(or how to encourage a fellow artist to keep going despite despair)
Dear Eva, April 14 It will be almost a month since you wrote to me and you have possibly forgotten your state of mind (I don’t doubt it though) You seem the same as always, and being you, hate every moment of it. Don’t! Learn to say “Fuck You” to the world once in a while. You have every right to. Just stop thinking, worrying, looking over your shoulder, wonder- ing, doubting, fearing, hurting, hoping for some easy way out, struggling, grasping, confusing, itching, scratching, mumbling, bumbling, grumbling, humbling, stumbling, mumbling, rambling, gambling, tumbling, scumbling, scrambling, hitching, hatching, bitching, moaning, groaning, honing, boning, horse-shitting, hair-splitting, nit-picking, piss-trickling, nose sticking, ass-gouging, eyeball-popping, finger-pointing, alleyway sneaking, long waiting, small stepping, evil-eyeing, back-scratching, searching, perching, besmirching, grinding, grinding, grinding away at yourself. Stop it and just
cut out each strip & collect
(*) Letter from Sol Lewitt to Eva Hesse, April 14th, 1965, in Letters of Note: An Eclectic Collection of Correspondence Deserving a Wider Audience, Chronicle Books, 2014. Shown here is just the first page of a 5-page letter that Sol Lewitt sent to Eva Hesse.
M N E M O N I C S ? Mantras? Memorials? Mathematical mazes? So many ways to remember and remind ourselves about tasks, (tareas), to-do’s. No, this STRIP TEASE® won’t be a lesson on alliterative haikus. Twenty years ago today, my father passed away in Buenos Aires at age 85. I decided to celebrate this anniversary with a personal challenge. Here is the scoop.
I interrupted —like many people during social lock-down— the one-on-one home training sessions with Mauro, my personal trainer. He is Argentinean but lives with his family in New York. I met him at the YMCA’s locker room one day when I was changing to a blue and yellow soccer jersey. Those are the brand colors of Boca Juniors, a quintessential Argentinean team based in the La Boca neighborhood. He initiated a conversation in Spanish. Then and there he realized I was a porteño, as the Buenos Aires natives are called. The jersey, the colors, and my accent gave me away (Mauro is marplatense, born in the seaside town of Mar del Plata, 260 miles south of the capital) .
After I quit the YMCA, he became my trainer at home on a weekly basis. I took copious notes and sketches of all the exercises he taught me during those sessions in my own private codex. Now I make an effort to reconstruct the postures and comply with the expert’s suggested repetitions. But besides triceps and biceps exercises, today I’m adding a new routine: a set of 20 push ups every day during 20 consecutive days. My father, a porteño himself, the son of Spanish immigrants, will help me with this challenge. Won’t it be easy to remember? 20 X 20 in 2020.
Y E S T E R D A Y at 3 p.m., as the U.S. lined up fifth in the countries with the most Coronavirus casualties, Ina Garten posted a badly lit photo of a cosmopolitan in Instagram. With 61,966 likes, she adds: “Is it time yet?? Please??!!” Lost among 2,090 comments, phillomaris says: “During a pandemic, every hour is a cocktail hour!” and fanswift68: “I love you Ina so much. It’s definitely time. And a great day to celebrate @taylorswift brilliant new music. [star emoji] Cheers!” (The previous night, Taylor Swift twitted that her new album was coming out, where she pours “all [her] whims, dreams, and musings into.”)
On another note, Laurie Pressman, VP of Pantone Inc, just celebrated the re-imagining and standardization of the Pink Panther Pink, whose “end result is a slightly subtler pink that suits the character’s suave manner without losing sight of the character’s mischievousness and vibrancy.”
Now that we don’t have to shelter at home much, we seem to “shelter” in safe places to counteract the uncertainty of this pandemic, being those places booze, Ms. Swift’s “Folklore” album, a certain shade of pink or, in my case, a performance of John Cage’s Cheap Imitation. Last Thursday, as I worked, I tuned in to listen to this 35+ minute piece for solo piano presented live by Mise-En_Place. The pianist, as you can see in the photo, was wearing an unnecessary bandana which gave the meditative, almost static piece, an additional meaning. Its aural thinness, ambiguous resolution, and elastic tempo seem to reflect the lack of structure of some of our days now—the work was composed in 1969. But as it faded out, the soft music gave me strength to focus on a few essential needs.
A R E W E V E R Y slowly returning to normalcy? Will there something “normal” ever exist again? Will we do without pre pandemic indispensable things like in-person meetings? How about viewing art, a monologue, a live performance?
