Human Endeavor

I am fatigued.  Worn out by the human endeavor.  Struggle, labor, toil.  Tired of endeavoring with humans.  I've searched for ~Lilac, that internet sage, but have yet to find her.  I've stolen this Bukowski quote from the same source as the other.

It was true that I didn’t have much ambition, but there ought to be a place for people without ambition, I mean a better place than the one usually reserved.”
— Charles Bukowski

Friday Morning Absurd

Sometimes late at night at the end of a shoot when everyone is exhausted, you just do stupid thing.  Like this.  I have no idea why this ever happened and it should not see the xenon of an internet screen but that it is so absurd I couldn't keep it to myself.  This is not the model's fault.  She is a lovely girl.  And the horrible thing is that the more I look at it, the more I like the absurdity of it.  Sorry.  I've gone wrong.

And Q, this is how it came out of the camera.  No Photoshop here.  It is all done with lighting.

I read the following axiom on the internet this morning and liked it.  It is from that great internet philosopher ~Lilac.  I assume she is a model.  She is helping me out greatly.  I, too, have given up on the mysteries.  I'm not too worried about the quality of today's post, by the way.

There is no mystery in life, there is no mystery in People, most people are Cunts,
and life is a meaningless nightmare of suffering.

~Lilac.

The Old Masters

The old masters were right.  Sun up, sun down.  Another day and evening pass.  Somewhere along the way, there is happiness.  Then there is trouble.  There are hard hearts and tender hearts, certainty and doubt.  It means so much to us.  And then it doesn't.

How did they know?

One of my favorite professors loved baseball.  He saw all of that there, the whole story of life.  He had a heck of an imagination, I guess.

Or maybe I'm just missing something.

Late Spring Blue

Feigning, a faux-death from fatigue and sadness.  The end of something.  Summer is almost here.  The pretty girls are going home.  Driving by the college coming from a day's working at the factory then the gym, having stopped for lotion and liquor and food, the sun dipping but still warm, drunk with worry and a lack of sleep, I want to go home to the other drunkenness.  A pretty blond walks slowly somewhere under drooping oaks, turns her head as I pass.  This song plays.  A slow drive past the lake, the big open water, the long early-evening sky.  I carry paper bags into the house and set them on the counter.  The cat runs to me for attention, for food.  I am worn.  I scoop some ice from the freezer into a glass, squeeze in lime, pour Campari and then the sweet vermouth.  Some Perrier.

I write this.

Nothing

"Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels."

"What?"

"That's what Kate Moss said."

"She must not have drunk whiskey."

"She did heroin."

"I guess that's why she didn't say 'nothing feels as good as skinny does.'"

I was trying to load my Bronica with 220 film.  I'd forgotten how.  Which way did the black side go?  I hadn't shot 220 film much and not at all for about a year.  The film went in alright, but I had put it in backwards before.  I was nervous.  I didn't want to lose these images.  I set the camera down.

"I'm going to shoot with the digital Nikon," I told her.  It meant nothing to her.  It wasn't about that she was thinking.  She liked the pictures I made, I guess, but she liked the pictures other photographers made, too.  I wasn't important except that I was photographing her.

"Let's call it a night," I said.

"Really?"

"Yea.  Let's go drink whiskey."

"I don't like whiskey," she said.

"You're not trying.  Give it a chance."

"No, that's O.K.  I've got to get going anyway."

She began gathering her stuff--make up, brushes and combs and clothes, keys and cell phone, stuffing it all into one giant bag.

"You got everything?"

"I think so."

I walked her outside to her car.  It was a dark night.  She opened the car door and was lit up by the interior light.

"Let me know when you want to shoot again," she said.  "And let me know when you finish the prints."

"Ciao bella," I said as she started the engine.  "Ciao."

I was done.  I knew it.  It was no use any more.  I had no ideas.  It had all become repetitive.  What the hell, I thought.  I wanted a drink.  I'd never been skinny.  I didn't know what that felt like.  Apples and diet coke.  Bullshit.  I wanted whiskey.

"Nothing feels as good as skinny looks," I said to the dark.  Kate Moss wasn't so skinny any more.  Now what?  I wanted to ask her.  It's all downhill from here.

Pope Calls for Peace Around the World

Abbey Lee Kershaw from some Googled source

"Sure, we had to be skinny. I lived on Diet Coke and apples for two years. For the couture, we had to get up at 4 am to be sewn into the clothes and there was huge pressure to be thin. But I made a million dollars by the time I was 20, I bought a town house in Manhattan and put myself through Columbia. Does that make me a victim?”
— Abbey Lee Kershaw

You bet.  We all are, kid.

