Real Estate

Is it surprising Trump regards the Ukraine as a real estate deal? Land is the issue, but in the Trump Weltaunshaung, it’s all about the market. Remember the first Zelenskyy White House visit where the president harangued his visitor about not having the cards. Forget that DLJ is playing without a full deck. Every one is dealt a different hand.That’s life.Too bad for the smaller country. Too bad for its larger neighbor whose hand is being called, but getting back. Trump regards himself as the broker. In that capacity it’s been convenient to "gaslight." Instead of Russia invading Ukraine, why not start with Ukraine occupying the old USSR or going further back Peter the Great's Imperial Russia? Put Ukraine in the dog house. If you have ever bought a piece of property you know brokers create an air of faux intimacy. There’s a lot of backslapping and hand holding. You bring people together. "Wrap things up" was the term Trump used recently. Forget all the death and destruction. In this case the brokerage commission is the Nobel Peace Prize.

read "Luggage Tags" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

and read "The El" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

and also read "Punk" by Francis Levy, Vol.1 Brooklyn

Choking Up

Sally Rooney is one of the great documenters of extended adolescence and also of sexual mores. In this regard "choking" is the foreplay du jour. Practitioners of jujitsu choke each other out with opponents signaling when they’ve had enough. You can’t cry "uncle" obviously. You slap the mat.  Back in the long ago era of Roth, fellatio was the transgressive activity. These days, in certain circles blow jobs don’t even qualify as sex. You walk into someone’s house and they matter of factly blow you. It's a far cry from "hello!" Times change. The 80s for example was the era of golden showers. Then came rough sex and bukake. Strindberg wrote Dance of Death which may someday be the swan song for this era of "choking," though today it’s everywhere. That same host or hostess who once blew you has become a veteran MMA who no longer wants to be a door mat. Go to a gathering of thirty somethings and you’ll be the guest who's being detained or restrained. Remember the choke which was part of the apparatus of the old standard shift? Remember when "gay" meant "happy?" Choking as an element of lovemaking has nothing to do with being gay. Most sexual intercourse amongst young people since the time of the pandemic has involved choking. If Godard were alive, he’d undoubtedly have directed a sequel to Breathless which would deal with this phenomenon. If you remember Anna Karina plays the prostitute in Vivre Sa vie. Talking dirty was the paraphilia explored in that film as it was in the porn series Talk Dirty to Me. Humankind always in the move has come a long way since then.

read "Luggage Tags" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

and read "The El" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

and also read "Punk" by Francis Levy, Vol.1 Brooklyn

Highest 2 Lowest

Spike Lee's thriller noir, Highest 2 Lowest, is based on Kurosawa's High and Low (1963) and Ed McBain's King's Ransom (1959). Provenance is one of the subjects of the movie. The very last powerful confrontation between a rapper and kidnapper named Felon (ASAP Rocky) and David King aka King David (Denzel Washington) is between "old" (King's "discovery" at the movie's climax is accompanied by a Steinway) and "new" style. Jeffrey Wright who played the role of the black writer Thelonious "Monk" Ellison in American Fiction functions not only as a character but citation. If you recall Ellison adopts a faux prison rapper persona to succeed in the Cord Jefferson movie. However, the antinomy, the Gregorian chant between King and Felon, separated by a penitentiary's plexiglass divider is the movie's coup de grace. (Edit note: the range of Denzel Washington's performance is off the charts).

read "Luggage Tags" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

and read "The El" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

and also read "Punk" by Francis Levy, Vol.1 Brooklyn

Dip in the Pool (Alfred Hitchcock Presents, l958)

Disasters provide a function. Particularly if they’re part of a collectivity (of as little as two) they can bring people together. "We three make up a solitude. For none alive to-day. Can know the stories that we know. Or say the things we say. (WB Yeats). No one wishes comeuppances on anyone, but they’re unavoidable. You might think of them as side bars, side roads or detours that can take on a life if their own. Whole ways of life have been uprooted by the recent floods in Texas and the Southwest where rescue crews and even FEMA can create their own intimacies. There was recently a very touching picture of first responder rescuing a woman trapped in her car and literally carrying her across a flooded highway. It’s unlikely these two will ever forget each other. The only thing better than being saved is saving someone. 

