Friday, February 14, 2025

All the King's Men



It's a mixture of  Damon Runyon, All the Kings's MenThe Last Hurrah and Pal Joey, with a dash of Mein Kampf. But you can't write this stuff. Imagine the richest man in the world exchanging favors with the Prime Minister of India in Blair House, with one of his children on his shoulders. The same day trans references are removed from the Stonewall memorial and a former Illinois governor, who has served time for trying to selling Barack Obama's senate seat, is pardoned just in time for a possible appointment as ambassador to Serbia. The pardoning of Jared Kushner's father, who was then appointed ambassador to France, set the precedent. Remember back in the 50s when The Threepenny Opera played at The Theatre de Lys and all one had to worry about was being called before the HUAC? City Hall is Tammany Hall with Mayor Adams kept on a string by virtue of his dismissal "with prejudice" and a Republican appointed U.S. Attorney, Danielle R. Sassoon resigning in protest. It would all be amusing, a skit on SNL, if the reality of USAID being shuttered with Trump planning a Club Med for the Gaza Strip while saying "of course they would" when asked if Ukraine would be included in the negotiations for its own country's peace with Russia. Is this some sort of knock, knock joke? There was the biblical Tower of Babel and then the Tower of Shit Retrumplicans are building today. Oh yeah "Trump Halts Aid to South Africa Claiming Discrimination Against Afrikaners," reads The Washington Post headline. Will there be a Truth and Reconciliation Commission after the world picks up the pieces?

read "An Incident of Defenestration" by Francis Levy, Vol. 1 Brooklyn

Thursday, February 13, 2025

Power




Is power what everyone desires? You 
might counter no,  adulation, which results from feats of selflessness. One looks up to a spiritual leaders who quell their appetites for the sake of enlightenment. An innovative artist runs the risk of dying without being understood. However the dream is that they will be discovered with all the years of poverty and suffering bearing the wages that fame delivers. There are those who don’t feel they have the stuff whether it’s beauty, brilliance, know how or will and who basically resign away any future claims they might have. These latter derive a contentment that comes from surrender and acceptance of their position in the food chain. Because they realize they will never get what they  desire, they are willing to be acolytes. Power is still the lingua franca of those who give it up. Neither Gandhi nor Mother Theresa exemplify powerlessness, nor do Thomas Merton or Richard Thurman, practitioners attained celebrity status. Only if you take a vow of silence and recuse yourself from the world forever will you ever truly enjoy the satori of loss.

read "Making the Graphic Novel Graphic" by Francis Levy, Vol. 1 Brooklyn

and listen to "Bernadette" by The Four Tops

Wednesday, February 12, 2025

Do Narcissists Trigger You?




"Narcissus" by Caravaggio

Does “ A Narcissist trigger you?” Or is it just the word? Lots of people slap the term on any self-involved individual who walks into a room. But there's a difference between a narcissist and someone who is merely selfish. Just because a person takes more than their own share of the meat on the platter doesn't  mean they're drowning in their own image. Still it's the word itself that's the trigger. Narcissism has undergone dilution due to over use but make no mistake when a real live Narcissist walks into a party or other event you’re going to feel like you don’t exist. For instance they may be genial when you start to make small talk. They’ll be forthcoming telling you their name, what they do etc. They’ll go on about their profession and even children but somewhere along the way, usually after about 20 minutes, have passed, you'll realize, you're standing on the event horizon of your local black hole. At this point you will be triggered enough to set off an alarm.

