Tosh Berman's Blog, page 204

December 10, 2014

December 10, 2014

   I live on Waverly Drive, and there is a location on the corner of my street and at Glendale Bouvelard that's a total mystery to me.  But due to its mystery, I find myself attached to this location.  I often wander around my life without asking questions.  I find things by chance, and I feel the nature of chance-taking is what leads me to another place.  Even now, when I reach the location, I try to imagine what was there, which is often not based on fact.  Or is it?



The location is on the corner of Waverly Drive and Glendale Bouvelard.  It is now a building condo complex, but for years it was a vacant property.  I never knew who owned it, but there were the remains of a staircase leading towards the lot, and then nothing.  At first I thought there may have been a mansion built on this property, but many years later I discovered it was once an osteopathic hospital called Monte Sano.  It was built 1931 and it closed during the 1970s.   When you research the hospital on the internet, there is so very little information about the hospital and the location.  One never gets a narration, but just snips of the story - that is a great deal like memory itself.  There seems to be births that took place in this hospital, and I have read that it was a location that un-wed mothers would go to, to have their child delivered to this world.  Also there was also a very vague report that an African-American serial killer by the name of Robert Nixon, threw a brick at either a nurse or a fellow patient at the hospital sometime in the 1930s.  I read on a blog “Red Car Property” that Monte Sano was California’s first osteopathic hospital, and was founded by Dr. Brigham.  He had a son, Dr. Creighton Brigham, who was also a doctor at the premise.  According to a resident whose family lived on Waverly Drive, claims that the Doctor and his family had a home on Waverly Drive; that was the first house built on that street.  He remembers a huge cage unit on their property that was concrete and wire.  His initial impression was that it was an aviary “although it always seemed large for that. ”



It also appears that at one time, there was a red-car station called “Monte Sano” but there are no longer any traces of either the station or the sign.   I often walk by this property, and I always think about what was there, and why is such a structure, a medium sized hospital, and yet there is no real record of it existing - except from people’s memories and the few photographs that are found on the Internet.   What is intriguing is that young people used to go into the deserted building, hoping to find the morgue.  Perhaps they did find it, God knows that there must have been a lot of deaths at this location.  Also there is not any record of why the building was torn down, and what happened to the hospital itself?   Some may feel that this location is haunted with ghosts who went to the hospital and not make it back alive.  For me, the ghost is not the people, but the building itself.



I had a vision one night, while I walked by the empty lot, and I imagined that there was the building - and at the time, I thought to myself, “that’s funny, I never noticed that structure before.” When I took another walk, about a week later, the property was vacant again.  At the time, it was late at night, and was very dark. Perhaps I mistaken the structure for some of the trees that were on the lot at the time.  Although I clearly have a memory of an entrance way, and maybe even a large window.  As I have mentioned before in another blog, I find buildings more profound than humans.  Even though humans build the structures, it is what is left on this world - often way past a human’s life span.  So it always seems cruel to me, to destroy a building because it is not being utilized or nature taking over the structure.   Even though the new condos are built on that property, when I go in the middle of the night, I see not the condos, but the original building.   I know it is not actually there, but for whatever reasons, that is what I see.

December 9, 2014

December 9, 2014

60.  Why?  There is no reason why I should have reached 60.  Yet, technically I’m not a senior citizen.  Yet.   Most experts say that the age 65 is when you become a senior citizen.  Sadly I can’t officially get a discount at a movie theater nor one for a public bus pass - but at both times, the middle-aged person asked me if I’m asking for a senior citizen’s discount or pass.  I could lie and tell them that I’m 65, but the truth is I’m 60.   This is exactly how I felt when I was 14 or 15 and wanted to get a license to drive. I had the talents of a driver, but I couldn’t obtain a license due to my age.  So once again, like a teenager, I’m waiting till I reach a certain number (65) before I cash in for the discounts and etc.



