In and Out of the Comet's Tail

Phasing back among the dead

So lantern-like the drops unfold

Through twisting lanes of cavern lore

On fingertips precise as wire

In and out of the comet’s tail

Off and on comes that old travail

Arisen from the ancient tomes

Kinetic dreams unspool their myths

We fuel up on semantic broth

And kiss until the world appears

In and out of the comet’s tail

Off and on comes that old travail

Those triple beams of laser torque

Connecting us throughout the night

To flow with death and live again

A thousand times and still it’s new

In and out of the comet’s tail

Off and on comes that old travail

FREESEXINTHEMOUTH

A Deathbed Scene

Imagine a cinematic deathbed scene with friends and loved ones gathered around. The dying person asks: "Can I check Facebook one more time?"; and is given a laptop, and types: "... is shuffling off this mortal coil." Eyes then close for the last time.

Church You Can Believe In

Rumor has it that on Sunday, October 3rd, Christine O'Donnell is going to suspend her campaign for the Delaware senate seat for one day so that she can appear at this Gnostic Mass and lead the gospel choir in a spirited rendition of "Satan Is Just All Right With Me".

"The Islamic Community Center Should Be Built Because:" -- "I Miss J-Lo's Butt!!"

Limitless

"Nothing frightens me more/Than religion at my door..."

- John Cale ("Hanky Panky Nohow")

A Family of Blobs

The image features the face of Benito Mussolini set against the backdrop of the Twin Towers.

No Masque

This was, I believe, penned by a student who majored in formal logic and minored in spelling at Glen Beck "University". Although, who knows, given the location -- a building site on the corner of 4th Avenue and 10th Street -- it could have been done by an NYU student. What I suppose he -- I'm guessing it's a "he" -- doesn't know is that the art of the masque died out after the Puritans closed the London theaters in 1642, and had been in decline since arguably the greatest practitioner in the English-speaking world, Sir Philip Sidney, died in 1586.

Invest Your Own Fucking Money!

The title of this posting is the title of another one of my blogs. That blog, which I plan to revive, has been inactive since last November. It's purpose is to provide information about the financial markets to people who want to rely on themselves rather than brokers or other financial advisors when making investment decisions.

I put together the reading list below for a twenty-five year old acquaintance who wants to learn about finance and economics.

These two books will provide you with a historical background:

The Drunkard’s Walk (Leonard Mlodinow)

Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk (Peter Bernstein)

This one is an enjoyable comic novel:

A Tenured Professor (John Kenneth Galbraith)

These four will explain about how different segments of the markets crashed and burned (or didn’t) over different portions of the past twenty-five years:

The Myth of the Rational Market (Justin Fox)

Mr. Market Miscalculates (James Grant)

Fooled By Randomness (Nicholas Nassim Taleb)

The Black Swan (Nicholas Nassim Taleb)

This is a left-wing critique (which I rather like) that explains how so many American corporations become the unfortunate creatures they are today:

One Market Under God: Extreme Capitalism, Market Populism, and the End of Economic Democracy (Thomas Frank)

And this is a novel from the 1970s by (in my opinion) the greatest American novelist of the 20^th century; it’s about a 9-year old boy who puts together a huge industrial conglomerate:

JR (William Gaddis)

Workers, Unite!

This poster, which I photographed two days ago on Grand Street in Soho (in Manhattan), is a rant against the Chinese workers' union in the area, complaining that they're just taking from workers without advocating for them. The picture is someone from the union, with a wolf's body. (Thanks to Tom and Hong for translating.)

Boner Party or Boehner Party?

I think this artist must have meant to write "Boehner Party" since the portrait is a spitting image (please forgive the pun) of John Boehner, the Republican House Minority Leader. This masterpiece can be viewed at Think Coffee on the corner of Bleeker and Bowery.

Man With Deer Head

This young man with a heavily tattooed face is carrying the head of a deer with antlers on his shoulder. Perhaps this is a new fashion trend for the fall season in downtown Manhattan.

The subject graciously consented to having his picture taken. The blurriness of the shot is a function of my BlackBerry operating in suboptimal light, but I think the grittiness of the image is more appropriate than a crisp take would have been.

