Category Archives: Art

Tied Down With Thick Ropes

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Not me! The park. What are you thinking?

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It’s another cripplingly cold morning so in an irrational fit of optimism, I’ve decided to post something that’s been sitting in my draft folder since last AUGUST. Maybe it’ll rekindle my long-abandoned dream of warm weather. Because at this point, I’ve pretty much lost hope.

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One of the things I love most about summer are the big-space art exhibits that pop up all over the city. Some ideas and schemes  are so ambitious that they can’t be constrained by four museum walls. Some of the best ones can be found in Madison Square Park off of 23rd Street and 5th Avenue.

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Last summer, they hosted contemporary American sculptor Orly Genger’s installation Red, Yellow and Blue.

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Walls of undulating, layered nautical rope were constructed and then painted. It looks like it was tedious, hard work to mount but I liked the end result. When you turned a corner, it was a pleasant shock to see these bright colors pop out where you weren’t expecting to see them.

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It’s a nice, warm environmental piece. The rope worked well with the surrounding flora, fauna and lawns.

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I didn’t intend for it to look this way–I’m not that clever–but the rope looks like it’s floating!

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A little painting, a little sculpture, a little arts-n-crafts. I wonder what they did with all that rope at the end of the exhibit?

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Did that whet your appetite for big art? Would you like to see another one? Here’s a really cool exhibit that ran at the Guggenheim last summer the same time this was up at Madison Square Park. What a great town!

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Guess how much maple syrup is in this bottle of Aunt Jemima’s Original pancake syrup?

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Ready?

None. Zero. Zip. Zilch. Nil. Not a drop. Nada.

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It’s all corn syrup + crap. My Bride brought home some authentic Vermont maple syrup and I’ve been so brainwashed over the years by consuming this rotten corn by-product that the real thing tasted kind of odd to me. And I thought it was thin, too. Thank you, Quaker Oats, for ruining maple syrup for me!

I am never putting this swill in my mouth again. You shouldn’t, either.

Potpourri

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pot·pour·ri [poh-poo-ree, poh-poo-ree] Noun.
3. a collection of miscellaneous literary extracts.

I haven’t had much time to read or comment this week. That’s soooo unoriginal. It’s the same complaint that everyone has. I’m guest posting next week elsewhere in the ether. Here’s a smattering of tidbits to fill in the gap between now and then.

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Do you guys know what these are? They’re new to me.

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They’re called claw caps. They keep kitty from tearing the settee to shreds.

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My sister claims the cat doesn’t mind one bit and there’s never a fight to put them on. They swap them out when they’re worn. My understanding is that the cat is currently sporting hot pink claw caps. They’re genius. If I had invented them, I’d be posting this from Fiji right now.

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I saw this in The New York Times yesterday.

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Yeah, that’s a GREAT idea. Let’s send some “advisers” to Africa. In 1955, British author Graham Greene published his novel The Quiet American. It predicted America’s slide into the Vietnam conflict with alarming accuracy. He wrote it after meeting an American “adviser” there. When the book was published, it was roundly condemned as being anti-American. It’s a hell of a read.

Will we EVER LEARN?

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Take a look at this spectacular sculpture by Lorenzo Quinn. It was briefly on display in the lobby of an office tower off of 6th Avenue over the Christmas holiday. I love it.

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This is Force of Nature II. I’m not a huge fan of sculpture but I was really moved by this. Enough to come in off the street and take it in. The earth’s continents are etched into the globe.

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I love the violent, wind-swept movement. It’s nice an big, too! It has a lot of interesting different angles.

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Fun fact: Quinn is the son of actor Anthony Quinn. He’s a hell of a sculptor, that’s for sure. Here are some of his selected works.

A spiritual lesson written in sand

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I visited the Asia Society on my lunch hour where four Tibetan Buddhist monks are creating a mandala. It’s a rare treat. I’ve only seen one other before; created in the lobby of the World Trade Center many years ago.

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Do you guys know what a mandala is? That’s all SAND, friends. A mandala is a beautiful, painstaking, time consuming, spiritual work of art.

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It’s being created in conjunction with The Asia Society’s current exhibit, Golden Visions of Densatil: A Tibetan Buddhist Monastery. The monastery was destroyed in the 20th Century and its reliefs and sculptures scattered to the wind. As Holland Cotter of The New York Times wrote in his exhibit review, “You have to hate or fear something a lot to do what China did to Tibetan Buddhism.” The pieces are now being gathered and the Monastery restored. They’re on display until May.

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They started the mandala on Thursday and it was scheduled for completion on Sunday. A pattern is designed and draw in pencil. You can still see some of the outlines along the perimeter.

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Colored sand in copper bowls is poured into copper funnels tapered to fine point. The monks tap or scrape the funnels with copper rods and the sand slowly pours out in small increments.

The mandala will remain on view through May until the exhibit closes. Do you know what they do with a mandala once it’s completed?

Mandala3They destroy it.

A ceremony is performed and the monks who created it take a broom and sweep it away. After all that hard work! It’s a meditative lesson on life’s impermanence. Everything changes, brothers and sisters. Nothing lasts forever. Trying to hold onto something, be it a shiny bauble, your fading youth or someone in your life, is an exercise in futility that will only lead to an unsettled and agitated mind.