Good Friday

I came home from work late last night.  Good Friday.  That is not why I came home.  I wasn't aware of it, really.  But another Friday night, cooking at eight, drinking the first drink, thinking about another night at home alone.  It is not so bad, and that is what begins to worry me.  I think that and then there is the little panic attack that I may become a recluse--may have already become--right smack in the middle of an otherwise normal existence.

But things go along.  A message from an old friend inviting me to the beach, a call from a woman I work with alone with her children for the evening. I dial my friends in Yosemite.  It had the feeling of a life.  Dinner and a movie.

You get it.  I needn't go on.

The movie was not good.  Worse.  It was an adaptation, Nin's "The Delta of Venus."  But it was a period piece with good cinematography and wardrobe and set design, and though the acting was bad and the script jejune, it made me remember old trips to London and Paris and Barcelona and Cuzco when life was different and we could behave in a other ways.  It was wrong.  It was fun.

The film flickered by.  Desire.  The voice of the film's protagonist as she reads the lines of erotica she writes for an unseen benefactor:

"He stays inside.  He reads, he yearns, he dreams."

Tumblr-DJ

Tumblr.  Get your own site.  It is the visual equivalent of being a D.J.  You just resample photos from other sites to put them into whatever context you like.  There are some clever site names, too.  Today I went to "Imperfect Mother," "Dad, I Need $300," "Die Young and Save Yourself," etc.  And the best (or worst) thing is that every time you click on an image, you are whisked away to another Tumblr site.  You can spend hours looking at the same images in different ways.  After spending far too much time at it, you will hate yourself.  I've been doing it for days now.  My degree of self-loathing is terrific.

So make a site.  Do it now and tumble away.  And send me a link.

The big new today for me is here. If this doesn't excite you, then you probably have a life much different than mine.  Congratulations on that.

"But I Don't Want to Go Among Mad People"

(I've updated this photo since this morning)

Troubled.  Being daily has its disadvantages.  I'm looking for a rabbit hole.  Just to tumble. . . tumble. . . tumble.

As Alice says, "I can't explain myself, I'm afraid, Sir, because I'm not myself you see."

The rule is, of course,  "jam tomorrow and jam yesterday--but never jam today."

"I don't want to go among mad people," Alice objects.

It can't be helped explains the Cheshire Cat.

 "We're all mad here."

When Times Are Tough. . . .

I've lost my mind, I'm certain.  I've just spent the last hour deconstructing CNN's online news illustrating with two articles.  And then I thought about it and got scared.  Certainly there is something wrong with me.  Not enough sleep, surely, and an overabundance of pressures at the factory and too much stress in general. The weather is turning hot and I can't figure out where my money has gone.  I am paralyzed and other than to go to work I do not leave the house.  So it is probably only natural that the world appears less and less appealing.

I'll probably show you the piece tomorrow.

Some of you might have noticed that I've been fooling around (immorally) with other photographers' images.  I have been experimenting.  Today, lessons learned (which ones?), I turn my not-too-considerable talent to one of my own.  Maybe Italian Vogue will notice.

CNN is apparently writing stories for Adult and Basic Education classes now.  Not really.  Typically there are too many sentence and grammar problems in the day's offerings.    They must be using adjunct editors for their online news.  Most of their stories are fluff pieces now.  Maybe not most.  Close.  They are competing with People Magazine, I'd guess.  But I'm oversensitive to it now that I can't read the New York Times online for free the way I have for the past few years now, so my take on it may be exaggerated.  Still, I'm not exaggerating this (though I've edited a bit):

Popular rapper Snoop Dogg is the front man endorsing Blast who -- according to a distributor marketing video -- "has the ability to take Colt 45 brands to a whole new level."

"Colt 45 makers are raising the alcohol level from the already high 6% to the even higher 12%, and enticing young people with hip hop themes and lollipop flavors," said Paul Porter of Industry Ears, a think tank that promotes justice in the media.

Porter said the company is "expanding its market with our children."

Blast joins the ranks of some high octane drinks such as Four Loko, Joose and Tilt that came under fire late last year for advertising to underage consumers.

"It's disappointing to see him and the utilization of hip hop music to promote an alcoholic beverage that is so dangerous to youth today," said Jorge Castillo, Advocacy and Outreach manager at Marin Institute.

Blast is gaining momentum.

"Last weekend I sold about 12 cans; they're becoming really popular," said Gurcharn Singh, who owns a deli near New York University campus.

Singh recalled a few cases where underage youth tried to buy the alcoholic beverage.

"Blast is only meant to be consumed by those above legal drinking age," Jon Sayer, chief marketing officer of Pabst Brewing Co., said in a statement.

"As with all Pabst products, our marketing efforts for Blast are focused on conveying the message of drinking responsibly. To that end, the alcohol content of Blast is clearly marked on its packaging."