A Review of Freak Parade by Marilyn Jaye Lewis

In Freak Parade Marilyn Jaye Lewis takes the reader on an exciting romp through a Manhattan of the very recent past that is surely as extinct as the days of trolley cars and vaudeville. The action starts in a posh Central Park West penthouse where retired rock star Eugenia (Genie) Sharpe has just discovered that her partner, music-industry mogul Daryl, for whom she has given up her career, has been two-timing her with a wide assortment of freaky wannabe starlets. This discovery propels Genie back into the downtown world from which she emerged – a world that is on the cusp of changing from the dangerous, gritty place she remembered into the fashionable, gentrified, and less-edgy destination of young, middle-class fun-seekers it has since become.

Genie is a character in search of both emotional intimacy and sexual fulfillment. Her old downtown life, which she slips back into after leaving Daryl’s apartment, provides the latter in spades, in encounters with male and female lovers, both old and new. As in her other books, Lewis is a master at creating achingly intense scenes of erotic abandon in which pain and pleasure collide in an alchemical quest for the philosopher’s stone of unbounded ecstasy. Readers who are looking to further their own explorations into this realm will be happily surprised by the places Freak Parade takes them to. Genie particularly revels in the transformations she experiences while enduring the pain and pleasure of exquisitely described interludes of anal sex, first with an out-of-control dildo-wielding lesbian top, and later with a generously-endowed and insatiable Latino man.

But emotional intimacy is a lot harder to find. Genie thought she had found it with Daryl, and she accepted a reduced sexual-bliss quotient as an acceptable trade-off. The dive bars of downtown Manhattan might seem to be an unlikely place to find a relationship in which emotional intimacy combines with mind-blowing sexual pyrotechnics. Much of the tension in Freak Parade revolves around whether this quest will prove to be successful.

But there are many other reasons to read and enjoy this novel. It is a complex, literary novel, and yet one that is a real page-turner in the best sense. Lewis knows how to create compelling minor characters without wasting the reader’s time with descriptive prose that is too elaborate. Her dialogue is focused and believable, and it fairly sparkles off the page as one reads it. Perhaps best of all, her portrayal of the downtown Manhattan demimonde reveals her knowledge of and love for one of the most exciting periods in the history of the city, and it will appeal to everyone who was there or who wishes they had been there.

Photo Op

Photo Op - in front of the old Fulton Fish Market. We approached this scene from behind the man on the ground. There was a boom box playing loud salsa music off to the left. Afterwards we compared notes. I thought the man on the ground was passed out. My companion thought he was doing something obscene with an exposed body part. As you can see he was doing something more prosaic.

Boycott Medea

My favorite part of this wacky rant is the exhortation to "Boycott Medea" -- Will they next be asking us to boycott Clytemnestra and Lysistrata? (Memo to Glen Beck: Perhaps your "university" should offer a course in remedial spelling.)

Do Not Stare Directly into Beam Chains

Street Sign in Chelsea

I am guessing that, given the timing and the location, this sign is Pride-related.

Railroad Sue

Jersey Petroleum consists of me on vocals and John Stanford on guitar. The lyrics for "Railroad Sue" are by Michael Andre, publisher of the literary journal Unmuzzled Ox.

youtube.com/JerseyPetroleum

R.I.P.

Etiquette

This sign is in the men's locker room of Dolphin Fitness on East Fourth Street. I wonder how Emily Post or Ms. Manners would have addressed the problem...

Notebook Pages

The drawing at left is of a prostitute in an Otto Dix painting that I did while at the Neue Gallerie on Friday. The one on the top right is of a figure from an Aubrey Beardsley drawing in a book. And the one on the lower right is my first ever attempt at a self-portrait -- in black ink while looking at my face in the bathroom mirror. 

Battle Of Tha Tyrants

The streets of anarchy -- fucking hipsters

Life in a Cybernetic Utopia

This sketch of the late Sidney Johnson was done during an excruciatingly boring meeting in early 1987. The quote is a verbatim Sidney-ism.

