The Dedicated Mourner

Is it possible that the people who show up for your funeral are just the ones who have nothing better to do, the assiduous ones who were always there, say like the useless quotes that you padded papers with in high school? The elusive and desirable types, made more desirable in your mind, by the low esteem in which they held you, will be no shows. Of course, there’s going to be one big difference, you won’t be there to care. You’ll never know even if all kinds of termites come out of the woodwork to sing your praises. Forbes famously publishes its 400 list and there's always the obit the matter of a Times obit, something bound to garner a multivalent reaction in just about anyone. Let’s say it turns out you’re a bigger wig than you thought and someone has taken note of your existence all these years, it’s really too bad you won’t be there to know. It’s at this point that elaborate hoaxes have to be dealt with. If parents can pay thousands, even millions to get their kids into elite colleges, why can’t you enlist the services of some PR company from the Dark Web who'll prematurely announce your demise. That way you can have your cake and eat it too. Wouldn’t it be fun to read your own obit. It’s like having a play opening on Broadway and reading the reviews that come out in the next morning's edition of the paper. Wouldn’t it be fun to be in the back of the chapel in which your eulogy is being given and in the end be there to greet everyone who has attended your wake? Remember Wally Shawn's The Designated Mourner? Why not be your own dedicated mourner?

The Final Solution: Quantum Politics

Frederick Christ Trump 

If you’re one of those people who feels confined by the small turf of physical or psychic space you occupy, you might be chastened by the awareness that it’s not always going be there. “Fox and Friends” made a wonderful gaffe last week with their infamous graphic that stated, “Trump cuts aid to three Mexican countries.” But it only underscores how easily the rug can be pulled out from under you. Alt-right media outlets like Breitbart can be pretty influential and who knows what misstated piece of policy will become law. Trump also claimed last week that his father was born in Germany when the fact is that Fred Trump was born in the Bronx on October ll, 1905. In the current climate if something is mistakenly uttered in the wrong time and place, it can be a game changer. What Fox was trying to say of course was that Trump was advocating cutting aid to 3 Central American countries from which caravans were purportedly emanating. However why not an alternate universe where there were three Mexicos, no Europe, a Saudi Arabia renowned for its nude beaches, a North Vietnam famous for its Free Speech Movement (by the way imagine the half life of the North Vietnamese version of Lenny Bruce or George Carlin)? Three Mexican Countries is after all not so far flung. It wasn’t all that long ago that there were two Germanys and using the principles of quantum physics in which a particle can be in two places at the same time, why couldn’t Fred Trump have been born in Germany and the United States?

Brain Enema

In a recent Op Ed ("Longing for An Internet Cleanse,"NYT, 3/28/19), David Brooks quotes from the Jewish scholar Abraham Joshua Heschel’s The Sabbath thusly, “The seventh day is a palace in time which we build. It is made of soul, of joy and reticence. In its atmosphere, a discipline is a reminder of adjacency to eternity. Indeed the splendor of the day is expressed in terms of abstentions.” Brooks’ piece is a meditation on timeless things. He mentions the Greek concept of Kairos time “which is not quantitative like our normal conception of time but qualitative,” 300-400 year old Japanese Kintsugi bowls and the work of the abstract artist Makoto Fujimura. But of course Keats’ “Grecian Urn” would qualify. The opening line of the poem “Thou still unravish'd bride of quietness…” is a notion that's more likely to be memorized in this age of rapid fire texting and Tweets than totally understood. In order to handle datification and the juggernaut of information that attacks the senses from social media, the average person has depend on short hand that reduces objects to flash preconceptions which are quickly encapsulated and categorized. There's no time to stop as in the chemical bath of an old-fashioned darkroom where a photo slowly and magically develops. Polaroids gave way to digital. It’s like Moore’s law. Expeditiousness is a byproduct of progress and consciousness is like philanderer who enjoys a promiscuous relationship with the parade of U.S.D.A stamped premium information.

Pornosophy: Capitalism and Adultery

Is serial adultery simply a form of capitalism? Reification is the process by which objects are turned into things or commodities and who is to say that concepts like economy of scale and division of labor can’t be applied to the erotic life? Entrepreneurs choose their metier or calling because they don’t like being wage laborers. They may also like what they do, but they generally are in the business of accumulating wealth, with the lode of assets they earn from business creating a principal that itself spawns out a return through simple interest or investment. More is rarely if ever, enough. The serial adulterer similarly does not enjoy being in thrall to one person who doles out pleasure the way salaried employees earn their weekly check. He or she derives a feeling of power from the equivalent of a steadily increasing stream of income, which in sexual terms involves maintaining a stable of lovers. Cheating is a pregnant word in that it can refer to infidelity or stealing. Many of the high rollers have been caught up in recent #MeToo scandals are people who don’t play by the rules and while it’s unlikely there will be too many studies about the relationship between philandering and tax evasion, one wouldn’t be surprised to find that those who avoid the arm of the law in one area, would also push the envelope when it comes to connubial matters. Now there are people who simply have many affairs and others who have appetites that are so insatiable that they’re the equivalent of conglomerates. 

