Tintern Abbey

"Lines Written (or Composed) a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey, on Revisiting the Banks of the Wye during a Tour" is the long title of the Wordsworth poem, "Tintern Abbey," dating from July 13, 1798. The poem comprises a definition of the romantic notion of beauty, a feeling of transcendence, by which the poet describes the sublime. The cover of the Penguin edition of a novel like Thomas Hardy's Far From the Madding Crowd, also set in rural England conveys a similar feeling. Today the sublime is disappearing. Its last remnant may have been the drive-in theater found on Route One or at the end of an Interstate like 95 as it runs past Co-Op City into Bruckner Boulevard. If you journey up to Wellfleet, on Cape Cod, a town famous for its psychoanalytic stable, you'll find a well-preserved relic of the past, the Wellfleet Drive-in Theatre, where another kind of romanticism once burgeoned (and perhaps still does) in the backseat of a sedan.

read "Double Reverse Midas Touch" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star 

 

Holstein, the Younger

 

Have you ever confused Holstein, a breed of cow, with Holbein, the Younger (1497-1543), the Northern German painter? Samstag Nachmittag, to introduce a non-sequitur, sounds like title of a British kitchen sink film, dubbed into German. Saturday Afternoon say like Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960), the Karel Reisz film from the Alan Sillitoe novel starring Albert Finney, as the factory worker, Arthur Seaton. But back to Holsteins. Imagine a Holstein, the Younger, whose life is cut short in an abattoir.

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Differentials

Which one is Newton?

What is the difference between a differential in calculus and one in life? Is there a calculus of life? "Calculus" is derived from the Latin for pebble. A differential is thus a small change, but it can also be employed to describe any method of reasoning or figuring things out for example in the citation of an "ethical calculus" or "political calculus."  "Algebra" by the way, derives from the Arabic al-jabr, "the reunion of broken parts." One of the simplest examples of a differential is finding the area of a square when one of its side lengths increases by a small amount. In lay terms it's tipping the boat. You are living together happily, but one of you gets a new job which involves travel. It's a no brainer, If A represents an unchanging relationship with the same amount of distance on each side. Then. A squared represents the space. Sometimes people need space, but instead of having to run just go, dA=2x.dx. Why spend money on a therapist when it's a D.I.Y situation, best handled on the abacus at home? Of course, differentiation is what makes for horse races. If you can't differentiate between what's important and minor then join 'em!

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The Dreamdrive

Weike Wang's "The Dreamdrive" in the May 25th New Yorker is extraordinary because it's about broken consciousness. You may have never read anything like it. Unreliable narrator is an understatement. Is the character dreaming? Is he driving? Is his existence a pathological condition? Is he falling asleep at the wheel both literally and metaphorically? Dreamdriving? Part of the experience of reading the story is feeling like unnamed subject--that you don't know what is happening, but it's a controlled confusion and not one that is the result of the author generating confusion, due to unearned ambiguity. One interesting bit is the confuting of phenomenology. Intention is the question. Objects don't possess subjectivity. "Another doctor focused on the sofa waves. Which, more specifically, were gravitational waves All objects emit gravitational waves, the doctor explained, and should those waves interact unfavorably with those of the self, through the calibrated physics of destructive interference, destruction ensues." Wang is the author of the novels Chemistry and Rental House. Her universe here is a literary form of Joseph Schumpeter's economic notion of "creative destruction." Freud, who is cited in the piece, also described free association as looking at reality through a train window-- which is, indeed, another form of driving. There is a theory going around town, that dreaming is the reality and reality the dream. It's perpetrated by the same person who believes that abstract expressionism is a branch of photorealism, but that's another "story." 

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Welcome!

 

Effect refers to result, affect a cause. You affect and effect  But affect is a crucial part of human sensibility. How one is greeted in an environment affects how you feel about one or another milieu. Say you walk into a restaurant and all the staff welcome you with open arms, asking where you've been and how you are. Likely you walk away feeling it's a great meal. On the other hand, there's always the maitre d' who sizes you up with a malign eye, looking, you think, for the least visible table, say by the restroom with their polished male and female profiles. You always thought it was a lousy place, don't know what you were thinking and certainly have no intention of going back there again. 