A Slap in the Face

Simplifying the issue is tantamount to a slap in the face. Reversals come strong and fast but never make up for the loss in trust. Untimely as it may seem, arbitrary disavowals may ultimately save the day. But do not under any circumstances forget to perform your warm-up exercises. If you do, you are entirely on your own in this reflexively goddess-forsaken social network.

Dirty Dick in Pigalle

The sign outside the door indicated that drinks started at 9.50 euros. When I looked through the window in the early evening the only people I saw inside were four very bored looking, provocatively dressed young women.

Shut The Fuck Off!

Abstract Behind Bars

The Girl With The Crooked Smile

I knew from the instant I first looked into her eyes that sooner or later I would end up with “She’s Not There” playing on an endless tape loop inside of my head. Those eyes. They were softest and the coolest I had ever looked into.

I have never been accused of being the romantic type. My reputation as a seducer started following me around when I was in junior high school. But I was always careful. I never got anyone pregnant and I never passed along any sexually transmitted diseases. I tried with mixed success not to break any hearts. 

Duke was a blur of parties. The Wharton M.B.A. was a precursor to a decent salary and very large bonus doing quant stuff at Morgan Stanley. Did I mention that I’m a math whiz? I guess it’s in the genes. My father taught astrophysics at Cal Tech until he quit to pursue his magical research. Now he lives in Thelema Squared, New Mexico with his twenty one year old mistress of the month.

My mother moved out when I was seven. By that time she had her fill of her husband’s serial infidelities. She was fluent in Tibetan and moved to Dharamsala to be close to the head of her lineage. She was born a Baptist and fled about as far as she could from that. It certainly makes sense to me.

Growing up in Los Angeles is not something I would recommend although I must admit that I did kind of enjoy it. And that is as much biographical information about my childhood as you need to know…

A Dragonfly on East Tenth Street

This building-site fence also contains a number of curious extreme right-wing rants, several of which are characterized by spelling and grammatical peculiarities associated with the "teabonics" dialect (for example "psycotherapy").

Fuck You, I'm Batman

No Gods

Summer Reading Series at Yippie Cafe Haiku

Reek of cat piss and unwashed Yippies

In an un-air-conditioned space.

Spring & Bowery, South-Facing Wall

Art Basement

When I arrived at John's apartment this afternoon the only portion of Art Basement I had written was the chorus. John handed me a piece of paper and a pen. I took his implied suggestion and cranked out three stanzas while he was creating the musical backing. And then we recorded it:

The shading is so subtle

That the rinse will disappear

Paint the burghers in the clink

And the villains in the clear

Let me take you to my art basement

We’ll mix some colors in my art basement

We’ll surf the zeitgeist in my art basement

We’ll start a movement in my art basement

A symbol’s just another way

Of sifting through the mire

Like a golden cup of malice

That’s been purified by fire

Let me take you to my art basement

We’ll mix some colors in my art basement

We’ll surf the zeitgeist in my art basement

We’ll start a movement in my art basement

What’s there is never frozen

Into reveries of crime

When the hand that wields the brush

Moves outside the bounds of time

Let me take you to my art basement

We’ll mix some colors in my art basement

We’ll surf the zeitgeist in my art basement

We’ll start a movement in my art basement

Lives of the Poets: Billy Viscous

Billy Viscous, also known as King Heroin III, was a Mumbled Word Artist who performed on the Poetry Nod circuit (also sometimes referred to as the Anti-Slam circuit). His first chapbook, entitled Walt Whitman was a Phony, was published when he was fifteen. He had all of Edna Millay’s sonnets committed to memory and he began his readings by reciting one of them as an invocation – most often either “Euclid alone has looked on Beauty bare…” or “Oh, think not I am faithful to a vow!” His stage costumes were always some variant of what a gentleman in the Augustan age wore. Mimosa O’Toole created his signature outfit – a three-piece suit composed of tailcoat, waistcoat and breeches of green silk velvet. The stories he told between poems consisted of outré descriptions of things like the notorious activities of the Hell Fire Club at Sir Francis Dashwood’s estate, and the opium habits of Thomas De Quincey and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. But there was one big secret that Billy never shared with anyone, apart from Mimosa. The fact is that he wasn’t a junkie, and had indeed never even tried heroin. At one time he did have a taste for smoking skunk but he eventually gave that up because it made him too paranoid. Nowadays he contented himself with rather pricey white wines imbibed in moderation.