Emotionally and intellectually, I feel exactly the same as when I was 35.   Basically there is no real difference between the ages of 35 and 60.  The one thing I do notice when I’m 60 is that people around you begin to die off.  Famous people, as well as friends.  And especially friends of your parents or other older family members.   35 strikes me as the age when you’re an adult.  Not legally, that happens when you’re either 18 or 21.  But I find most people in their 20s are still trying to figure out what to be done in their life.   Basically, the 20s is very much like being a teenager, but you have the ability to move out of your family home (for some) or make financial decisions.  Otherwise you’re very much still a teenager.   Some people get married in their 20s, but if they asked me for advice I would tell them to wait till they are in their 30s.   Unless they have grown up in a certain culture, I think getting married in their 20s is OK, but for most Americans who live in America today, I would strongly suggest holding off on marriage and major decisions on career moves.  It is not till you’re 35, when life becomes much clearer than when you’re a teenager or in your 20s.



The worst fear of being in your 60s, is the fact that one’s looks starts to fade or change, and you will of course be facing death - either as a subject matter or someone close to you will eventually die.   That in three words: Is. A. Bummer.   As for me, I like to be attractive to the opposite sex as much as possible.  When I was young, I was quite handsome, but now, staring at the mirror I realized age has changed me.  The worst is the stomach area got bigger, and that is a very fragile emotional point for me.  I used to be so skinny or slim, but now, I look very much like a 60 year-old man, who doesn’t exercise on a regular basis.  Me, doing exercises, would just remind me that I’m 60 and that is kind of depressing.  Women don’t look at me like they used to - especially women in their 20s or 30s.   That is quite painful.  The only thing I have in my favor is charm, but that is like fine wine in a bottle that is placed in the garage or wine cellar.  It becomes an object to admire, but no one wishes to taste its flavor.



As I got older two artists that I adore much more as a “senior citizen” is the filmmaker John Cassavetes and the composer Pierre Henry.   I feel that they make art for older people.  I never got Musique concréte as a raving youth, but now, that I’m an adult, I appreciate the aesthetics of sound that is around me.  For instance as I write in my wife’s studio, I can hear the morning traffic, which has a consistent rhythm that is very suitable for writing.   The one surprise is to hear the sound of car crashes on the No. 5 freeway (which is directly behind our house).   But normally it is just one long purr - it’s fantastic.  Some of Pierre Henry’s work reminds me of the beauty of hearing traffic out of one’s window.  As for Cassavaetes, it is middle-age angst.  I can identify with that!  “Opening Night” is the film that I like the best from all his other films. I think it’s a masterpiece, with a brilliant performance from Gina Rowlands.   An aging actress dealing with a theater role that in turns makes her think of aging, relationships changing, and the need for love.  Or to give love.   Although it has a strong point-of-view from a female’s perspective on the subject matter of aging, I too can identify with her, as well as with the other cast members in that film.



At this point, I’m still too young at 60, to really understand the full meaning of aging.  I’m hoping that when I reach 65, and receive the official discounts one deserves for a ‘long’ life, I will finally understand what it means to be an old person.  Till then, it’s a paradise of my own making.

December 8, 2014

December 8, 2014

I had a hard time sleeping last night.  “I woke up at 4 A.M. and start sneezing, sometimes for five hours.  I tried to find what sort of allergy I had but finally came to the conclusion that it must be an allergy to consciousness.” Not only that, but I keep hearing noises around the house.   I was deeply concerned about a noise coming from my bed last night, and I realized it was my stomach digesting the vegetarian sausage I had before I went to bed.  Which lead me to thoughts about why I ate such a thing before going to sleep.  It made me so angry, because I wasn’t really hungry at the time.  Why do I eat when I’m not hungry?  I remember many years ago, when I was having sex with a girl that I greatly desired in school, I started to think about having pasta.   That whole day was thinking of nothing but getting this girl in bed with me, and yet, when the moment arrives, I started to crave penne.   When I climaxed inside her, I thought of tomato sauce being spread all over the pasta.   That happened many years ago, and to this day I still think of it - but mostly when I’m in bed trying to fall asleep.



