Excerpt, "Sarah at Palestinian art exhibit," from A Stranger on Earth

Writer's Note: I began working on a fiction project in 2006 in New York, and completed the novel, A Stranger on Earth, in late 2010 in Louisiana, and here is an excerpt from that already copyrighted work...

Sarah attended an early evening exhibition of Palestinian art in Chelsea, featuring drawings, paintings, sculpture, photographs, and things she had no name for.  It was on the third floor of a rough-looking building.  The walls of the gallery were gray; and the signs in the gallery were written by hand.  There was art on the walls, on stands, and hanging from the ceiling.  The organizers were nice enough to provide refreshments; and Sarah put some cookies on a napkin, which she carried as she moved through the images. She stopped in front of a large canvas of naked men, women, and children walking through a desert: an exodus, the beginning of exile.

It might have been an affectation but Sarah long had thought of herself as an exile.  Was she exiled from home, or from a dream of home?  Was she exiled from paradise, or from a dream of paradise?  The questions seemed romantic in the face of Palestinian facts.

“Do you think this picture is erotic?” asked a young man who had stopped next to Sarah, and was looking at the same canvas she was.  His voice was almost harsh, but his enunciation was precise.

Sarah looked around.  They were the only two people in front of the canvas.  He was talking to her.

“I had not thought of that at all,” Sarah said.

Was she reprimanding him?

“They are naked,” he said.

“We are born naked.  Babies and children are often naked in many parts of the world,” Sarah said.  Was that an intelligent, or an obvious thing, to say—or both?

“There are adults here.  Women with breasts, large thighs, hairy pubic regions.  Men with cocks hanging,” he said, smiling.

What was this man talking about?

Sarah said, “The people in this picture have had everything taken from them.  They do not have clothes on their backs.  They are leaving home, and they don’t know where they are going or what’s going to happen to them.”

“I know,” he said, smiling at her.  In a voice that had a sensuously thick tone, he said, “It’s an existential moment.  There is a lot of freedom in that moment.  It doesn’t have to be all about pain.  There can be pleasure.”

Sarah turned from his face, a face that indicated it was her response that was predictable, and possibly wrong, and she looked, again, at the picture; and, while looking at it, she said, “It is a moment in which anything can happen.  Anger.  Tears.  Hope.  Regret.  Comfort.  Sex.”

“Yes,” he said.  “That’s what I was thinking.  Why assume one thing?”

“The context,” she said.  “We know what has come before, being forced out of their houses—and we know what is going to come, not being able to go back when they want to.”

“But in this moment, as they move, naked, free?” he said.

Why was he being insistent?

“Are you Palestinian?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said.

“Did you grow up there, in Israel—Palestine?” she asked.

“I grew up here,” he said.  “My parents came before I was born.”

“Are you an artist?” she asked.

“No, I am a spectator, a voyeur—someone who enjoys seeing,” he said.

Sarah was abashed by his use of the word voyeur, by his tone of voice—intimate, low, suggestive.

“How can you call them free?” Sarah asked.

 “Aren’t we free if we think we’re free?” he asked.

“Sometimes,” she said.  “Sometimes we want to be free—and we’re not,” she said, “but, in this instance, I don’t think many people would see these people as free.”

“Isn’t that a pity—if the people moving do not think they’re free, and if we don’t consider that they might be?” he asked.

Sarah smiled.  She was not inclined to surrender to the arguments of others, but the young man was too insistent for her to persist.  Besides, she thought that they were not really talking about the picture: he was using that as an allegory or a sign for something else.

“Could I get you something to drink?” he asked.

Sarah laughed easily, realizing they had been talking about sex, rather than art or politics.  She had several laughs—a giggling high laugh, a deep rumbling and ruminative laugh, a sharp short laugh that held some tension, and a knowing chuckle of a laugh; and her laugh now had both relaxation and self-awareness in it.

“Yes,” she said.

“Wine, juice, water?” he asked.

“Juice, orange juice,” she said.

“You’re trying to be a good girl?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said, smiling.

“I’ll be back,” he said, and she took his absence as the opportunity to finish the cookies she had. 

When he returned to her, Sarah had moved to an installation that involved bullet holes surrounded by a brownish red color on a white canvas, indicating bloody violence.

He handed Sarah the medium-sized paper cup of orange juice.

“This is a lot of juice,” she said, looking at the serving table, only to see the server, a large woman with gray in her hair, watching them.

“My name is Mustafa,” he said.

“I am Sarah,” she said.

“Sarah,” he repeated.

“Did you get tired of looking at the naked people?” Mustafa asked.

“I saw them,” she said.