An Excerpt from Chapter 5: Mimosa Rising

Mimosa at first had a hard time with the meditation technique Yogi Baksheesh had given her. But eventually it became so effective as to become almost addicting. The first step was to sit or lie comfortably and to get sexually aroused any way she wanted to. Then she was to start masturbating. But she was never to allow herself to have a complete, earth-shaking orgasm. To the extent possible she was supposed to keep herself from getting wet and especially to avoid ejaculating. The goal was to reach for fainter and fainter orgasms that paradoxically were more and more powerful, and in their own peculiar way earth shattering (rather than merely earth-shaking). The point of the exercise, according to Yogi Baksheesh, was for Mimosa to free herself from the constraints imposed by birth onto this planet and to begin visiting some of the quirkier realms of a five-dimensional universe. To accomplish this she was to imagine a current of electric energy flowing down her legs, through the ground, and into the molten core of the earth. Then she was to imagine this energy flowing back up through the ground and up through her feet and legs until it reached her root chakra where she was to imagine a bright red sphere turning clockwise, and then up through the second chakra in her genital area with an orange sphere turning clockwise, and similarly up through the other six chakras with their associated colors, and finally as a spray of energy cascading out of the top of her head and traveling to the furthest points of the universe. Then she was to reverse this process and pull the energy back down into her body, first into the chakra at the top of her head with a sphere of violet light now turning counterclockwise, and from there into the middle of her forehead with an indigo sphere turning counterclockwise, and down through the other six chakras, and finally down through her legs and feet. At the end of the meditation she was to deposit this energy back into the molten core at the center of the earth. Mimosa was discovering the intensity of this exercise to be increasing exponentially over time.

Some Notes on Genderella, the Perviest Clown of All-Time

Genderella is a serial-killer clown and covert upright citizen who anonymously donates a large portion of his earnings to the social-causes wing of the Republican Party, especially to groups fighting to end abortion, prevent gay marriage, crack down on illegal immigration, and retain or stiffen current drug laws. Some clues about how Genderella turned out this way can be found in an examination of his childhood, about which some preliminary notes are archived below:

"Genderella, the Perviest Clown of All-Time, was born Francis Xavier McGillicuddy in Providence, Rhode Island on May 13, 1957. At the age of six he began a seven-year consensual sexual relationship with Father Gilligan, a local parish priest and later a proponent of Liberation Theology who spent three years trying to foment a revolution in Nicaragua before getting thrown out of the country under mysterious circumstances by the Sandanistas. Genderella’s father, Tobias, was a high school gym teacher who in the evening after drinking a six-pack of Haffenreffer routinely beat the crap out of him for no reason other than his perception that his eldest son lacked the appearance of what might be termed consensual masculinity. But Genderella was not a typical sissy bottom. From the age of four into and through adolescence he was an avid participant in sex games with several girls in the neighborhood. When they were seven years old he and Ellen Goldfarb found several decks of pornographic playing cards in her father’s sock drawer and took them out into the woods behind H. P. Lovecraft Junior High School. On an antique Navajo blanket featuring a red background with two central diamonds and a whirling log in each corner that her great aunt Zazua brought back from a trip out west in the 1920s they acted out the scenarios they found on the playing cards. Genderella’s asshole had become sensitized by the attention paid to it by Father Gilligan. He felt the tiniest and most intense tingly sensations when Ellen licked slow circles around his anal opening, and even more thrilling pulsations when she occasionally poked her tongue as far inside as she was able to. Ellen seemed to like it the most when he pinched her tiny nipples while rubbing his hard little penis against the outside of her cunt lips…"

Spread

My First Response to E.T. 101

This is from an email I sent to a friend who is interested in this topic:


In all the relevant material I've seen to date including the piece I sent to you [E.T. 101] what seems missing is a clear sense of the different stages of intervention. There are arguably many ways of defining these but one I find useful divides the main tasks into three stages: Stabilize, Transform, and Maintain. If we are correct in assuming that the people on this planet are not going to blow themselves up then the Stabilize function has been completed. How long has this process taken? Different people have different views on this. My sense is that the intervention has been going on for centuries rather than decades. And there is still some mopping up to be done, as the main functions tend to overlap in time. If I'm correct one can infer that the Transform and Maintain phases will take centuries as well, with the Maintain phase extending pretty far out into the future. 