Students around NYU say the drink's attractive design and low price could potentially be dangerous for a young consumer.

"It's bigger than a normal can size, people don't take that into account when they're drinking it," said student Ashima Talwar.

Student Sadik Uddin said it does not look like an alcoholic drink.

"They dressed it up to look like a soda drink. I think the design is pretty cool. I would probably assume it's a sports drink and gone for it," the 21-year-old said.

I'm shocked that Snoop would be involved in something like this.  I haven't found out if the beverage company is using "Blast" by Snoop as their ad song, but here it is if you are interested.  Perhaps, in Jorge Castillo's defense, the Advocacy and Outreach manager had never heard of Snoop before.  I'm sure he is effective in his position, though.  I just did a quick Google search on the Marin Institute and found that they are an Alcohol Industry Watchdog.  Here is their profile of Mr. Castillo:

Jorge Castillo joined Marin Institute in December 2007. Before coming to MI, Castillo worked as a family reunification case-manager in South Central Los Angeles and as a substance abuse counselor for Newcomer Spanish speaking teenagers and young adults in the Mission District of San Francisco. He has also advocated and produced community-based media. Castillo is currently a member of the County of Marin Board of Supervisors Advisory Board on Alcohol and Other Drug Problems.

Here is the ad for Blast that the Marin Institute is running on YouTube.  And from their webpage:

Mission

The Marin Institute fights to protect the public from the impact of the alcohol industry’s negative practices. We monitor and expose the alcohol industry’s harmful actions related to products, promotions and social influence, and support communities in their efforts to reject these damaging activities.

Noble, no doubt.  

Style as Substance

I found this photo (of sorts) while surfing the internet today.  It is Paolo Roversi, the great fashion photographer.  That is what he is, too, nothing more nor less.  I mean both great and a fashion photographer.  He is fortunate in that he gets paid a lot of money to make pictures.  It must be something of a curse, too, but I am in no position to opine on that.  Like Sarah Moon, he makes photos of women in dresses for the most part.  A billion photographers do that.  But his photographs arrest your attention in ways that only he and Moon's do.  They are Modernists, I believe, in their attention to style.  They, like the best modern writers, have wedded style and content.  The images perform the underlying theory.

I like style more than most.  In writing, I prefer phrases to paragraphs.  Paragraphs are merely support.  On the surface of things, Moon and Roversi have silly subjects.  Women and dresses.  But that is not it.  If you can't see beyond that, I can't help you.  It is silly.  It is frivolous.  It is profound.

I haven't shaken the funk.  I've not made a picture in over a month.  I struggle.  Graceless.

(photo by Paolo Roversi)

The Full Moon Cometh

Another full moon tonight, the Pink Moon.  The month has flown.  I still have a red ant bite on my toe that has not completely healed that I got making pictures of the full moon by the lake in my flip-flops last month.  Vicious thing.

I'll work on hope tonight.  Like in "The Iceman Cometh."

"To hell with the truth! As the history of the world proves, the truth has no bearing on anything. It's irrelevant and immaterial, as the lawyers say. The lie of a pipe dream is what gives life to the whole misbegotten mad lot of us, drunk or sober."
(Eugene O'Neil, "The Iceman Cometh")

Here and There

(photo by Sarah Moon)

"What do you expect," she asked?

"What do you mean?"

"The way you are.  You think things will turn out differently?  It's all interrelated."

"What do you mean?"

"You can't stand outside and inside at the same time is what I mean.  You want to be this and that, here and there, but you can't."

"I thought you could.  Isn't that what the koans were about?"

"Jesus.  You can't live your life like a fucking koan.  What are you, five?"

He sat there looking out to the crowd of people passing by.  People were with families, with boyfriends and girlfriends.  They were going to see a movie or going to dinner.  He looked serene but profoundly unhappy.  She looked irritated.  They weren't enjoying their dinner now.  I felt sorry for them.  Really.  I think I'd been through all that before and before.  I poured more sake trying to relax the tension I felt. I mean, it wasn't me for once.  Their conversation was both fascinating and stupid at the same time.  I wanted to ask them what they were really talking about.  They were talking around it instead of about it.  They would get to that later.  They were still in the philosophical throes of the conflict.  He had done something.  Particularly.  More than once.  He seemed to be meditating now looking outwardly and inwardly, I guess, being here and there, this and that.

I drank the last of the sake and got up to leave them to their long unhappiness.  For once, I could get up and walk away from it.  In fifteen or twenty steps, I'd begin to feel better.  Maybe I'd get some ice cream.  Something.

"Goodbye," called the waitress.  "Thank you."

I turned and waved in the last of the evening's light.