I was so looking forward to my first post lock down visit to an art gallery. In New York, some started re-opening last week, by appointment only. Security guards wear masks. Receptionists sit behind plexiglass. If galleries were temples of antiseptic austerity before Covid-19, now they are even more. Who could have imagined the pairing up of a drippy, impulsive canvas by 80’s enfant terrible Julian Schnabel with a bottle of Purel hand sanitizer? (They share an immense room at Pace Gallery). I slipped in Metro Pictures although a sign was blocking the entrance predicating their occupancy quota. But the gallery was totally white and empty. Clinical silence and the echo of a 150-day closure made admiring the art almost impossible. I left unmoved, uninspired.
I walked out, put on my mask, and passed by one of the few auto mechanics left in the neighborhood. I shared my free M11 bus ride back home with two nuns in full regalia including black masks. A construction worker was absorbed in a TikTok meme. Through the window I saw written on a pillar: “Can we still fall in love this summer? —7SoulsDeep.” Then some plywood-covered stores with unintelligible signatures and creative glyphics that only street artists can produce. I found more solace in these images than the art gallery promenade. I tuned in TikTok myself, checking out the latest posting from Uffizi Gallery: gifs of Botticelli’s virgins in sync with Jay-Z. Refreshing.
— Williamsburg, Brooklyn, 7/21/2020
(*) One of Bascal’s aphorisms, in Plas Bascal, Aphorismes, Wythe Avenue Books, Brooklyn, 1978
T O D A Y W E celebrate Bastille Day. Seven years ago in San Diego, California, my husband and I organized a French-themed soirée distinctly à propos. It took place after July 14th, so we called it “Still Bastille Day.”
The evening started with all of us standing and singing La Marseilleise, karaoke style with Hector Berlioz’s orchestration. Then we showed Pepé Le Pew, from the Looney Tunes DVDs that enrich our vidéotèque. Afterwards I played some Rameau on the piano pour amuser la bouche, as they say in cooking school. Two bilingual poetry readings followed: Charles Baudelaire Au Lecteur (To the Reader) from 1857 and Breakfast (Déjeuner au matin) by Jacques Prevert from 1946. Each dual reading happened simultaneously, at the readers’ discretion. For the French version of Breakfast, we asked Hélène Holl to recite it from her home in Marin County, via Skype. (Nobody talked Zoom then)
During intermission, or entr’acte, as they say in French, I played Erik Satie. Background music not to be listened to necessarily, what he called musique d’ameublement (furniture music). Part II: a re-enactement of a letter by Claude Debussy to Ernest Giraud about Impressionist harmonies, and my version of Canopes (1905) in our electric keyboard with some twinkling amplifications. Our friend Scott Striegel ended the evening with a splendid reading in drag of Paul Rudnick’s Vive la France, a riotous one-page article from The New Yorker that follows.
— New York City, 7/14/2020
Vive la France by Paul Rudnick
The New Yorker, March 26th, 2012
I am Marie-Céline Dundelle, and I do not need a book contract to reveal that French women are superior in all matters. Our secret lies in an attitude toward life, a point of view that I can only call Frenchy. For example, let us discuss weight loss. The American woman obsesses over every calorie and sit-up, while in France we do not even have a word for fat. If a woman is obese, we simply call her American. Whenever my friend Jeanne-Hélène has gained a few pounds, I will say to her, “Jeanne-Hélène, you are hiding at least two Americans under your skirt, and your upper arms are looking, how you say, very Ohio.”
To maintain my figure, I eat only half portions of any food, always arranging it on my plate in the shape of a semicolon. For exercise, at least once a day I approach a total stranger and slap him. And late each afternoon I read a paragraph of any work of acclaimed American literary fiction, which makes me vomit.
As for family life, Americans are far too concerned with a child’s self-esteem and accomplishments. The French woman knows that to build a child’s inner strength it is best either to completely ignore the child or to belittle him. As I was giving birth to my daughter, I refused to put down my copy of French Vogue. When it was over, I turned to my husband and remarked, “I have just had an unusually large bowel movement that will never be as attractive as me.” During my son’s thirteenth-birthday party, I ordered him to remove all his clothing, and I told the assembled guests, “You see? That is why we raised him as a girl.” My wisdom can be traced to the influence of my own mother. When I was five years old, I asked her, “What is love?” She took my small, flowerlike face in her slender hands and replied, “What do I look like, Yoda?”