Self-Portrait with Truck Reflection in Gallery Window

Art is Capital

It’s Happy Hour at the Wobblie Wonk on Rivington Street. A Pandora rockabilly station is playing Wanda Jackson’s “Let’s Have a Party” as the curtain rises. Carl and Sam are sitting by themselves. There is an empty seat between them. Carl is wearing a Paul Smith suit, Hermes tie, and Berluti loafers. Sam is wearing jeans and an open-necked white shirt spattered with paint. The bartender is texting at the other end of the bar.

Sam (to the bartender): Another Calvados for the gentleman on my right.

Carl (to Sam): Thank you.

Sam: My pleasure.

The bartender comes over and pours a glass of Calvados for Sam.

Carl: I’ve seen you in here a few times. You live nearby?

Sam: I live in Tribeca but my studio is nearby. How about you?

Carl: I live and work in the financial district. But I usually go for a long walk after the market closes.

Sam: What do you do?

Carl: I manage an investment fund.

Sam: Do you enjoy it?

Carl: Actually I do enjoy it, at least most of the time. Of course I don’t enjoy it when I make moves that in hindsight prove to be wrong-headed, but one hopefully learns at least a little something from one’s mistakes.

Sam: Overall you do well? You beat the market averages?

Carl: To date I have. The fund is five years old and I’ve outperformed the S&P by a good margin every year. But my success could just be a function of randomness, I don’t know for sure. If you flip five coins a hundred times and tally the results you’ll likely have a number of cases in which heads come up five times in a row. Maybe that’s all my outperforming the market really is.

Sam: My way of beating the market averages is reflected in the prices my dealer can command for my canvases compared with the average sales price of works by other artists in my age cohort. Or that’s what one is led to believe in the essay “Art is Capital” that was purportedly written by one J. Guggenheim Sachs III. My sources in the art-crit world tell me this is the nom de guerre of a philosophy professor at Columbia who takes great delight in skewering the hedge fund haute bourgeoisie.

Carl: What are you working on now?

Sam: I’m putting the finishing touches on one of a pair of family portraits. They’re titled Imbeciles 1 and Imbeciles 2. At the bottom of each painting is the statement: “Three generations of imbeciles are enough.”

Carl: Ah, the Oliver Wendell Holmes quote from the 1927 case Buck vs. Bell, which upheld the sterilization of Carrie Bell on the grounds that she was feeble-minded.

Sam: Exactly. Above the legend Imbeciles 1 depicts Ambassador Joe Kennedy in Nazi regalia, Senator Teddy Kennedy driving off the Chappaquiddick Bridge, and Representative Patrick Kennedy giving a demented, drug-fueled speech on the floor of the House of Representatives. Imbeciles 2 shows analogous scenes from the lives of Senator Prescott Bush, President George H. W. Bush, and President George W. Bush.

Carl: I think you have a stronger subject with Imbeciles 1. Not that the Bushes are any less imbecilic than the Kennedys, at least in my opinion. But they are certainly a lot less colorful.  For the Kennedys you could alternatively have shown Jack banging the Nazi Spy known as Inga Binga and John John dressed as an airplane pilot. But what can you show the Bushes doing – 41 passing out into his food at a state dinner in Tokyo and 43 clearing brush on his ranch, and who the hell even remembers Prescott Bush?

Sam: As you no doubt would surmise the painting that’s just about finished is Imbeciles 1. And I’m happy to report that it has pre-sold for seven figures. So the next one is on me….

Girl Masturbating

This photo is from the mid-90s. Images like this are not very likely to be posted in public spaces in the Manhattan of 2010.