Some Way to Live

Week done, I went for sushi, and even though I have said I would not go back to the old place, it was a nice evening and thinking of sitting on the veranda and drinking sake and watching the world was just too overwhelming.  Forget that I have quit drinking.  That resolution "had all too short a date."  Thursday night, I lost my mind and ate pizza and drank beer then Campari then whiskey and finished off a box of beautiful chocolate European wafers.

Walking from my car to the restaurant, I was behind a beautiful young couple who practically danced across the parking lot.  At least she did.  She wore the sheerest green mini-dress that was god's way of letting her walk naked with her clothes on.  I watched her from behind, tall, long-legged, tan. I wondered what she looked like from the front.  I already didn't care much for him who was tall and slender, too, with a regal stride, an awful thing in a boy.  I followed them all the way to the restaurant which had been their destination all along or, as I believed, I had willed them there.  But I lost sight of them when they entered the front door.  There were only two outside tables left, so I looked at the waitress and asked if I could take one and of course I could not needing to speak with the hostess for I am me and am allowed such things, and in mere seconds I had given her my order as others around me waited, menus in hand.  A group of children sat, sort of, at the table in front of me.  They were playing a game on an iPad, the new best babysitter. The two sets of parents were at another table.

My sake came right away to the obvious chagrin of a couple holding menus apparently for some time.  As I poured the first cup, the young couple followed the hostess outside.  They got the only table left, the one next to me.

The hostess is from Vietnam and she likes that I ask about her life.  She stayed and we chatted for some time, she asking yet again if I am going to Vietnam and me saying yes but not knowing when, she telling me how strange and beautiful it will be for me, urging me to go.  She is a beautiful woman, married with no children.  I ask her when as if I were a nagging mother, and she tells me as soon as. . . .  She works ten hours a day in her mother-in-law's dry cleaning business and must take care of the in-laws and her husband, cooking every meal and cleaning the house.  It is not right, she says, but it is the traditional way.  Just now, she said, it is prom season, so they are working overtime at the dry cleaners.  "Look at my eyes," she said.  "I look so tired."  Someone should love her more, I tell myself for the thousandth time thinking of how I've never had anyone cook or clean for me except for my mother when I was young.

When she leaves, I look over at the young couple sitting next to me.  I was right about the boy.  He is a sonofabitch, good looking with fuck-you horn-rimmed glasses.  She, on the other hand, is close to everything.  Not really, maybe, but she has a charm about her and pleasant looks and a vivacity that makes me want to join their conversation.  He just can't seem to hold up his end of it, unequal to her intellect in every way, and I want to give her things.  Yes, I think, I am a very loving and giving person this evening.  I chuckle to myself knowing what the evening holds in store.

The little girl, about nine, at the table in front of me, gives me the eye.  She's a little flirt, I think.  She does not look at all like any of the adults at the other table, with the thick dark hair and full lips of a gypsy.  Then I notice what she is doing.  She has an iPhone and is secretly taking pictures of me.  She probably works for the government, I think, or the corporation.  They have fallen to this, using young girls to spy on people.  It is perfect, of course.  She will catch me in some immoral thought.  It will be obvious from the picture.

My food arrives before the young couple have even gotten their menus.  A waitress comes to take the drink orders from the irritated couple who have been holding their menus so long.  They are the sort you would not notice but for their tight-lipped, squinty-eyed discontent.  They have suffered a lifetime of this surely.  They were never like the couple sitting to my right, carefree and entitled.  Somehow, I think, I must do something to provoke that boy.  He will say something smug and I will smash him.  The little girl takes another picture of me, I know, because a light shines from the back of the phone into my eyes. I look at the little devil, but she only stares at the iPhone with an impish grin.  The other kids pay no attention.

The beautiful girl in the wonderful green dress is smart.  Her conversation makes me nervous.

"And I told daddy, 'You can't hate Ghandi.' I mean, how can you hate Ghandi?"  I picture her father, an older version of the boy who sits with her, a giant of some horrendous industry.  When she talks, she laughs.  She has the brightest white teeth I've ever seen.  She calls him darling.  Jesus.  I will have to hit him, I think.  He is a soccer player of some sort.  He talks about it in boring detail.

"I scored a goal in that game," he says doltishly.

"Oh, really?"

"Yes," he says in an almost pleading tone, "you were there.  Remember?"

"I dont' think I was watching."

My love for her intensifies.  They are talking about one of his friends when she raises her chin and laughs out loud.

"Him?  His testicles are bigger than his brains, aren't they?  I mean, he's too aggressive."

I give up thinking about hitting the boy.  That would not be the way to win her.

I am finished eating and drinking as the other patrons begin to get their food.  I want to stay and watch and listen, but I am taking up a table and others are waiting.  Besides, I have to get on with my night.  I must get home and have some whiskey and re-watch the last few episodes from season one of "Mad Men."  The cat is waiting.