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Hamlet's Father's Ghost

"Hamlet and His Father's Ghost" by William Blake (1806)

Remember the old horror movies in which the angry ghost comes back to life. Stephan Daedalus theorizes Hamlet's grandson is Shakespeare's grandfather. Then there is just the classic misty gravesite with the pallid white hand whose fingers one by one inter the whole body. On a more quotidian level everyone is simply haunted by memories that at times seem so real, they themselves are on the verge of coming back to life. You may recently have experienced an untimely death, either by virtue of illness or accident. There are moments when you are likely to be caught off guard. You have something to tell the person who's left. For a second you have the impulse to call them up when all at once you realize, they're no longer around. Consciousness has yet to catch up with reality.  Sometimes your desire creates a break in which you suddenly think you can talk to the dead. It's a bit like flying. You may have experienced the feeling as a child that you could jump out your bedroom window (that's why bars are mandatory) and find an airwave that will let you fly like a bird. Free soloists may be those who never get over the childhood delusion they can jump of the window. 

A Psycho

Gaslighting is the primary mode of political discourse employed by the Trump administration, but there is a fine line between employing a figure of speech as as an ideology and outright mass psychosis. MAGA Republicans are a cult.Trump is Jim Jones. His followers, who constitute a considerable portion of ghe population, will do anything he says. Thus the famous statement about walking down Fifth Avenue shooting. Actually it’s not hyperbole. That is what he is doing. It is unclear whether Trump or Netanyahu is to the proxy. The result has been and will be carnage. 

The Last House on the Left

 

One of the most ubiquitous comments one hears is, "you couldn't have dreamt this up." Meaning "a tale told by an idiot full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." "Motiveless malignity" what Coleridge wrote in the margin about Iago? Doesn't fit and btw is there ever a method to madness? No the plot needs something. Real Housewives of Ice? You may have to go back to Thomas Middleton's The Revenger's Tragedy (1606) to unleash the venom the president is looking for. However, there is always Wes Craven's The Last House on Left (1972) whose narrative is enough to make any Jacobean wince.

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Civil War!

The United States is in its second Civil War. Hopefully the casualties won’t be as great. Instead of relenting in the face of an inflationary economy and an unwanted and unauthorized war, MAGA remains strong. Yesterday Trump defeated Thomas Massie and right wing Americans said it was OK for Trump to produce a 1.9 billion slush fund which will ostensibly go to the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers and all those who were prosecuted for attacking the police defending the capital on January 6. But Trump is even scorning his own faithful,
in the radical endorsement of the notoriously corrupt Ken Paxton in the Texas primary. Whether this helps James Talarico the centrist democrat who defeated Jasmine Crockett remains to be seen. In terms of polarization, the Squad and Bernie Sanders are drawing the crowds while the more moderate Maine governor Janet Mills, who famously went nose to nude with Trump in a shouting match, has caved to Graham Platner. So it’s the radical right and what Trump
likes to call "the radical left" are facing off, with a number of prominent exceptions such as the Texas race which pits a moderate against an extremist. Actually Trump calls anyone who opposes his will "a radical left lunatic." You don’t have to be AOC to apply. Will the two sides take up arms? Political violence is the new lingua Franca and that form of social capital is not fungible.

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Freedom 250

Most of the speakers, Trump, Vance, Hegseth, addressed the Christian nation rally by way of video. Is it MAGA or MACA, make America Christian again. The most important political figure to appear in person was Mike Johnson . UFC Freedom 250 will occur on the South Lawn of the White House, July 14. The Freedom 250 Grand Prix is scheduled from August 22-23. The route turns down Ninth Street onto Constitution Avenue, crosses the National Mall on Seventh Street, and loops back via Independence Avenue and Maryland Avenue to Third Street. Drivers include such well known names as Christian Rasmussen and Josef Newgarden who will speed past crowds almost 200 mph. The question is do you have to be Christian to attend?