The sooner we learn to LET GO of things, the happier we’ll all be. Reet?

You are permitted to stand along the perimeter and observe. The room is dim and a quiet respect fills the air. The monks talk amongst themselves in low tones and will occasionally chuckle over a private joke. They work seven hours a day.

Mandala10Their philosophy is the closest thing I’ve ever come to being moved spiritually. I sat in Catholic churches and parochial schools all throughout my youth. I was never touched and, more often that not, was just bored. These are not negative judgments I’m espousing. Just my own personal experiences. My mother was saved by the Catholic church. She died peacefully because of her deep faith. She was always sad that I didn’t embrace the church’s teachings, but what am I to do? You can’t manufacture enthusiasm. It’s either there or it isn’t.

7-Year Old Daughter had her first Holy Confession last week. It’s one of the seven sacraments you can receive in the Catlick church. In confession, you sit with a priest, one-on-one, and confess your sins. Afterwards, you are given penance, usually a series of prayers to recite. It’s cathartic for a lot of people. 

Before their confessions began, the pastor stood in front of the congregation and said:

“I’m addressing just the children.

We are all sinners. It says so in the Bible! And if you say you’re not a sinner, then you are calling God a liar.”

What a heavy trip to lay on an innocent 7-year old! Always the beat-down. This is the oldest trick in the book. In the military they do it in boot camp. In fraternities it’s called hazing. It’s at the core of most theologies. You’re torn down, made to feel lowly and unworthy, and then rebuilt. You feel grateful towards your tormentors—the very people who damned you!—for making you feel whole again. I should take her to a monastery and save her from all this wrath.

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A forgotten doorway to my past

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binLong-time readers know what these are. For the benefit of new readers, [I have new readers! Thank you, WordPress migration.] this is a storage bin  filled with journals from when I first moved to New York as a young, scared, lonely boy. There are hundreds and hundreds of single-spaced typewritten pages and many books filled with shaky, unsure handwriting. I had completely forgotten about them for many years but they resurfaced not long ago. I occasionally crack one open and post an entry. I offer these without edits and with the caveat that I was an emotionally immature, crude and not very nice person. Especially to women. But I’ve since learned a thing or two and I have forgiven my trespasses. I hope you do the same. I am in a constant struggle with whether or not I should destroy these. I don’t want any of the ladies in my life to read them.

When we last saw our hero, he was in the throes of a crisis of his own making (as they almost always were). An extraordinary woman he was seeing, Bonnie, had given him his walking papers. He had spouted off at length about how the work of avant garde artist John Cage was dull, unimportant, lacking structure and, worst of all, pretentious. Unbeknownst to him at the time, Bonnie, an older sophisticated architect, wrote her thesis at Yale on the career of John Cage.

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August 30, 1992

In an effort to better educate myself and repair the damage I wrought with Bonnie, I invited her to a concert of John Cage’s work at MoMA. Bonnie asked if I was paying penance and I said, of course I was, so she agreed to go. The concert was just awful. Honestly, it only confirmed my suspicions but I’ll never admit that to Bonnie. I still want to sleep with her.

They had a lot of nerve calling it a concert. It had very little to do with music. The opening and closing numbers used traditional instruments—violin, viola, flute and a few others. They would each take a turn playing a long, sustained note. They’d occasionally overlap for texture but it was little more than a drone. The middle piece was three guys standing in front of a microphone crumbling and then un-crumbling pieces of newspaper and then slowly ripping them into long strips. This was accompanied by a man tapping a plastic plate, a woman pouring water and someone tapping two plastic tubes together. We heard some people in the back laughing, so I know I’m not alone in my mystification. There was a beautiful Steinway grand piano on stage but the only sound that came out of it was some guy occasionally plucking a string or slapping the wood. I listened with all sincerity but all I heard was someone ripping newspaper and beating up some poor piano. It didn’t mean anything to me. At the conclusion, the audience erupted with wild applause. I don’t get it. But I think I might be back in her good graces, so that’s good news. (Note: It didn’t work. Things were never the same again.)

September 1

I just got off the phone with Bonnie. Apparently, it’s not enough that her business is failing and she’s teetering on bankruptcy and might lose that spectacular apartment. She said, “Mark, I had blood coming out of my rectum. I thought it was just a simple hemorrhoid but I went to a doctor and he’s sending me to have tests done.” She’s at Cornell Medical Center as I type this. I told her I’d accompany her back home but I’m being spared that horror, thank heavens. I feel awful for her but it’s disgusting to hear about it in such graphic detail. I’m completely turned off. She said I could stop by later today but I’m wondering if she’ll be too out of it to receive guests.

Bonnie is sick. Joan only wants me to look at an apartment in Chelsea that I can’t afford. Klinger is in Miami. Colleen wants to see me, but I think she’s getting the wrong ideas. Cindy is in Arizona. I haven’t heard from Jennifer. I can only see Laura if I pay for everything and I’m broke. That leaves a city full of strangers. And my cats.