read "Luggage Tags" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

and read "The El" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

and also read "Punk" by Francis Levy, Vol.1 Brooklyn

The Night Watch

The Night Watch by Rembrandt (1642)

Sleep hygiene is a phrase that’s sometimes used to refer to nocturnal habits. Of course there are those who work nights, for instance, soldiers on the lookout for the enemy. Your doctor may have arranged for you to go to a clinic where they hook you up and test for things like sleep apnea but there is another kind of sleeplessness--the physical manifestation of a metaphysical plight. "The Night Watch" is one of Rembrandt’s most famous paintings. The subject is a group of men, what sixties radicals would have called The Establishment. But when you think of it, the title is resonant of the very things that might keep people up. It’s hard to sleep when you feel your world is falling apart. Is that what Rembrandt was thinking about when he produced his great masterpiece? Probably not. He was plainly interested in applying paint and that task was so all encompassing, there was little time left to the think. No it’s unlikely Rembrandt tossed and turned. When you look at "The Night Watch," you'll likely conclude, the artist got a good night’s sleep.

read "Luggage Tags" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

and read "The El" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

and also read "Punk" by Francis Levy, Vol.1 Brooklyn

Beyond Good and Evil?

Is evil relative? Is there a little bit of larceny in everyone? Today it’s easy to see evil as absolute. Just pluck from the grab bag of headlines about evil people say Ken Paxton, the attorney general of Texas trying to beat out the incumbent,  John Cornyn for the Republican senate seat nomination. There's  Cetco, Jair Bolsinaro luckily under house arrest in Brazil, naturally Putin, Kim Jong-un (who purportedly blew his uncle up with a mortar). Netanyahu washes his hands of Gaza by killing all the Palestinians and taking it over. The latest bit of treachery was the murder of 4 Al-Jazeera journalists. Marjorie Taylor Greene the embodiment of evil gets points for condemning the genocide. Where is the relativity, where the gray areas? Is there an ounce of good in Trump? Or is that like mistaking apples for oranges? It’s literally a new Ice Age. Can it be said good came from the previous one—to the extent that human life for good or bad might not have come to be without it?

read "Luggage Tags" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

and read "The El" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

and also read "Punk" by Francis Levy, Vol.1 Brooklyn

The Great Dictator

Remember the scene in The Great Dictator when Chaplin bounces the globe around like a ball. Now Trump is meeting with Putin to finalize an agreement on Ukraine’s fate. Zelensky may be allowed to attend in observer status after all it is his country that's being discussed) but he won’t have any say. This coming after the announcement The White House Rose garden is being turned into a cement patio and 800 National Guardsmen will be called in to patrol the capitol even though crime is down. Is the country a kingdom or police state? Don’t be surprised to see The Icemen Cometh in repertoire at The Kennedy Center. The next step for Ghislaine Maxwell will be a move from the minimum security prison to house arrest at Mar-A-Lago. Netanyahu is washing his hands of Gaza by killing all the inhabitants. As Kurt Vonnegut remarks about the bombing of Dresden (and war in general) in Slaughterhouse- Five  “And so it goes”

read "Luggage Tags" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

and read "The El" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

and also read "Punk" by Francis Levy, Vol.1 Brooklyn

The Naked Gun

The decision to cast Pam Anderson as Beth Davenport the sister of a murder victim breaks down the fourth wall. Anderson’s supposedly stolen marriage video in which she’s shown avariciously fellating Tommy Lee, during their honeymoon (1998) augured in the era of reality television. "The Celebrity Wives of Deep Throat" should have been the title of the pirated video which rivals Chloe Sevigny’s memorable performance in Brown Bunny. But Akiva Schaffer’s The Naked Gun which stars Liam Neeson in the role popularized  by Leslie Nielsen is "surreality reality TV" in film form.  Un Chien Andalou (1929) challenged the conventions of cinema when a razor cut an eyeball. Here the films Top Gun literally punches open the screen after he’s also bent apart the film’s credit sequence. The verbal pyroteomics derive from another master of surrealism Groucho Marx. When Pam Anderson is asked “did you see LA?” she blithely says she’s an alumnus (of UCLA). It’s all up hill, down hill and sideways from there.

