A dark walk home from a long time ago

Posted on August 28, 2013 by Exile on Pain Street

While rummaging around in the basement, I found a plastic storage box containing my journals from when I first moved to New York City as a young buck [mumble-mumble] years ago. 1,000+ single-spaced type-written pages and a bunch of hand-written books. There’s stuff in there I don’t want My Bride or Daughters to read so I am of a mind to destroy them. But every time I try, I start reading and get sucked in.

Here’s an excerpt. It’s interesting from an historical standpoint, both mine and in regards to the city. We’re both much different people now. I dedicate this post to all the New Yorkers who bitch and moan about gentrification. Forget your misty watercolored memories. This is the way it was.

* * *

March 10, 1993

I saw some horrific things on the way home this evening. If anyone in my family saw even ONE of these, they’d hog tie me, throw me in the trunk and drag my ass back to Ohio.

I got off the F train at Second Avenue and walked east on Houston. I passed Orchard Street and saw two black guys standing uncomfortably near a parked car. I got closer and saw a white guy sitting on the sidewalk with his back against the passenger door. He had a hypodermic needle in one hand and was trying to remove the cap with his other hand. His hands were shaking so badly he couldn’t grip it. How does he expect to inject himself?! Maybe that’s what the two dudes were there for. As I walked by, I heard him tell the black guys, “I’m from Amsterdam, you know.” It was 4:00 in the afternoon in broad daylight! There were people everywhere! I walked on.

I was waiting at the light to cross Essex and I saw a homeless guy on the other side of the street sitting on the ground, completely hidden under a filthy blanket. It was cold and wet out and the blanket looked heavy and damp. I felt awful for him. The light changed and as I crossed the street and got closer, I could see he was shaking. As I walked past him, I looked down at the heap and could tell that the shaking wasn’t from the cold. He was masturbating. In an instant, my sympathy dissolved into disgust.

Then I was waiting for the light to change at Suffolk Street and the guy in the car in front of me was getting a blow job! A girl was in the passenger seat bent over the shift console. The light turned and he drove away with a big stupid grin on his face. Guess what I felt that time? Envy.

The bums were kind of staggering around as usual. I passed the pay phone a half block from Clinton Street and out of the corner of my eye I could see there was a little kid using it. She was a little girl, about eight or nine years old. She was wearing a dirty pink winter coat that had a hood with a fake fur lining. She had the phone off the hook and was holding it up against the ear of her Barbie doll. In this sea of ugly humanity, this poor child was playing with her doll. She doesn’t stand a chance. She’ll be eaten alive.

Why, in God’s name, did I leave Fort Greene? Brooklyn was great! South Portland is a beautiful street. Even though I was the only white guy on the block I felt, at best, welcomed and if not that, at least tolerated. I’ll never feel close to the idiots who live in this shithole neighborhood. What was I thinking?

* * *

The modern day irony is that today, that same apartment, those same streets, are well outside my range of affordability. I couldn’t move back there even if I wanted to. Other, less dreary, posts pilfered from my journals can be seen here, here, here and here.

* * *

My semi-annual visits to Cleveland to see my family have taken on a whole new and fabulous dimension since a casino opened in the heart of downtown. They took a once-elegant department store and filled it with liquor and gambling. Huzzah! I took this clandestine photo of the dealer relieving me of $20, simply because there was an unfavorable roll of the dice. What nerve! Good-bye money. Now, that’s entertainment.

Krishna on 2nd Avenue

Posted on August 23, 2013 by Exile on Pain Street

I’m not a big fan of dance. I don’t get it. I’ve attended numerous performances over the years—everything from traditional ballet to modern—and it all looks like a lot of people with 0% body fat imitating dying poultry. But there’s something about Indian dance that shakes me to my core. I meditate (poorly). Perhaps therein lies the connective tissue.

Legendary Lower East Side performance space La Mama is jam-packed this week with performances from Drive East, the Indian music and dance festival. It’s an intimate black box theater that, while lacking in amenities, is ideal for dissolving the space between performer and audience. The caliber and athleticism of the dancers—Kalanidhi Dance—is extraordinary.

This dance, Alokaye Shri Balakrishnan, tells the story of Krishna, who brings his cows to the river to drink. They all die because the water has been poisoned by the serpent Kaaliya. Krishna hunts the bastard down, taunts him and a fierce battle ensues.

Synergy blends elements of traditional and contemporary dance and music. The video is relatively brief because I accidentally touched the off button. Hold your applause.

The biggest surprise is how percussive the performances are. Being in such a small space, you hear the fleet slapping the stage and the bells on their ankles. It’s exhausting to watch. I had to nap on the way home.

Step into the light. All are welcome!

Posted on August 6, 2013 by Exile on Pain Street

I’ve heard architect snobs snidly refer to the rotunda of the Guggenheim Museum as a parking ramp. It features a floor that gradually winds up six stories. Exhibits are mounted along the length of the walk (in the case below, a Kandinsky retrospective).

The same idiots who call the rotunda a parking ramp have referred to the exterior as a giant toilet bowl. I think the building is beautiful, inside and out.

James Turrell uses the rotunda as his canvas. He has worked since the late 1960’s with light as his primary medium. His installation, Aten Reign, is a brilliant example of how environmental art can envelope you. A white fabric scrim was installed in the rotunda and colored lights are projected onto it. Viewers are seated on the ground floor in seats that are angled up towards the rotunda, or they lay down on a huge futon in the center of the room.

One of its designers describes the work as a stack of five giant lampshades as seen from the inside.

