Monthly Archives: December 2006

Wine Line

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When the dead look down at us we are as harpoon heads at the end of time’s arrow. They can see the line of our live’s, tethered to the umbellical chord of our conception – ending in a thud at the target. The target is the dirt under ground. This image reminds me of the characters… their harpoons have tangled tight while on the rivers of New York and togther they have traveled the Atlantic Ocean into the mountains of Switzerland. The Target they seek is indeed in the dirt, underground. It is not the grave. Nor is it Dante’s inferno. It is the tiny inferno of the Cern Large Hadron Collider. That is the end of their tragectory. This is the concentric circle target they are aimed at. This the White Whale they will pierce. We can see that, because we, like the dead, can see the characters as harpoon heads at the end of time’s arrow. We are above them, like the dead.

I started thinking about timelines and characters in time and space over the holliday, when I went with my brothers and nephews to the Bridgeport (there’s bridges and ports in that name, funny) Science center and we all got facinated with a Einsteinian gravity model, similar to the penny spinner video below. I didn’t bother to shoot it, as I knew there are tons of similar videos on vimeo. I regret it a little now as Ithink I could have made something rather pretty in the editing and music, but it is sort of fun to just pull stuff of the web like a readymade (I did make the rubbing and the pendulum orbits drawing, however, and they seem very related and part of my thinking). Anyway, seeing the dangerous orbits of the ballbearings (instead of pennies as shown here) reminded me of individual characters traveling with and colliding into eachother as they arc down into the deep dark hole of time.
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Spinning Pennies on Vimeo

Fuck Off, I Love You

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Rolled into Pittsburgh and washed up at a cocktail party like angry sailors. We spotted Dave Conrad (Pat [trick] of Arc Along the Watchtower fame) charming the Ladies of PIttsburgh at all ages and stages and spoke of theater and Shakespeare and drank a little Glennfiddich and somehow the subject turned to Art and how we should go over to Mattress Factory (annex?) and put something into the show Graham Shearing and Michael Olijnyk currated, called “GESTURE”. Connie convinced himself and me and then Graham (who was at the party and so there for the convincing) that putting it into a show three weeks into its month long run in the middle of the night would be part of the gesture. Also part of the gesture was having no actual art materials and no idea of what we we wanted to do and a belly half full of Scotch and wine and raw meat (Carpaccio… mmmmm). It was sort of a Genghis Kahn barbarian invasion of the Pittsburgh art world. Conrad magaged to scrounge up a box of sidewalk chalk and a black whiteboard marker. “My kingdom for a brush and some ink,” quoth I. But we knocked up chalk and marker drawings in three spots in the rambling old house, now serving as an art space. Half the fun was spelunking through the dark midnight rooms, bumping into sculpture while clawing for a light switch. Ended up tracing the actors instrument and it’s shadow, etc. The work felt at home in my Library Project mode as it was sort of literafitti (or literary grafitti: Connie documented all the books he started reading this year, but never finished… the romantic in me likes to think it was because he was called to set and just never quite got back to the book, the realist in me knows that I’ve started a ton of books this year and I don’t think I got all the way through any of them… I think maybe our attention spans are getting fucked by things like blogs and youtube and video games, or we are getting old and lazy). It was also like the Library Project in that we maybe didn’t make the best work we could have made, but we made different work than we would have had we worked alone and more important, we had a lot of fun making it and documented the physical event digitally. Still I’d like to score some materials and return to the scene of the crime and work things a bit. However, the next day was Christmas Eve and then we blew out of town like bitter dust on Christmas day, so rather than great art, the thing is a gesture….as I suppose it is meant to be. The song in the video is David Bowie’s “Cracked Actor”. I padded it with various movie samples from various e-books and tried to contemplate the dangers of Hollywood performance…. and, yes that IS Connie getting a thumping from DeNiro at the end. It’s a bit of mash up from the first run through of OMegg, where DeNiro stands in for M. Tristan beating up Pat. All things that go around come around like particles in a Large Hadron Collider… etc.

Devil Sticks

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SOMETIME AFTER THE FALL, NEAR PITTSBURGH

Somehow the devil talked me into getting Christmas Eve dinner at a Japanese Hibachi steak house. It was one of those places that serves any kind of Asian food – from Sushi to chow mein, but also cooks your surf and turf on a hot Hobart grill right in front of you with a weird mixture of soy sauce and butter. I mean, it wasn’t real authentic, or anything. It was Asian food for white people. Scratch that, it was Asian food for white people who still call Asians Orientals. Yeah. It was Oriental food and the devil mostly liked it for the waitresses dressed up like Geisha and the drinks that came with tiny paper parasols.

By the time I got there, the grill was already warm and the devil was half crocked on mai tais. He was wearing a parasol behind his horn like a Polynesian virgin and talking smack about the Buddha.

