Two Pianos

You may take a look at the image of Charlotte Rampling in the Kino Lorber promotion for a movie named Two Pianos and ask yourself, do I look that old? The Night Porter (1974) was one of Rampling's most controversial roles and one which could leave an ineradicable memory, ("Walking on Broken Glass") on an already tortured post-adolescent imagination. The real shock is age. It becomes increasingly difficult to see oneself as the years go by and you may even find yourself dumbfounded when your college roommate comes up to you at the class reunion. At first the response to the hug may be to step back, then suddenly you see the familiar old face embedded in a mess of tired flesh. Preconception is similar to the shock absorber on a car and the process by which nature spares us from the shock of recognition.

read "Boudu Saved From Drowning" by Francis Levy (with a painting by Hallie Cohen), The East Hampton Star

The Origin of Species

The Origin of Species was published November 24, 1859. You might calender that date as man’s fall—at least from an evolutionary point of view. No more were they made in the image of God. Rather apes turned out to be the forebears. But when and how did reason and consciousness arrive? Was it by way of the toolmaking of the Australopithecine era 3.2 million  years ago of which the fossilized Lucy is the prime extant remnant? How does Stephen J. Gould’s “punctuated equilibrium fit in?” It’s nice to look at life as a temporal food chain curiously similar to the Elizabethan world’s “great chain of being” but nature is more about accident than intention. Is this literally and figuratively a new Ice Age?

read "Boudu Saved From Drowning" by Francis Levy (with a painting by Hallie Cohen), The East Hampton Star

Mimicry

 

Howdy Doody and Buffalo Bob

Remember when you were a little kid and you mimicked your parents. "Johnny brush your teeth!" would be met with a reiteration of the same instruction. "Be careful or you will bump your head!" another and of course "watch out for bones!" Back in the 50s, everyone was choking on bones. If you're a baby boomer, you remember your parents making chicken dinners into fearful ordeals. The funny thing is that everyone is mimicking everyone else though they don't often notice it. Try to think about the first person who said "sounds like a plan," "at the end of the day" or  averred they were glad you were "on the same page." Widely used turns of phrase don't come out of nowhere. Yet it's curious why some have a longer half life than others. You may have heard someone say "I don't feature..." meaning they don't prefer or like something. Where did that come from? Oh, ye gods and little fishes" is another. You probably don't own one original phrase, yet you'd have to hire a linguistic private eye to figure the roots of your own way of talking--and thinking too 

read "Boudu Saved From Drowning" by Francis Levy (with a painting by Hallie Cohen), The East Hampton Star

Persona

 

What is it about logorrhea that’s so disconcerting. Eloquent speakers and tyrants have prolixity in common. The core of the pathogy and what makes it so disconcerting to those who are forced to endure it, is that it’s an attack by way of imperviousness. It’s Procrustean. The speaker is mowing you down with words an intruder. Make no mistake that's the point. From the point if view of etiology you may have noticed that mourners justifiably unload their grief. Underneath the wave of sadness is also anger that you have lived while their beloved is dead.

read "Boudu Saved From Drowning" by Francis Levy (with a painting by Hallie Cohen) in The East Hampton Star

Exhibitionism

Exhibitionism is colonialism. The images invade the imagination, the Sudetenland of the mind. Remember Michael Fassbinder up against the window of The Standard in Shame Tangentially, what about  all the tourists with their reality collections. Taxidermy falls on the heels of the hunt.  Little time left to look, especially when one is perpetually ambushed by stimulating billboards.

read "Boudu Saved From Drowning" by Francis Levy (with a painting by Hallie Cohen) in The East Hampton Star

"There's a Sucker Born Every Minute"