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Childhood

Childhood is a long slog. Holden Canfield says:  "If you really want to hear about it...and what my lousy childhood was like." You're always hungry, your feet are frozen and your fingertips sting from the cold. There's nothing to do. School days go on forever. You come home snack, study, eat dinner by yourself at 5 since you can't wait for dad  who's always in a hurry though he always comes home later with the small of whiskey on his breath. Your parents' fighting frightens you. You want everything to be alright. You hold the hope that the book report you hand in will garner an A. You are always wishing for improbable things and are surprised only in those moments when you're not looking. Good news is like a rabbit punch. You don't see it coming, but it will always be this way. Your stomach churns in the morning. You say the pledge. The teacher calls the roll. The mocking laughter dies--one of those swells that never becomes a wave-- the second your name is uttered. The linoleum in the hallways smells like vomit. You need a pass to go to push the door marked "Boys." You hope no one else is in the bathroom. You're mostly lucky. Everyone has that one experience of being bullied by the smell coming from a stall--which makes you gag. Recess and dismissal both become mimicked in your life as an adult.

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Power of the Purse

Hermès Birkin Bag

It's almost inane to point out the preposterous contrarieties of MAGAism. Trump backing flavored vapes is the latest. What about Dobbs? No matter. You would rather be a big tobacco company then a woman who chooses to use Mefipristone--which according to the right-to-lifers needs more evaluation, for women's sake. For God sake's! Continued strategic ambiguity on Taiwan, continued appeasement of Russia on Ukraine? Why not fatten up Russian coffers with the Strait of Hormuz blocked? Value-free politics, realpolitik--which ever way you put it, the buck stops here.

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Donald Trump Captured!

South Entrance Quincheng Prison in Peking

What if Xi Jinping pulled a Maduro and put Trump under arrest for criminal behavior? The equivalent of The Metropolitan House of Detention where Maduro is being held (and Jeffrey Epstein was held) is Quincheng, notorious for holding political prisoners. What crimes could Trump be accused of? Violating the emoluments clause and the War Powers Act, commencing the demolition of the East Wing without approval of the group of architects and preservationists who supervise The White House,  awarding an $18 million dollar contract for a reflecting pool at The Lincoln Memorial without going through the normal bidding process--are just a few of the many infractions that Xi Jinping might cite. The fact the President of the People's Republic of China has no jurisdiction over the President of the United States is irrelevant in world fueled by gaslighting. Everyone always knew that behind the Chinese leader's avuncular exterior was a ruthless tyrant. The recent purge of the generals is only one example. John McCain famously stayed in the Hanoi Hilton. Trump must have built up enough points for admission to the Peking version.

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2 New Yorker Poems

There are two notable poems in th 5/4 New Yorker. "Tompkins Square" by Anthony Walton includes the following lines: "content with indefinite apprehension," "sprang from the facticity of her body," "simple theater of one man and one woman," "swallowed all intentions," "Experience and Recrimination," and "uncertain scholars of the inevitable." Spoiler alert: the two would be lovers consummate  in a friend's studio. The second poem is a "A Theory on the Origin of Language" by Tishani Doshi.  Is she tipping her hat to "Pale Fire "I was the shadow of the waxwing slain," when she begins. "a lapwing piercing the still dark still." Later,  "The ancestors of lapwings--they had feathers for a million years before ever using them to fly."  From an evolutionary point of view, this last line is spot on. But the title is the poem too and it makes the reader take one step back. Is it hyperbole or supposition?

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Death Redux

"The Waters of the Lethe by the Plains of Elysium"

  
When one of you is no longer there, the other will feel rejected. Death is the ultimate rebuff. There's always the hope you can turn someone's head around, change the feelings of the client who has decided to change their loss of supply. Death won't be convinced otherwise. It's impossible to absorb death or the idea that there are no possibilities left. Why not one final word, one last chance to set things straight or even just say goodbye? Finality is itself an impossible concept to entertain. Doesn't every one gets a fortune cookie's length of reprieve, the chance to exchange an aphorism, pieties or merely just one last neither/nor. Not the tired "Neither a borrower nor lender be." That's silly advice to the dead, but just the truth, "For loan often loses both itself and friend."

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painting by John Roddam Spencer Stanhope

Visconti's Bellissima

Visconti's Bellissima (1951), currently in revival at Film Forum, is "romantic neorealism." It’s an obvious vehicle for Anna Magnani whose operatic flourishes make one cry. It’s about the depredations of cinema albeit in their most melodramatic form. At one point Magnani beautifully and simply says that acting is being someone else, but the plot centers around a contest. You’ve seen the crowd scenes and screaming mothers in other films particularly In Pasolini’s Mamma Roma and Fellini’s Roma. Here the histrionics reach the level of farce since all the mothers including Magnani are promoting their 5-8-year-old daughters. Spoiler Alert: Magnani is depicted in her usual desolate state, but the little girl who has been the subject of ridicule gets the part—in fact because of her lack of beauty and ability (she can’t even blow out the candles on a cake). It's meta to the extent that the film is about the film, the casting of an Italian Shirley Temple. American films are everywhere with Magnani and her husband watching a John Wayne western on a huge screen put up on their neighborhood street and one of the would-be child stars lifting her skirt to do a Lana Turner. You may feel the film is not the Visconti at his best while appreciating the set pieces which include some wonderfully sublime portraits of Magnani's face.

