They Fight With Cameras

When you visit Omaha beach, you're astounded by the Sisyphean nature of the task the invading allied armies faced. Soldiers stared death in the face. One can't imagine mustering up the level of courage required to scale those cliffs under enemy fire. Nina Rosenblum and Danny Allentuck's They Fight With Cameras tells the story of Walter Rosenblum, the famed photographer who filmed D-Day, Dachau and numerous signposts of invasion, as a member of the Signal Corps. It's a rather amazing document that will break the composure of even the most hardened souls. The film also tells the story of its own inception through lost letters, miraculously retrieved, that Rosenblum had written to his first wife. But it's particularly significant today, since it trades in empathy and sentiment, two notions that are in short supply in the current universe of self-regard. Soldiers risked their lives and cared about their compatriots from other countries. Sounds obvious, no? Not in the transactional hell, the world of Trump, Putin and their minions where no human being does anything for anyone, unless there is something in it for them. "Lasciate ogne speranza voi ch'intrate" abandon all hope, ye who enter here" are the words that graced the gate of Dante's Inferno and that should be the warning to visiting dignitaries like Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Cyril Ramaphosa who dare to enter the current White House.

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

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

Slumming

favela of Rochinha in Rio

No one is accusing anyone of being a snob but you may, on the other hand, be guilty of slumming. It's what well-to-do educated people prosecute when they hang around the tough part of town. As a kid you may have been afraid of getting beaten up. So one day you joined a dojo or boxing gym. What's the result? You remain a sissy who's basically still afraid of their own shadow. Here is a comment from a prosperous friend: "In the past 10 years I have been in two scary situations. In the first, crossing 21st and 3rd, I gave the bird to some guy who was honking me. He pulled over and threatened me with his MMS abilities. I smelled alcohol on his breath. Situation #2--I stupidly made eye contact with a loony on an R. He started provoking me, calling me “grandpa” etc. I have replayed this back and forth in my head. What if I had  sat right smack down next to him and upped the ante? Of course I walked away with my tail between my legs in both instances. I have no street smarts. I mean niente, nada! I am still that kid, tormented by the neighborhood toughs who threaten you with rocks in socks on Halloween.”

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

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

Is the Earth Square?

Galileo and Copernicus were charged with sacrilege for demonstrating the earth was not the center of the solar system. There are those in the QAnon metaverse who have changed things back. Not only will the earth be the center, but also square. So along with those vaccines which cause autism you have to make sure not to fall off. The human brain often mistakes interiority for the empirical universe. The unconscious is a rife with conspiracy theories.

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

Esther

closeup of "Esther Preparing to Intercede with Ahasuerus" (F. Levy)

There are the greats of the past, Rembrandt, Vermeer,  Velasquez and those of the modern world de Kooning, Pollock, Rothko, Johns and Rauschenberg--who all emerged in America during the 50s. The current "The Book of Esther in the Age of Rembrandt," on exhibit in tandem with the Purim holiday at the Jewish Museum, illustrates how geopolitics and culture create not a classic paradigm shift but a paradigm. The show’s titular painting is luminescent in a sui generis way. It is neither one of the masks or "tronies" by which the master demonstrated his gift for role-playing, nor the usual tincture of darkness out of which say an early self-portrait, also in the show, emerges. It’s as if the mercantile forces which allowed for freedom were epitomized in this singular portrait of an iconic biblical icon. On a more overarching level, any Rembrandt show is a challenge to the present. Clement Greenberg the ideologue of the abstract-expressionist revolution would temble in his grave, but to rephrase Saul Bellow’s famously reactionary quote “Who is the Rembrandt of the 9th Street Bohemians?”

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

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

Fighting Your Way Out of a Paper Bag: Lesson #1

The Rumble in the Jungle

There are two basic ways of fighting yourself out of a paper bag, but the most important thing is to protect yourself at all times. You have to keep your hands up. Have you ever seen someone fighting themselves out of a paper bag? It’s actually a familiar sight in this age of ear buds where people always look like psychotics having animated conversations with themselves. But you have to be there! Man v bag. If the bag is big enough to fit over your head, you won’t be able to see.The one fighting their way out of the bag in question at a distinct disadvantage. Since they are momentarily blind, they can’t see the woods from the trees. Lots of energy is spent by blind men who punch at air.