read "Luggage Tags" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

and read "The El" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

and also read "Punk" by Francis Levy, Vol.1 Brooklyn

Clockwork

 

"Even a broken clock is right twice a day," reads the old saw. But there are brief remissions where time seems to slow down and you don’t feel like a rat on treadmill. Quotidian reality is a double whammy. You're getting nowhere with a built in loss factor. In fact if you are loss averse life isn’t for you. But oases can be found in the most unexpected places. Go to one of those malls in the middle of nowhere and enter the CVS whose stores are made from a template, all with similar footprints. Your past melds with the present and suddenly you are not living in the wreckage of your future. Whoever thought you’d quote Eliot in a real wasteland? "Time present and time past Are both perhaps present in time future..." (Burnt Norton) The chains that link are the same ones that bind. 

read "Luggage Tags" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

and read "The El" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

and also read "Punk" by Francis Levy, Vol.1 Brooklyn

Rebel Without A Cause

Within the mythology created by American Film, beaufiful young women are attracted to guys who flirt with danger. James Dean was the prototype and Rebel Without a Cause, the film. Life mirrored art since Dean himself met an early and tragic end in a car crash. One could hardly describe the current administration as swashbuckling thought they certainly flirt with danger, DJT is a little like Popeye flexing his muscles into rubber bands that snap right back in his face. Some poker players insouciantly up the ante and get wiped out. But is China actually the poker-faced dealer in the current tariff wars. Remember there’s an Adrenalin high to gambling, but when all is said and done, the house is the winner. (Edit note: could there be any better name for a Las Vegas mogul than Steve Wynn?)

read "Luggage Tags" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

and read "The El" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

and also read "Punk" by Francis Levy, Vol.1 Brooklyn

A La Recherché du Temps Perdu (Mathématique)

Henri Bergson

Does the past seem closer today than it did 10 years ago? Is the sense of pastness inversely proportional to the length of time that’s transpired from the incident or event being remembered? Do you have trouble remembering what you did, what you ate and who you saw yesterday while it feels you have just gotten off the phone with a lost love fifty years back? Remember the old wooden booth with the black rotary pay phones? You’d can almost hear the coins clink as they drop, first a dime for 3 minutes, then a quarter, until suddenly you were in the orbit of the cell? How to name this property of time?

read "Luggage Tags" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

and read "The El" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

and also read "Punk" by Francis Levy, Vol.1 Brooklyn

Superman

James Gunn's Superman (David Corenswet) is the ultimate immigrant--a visitor from another planet. Like many illegal immigrants, he's forced to veil his identity.The resultant disguise is an ingenious way of looking at one of comic book history's famous doppelgängers, Clark Kent. Gunn's Superman is an almost too obvious political allegory with Boravia (Russia) and Jarhanpur (Ukraine) in a conflict engineered by Lex Luthor (Nicholas Hoult). But it's the virtual reality graphics that tell the story. Superman is a computer game in a surrealist Dali landscape. Note Metamorpho's floating head. Is this hyperactive Krypto, Un Chien Andalou (1929)? In his latest iteration, Superman is in danger of losing his DACA status until the Justice Gang, The Green Lantern (Nathan Fillion), Terrific Man Ed Gathegi) and Hawkgirl (Isabella Merced) intervene. Dream on. (edit note: what constitutes the modernity of the movie is not the advanced computer simulations, rather the ambivalence of the relation between Clark and Lois).

