations, discourses, possibilities, exclusions, and experiences. It behaves as a trait in a genetic code, not one that codes from our actual chromosomal DNA, but as the codes we absorb from the beginning by being raised in a culture of Racism, both explicit and implicit. This is what accounts for the construction that is ultimately racist in the well-intentioned text quoted at the outset of this post, which could have very easily been written by someone black as by someone white, though I'm banking on the latter, in this case.

This fact of baseline American Racism doesn't meant that Racism--in others, in ourselves, and as it is enacted by The State--cannot be resisted, but I think that the de facto status and placement of white(s) within the environment of American privilege, possibility, and human worth underwrites expectations, investments, and meanings of which we are not even aware because the discourse itself is in us, is us, has always been in us and us, was taught to us, yes, but the discourse is tainted at its essence and has always already been tainted, long before we were immersed in it, by Racism, which exists as sometimes a command, sometimes an enraged explosion, sometimes a feeling of distaste, sometimes a knee-jerk reaction, sometimes an unnoticed current, a subtle drift, an undertow. We are not powerless to resist it, but we have to understand that it is there in order to resist it in the first place, all the same. How can you resist something that you don't believe--or don't know, or don't want to know--exists?

An old friend--her name is Lisa--replies:
I wholeheartedly believe that all people in the U.S. are bigots. I don't think you can be raised in this culture and not be--too many messages bombarding you from your earliest memories. It is incumbent on us to recognize that fact, and consciously try not to be racist. We may not be able to help the thoughts that come into our heads, but we can control how what we do affects other people.
I entirely endorse and agree with this view. 

I agree that if we widen the frame to discuss bigotry and/or prejudice, that view will encompass everyone in the United States. And while I would prefer each individual examine her or his assumptions and real-world, real-time reactions and behaviors with regard to other people, to understand better that and how his or her unreconstructed, unthinking thoughts, words, and deeds do affect others, it seems clear that many enjoy the negative effect they produce in the other, that they seek that effect, as well as that affect. It is not that they don't care if they humiliate or hurt someone else: they do care: they care to do precisely that; they prefer to hurt someone else, and that action, that effect, brings them pleasure, power, and the pleasure that is power. 

This activity, this desire, happens across ethnic groups; it obeys no national boundaries; it seems to be intensified, rather than muted by religious affiliation (though the converse, one would think, should be the case); it crosses time and space, languages, communities, hues of skin tone, hair color and texture, height, weight, gender, sexuality, performativity, age, and any and every possible distinguishing trait or feature that humans can come up with to mark another as the other, as different, weird, foreign, or just not-them, and so reject him--abject him. 

We don't just fear the unfamiliar, we need it. We need the unfamiliar--the not-me, the not-us--for its use-value in order to be ourselves, to differentiate ourselves from the other, and we need it because--and this is the pessimistic view, but I am afraid that it's true--we need it because we like hurting others. 

As my friend, Lisa, says, the test is whether we give in to that desire to mark, distinguish, reject, abject, and hurt the other or not. We don't have to, though in many cases someone is literally trying to make us do just that. 

I would like to distinguish this event and desire from Racism, which belongs to the category of bigotry, though all bigotry is not Racism. 

Racism is not just fear of difference, it is a systematized, large-scale, cultural, historical effort--a national effort--against a particular kind of individual, against a certain group. And about this group the racism has very specific ideas about what should be available--socially, financially, educationally, conceptually, semantically, and materially--to that group and the individuals who have comprised it, and who comprise it, both now, and in the future, and the future of their children. This is not a conspiracy, as such (but, yes, of course, it is; in many cases it is entirely an agreed upon program that doesn't need to be discussed, though it is discussed, here, and there), in which those in power, and especially those not in power, specifically collaborate against the humanity and advancement of a whole group, but it might as well be. Racism is less a program than it is a fucked-up disease of a culture--in a culture--on a scale and pervasiveness bigotry only wishes it could attain. Racism is the child of bigotry. Racism is the perfectest example of bigotry. Racism is the god bigotry prays to.

20 November 2014

I am a writer



I can no longer post anything of value to Facebook. They seem to stifle all expression.
I post it here, instead:

The essential, brilliant Ursula LeGuin tells us:
I think hard times are coming, when we will be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now, and can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies, to other ways of being. And even imagine some real grounds for hope. We will need writers who can remember freedom: poets, visionaries—the realists of a larger reality. Right now, I think we need writers who know the difference between production of a market commodity and the practice of an art. The profit motive is often in conflict with the aims of art. We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable; so did the divine right of kings. … Power can be resisted and changed by human beings; resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art—the art of words. I’ve had a long career and a good one, in good company, and here, at the end of it, I really don’t want to watch American literature get sold down the river. … The name of our beautiful reward is not profit. Its name is freedom.
My mom worries about me, because her heart is so, so huge, and, like me, she looks for the good in things; my father worries too; they worry because they love me and because I will always be their little boy--at 46 I still am their little boy, and this is a fate I have given up trying to escape. 

I live a life they don't entirely understand; I move in a world different from theirs. It worries them because it is mysterious to them. But I am happy. I am a writer. They made me so, somehow, in a way ineffable, as they made my brother a musician (I cannot speak to what they made my brilliant, beautiful sisters, here, for it is much more complex than a word, but at the very least I can say they gave them an enormous talent for parenthood). 

I am a writer, and it falls to us--and we are all writers, all of us--to think and see, to worry and wonder, to pick apart and put together, to--as my students used to accuse me--"over-think." There is no over-thought, no over thinking; that is the nonsense of people who neither like to think nor want you to think, anything. 