read "Pet Buddha" by Francis Levy, Vol. 1 Brooklyn

listen to James Brown and Luciano Pavarotti singing "It's a Man's World"

and listen to "I Love to Love (But My Baby Just Wants to Dance)" by Tina Charles (1975)

and listen to "Band of Gold" by Freda Payne with Belinda Carlisle

and listen to "Twenty-Five Miles From Home" by Edwin Starr

Tuesday, February 11, 2025

I'm Still Here




Walter Salles' I'm Still Here is a Brazilian movie about political disappearance. In Argentina, these victims were famously called "Desaparecidos." Rubens
 Paiva was an engineer who was abducted by the military. His wife played both by Fernanda Torres and her 95 year old mother, Fernanda Montenegro, is left to cope. The movie has been nominated for an Academy Award and the virtuoso performances by this mother/daughter team are stirring. But how does a viewer in a society where such things supposedly don’t happen react? With Trump’s immigration policy and his use of ICE and Gitmo, a once inviolable line has been crossed. America is no longer democratic and free. This is a nightmare whose horrifying implications one hesitates to fully accept. The movie’s resonance then comes not only from what happened in a far away country but what is occurring now. Still there is another level in some ways more tragic and irremediable the film strikes--the empty bed. Time is the villain in that tale and there is always someone who is going to be left. How does one go on living when a beloved person becomes a word that is forever lost, a name erased on a page? Is it selfish for inhabitants of modern Western industrialized societies to invoke themselves into the drama? When their loses occur  there is a reason, illness, death and age, all tragedies, but different from execution. And art does justice to those too. You can’t compare or weigh grief except to invoke the imminent dangers and terror present day political prisoners, undocumented immigrants, DACA children and other political prisoners are facing now.

read "Pet Buddha" by Francis Levy, Vol. 1 Brooklyn

listen to James Brown and Luciano Pavarotti singing "It's a Man's World"

and listen to "I Love to Love (But My Baby Just Wants to Dance)" by Tina Charles (1975)

and listen to "Band of Gold" by Freda Payne with Belinda Carlisle

and listen to "Twenty-Five Miles From Home" by Edwin Starr

Monday, February 10, 2025

Box Store




Walmart, Windham, CT

Greater civilizations than America's have fallen. Take the Aztecs and greater institutions than democracy, though you may be hard put to name one. Democracy with its due process was pretty nifty. When Trump competed his work, America became a box store.Target, BJs are the models. Damaged goods, what are known as seconds, are dumped into big bins where  consumers are fooled and can fool themselves with a label say Levi’s. Walmarts the ur-box store is a virtual prairie. What is being marketed are not products but bargains. Legislation is similarly packaged as "bills" that reflect some sort of consensus when the bosses are DOGING the truth. Sorrowfully what used to be called the electorate is a reflection of the damaged goods and twisted information they imbibe. Guantanamo Bay and a sub-human prison in El Salvador which have sold their penal product to the US became "destinations." Not to worry under the current administration, assisted living will be tantamount to prison too.

read "An Incident of Defenestration" by Francis Levy, Vol. 1 Brooklyn

Friday, February 7, 2025

Boswell's Life of Johnson


Supply and demand is what creates the balance of trade. Parity is usually what nation states who support the notion of homeostasis seek. In political terms “spheres of influence” was a word bandered about during the Cold War. The CIA toppled Mosedegh, Lumumba and Allende to keep the Soviets at bay. In microeconomic terms supply and demand determines the price of eggs and gas. The current regime came to power with promises of lower prices in goods. In micro micro comic terms this is the engine that drives the economics of culture. It is often hard for artists to realize they’re providing piece goods which stock the shelves of galleries and bookstores. What moves—not necessarily what’s good—defines an age as readily as tastemakers and critics—though the cross-pollination is ultimately what accounts for the commerce. In the field of publishing a readership has a writing cohort who are the suppliers of words. The little magazine are dead, literary criticism is dead. You can’t get read unless you’re reviewed. You can't be reviewed unless you're read. Sure the sociology of literature may have changed but it’s not been annihilated. Sure it’s difficult nigh impossible to find an agent. And yes publishers don’t look at unsolicited manuscripts, but it goes back to the price of eggs which have recently increased 50% due to bird flu.