read "Luggage Tags" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

and read "The El" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

and also read "Punk" by Francis Levy, Vol.1 Brooklyn

Unified Executive Theory

Russel Vought

The movie Zone of Interest epitomizes being in a bubble. Can people live a normal existence in the face of atrocity.  Day after day the pillars of democracy have fallen. Rome’s ruins exude the sublimity of Tintern Abby. You marvel at the  emotion without remembering the title of a famous tomeThe Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Trump announces dicta willy nilly. No president has ever done x y or z and there is no legal precedent. In an unprecedented act Ghislaine Maxwell, a sex offender, is transferred to a minimum security prison. “The unified executive” trumpeted by Russell Vought, is the ideology (Project 2025). In the meanwhile you find yourself commuting from one biosphere, the Upper East Side to another East Hampton with no thought of the Gilgo Beach murders and the bodies of tortured prostitutes buried by Rex Heuermann along Route 110 in Manorville, linking the LIE with Route 27. Compartmentalization facilitates survival and murder.

read "Luggage Tags" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

and read "The El" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

and also read "Punk" by Francis Levy, Vol.1 Brooklyn

Madeleines

Old standbys are like people. You go back to them thinking you will retrieve the past but they have aged too. Have you ever seen someone who looks vaguely familiar? You can’t place them until the face emerges from the flesh. The next time  you recognize Tom or Julie right away. The preconception established in memory trumps the realities of the present. You are back there. It’s not the Proustian Madeleine with its mesmerizing smell rather a blast from the past.

read "Luggage Tags" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

and read "The El" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

and also read "Punk" by Francis Levy, Vol.1 Brooklyn

Jair Bolsonaro

Jair Bolsonaro

Strong men only get power by virtue of those they rule. One can admire charisma but it’s nothing more than satanic public relations. The push back by the MAGA base over Jeffrey Epstein flies in the face of the notion of the invulnerability, a truly "unified executive." Is a leader really so powerful they could walk down Fifth Avenue shooting willy-nilly at whoever gets in their way. The horrifying  shootings at 345 Park are a night mare of executive privilege. Ezra Klein recently pointed out how the notion of the deep state can easily be used by either side. If you deny a coverup, you become the problem. BTW is it possible that Q is an invention of the Trumpocracy? The current situation bears comparison to the Middle or Dark Ages where the fires of inquisition are fueled by a plague. Those who criticize a tyrant are under the same delusion as the support base. Those who worship idols ultimately remove them from their pedestals.

read "Luggage Tags" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

and read "The El" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

and also read "Punk" by Francis Levy, Vol.1 Brooklyn

Free Fall

apple tree under which Newton sat in 1666

Have you ever had one of those dreams where you are free falling. It’s not the one where you are caught with your pants down. No secret is being revealed. Rather you have taken a chance, leaping from the high dive, now out of control. However, from a Newtonian point of view, you are only accelerating at 32.2 feet per second squared. Of course the terror lies in the unknown, in what happens between the diving board and the water. The Cyclone at Coney Island peaks slowly but its descent which is obviously faster always seems as if it were taking forever. When will this stop? When you wake up, is the answer. But is it the dream that breaks the fall or the fall that cuts short the dream?

read "The El" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

and also read "Punk" by Francis Levy, Vol.1 Brooklyn

Apres Coup

Do you often find your self lost in thought. You may even be facing someone who gives you a queer or bemused look. “Have you been listening to me!” If you say you have been listening when you’re not, then you run the risk of being caught in lie.You hope you’re with one if those people who are so self-centered they will assume that you hang on their every word. The nod in your direction is just their way of pretending to be interested in what you think. Human beings produce kinetic energy. Particles react without fracturing their integrity. In most cases the collisions are fly-by-night affairs which don’t create either anything of substance or any new substance. Entropy is  the second law thermodynamics. Then there is the psychoanalytic concept of "apres coup," which is a delayed reaction to a traumatic event. Don’t try to justify anything. It’s a waste of time--and energy.