We writers stray into dangerous neighborhoods and territories because, it is eventually true, that you can't know good until you have at least met evil; hope without meeting hopelessness. It is an unpleasant enterprise. We stray to watch and learn, to see and know, somehow, something, to know anything. This is literature; this is art. It is our job to see, to watch, to learn, to know: The Terrifying Other; most especially when that Other turns out to be Ourselves.

Get close to lies and see the truth. See evil and know what not to do. This is the world of art and literature, which gives us a chance to provisionally try out other options and see why they are so awful. This is why art, history, and literature are so important: they are the lab of ethics and behavior. Do not fail these lessons because we are all writers, writing the world. Listen to Ursula LeGuin, who is so much wiser than I have ever been.

Thanks, Rosemary.

18 November 2014

Das Berliner Requiem: First & Second Reports on the Unknown Soldier under the Triumphal Arch



From the classic, 1970s, DG recording by David Atherton and the London Sinfonietta, these are two of my favorite pieces ever and come from Kurt Weill's Das Berliner Requiem (1929), a cantata setting of poems by Bertolt Brecht, which itself, more than anything else, is about the German experience of the aftermath of World War I. As you will see....

As it is ever inappropriate to divorce the salt and pepper at the dinner table, I refuse to divorce the first Bericht, or Report, from the second, in this truly incredible one-two punch (a dreadful pun, here) of Weill-Brecht, in this strange and beguiling, this deeply upsetting and unsettling, this compelling piece. Its ferocity may surprise you. And so, first, The First Report on the Unknown Soldier under the Triumphal Arch. All translations, which follow Brecht's original German, are mine, flaws and all.

IV. Erster Bericht über den Unbekannten Soldaten unter dem Triumphbogen

Wir kamen
von den Gebirgen

und vom Weltmeer,
Um ihn zu erschlagen.

Wir fingen ihn mit Stricken, langend
Von Moskau bis zur Stadt Marseille

Und stellten auf Kanonen, ihn erreichend
An jedem Punkt,

wo er hinfliehen konnte,
Wenn er uns sah.

Wir versammelten uns vier Jahre lang,
Legten nieder unsere Arbeit

und standen
In den zerfallenen Städten,

uns zurufend in vielen Sprachen
Von den Gebirgen bis zum Weltmeer,

Wo er sei.
So erschlugen wir ihn im vierten Jahr.

Dabei waren,
Die er war geboren zu sehn

Um sich stehend zur Zeit seines Todes:
Wir alle.

Und dabei war eine Frau, die ihn geboren hatte
Und die geschwiegen hatte, als wir ihn holten.

Der Schoß sei ihr ausgerissen,
Amen!

Als sie ihn aber erschlagen hatten,
Richteten wir ihn zu, dass er sein Gesicht verlor

Durch die Spuren
unsrer Fäuste.

So machten wir ihn unkenntlich,
Dass er keines Menschen Sohn mehr sei.

Und gruben ihn aus
unter dem Erz,

Trugen ihn heim
in unsere Stadt und

Begruben ihn unter dem Stein,
und zwar unter einem Bogen,

genannt
Bogen des Triumphs,

Welcher wog tausend Zentner, dass
Der Unbekannte Soldat

Keinesfalls aufstünde
am Tag des Gerichts

Und unkenntlich
Wandelte vor Gott,

Dennoch wieder im Licht

Und bezeichnete uns Kenntliche

Zur Gerechtigkeit.



IV. First Report on the Unknown Soldier under the Triumphal Arch

We came
from the mountains

and the oceans,
To strike him dead.

We caught him with ropes, strung
From Moscow to the city of Marseille

And aimed cannon, so as to reach him
At any point

to where he should flee,
When he saw us.

We gathered for four years,
Laid down our work

and were
In the ruined cities,

calling to each other in many languages,
From the mountains to the oceans,

Where he was.
So we killed him in the fourth year.

It was to be
That he was born to see

Standing before him at the time of his death:
All of us.

And there was the woman who bore him
And who was silent when we got him.

Let her cunt be ripped out.
Amen!

And when we had slain him,
We turned on him so that he lost his face

Through the traces
of our fists.

So we made him unrecognizable,
That he was no man's son, anymore.

And dug him out
from under the steel,

Carried him home
to our city and

Buried him under the stone,
and indeed under an arch,

called the
Arch of Triumph,

Which weighed a thousand talents, so that
The unknown soldier

Under no circumstances
should rise on Judgment Day

and, unrecognizable,
Walk before God,

Yet again in the light

And call us the knowable

To justice.

Great poem: Bertolt Brecht, 1919
Serviceable translation: Attributed to L. Steve Schmersal, November 2014






The reason I am thinking about this now--and writing about it at all, here--is because this second (or fifth) movement, this Bericht, this Report, this recitative, this solo, sung, here, by the wonderful Benjamin Luxon, is sung almost entirely over a Hammond organ, and my friend, the composer, Gordon Beeferman, has just acquired a Hammond, which required me to regale him about this piece for not a little while. Gordon, I write this for you.

In Settling the Score, Ned Rorem writes about how some composers are constitutionally fast or slow (off-topic, but I feel the need to share, Rorem also says that one can hear Weill in Bach but not the other way round--a fascinating and paradoxical assertion) and that Weill is of the fast variety, that even in his slow music you hear the stillness of atoms spinning, spinning, spinning.

This observation is nowhere more legible than in his setting of Brecht's great poem to--or "report on" but always very much report to--the Unknown Soldier, in which Weill makes the Hammond sound like a squeezebox, devolving, dissolving in its own solution, into a single note repeated figure before the woodwinds take over. The suspense of the stillness of atoms spinning. The master at work.

