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.