The Price of Everything

Social Darwinism is epitomized by the art world. No one even pretends that culture is tantamount to enlightenment. Goring a lover of art presided over the attempted plunder of  masterpieces which the Italian curatorial establishment united against--like the French resistance against Nazism and the prospect of a Fuhrermuseum in Linz which would have been the repository of stolen masterpieces. Sadly fascism is the only way to describe an art market dominated by big auction houses—where esthetic judgements are undercut by the demands of investors collecting tangible assets. Neophytes who make the pilgrimage to Chelsea are likely to find the absence of humanism disconcerting. New art is regarded as venture capital while old  masters like Basquiat break records at the box office.

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

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

1Q84

IQ84 by Huruki Murakami

Anyone who has ever entered a parallel or alternate universe will tell you it can be treacherous going. You generally arrive somewhere that looks like home, though by definition that train has already left the station.To begin with, if you’re the kind of person who looks for parallel universes, you’re undoubtedly an escapist who is going to want to be somewhere else before you even arrive. You impulsively enter another parallel universe, all the while getting further and further from the ideal universe you envisioned. That’s the problem with dreaming. It’s self proliferating activity that acts like a rip tide taking you further from where you want to go, the more you try to fight to get there.

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

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

Sinners

The default interpretation of Ryan Coogler's Sinners is that the movie is about the expropriation of black culture by whites. Even the director may agree. You have a black blues musician at the heart of the narrative (who in his adult form is played by the famous blues guitarist Buddy Guy) and a band of white vampires out to suck the blood out of him. Incidentally, the clarity of Guy's notes and beauty of his voice is one of this horror movie's particular pleasures. However, you may defer to seeing the film like a great grotesque painting say Bosch's Garden of Heavenly Delights, in which the canvas does not allow for simple or reductive interpretations. Moreover, there isn't one instant of appropriation. Sure whites marauding the house of black culture is a fact, but within the context of the movie most of the theft is an in-house or rather intra-cultural affair. So what's the movie "about?" Perhaps the clue lies in the title, "sin." Sin and redemption are recurring motifs with the lone survivor of vampires, a saintly figure who's been resurrected with baptismal water--another recurring motif.

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

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

The General

The Colonel welcomes you to most cities, if not most blocks. Mattress Firm is trying to knock the fast food business out of business which is beneficial in two ways: in encouraging couples to have more sex and of course sleep (priapism is another matter). Popeye the sailor man lent his name to the Colonel's main competitor and hola they are luring Odysseus with not only a Pickle Glazed Chicken Sandwich but pickled flavored wings. "Where's the beef?" is the famed Wendy's meme, which most kids today know better than "Hamlet's famed question, but if you're a romantic you'll probably "dream the impossible dream" with an Impossible Whopper. BTW you can hold the mayo. Most human beings learn"Big Mac" before  "mommy." McDonald's fries occupy a ring or two of human existence's three ring circle and earn their own circle in The Inferno. Everyone knows they are the best and better than any crinkle cut. Not to forget the Baconator! Look for the movie starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. There's the Colonel, but what about the General? What face will he portray to the world?

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

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

Bananas

Bananas are purportedly one of the anodynes for suicide along with the movie of the same title which can still cheer you up. Is Banana Republic utopia rather than being a line of clothes? The secret ingredient is apparently potassium. United Fruit now known as Chiquita Banana should use it in their ads. The suicide hot line could use them out like condoms which bananas have been used for in emergencies. The only downside about bananas is that you can slip on them which is definitely a "downer." OK let’s say you have an aversion to raw bananas. There is banana bread and most importantly the banana split. Back in the 50s and 60z when no one even worried and normalcy prevailed you could get yr second banana split free at an ice cream parlor named Jan’s provided of course you finish your first. Or maybe the was just Sundays

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

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

The Plot Against America

There are the "new historicism" which calls for revisionism, particularly with regard to the notion of an inviolate past and absolute truth.  Thomas Kuhn famously wrote The Structure of Scientific Revolutions which coined the notion "paradigm shift." Multiculturalism, the bane of those who attack woke culture, is a product of widening the epistemic net.  A quote like Saul Bellow's who is "the Shakespeare of the Zulus" is the equivalent is a form of cultural rape. All this being said, it's astonishing how fast the Visigoths toppled the current Rome. Down with the emoluments clause! Trump hosts a bit coin dinner. His sons pitch hotel projects in the wake of Mideast meetings. All of a sudden there is literally no separation between the executive and the judiciary. Trump issues executive orders like flapjacks. Kristi Noem apparently thought habeas corpus was created by the president--a creative contravention of one of the most central principles of jurisprudence.Trump's brand of transactional politics gives isolationism a fresh and more lethal spin. Philip K Dick's The Man in a High Castle imagined an alternate universe with the Axis powers in charge. What once seemed like sci fi has the stark ring reality.  You wake up from the nightmare only to find yourself in an alternate universe in which the past nightmare is the take-off point for your dreams.