Rorem also suggests Britten's War Requiem owes a certain allegiance to this uncategorizable, ineffable, nearly inscrutable work. Don't think. Just ride the sounds and the meanings dissolving into sounds, vocabularies, and histories to which we have almost no real access, except through imagination. Just try to be quiet. Amen!

V. Zweiter Bericht über den Unbekannten Soldaten unter dem Triumphbogen

Alles,
was ich euch sagte
Über Ermordung und Tod
des Unbekannten Soldaten

Und die Verwüstung
seines Gesichts,

Auch was ich euch sagte über die Bemühung seiner Mörder,
Ihn zu hindern am Wiederkommen,
Ist wahr.

Aber
er kommt nicht wieder

Sein Gesicht war lebendig wie das eure,
Bis es zerschmettert wurde und nicht mehr war.

Und er ward
Nicht mehr gesehen auf dieser Welt,

Weder ganz noch zerschmettert,
Weder heute noch am Ende der Tage

Und sein Mund
Wird nicht reden

am Jüngsten Gericht.
Es wird kein Gericht sein,

Sondern

euer

Bruder

Ist tot

und tot

ist der Stein

über ihm,

Und ich bedaure

Jeglichen Hohn,

und ziehe zurück

meine Klage.

Aber ich bitte euch,
da ihr ihn

Nun einmal erschlagen habt,
Still!

Fangt nicht von neuen an
Zu streiten, da er doch tot ist.

Aber doch bitte ich,
da ihr ihn also

Erschlagen habt:
Entfernt wenigstens

Den Stein über ihm,
Denn dieses Triumphgeheul

Ist doch nicht nötig
und macht Mir Kummer,

denn mich,
Der ich den

Erschlagenen
Schon vergessen hatte,

erinnert er
Täglich

an euch,
die ihr noch

Lebt, und
die ihr

Immer noch nicht
erschlagen seid.

Warum
denn nicht?



V. Second Report on the Unknown Soldier under the Triumphal Arch

Everything
I told you
About the murder and death
of the Unknown Soldier

And the devastation
of his face,

Also what I told you about the effort of his murderers,
To prevent him from coming back,
Is true.

But
he will not come back

His face was alive like yours,
Until it was broken, and was no more.

And he was
Not seen in this world,

Neither whole nor crushed,
Neither today nor at the End of Days,

And his mouth
Will not speak

on the Day of Judgment.
There will be no judgment,

But

your

brother

Is dead

and dead

is the stone

above him,

And I regret

Any scorn,

and withdraw

my complaint.

But I ask you,
because now that

You have slain him:
Quiet!

Do not start anew
To argue, because he is dead.

But I ask, because you
Have so slain him:

Remove, at least,
The stone above him,

For this howl of triumph
Is unnecessary and makes

Great sorrow
for me,

The one
who had the slain man

Forgotten, it reminds
Me daily

of you
who still

Live, and who
Have still

not been
killed.

Why
not?

Great poem: Bertolt Brecht, 1919
Serviceable translation: Attributed to L. Steve Schmersal, November 2014


16 November 2014

Mrs Stechschulte



/MISS iz SHTEK shuhl tee/

O Mnemosyne! I
Cry unto you! Mother
Of the nine Muses, the
Titan of Memory!
Help me, help me, help me
To remember, in these sixes,

Mrs Stechschulte, the
Teacher of my Second
Grade! In the grocery
Store, I walked past her, my
Mother asked why I did
Not say hello. "To whom?"
I replied. "To Mrs Stechschulte,"

My mother said, "She just
Said 'Hi' to you." I looked
Around, but my teacher
Had vanished. Even then,
My facial recognition
Software was faulty. O

Mrs Stechschulte! I
Still look for you, in store
And street, home and soul, in
The vast plain of my mind,
Yet, lo, you are never
There. It is only me,

Hoping to say hello.


L. Steve Schmersal, /MISS iz SHTEK shuhl tee/, November 2014

12 November 2014

That Great, Unexorcised Demon of the American Soul



The NY Times reports on the idiocy of the American voter in this 5 November 2014 article about the disconnect between individually-held values and temper-tantrum-style revenge voting, as revealed by 2014 Midterm exit polls. 
More than a third of people voting for a Republican House candidate said they were unhappy or even angry at the Republican leaders in Congress, according to exit polls, but they did so anyway, producing a House that is even more right-wing than the current one. On a day of Republican triumph, a majority of voters said they wanted to find a way to allow immigrants to stay in this country, even if they are here illegally. That position could not be more at odds with the one held by most of the new senators elected yesterday.
Though the piece in no way entertains the notion that voters' desire to express their unhappiness with President Obama by stacking the Senate with Republicans diametrically opposed to their own values hints at a dark, reactionary motivation rooted in Racism--which should surprise no one given the surpassing general silence on this question--the absence in the piece of the exact causes of this wounded, flailing unhappiness is the very thing that gives the obscene, vindictive, irrational reaction in question the familiar structural shape discoverable ad nauseam in the obsessive, gleeful, racist resistance to and confounding of all things Obama--a more or less open revolt--by Congress in particular and Republicans in general. 
They did it in order to send a message of deep disappointment and frustration to President Obama, but the message didn’t really contain much content beyond that. “I’m just tired of all the fighting and bickering,” Jeffrey Kowalczuk, a Wisconsin voter, told The Times yesterday, explaining why he voted for Republicans.
It is not necessary to have a rational or consistent reason to oppose any of the motions, nominations, proposals, or actions of Obama because our Republican brothers and sisters oppose all of them, before they even know what they are. This is not the evidence of a reasoned, principled opposition to policy or thought but the betrayal of a cocky, condescending, disrespectful, mocking, dismissive opposition to a man. The mysterious, unarticulated root cause of this unhappiness with Obama--when there is no reasonable reason that could ever account for such a confident, childish, consistent, universal, and unyielding stance--could only be that great, unexorcised demon of the American soul, called Racism, for it bears its classic shape and markers. It is the only thing that could allow both our legislature and electorate to behave in such embarrassingly and unselfconsciously stupid ways. 