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Paradise Regained

The Deed is a term adolescent male personalities use to describe sexual intercourse. It's also a document that records the ownership of property. A deed can be an act. One can do a good deed, sometimes of an eleemosynary nature, though it's sometimes might too casual to qualify as charity. Let's say you help a neighbor with their packages or open a taxi door for a fellow resident, when the doorman is helping someone else. The altruistic instinct informs many benevolent actions. Larissa MacFarquar's Strangers Drowning deals with a more extreme situation. A person who is going down often panics and can take a potential rescuer with them. You probably have asked yourself if you would have the courage of the real estate broker from New Jersey who jumped onto the subway tracks to save a fellow straphanger, with a train coming. "Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heav'n," says Satan in Paradise Lost.  

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The Phenomenology of the Pickle

"Once a pickle, no more a cucumber." so they say. But what's wrong with pickles? They are one of the most adaptable of condiments, delicious on hamburgers or with tuna salad. "Pickled" may describe someone who's had one too many, but neither pickled cabbage or beets hurl or pass out. No pickled vegetable ever forgot what they said. "My downfall came when I started to steal from other people's plates," begins Lost Weekend, a memoir about a food addict. The nice thing, from a phenomenological point of view, is that no food has agency. So that the journey is something no cucumber has control over, anyway, since neither pickles nor cucumbers possess volition. Farther and Wilder was the memoir Charles Jackson was writing at the time of his death in l968, but the earlier book, the original Lost Weekend, is what put Jackson the map. Consult the laws of metaphysics for a moment. Imagine a 12-step program for pickles. "I'm Howard," says Howie, who is one. Yes, he has learned to be grateful to want what he has, which is the dish he is sitting in, on the table in front of the argumentative couple, and though he's a mere pickle Howie can still imbibe a Maurice Merleau-Ponty, '45.

Gaslight

Humanity is evolving right before one’s eyes. Stephan Jay Gould coined "punctuated equilibrium." What’s going on definitely could use some periods. The thing about the rant which is the mode of discourse propagated by the president is that it’s usually NAS. You may remember that acronym from freshman composition. Ranting btw is viral. All the Trumpeters sound the same. Have you ever listened to an interview with Stephen Miller? Gaslighting is the means. The weave, as Trump terms it, is the method. The result is an art served up with the loss of a moral center, hold the mayo. "Value-free politics" is the name of the game and speech. The bowdlerization of language is part of MAGA man, Homo MAGAensus, a creature who trundles through Lilliput crushing all the insects (aka insignificant creatures) that get in his way. Is it fascistic to call a fascist, fascist?

read "Current Affairs" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

Condition

electron micrograph of Ebola virus

De Clerambault's or erotomania, ataxia, Wernicke's, temporal lobe epilepsy, Capgras, prosopagnosia and Tourette's are all neurological disorders. Then there are Ebola, Marburg's, spongiform bovine epilepsy,ALS and Parkinson's which are diseases that result in the actual deterioration of the brain. Are delusions, like consciousness itself, just another biological process? Certainly schizoid personality disorder has biological and sometimes genetic roots. Irredentism is the propensity for formerly balkanized countries to reconstitute themselves. Putin displays a demagogic form of the syndrome. Hemorrhaging with the loss of considerable amounts of blood is a direct result of these behaviors. 

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Raising Cain!

Accepting limitations runs contrary to the American creed. And there are "No Inhibitions Allowed" signs everywhere in the modern all/inclusive resort Homo Ludens resides in. You may not want to be a member of a club… but you probably can’t being yourself to say no to this weeks offering at Club Hedonism. Addictive personalities ultimately have to accept the notion of abstinence and even dreamers end up selling their copy of The Fountainhead to The Strand. Who would you rather be Citizen Kane or Bishop Tutu?