Then. . . This

I almost fell into the trap again.  Beat at the end of a work day, I was surfing internet sites and stumbled upon this.  What a treat.  A tremendous collection of photographers and photographs.  I took my time and clicked through marveling that someone had taken the time.  And then, there among the Arbus's and Franks', the Horvat's and the Penn's, among them all. . . there was a photo that arrested me.  I knew that one, I thought.  It was mine.

Jesus Christ, I thought, I am among the greats, included with the masters.  And indeed it felt as if I should be.  There were no petty artists included in this group.  Nope.  Someone had recognized me, not as a contemporary marvel, but as a classic.  It felt awfully good for awhile.

Then. . . I remembered.  What was it, anyway?  A website.  Who put it together?  Anonime.  This after what I had written here yesterday.  Nope, I had not forgotten yet.

Still, I won't kid you, it was fun for a moment.  And you must look at the site if you care about photographic images.  I mean, man, it is all there.  Including me.

Hopes and Expectations

(photo by Sarah Moon)

Like most people, I seem to be on a losing streak right now.  The more I think about it, though, this is the result of some Hopes and Expectations.  Perhaps you have suffered from that as well.  It is a matter of wanting.  Desire and Frustration.  How could I forget that?  A little desire, a little success, a greater desire, and then the expectation that it will somehow be fulfilled.  I think that's the pattern.  And then the script is written.  Bits and bites in the foreground, randomness behind.  Suddenly you are defining success in ways you had previously rejected.  Perhaps, you think, you should listen more to the accumulated wisdom.  Other people seem to do well with it.  But we are not like Other People, are we?  And there's the beginning of the Big Lie we tell ourselves.  I'm speaking to a specialized audience here, not the crowd of dolts we deride.  Nope, by Jesus, we are Special.  We have Special Talents.  And the Biggest Danger is that they get recognized or even (our holy savior) rewarded.  A little.  Not like the asses who REALLY succeed, but enough to make us think we are the next best thing.  At least with the neighbor's daughter or some uptown bar for hip locals.  Any little goddamned thing.

When do I quit forgetting that?  How old do you have to get to quit forgetting that?

Otherwise, there is no failing at all.

Something Less than Polemic

I will start shooting again soon.  I've put all the Polaroid stuff behind me now and am trying to find a new way.  For now, I think I will shoot digitally.  It is the complete opposite of what I've been doing and I like the fine lines and colors as an antidote to the other.  Plus, I have spent God's own money on large format cameras and lenses and technicians to adapt them and make them work, so I can't do that just yet.  That is always the way, no?  Once you get what you wanted. . . you must put it aside.  For awhile.  The time will come when I will be mad to work that way and there it will be just waiting for me.  Who knows?  I don't, certainly.

Or cares?  It doesn't matter.  It is what we do to fill the time between then and what comes.  Don't kid yourselves that I don't know how little any of this or anything else matters.  I'm just trying to decorate the place and have a bit of fun in the meantime.

There's a lie in that, too.  It is impossible not to no matter what you say.  I read a review of a new book on Information Theory.  It is called "Information," I think, and was written by a physicist (again, I think) who postulates that all "knowledge" is just "information," zeros and ones, ons and offs.  Everything we know, he says, is either yes or no, just the way the computers work.  It is the way genes work.  Cultural theories propose the meme.

But I am hoping that poetry and art can confute some of that.  I like theory mostly because there is always another theory that comes along to change what came before.  And it makes me feel better that whether the theorist realizes it or not, it is just what we do between then and what is to come.

Perennial Adolescence

Driving home in the suddenly warm evening last night, having worked just a little bit on a new encaustic piece in the studio, I turned on NPR and heard a review of the Smithereens new album, "Smithereens 2011."  In no rush, with nothing to do and no one to see, I sat in the car after I got home and listened to the end of the review.  And it ended up with something I adored:

"To say that The Smithereens are stuck in a perennial adolescence is, in a twisted way, to pay them the compliment they seek."

Here is the transcript of the entire piece, or you can go to PBS and listen to it all here.


The Smithereens have released their first album of new material in 12 years. The collection is called "Smithereens 2011," and was produced by Don Dixon, who produced REM's earliest albums, as well as some of The Smithereens first records.

Rock critic Ken Tucker has a review.

(Soundbite of song, "As Long as You are Near Me")

THE SMITHEREENS (Rock Band): (Singing) (Vocalizing)

As long as you are near me, I can see things clearly. Let me speak sincerely. All my fears are gone. As long as you are near me, I will have the strength to carry on.