I got up in a rather bad mood and decided to start writing my daily post for the day.  Since John Lennon was killed on this date, I considered it would be appropriate to write a memorial of some sort.  Lennon was very much a figure of my generation, specifically my youth.   I loved him.   What I found the most disturbing about his death is that I was shocked when it happened, but also quite disturbed that I didn’t like the album he released that year.  For me, the Plastic Ono Band album was his masterpiece.  Also the singles he released before that specific album were magnificant.  “Imagine” I think is pretty dull and forever what reason, his music became a sort of wallpaper in my life.  After that, he disappeared in the city that one can disappear like Fantomas.  He avoided the spotlight for five years, not even a photograph of him was made available in the media, and then all of a sudden he came back.  My excitement to hear a new Solo Beatle song or album was pretty great.  Yet, when I heard it, it sounded dated, and someone just coasting on their talent.  I knew there must be a great album within him, and it will be the next one.  Then his death took place which robbed me the “in theory” the perfect Lennon album.   Since then, my life became an illusion of sorts.  Soon after December 8, 1980, I gave up pop music and listened to only classical music.  Since punk was turning into a product, I decided to jump into another decade of music, or something as far as I can get from my once favorite three words: Rock. N. Roll.



I’m attracted to Jean Sibelius’ music, because he once “justified the austerity of his old age by saying that while other composers were engaged in manufacturing cocktails he offered the public pure cold water.” I understand that.  Sometimes, even I, have a hard time to make something of value, or worth.  When I can’t sleep at night, I have a 16mm projector and the only film on a roll is a series of works by Georges Méliès.  I set the projector up in my bedroom to project the film on the white wall above my bed.  My favorite film of his is “The Impossible Voyage” which is about a group of scientists who go on a trip to the interior of the Sun.   The film was made in 1904, and I often play music by Sibelius as a soundtrack to the images projected on my bedroom wall.  Sibelius is from Finland, and I never been to Finland, but in my imagination I think of it as a magical part of the world.   I often lay on the corner of my bed and think of worlds that I have never been to, but imagined.



“Cold water” is not bullshit.  It is exactly what it is, and therefore I can’t worry what people will say about me or my writing.  I “pay no attention to what the critics say.  A statue had never been erected in honor of a critic.” The clarity that I desire in my life, is that I find that “the longer you look at an object, the more abstract it becomes, and ironically, the more real.” With that in mind, I face this afternoon with great delight for the adventure that surely will happen.

"Empire" by Andy Warhol and John Palmer. Photographed by Jonas Mekas. 1964. 16mm black & white, silent

Just had an extraordinary screening experience of seeing Andy Warhol and John Palmer’s “Empire.” The film is 8 hours and five minutes, and I saw 3 hours of it.  I was there from the beginning when it's daylight and slowly turns into nighttime.  “Empire” works on different levels, and is probably is one of the most complex films I have ever seen. On one level, it deals with the Empire State Building, which is the subject of the camera just being focused on the top of the iconic building.  The grainy and textural aspect of the film adds a definite layer of beauty to its subject matter.   When it becomes night, and all of sudden the building's lighting goes on, you can hear the audience swoon.  There is nothing for a long time, and then… something happens.  After awhile, I can’t tell if the camera is moving or it is just my eyes adjusting to the lights - or maybe just starring at one object for such a long time.   I started to see a face - something of a mid-evil armory mask.  Illusion for sure, but one has plenty of time for inventorying their brain while watching this film.  Which comes to the other layer, which is time.