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

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

Let's Make a Deal

Trump plainly looks at Ukraine as another real estate deal similar to Greenland, Panama and Gaza The US annexation of Canada (similar to the Louisiana Purchase) is something he will hand over to Sotheby's or Cushman & Wakefield, both of whom have big residential divisions—which handle the acquisitions of sovereign states. Marco Rubio had been handling Ukraine in-house, but he’s said that if the two countries can’t agree, the US will have to move--to where? It is rumored that Rubio may be getting into the brokerage business himself. Someone has to ask China about their "requirements" and how much space they will need on a square foot basis. Taiwan may turn out to be just what China is looking for and the State Department will make a good commission if they sell their old ally under the bus.

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

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

American Civilization's Late Life Crisis

Tolstoy had a late life crisis in which he ran away from Yasnaya Polyana and died alone in the train station at Astapovo. That might be a good description for American society. Under the guise of having it up to here with government regulations including woke culture, inflation and income inequality, America supported a version of the mad clown from Stephen King's It. Along the way was Pizzagate, QAnon and a conspiracy theorist named Laura Loomer. When things get tough people opt for the medieval or the geopolitical form of medieval theme parks filled with jousters like Pete Hegseth who earned his stripes as a drinker and carouser. Democracy has ultimately been the price the USA has had to play for their bachelor or bachelorette party. Carpe diem. People want their fun and want it now—no matter that someone’s gotta pay the piper.

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

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

Towards a Value-Free Politics

Ahmed al-Sharaa, Syrian Head-of-State

Value-free politics and diplomacy are the product of a transactional universe. Philippa Foot’s "trolley problem" is tangentially relevant in a Neo-Calvinist way. The ethical thing is not to tamper with reality. If you take a Time Machine into the past don’t ruffle any feathers for fear of creating a monster. If you let the train hit the many you have not mucked with destiny. Oddly Retrumplicans and their minions will conclude that it makes no sense to change tracks and do the right thing which is to kill one lonely soul so that the many will survive. Dems remaining starry-eyed and idealistic will favor the means over the ends. Due process would entail, in this case, making the seeming unfair decision of killing the one over the many. Trump is on the way to lifting sanctions from Syria. The Democrats might have been reluctant to deal with the current rebel leader of the country--a former Jihadist. They would have killed the one--as a matter principle when the more humane outcome requires a waffling on ethics.

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

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

Supernova

A supernova is a dying star (known in scientific lingo as "the progenitor") that lets out a huge burst of light before it explodes and turns into a black hole or neutron star. Cosmological events like this which are not singularities are also a reflection of a particularly human condition. Naturally it’s not something like quantum entanglement that occurs universally in a subatomic level. The gigantic flourish preceding an implosion is a poetic metaphor for the not so quantifiable act of human aspiration. One may recognize this very process in the historical palette of one's emotional life. It starts with an inordinate expenditure of energy which inevitably feels wasted no matter how successful the endeavor--as it leads to entropy and inanition. The spotlight falls on an individual existence before the house goes dark and nobody but the dreamer is left with the memory of what’s occurred.

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

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

Death Valley Days

Tinnitus produces a ringing sound in the ear, satellite generators, a hum. Compactors, hydraulic drills pounding into pavement and the beeping of trucks backing up are a municipal orchestra but on another decibel class. These  are the equivalent of a nouveau riche individual trying to establish themselves in an aristocratic environment. Gold diggers is the word pejoratively used to describe those who marry for money. In an episode of the 50s TV series Death Valley Days centering on the San Francisco gold rush of 1848, a couple who have discovered gold run into trouble spending it.They acquire the big San Francisco mansion but sit at opposite ends of a long table whose chairs are vacant when invited members of the ruling class fail to arrive. Social elevation and sound then share the Doppler effect. As the parvenu grows closer and their supplications rise so too does the pushback from those who still control the systole and diastole of social and political power.

read "The Waste Land" by Francis Levy (illustrated with "Pluperfect" by Hallie Cohen), The East Hampton Star

Is Knowledge Power?

There is an old adage which curiously equates the acquisition of knowledge with emptiness. The seeming contrariety simply relates to filling a void. If one’s glass is full there is no more room for any additional liquid. It’s a version of the glass half empty or half full equation. An emetic cleanses the system of toxins and the sum of such procedures also pertains to the mind. By purifying and removing you create a clean slate. Have you ever been in a room with a very noisy person? Individuals like this bilge out verbiage so no one can get a word in edgewise. Disturbed children display a hyperactivity that performs a similar function. On a macro level, you will note this kind of behavior in political discourse. There’s a method to the madness. Trump and his surrogates have a way of talking that takes the air out of the room. Kellyanne Conway set the gold standard in this kind of logorrhea. Interviewers are  stymied in the face of assaults which insure that no real discussion takes place and that no information is allowed into an overflowing reservoir of propaganda. From an epistemic point of view, there are incidences when it's not so great to have one's cup running over. Yes, there are the Saudis and now Syria, yes there was some sort of agreement with the Chinese, but what is the fate of democracy in the USA, where judicial orders are dismissed or totally ignored by the executive branch?