The French woman is known for being effortlessly chic. I have, in fact, offered tutorials on elegance to American women. I will hand an American an Hermès scarf and ask her to tie it somewhere on her body, anywhere but around her neck. A French woman might use the scarf to secure a ponytail, or she’ll knot it loosely around the strap of her Chanel handbag. Sadly, most of my American pupils either use the scarf as a makeshift sling or eat it. I have attempted to counsel many American women against overdressing. I told one woman, “I’m going to turn my back, and I want you to take off three things.” A moment later, when I faced her, the woman had removed her teeth, one of her eyes, and an Ace bandage.
French culture remains unmatched. Our films include rollicking farces, searing documentaries, and quietly explosive investigations of family life. In these films, to avoid vulgarity, nothing happens, and none of the actors’ faces ever move. French film making has recently reached a peak with the almost entirely silent Oscar-winning movie “The Artist.” True cinéastes say that the ultimate French film will be a still photograph of a dead mime.
The French woman has given so much to the world. Marie Antoinette alone has inspired books, movies, operas, and the hair style and perspective of Donald Trump. Our current First Lady, Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, is not only a role model but an ex-model. But the most glorious and eternal symbol of French womanhood is, of course, Joan of Arc, because she was a cigarette.
W H A T W E R E Y O U doing at 14 years old? I was a freshman, in Buenos Aires. My father, my mother, my sister and I were living a stable life, in a typical middle class apartment in a quiet neighborhood. We were shielded from danger. We watched TV.
But for Susan Zuckerman, born in Poland, life at 14 was quite different, as the obituary on the left shows. She made it to 7th grade and then her life fell apart, torn away from the family and friends forever. She was shoveling snow for German tanks in a concentration camp at 17. By the time Susan was an adult, she had experienced detachment, deportations, deadly threats, and most likely hunger and despair. But she lived shy of her 95th birthday celebration. “In her early 90s [and already in the U.S.], she would sometimes shovel her own snow, saying that if she could do it for tanks, she could clear her own driveway,” as quoted on the New York Times. And she died, in a numerological twist, on January 27th of this year, the day of the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.
I cut out the obituary as a strip and kept it as a bookmark. And as a reminder that, next time I complain about a delay of an Amazon delivery, my health insurance objecting a prescription coverage, the gradual deterioration of Netflix series after a couple of seasons, potential spam calls in my cell phone, New York City humidity, and most importantly, the discomfort of wearing a surgical mask, life could have been definitely worse.
S A T U R D A Y J U L Y 4th was Full Buck Moon. Google it. It prompted me to write about the moon. But I had already written about the moon 15 years ago:
“[Tuesday, October 17, 2005] was full moon so I listened to Peggy Lee singing Full Moon. She was discovered by Benny Goodman in 1937, at age 17. Those good old days! The 30’s! Over a candlelight brunch [on Sunday, October 15th] at my friend John’s house near McGinley Square, in New Jersey, he and I decided that the 30’s would be the decade to spend our reincarnated adulthood. Do you believe in reincarnation?
We would wear our tuxedos frequently, go to the première of Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess at the Alvin Theater (October, 10th, 1935) and afterwards to the Central Park Casino for a few hands of jack. I —not John, he doesn’t smoke— could finally smoke a Cuban cigar indoors, maybe with Gershwin, himself a hardcore smoker. An earlier stop at Tiffany’s to purchase our matching newly released T-ball point silver pens (Ball point pens were invented by Laszlo Biro in the 30’s). On our way back home the next day, we would cross the river in the new bridge connecting Manhattan with New Jersey —the George Washington Bridge, inaugurated in 1931— and attend a matinée of the Marx Brother’s 1932 Horsefeathers at the Loews Theater in Journal Square. Did I mention a late nightcap at the Morocco listening to Ernesto Lecuona and his Cuban Boys doing rhumbas, my favorite ballroom dance? The daydream ended in our Peugeot 402 Lègere, as John was singing while driving: “… and then there may be teardrops to shed. So while there’s moonlight and music, and love, and romance, let’s face the music and dance!”
Let me close this Moon Momment with a quote from a play by Peter Brook: “There is my truth, your truth, and the Truth. The Truth is a perfect circle (le grand circle de la verité) like the moon. Your truth and my truth are crescent moons, converging and diverging but only the Truth is the Full Moon.”
— adapted and rewritten, slightly, in New York City during Phase 3, 7/7/2020
R E M E M B E R Oh What a World, a 2004 song written by Rufus Wainwright? Two minutes and forty three seconds into the song and bang! you are hit by several bars of Ravel’s Bolero. The song sounds happy and celebratory, embracing Ravel’s theme, but unlike Ravel’s, it ends in a descending scale of uncertainty.