Time going by, or time passing.  It became obvious to me after watching it for an hour that the building is not really the topic, but more how one spends time viewing something.  Especially when you’re in a theater watching this film.   One can say it’s non-narrative, but that is not correct.  If you’re in the beginning of the film, you gradually see the building emerging from the whiteness of the screen.   As it emerges you then see the skyline of New York, but not fully.  Almost ghost like, till it gets darker, and then one can only see the building - and once in a while you see a light here and there from other structures, but they’re way in the background.   So the narrative is basically watching this building for a period of time, and therefore it tells a story.  The fact that day turns to night is narrative enough.   And then when it gets dark, the lights go on the building.  So things are happening, and there are things we don’t know about.  For instance what are the people in the building doing while Empire is being filmed?  I thought about that as I watched the film, and I also started to daydream about my life - thinking of past pleasures.  



“Empire” becomes an entrance way to one’s imagination and thinking.   Jonas Mekas did the filming.  He captured such beautiful images as the day is turned into night.  Also the relationship between audience and film is an interesting one as well.  When I went in, I turned off my phone, not only because you should in a theater, but I also wanted to destroy my version of time.  I didn’t wish to be aware of my time, but just focus on the time being expressed in the film.   After awhile I totally got lost - and I wasn’t sure if one hour passed or even six hours.  There had the feeling of comfort watching a film knowing how it will end - and therefore you are just there for the journey itself.

December 7, 2014

December 7, 2014

I never been to Pearl Harbor, but I have heard of Pearl Harbor.  It is famous for being the home of the Dolphin God, Ka’ahupahau and her brother (or some say her father), Kahl’uka.  Kahl’uka protected fisherman by smacking them with his tail, to warn them that there were man-eating sharks in the area.  He also used his shark tail to strike at enemy sharks.   It has been pointed out that Ka’ahupahau lived in an underwater cave in West Loch.  Kahl’uka lived in an underwater cave off Ford Island.  Both had their common enemy who was Mikololou, a man-eating shark from the Big Island.



Mikololou and his shark friends, Kua, Keli’kaua o Ka’u, Pakaiea, and Kalani were swimming near the guarded entrance of Pearl Harbor, when they came upon Ka’ahupahau, who normally guards the opening.  Basically her rule, was not to allow man-eating sharks into the area, and sometimes these sharks were tricky and deceitful.   At the foot of the entrance, Mikololou told Ka’ahupahau that "Ah! What delicious-looking crabs you have here!"   Overhearing the conversation, Kahl’uka swam over closer to Ka-ahupahau, and told her that these sharks are not interested in crabs, but human flesh.   Ka’ahupahau who had the power to alter her form, became a large net and she threw her body over Mikololou and his gang of flesh-eating sharks.



Keli’kaua o Ka’u changed himself into a pao’o, which is a fish that is capable of leaping or skipping out of danger’s way.  He avoided the net, and with his sharp teeth was able to bite into Ka’ahupahau’s skin, which at the time was a net, and made a huge hole for the fellow sharks to swim out of Ka’ahupahau’s clutches.  A battle took place between Mikololou and his gang against the Dolphin God and Kahl’uka.  With help from the fishermen, they managed to kill Mikololou’s gang, and captured their leader by casting him in a net.  They brought him back to the surface, and placed Mikololou on the shore, where he remained under the power of the net, and slowly dying from the intense heat of the sun.


Mikololou’s body died, but his head lived on.   Children would come by and throw rocks at it, or take sticks and poke him around his eyes.  Mikololou would follow the children with his eyes, and at times it was reported that tears came out of his eyes and rolled down his face.  Eventually over time, his head started to rot, and the only remaining part of his body was his tongue.  Eventually someone took the tongue and threw it into the ocean.



Once in the ocean, the tongue which contained Mikololou’s spirit became whole again, and eventually got a shark’s body, and once again, went back to his nature to become a man-eating shark.    Hawaiians have a saying “I ola o Mikololou I ka aieio.” loosely translated as “Mikololou lived through his tongue.” Through the example of Mikololou’s troubles, it is believed that no matter how much trouble one gets him or herself into, there is always a way of escape.