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

and listen to "Mr. Big Stuff" by Jean Knight

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

Trump Palace

Frederick the Great was the model of the benevolent despot. In modern times, Marshall Tito employed autocratic methods to benevolent ends, holding off the onslaught of ethnic cleansing and irredentism, the result of a bloody religious war. The USA has in its president a not so benevolent despot who veils his malevolence under a veneer of laissez-faire capitalism. Well it’s laissez-faire when it comes to emoluments and not so laissez-faire about free trade. Trump displays a  clownish veneer gadding about town with the world’s richest man chainsaw in hand. Stephen King has shown the dark side of the clown in It. Kristi Noem is the epitome of Pennywise shaking her booty and $50,000 Rolex as she tours the cages at Cecot. BTW you realize chicken coops and abattoirs offer a kind if utopia since those inmates don't know what’s in store for them. Perhaps pigs are the exception. Historically democracy renovated (ie Parliament) and in the case of the US did away with monarchy. "It’s good to be the king," said Mel Brooks in The History of the World. In his disregard for the rule of law and particularly the judiciary, Brooks' comic one-off is something  Trump is plainly taking seriously.

listen to "It's Good To Be the King" by Mel Brooks

and read "Never Brush Again" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

Rain

Rain and cry are almost the same verb in French ("pleuvoir" and "pleurer.") "Il pleut dans mon coeur comme, il pleut sur la Ville," run the lines of the Paul Verlaine poem. Remember "The Tracks of My Tears.” Smokey Robinson is undoubtedly cringing amidst the allegations against him. La Cloche Sonne is a composition by another composer, Franz Liszt. For Whom the Bell Tolls. Do rain and tears cleanse cathartically or are you all wet? Just when you think the clouds have parted and hope's in the air, your local Tiresias is there to remind you, the day is young. Apparently it's pleuring in Gerard Depardieu's coeur aujourd'hui, aussi.

listen to The Tracks of My Tears" by Smokey Robinson and the Miracles

Pious?

Trump embedded his own image in the Pope’s mitre. It’s not too different from him dancing to YMCA at a rally with Kristi Noem gyrating in the background. Noem would go on to flash her boobs and Rolex in Cecot prison with tattooed inmates glaring at her from behind their cages. It’s all a big joke where a former heroin addict, anti-vaxer runs HHS and a conspiracy theorist blackballs a respected general, Timothy Haugh, who’s head of Cyber-command and the NSA. MAGA again, never again USA.

listen to "Love Is Like An Itching In My Heart" by The Supremes

Breeding Sheep

Gregor Mendel

Gregor Mendel should have bred ideologies. Adherents to opposing doctrines come out like roses. Multiculturalism, for example, places itself firmly against the canon, the same syllabus of white male humanistic philosophy that has created the liberal order, as does Retrumplicanism which attempts to crush universities, under the guise of fighting anti-semitism. Higher education is a threat for many reasons, but primarily in the way it upholds constitutionalism with its emphasis on due process and inalienable rights. Revolution in most cases favors the ends over the means and hence often finds itself sharing a similar dismissal of the democratic order as the very despots it seeks to overthrow. One cannot but remark that the Ice agents and those they arrest have one thing in common--they both wear masks.

read "Never Brush Again" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

It's Raining Cats and Dogs

The subject of emotion in animals is as difficult to parse as consciousness itself. The philosopher Thomas Nagel wrote “What’s It Like To Be Bat.” Bats sleep are like teenagers who sleep all day. If you go into a cave during daylight hours you will barely make them out hunkered up stealthily against the ceiling and walls. Can it be said that most of the emotion humans espy in pets is the result of projection? Of course by definition you cannot confirm or deny that. Give Ruggles a polygraph? Or by monitoring perspiration, can you tell whether dogs are really man’s best friend. Maybe it’s “thinking” that’s the issue. Ruggles may be sad but does he or she possess self-reflexive consciousness that would spill forth if only barks were filtered through a language cortex? Will it ever be known what goes through a fly’s mind as it furiously tries to avoid being swatted to death. Or take the water bug you creep up on, who doggedly eludes the stamp of your foot. Yes it looks like those insects are experiencing fear.

