Would You Rather End Up as "Trash" or "Junk?"

photo: Fruggo

Have you mistakenly consecrated someone to “trash” who is merely “junk?” Sometimes it’s hard to separate the wheat from the chafe—and there are all those notes from your old friend Joe who's stuck in Estonia and needs you to wire the cash. If you’re lucky that will simply go directly to "junk," before you even have to think about throwing it in the "trash." But there are all the e mails from candidates. They're always in trouble and there’s only 1 day left—which is usually true. Sirius FM’s attempt to improve your playlist is a candidate for "trash" along with those promotions from Jet Blue, Optimum and Spectrum who all are desperate to help you with your  "plans"—while you wait hopelessly to for that e mail which is not "trash" or "junk," the e mail that's gold and will make a radical difference in your life. And then there is the missive full of things you don’t want to hear about yourself. How did they even get your e mail address? Now they've come out of the closet to inform you the great harm you've done? What to do with these emails. Throw them into “junk” or simply press "delete," which means they will immediately go into “trash?”

read "Ultimate Rejection" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

and listen to "Clean Up Woman" by Betty Wright

Diasporic Dining: Chez Ivermectin

overflow of wastewater, photo: Susana Secretariat

For your first course you're served a broth spotted with slim reeds of Beyond Vegetable, a synthetic green that resembles industrial pollutant. Next comes the main dish, the Donner Party kebob, hunks of meat that resemble human flesh and would be considered a delicacy in any zoo. But the food is only half the story. The hyperactive servers with bulging eyes who look as if they are part of a low pressure system producing hurricane force winds are accompanied by the other diners, a unique mix of mid-island women with dyed blond hair who long ago gave up on those post pregnancy stomach tighteners. They are joined by men in double knit pants and white patent leather loafers, whose most salient defining characteristic is their blowed dried hairdo resembling that of a former president. These kinds of patrons travel in schools and exhibit belligerent demanding behaviors reminiscent of the insurrectionists who invaded the capital on January 6. It's always embarrassing to leave uneaten food (with all the hunger in the world) but what is really needed is a trough rather than a dumpster for these leftovers in which even pigs, would still be loathe to feed.

read "Diasporic Dining: Les Specialities de L'Etat Islamique" by Francis Levy, HuffPost

and listen "Twenty-Five Miles" by Edwin Starr

Is Beauty a Grecian Urn or a Blond?

tracing of engraving of Sosibios Vase by Keats

What is beauty? Is it a Grecian Urn? There's some controversy brewing about the show of Anna Weyant’s work at Gagosian. One reviewer compared her to both John Currin and Lisa Yuskavage, both to whom she was deemed to come up short.  “There is a weirdness about Currin and Yuskavage’s art that isn’t present here,” says Alex Greenberger in ARTnews. The point is that she's apparently just sophisticated enough. However, the real problem lies not in the beauty of the paintings but that of the artist. She's so beautiful your eyes are glued to her picture. Could it be that looking at her is the esthetic experience? What would happen were she to appear in real life? Would she stop you in your tracks? Would you be turned to stone or drown, like Narcissus, but in her rather than your own image? Does she create pileups on the LIE? In addition, how does a 27 year old artist of her caliber whose work is masterful, if derivative get a show at the hottest gallery in the world? The backstory is both predictable and boring. Larry Gagosian as you might expect is purportedly having an affair with her. Would she get into his gallery otherwise? Would a man fifty years older get into her, were he not such a powerful art world figure? What to do with this information. Why not say simply that an extraordinarily beautiful young woman with nice but not exceptional work got the attention of an aging gallerist. She must realize, if she has any feeling for him, that he will, from an actuarial point of view outlive her? And he has to accept the fact that she likes him for his  power and money as much as she does for his "self," if one can be extricated from the other. There's something horribly unfair about so many aspects of this story that it might be said to resemble life.

read "The End of Genius and the Rise of the Compassionate Artist" by Francis Levy, HuffPost

and listen to "Modern Love" by David Bowie

Buddha Rejects

Dante's Inferno by William Blake

The Buddha is generally deemed to be a symbol of ultimate compassion. But does that magnanimity extend to all creatures? Do the arms of universal love open up for Donald Trump at Mar-A-Lago? Those who believe in a Manichean universe of heaven and hell would condemn such tyrants to the infamous Ninth Circle of Dante’s Inferno where the condemned have their bottom half frozen into a lake. “Better to rule in hell than serve in heaven,” said Steve Bannon quoting Satan’s words from Milton’s Paradise Lost, in Errol Morris’s American Dharma. But where does Bannon go from here? If he is forced to step down, by the next in line to reign in hell, will he say “the election was rigged and stolen?” Do the extremes of human depravity elicited by a Putin who licenses the bombing of children’s hospital and mass rape engender an even more encompassing forgiveness or will the Buddha simply throw up his hands in helpless disgust saying, "Let them rise to the top of the food chain after having preyed on all the animals below, but I’m done.” Are there those who are so terrible that they're even refused  entry into Hell? Does the Buddha have a list of "deplorables" a la Hillary Clinton, who're rejected from his love?