Many years later, the United States government builds a dry-dock for their navy over the exact location of the opening that Ka’ahupahau and Kahl’uka protected for centuries.  Some of the natives believe that once that happened, both Ka’ahupahau and Kahl’uka were forced to move on to another island, closer to Asia, or perhaps just silently disappear into the deeply textures of the ocean.

December 6, 2014

December 6, 2014

Personally, I always hate the moment when she leaves the house for the airport.  I go outside to help with her baggage, and put it in the car for her, and then she is off.  I stand in the middle of the road and watch the car disappear into the vanishing point.   I go back into the house, and there is nothing louder than silence.  I play music on the turntable, but that seems to just remind me that she’s not there, and therefore what do I do?  

I go check out her CDs in her studio, and found some cool Japanese enka music from the Showa Era.  I put them on, and I can feel her presence through the music.  I don’t want the music to stop, but each CD is 80 minutes long, and there is a sense of panic in me, when the CD becomes silent.  Since I don’t read Japanese, I still pretend to understand the liner notes on the packaging.  I have been toying with the idea of taking one of her Japanese books, and taking a bus ride to Little Tokyo.   There is a patio outside the Kinokuniya bookstore at Astronaut E Onizuka Street, where one can sit and I guess read.   I take the bus line 92, and get off Spring and first, and walk to the store.   I sit outside and start reading the Japanese book.   It appears to be a biography on the actor Otojirō Kawakami.   I never heard of him, but my wife talks about him on a consistent basis.  Now that she is gone, and to stay close to her presence, I start focusing on Otojirō’s life and work.



As my wife called him, Oto was born in Hakata-ku, which is not far away from my family in Japan.  He was an actor, comedian and had his own theater group that toured the world.  He was “the second son of a second son” of a merchant family, and when he was young, he ran off to Osaka.   At 18, he became a cop in Kyoto, which in turn he left to join the “Freedom and People’s Rights Movement”, which were a left leaning organization devoted to democracy in Meji era Japan.   Within that group, he became a radical and was quite outspoken in his views.  He was arrested about a hundred and eighty times, which was a badge of pride for him.  When he was nineteen, he was prohibited from speaking in public in Kyoto for a year, and it was at this time he earned the nickname: “Liberty Kid. ”



Oto was inspired by Rakugo, which is an art form in Japan, where a narrator tells a tale on a stage.   Oto decides to start his own theater group, inspired by the politics of the West, as well as the ability to stage theater productions as an outlet for his political views.   It was near this time that he met his future wife, the actress and geisha, Sada Yacco.   Both became quite successful in staging performances in Japan as well as touring outside the country.  Even with that, Oto had money problems that seemed to never go away.  To have a foundation to promote himself and theater troupe, he built his own theater, the Kamakami-za.  It was the first European style theater in Japan, with at that time, had electric lighting throughout the theater.  It took him three years to build and raise the money for the venue, and they had their grand opening on June 6, 1896.

While the couple were in Kobe, they met a businessman who wanted to improve his business in the West, and decided to sponsor Oto and his troupe for a long American tour.  For the next two years, Oto toured throughout the United States as well as Europe.  In fact, his Japanese troupe was the first to travel in the West.   What he did was sort of do a bastardization of the Kabuki for Western audiences.  He cut the dialogue out, and put in more dancing and slapstick.   This was a huge success.  When they got back to Japan, he decided to do a tour, but instead of doing Kabuki theater, he would present to the Japanese audience, a palatable version of Western theater plays.   Mostly his version of Shakespeare.



The beauty of Oto was that he went out of his territory to learn and bring back a culture to Japan.  His fascination with Western theater from both the United States and Europe (specifically France) was a new phenomena in cultural Japan.  Oto makes me think of my wife, because she too is an adventurer at heart. I feel bad, sitting here in front of the bookstore in Little Tokyo, when I should be by her side in Japan.  Nevertheless the distance between us, is almost like appreciating a beautiful bottle of wine, but not yet ready to become consumed.   I can just presume right now she is somewhere in Kyushu, and she is thinking of Oto, and I’m thinking about him as well.  At the same time of course.