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

The Faceless Man

 

Do you ever have the desire to simply say to yourself person x who I am trying get the attention of will never give it so why not simply tell them what you really think of them? The problem with this kind of conviction lies in the fact that what you think you think may not be what you really think of them. The monster you have created in your mind is a confabulation, a mysterious mutant born between the amygdala and pre-frontal cortex. In fact the individual onto whom you have projected all your ire is the one who should be angry. Not once have you asked yourself who they are and what their particular existence is about. Their sole function in your life is to provide the validation you crave. You are like the homeless person who takes money then moves onto their next mark. Have you, for instance, ever been confronted by someone who asks you for money on the street and has forgotten you just gave them a nickel? To them you are faceless. Similarly all those unforthcoming people who are the subjects of your obsessions are faceless maggots to you.

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

Secret Mall Apartment Q&A

Do you go to art houses and see people you don’t know--and think you would know and not like? The opening night screening of Jeremy Workman's documentary, Secret Mall Apartment--about an artist, Michael Townsend, creating a hidden living space in a Providence mall, that had become an eyesore, elicited earnest questions at The Sag Harbor Cinema Friday night. It’s never clear if people who speak up on these occasions are looking for answers or simply enjoying the sounds of their own voices. If it’s been thought it’s been said is as true of opining as it is of porn. Speaking of porn, Marco Bellocchio's Devil in the Flesh (1986) which played at the "old" Sag Harbor cinema, included scenes with Maruschka Detmers, which memorably succeeded in silencing the audience. There was little discussion in the theater as the audience filed out.  But getting back to the subject of recognition. When you think someone looks familiar, there’s invariably an iota of truth in it, particularly when you occupy the kind of zip code where many residents are all under the delusion they're equally unique.

listen to "Shake Your Groove Thing" by Peaches and Herb

Cosmically Yawning

Non-existence, no sentience are hard notions to absorb and conditions from which no one, not Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong-un, Xi Jinping, Victor Orban nor any of their predecessors, Stalin, Hitler, Idi Amin or Pinochet are exempt. It’s “Alas, Poor Yorick” territory. Very hard to imagine desire and volition absent a la Jaques' “Seven Stages of Man” which ends “sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.” Yes the universe is cosmically indifferent, but it can’t snub you, if you’re no longer there.

listen to "Shake Your Groove Thing" by Peaches and Herb

My Dinner With Adolf

Larry David satirized Bill Maher’s bright words about Trump ("My Dinner With Adolf," NYT, 4/21/25). Mahr’s equanimity (following a White House visit) sounds a little like Chamberlain's “I just had another conversation with Chancellor Herr Hitler…” speech before the invasion of the Sudetenland. Smerconish took exception to the humor. Trump isn’t Hitler was Smerconish’s argument. It diminishes the horror of The Holocaust to make such comparisons. But Trump is Hitler, in fact he is worse since he portrays himself as the jolly green giant while he summarily destroys everything in his path. Didn’t Trump once say he could walk down Fifth Avenue and kill? Isn’t that exactly what he is doing?

8½

 

Is it an understatement to call Fellini's 8½ (1963) phallocentric? One might emerge from the current revival at Film Forum feeling the movie a parody of itself. There's lots of satire. All the aspirational actresses including the ravishing Claudia Cardinale are parodic figures. But life is a circus, with the director, as the ring leader. So the answer is no. 8½ is not making fun of its central figure. As its title indicates it is the film between La Dolce Vita (1960) and Juliet of the Spirits (1965) and it reveals the workings of Guido (Marcello Mastroianni) and by proxy Fellini's imagination. Does 8½ hold up? The answer is yes and no and that ambiguity may account for the sublime enjoyment that lies in seeing it after all these years, in all its black and white glory.

 

The Art of the Deal For Dummies

“I love you dear. Can you just hold me?”

“Sure after I tie you up.”

“Can we talk about our feelings?”

“If you let me choke you, like that character in the Sally Rooney novel.”
   

Donald Trump's mega best seller, The Art of the Deal has sparked discussions in households across the country. When you look at love as a transaction, negotiation becomes the foreplay. Americans have come a long way from the old saw, Tell em you love em then you lay 'em . Now what sexually active couples are doing is bargaining. Say you want to gag your loved one or slap and hit them. Say you like being bitten and are proud of the hickeys on your neck. Whatever you want to do or want done to you is a potential bargaining chip. Say you want to be suffocated? The psychoanalyst Charles Brenner coined the term "compromise formation." In order to arrive at a particular result with another human being, you always have to ask for More!!!! In the present negotiations over tariffs, Trump has threatened to annex other trading partners--like Canada--in order to arrive at a favorable balance of trade. The comparable behavior when it comes to couples would be overtly dominating and possessive behavior. What is the final result? The answer is a kind of bickering and nagging which creates homeostasis.

listen to "Shake Your Groove Thing" by Peaches and Herb