“Why are people tolerant about violence, but intolerant about sex?” he asked.

Sarah was familiar with the argument that in film and on television, and in other image mediums, such as painting, the spilling of human blood was a less discomforting sight than sexual activity, for many people; and she thought that was accurate; but, that did not mean that she wanted every film or television program or piece of art to be pornography. 

“I am not tolerant of violence, or intolerant about sex,” she said.

“That’s good to know,” Mustafa said.

“Anyway, that picture was not about sex—it was about people moving naked through a desert,” Sarah said.

Mustafa smiled at her.

“Hi Mustafa, I like your hair short,” said a petite woman with long dark hair in a little black dress, as the long-haired woman passed behind them.

Mustafa turned, and said, “Hey, Hanin.”  He returned his gaze to Sarah.  “Do you think women and men are different about what they want?” he asked.

“I don’t think they’re different.  Civilization does.  There are thousands of years of commentary on the subject,” Sarah said.

Mustafa laughed.  “That’s not the answer I was expecting,” he said.

“You were expecting an answer?  Are these your typical questions?” Sarah asked.

Mustafa considered her, shrewdly.  “Do I get marks for originality?” he asked.

“And for the attempt at it,” Sarah said.

Mustafa laughed, easily.

“I think about sex all the time,” Mustafa confessed, warmly.  It was as if a light had brightened behind his eyes and his smile.

“Not all the time,” she said, moving to another piece of art, finding it impossible to believe anyone could think about sex all the time even if he wanted to.  Sarah looked at a face that had been created out of news print.  What did that mean?  That identity had become public reputation?

“I like sex,” Mustafa said.  “I like everything about it.  The heat, the touch, the smells, the taste, the thrusting, the release.”

Sarah looked away, wanting to see where other people were in relation to them.

“Doesn’t it get repetitive, and boring?” she asked, looking at Mustafa.  She liked his coloring—the very light brown skin, the black hair, the large eyes with brilliant whites, the sharp nose, the long, slim dark lips.  Mustafa was an attractive man, but sex was not the first thing she thought of when looking at him.  He had a tempestuous air—she could imagine him changing his mind a thousand times, rushing in and out of a room, raising his voice, throwing things.  Was it passion she sensed?

“Sex boring?” Mustafa asked.

“Yes,” she said.

“I don’t think so,” he said.  “Do you get bored by eating?” he asked.

“No,” she said.

“Do you get bored by drinking water?” he asked.

“No, boredom has nothing to do with it.  It’s necessary, natural,” Sarah said.

“Sex is too,” Mustafa said.

“Some people go without it,” Sarah said.

“Yes,” Mustafa said, although he did not think she was one of those people.

A woman in a blue silk blouse and blue jeans, with a white scarf on her head walked to Mustafa and asked, “Are you meeting us at Mahmoud’s restaurant later tonight?”

“I’m not sure, Rana,” Mustafa said.

“I hope you do,” Rana said, before moving on.

Sarah, with little more than a glance, was inspired to wonder how the woman could look both simple and mysterious: the woman in blue looked as if she had nothing on her mind but the moment and place she was in, and yet she moved with purpose.  Was the current moment being measured against and reconciled with some greater good?

Mustafa smiled, trying to guess if Sarah had a response to having their conversation interrupted. 

Sarah’s face showed nothing.  Sarah looked at the art—the black face against a gray background.  “What do you think this image means?” Sarah asked, not knowing why she was continuing the conversation.  Was she herself bored—or not bored?

“That—it’s a face,” Mustafa said.  “I don’t think it means anything.  It’s something to see.”

“Do you really like art?” Sarah asked.

“I do,” Mustafa said.  “I like all sorts of things—things you can see, touch.  Things are more real than what we think about them, Sarah.  I know some people think things are imperfect manifestations of ideas, but I don’t.  I think things are as perfect as they need to be, as perfect as we need them to be—even if we don’t know that.  Some people are puritans.  Are you one?” Mustafa asked.

“I am not a puritan, nor am I at all promiscuous with my affections or my body,” Sarah said.

Mustafa looked at her.  Had she rejected him?  Or was she rejecting all those other men who might approach her?

“What do you think about what’s happened to the New York governor?” Mustafa asked.

“I am disappointed.  I thought he was a smart man.  Did he really need to pay for sex?” asked Sarah.

“He was paying for the convenience, and the honesty, the lack of confusion,” Mustafa said.

“It doesn’t seem to have been all that convenient,” Sarah said, smiling; and Mustafa laughed.

“True,” he said, following as she moved to the next piece.

“The governor is a whoremonger,” said a Middle Eastern man in a suit.