September 2

Bonnie got back from the hospital late last night and sounded awful so I didn’t visit. She’s going to be okay, thank God. Hemorrhoids. What the fuck is a hemorrhoid, anyway? Remind me to look it up later. Her doctor thought it might be colon cancer. They knocked her out with nitrous oxide, lucky duck. I’ll bet they didn’t have go to the Key Foods and empty all the Reddi-wip canisters, like I have to. I’m happy she’s okay but all I can picture is blood flowing out of her ass. I don’t think I can sleep with her again. Maybe if she goes down on me I’ll be okay. We’ll see.

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Quite the charmer, wasn’t I? I’ve created a new category for my other journal entries, but THIS ONE is the best of the bunch so far. It’s amazing how you walk around thinking nothing is happening when the truth is you’re having the time of your life.

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Another big blankey of snow this week. No surprise there. On Tuesday, I heard Irish author Roddy Doyle read from his new novel (and got a signed first edition, OF COURSE). He said the Irish winter he left behind was typically cold, wet and gray. He’s absolutely thrilled with the snow. Wait until he tries to fly out. See how much he likes it then. Here are some shots of Central Park. See…it ain’t all bad.

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This is how I lost her

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In the last paragraph of my previous post, (Three weeks ago. I know. But when I get the I-don’t-cares, the first thing I stop caring about is this stupid blog.) I mentioned a long-ago dalliance with Bonnie. Go back and reread that paragraph and then come back here. I’ll wait…

This is how I lost Bonnie.

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Bonnie was way out of my league. She knew it and I knew it. She was a successful architect and a Yale graduate who had a bitchin’ apartment right across the street from the Museum of Modern Art. She was a Renaissance woman. She dabbled in stage design and performed in a modern dance troupe when she was young. I, on the other hand, had just gotten out of the Coast Guard and had begun an exciting career as a word processor.

She was significantly older than I was. I don’t know by how much because I was never gauche enough to ask, but it was quite a few years. On the surface, you’d think we wouldn’t have anything in common. But I know what she saw in me (aside from my youth). I had an insatiable hunger for experience and knowledge. I hadn’t attended college so I had a lot of catching up to do and Bonnie made an excellent Sensi. She guided me through the literary, artistic and theatrical classics. She taught me all about New York City, which was quickly becoming the love of my life. It fed her ego, which was fine with me. And we were passionate. She still had a dancer’s flexible body and I had energy to spare. We were Bogie and Bacall in reverse.

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We would attend functions together and knew that her friends were talking about us behind our backs. We’d take mental notes to ourselves of all the sideways glances and whispers, retire to her apartment, lay in bed, compare notes and laugh our asses off at them. We were awfully, awfully fond of one another, but never in love.

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Currently at MoMA is a Post Modern art exhibit. The feature piece is the manuscript of avant-garde artist John Cage’s 4’33‘‘. In this piece, a pianist walks up to a piano, sits down and does absolutely NOTHING for four minutes and thirty-three seconds. The “composition” is whatever ambient noises occur in that period of time. Floorboards creaking. People coughing. Programs rustling. Cage was pleased at the premier in 1952 as, according to him:

“… people themselves made all kinds of interesting sounds as they talked and walked out.”

Here’s what the sheet music for 4’33” looks like:

cage-2On August 12, 1992, John Cage passed away. There was a front-page obituary in the New York Times. I was over Bonnie’s apartment and let her know, in no uncertain terms, that I thought Cage was a pretentious fraud and that a front-page obit is wholly unwarranted. I told her that nobody *I* know or listened to was ever influenced by Cage (certainly not Rush) and that four minutes and thirty-three seconds of silence is neither music OR art. It’s just lazy. I prattled on for several more minutes and finally ran out of gas. Bonnie looked at me.

“Are you done?”
“Ummm…yeah.”
“My dissertation at Yale was on Cage’s career.”

That was it. I blew up the bridge. That distance between us was never traversed again.

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I bumped into Bonnie in the summer of 2012. I was seeing a play with My Bride and she sat several rows behind me. I leaned over and whispered, “Hey, I think that’s Bonnie! Do you think she’d remember me?” I couldn’t concentrate on the play. At intermission I got up and walked to the lobby and out of the corner of my eye, I saw Bonnie get up out of her seat. I stopped her as she walked past.

“Hi, Bonnie. Do you remember me?”
“Oh…I remember you, alright.”

Bonnie ended up marrying a multi-billionaire. You’d know his name if I said it. They were married for a short period of time and then had an amicable divorce. She always wanted to be traveling and on the go and he just wanted peace and quiet. They threw a lavish divorce party for all their friends to show there was no hard feelings. The wheel spins, doesn’t it?

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Several people have written to say my Follow button does not include an option to add my site to a WordPress RSS reader. No doubt this accounts for my low readership. It can’t possibly be the content, right? To add this site to a WordPress Reader, go to your reader, click on Edit and add my URL. Conversely, I’ve moved an email subscription widget below the photo of dear St. Lucy and her plate of eyeballs. I blame Obamacare for my Follow button kerfuffle.