I love Ravel. Everybody loves Bolero. But Ravel himself said to fellow composer Arthur Honegger: “I have written only one masterpiece. That is Bolero. Unfortunately, it contains no music.”(1) “In France,” Madeleine Gross tells us in Bolero, la vida de Maurice Ravel, Ed. Peuser, Buenos Aires, 1945, “there is a saying: It is the sauce that makes the fish taste good. (“La sauce fait passer le poisson.”) In the case of Bolero, the theme is the fish, the instrumentation is the sauce.” When he was composing the piece (1928), Ravel explained in a letter to Joaquín Nin that his work had “pas de forme proprement dite, pas de développement, pas, ou presque pas de modulation; un theme [très simple] du rhythme et de l’orchestre.”(2)
I was listening to Rufus Wainwright recently, doing Leonard Cohen’s Everybody Knows. I don’t pay attention to lyrics but it just dawned on me that this 32-year-old song was prophetic, as if Mr. Cohen, a singer, songwriter, and poet, was forecasting Covid: “And everybody knows that the Plague is coming / Everybody knows that it’s moving fast.” Poets and songwriters are seers, voyants, as Arthur Rimbaud wrote in a letter to his friend Paul Demeny in May 1871: “The Poet makes himself into a seer by a long, involved, and logical derangement of all the senses. Every kind of love, of suffering, of madness; he searches himself; he exhausts every possible poison so that only essence remains.”
— New York City, 6/30/2020
(1) H.H. Stuckenschmidt, Maurice Ravel Variations on His Life and Work, Calder and Boyars, London, 1969, p. 230.
(2) Madeleine Gross, op. cit., pp. 10-15.
“I L O A T H E nostalgia.” That’s how Diana Vreeland starts her book. To me, it’s the best way you can start a book. The best way you can start anything. John Cage said in 1966: “The past has no trouble, no lack of people who are going to make love to it.” I reproduced this line on Schubert Apartments, one of my Musical Interludes or music-related postcards I produced in 1997–2004. Let me know if you’re interested and I’ll mail it to you with a handwritten, personalized message. Somehow in this pandemic we yearn to touch something, someone.
But back to Ms. Vreeland. In 1936, being the editor of the magazine Harper’s Bazaar, she launched a column called why don’t you? The dictum was not the only revolutionary element of the column. Alexey Brodovitch, the art director and pope of graphic design, decided to set the column on a slant, at a 110º angle. We have seen text on a diagonal ad infinitum, but before 1936, nobody had done anything like that except the Russian graphic designers who created posters for the Bolshevik Revolution and thereafter.
My late business partner used to pose another important question that incites creativity: why wait? Artists engage in their own private journeys through hard work and inspiration. Creativity happens when you least expect it, when you are totally free from regulations and prejudices, and when you act fast. Jeff Bezos, from Amazon, said: “Being wrong won’t kill you, being slow will.” Obviously he is thinking as a business man. But invention and subsequent profits also depend on swift, unfettered creative acts. So during this Historic Interlude due to Covid-19, why don’t you? why wait?why not?
“T O D A Y,” S A I D G O V E R N O R C U O M O on Wednesday, June 16th, “I issued an Executive Order recognizing Juneteenth as a holiday for state employees. Juneteenth marks the day that enslaved African Americans in Texas finally learned they had been freed, over two years after Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation. In addition to this Executive Order, I will advance legislation to make this important day celebrating freedom an official state holiday next year.”
Can you think of images so powerful that you’ll never forget them? I can think of three: 1. Tibetan monks creating a mandala out of colored sand to blow it off days later after completed; 2. Seventeen-year-old Malala Yousafzai receiving the Nobel Peace Prize in 2014 becoming the youngest laureate; 3. A 1785 engraving of a slave ship (above) showing 292 African natives of all ages laid out onto two rows of shelves on the deck, coffin-like, ready for a transatlantic trip that will seal their fate forever in the “. . . America Great.”
Slavery was abolished in the 1860s but then came lynchings, still occurring way into the 1960s. Only in 2018–2020 anti-lynching laws were promulgated by the Congress (*). Josephine Baker, who lived through the Ku Klux Klan golden era, reminisced later in life: “I have walked into the palaces of kings and queens and into the houses of presidents. And much more. But I could not walk into a hotel in America and get a cup of coffee, and that made me mad.” In the 1950s, she was denied reservations at 36 New York hotels because she was black. Let’s pause today to pray or reflect, in remembrance.
— Williamsburg, Friday, Juneteenth, 6/19/2020
(*) @SenKamalaHarris on Twitter, December, 19th, 2018: “The moment when the United States Senate agreed unanimously to make lynching a federal crime for the first time. History.”