read "Shame" by Francis Levy, HuffPost

and listen to "Mr. Pitiful"by The Commitments

The Unbelievable Weight of Massive Talent

Many Americans brought up on a diet of James Dean, Marlon Brando and more recently Nicholas Cage, Tom Hanks and Tom Cruise, regard actors as larger than life figures whose roles are extensions of their personalities."The method," by which actors delve into their own psychologies to create their parts, derived from The Actors Studio and before that Stanislavski and the Moscow Art Theater, reflects only a minute evolution of a profession that began around 450 BC--the era when Sophocles was first trying to cast Oedipus. In fact, from the earliest days of the theater most actors were possessed with a tabula rasa, a labile sense of self in which character could be molded. Remember the two masks, tragedy and comedy, which symbolize theater. It was the performer's task to fit his personality to the role rather than the role to the personality as became the case in American theater and film. Lawrence Olivier is a classic actor who played everything from Henry the Fifth to Dr. Christain Szell the Nazi war criminal who was a dentist, in Marathon Man. George Clooney or Julia Roberts may play themelves in the succession of movies they’ve done together, but Olivier is totally transformed in every part he plays. You recognize Brando as Kurz in Apocalypse Now,  as Vito Corleone in The Godfather, as Terry Malloy in On the Waterfront. The Unbearable Weight of Enormous Talent, a parody of the cult of personality, is a homage to Nicholas Cage. However, Oliver is totally transformed as Archie Rice in The Entertainer,. Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights and Maxim de Winter in Rebecca. It was undoubtedly enormously exciting to find a "method" until it wasn't and you grew tired of seeing Marlon Brando playing himself one more time--however unforgettable Stanley Kowalski's cry of "Hey Stella" was in A Streetcar Named Desire.

read "The Icarus Complex" by Francis Levy, HuffPost

and listen to "Mister Pitiful" by Otis Redding

Judging a Book By Its Cover

Do you really want to see The Collaboration, a play about Jean-Michel Basquiat and Andy Warhol (shades of Rimbaud and Verlaine?). The former is highly overrated and the latter just plain bad. “Here’s mud in your eye!” goes the old salutation. Andy Warhol's repetitive Campbell’s soup cans epitomize his value-free existence, if nothing else. Or what about a nostalgic film about how Steven Spielberg was first drawn to the camera as a kid? Not to underrate a talented director, but does everyone’s story need to be told? All art is autobiography and all autobiography art. Still, a book about Joseph Roth like the recently published biography, Endless Flight, by Kieron Pim may turn out to be far more interesting than Blake Bailey’s biography of Philip, which achieved a certain degree of notoriety when its author was #MeTooed. "Happy families are all alike, every unhappy family is unhappy its own way," said Tolstoy. Philip Roth drew the ire of Claire Bloom who was one of his wives, but compared to Joseph Roth, an alcoholic, who was forced to flee his native Austria by the Nazis, he had it good. The important thing in judging films, plays and books in the coming year is to make sure not to see or read them. The same can be said about people.You may take an immediate dislike to someone and then do backflips to understand and enjoy them, but in the end you're likely to find that your early intimations were totally on the mark in judging x to be a schmuck. Actually taking a look at someone or thing can cloud your vision. Uninformed snap judgements are much maligned, but look you’ve made your bed. Now you have to sleep in it.

"The Rise of the Crypto-Relic" by Francis Levy, HuffPost

and listen to "I'm the One Who Love Forgot" by The Manhattans

Trump and Newton's Third Law

Does Hamlet’s “How all occasions do inform against me” apply to Trump? The DOJ, the Fulton County prosecutor and the January 6 Committee have all leveled numerous charges about illegal conduct with regard to the 2020 elections. And then there are Trump’s tax returns and the sensitive documents secreted away at Mar-A-Lago. Trump is the first former president to be charged criminally. Newton’s Third Law states, “every action produces an equal and opposite reaction." Are all these probes adding oil to the fire? In classic horror film there's a creature who refuses to die and whose venomous attacks are fueled by all those who attempt to annihilate him or her. In fact, spears, arrows, axe-handles, exfoliants only stoke the flames. Under this theory a popular uprising, perhaps even worse than January 6^th waits in the wings. The reality is Trump’s chief strategy is delay. The idea would be to hold everything off until the election. Trump gets reelected and the DOJ, FBI and a host of other government agencies are disbanded, resulting in the dropping of all charges. There's always a Darth Vader or Dark Force in a Manichean universe. That’s what makes for an epic film series like Star Wars, but that’s entertainment. 2024 will be for real.

read "Trumpty Dumpty's Great Fall" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star

and listen to "Make America Great Again" by Pussy Riot