Let's Say You Were Tolstoy?

Tolstoy in l908

Even Shakespeare, Tolstoy and Dostoevsky would likely feel deflated by each other's company in the unlikely event they were at the same party. The only things that can happen when you reach the top of Mount Olympus is to either become one of the gods or fall off. Every kid dreams of growing up to become Zeus though the likely realization, about even their own hero, is that he is only a god amongst gods. Monotheism was created to deal precisely with this "constitutional" problem. God is not bidden to play by any rules since he lords it over all of us and is the ultimate maker. 

read Mark Segal in The East Hampton Star on Hallie Cohen's "Mi Ricordo" and see the show which is in it's last week!

and listen to "Everybody is a Star" by Sly and the Family Stone

Finality

How to absorb the notion that someone is completely out of existence? That you can't add something you forgot to say or  explain. Everyone wants to have the last word. Life is an extended argument, comparable to Dickens' Jaryrdyce v Jaryrdyce in Bleak House, until of course there are no more plaintiffs, defendants or case! "Get off of my case" is an expression that's used by those who don't like to be nagged. They will unfortunately get their wish when either the accuser or respondent is no more. It's, of course, true that there are those who carry on the conversation talking to the dead, still insisting on their wishes. It's indeed very human to court such impossibilities.

read Mark Segal in The East Hampton Star on Hallie Cohen's "Mi Ricordo" and see the show which is in it's last week!

and listen to Wagner's Liebestod played by the Berlin Philharmonic under Daniel Barenboim

Oneiric

statue of Hermione. comes to life

Dreams are the royal road to the unconscious. But when you think about it, everything is. Life is a dream is the title of a play by the 17th century playwright Calderon. In The Winter's Tale the statue Hermione comes to life. The unconscious is supposed to be the repository for the clandestine knowledge one might even be hiding from oneself. Yet isn't life itself the last stop on the line. "Everything comes out in the laundry" and even the most repressed wish finds itself sewn into the tapestry of existence. It's really just a matter of time. You might also look at dreams as sayings in Chinese fortune cookies. It seems random when a waiter places the dish on the table. Then there's the aleatory movement which determines which one is finally yours.

read Mark Segal in The East Hampton Star on Hallie Cohen's "Mi Ricordo" and see the show which is in it's last week!

and listen to "Cool Jerk" by the Capitols

The Crack-Up

You know the novels and films about people who lose everything. There were numerous defenestrations after the crash of 29. Alumnae of money make appearances in the novels of Fitzgerald, O'Hara and the now forgotten John Marquand. The Crack-Up Is the title of Fitzgerald's controversial volume of essays. And the one in which he famously wrote, "there are no second acts in American lives." Does fortune then mask the reality that your "run," good or bad, will be cut short by mortality. Pleasure is the radioactive fallout following a major blast. And it's also a black hole. You stand at the event horizon and implode like a super nova. Imagine a biopic about Courbet gingerly walking the line between eros and art. Narcissus drowned in his own image. And what are the viewers to do--as they gaze, mesmerized and disarmed, by the wantonly splayed legs of the artist's model in "L' Origine du monde?"

read the review of The Kafka Studies Department in Booklife

and watch the trailer for animation of Erotomania

The Go-Between

The past actually is a closed book. It's tantamount to Yom Kippur where the Book of Life is sealed, on a yearly basis. It's not that one can't remember specifics. Rather the feeling is similar to examining an antiquity --say the Ming Dynasty princess on the porcelain base of an old lamp you've grown up with. Remember the case of the Florida man who fell into a sinkhole while he was lying in bed? You may be caught unawares by the pasf. Bergson called it "involuntary memory" lest one "forget" the Proustian "madeleine." Bergman's Wild Strawberries is  a journey. Supposedly the professor is being honored. In fact, he's swept back into another sometimes unwelcome world of recollection--that's both hauntingly vivid and reeking of impossibility--filled, as it is, with chances missed snd turns not taken. Which past do you prefer-- the chronological timeline or the  sometimes haunting nightmare in which one struggles to remain afloat? FromThe Go-Between: "the past is a foreign country."

read Mark Segal on Hallie Cohen's "Mi Ricordo"

and listen to Joan Baum's NPR review of The Kafka Studies Department

Eat or Be Eaten

You hear much more talk about people choking than eating each other. It used to be a quid pro quo and part of the food chain: eat or be eaten. In this sense The Kama Sutra is a mixture of Roto Rooter and Micheline both the tire and food guide. Way back when "gay" meant "happy," choking was what you had to watch out for when there were bones. Every time you ate say cod, you're wife (who is now probably on the way to becoming a man) would say, "honey, watch out for the bones" just as you were about to dig in. Now when my "wife" who remember now is almost a man (and qualified for a bar mitzvah at that) says "eat me" when I ask "what's for dinna, meat loaf?" I reply "sure I'll go down on you." If you are one of those people who likes meat loaf, but still gets off on asphyxiation (a la the recent front page Op Times piece, "The Troubling Trend in Teenage Sex"), you're going to have to sacrifice certain pleasures.Make no bones about it. 

listen to "Lick It Before You Stick It" by Denise LaSalle

and also read the review of The Kafka Studies Department in Booklife (PW)

A Wooden Ruler

photo: Alexei Nicolsky

Rulers are figures of historical importance who perpetuate dynasties. For instance Czar Nicholas II presided over the death of the Romanovs--who today are remembered for Faberge eggs. Frederick the Second a benevolent despot fared better. When one talks about a royal's rule, one is referring to a measure of time. Thus you have the rule of ruler or a rulers length rule divided up into ever smaller demarcations. After all the much maligned plastic or wooden ruler was designed precisely for the purpose of noting the small points between one end to the other if the ruler in much the way a clock marks time. Even a broken clock is right twice a day goes the old saw. It would have been really cool if Henry Eighth had possessed a ruler. Maybe it would have enabled him to moderate his appetites. A ruler might have helped Shakespeare's fey Richard II to enjoy his garden. Think of     famed pre-Raphaelite Millais's "Death of Ophelia." One could judge the equanimity of a ruler by their ability to  use a ruler to measure the fine points.Tempus fugit.

listen to "Do the Funky Chicken" by Rufus Thomas

and read Mark Segal on Hallie Cohen's "Mi Ricordo"