“He’s just a guy,” said the American next to him, in a jersey and jeans.

“Abdel, Rick,” said Mustafa.

“Mustafa,” they both said.

“Having a good time?” asked Abdel, looking from Mustafa to Sarah.

“Very good,” said Mustafa.

Mustafa asked Sarah to sit down.  She said that she wanted to see the rest of the show, but would sit for a short time.  They sat on folding chairs, old brown aluminum chairs set out for a discussion that would take place later.

“You really like art,” Mustafa said.

“I do,” Sarah said.  “You know a lot of people here,” she said.

“I work in the area,” he said.

Mustafa told Sarah about his work, in his family grocery store.  Mustafa clerked behind the counter, but as he was in the store as much as anyone, and ordered stock and did some of the accounting, he could be considered one of its managers.  He asked about her work, and Sarah mentioned the work she had done in the past, and the part-time work at the college, and what she wanted to do in film.  They talked about the many things there were to do in New York during the summer and autumn.

“Have you been to Palestine?” Sarah asked.

“No.”

“Do you want to go?” she asked.

“It’s not a big thing to me, but, because of my parents, I want to see it,” Mustafa said.

“Here,” said a young woman in a jacket and skirt, “are some sweets for you and your friend,” handing two little plates to Mustafa.  The woman seemed kind but responsible—one looked at her and imagined the generosity and tenacity of a mother.  What had it cost a young woman to assume maturity early?

“Thanks Emily,” said Mustafa, who handed one of the plates to Sarah.

“Thank you,” Sarah said to Mustafa, then to Emily.

Mustafa talked alone with Sarah about the girls he had known, girls from every continent.

“Are you still friends with them?” Sarah asked.

“Some of them,” Mustafa said, smiling.  “They remember me,” he said.

Sarah laughed.  “You’re memorable?”

“Yes,” he said.  “You don’t believe me?”

“You probably are—but I am not looking for new memories,” Sarah said.

“Mustafa, thanks for the quick delivery yesterday.  Tell your mother I said hello,” said a girl in tube top and white shorts.

“I will Nida.  You’re a scandal in that,” Mustafa said, nodding to what she was wearing.

“I know,” she said.

“If my mother saw you, she would talk to you, then she would call your mother,” said Mustafa.

“My mother is here,” said Nida, who pointed to the woman.

Mustafa laughed, as did Nida.  Sarah smiled, and watched the girl walk away; and she saw appreciation for that walk on Mustafa’s face.

“She’s a nice girl,” said Mustafa.

Sarah did not contradict him.  How could she, not knowing the girl?

“Are you sure you don’t want new memories?” Mustafa asked Sarah. 

“I am,” she said.

Mustafa looked away from her.

“If you see someone else you want to talk to, you can,” Sarah said, quietly, sincerely.

“I like talking to you,” he said.  Mustafa looked sad.  “We could have a sweet experience together,” he said.

“I want a lot more than sweetness,” Sarah said, smiling.

It’s Going to Be a Long Fifteen Minutes: On Lady Gaga and Her Generation

Lady Gaga, Born This Way

Interscope, 2011

“I’ve had to shout for so long because I was only given five minutes, but now I’ve got fifteen.  Andy said you only needed fifteen minutes.”

—Lady Gaga

Lady Gaga, who has a popular song (“The Edge of Glory”) making its way up the music charts, seems, like Madonna before her, to have commandeered her own fifteen minutes of fame and that of millions of other people.  She is one of an emergent generation that has acquired great attention in the last three years or so; among them, Taio Cruz, Jason Derulo, Ke$ha, Bruno Mars, Travie McCoy, Owl City, Katy Perry, Mike Posner, Rihanna, and Taylor Swift, performers whose songs do possess a certain seduction, an energy and personality that are first irritating, then persuasive, and finally irritating again.  There are distinctive and frequently fleeting qualities that one can hear in the work of youth—charm, confidence, exuberance, irreverence, sensuality—and if an artist is particularly aware, gifted, or lucky the listener can hear intelligence and moral conviction, but usually one does not hear depth, experience, or wisdom.  Much of the confections that Bruno Mars, Katy Perry, Taylor Swift, and those other musicians are serving are sugary and fattening, below the established standards for good nutrition, but one’s energy does spike and the resulting spastic movements can be confused with dancing.  Standards do matter, even when we are inclined to ignore them; in fact, they matter most when we ignore them.  Of course, there are artists in classical music, jazz, indie rock, and world music that are making very good music, such as Julia Wolfe, Awadagin Pratt, Jeremy Denk, Build, Eric Reed, Rene Marie, Death Cab for Cutie, Bright Eyes, Angelique Kidjo, Mamadou Diabate, and Vieux Farka Toure, but they get less attention.  It is telling that Lady Gaga, quoting Andy Warhol on fame, gave an inexact if not incorrect interpretation: Warhol said, and is widely understood to have meant, that in the future everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes; and that, in light of the pervasive and promiscuous nature of publicity, fame may come for a good reason, any reason, or no reason, but the fame, in all probability, will be fleeting.  It is not surprising that Gaga’s grasp of that should be faulty, as she often uses culture in shallow and self-serving ways, attaching provocative images to pedestrian songs, to the delight of many people who are clueless about the real sources of her images and sounds.