KEN TUCKER: In the world of The Smithereens, women tend to be girls, who tend to be either the saviors or the destroyers of the singer's closed-in universe. With a lesser band of middle-aged American men deploying guitar chords and harmonies that evoke 1960s British Invasion pop, this could come off as stunted, even laughable. With The Smithereens, however, it's an achievement and a musical conservatism rendered joyously.

(Soundbite of song, "A World of Our Own")

THE SMITHEREENS: (Singing) When the world just keeps on bringing you down, you can come by me, and I'll be around. I will try my best to never leave you alone.

When we're here inside with nothing to do, baby, I feel fine just being with you. I will tell them all to leave, just leave us alone. You and I will live inside a world of our own. Just alone...

TUCKER: We live in a world of our own, assert The Smithereens on that song. Lead singer Pat DiNizio is addressing his observations to a woman he's obsessed with - or, perhaps I should say, a woman engaged with DiNizio in a mutual obsession.

That's what a lot of Smithereen lyrics are about: two people who create a world for themselves against all odds, with everyone around them trying to divide them, keep them apart. Everything in Smithereen world is like a film noir shot in psychedelic colors. In "Keep on Running," the story plays out like a teen drama such as "Rebel Without a Cause." They say I'm a fool and I'm wrong for you, the band harmonizes as one. We will leave this town, and together we'll roam.

(Soundbite of song, "Keep on Running")

THE SMITHEREENS: (Singing) They say I'm a fool, and who knows(ph) just for you. But we know they're wrong and that our love is true. Please believe in me. I'll believe in me, too. And our love will last after all (unintelligible).

No, don't listen to the things they say. Just take my hand, and we'll keep on running. No more suffering, time to walk away. You just take my hand. We'll just keep on running.

Every move I make...

TUCKER: The soundtrack to these baby-let's-blow-this-joint scenarios is a thundering mass of guitars and drums that seem powered by the Marshall amplifiers that gave records by The Who and Jimi Hendrix their thick reverberation. Combine that with harmonies and melodies that cross The Beatles with The Byrds, and you know why The Smithereens can hit a sweet spot among listeners for whom the late '60s and early '70s was a summit point for pop-rock. The Smithereens have traded in nostalgia, recording, for example, an album reproducing The Who's rock opera "Tommy" and "Meet the Smithereens," which covered the entire "Meet the Beatles" album.

But this New Jersey band has a talent for creating fresh variations that prevent dust or mist from clouding their music. "Smithereens 2011" reaches a peak with the song that opens the album, the sour-tempered yet utterly transporting "Sorry."

(Soundbite of song, "Sorry")

THE SMITHEREENS: (Singing) Things get better when the wind(ph) comes by, 'cause every time I'm with you, girl, you break my heart, 'cause you don't look at me the same as me. You say stay, and I say no. You make me want to (unintelligible) and you say hello, 'cause you and I will always disagree.

I would stand up. I will fall. Please don't pray for me to go. I would like to say I'm sorry, but I won't.

TUCKER: I would like to say I'm sorry, but I won't goes the refrain of "Sorry." It's one of their sullen, why-did-you-do-me-wrong songs. To say that The Smithereens are stuck in a perennial adolescence is, in a twisted way, to pay them the compliment they seek.

The band prefers to keep things not simple, but narrow. Their tunnel-vision romanticism is, at its best, as obsessive and neurotically rich as a David Lynch film. That The Smithereens has managed to maintain this obsession since the mid-1980s until now without repeating themselves may keep it entrenched in cult status. But for those of us in the cult, it's a hypnotic way to live.

Critics

(Sarah Moon)

I've been reading an interview with Sarah Moon.  Even she is hurt and made uncertain by her critics.  I think they are why she makes so few images now.  It is easy to say simply that people are manipulative and always seeking to make the world in their own image, some much more aggressively than others.  It is easy to fight back--for others; but for your own work--well, that's another thing.  

Sarah Moon : I've always felt that photography provides an opportunity for staging, for telling a story through images. What I aim at, is an image with a minimum of information and markers, that has no reference to a given time or place - but that nevertheless speaks to me, that evokes something which happened just before or may happen just after. I know that many people question this way of photographing, but why should there be only one sort of photography? I want to create images with elements of my choosing, narrative or evocative, beyond the document about that particular woman wearing that dress. I give myself a literary frame, I tell a story. It's the only springboard I have found for taking a leap. On the other hand, I am interested in commercial photography because it provides me with a purpose. The agreement between client and photographer seems perfectly fair to me. They give me the opportunity to make images, on condition that I show their product in a favorable light. I get paid for doing it and am given the means to do it well. This submits me to a discipline, which is something I need, because for me it's easier to do things when I find myself obliged to do them. To do them just for my pleasure would seem irrelevant.