Sympathy for the Devil or Patient?

Many Rolling Stones fans were shocked to find out Mick Jagger was canceling his current tour for medical reasons. Apparently Jagger has to have a heart valve replaced, but it was like John Donne's "For whom the bell tolls, It tolls for thee." The venerable icon of the 60’s Baby Boomer generation is a signpost and a litmus test and one wonders about the title of the song that will derive from the experience. “Pleased to meet you,” Jagger croons in “Sympathy for the Devil.” The new version might finish off the verse, “but what puzzles me is the nature of your diagnosis.” Jagger is now 75 and it’s the perfect chorus for a rocker his age. Here's sex, drugs and rock ‘n roll minus the sex and drugs. Instead of getting his “kicks on Route 66,” Mr. Jagger may well be singing the praises of his Medicare coverage, provided, of course, he has paid for Part B. And before that,  was it Oxford Freedom? The Rolling Stones have turned out to be the most durable rock band in history and who knows how much they gross from their perennially sold- out tours. But until someone finds the secret for eternal youth even guys like Jagger and Keith Richards are going to continue showing their age. Imagine Mick on stage in 15 years. By then he'll be employing a stylish walker as he navigates an assisted living concert where he's performing “Jumpin' Jack Flash.”

Sperm Count: Shameful Delights

Shame is a much maligned feeling or emotion. There is too much mollycoddling about shame and too many helpful Cassandras who warn us about the danger of feeling ashamed of our bodies and our desires. The message, of course, is there’s nothing to be ashamed of, particularly if you have one proclivity or another. Well let’s start with nudity. Sure you can go to a beach where everyone is naked and you probably won’t experience an iota of shame, but if you go to an elegant Broadway opening totally in the nude, you’re likely to experience some shame and the desire to cover up your so-called private parts. If this weren’t the case then things like streaking and mooning would be no fun at all. Enlightenment rationality concerning bodily fluids and functions may have dealt the shame  an almost mortal wound, but shame is not totally dead. There are still things to be ashamed about which add a little sizzle to life. If everyone talked freely about their anxieties, inhibitions and problems, their shame might be eradicated say like Polio was with the advent of the Salk vaccine. However, luckily they don’t. In terms of paradigms you’re more likely to find yourself as the nude person at the Broadway opening with all camera lights flashing then as the sunbather on the nude beach. There's nothing worse than being male and expressing the fact that you’re the only one who isn’t getting it up. And what about farting? If there wasn’t shame, the word “strip” would become an anachronism. You blanch when someone tells you to “strip,” since the connotation wrongly or rightly is that you're being forced to undress in front of a stranger and show that stranger those hidden orifices with their surrounding follicles that they wouldn’t ordinarily have access to. Some people hate having to take their clothes off even for a doctor's exam, but sometimes a future stripper finds his or her calling during a casual examination in a proctologist orurologist's office.

Us

Dostoevsky wrote a novella about a doppelganger called The Double: A Petersberg Poem which inspired Jorge Luis Borges to write his own version, The Other. Us is a doppelganger fiesta, though the director Jordan Peele’s form of doppelganger has a homicidal edge. "Tethering" is term the film coins for what's going on, but the double the central character Adelaide (Lupita Nyong’o) meets in a "find yourself" fun house mirror lacks one important element. She lacks a soul and that constitutes the chrysalis of the horror. What's brilliant is the imagery. The movie takes place in l986 and a Michael Jackson Thriller tee-shirt is a treasured artifact of the years leading up to that era in this “thriller" (Jackson, of course, was not the love child he seemed to be). But an even more important piece of imagery is the graphic of the “Hands Across America” movement which took place in May of that year. The wonderful twist is, of course, that something high-minded becomes a cross between The Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) and The Night of the Living Dead (1968). Home Alone (1990) also is a garish cameo in Us. Gabe is the father of this particular domestic drama. The performance  by Nyong’o has received rave notices. Yet it's Winston Duke in his Howard University sweatshirt, playing the tell-it-like-it-is, social-rising plain dealer Dad who makes comments like “what is this some kind of fucked up performance art” on seeing the red suited ghouls forming a human chain, who continually steals the show. Gabe is also interesting precisely because he's a black man who has made it and the film is about a kind of revenge of the have-nots who haven't  been so lucky.The title of the film of course says it all. Who are they, but us? Forget Jeremiah ll:11 ("I will bring evil upon them, which they shall not be able to escape") which appears throughout the film and bespeaks the obvious.  Remember the Mount Rushmore scene in North By Northwest? Us is a reminder in an era, where commerce and complexity, often don’t go hand in hand, that mass appeal art can produce unforgetable imagery that possesses real and lasting genius.