            I love literature, film, music, painting and other arts, and prefer work that has complexity, depth, and originality.  I had heard of Gaga before I heard her music, and when I heard her music, I was mystified: is that what all the fuss is about, the recycling of other people’s music?  The obvious references were to the work of Madonna and Annie Lennox, but Gaga’s catalog of influences is, from Grace Jones, Prince, and Boy George to Klaus Nomi and Isabella Blow and including many others, too large a list to be documented here.  It is important to remember that we all have ambition, and ambition can be infused in anything, from cake-making to singing to becoming a priest or president.  It can be achieved honestly or dishonestly, or with a mix of methods.  Lady Gaga is nothing more than the contrived image of an ambitious New York girl named Stefani Joanne Germanotta, the daughter of upper-middle class strivers.  “Her father ran a company that installed Wi-Fi in hotels, and her mother worked for a time as a V.P. at Verizon,” reported Vanessa Grigoriadis in New York magazine, April 5, 2010.  Stefani Germanotta went to a Catholic school, and was drawn to the arts, playing piano and acting in school plays; and she looked like a normal girl, healthy, sensual, and warm.  She had a reputation for being nice and she worked hard, playing in clubs and collaborating with other songwriters, but when a music industry contact suggested she needed to change her look, that is what she did, dying her very dark hair blonde, with other changes to follow.  She became a reader, or misreader, of Warhol, taking on his use of the term superstar.  Warhol’s “superstars” seemed to have one look and limited talent, and were like the remembered images of famous actors and actresses, rather than being vibrant artists or people.  The popularity of Stefani Germanotta’s self-construction as Lady Gaga is fascinating, at once a triumph of imagination and will, but also of artifice and ugliness; and her willingness to introduce ever new changes to that image, like Madonna before her, will keep a fickle, large, and tasteless public interested.

            Lady Gaga is the icon of the moment, and she has her defenders, low and high.  Some manage to say things about her that her actually true, though the truth does not always matter.  In a June 2011 Vanity Fair profile of Katy Perry by writer Lisa Robinson, featuring lovely photographs of Perry, entertainment writer Perez Hilton is quoted as saying, “In many ways, Katy reminds me of a young Gwen Stefani.  Gwen’s been away from the music scene for a while, doing the mommy thing and taking her time to make new music with No Doubt, and Katy has filled that void—much like Gaga has filled the Madonna void.”  The void is not merely one of entertainment, but of money-making; and the industry requires things to sell, and Gaga, like Perry, like Rihanna, is obliging.  In 2010, Gaga was reported by Rolling Stone (February 4, 2010) to have sold fifteen million digital tracks, and Time magazine (May 10, 2010) put her on its cover as one of its one-hundred most influential people.  Her newest album, Born This Way, featuring a cover in which Gaga is presented as part human and part machine, a symbol that may be a confession, continues Gaga’s selling power, though some well-placed critics remarked on the confusing messages in some of the songs.  Has Gaga influenced anyone but drag queens (who, really, would seem to have influenced her)?  Recently, music critic Nitsuh Abebe (New York, July 18-25, 2011) argued that the self-affirmation of artists like Gaga is the political gesture of women and minorities, but almost everyone is inclined to self-affirmation, for good or ill. 

Questions remain: what does that self-affirmation inspire one to do?  What are the ideas and values in one’s work?  What does one’s work achieve in the world?  As evidence of social awareness, some may point to Gaga’s support of gay rights, which are certainly in the interest of a significant number of the people who buy her recordings.  She affirmed the rhetoric of aggressive gay politics with the song “Born This Way,” though science is rarely certain when it comes to defining what human character or orientation is at birth—one reason for the long existence of the nature/nurture debate.  There is something ironic to me about people attempting to achieve greater liberty by arguing that who they are is determined by biology, as most arguments for freedom are based on the desire for more choice.  Yet, I suppose if you are perpetually told that what you want is not natural, you will insist that it could not be more natural.  However, civilization is about choices—what we choose to be, think, and do; what we choose to create, protect, and transmit.  Civilization is about the transformation of nature; and the question is, Is nature being transformed by knowledge or ignorance, in the name of life or death, and on the behalf of decency or decadence?  Has the musical world or the social world been made better by giving so much attention to Madonna, and will either be made better by giving great attention to Gaga and her generation? 