You may read the NYT article in its entirety in "The Tornado Election."

27 October 2014

The Shelmstress Poems II



From Wikipedia:

"'Coolidge Shelmstress writes in his introduction to Great Book of Bad Poems, the definitive collection of Calvé Shelmstress's poetry (with the title Calvé requested as well as requesting that all his work be burned after his death--he seemed to know his brother all too well): "I grew up in a household filled with books, music, language, and languages. My parents spoke to my elder brother in three languages, but to me they spoke only in English. This killed me. But my brother aced every German and French class he ever took and any class in English Literature. He hated America for being both too easy and so hard.

"'He was an early adopter of scientific, psychologic, and--not quite-so-early--psychoanalytic frames of knowledge and languages, which he followed assiduously. In some of his best poems, he uses terms like 'Dark Matter,' 'Event-Horizon,' and 'Anti-Matter' to, to my mind, spectacular effect. He is the poet of Happy-Unhappy Happiness. I have reproduced his poem on learning, with all its line-spacing intact, the way my brother insisted it must be (an insistence lost on the editors of most anthologies in which it appears). It is as though this poem were falling apart, even as it expresses itself. I think I may weep every time I read it.'"





I have learned, I
by Calvé Shelmstress


I have learned, I

Have found, that I

Live in a world

Of Negative,



Anti-matter,

Love; a World of

Anti-matter

Thought, in with whose



Contact which, my

Thought should Explode.

Yet. I live in

That World of Thought,





Which, if I should

Lose it, I should

Lose My Self; a

Self unmeasured








By Puritan

Accountants, and

Profit Margin.

In their world, I








Would live in a

World, where My Life's

Work, My Life's worth,

My Life's words and










World would account

For Nothing; no,

How should I live

There? I could not.


Calvé Shelmstress, I have learned, I, 1974.





Beware, O Human
by Calvé Shelmstress


Beware, O Human of
Of Sleep, Time Machine of
American Depression;
With you falling asleep
Tuesday yet waking on
Thursday. This is a verse

Written in Sixes. That
Sick sixth sense of health and
Hell, this machine will take
You backwards only but
Never forward; Inward,
Never outward; then but

Never now nor yet. La
Grande jamais la petite
Mort. Ersatz Liebe; Nichts.
This is a verse written
In Sixes. Sleep, sleep, sleep
The Day away. Who cares?

Six deadly sins, virtues
Too, are quite enough, who
Needs the seventh? I my
Self do not even need
Six. This verse is written
In Sixths. The Beatles said

We should want to live in
A week of eight days. I
Could never. How should I
Ever live in an eight
Day week, when six is too
Much for me. This verse is

Written in Sixes. O
Beware, Human, of this
Machine, it will take you
To Peace and Nowhere fast.
Schade. Tristesse. This verse
Is written in Sixes.


Calvé Shelmstress, Beware, O Human, 1984.




23 October 2014

The Shelmstress Poems



From Wikipedia:

"Named after his maternal grandfather, Belgian-American poet, Calvé Shelmstress, moved to the United States, as a young child, with his parents in the late 1940s, after the end of World War II.

"Although immigration was still constricted immediately following VJ Day, the fact that Shelmstress' paternal grandmother was an American citizen helped to grease the immigration wheels, somewhat. The ironic fact that his American grandmother's Jewish ancestry had prevented an earlier move to the United States, which forced the family to live by its wits and survive through the dangerous generosity of Christian family friends in Belgium, was never lost on the writer. Although a naturalized American citizen, Shelmstress, frequently expressed a discomfort with America and the idea of a homeland--which he felt inextricably tied to German and Nazi notions of der Vaterland--or even the idea of a home, as such.

"Fluently tri-lingual, Shelmstress' poetry and criticism only survives through the efforts of his much younger brother, Coolidge, executor of his estate."


He Sits and Waits at Home
by Calvé Shelmstress

He sits at home alone,
In a home not his; he
Has never had a home
That's his, he thinks, yet feels

And is, at home, he hopes;
He sits and waits at home;
Sees the news and sings the
Blues and the loneliness

Is excavating. We
Must wait for things that Must
Never come, for Other-
Wise, they never could, could

Never, be real. Using
Change, harvested from time,
And pockets of time, and
Pockets and streets, he rides,

Derides public transit,
Wand-erring idly, Who,
If I cried out, would hear
Me, someone suggests, with-

In the Engel Ordnungen.
He has no other choice.
Still. It's real enough, is
It not? It's real to feel,

To read and write and know,
And be right, but only
From time to time, because
What is right can change for

You, on a dime, as they
Say, or when banks are used,
Then even a nickel's
Turn is for the worst. He

Sits and he waits, he'll have
Manhattan, Brooklyn, and
Staten Island, too; he'll
Have hell, as well, and wait-

ing, too, perhaps, for God--
Oh, wait. Except that, he
Supposes, someone must
Have said, God waits for you,

I expect. He sits and
Waits as Time flicks the day
Away Across the screen,
Surviving On M and

Ms and seeds And stems,
Friends, family friends, love,
Passing stranger love, and
Family, too. It's love-

ly walking through the zoo.
Pretend you saw this in
The New Yorker or in
Chalk on the sidewalk. He.

He sits and waits at home.