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Robert Wilson's Moby Dick at BAM

 

Christopher Nell, sublime boy, and Rosa Inskat, Ahab, (Krulwich NYT)

If you loved The Life and Times of Sigmund Freud, The Life and Times of Joseph Stalin, Deafman Glance and even the late Robert Wilson's more recent production of The Three Penny Opera (whose majestic production by the Berliner Ensemble derived from its faithfulness to the original work), you may find the current production of Moby Dick, by Germany’s Düsseldorfer Schauspielhaus, disappointing. To begin with Moby Dick is its words. The greatness derives from language which is belittled and mocked, in the current outing with once grand characters turned into babbling cartoons. The other problem is that the last half is quite simply a rock opera. No doubt the songs by the British singer song writer, Anna Calvi, will make it to the hit parade say like Laurie Anderson's "O Superman!" Anderson BTW did a l999 production of Moby Dick at BAM. The audience was grooving, heads bobbing, and the production received standing ovations from the youthful crowd. Moby Dick had been turned into a rave, the kind of irritatingly percussive soundtrack that accompanied Sirat.

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Inigo Jones

Inigo Jones (1573-1652)

Inigo Jones, the Vitruvian 17th century architect and set designer, responsible for Ben Jonson's masques--imagine a time when theater had the immediacy of movies and theaters like Shakespeare’s globe evinced their own raucous and sexy spectacle in the galleries. What a name for a stage! The Globe! Ever since humans first recognized their own faces as reflections, the desire and need to see themselves has exploded, Look at the famous Bayeux Tapestries down the road from Omaha Beach and look at how many hits Pornhub receives in a day. Over 114 million is the answer. War is just one of the arenas. Pharoah receiving the prophecy about the calves is another. Joseph btw was the first Jewish psychoanalyst. Let’s call it the interpersonal school! Speaking of analysis, "the rest is silence."

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Nudity

strip club in Anora

Nudity can be physical or emotional. In the latter one exposes oneself, the orifices and cavities which comprise the mind. The former is a taller order. You undress, perhaps finding yourself in one of those dreams where you find yourself standing in front of a crowd with nothing on. As irrational as it may sound, some people would rather admit to anything in lieu of finding themselves scrounging for a fig leaf. The shame attached to nudity is a mystery akin to that of consciousness itself. Words play the role of clothes when it comes to unveiling emotion, but most people are not afraid to let down their guard when they get excised enough, for example. Stripper is a noun most people take for granted. You think of gaudy Gentlemen’s clubs where dupes pay exorbitant fees to drink champagne in the V.I.P room, but why not apply it to those who tell the truth? Further, to be contradictory, is telling all a definition of truth.

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Circulation Des Elites

Vilfredo Pareto

It's like overhearing your parents fighting behind their bedroom door. From the point of view of the average Joe, the elites are having a dust up. The sociologist, Vilfredo Pareto, coined the term, "circulation des elites." The White House correspondents are no less an elite than Joe Rogan. Certainly Tucker Carlson and Steve Bannon are their own elite along with Wolf Blitzer and his co-anchor, Pamela Brown. In comes a would be assassin guns a blazing. Will he become an urban legend, the Luigi Mangione of 2026? Will he be locked up in Fort Knox, a true Goldfinger, rather than one those maximum security for-profit federal penitentiaries filled with cypto-kleptocrats? This is not The Apprentice. It's Jerry Springer where you had to call security to break things up.

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Kant

Kant

Paradigm shift was the catchphrase of Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962). The two words are innocuous, almost pallidly academic yet absolute in their assertion of relativity. But where does the "categorical imperative" figure in? The Kantian requisite differentiates between right and wrong. The present comical universe displays the consequences of “transactional analysis.” Decision making has no relationship to morality. The present state of "value free politics" perpetrated by the president illustrates the consequences of the attack on deontology.

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Which Way Should the Male Gaze?

 

"Sunlight" by Joan Semmel (1978)

Is it wrong to look pruriently on Courbet's"L'Origine du monde" with its headless model in a wanton splayed legged pose? Joan Semmel is known for her nudes, currently on display, in her solo show, "In the Flesh," at The Jewish Museum. Does the artist defang the male gaze by virtue of her own agency? Is it an act of esthetic corruption to get turned on by "Sunlight," or another of Semmel's nudes where a female subject is pictured underneath her male lover with one hand grasping his balls and the fingers of her hand reaching tantalizingly towards his anus?