It was amusing to hear Ryan Seacrest on his top forty radio singles show introduce the British singer Adele’s song “Rolling in the Deep” and realize he had no trivia to add to that introduction, as he does with the work of Gaga, Perry, and Rihanna, and then to hear the Adele song itself—an eloquent song inspired by a genuine experience, full of passion, with a beautiful arrangement and thunderous rhythm—and how it made everything around it, including the work of Gaga, Perry, and Rihanna, sound silly.  Hearing good music is the only standard one needs by which to judge all music, if one does not want to be intellectual about it.   

            One generation can pursue classical form, and another experimentation, folk, or industrial customs.  One generation can pursue duty, and another pleasure; and each has its strengths and weaknesses.  To be fair and prudent, I must note that it is not wise to bet against youth: those who are young now will have a lot of time in which to pursue their habits, ideas, and goals; and many people change, deepen, and grow—often unpredictably.  Yet, fame, even the fame of youth appealing to youth, can be used for admirable purposes, though it is important to remember that good intentions cannot justify mediocre art.  On the 9^th of August, 2011, Lady Gaga with many other performers utilized their Facebook pages and Twitter feeds to reach millions of people on behalf of Save the Children, to raise funds for use in East Africa.  I am glad to hear that, though I would like to hear a lot less of Gaga’s music. 

Leonardo: The Court Genius, Born Outside Law

The Life of Leonardo da Vinci, Part 1 and 2

(A 2-disk, five part documentary-drama by Renato Castellani)

RAI, 2003

Leonardo of Vinci was born to a lusty, successful father who claimed him and a peasant girl mother who was kept from him; and the claim of Leonardo's father was not embraced by the man’s other children, Leonardo’s ten brothers and two sisters, and those siblings used Leonardo’s illegitimate state to keep Leonardo from the estate first his father then his uncle willed to him.  The solitary Leonardo had a desire to learn and a talent for drawing; and he seemed to need to build a genuine knowledge base in order to proceed with his work, whether it involved art or engineering.  He studied nature, particularly the human anatomy, even dissecting corpses.  Religious paintings—such as his “Last Supper”—brought and sustained his fame.  The Italian Renaissance master had popes and princes for his patrons, and a place at court, something that must have given him some assurance and pride.  Yet, he seems to have grown up without the security in home that many people take for granted, and the political fortunes of his patrons—sometimes high, sometimes low—affected his own state; and those shifts in position could have renewed a sense of vulnerability.  That may have affected him: it may be part of why he did not finish many of his projects.  He had the curiosity and passion, but did he have the discipline and focus?  If you do not receive lasting commitment from others, you do not have a model for it, or even a reason for it—it does not seem real.  That insecurity can have an impact even upon things you imagine will be transcendent—at least that is what I am inclined to think, in general, and in particular, having watched the multi-part motion picture by Renato Castellani on the life and work of Leonardo, who painted the “Mona Lisa” and imagined air flight, underwater boats, and armored tanks centuries before others did.

Why did I decide to see a film on Leonardo?  I realized that, other than an ad for a distant museum show, I had not seen or heard his name recently and had not thought about him in years—and was beginning to forget him.  I am ambivalent about biographies and memoirs, thinking their concerns more likely to be gossip and self-indulgence, rather than significant fact, or true insight; and that the distorted perspective found in many biographies and memoirs can have a detrimental effect regarding the understanding of artists, writers, and thinkers, with the emphasis shifting from philosophy and practice to psychology.  When Leonardo’s “Last Supper” is considered, Renato Castellani’s film narrator points to the centrality of Christ in the picture, and the high place of an early loyal disciple and the lowest place given to Judas; and these are appropriate and relevant (aesthetic and ethical) notes.  Leonardo’s biography is not a theme in the painted picture.  Often the concern of people with an artist’s biography has to do with their inability to deal with the artist’s greatness—they want to bring the artist down to their level, and prefer to look at the failures in his private life.  However, it cannot be declared too frequently that an artist’s greatness is often rooted in his pursuit of his own values and visions, and ability to win support for those; and his failures in life often exist because the people in his life refuse cooperation (compromise of artistic principles can endanger work, but compromise of personal principles can be the thing that allows a relationship to survive).  Not much is known of Leonardo’s erotic life, so his childhood familial life is looked to for obvious personal conflict and drama.  It seems to me that Leonardo was lucky to have a father who recognized his creative talent and found an artist with whom the precocious boy could apprentice: that is a rare life-making response, rather than life-destroying one.  Yet, a biographical and historical documentary, such as this, presents a strong sense of the world in which the artist moved.  Some of the scenes are historical, informational, and others are acted drama.  The locations, costumes, casting, and acting do bring the viewer close to the time in which the man and painter lived.  (I liked the landscapes and buildings, and found myself wondering about the temperature in the rooms, and how men could go about in such heavy jackets, and about the practical implications of their tights.)  It is impossible not to conclude that whatever continuity existed in Leonardo’s life began in his own imaginative mind and questing spirit. 