Clarissa and Henry

Clarissa was a serial decorator. Henry indulged her in this passion. He always liked the results. She was extremely talented and in his opinion could have done this professionally if only she had a little more consistency in her approach to life. He also knew that when she was planning and implementing a makeover of the interior of the apartment she was less likely to be drinking to excess and taking pills. Money fortunately wasn’t an issue. Although Clarissa had her own money from her father’s estate – Clarissa’s father was an inventor who made significant improvements to components used in undersea oil drilling, and he hung onto his patents -- Henry insisted on paying for everything. After the initial design it actually wasn’t all that much of a capital outlay because Clarissa had a keen eye and was a shrewd bargainer. The year she did a Modern makeover of the living room she found a George Nakashima coffee table at a yard sale, a Harry Bertoia spray sculpture at a church bazaar, and a George Nelson sunburst clock in a thrift shop. Before embarking on an Arts & Crafts redo two years later she sold these pieces at premium prices at an auction. Once disassembly work on a new makeover began they moved into a hotel until the job was completed. Hotel living agreed with Henry. Clarissa usually worked late in their apartment. Once she started on a project she focused on it with her entire being. Henry usually dined out, sometimes alone but often with friends….

Fluxie Sings the Blues

How did you come to make the painting Fluxie Sings the Blues?

Fluxie is a rescue dog, a mutt. Two years ago I went to the Animal Control Center on E.110^th Street. We made eye contact and she came home with me. Fluxie’s full name is Fluxie R. Mutt. Her purposefully anarchic nature led me inexorably to this name for her. One afternoon, about six months after her arrival, I was working on an acrylic study of Jeff Koons Creating ‘Michael Jackson Suckling Romulus and Remus at the Founding of Rome’ -- this is an image that comprises one of the gates of a large mandala I was working on at the time. The painting was about ninety percent done. There was some detail work on Jeff Koons left to finish, plus the lotus motif around the borders, that’s all. The study was primarily in ochre. I had Bronzino and Goltzius in mind while I was creating it. I had just prepared some International Klein Blue to do the lotus pattern in but I hadn’t applied any of it yet. Well anyway, that afternoon I took a phone call from my dealer into the library and I must have inadvertently closed the door on Fluxie, trapping her inside the studio. Being who she is, she knocked over the easel and my palette. The canvas landed face up on the floor. Fluxie landed in the International Klein Blue and proceeded to apply it liberally to the entire canvas using her paws as brushes. When I came back into the studio my immediate reaction was anger that almost instantaneously turned into huge, cathartic peals of laughter. As I was picking up the canvas the phrase “Fluxie sings the blues” popped into my head, and I knew that with no further work to be done we had just collaborated on a NextGen readymade.

Here is Portrait of Fluxie R. Mutt (with a nod to Picasso's 'Dog'):

Fuck Feet First

This statement can be interpreted in several ways. 

The Jane Birch Society

Imagine my surprise when, while researching an article on the Tea Party Movement, I stumbled across a cell of the secretive, ultra-right-wing Jane Birch Society. Its members are all transsexuals who have also had a huge amount of facial surgery; and now they all closely resemble either Ayn Rand, Maggie Thatcher, Sarah Palin, or Nancy Reagan.

Two Aphorisms

Good taste, if that's all it is, isn't timeless, it's pointless.

Information tends to be overrated.

Seven Wolves in the Way

Yesterday afternoon while Rob Stephenson and John Stanford were respectively playing and recording a keyboard track I wrote the following lyrics for the piece:

Seven wolves in the Way
Pale treasures of the trough
Whisper by the window
Drinking cinnabar and soda

The hidden path astounds us
With its circular declensions
How could a map of hours
Foretell this life of games

O brave and clement Aries
With ice cubes as your missiles
Refresh our teaming portals
And furnish us with flame

Astounded in the shadows
Begrimed with claims upheld
We flaunt our guilty pleasures
And sail out of the bay

December 31, 2009

The ball and the hammer descend with equal grace;
We'll all wake up tomorrow in a different space.