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Kepler

Johannes Kepler

There are billions of galaxies. The Milky Way is only one, though a Kepler planet, an inhabitant, is still going to be 1200 light years from earth. In addition the cosmos is filled with a dark energy that's causing objects to drift ever further from each other. Space is getting darker, with celestial objects becoming ever more evanescent. No wonder humans constantly and futilely need to assert their self-importance. However delusory, it provides an anodyne. So, much maligned ego does have a function--as a momentary respite from cosmic indifference. 

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Chance

What are the chances of being spotted by somebody you barely know in the middle of nowhere aka Main Street in a strange city. Not much, right? How much more improbable is it to be spotted by the same person a second time? The improbability of an improbable occurrence repeating increases exponentially. Those who believe there are no coincidences  argue there are other spiritual algorithms at work. Is it a mere throw of the dice? Or...? 

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Ozempic Personality Disorder

Apparently weight loss drugs like Ozempic have side effects—one of which is anhedonia or the ability to experience pleasure. In the course of quelling one appetite by way of reducing dopamine flow other temptations are eradicated and patients may start to ponder the point of living. Hamlet comments "that the dread of something after death/The undiscovered country, from whose bourn/No traveler returns, puzzles the will." Suicidal ideation is not compatible with those taking GLP-1 receptor agonists.

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L.H.O.O.Q.

 

L.H.O.O.Q.

"I have forced myself to contradict myself in order to avoid conforming to my own taste." Duchamp's quote which graces the wall in the current MoMA show, sounds a bit like an artist trying to punch his way out of a paper bag. One admires the cleverness of his famed vandalizing of the "Mona Lisa," which sets the state for Rauschenberg's erasing of de Kooning and later guerrilla art such as Banksy. However, to complete the circle and in a Duchampian way turn Duchamp upside down,  can the Dadaist enterprise compete with great art "works?" Compare the experience of "View of Delft," "The Night Watch" and, yes, the "Mona Lisa" to any number of conceptual strategies--that seek to redefine the nature of beauty and art, and you may find you may feel shortchanged. 

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Le Dereglement de tous les sens

 

"Le dereglement de tous les sens” is both a call to arms and ars poetica from Arthur Rimbaud. It's also an expression used by the playwright Antonin Artaud, famed for his "Theater of Cruelty. Is it akin to the 60s where people dropped acid? Is it a loosening of the bonds of mimesis or reason? Certainly, the idea more related to content than style, relates to the emotion within the mind of the creator. From your mouth to God’s ears goes the old saw. Ghosting is when you don’t get back to someone. However, the state Rimbaud refers to emanates from an extreme out of body experience, similar to that of someone who has just seen a ghost.

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Stimulation

"Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe" (Manet, 1863)

What makes for stimulation. Neurologists point to serotonin flow between synapses, but that relates to a result. It’s similar to discussions about consciousness by Daniel Dennett and others who create theory. Is consciousness a biological process akin to digestion? Or does Cartesian dualism still hold sway? In any case you are left with theorems for which proof is offered. But, where does the feeling of excitement originate in art as well as sex? Sexual fantasy, for example, is a form of preconception--fulfillment a matter of the shoe fitting the foot. “Le Dejeuner Sur L’Herbe” is an idyll about which there’s a consensus. It’s one of the most beautiful paintings in the canon of proto-modernism. But how to account for interstice between art and mind, between the eye and the emotion that looking produces?

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Patience

Patience is arithmetic, building slowly as one after another particular expectations are or are not met. Impatience is exponential with waiting akin to a fireworks factory going up in smoke. A person who is calm in the face of uncertainty is a practiced juggler who can take things as they come simply--though sometimes it's just because they're wise enough to not have too many balls in the air. Of course the act can be spiced up by doing it on a high wire or bike or both. That’s why it’s called a circus. Impatience doesn’t usually occur under the big top—as it's not a bona fide high wire act.