Documentaries get less attention than fiction feature films, but remain important for intellectual and political purposes.  They offer a concentration of analysis and experience, a fundamental seriousness, that does not have always a large place in the culture; in reading literature, the thought of the writer meets the thought of the reader, and in seeing documentaries the thought of the filmmaker and his subject/s meet the thought of the viewer.  It is rewarding, but also demanding.  We are far from the time when the major television networks presented documentaries as a regular part of their mission; and the films and videos that get theatrical release and critical attention tend to be on controversial subjects.  Home viewing on personal equipment augments that.  I still recall one of my favorite documentaries, many years after seeing it in a downtown Manhattan theater: the original civil rights series Eyes on the Prize; and appreciate the other documentaries I have screened recently, including America’s Castles, Art of War, Barack Obama, Daughters of Afghanistan, King Arthur (His Life and Legends), Men Get Depressed, Muse of Fire, Opera Stories, Shakespeare’s Soliloquies, and Why Shakespeare?  I thought Charles Ferguson’s recent documentary, Inside Job, on the origin of the banking crisis was great—beautiful, smart, and useful.  In watching actor Philippe Leroy as Leonardo in the documentary-drama, and seeing the artist’s exploration of art, science, and even philosophy, something of Leonardo’s life and work were restored to me, an accomplishment that provides a foundation for further exploration. 

 

The painter Leonardo’s competition with the younger and angrier Michelangelo, a great sculptor, was interesting, as well—for the differences in their personalities and work; and it reminded me of other, later competitions, possibly inevitable competitions, among artists (writers and singers too) of different generations, philosophies, and styles.  Everyone wants the space in which to do his or her own work, the space, the respect, and the reward; and an emerging artist often sees older masters as gatekeepers and threats—and sometimes bores.  I did find myself wondering what Leonardo’s work would have been like if the questions he asked—the knowledge he sought—had been provided already, had been inherited.  Would he have been more productive, or less?   

The Culture of Riots

There have been protests and rioting in London and other English cities (Birmingham, Liverpool, and Manchester), following the shooting of a black man, reportedly an armed criminal under surveillance.  The prime minister and mayor were on vacation when the rioting began, rioting that has included looting and vandalism, followed by accusations that there have not been enough policemen on the streets.  It is surprising news, reports that suggest that there must have been tensions slowly burning beneath the social surface—before the riot, before the police shooting.  Some people have acknowledged deprivation, poverty, and unemployment, with one in five young persons having no work, and cuts in government programs, as possible causes for the disturbance; and others condemn the rioting and theft as thuggery.  The young people involved have communicated by social media, using Facebook and Twitter to organize meeting and give advice about eluding the police.  Looters have taken shoes, television sets, and wine.  I found myself hearing the reports and trying to think of the English culture I was familiar with, wondering if there were signs to be found there.  Literature did not immediately come to mind, though films did, some of them inspired by written fiction.  I had just seen the old British television program of Jane Austen’s Persuasion, which—except for the great distinction between economic classes and the privilege of the upper class—did not suggest conflict.  I thought of films I had remembered as being set in Britain: About a Boy, and An Education, and Bright Star, Control, Creation, Dorian Gray, The Duchess, The Edge of Love, Jane Eyre, King Lear, Kinky Boots, Last Chance Harvey, The Mayor of Casterbridge, Miss Potter, Never Let Me Go, The Other Man, The Oxford Murders, Pride and Prejudice, The Queen, Sense and Sensibility, Sherlock Holmes, Small Island, Split Second, Under the Greenwood Tree, When Did You Last See Your Father?, and The Young Victoria.  So many of the films I could recall seemed to be about civilized white people in the rural English countryside, their concerns mostly personal.  I did think of the Stephen Frears/Hanif Kureishi collaborations of decades past, My Beautiful Laundrette and Sammy and Rosie Get Laid, films that explored the roiling beneath impressive appearances, with their metropolitan mix of money, politics, sex, and wit; and I thought of Alfonso Cuaron’s futurist nightmare of several years ago, Children of Men.  Art is not a handbook or manual, and many of its resources are aesthetic, intellectual, and spiritual, of course; but one standard for judging it is whether it prepares us for the world we are to live in.  Finally, I remembered English rock, with its roots in American rhythm and blues (and possibly the English music hall)—and the rude explosion of punk music, a music of alienation and anger that attacked the establishment.  That can be a guide; it certainly was a warning.  As might have been the violently expressive work of the painter Francis Bacon.   