December 5, 2014

December 5, 2014

My mother turns 80 today.  And I, her son, turned 60 last August.  Aging is a very strange phenomena.  My brain is basically the same as it was when I was 35, but no doubt my body is very 60.   Talking with my mom, I don’t feel that she’s 80.  I feel like I’m talking to a 60 year old.   Both of our lives are very compact, in that we both live in the same community, and we share the same supermarkets, as well as her being part of my cell telephone plan.   I remember going to Ralphs not long ago and running into my mom in the coffee filter section.   I never run into friends there, just my mom.   I feel very close to my mom.  The other woman in my life is my wife.  Then there is my uncle and his boyfriend.  That is essentially the unit.



  The time period in her life I find totally fascinating.  She’s born in 1934, and lived in Hollywood at the heart of the depression, and the War years came afterwards.  Then experiencing the post-war years as a female, and dealing with the 1960s as well.   And then being married to my father, well, that’s pretty hard work!  My life was sort of the flip version of “Father Knows Best, ” in that my mom went out of the house to work, while my dad stayed home to do his work as an artist, as well as making meals for me.   He was a horrible cook.  I love him dearly, but when my mom was at home, that was cooking that was the best.  I remember her singing songs to me, and she played guitar as she sang a lullaby.   It was such a good sleep when ever she sang a folk song to me.   For the life of me, I can’t remember the song.  All I remember is the feeling of comfort and that my life will be safe, sound, and … sleepy.



She worked at various boutiques in the Beverly Hills area, and I remember that my dad (him driving) and I would go pick her up after work.  Mostly we waited inside the car till my mom closed the store.  I have faint memories of being at her work as she closed the shop.  I felt a great deal of excitement as we head back home.  I always liked it when we were all in the same room.  Which is not that difficult since all our homes were quite small.   The essence of my life is to be in a room with both parents there. I’m OK if I’m with my dad, or just with my mom - but when they’re together that was the big hooray for the day for me.



I have no memory of my father going to school with me.  I remember him outside the school, or waiting for me in the car by the school - but never in the school.  My mom on the other hand I do have a memory of being in school with me.  She was good with administrators and had an understanding of how the world worked in such a fashion.  If I had to choose who I would trust more, it would be my mom.  My dad was good with the crazy stuff, but my mom had a well-balanced way of looking at the world. Also she is non-judgmental, so I never had to add that there was something else in the mix.  I’m getting an opinion or a stance from her that comes from her gut.   I trust her gut.  Hell, she’s my mom.  I trust her!



When my father died suddenly (and unexpectedly) she didn’t change, but I on the other hand became an adult.   It was almost like watching Joseph Cornell’s "Rose Hobart," with the color filters being taken off.  It was the same, but not.  It was something else.  My mom had to pass through a major change in her life, and even though I was there, it was something she had to do alone.  When the ultimate happens, you can be part of a crowd, but one is very much separate from any grouping.   Besides my wife, I totally admire my mom.  Life as a female is quite challenging in any circumstances, due to the way the world exists - or to be blunt - how the Western world looks at the female.



In my youth, my mom was very much of an iconic figure owing to the photographs taken of her by my father as well as Charles Brittin and Edmund Teske.  All three photographers were different in their approach to their art, but yet, their subject matter, my mom, is the same person in all the images.  Her physical beauty is without question, but beauty alone does not make the picture.  There is something compelling in the image of her that I think a lot of people find enticing.   There is no separate image of her that is not her.  Each artist saw something of her that they clearly understood and shared through their artwork.   Very much the images of the woman in the photographs are clearly my mom.   I have met people who are actors, and they are not the same as the character they portray in films - on the other hand, my mom is exactly the image that is reproduced in the photograph.