P.T. Barnum

Is the persona a person portrays indicative of their nature. It’s the old question of manifest content. Beware the smooth talker, whose soft spoken words may be a crude attempt to mask an exploitative nature. Is someone who speaks slowly actually five steps ahead? And what about the veneer of understanding often conveyed by the sage gaze, the nodding or the knowing smile which is really a smirk? The chipper old stock broker gives clients advice on their IRA, muttering to himself the phrase sometimes attributed to P.T. Barnum, “there's a sucker born every minute.” Politicos are notoriously Janus faced, making promises to one constituency that blatantly fly in the face of another.

read "Boudu Saved From Drowning" by Francis Levy (with a painting by Hallie Cohen) in The East Hampton Star

More Than a Million Little Pieces

Separation and individuation are not only stages of development, but also properties of matter--that matter. Remember the old saw about no two snowflakes being alike? How do CRISPER and before that cloning figure in? The expression sheep to slaughter is challenged by the fact you may create identical ones, to eat and clone. When you think about it, the question of duplication is biblical going back to the Adamic fall and later the Arc which might be looked at as proto-Planned Parenthood. How do plagiarism, appropriation and other forms of literary fraud figure in? Clifford Irving is sui generis since he practiced what, in other literary ages, might be termed meta fiction, particularly since he poached the autobiography of someone who himself might be considered fiction. Same with James Frey who wrote a meta-non-fictional tale about his “recovery.” The indignation over this last is a bit dubious since he was only doing what most alcoholics do in the O'Neill masterpiece, e.g. wait for the Iceman to come.

As American As Cherry Pie and AI

 

photo: Francis Levy

Was Horn and Hardart a precursor to AI? Turing cracked the Enigma code. The Turing Test and decryption are central elements of computer science. Fast food also plays a role. Assembly line production tantamount to "bytes" of information. Not to forget Nedick’s and other “hot spot” precursors to Door Dash. Cart or horse? All around life is moving faster though the planet, lacking sentience, won't get dizzy in its own rotation. The ineluctable more is fuels currents that themselves create a new water mark. Sea level is no longer what it once was. AI will not take over. Rather humans need their Alexa if they're going to live on processed cheese. 

read "Boudu Saved From Drowning" by Francis Levy (with a painting by Hallie Cohen) in The East Hampton Star

Curb Your Enthusiasm or Dog?

Gramercy Park 2013

"Curb your enthusiasm" is the sardonic thing one might say to someone who yawns when you’re offering a critique of Kant's "Critique of Pure Reason." Btw in this age of gaslighting a categorical imperative is what Is missing from the current monologue. Larry David is one of a generation of comic antiheroes that make the experience of failure a success. Imagine a Clint Eastwood type dealing with the fact that someone at the golf club hasn’t paid back the $5 and is  belligerently dismissive when reminded. Does the .44 Magnum really fit into this scenario? The genius of both Curb and Seinfeld is that it's one size fits all--with no exception made for heroes.

read "Boudu Saved From Drowning" by Francis Levy (with a painting by Hallie Cohen) in The East Hampton Star

Monsieur Arno

photo: Francis Levy

Everyone has their Arno, in fact their own private subjective view of everything! Isn't that what makes life living? Perhaps not. Even that homily goes in the crapper along with “we aim to please…”--your Seine, your Nile and even your mythic Euphrates (the longest river in Western Asia, running 1740 miles through Turkey, Syria and Iraq, joining the Tigris to Shatt al-Arab before flowing out into the Persian gulf). In the days of Cartier-Bresson, there were the green bookstalls along the Seine and the lovers—who are also a construction of past imaginings. Ecco! Ecce Homo, voila!

read "Boudu Saved From Drowning" by Francis Levy (with a painting by Hallie Cohen) in The East Hampton Star

Taxinatra

 

Emanuele Della Seta (il Duca 40)

Imagine finding yourself in a taxi in Rome with a driver singing "NewYork, New York". Finally you've arrived in Fellini's Roma where everyone knows everybody. Taxinatra (his real name is Emanuele Della Seta and his Duca 40 cab is legendary) is your Virgil this time and every time you stop for a red light, the window goes down. What seems like an ongoing, almost eternal conversation, picks up where it left off. As you approach Termini to catch your train, Taxinatra who turns out to have his own You Tube channel asks if you have cash. "Yes" you reply. "Cash is king." It's a statement one doesn't need English to understand.