Calvé Shelmstress, He Sits and Waits at Home, composition date uncertain: late 20th Century




Cry, Cry, Cry, 1944, 1954, 1964, 1974, 1984, 1994-2014
by Calve Shelmstress

I walk
I walk the
Streets of the
Great city and
I see
I see people
Crying. I see people
Crying. They
Cry on their
Cell phones; they
Cry to their
Colleagues; they
Cry to friends; they
Cry by themselves.

Cry, cry, cry.

I repeat this word:
Cry: to turn it inside-
Out. To denature it and
Make it strange. I
Do it
Here. In
This poem.

Cry, cry, cry.

I am beginning
To accept.
I am
Beginning to
Accept that
I am one
Of those
People no one
Will matter to.
No one will
Matter to. No
One will matter
To, till he
Is dead. Not
As good as Kafka
Or Benjamin, but
Forgotten until
Remembered,
All the same.

Cry, cry, cry.

People are crying!
Crying in the
Streets of New
York! They
Cry for themselves!
They cry for
Their friends! They
Cry for their
Jobs! Their families!
Their government!
They cry!

Cry, cry, cry.

I walk to the
Corner store.
Crying. I buy
Cigarettes,
Crackers, ice
Cream, and the
Counter guy
Calls my name. Take
Care he says.

Cry, cry, cry.



Calvé Shelmstress, Cry, Cry, Cry, 1944, 1954, 1964, 1974, 1984, 1994-2014, 2014









21 September 2014

It's the End of the World as We Know It: I Think I Thought You Were Someone Else



Should we talk about the weather?
Should we talk about the government?
-- R.E.M., "Pop Song 89," GREEN

I am a child of the 60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s. It sounds like the call sign for junk, pop radio, doesn't it? In truth, I am, as is everyone of my generation, and the generation before us, and that generation before them, a child--a "product"--of the 19th century. We are all Victorians. We are the new Victorians--"the 'other' Victorians"--as Foucault so memorably described himself, us, and you. 

If you are younger than I am, you, too, perhaps feel unmoored from the 19th century, perhaps do not even know what it is, what that means. I assure you, the only thing that divides me from you is this understanding: We are still living in the 19th century. And we live very much in the 19th century A.D.--"of our Lord," Jesus Christ, though not in any sense he--or even He--would recognize as living during such a time. "We" are "living" it "up"; but we are not living. Friends, we are at the end of days. And it isn't the one indicated to us in Scripture, in the inscription, of The Word--an "in scripture," an inscription, a script, which, as its name clearly indicates, is a writing, a quotation, because all writing is a quotation of something and thus a something subject to misquotation, mistranslation, emendation, animus, amendment, redaction, addition, subtraction. 

No, in fact, the coming apocalypse arrives, at what may be the actual end of the industrial, 19th century, by way of "Science," which is--the public discourse of which is--only another indispensable invention of the 19th century. We are living at the End of Times, during which the agricultural year of dependable, repeating cycles is overtaken by and dissolved into high-speed and the overproduced, entertainment version of high-speed called instant gratification. As the early, seasonal manifestation we are coming to know so well, perhaps even, perversely, getting used to, illustrates; yes, the awkward disturbance in, and disruption of, the seasons, which used to number four, makes so clear--the times of Autumn and Spring are subsumed by Winter and Summer, which then start turning into each other in alternation. Your latest evidence is the Winter of 2014, with snow and freezing temperatures interspersed with 50 degree days, and a Summer in Ohio, traditionally a time of luxuriant, overwhelming humidity and heat, reduced to a bizarre string of 50 degree days and nights during the high summer of July and August, followed by a September heat wave in New York coinciding, exactly, with snow in the Midwest.

Seasonal time is out-of-joint; time is out of joint. And this is just one of the many gifts of the 19th century and its passion for unregulated industry, which has returned to us in the 21st century, a time we live in in name only.

www.peoplesclimate.org

#peoplesclimate, #peoplesclimatemarch, #climatechange, #globalwarming

03 September 2014

On Kate Bush 2: You're the One



The BBC doc, Running Up that Hill, has made me relisten to some Late Bush.

As a serious fan of the woman, I must confess, The Red Shoes, Aerial, and Director's Cut did not receive a very fair listen from me when they came out. This was a mistake. This was a mistake that I have rectified over time. 

Aerial is a stupendous album that I am ashamed to have ever neglected. The Red Shoes has grown on me in ways I never expected. Director's Cut--which one friend dubbed "a crime against music" at the time, based primarily on the new version of "Deeper Understanding" (and, at the time, Reader, I didn't disagree), and which another friend defended powerfully, though he was troubled by 50 Words for Snow in ways I couldn't comprehend--is also a secret gem, especially the extended version. 

This case in point--Director's Cut is entirely a revisit to earlier material from The Sensual World and The Red Shoes (two albums that dovetail into each other all over the place)--with remasters and re-recordings of songs that were already well-known to me, and I didn't get it; I didn't understand the album. Leaving anything and everything else behind that one might want to say about the disc (or the 3 disc set, which is the definitive option), the remaster of "You're the One" is a staggering piece. With Gary Brooker nailing your mind and heart to the wall with the Hammond organ, in a rather Motown/Atlantic R and B fashion, actually--which in the remaster melts into the Trio Bulgarka, in this really extraordinary way--and the straightforward, prosaic, heart-rending, mind-bending lyrics and voice from Kate Bush, this song is a truly special thing. A wrenching, break-up song, with Bush screaming "SUGAR!" at the end.

I wept today, listening to it--I am unashamed to say--on the bus to visit an old friend. I had to hide my tears.

It's alright,
I'll come round
when you're
not in;
And I'll pick up
all my things.

Everything
I have,
I bought
with you.

But that's
alright, too.
It's just,
everything
I do,
We did,
together.
And there's
a little
piece
of
you,
In whatever.