On Art and Friendship: Local Color, a film by George Gallo

Local Color, a film by George Gallo

Starring Armin Mueller-Stahl, Trevor Morgan,

Samantha Mathis, Ron Perlman, and Ray Liotta

(Monterey Media/Alla Prima Productions)

Brushwork Pictures, 2009

“Don’t ever let anyone talk you out of what you want to do, who you want to be.”

—poet to painter

You are only young once: and in the film Local Color, a film about an art master and his student, an elderly man and one much younger, the young actor Trevor Morgan’s face, body, and manner capture the candor, confidence, fragility, hope, and humor of a time that cannot return.  John, a boy becoming a man, is an artist looking for guidance, and as portrayed by Morgan, the beauty, health, and promise of that is vivid.  Directed by George Gallo and inspired by his own youthful experience, Local Color is an intelligent and touching film, a tribute to friendship and to teaching, and a salute to both the past and the future.  The film opens with scenes of nature, followed by close scrutiny of paintings; and we see a boy drawing in a gallery, mocked by a younger boy, praised by a young woman.  Trevor Morgan’s John Talia is a young man whose father is ignorant of art, and suspicious of what such practice might mean (his son’s depictions of nude men is a particular concern, and the father, John Sr., approves of a school John wants to go to when John Sr. sees the attractive women also attending); but luckily, the mother, a seamstress, approves of, and identifies with, the boy’s talent.  When an old, rotund art gallerist and framer, Yammi, tells the young man, John, about a local but famous artist, Nicholi Seroff, someone whose work and writing John is familiar with, John sees a direction worth pursuing.  The place and time of the film are Port Chester, New York, 1974; and the story will take its characters and us to summer in Pennsylvania (but it was filmed in New Orleans and Covington, Louisiana).

Trevor Morgan plays John, and Armin Mueller-Stahl, an actor and visual artist, plays the tough elder artist Nicholi Seroff; and Charles Durning is the gallerist Yammi; Ray Liotta is John’s father; Diana Scarwid his mother, Edith; and Samantha Mathis, who has spoken of her character’s generational malaise, is a grieving poet, Carla, who lives near Seroff in Pennsylvania, sharing with Seroff the loss of a loved one (her son, his wife); and Ron Perlman is an art critic who likes abstract and experimental art, an acquaintance of Seroff.  John visits the gruff, cursing Seroff and is rebuffed but returns and ingratiates himself.  Nicholi Seroff says that feeling is the enemy of the elite, and that the common man knows bullshit and thus the elite of artists and critics rejects the presence of the common man; but that a journey shared is more important than a solitary journey.  Seroff, who prefers representation art to abstract or conceptual work, sees John’s art, and thinks one of its limitations is that John is tell seeing through the eyes of other men, still imitating their effects.  Surprisingly, Seroff invites John to accompany him on his summer vacation in rural Pennsylvania, a place where John will be able to see local color, things before they are affected by anything else.  Yet, while John looks forward to art lessons, Seroff is giving to eating and drinking and having John repair the house.  The time in Pennsylvania becomes as much as lesson in life as in art: attention, dedication, discipline, friendship, love, and sacrifice are cultivated.  John learns the different sides of both character and color.

Nicholi Seroff’s acquaintance Curtis Sunday, an art critic, thinks representational art is safe and shallow symbolism, but John notes that it is not appreciated and popular and, consequently, seems to John far from safe.  (Obviously competent, Seroff’s work is not as expressive on film as his argument or John’s is compelling.)  The film offers a reminder that when most people are celebrating the new, the new is no longer radical, or even particularly new—it has become conformity, whether in painting, music, literature, or film.  In Local Color, the critic and established but neglected artist have great Sunday night meals and raucous talks, which Sunday’s wife Sandra (Julie Lott) and now John attend.  Seroff insists on the centrality of feeling, and when the critic asks him to be a judge at a county art fair, then Seroff seeing mechanics, a mannequin, a one-color painted canvas, and an amateur scream painting presented as art, all part of a struggle of sanity against madness in which madness is winning, a rebellious Seroff awards the prize to a practical item, a working, tall painted-yellow floor fan.  The worst (or best) of this occurs later, when Seroff shows the critic some work and the critic is impressed by the complexity, depth, feeling, minimalism, purpose, and secondary thought evident in the work—and the revelation of the origin of the work produces hysterical laughter in all, particularly in Sunday’s own wife.  Seroff has proved his point about the emptiness of certain aesthetic theories, but being right is little help in a world in which “No one cares.  The world is too ugly.”  The old painter has lost faith, but the young man rekindles it, and Seroff begins to teach John in earnest about working habits, observation of nature, and use of colors.  It is a lovely film.