Download as MP3

No, No, No, No, No

The cat is giving me the cold shoulder this morning.  I did not get up until very late .  I didn't know I could sleep like this any longer, but last night I stayed out late, came home drunk, and fell into bed. I feel it today.  I felt it last night.  It started with a simple and simply outrageously expensive dinner, but that was fine.  Then my buddy wanted to go for a drink, then another, and I followed him from bar to bar looking for something that I've never found in a bar.  I don't like bars.  A clean and quiet cafe, now that's a different thing.  There is no dignity standing before a bar. . . .

This morning I have determined to quit drinking, of course, and to live outside.  That is what I've determined sitting at my computer looking at the world through windows as I begin the second pot of coffee.  I don't want to see anyone.  I saw everyone last night.  They were cool, hip, square, beat, handsome, homely, lost, found. . . .  If I can gain their trust, though, I'd love to tell their stories.  I just don't want to sit at a bar with no purpose.

Tonight will be dinner with my mother.  She is going to Hawaii in a couple weeks.  She and the girls.  What a hoot.  It makes me want to go to Miami Beach and check into the Fontainebleau.

Introductory Offer

(photo by Sarah Moon)

I may switch my morning reading from the New York Times to the Washington Post since the former is now charging for online subscriptions.  I have a friend who seems to prefer the Post.  There is also the Herald Tribune.  I hate giving up on the Times because I love New York, but times being what they are, as they say. . . .  It is not that I begrudge the paper some money.  I may relent.  The introductory offer is reasonable, but it is just that.  That means they are shilling and scamming.  And there's the rub.

There seems little advantage in knowing what is going on anymore anyway.

Endlessly

(photo by Sarah Moon)

I will make this a Sarah Moon website until I begin to make my own pictures again.  I am depressed and can do little but look at pictures and plan, dream. . . scheme.  I want to make photos again, but there is too much against it just now.  I have hundreds if not thousands of my own Polaroids from the project, but I fear to continue posting them over and over again.  Having worked so hard on them, I am as the orchard owner in Frost's "After Apple Picking," weary of the harvest I myself have so desired.  I have come to live repetitively, too sedentary and too much alone.  I will need to break from this lethargy before anything else can happen.  Did I mention fearful?  Yes, there is that, too.  And most of all, I fear plying my own paltry talents only to disappoint myself yet again.  I will attempt these Moon photographs because I love them and she seems not to be making them any more.

The weeks wear on endlessly, ceaselessly, running through me, more ravaging than they have been before.  I put up a weary defense, but I know the fruits of living defensively, always on your heels.  I must lean forward and step on the balls of my feet once again, dig in deep and drive.

I wish I could say this is only a time of contemplation and respite.  As always, though, who knows what a weekend might bring.

Truth and Fancy

My friend is beginning to feel confined by life.  The Walls of Time close in.  When it begins to happen, you don't realize it.  It is new.  At first.  But you know that the funds are running out, that there are more withdrawals than deposits.  And you wonder.  At first you didn't do what they said to do, then you did.  Job, marriage, the dream of children and a house.  Whether it works out or doesn't, at some point you realize you are not in control.  Voices of criticism begin to cut you deep.  What happened?  And you begin to dislike people who want to tell the truth.

The Victorians knew better than to do that.  Masks and veils.  It is the raw nakedness of things that bothers us most.  Truth and Fancy.

Two: That Is What I Think

(photo by Sarah Moon)

"It’s well established that, looked at over the long haul, certain activities and events do increase someone’s risk of experiencing a heart attack. Christmas, for instance, has been identified as a heart attack trigger, as have overeating, waking in the early morning, Mondays, job strain, air pollution, using cocaine and living through an earthquake" (New York Times)

Jesus Christ, I've all of these factors!  Let's add another.

I have posted little that is my own lately.  But I've been thinking about the "new art" that must emerge.  Wondering.  Predicting.  It will definitely fall into two camps, two reactions, two movements, that are opposed to one another in form and tone, mood and atmosphere.  Two.  That is what I think.  

Retreat

(photo by Sarah Moon)

There must be a new art to deal with the world now.  I don't know what it is, but it will develop.  There is a seismic shift literally and figuratively and we can't keep doing what we've been doing.  As my friend Q says, we have been enslaved by Policies and Procedures.  Art now will either confront it or hide from it.  Both, of course.  Today, I choose retreat.

Tokyo (CNN) -- Japanese utility and government authorities suffered fresh setbacks Tuesday with the detection of radiation in a fish and news that water gushing from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant into the Pacific had radiation levels more than millions of times above the regulatory limit.