I got everything
I need,
I got petrol
in the car.
I got some money
with me.
There's just
one problem:

You're the only one I want,
You're the only one I want;
You're the only one I want,
You're the only one I want.

It's alright,
I know
where I'm
goin'. I'm goin'
to stay
with my
friend.
Mmm, yes,
he's very
good-looking.

The only trouble is:
He's not
you.
He can't do
what you
do.
He can't
make me
laugh
an' cry, at
the same time.

Let's
change things.
Let's
danger it up.
We're
crazy enough.
I
just can't take it.


You're the only one I want.
You're the only one I want.
You're the only one I want.
You're the only one I want.


I know
where
I'm goin', but
I don't
wanna leave.
I just
have one problem:

We're best friends,
yeah;
We tied ourselves in
knots,
Doing cartwheels 'cross the
floor.
Just forget it, all
right.

Sugar!
Honey.
Sugar!
Running down!
Sugar.
Sugar!


"You're The One (Remastered)" is track #12 on disc 3 of Directors Cut (Collectors Edition). Music and lyrics by Kate Bush. The song features Jeff Beck on guitar, Gary Brooker on Hammond organ, and The Trio Bulgarka on backing vocals.

"You're The One" originally appeared as track #12 on the album The Red Shoes. Music and lyrics by Kate Bush.


01 September 2014

Labor Day: On the Value of Labor



Today we mark the annual, ritual acknowledgment of labor we fail to find, and fail to remember, in the "celebration" of Labor Day--which is really nothing more than the gateway exit from Summertime.

I closed a recent post with the ironic assertion that one's labor has no value. This notion is, of course, preposterous and vile. Under the non-protective (except to itself and its systems and beneficiaries) aegis of, following the term-setting rubric of, within the immersive environment of Late Capitalism, it is easy to forget that your labor has value.

Your labor has value.

Your labor does not have a price tag.

Your labor is not a commodity. It is not a thing.

The value of your labor is not--and does not derive from and is not defined by--your salary or wage.

Your labor is not defined by your job description, nor does its value proceed from it.

Your labor is a presence and an action.

Your labor is attached to, and emanates from, a person and a personality, a past, a present; a body in space and time.

Your labor is inextricably bound to and in your sleep; your nutrition; your exercise; your lodging; your familiars, friends, family, and dependents; your leisure; your play; your pleasure; your gender; the color of your skin, the perception of your ethnicity, your education, your class; your age; your health; your mental health; your happiness, your anxiety, your depression, your joy; your thought; your ongoing education; your travel time; your time; time.

Never forget your labor has value. Your labor has value. Your labor has value.

You have value.

Happy Labor Day.

26 August 2014

On Kate Bush



Watching this delightful BBC documentary on Kate Bush today, Running Up that Hill, I heard many people talk about her music, her output--many of them you've heard of--Annie Clark (of/is St Vincent), Neil Gaiman, Tori Amos, Peter Gabriel, Tricky, David Gilmour, Big Boi (of Outkast)--speaking very personally about their relationship to this music, these albums, these songs. She is, in fact, a musician's musician. Artists we--you and I--are fans of, are fans of hers: example, Prince. The thing about this woman is that we all, each of us, who are beguiled by her, are so beguiled individually and alone. We listen to these songs, over and over, for hours, for years, for ourselves, and it seals a certain place within us, that is only for us, as we puzzle over the words and become lost and found and lost in these sounds. It is only for us; it is only for me; I have dreamed some of these songs, quite literally. Sometimes, I can't tell whether I'm dreaming or not, listening to her. Reality becomes less real, unreal. It's very personal, and it's work, too. She doesn't let you in easily; she doesn't let you in at all. You have to find your own way in, and that makes every entry hard-won and personal and so, so very, very worth it. The thing about Kate Bush is that you don't have to like her; you don't have to like what she does, what she makes. She's going to do it anyway, and you can follow where she goes but never leads. It's up to you. And that is why, when you meet a fellow-traveller, they are like family, in this very queer way. Because you have taken this journey alone, and when you meet someone else who has also made this difficult trek, that moment of recognition is instantaneous and exciting, because you can share what you've learned with each other, and close a circuit here and here in these extraordinary songs. When someone reveals to me that they have a relationship to this music, it feels very much to me like what we're saying to each other is--as if, in a line never written, never uttered, never read, in The Velveteen Rabbit--"Oh, you're real, too!"

Oh. You're real, too.

13 August 2014

What's So Bad About Late Capitalism?



When a well-respected, French economist publishes a heavily-researched, closely-argued book showing the accelerating trajectory of income disparity across the major democracies, he's dismissed as a radical and a Marxist (and, in America, we are nagged, ad nauseam, with a childish, hysterical insistence that Marxism is nothing less than the most unpatriotic, preposterous, yet seductively treacherous Evil since the invention of Satan), but when research economists working for the S & P--the godlike index of that stupid, misunderstood, overesteemed, high-stakes casino game called the stock market, in whose thrall we have remained far too long--release a study exploring the intuitively-correct notion that increasing economic (and by extension, if you have a brain, political) inequality between the infinitesimally small few and every-fucking-body else, is demonstrably bad for the economy, the 99.9%, and the aforementioned, heroic celebrities--the protagonists--of Late Capitalism, suddenly it becomes possible for the mainstream and, much more deliciously, the super-rich, to fathom that the runaway train being driven/not-driven by our wealthiest citizens and corporations--they who are the true constituency of "our," at best, surreally-representative government--that the runaway train we are all riding on, whether we want to or not, is headed directly for a cliff; a cliff which, perhaps, once featured the extended metaphor of an indispensable, infrastructural bridge, a neglected bridge, long-forgotten in the fanatical, ecstatic, free-market pursuit of a bottom-line profit-margin that benefits almost no one, a bridge now-collapsed; a no-bridge, a cliff, an abyss. 