listen to "It's a Man's Man's Man's World" by James Brown and Luciano Pavarotti

and read "An Incident of Defenestration" by Francis Levy, Vol. 1 Brooklyn

Thursday, February 6, 2025

Man's Inhumanity to Man




Norman Mailer jailed after stabbing his wife, Adele Morales, at party 

Don’t be offended the next time you're invited to an art opening or publication party and the artist or writer who has invited you refuses to acknowledge your presence after repeated fly-bys-- to the position where they're holding court. After finding yourself roundly ignored you may in a form of reality testing even go back for more only to experience the pangs not only of rejection but the whole obliteration, not for the first time, of your humanity. Art openings are not places to achieve validation and being snubbed in Chelsea or even in some modest gallery on Orchard Street is considered a form of politesse. Yes in the reverse system of etiquette that characterizes the work of so-called culture, being snubbed shows you are someone. The same attraction repulsion 
syndrome applies at cocktail parties or singles bars where one is looking for love, but it's less blatant ie if a girl or boy takes a shining to you, they're likely to let you know they would be only too happy to make you a strange bed fellow or even stranger fellow traveler. Such are the vicissitudes of social intercourse in these troubled times. The world may be going to hell in a hand basket, yet there still are plenty of venues where you will be able to experience man’s inhumanity to man before you find yourself playing to a darkened house.

listen to "It's a Man's Man's Man's World" by James Brown and Luciano Pavarotti

and read "An Incident of Defenestration" by Francis Levy, Vol. 1 Brooklyn


Wednesday, February 5, 2025

Civil Disobedience





Civil Disobedience is an interesting phrase. "Civil" connotes "polite" but also "social." You have civil defense, civil services. Gandhi used it against the British, then Martin Luther King against segregation. Speaking of civil defense, "civil" is in it,  but the connotation requires defending. DOGE is attacking many government organizations which contain the word "civil" often in "uncivil" ways that break both protocols and the law. If you are an employee of the US Treasury, which once was impregnable, you are not happy. What would Gandhi or MLK do in the face of juggernauts as powerful as colonialism and segregation still continue to be? "Drill baby drill" is the mantra of those who don't cotton to "civility," those who annex, annex and annex, say everything is constantly going be alright and then put all the dangerous dog eating immigrants into camps.

read "An Incident of Defenestration" by Francis Levy, Vol. 1 Brooklyn

Tuesday, February 4, 2025

Soundtrack to a Coup D' Etat





It is not to diminish Johan Grimonprez's Soundtrack to a Coup D’ Etat to say the title is one of the most powerful aspects of the documentary, currently playing at Film Forum. Patrice Lumumba meets Louis Armstrong with CIA director Allen Dulles as impresario. At one point, a rioter stealing King Baudouin's sword adds a memorable and inadvertent dance number as he skillfully eludes his pursuers. Soundtrack also happens to be a masterpiece that transcends its own historical preoccupations in the way that say The Battle of Algiers or The Sorrow and the Pity are. An earlier coup d’etat—that of Mosedegh was good practice--though that one didn’t have musical accompaniment, nor did the later ousting of Allende in Chile. Regimen toppling, in the name of the balance of power in South America, Africa and the Middle East was the CIA’s job description in what almost seem like halcyon times compared to the present. Now it’s 
Kristallnacht, with the books being burned once again! Truffaut didn’t take this seriously enough in his adaptation of Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451. Hail Caesar or Sieg Heil?

Monday, February 3, 2025

Citizen Kane?




Curtis Yarvin (The New York Times)

Curtis Yarvin (aka Mencius Goldbug), the ideologue du jour of the current counter-reformation or counterculture reconstruction, is reminiscent of none other than you guessed it, Steve Bannon. If you saw American Dharma you will remember Bannon is quite the film buff--someone you might know who's seen Citizen Kane one time too many. Yarvin is a creature out of central casting. He's no Gary Cooper, but if they ever do a remake of The Fountainhead, he's the guy for the role He swaggers as he murders the idea of democracy and calls for monarchy. He's an advocate for the "Dark Enlightenment." Isn't that grand? What flourish? What a cool piece of nihilism! Actually he may be up for the part of Raskolnikov, for murdering Alyona Ivanovna, the old pawnbroker (aka The Constitution of the United States of America).

read "An Incident of Defenestration" by Francis Levy, Vol. 1 Brooklyn