The colors slowly move across the spectrum, the full cycle taking about 60 minutes. Each level is a different hue of the base color.

Lying down and starring into the slowly changing light is a meditative experience. The ground floor and visitors fade away. You’re pulled into the work and lose your sense of time and place.

None of these photos have been retouched in any way. It really does look this bizarre.

There are four other light pieces by Turrell in this exhibit, which I will post photos of later. They’re interesting, but they don’t have the breadth or impact of this main showcase piece. How could they?

There’s no limit to the amount of time you can spend in the rotunda. People wait patiently for a spot to open and when someone finally gets up to leave, they pounce. The exhibit is a huge hit, as you can imagine. If you’re a museum member, you can attend private “quiet hour” sessions after the museum closes. If you’ve always been curious about psilocybin mushrooms, this might be a good place to experiment.

I am highly susceptible to this sort of spectacle. I willingly give myself over to the artist’s vision. It took several minutes but I lost myself in the piece/peace. I forgot my troubles and floated up into the slowly-changing colors. To enhance the experience, I did what anyone who grew up in my generation would do:

Peek-a-boo, bitches. The exhibit runs through September 25th. Come to town and I’ll get you in for free. Don’t ask me how I can do it. Just be glad I can do it.

Nuclear recycling

Posted on July 27, 2013 by Exile on Pain Street

I was reluctant to write a post about Ghanaian contemporary artist El Anatsui’s solo show at the Brooklyn Museum, Gravity and Grace: Monumental Works by El Anatsui, fearing that my lame photos and prose wouldn’t capture its freakish, alive spirit. His medium is discarded bottle caps, bands and found objects. He turns them into giant, fluid, flowing works. He gathers thousands of pieces like this:

And connects them together with copper wire to create stunning curtains like this:

This is some of the most painstaking work I’ve ever seen. It’s like pointillism except your fingers bleed. Where does his ambition come from? He connects flattened caps together with a painstaking specificity…

…to create splashes of color and texture. Look how this piece spills onto the floor.

Here he collected the tops of tins…

…to create long, snake-like sculptures that ooze across the floor and up the wall.

From a distance, the pieces hanging on the wall look like great swaths of multi-colored fabric. You want to reach out and caress it. Closer inspection reveals its sharp edges and copper wiring, not soft to the touch.

Behind a curtain of pop top rings.

* * *

Summer is half over. Do you guys call them lightning bugs or fireflies? It’s a regional preference. Do you call it a bucket or a pail? Pop or soda? The Daughters gather them up in our back yard and I always insist they release them. They’re not permitted to stuff them into jars. They’re such beautiful, innocent, harmless creatures. Both The Daughters and the fireflies. I wouldn’t keep either one imprisoned.

* * *

This pic is raw, straight from my iPhone. No Photoshopping, no Camera+, no Picoli—nothing. The technology behind this astonishes me. Some guy wrote a code that allows this to happen. Man, I’ll never be that smart.

A Demure Hobby

Posted on July 17, 2013 by Exile on Pain Street

I’ll try to articulate my point without sounding like a pretentious toff but I’m warning you ahead of time I might not be able to pull it off.

If you live close to New York City and never take your kids in to experience its rich cultural offerings, you are a negligent parent. Art is life. It’s important. At this point, The Daughters walk around the Metropolitan Museum of Art like they own the joint. They can spot van Gogh’s thick, juicy brush strokes at 15 paces. They know their way around the mezzanine section of a theater. But turning them into culture snobs is also a terrible mistake. They need a variety of experiences. That’s why when summer rolls around, we make sure they get a good, healthy dose of loud, violent fun. It’s summer and time for…

ROLLER DERBY!!

WOO HOO! That’s right, bitches. Roller Derby is alive and well and flourishing in New Jersey. Our team, the Red Bank Roller Vixens, recently went head-to-head with their arch nemesis (not really) the Shoreline Belladonnas. I don’t want to get all Oprah on you guys but aside from the purely visceral pleasures of watching a bout, I like the fact that the girls get to see a bunch of women out there knocking it around a bit. Roller Derby is just as important an influence as Degas, and I’m not joking about that.

A funny thing happened. I asked My Bride if she wouldn’t mind taking a pic of me with one of the derby girls. Everything, and I mean everything, is a potential blog post. She knows this and indulges me. (It could be worse. It could be whisky and whores. Some guys take that route.)

At halftime I walked up to one of the toughs and sheepishly asked if she would take a picture with me. She took her mouthguard out, looked up at me and said, “I know you.” I didn’t recognize her with all her equipment on but this girl used to cut my hair! For about two years! We had a happy reunion. She left to teach so the first thing I did was yell at her for dumping me. Hair care is critically important to me and she was a grand master ninja with the scissors. I think The Daughters were kind of impressed. Hey, fellas. Check out those fish nets. Meow!

Her Roller Derby name is Lady Speedstick. They all have made-up names and they’re hilarious. Also skating on the quads that night were Pushy Galore (jersey #007), Particle CollideHer (#U235), Anita Guinness (#16oz), Strawberry Shortfuse, Fire Crack-Her (#M80), Slamour Doll, Smacks 5th Avenue, Hip Czech, etc., etc. You get the idea. This is an excellent education for The Daughters. I wouldn’t mind one bit if they signed-up.

* * *

Hey, robins! Building your nest under the floorboards of a deck is a terrible idea. There’s a lot of foot traffic there. Should we charge them rent? Or fire up the omelet skillet?