What would be hilarious, if it weren't so tragically, mind-numbingly, willfully, embarrassingly stupid, is that the condition and direction of our economy--whose unregulated, pathetically-mismanaged fate is now so dangerously and inextricably submerged within, subsumed by, symbiotically enmeshed with a global market economy, gloriously stripped of inconvenient-yet-beneficial buffers, boundaries, and brakes guaranteeing that where falls America falls the world--was portended by that paradoxical boogeyman, the disdainfully dismissible, disproven, and ineffectual, yet superstitiously warded-off, Herr Marx, over a century ago. 

The New York Times:
Economists at Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services are the authors of the straightforwardly titled “How Increasing Inequality is Dampening U.S. Economic Growth, and Possible Ways to Change the Tide.” The fact that S.&P., an apolitical organization that aims to produce reliable research for bond investors and others, is raising alarms about the risks that emerge from income inequality is a small but important sign of how a debate that has been largely confined to the academic world and left-of-center political circles is becoming more mainstream.
Yes, a specter is haunting the world--it has never ceased haunting us, even if we believed, or wanted to believe, we had forgotten it. Insubstantial and unreal; both absent and present; here, not-here, and everywhere; a phantasm, an irrationality, an illogic; a naive ghost-tale ghost, suitable only for frightening anxious children and the weak-minded, and which the wise "adults"--to their own, condescending amusement--explain away to me, you, and themselves, as only an absurd misapprehension, a night-terror, a trick of the light, a trick of the night, a trick of the fog, nothing but the old pine tree looming indistinctly in the corner of the yard; unscientific, an illusion, a derangement, a disease, a deviation; a heresy; a dangerous dream; this uncanny thing we sometimes almost catch out of the corner of our eyes, only seems to murmur hair-raising, disturbing, fantastic threats and predictions, which we can only try to forget to remember. It is the specter of Capitalism.


Read the whole NYT piece here.


12 August 2014

SUSPICION: Warhol-Hopper-Lynchian Series of Garage, Driveway, and Grass

Reader. This is a true story.

It was around 1:30 am last Tuesday night, and as I was walking an empty bottle to the recycling bin at the end of my parents' driveway, I was struck by the light on the garage, so I had a smoke and snapped a few pictures over the course of 10 to 15 minutes. I had to lie down on the driveway to get some shots of the grass and some low angle pics of the garage. When I was done, it was time for bed, so I turned off the lights as I went through the house, ending up in my bedroom, which faces the front yard, where I stripped to my underwear, got into bed, and turned out the light.

Lying in the darkness, I scrolled through the pictures on my phone to see if I'd gotten anything interesting, when I heard an odd sound of voices, almost as though over a walkie talkie, and suddenly a bright light shone in the window behind my right shoulder, and a voice from right on the other side of the screen forcefully asked, "SIR, WERE YOU JUST OUTSIDE NOW?" I said something like, "HOLY SHIT!" as I jumped out of bed, where I stood, face-to-face, in my underwear, with two police officers standing in my mother's flower bed on the other side of the window. "Could you come to the door, please?" one asked. "REALLY? I'm, um, just in my, uh, underwear," I said. "Can you put some clothes on and meet us at the front door, sir?" "I guess so."

I pulled on my shorts and walked past my parents' bedroom door, expecting to see my mom standing there--my mom usually wakes up if a fly sneezes--but the door stayed closed. Shirtless and barefoot, I opened the front door to see about five police officers arrayed on or near the porch. "Sir, WHO ARE you?" "I'm L--------, this is my parents' house, I'm visiting from New York, and, yes, I was just lying in the driveway taking pictures of the garage."

They did not seem amused.

"If you'd like to speak to my folks, I can wake them up, but I'd really rather not over something like this." They decided that wasn't necessary, but they did copy down info from my driver's license. I thanked them profusely for responding so quickly and taking the safety of the citizens of Winesburg, Ohio so seriously.

This neither amused nor pleased them, either. Nevertheless, they slinked off into the night, disappointedly.

The next morning, I told my astonished parents the whole story. My mother's only real comment was, "I hope this doesn't make the police blotter...."








































































26 July 2014

Es Regnet



It is raining in Ohio. It wasn't supposed to, but it is.

And one can't help thinking of that beautiful lyric, ascribed to Cocteau--can one?--so implausibly in German, which I quote, now, from memory in Kurt Weill's melancholy-sweet Lied:

Ich frage nichts;
Ich darf nicht fragen.
Denn du hast mir gesagt, Frage nicht.
Aber kaum, höre ich deinen Wagen,
Denke ich, Sagen, oder nicht sagen?
Er hat alles auf dem Gesicht.
Glaubst du denn daß nur der Mund spricht?
Augen sind wie Fensterglas.
Durch alle Fenster sieht man immer,
Schließt du die Augen ist es schlimmer.
Meine Augen hören etwas,
Etwas anderes meine Ohren.
Für Schmerzen bin ich denn geboren.
Laß mein Gesicht am Fenster, laß;
Die Sonne darf jetzt nicht mehr scheinen.
Es regnet, sagt das Fensterglas.
Es sagt nur was es denkt.
Laß uns zusammen weinen,
Zusammen weinen.


I ask nothing,
I may not ask.
For you have said to me, Ask not.
However, as soon as I hear your auto,
I think, Say or not to say?
He has everything on his face.
Do you believe that only the mouth speaks?
Eyes are like windowpanes.
Through windows one sees always,
Close the eyes and it's awful.
My eyes hear something,
Something other than my ears.
And so, I was born to suffer.
Let me lay my face against the window, let;
The sun must no longer shine, now.
It's raining, says the windowpane.
It only speaks what it thinks.
Let us weep together,
Weep together.