read "Boudu Saved From Drowning" by Francis Levy (with a painting by Hallie Cohen) in The East Hampton Star

The Picture of Dorian Gray

At a certain stage you of life a child realizes the birthday cake is for them. The recognition of one’s own visage in the mirror is a similar developmental signpost. However with age these kinds of eye openers fade to the point where one may become surprised and even think “who is that?" as a reflection comes towards them in a store window lining a sidewalk. Unless you're articulately vain you probably stopped looking at yourself holistically. Sure you shave or apply makeup but these involve a facial compartmentalization that leaves little time for evaluation. Moreover what is one to say? “I’ve aged.” Following that the crushing truth is repressed in order that one may perpetuate the delusion of eternal life.

read the review ofThe Wormhole Society by Francis levy and Joseph Silver in The East Hampton Star 

Making Out

photo: Francis Levy

There is a lot of talk about relationships but relatively little about the kind of love that occurs when you can’t get your hands off each other and think about someone all the time. Relationships are currency with one night stands as the now anachronistic penny, culminating in marriage as the Ben Franklin. Before the advent of the euro you had francs and marks and lire. How would these be translated into sensations such as second base or 69? The Breton Woods Conference of 1944 established the international monetary and financial order which is tantamount to what Cialis and Viagra accomplish despite the dulling effect most serotonin re-uptake inhibitors have on desire.

read the review ofThe Wormhole Society by Francis levy and Joseph Silver in The East Hampton Star 

Rosemary's Baby

Once you’re dead, there be no one to talk to, though luckily you won’t know it. Much is made about all those you’ve left behind, but know what? What? “Knock, Knock” “Who’s there?” “Knock, Knock” “Goddammit, if you don’t answer, I’m going to knock this fucking door down.” So both the person who dies and those they leave behind are caught between a rock and a hard place, unless they are part of a cover and attend a satanic rite, as in Rosemarys Baby.

read the review ofThe Wormhole Society by Francis levy and Joseph Silver in The East Hampton Star 

Too Far to Go

Do great artists create the drama that they write about? The most obvious example is Too Far Too Go, the Maples stories about the breakup of Updike's marriage. After reading the book, you ask why? Was Wild Strawberries a premonition of Bergman's life. Fanny and Alexander, the piece de resistance, as far as autobiography is concerned, is a whole other matter. Karl Ove Knaugard's Min Kamp, whose title is a famous act of provocation, presents another variation, in which artistic production and life are one and the same. 

read the review of The Wormhole Society by Francis Levy and Joseph Silver in The East Hampton Star.

Transactional Man

It's politically incorrect to talk about primitive mentality eg one that is not informed by scientism. Max Weber coined the term "charisma" in describing the unmediated relation of early Christian’s to God.The passion informing sects gives way to institutionalization and the corruption Luther would fight against as it manifested in pardons. Modern geopolitics has no monopoly on transaction. It’s the history of more than one “faith.” Perhaps early rather than primitive is the word that should be used for the kind of awe that’s untarnished by the scholastic impulse.

read the review ofThe Wormhole Society by Francis levy and Joseph Silver in The East Hampton Star 

Propinquity

Propinquity means closeness, an increasingly rarefied condition in this era of ghosting. It seems everyone is either ghosting or being ghosted. “Devices” are to blame. In what seems like a far away world of fairies and gobblins you might get snubbed when you tried to talk to someone at a party. In Marxian terms, the rejection was reified. You had comparatively a lot to go on or to give out, as it were. "Devices" are part of the villainy inherent in Jacobean drama. Now extinction lies at everyone’s finger tips. No sooner have you deleted the offending sensibility than they have zapped you back. In fact you may find yourself getting rid of annoying mindsets before you ever have a chance to encounter them. Welcome to the world of virtual reality where you marry someone you’ve met on Tinder or even the cheating service Madison in anticipation of a physical encounter that may or may not occur in your lifetime. In the meanwhile daily life is a mixture of Night of the Living Dead and Invasion of the Body Snatchers with a troll or too from The Silence thrown in for good luck.