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

Mind

"Thinking" may turn out to be the closest thing to the driverless car Imagine mind taking the place of SMS, emails and text. Caveat Emptor, you may have to practice blanking yours if you don't want the wrong kind of command to get away. What if a program called "Mind" became competitive with A.I. As has been demonstrated driverless cars have plowed through pedestrians as they negotiate intersections. Now there are driverless semis and a drone is a driverless plane. With the advent of Mind, many cars planes and even trucks may start thinking for themselves. You may input Philly into your Google maps and find yourself on the way to Scranton or more likely Florida if you possess the kind of AI that's a snowbird. Don’t try stopping for s coffee at the next rest stop if you have a Cassandrish AI which throws out jeremiads. “Drinking coffee makes you pee!” "But not drinking makes me fall asleep and crash” might be your riposte. Have you ever encountered a driver getting into a fight with their AI and not watching where they were going? “The horror the horror” says Kurtz in Fart of Harkness (“just checking to see if you’re awake”—Ed.)

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

Quotidien Recurrence

So you travel down the same road or if you’re a a Manhattanite the same street leading to the upturn express bus at 23rd or the stairs down to the Hades of the Lexington Avenue Uptown 6 on Park Avenue. You don’t think it’s going to go on forever, though it will. If you have a nice apartment, you’re not leaving. In the current downswing of the residential market, you're going to incur a comparative loss (from 6 months ago). When you try to find something else you’ll find the price way too high for anything as nice as you had.The same thing for changing courses in mid stream, when it comes to love.The price you pay for the new emotional residence you think you desire is too high. One could go on, but you may find yourself ending up like Oedipus, who by running away from fate, brought about the very things he feared.

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

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

Friendship

You may have walked out of Andrew DeYoing’s Friendship not because of the theme of an anomie which is as old if not older than Thomas Mann’s Tonio Kroger. Tim Robinson plays Craig Waterman a malaprop market executive to Paul Rudd’s Austin Carmichael a tv weather anchor and sometime punk rock guitarist. Craig falls for Austin big time. It’s more subliminally homoerotic, though isn’t idealization tantamount to infatuation? Outsiderdom which is ostensibly what the movie is about is generally part of a  fabric made up of more than one pattern. Friendship suffers from perseveration (yes real friendship does too--ed). At one point  Craig sinks so low in his abjection that he eats soap. It’s as if the director were afraid you didn’t get the idea. In fact DeYoung is a little like his character who is always overplaying his hand. Woody Allen made the schlepp and anti-hero into cultural archetypes which unfortunately didn't rescue him from opprobrium. But the joke is really on the director here since in some circles Craig will still rise above the dullards who will be mockingly dismissed. One other criticism, Craig is a father and executive. He wouldn't have gotten any where, if he didn’t possess some degree of know how, the movie's script doesn’t accord him.

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

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

Mustard or Sauerkraut?

"Yellow Submarine" sang The Beatles. Then there are Subway, the Philly sub and the submersible that can go 20,000 leagues under the sea to the Lost Continent of Atlantis. Maybe that’s where Malaysia 370 finally landed. Floyd Collins became lost in the subterranean  tunnels of the Mammoth Cave. Jersey Mike’s is the latest, particularly if you are looking for a hero, a wily Odysseus who will help you to navigate your appetites so you won’t be lured by the Sirens of gluttony. You won’t be triggered by that famous Popeye sandwich that an antsy patriot once killed for? You shouldn’t die (non-sequitur-ed). Subs are food for thought particularly if you are on the couch and dealing with unconscious fantasies that lurk beneath the surface, the subtext that defies the kind of simplistic either/or categories like “mustard or sauerkraut?” proposed by the hot dog vendor in front of The Met (Goldfinch territory-edit.) protected from sun (Daedalus--ed?) by his blue and yellow Sabrett umbrella.

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

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

Submittable

Submittable is like Dickens’ Bleak House. No it’s not a porn site. Would that it were capable of dispensing that level of pleasurable displeasure. No, rather it's tantamount to the hip dysplasia hounds suffer making it impossible for the poor animals to walk, then they are put down. This is a long-winded way of describing a site that is a concentration camp for poems and short stories. Magazines such as The New Yorker and literary journals like The Paris Review are deluged with tsunamis of submissions from wannabes. These wannabes have no real understanding of the editors who they scream to from the wrong side of the velvet rope. There is an organization called The Community of Literary Magazines and Presses (CLMP). That and a number of similar organizations must have had a summit in which Submittable was created  to deal with the flood of manuscripts they receive. Know those storage facilities filled with items no one will ever see again. Submittable is the DOGE of the world of letters. Perhaps you remember BicycleThieves (1948), the Italian neorealist film about a father and son's desperate search for a stolen bicycle in post-war Rome. That’s a perfect description of what it’s like to submit to Submissible.

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

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

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