Es Regnet, music by Kurt Weill, translation ascribed to L. Steve Schmersal, on the fly, tonight, 26 July 2014.



07 July 2014

and and that that



and and that that

I circle you
constantly
in what is
my mind as
a child I

want you as
a child wants
one or two
or three or
everything

Could there be
a more than three?
I wish as
a child wills
Yet I guess

I perhaps
went you where
dead in a
child's want so
much like one's

own death My
funereal
Tom Sawyer-
mind of their
your my weep-

ing for your
me you With
a short shared
pastness and
nothing shared

between No
only death and
love you me
and and that
that called life.

L. Steve Schmersal, and and that that, July 2014.

06 July 2014

The Burden of History

.

I wake up cold, I who
.
.

Prospered through dreams of heat
.
.
.


Wake to their residue,
.
.
.
.


Sweat, and a clinging sheet.
.
.
.
.
.


My flesh was its own shield:
.
.
.
.
.

Where it was gashed, it healed.
.
.
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I grew as I explored
.
.
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The body I could trust
.
.
.
.

.
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Even while I adored
.
.
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The risk that made robust,
.
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A world of wonders in
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.
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Each challenge to the skin.
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I cannot but be sorry
.
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The given shield was cracked,
.
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My mind reduced to hurry,
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My flesh reduced and wrecked.
.
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I have to change the bed,
.
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.

But catch myself instead
.
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Stopped upright where I am
.
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Hugging my body to me
.
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As if to shield it from
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The pains that will go through me,
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As if hands were enough
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To hold an avalanche off.
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Thom Gunn, "The Man with Night Sweats" from The Man with Night Sweats, 1992.

If being is said to be unbearably light, then history has a weight, even when we don't seem to notice or know it.
.
.
Christopher Street is, technically, the oldest street in the West Village, as it ran along the south boundary of Admiral Sir Peter Warren's estate, which abutted the old Greenwich Road (now Greenwich Avenue) to the east and extended north to the next landing on the North River, at present-day Gansevoort Street. The street was briefly called Skinner Road after Colonel William Skinner, Sir Peter's son-in-law. The street received its current name in 1799, when the Warren land was acquired by Warren's eventual heir, Charles Christopher Amos. Charles Street remains, but Amos Street is now 10th Street.
.
The road ran past the churchyard wall of the Church of St. Luke in the Fields (built 1820-22; rebuilt after a fire, 1981–85) still standing on its left, down to the ferry landing, commemorated in the block-long Weehawken Street (laid out in 1829), the shortest street in the West Village. At the Hudson River, with its foundation in the river and extending north to 10th Street, Newgate Prison, the first New York State Prison, occupied the site from 1796 to 1829, when the institution was removed to Sing Sing and the City plotted and sold the land.
.
West Street is on more recently filled land, but the procession of boats that had made the inaugural pass through the Erie Canal stopped at the ferry dock at the foot of Christopher Street, November 4, 1825, where it was met by a delegation from the city; together they proceeded to the Lower Bay, where the cask of water brought from the Great Lakes was ceremoniously emptied into the salt water.
.
In 1961 Jane Jacobs, resident in the area and author of The Death and Life of Great American Cities published that same year, headed a group that successfully stopped Mayor Robert Wagner's plan to demolish twelve blocks along West Street north of Christopher Street, including the north side of Christopher Street to Hudson Street, and an additional two blocks south of it, slated for "urban renewal".
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In the 1970s, Christopher Street became the "Main Street" of gay New York. Large numbers of gay men would promenade its length at seemingly all hours. Gay bars and stores selling leather fetish clothing and artistic decorative items flourished at that time. This changed dramatically with the loss of many gay men during the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s. The apparent center of gay life subsequently shifted north of 14th Street to Chelsea. This new area, however, was never as vibrant as the old West Village. While some gay bars remain on Christopher Street, it has largely lost its gay character and is not unlike other quiet thoroughfares in the Village.
.
Christopher Street is the site of the Stonewall Inn, the bar whose patrons started the 1969 Stonewall riots that are widely seen as the birth of the gay liberation movement. The Christopher Street Liberation Day Committee formed to commemorate the first anniversary of that event, the beginning of the international tradition of a late-June event to celebrate gay pride. The annual gay pride festivals in Berlin, Cologne, and other German cities are known as Christopher Street Day or "CSD." Christopher Street magazine, which began publication in July 1976 was, for many years, one of the most respected gay magazines in the U.S., until it folded in December 1995.
.
Near Sixth Avenue, Christopher Street intersects with a short, winding street, named by a 150-year-old coincidence, Gay Street.
.
Adjacent to Sheridan Square is Christopher Park (at the intersection of Christopher, Grove, and West 4th Streets), a 0.145 acre landmark. The park contains a bronze statue of General Philip H. Sheridan and, since 1992, has been decorated with a reproduction of the sculpture, Gay Liberation Monument, by George Segal to commemorate the gay rights traditions of the place. [The original sculpture is located at Stanford University.]
.
.
NOTE: With the exception of the title and the initial sentence, these are all found texts from Wikipedia and the great Thom Gunn. The pictures at Christopher Park are mine.
.
.
On George Segal:
Commuters by George Segal
.
What of George Segal that should be at Kent State.
.
Wikipedia on George Segal.
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On Thom Gunn:
Wikipedia on Thom Gunn.
.
On Christopher Street and Christopher Park:
Wikipedia on Christopher Street.

New York City Parks' Christopher Park page.

The Christopher Park Facebook page.

http://www.christopherpark.org/