read the review ofThe Wormhole Society by Francis levy and Joseph Silver in The East Hampton Star 

Hic Sum

When a life passage is in the offing, you don’t need to dot the eyes (i’s). You merge into the exit with the actual event, even it is death, an after thought that almost gets lost, following the initial shock. The deceased is at first surrounded by mourners then dies alone as the funeral cortège turn their backs on the grave diggers with their shovels. Then a new stage begins for the survivors who are left with little more than  memories and a headstone which is more likely to be inscribed hic sum rather than quo vadis?

read the review ofThe Wormhole Society by Francis levy and Joseph Silver in The East Hampton Star 

Astopovo Station

 

Astopovo Station in 2010

That train has left the station joins wheelhouse, sounds like a plan and same page as another shorthand for experiences that are pregnant with simplicity. Tolstoy ran away at the end of his life and died in the Astapovo Station. A wheelhouse is defined as a place of shelter for a person like a captain who is steering a ship. When you use this expression, the implication is that you're going somewhere where there a limited number of  possibilities in your ken. Sounds like a plan is clear enough but what does it really mean  to be on the same page in this era of devices where few people use paper anymore?

read the review ofThe Wormhole Society by Francis levy and Joseph Silver in The East Hampton Star 

What is Poetry?

What is a poem? Why write one in lieu of a short story novel or play? Poetry seems easier to write since many poems are “pieces d’occasion” scribbled out as declarations of love as in the case of Plutarch and Laura, Dante and Beatrice or death such as in Thomas Grey's "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard." Indeed passion produces sinners and grief requiems. Many people who resort to poetry fail to realize there are journeyman poets like instance, the Pulitzer Prize winner, Jorey Graham. There are many poets that also write in different media. Eliot wrote a play, Murder in the Cathedral. Nabokov was a novelist but one of his greatest works was a book length poem Pale Fire. There is no poets union but there are practitioners who are not polymathic in their endeavor. Poetry is their medium as was the guitar wax for Chuck Berry. So what defines the poet's metier? Economy, rhythm and meter, liberal use of figures of speech, synecdoche, metonymy simile and metaphor and lastly color. Isn’t the spectrum the palette of the painter? Color as it’s applied to prosody refers to lights darks shadows, bright and dim. Poets turn the lights down, the sound up then begin to swing.

read the review ofThe Wormhole Society by Francis levy and Joseph Silver in The East Hampton Star 

 

Place

photo: Francis Levy

Place is something you may tend to take for granted. You’re attracted enough to stay, take turns, snapshot and file your initial perceptions away under “preconceptions.” When you return you see a person, place or thing  that’s in your mind's eye as opposed to reality. The same experience applies to the people in your life. You see them in a certain way—something from which you may occasionally find yourself experiencing pushback e.g. when a child, spouse, friend or lover doesn’t agree with the mnemonic frame in which you’ve put them. They’re no longer the flighty dreamer and resent being patronized as such. Coming back to physical landscapes, you may suddenly realize that the oculus of the Pantheon looks into a void!

read the review ofThe Wormhole Society by Francis levy and Joseph Silver in The East Hampton Star 

Siddhartha

 

There is a truth to adolescent angst and alienation. If you walked around with a copy of the New Directions Siddhartha in your back pocket as a gloomy teenager you may be disconcerted to find out you weren’t far off the mark. Whether you’re cremated or buried, you’ll end up alone with no one to help you—even your mother! You start as potential and end in finality, the only saving grace being, you’re no longer there to realize it or care.

read the review ofThe Wormhole Society by Francis levy and Joseph Silver in The East Hampton Star