She has told me numerous times that she hates her photograph to be taken.  It is usually the most photogenic who dislikes their image in a photograph.  Perhaps that is why the images come out so cool, because she is cool.  One thing I do know, is that my father wouldn’t exist without her.  Scientifically I wouldn’t be either.  But to be honest, beyond science, I need her in my life.   I inherited a certain way of needing to examine the world, that for me is essential. I didn’t learn that in school or in books - but through my parents.  My mother has a certain amount of genius in her, and I imagine if I can have her sensibility in whatever I do, I shall be OK.  I love my mom.  Shirley Berman is 80 today.

December 4, 2014

December 4, 2014

Come on world, inspire me!  There are occasions in my life when I have to check the mirror by putting my nose close to it, to see if I’m still breathing.   The room I’m in right now was built for consistent inspiration.  There is a turntable on one corner with two gigantic speakers, and a window looking over Astro’s Diner on Fletcher and Glendale Boulevard.  The bookcase is filled with books that I haven’t looked at in years, and yet, the spines of these books are laid out to inspire my writing sessions.  But now, a sense of failure is creeping up on me, like a weed in an outside potted plant - it comes alive when you try to ignore it.  The traffic noise outside is an unfluctuating reminder of a life that is spent in doors.   What do I know of the world, except whatever is through my window and what record is on my turntable?   Other than that, I’m clueless.



“I’ve got a great ambition to die of exhaustion rather than boredom.” The fear of time passing, and just thinking of time as this abstract body of matter makes me fearful.  I feel that “body” looking over my shoulder as I write, and the solitude I crave is not from the people in general, but time itself.  I somehow woke up as a teenager, and somehow went to bed that same day as a senior.  I don’t even want to think about tomorrow.



Gérard Philipe, the eminent French actor, was 37 when he died from liver cancer.  His doctor never informed him that he was that ill, so he worked on, except one can notice fatigue in his facial expressions.  He shared that fatigue with another actor in his last film, “Les Liaisons dangerousness” –Boris Vian, who that same year also died, but from a life-time heart problem.  Both had the same look like they were prepared to leave the room, and they couldn’t leave fast enough.  Time is essentially important, and you have to either trick it, or not let it take possession of your life.  The sensibility of time is very much being stuck in a narrative, perhaps not of your own choice.  With respect to time there is an end, but when?   That is the essence of time itself.  Otherwise, “life is one long process of getting tired. ’



The mental journey from one end of my living room to the other side is a lifetime to me.  I go through emotions like one changes pj's during night sweats.  “Extreme joy and extreme sorrow are indistinguishable beyond a certain point.” All I know is that I have to finish my writing, and not let time take it away from me.  I will take it, not time.  “Go as far as you can see; when you get there, you’ll be able to see further. ”

December 3, 2014

December 3, 2014

There’s a storm starting up outside my window, and there has been a storm brewing in my heart for a while now.  I feel that everything I have carried out in the past, will now come home to either haunt me right up till my death, or fly like a buzzard over my body, just waiting till I stop breathing.   I woke up from a dream just now, where I was wandering in a foreign city, and I’m not sure if it was Paris or Tokyo, but it’s a location that I visit often in my dreams.  Bookstores are very much part of my dream world.  I have at least three bookshops that I visit in my dreams.  I’m sure that they are based on actual stores, but to this day, I can’t figure out which store or in what location.  The bookstore last night was a second-hand store that always sold interesting titles, and mostly was Penguin editions from the 1940s. The store was located on a side-street off the big arcade.   I remember there were Americans on the street, but obviously tourists of some sort and manner.  I couldn’t find the store, and when I woke up, I felt a great depression upon me.  I think through my dreams, I’m trying to find heaven, but alas, it is so close to me, I can almost feel it - but then I awake, and I’m left with a storm outside, that clearly represents how I feel inside my heart and soul.