read "The El" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

and also read "Punk" by Francis Levy, Vol.1 Brooklyn

Zen and the Art of Archery

Words actually don’t fly up, as Claudius avers. See Eugen Herrigal’s Zen and the Art of Archery (1948). Words and arrows both have minds of their own. It’s not the object but the act. So picture yourself at a tony social interaction in East Hampton. You place great store in what people say and think but it is not the goal of impressing, ignoring or having one’s being bathed in validation that ultimately describes what goes on in any particular moment. People are outcome oriented and suffer from what are called "limited objectives" in certain spiritual quarters. Whether you’re about to attack, praise or simply find yourself in the line of fire, the significance resides in the fact that you're perfecting the art of oratory or self-defense.

read "The El" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

and also read "Punk" by Francis Levy, Vol.1 Brooklyn

Truth and Reconciliation

"The Creation of Adam" by Michelangelo

Without being dismissive of a great human project, don’t all human beings merit their own Truth and Reconciliation Commissions? You have harmed others as well as yourself. Then there's the ICC. Your case won’t even come "Before the Law." "Before the law sits a gatekeeper..." begins the famed Kafka story. In fact, rather than setting a precedent, you will be forgotten with the rest of suffering humanity. Michelangelo canonized Adam's hand reaching up to God. Still day after day you pace back and forth waiting for a verdict. Are you good or bad? How will you be remembered? Your legacy, your message to posterity. The paradox is that history which is created in the present, leaves no clue as to either its final disposition or the fate of its adherents.

read "The El" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

and also read "Punk" by Francis Levy, Vol.1 Brooklyn

The Wide Sargasso Sea

Life both for the earliest superheroes and your average Joe or Josepha is a set of obstacles. Homer puts Odysseus up against the sirens and Polyphemus. Then when he returns home, he’s only recognized by his dog, Argos. This last, facing the cosmic indifference of his universe, is the most difficult. What is the deal with Penelope anyway? Jean Rhys Wide Saragasso Sea is usually thought of as a prequel to Jane Eyre but the title is bewitching. Imagine living in a changeless liquid suspension with an absence of circumstance. Such timelessness is usually not the province of the storyteller or even a civilian. What to day or do in the absence of pain and suffering. How to negotiate utopia amidst dysphoria?

read "The El" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

and read "The Waste Land" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

Naked Came the Stranger

You may be familiar with the genre of Autofiction, which navigates the channel between reality and imagination. Sex With Strangers may be the title of the work you're contemplating. One of the virtues of not leading the promiscuous existence of the libertine is to contemplate the wonders and possibilities of finding yourself totally undressed with a stranger. However, nudity and nakedness also have other levels. In the heat of passion, it's easy to forget that one is revealing as well as staring into the face of lust--which is a mirror. The realization that one is naked with a stranger is one of the most sublime experiences of human life and one whose savor is directly proportionate to its exceptionality.

read "The El" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

and read "The Waste Land" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

and also read "Punk" by Francis Levy, Vol.1 Brooklyn

Trump's Trolley Problem

Philippa Foot

Trump plays the news cycle. One reason he's not going to send Jake Tapper to CECOT is, he needs him. He sets off a firestorm on one issue only to divert attention with something even more provocative. MAGAworld is a totally transactional universe. So game theory comes into play. Philippa Foot’s “Trolley Problem” is a literal description of a day in the life of White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt. A train is coming right at the terrified woman of early cinematic montage. If it’s diverted six other track workers die. Do you let life take its course? Or do you feel ethically bound to save the one at the expense of the many? The Retrumplican train solves the whole problem by killing two birds with one stone. 

read "The El" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

and read "The Waste Land" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

and also read "Punk" by Francis Levy, Vol.1 Brooklyn

Ancien Regime

The Storming of the Basille (July 14, 1789)