“Sit down,” he said. “Don’t be so passive. What are you the freakin’ buddha.”
“No,” I said. “I’m Ishmael.”
“You’re an A hole is what you are,” the devil laughed, waving me to sit down with his red, claw hand. I slid in behind the grill table and the Korean chef came over to cook like a Japanese guy. It was all a weird sort of theater where nothing was what it appeared…. I mean from a historical or cultural perspective. Mr. Lee was chopping away with the sharp knives and making a James Brown rhythm on the griddle with a pepper shaker and the devil ordered me up a mai tai with extra umbrellas from the pretty cocktail waitress, who was half Peurto Rican, Chinese Filipina dressed up like I said, as a Geisha… cute too.
“I could fall for her,” the devil said.
“Shit, You’ve already fallen.”
“Must you curse at the table,” the devil scolded.
“What the fuck,” I said.
”Please,” said the devil. “There are ladies present.” and the waitress came with the cocktails and the devil took a long pull and so did I and he ordered a round of Kamikaze.
“Come on,” I said. “The waitresses are dressed as Japanese whores.”
“Geisha are not prostitutes,” he said. “They are artists… granted their medium is eros.”
“Fuck me.” I said. “You’re the fucking devil.”
”You forget, that I am an angel too. Just because my father thinks I’m no good, doesn’t mean I AM no good. I’m a freakin’ angel and stop swearing before I get angry. IT’S Fuc….IT’S CHRISTMAS.”
“What do you care for Christmas? You’re the devil.”
“Jesus is my freakin’ cousin, okay and he’s next in line… Show some respect.”
”You make religion sound like the mafia.”
”Well it sort of is.”
“And you’re Fredo.”
“Yeah… I guess I am… but I am really smart you know?”

“Sure,” I said and the kamikazes came and then we had more and few more mai tais and the chef made a volcano out of a stack of onion rings and burning liquor. It made the devil homesick and he started getting drunk and pinching the ass of the cute Chinese/Filipina and whispering dirty things in her ear and calling Mr. Lee the best knife chink in the business and just really getting loud and out of control and I was sort of embarrassed as he kept throwing the food around the table like a spaz. He couldn’t keep anything on his chopsticks.
“Who fucking invented these things?!” he yelled at Mr. Lee.
“Maybe Chinese,” Mr. Lee said in a flourish of knife work.
“Bullshit Chinkboy, I did. Who else but the devil cold invent these fucking things? Useless. Give me a fork. I’m a god damned devil and I like pitchforks and forks and…. I hate fucking devil sticks…chop chop chinaman,” he said.
“Me Korean,” said Mr. Lee.
“You get me fork, or you be Solly,” said the devil.
“Cool it,” I said. “You’re acting like a real…as… A hole.”
“Fuck You,” he said. “Who’s paying for this fucking dinner anyway? Me, asshole. You don’t have any money.”
It was true. I hadn’t sold a story since the whale thing, so I was the devil’s guest.
“Right…so I’ll fucking act like I fuckin’ want to act,” the devil said.
”Hey the language,”I said. “I thought you said you were an angel.”
“Sure sure. Most of the time I’m a fuckin’ angel, but listen…” and he dragged me close with the red claw and said in a whisper, ”I’m a god damn devil when I drink. How the fuck do you think I fell out of heaven anyway? I fuckin’ tripped on a cumulous cloud, drunk on Rum and pineapple juice… A funapple , I called it. A God Damn Fun Apple.”
He ordered a round of funapples and dumped the rest of his kamikaze on the griddle and it exploded in fire and heat.
“That’s more like it,” he said. “Just like home.”
It was that kind of night all the way into Christmas morning when the devil stumbled out of a strip club and tried to pick a fight with Santa Claus, but santa just tried to give him a stuffed bear.
“You fucking Buddhist,” he yelled at Santa and. then he tried to fuck the stuffed bear. He couldn’t find a viable orifice and made a lunge at Prancer. I grabbed him by the left horn and I dragged him away. I walked him back to the gates of hell.
“Merry Fuckin’ Christmas,” the devil said.
“Merry Fuckin’ Crhistmas to you too,” I said and he slurred something and fell down the hellacious stairs.
I heard him yell up from hell in a bruised hoof groan, “I’ll be an angel in the morning and you’ll still be an asshole, out of work writer!”
I realized then that those who’ve known the heights of heaven, always think they’re above you. They look down on you, even when their drunk asses are falling down the stairway to hell, you know? I was good enough for hibachi Christmas Eve, but you know… I wasn’t really good enough. Anyway, I bet they use chopsticks in heaven… I mean if they eat or anything, I just bet you they use chopsticks.
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Margaux

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“We should order some wine,” he said.
“We’re drinking wine,” she said.
“I mean something special. Enough of the Swiss white. It’s all good, but let’s have something great. This is supposed to be an extravagant shopping spree and you haven’t bought a thing.”
“I didn’t see anything I want. It all looks sort of matronly.”
“I told you Geneva is dull town. Politician’s wives,” he reminded her.
“But what about the mistresses?” she asked. “Where do they shop?”
“They shop in Paris,” he said.
“Of course,” she agreed and they asked the waiter for the Carte de Vin.
He looked at it earnestly for a long time and then admitted, “What I don’t know about fine wine is a longer book than what I do know.”
“Yeah,” she said. ” What I know is a short story.”
“Well speaking of,” he said and pointed to a Chateau Margaux. “This is the wine Hemmingway named his daughter after.”
“Which one?” she asked.
“Margaux.” he said.
“….Ummmm duuuuuh. Was she the one in Manhattan, or was that Mariel?”
“I’m not sure,” he said. “I get them confused. One was the suicide and one was Lolita.”
“Both pretty,” she said. “I think Margaux was in the Manhattan and lived.”
“Nope, I think she was the tragic beauty,” he said.
“Mmmm tragic beauty sounds delicious,” she said
“Okay,” he said. “We’ll drink her… whichever Hemmingway she was… You have to figure Papa wouldn’t name her after plonk.”
And he oredered a vintage that was about as old as that Soon Yi was when she first Lolited Woody Allen, or he Humberted her… whichever way you tell that story.
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The 400 Books

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One of those impossible days, with too much to mail, too much to scan, too much to wash, too much to clean, to much to make a mess with, and too much to edit. In the back of my mind I keep remembering that the characters are sitting in a cafe (either in Geneva, or Brooklyn) and Pat is about to order some wine. Remember that… I’m too tired and getting sick to go any further with it.