Gertrude Stein and Art

Sometimes people who grow up surrounded by wild and cultivated nature do not notice its beauty: nature is just what has been there—what they drive through to get somewhere else, or what they use in order to achieve some particular goal, such as fishing in a lake for dinner or market—and something out of the ordinary has to develop, some aesthetic sense, some proposed loss, for them to have the appreciation for nature.  If someone goes away to college or for work, and then returns, he or she is likely to have the distance to see what has been taken for granted as beautiful or special.  (I have found land beautiful for a long time, but then I have both an aesthetic and an alienated sensibility—I can see objects from a distance.)  Nature does not stand still in the way a work of art does.  Nature changes with the seasons, and one autumn may be very different from another.  I was struck recently by the particular green of the grass in a cane field after weeks of first drought then rain—the grass was long, rich, shimmering, and wild, before it was dusted and killed by a plane hired by a farmer, after which it began to yellow and brown.  The green had seemed dreamy, and the yellow sickly; and neither seemed quite real, a perception that may suggest how odd the perception of what is natural can be.  Often what is considered natural is what is considered mundane, not special or startling; and it is art that encourages us to take a second look and a third and fourth.  Contemplation is the door to the sublime.  Yet, the green of that field of glowing grass does not quite match the green that could be seen in the detail published by a national newsweekly of a Picasso painting, La Rue-des-Bois, owned by the experimental writer Gertrude Stein (Time, June 6, 2011; pages 49 and 52).  Picasso’s trees do not remind me, really, of trees I have seen in New York or Louisiana but I do see his painting and think woods.  The color and shapes in the Picasso painting are both abstract and figurative: they evoke plant life but go beyond it.  Of course, it is rarely that art is only mirror reflection; usually, it contains both interpretation and style.  Stein herself was a stylist of prose, and it was a style that had to be noticed, and yet that style—abstract, musical, and repetitive, a complexity created out of almost confounding simplicities—pointed to realities that were not named by other writers.

I read Gertrude Stein’s Wars I Have Seen years ago, a book inspired by twentieth century war, appreciating its personal and social commentary, and also liked her writing on Picasso, and more recently read her “Q.E.D.,” short fiction focused on the relationship among three women.  The June 2011 Time magazine article on Gertrude Stein’s art collection (“Bohemian Rhapsody” by Richard Lacayo) shows Picasso’s portrait of Stein—the prophetic depiction of her, that she would grow into—and paintings by Matisse and Juan Gris, some of the works appearing in an exhibit of works, collected in Paris by Stein and her family, at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, an exhibit scheduled to travel to Paris and New York.  The journalist Lacayo claims that it is better to remember Stein as an art collector rather than a writer, a foolish assertion: it is not necessary to belittle one endeavor in order to praise another.  It is important to recall that many things inspire and sustain a writer, and the other arts are usually to be found at the top of that list of things, especially painting, which is frequently not about what to see but about how to see.

Reading Stein’s “Q.E.D.,” what I found striking was how abstract it is, and also how intense, describing the friendship among three women and what seems the romantic entangled of first Helen and Mabel and then Helen and Adele.  It is a story written in 1903, and yet here is observation of character, of social setting, of personal obsession: and the things that are not named—sexual possibility, sexual seduction—are the things that seem most clear.  It is a lesson to writers who have come later, writers given to describing throbbing and thrusting limbs and members that do not seem connected at all to heart, mind, or spirit.  (It is also a lesson for editors and teachers of fiction, who would be inclined to butcher such a story—not understanding the point of its exposition or meditation: it is not only experience that is presented, but dignity that is created and sustained, with transcendence achieved.)  Stein knows that what matters only matters because of whom it is happening to: if you have no particular character, and no particular consciousness, what you do—and what is done to you—is little different from animal behavior.  It was Stein’s unique perspective that was the key to her seeing what was unique in the work of men such as Matisse and Picasso; she could appreciate the strange.