Tourists are attracted to Rome because of the ruins. The past can be inviting if kept at arms length. Visitors team around Hadrian’s Tomb like flies to shit. However there are different pasts. Yesterday does not produce an effusion of tourists with old fashioned Leicas dangling from their necks. Yesterday is more the province of therapy than travel. Where are the monuments to intra-psychic development? Perhaps they are the property of imagination and memories--left with one’s confessor whether priest or analyst. Everyone possesses an ancient civilization which is sometimes only a nightmare away.

read "The El" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

and read "The Waste Land" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

and also read "Punk" by Francis Levy, Vol.1 Brooklyn

Urgency

You know how you urge someone on with all they could or should accomplish or overcome? You cheer them on as if you had money on a horse. The problem is most people give up in the face of adversity. Turns out you're doing it for your own benefit for the feeling of agency and poise. However, the recipient of such largesse may find themselves lost in the shuffle and even belittled by the positive energy. Drowning can even occur when one is too willing to brave the waves. Not everyone can do it. In fact many people can’t. If mountain climbing were so easy, there’d wouldn’t be room for all the climbers on the slopes (which btw is actually what occurs on Everest where the long lines have become one of the most perilous parts of the ascent).

read "The El" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

Road (of life) Rage

Surely you have exploded at some innocent person who gets in the way of your anger. Relief is followed by remorse. Unfortunately, If you’d kept it inside, your complaint would still be rolling around in your head. Now it’s deposited. “Curb Your Dog?” The problem is retribution. Powerless inept creatures at the bottom of the food chain are the stuff of psychotic assassination. Have you ever given the finger to a driver honking at you to speed up your crossing of an intersection? He can’t do anything. He’s not going to leave his car. Wrong! He’s had a few and feels like one of Tom Wolfe’s “masters of the universe.” Even if he employs his MMA on you in word only, it still hurts.

read "The El" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

and also read "Punk" by Francis Levy, Vol.1 Brooklyn

Zukunft der Erinnerung

Zukunft der Erinnerung, "future of remembrance" is the title of a recent book reviewed in the TLS. The compound word Vergangenheitsbewaltigung,"the burden of the past" actually sounds like road directions, “Ausfahrt” or “exit “ a word you are likely to see on highways in Germany or Austria is onomatopoeic. Contrary to Merleau-Ponty words themselves which, by definition, lack the consciousness of their own being, are reeking with intention. Memory and the past are loaded issues anywhere but their significance is underscored by the rise of Germany’s Alternative fur Democracy (AfD), the movement embraced by JD Vance. As in the old Western Union Telegrams STOP! “Say no more, nudge, nudge “ to quote Monty Python.

Second Coming

 

The Last Judgement by Michelangelo

Tolstoy was excommunicated by the Russian Orthodox Church because of his last novel Resurrection—essentially the final letter to the world from an author who walked out of his estate and died alone in the Arapovo station. Fitzgerald prophetically said there were no third acts in American life but reincarnation is one of the first things children learn about in Sunday school. Second Coming or just the old male refractory period? The urban legend is that the angel comes down and taps the little indentation below the nose and above the upper lip, to make you forget who you were. But no supernal force can lock or unlock the future. though; the writing is simply Living in the wreckage of one’s future is a slogan that’s often invoked about the pitfalls of projection. Then there’s the phoenix.

read "Rhododendron" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

and also read "Punk" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

Ghostbusters

Have you ever felt there was unfinished business and wished you could cross eternity and get that one last word in with the dead? There's something unfair in being cut off by the end of someone else's life. It's like being stopped in mid-sentence. Late developers face this predicament. Say you had a successful parent. Once they're dead you may start to succeed, but it's too late. Isn't there supposed to be a party line with the afterlife? Isn't that what seances purport to do? You call up the apparition or shadow spirit of whomever at the seance, but instead of asking them how their afterlife is going, you go on about yourself. You've got a captive audience. They're not going anywhere, like that that editor or agent who told you they were on the way to meeting, even as they open the rest room door.  Poltergeists ("Geist" in German is "spirit") are harmless is one of the first things Ghostbusters learn.

read "Rhododendron" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

and also read "Punk" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star