I’m not a great traveler, but I do travel time-to-time, and it’s always for the pleasure of looking for pleasure in some area of the world that will spark my imagination.  I often dream of going to the cinema and it is always a theater located in a very urban part of the city - meaning not in the suburbs.   I know it’s a film by Jean-Luc Godard, with a soundtrack by Nino Rota, but as far as I know the soundtrack or the Godard film does not exist in the awakening life.   But my dream of the film is in great detail, and it is an actual movie, including credits, stars, and so forth.  And even though the soundtrack was by Rota, I clearly made-up the music and orchestration in my dream.  Which is unbelievable to me, because I’m totally tone-deaf and couldn’t carry a melody if your life depended on it.  Nevertheless I have the entire orchestration as well as the narrative of this film in great detail in my dreaming life.



“Tell me, can one at all denote thinking and feeling as things entirely separable?  I cannot imagine a sublime intellect without the ardor of emotion.” In my awakened life, I try to separate my feelings from that actions that I do on a daily basis.  A sense of detachment is important for a writer, so in theory that artist can see his work placed in a bigger context.   Yet, in my dreams, I’m consistently emotional, and when I do see a film in that state or landscape, it fits perfectly with how I’m feeling at that moment.  When I’m conscious and writing in a library or in my studio, I feel totally not connected to the written page that is in front of me.  “My aesthetic is that of the sniper on the roof.” Yet, I lose the focus once my morning starts up and I have to face the afternoon, and then the dread of the evening.  Only in dreams do I seem to exist in my fullest capacity as a writer and human being.



“Art attracts us only by what it reveals of our most secret self.” Therefore I feel dead, yet only alive in my deepest dream.  On the other hand “knowing this to be a worthless life to live, why do I keep living on?  Because life contains something called beauty.” And for me, the beauty in my life, is in a dream.

December 2, 2014

December 2, 2014

“A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande (Un dominate après-midi à I’île de la Granda Jatte) is a painting that I have always found fascinating.   I have never seen it in person, so my observations are like watching a movie on an airplane, and I’m watching someone else’s screen a row in front of me.  I get the ‘drift’ of the film, and it’s the same way as seeing a painting in an art book or magazine.  Then you just have to think about what is the best representation of this painting?  An expensive art book, a postcard, online?  Some years back I wrote a poem about this painting, or to be honest, inspired by the painting that was published in a book of paintings by Georges Seurat:

You, boats, dog
& A monkey
Fishing
All under an umbrella or two
Each point
Is sharp
Yet, you don’t look at me
Except the little girl
She can see the ghost
… Of a chance



When I look at this painting, I think of death.  Because surely all these people, real or imagined, would be dead by now.  I go through a time tunnel where I ‘m transformed into that place and time.  When I was in Paris, I went to the Île de la Jatte, just so I can imagine what that landscape looked like in Seurat’s painting.   Of course everything has changed, but I still wandered around the area to figure out where the painter viewed his ‘scene. ' I did bring a postcard image of the painting with me, but I made the decision to look at the landscape without the image.  I wanted to do it through memory, which I find is more accurate in the sense that the thoughts of a place, are eventually more important than the facts.



It took Seurat two years to do this painting.  He did many sketches and drawings before completing “A Sunday Afternoon.” What I find interesting is that he did a similar painting called “Bathers at Asnières, ” that is sort of the flip-side of “A Sunday Afternoon.” Same place (different location) but the bathers are in the sunshine, where in the other painting all the figures are under the shade, either from the umbrellas or trees.



I’m also intrigued by the woman who has a monkey with her.  Was that a normal everyday occurrence in Paris 1884?   The more you look at the picture, more interesting and borderline eccentric imagery comes out towards the viewer.  Seurat was very much a theorist as well as a painter.  He was deeply interested in optical and color theory.  The whole painting consists of miniature dots or minimal brushstrokes, and what I find fascinating is that he enclosed the painting with a pure white wooden frame.   Again, I have never seen this painting in person, but seeing a photograph of the work being displayed in its current home (Art Institute of Chicago), the white frame really sets the painting from the world today.  When one looks at “La Grande Jatte” you're looking at the painter, not really the painting itself.