"To put this in perspective, the Pacific Ocean holds about 300 trillion swimming pools full of water, and they are going to release about five swimming pools full," said Timothy Jorgensen, chair of the radiation safety committee at Georgetown University Medical Center. "So hopefully the churning of the ocean and the currents will quickly disperse this so that it gets to very dilute concentrations relatively quickly"

Michael Friedlander, a former senior U.S. nuclear engineer, claimed late Monday that authorities will continue to have problems related to excess, radioactive water -- and the need to dump some of it -- as long as they are injecting huge amounts of water, in order to prevent fuel rods from overheating in reactors' cores and spent fuel pools.

"This is not a one-off deal," Friedlander said of dumping tons of radioactive water into the ocean. "This issue of water and water management is going to plague them until they can get (fully operating) long-term core cooling."

My Soundtrack for Retreat

Nonpareil

(photo by Sarah Moon)

Is there anything more melancholy than a late Sunday afternoon of a perfectly formed weekend?  When the sky is blue and the air is clear and and seems a most faultless lover?  When sidewalk tables are filled with laughter and beauty?  When with every breath you feel most ardently that deep down thing?  No, nothing more sad nor mournful than knowing that is over.  You must face what was left before.

If only the weather, I had--the tone and mood and atmosphere and the things that lie within my heart and nerves--bones, brain, and tendons.  Nonpareil.  Sometimes enough.

Deep by Deep

(photo by John Olav Riise)

I'm loosing the big 44" Epson printer that another artist has been storing at my studio.  It will be gone next week.  I have become addicted to printing large, so I don't know what I will do.  I can buy one for $6,000. I can maybe get a used one for half that price.  Or I can go small.  I wasn't prepared for this, but I'm never prepared for anything, really.  Who is?

I feel abandoned.

I'm sick this morning and going back to bed.  Blow after blow.  Sometimes I think life is like a bad parent who comes home drunk and beats on you.  It is occasional and you believe that he will quit, that each time will be the last.  But as soon as he sees you getting too happy. . . .

There are beautiful days, too.  At least I remember some that were.  I'll go back to bed and dream.

all by all and deep by deep, 
and more by more, they dream their sleep


(from "anyone lived in a pretty how town" by e.e. cummings)

Now More Than Never

Jesus, I am in need some distraction.  I am facing an existential hell which, as you know, is always our own creation.  Right now, I don't wish to make the important decisions and am really not capable of it.  Forty-eight hours, I say.

And then I open the N.Y. Times and read this:

Poetry and beer. Maira Kalman and Gypsy rhythms. There’s nothing the Miser likes better than mixing it up.

The Brooklyn Historical Society is going to present  "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Black Girl."  What is Wallace Stevens doing in his grave?  (O.K.--nothing, of course).

Next I read the review of David Foster Wallace's "new" posthumous book which makes me wish to buy it.  If I can find it in a bookstore here in my own hometown, I will be lucky.  I searched unsuccessfully for months to find "Infinite Jest."  I confess that I still haven't read it.

His posthumous unfinished novel, “The Pale King” — which is set largely in an I.R.S. office in the Midwest — depicts an America so plagued by tedium, monotony and meaningless bureaucratic rules and regulations that its citizens are in danger of dying of boredom. . . . Perhaps, he writes, “dullness is associated with psychic pain because something that’s dull or opaque fails to provide enough stimulation to distract people from some other, deeper type of pain that is always there,” namely the existential knowledge “that we are tiny and at the mercy of large forces and that time is always passing and that every day we’ve lost one more day that will never come back.”

I'm changing my mind a bit, at least for the weekend.  All hells are not of our own making.  Other people can make them for us.  I am eschewing the burdens of responsibility for a few days.  I hope.  If I can find some distraction.

My friend Q lives in Manhattan.  I think of all the distractions there.  Manhattan presents the other problem, I guess, of too much distraction.  I need that for awhile.

Maybe I need to quit reading the Times.  Since their internet site will soon no longer be free, I may.  But perhaps it will be the better thing.  They lead me into traps I sometimes cannot escape.  "Skins."  After reading their provocative review of the show, I watched it.  All of it.  I got hooked like a ten year old watching the Disney Chanel.  I am despicable and ashamed.  It was fun.   

The kids don't read much on that show.  There are no references to Wallace (either one).  But there are plenty of distractions.  Still, none of them are happy.  Hmm.

I need a concluding sentence, something witty, some metaphor that ties this disjointed entry together in some organic/artificial way.  I am not clever enough for that this morning, it seems.  I didn't really write this.  It has been pieced together from notes by a third party editor who has read my other writings.  Consider it notes for something.  Incomplete.

Although “The Pale King” was pieced together by Wallace’s editor Michael Pietsch from pages and notes that the author left behind when he committed suicide in 2008, it feels less like an incomplete manuscript than a rough-edged digest of the themes, preoccupations and narrative techniques that have distinguished his work from the beginning. After all, Wallace always disdained closure, and this volume showcases his embrace of discontinuity. . . .