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Letter From An Unknown Woman

If you remember back to high school, equations with two unknowns led to the notion of graphs and coordinates. Speaking of unknowns, think about Sargent’s mysterious "Madame X" in her majestic black gown or Max Ophul's classic romance Letter From an Unknown Woman. Part of the mystery of the algebra itself derived from the fact that the math became visual, numbers created lines. Mirrors and the notion of the virtual image would soon be introduced in physics. Actually the notion of "x" and "y" are hard to swallow at first. It's easy to disregard their mystery and cachet. You have to get on with your life, so you mechanically finish the assignment. However, without knowing it, you have been introduced to the world of math. 

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The Trial

Everybody needs a witness at their trial, someone who can testify to their character but also, in a world of indifference, a judge,a person who keeps a close eye, perhaps even a closer eye than they themselves can about their motives. Joseph K is actually your average Joe. No one who has his back. There's no Clarence Odbody (Henry Travers) who stops George Bailey (Jimmy Stewart) from jumping to his death.

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No Exit

Hubert Selby: "I was sitting at home and had a profound experience. I experienced, in all of my Being, that someday I was going to die, and it wouldn't be like it had been happening, almost dying but somehow staying alive, but I would just die! And two things would happen right before I died: I would regret my entire life; I would want to live it over again. This terrified me. The thought that I would live my entire life, look at it and realize I blew it forced me to do something with my life."

Among the numerous other indignities of the present war between good and evil is the attack on interiority. 

Thank God for Howard Jacobson whose most recent broadsheet/novel about "the war" (aka chthonic battle between medieval notions of good and evil) is titled Howl.

read "En Plein Air" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

The Man Who Couldn't Feel Anything

CIP, Congenital Insensitivity to Pain is life-threatening. How many time can you pound your head into a brick wall? The Man Who Couldn’t Feel Anything sounds just like another super hero until you realize that the strength hides a weakness. The Kryptonite in this case is a neurological condition which allows one the ability to painlessly self-destruct.Such a fictional character is also a metaphor for the institutionalization of forgetting. People don't realize they're time bombs. What goes around comes around. It’s the law of the conservation of energy. One of the chief methods of beheading a population is by convincing them that some atrocity is life as usual. Atrocity can be normalized. You can comvince humans of anything. Evil is truly banal. Like Kafka’s Hungerkunstler, it's the genius, the proclivity that's also is the undoing.

read "En Plein Air" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

Civilization

 Kohneh Square, Isfahan (photo: Franco Pecchio)

Is the destruction of a civilization not too high a price to pay to turn attention away from the Epstein files? But from a world historical point of view, the real question is: who is the greatest authoritarian? The field is tight with KimJong-un, Recep Erdogan, MBS, Xi Jinping and Donald Trump all in the running. A Quinnipiac poll indicates most Americans feel Kim Jomg-un is most repressive with his ceremonial displays of strength in Kim II Sung Square. But fascism is on the upswing with Trump’s goon squad of masked agents bringing back the glory days of Kristallnacht when Black Shirts roamed freely through the streets of Berlin.

read "En Plein Air" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

Half-Lives

"Half-life" is an odd term since it emanates from the elements. Humans have short half-lives. Here today gone tomorrow. It's stunning how quickly people pickup their things and leave the consciousness of other human beings forever. What’s the rush? Sorry to inform you, life goes on very nicely without you. No need to fret, thank you. One good thing is that most people are like Miss Havisham, cloaked in clutter. However, a quick exit from the stage, enables the minions to get rid of remains. Oh yes, now and then you will come to mind,  say when the word “soup” is mentioned. You like your soup "hot!"

read "En Plein Air" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

Fountain

"Fountain" by Marcel Duchamp (1917)

You have the found object or “objet Trouvé” epitomized most famously by Duchamp’s "Fountain." Then there are the the lost objects that people try to recover. Are you someone who is always crying out “where’s my phone?” There are those who would lose their heads if they weren't attached to their necks and some who routinely lose their minds. There are valued items that are stolen as is the case with the bike in De Sica’s Bicycle Thieves. But what about those things that disappear of their own volition? You can’t find  them anywhere. If you leave your cellphone in your freezer, you may want to discuss it in therapy. Are the things that refuse to show up part of an unconscious deaccessioning project that has yet to reveal itself. No sooner had you purchased Dan Simmon’s Hyperion at the advice of a friend than that piece of sci-fi went into outer space, into an orbit comprising space/time coordinates that were no longer part of your universe.

read "En Plein Air" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star