― Jean Genet, The Thief’s Journal, 1948

The Thief’s Journal is one of my favorite books. The kind you can deeply commune with, and reread for the poetry and wisdom and offering of art and pain. Its been on my nightstand for years. Among the ever-shifting pile of books that have bored me, and wait for me to resurrect interest.

My friend Lee Gordon, who died 5 years ago this coming Memorial Day, once told me he thought Genet was too hung up on Catholic guilt. As a gay Jew and PLHIV, who had a truly sadistic father, his perspective halted me. His opinion about things was always well informed. I reasoned that for its time it was revolutionary, and he conceded it was. We were both right.

I miss Lee, and was sad to see there’s no work of his online. Somewhere in an old computer are a few jpegs, but I want everyone to see them. It renewed my desire to organize a memorial show here in NYC for him (preferably not on Memorial Day, I can hear him say, lol).

“Also worth a look are paintings by Lee Gordon. For several years Mr. Gordon has been producing exquisite, strange watercolor self-portraits in which he sometimes appears wearing women’s lingerie. In the new work in watercolor and oils, he assumes an infant’s body, which gives the several paternal encounters depicted a distinctly erotic cast…his watercolors are so good that he should be awarded a full-scale show soon.” HOLLAND COTTER, NYT, 1995

Lee never got that full-scale show. He kept on making art though, even while working a very demanding job. I’d like to at least give him some version of it, posthumously. So I contacted his best buddy, another great artist, Tony Feher, whose exquisitely gorgeous retrospective at the Bronx Museum of Arts, was so deserved, btw (I can at least post a couple of those), and will try to set that in motion. This post is in memory of Lee. RIP.

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If you want to know origin/author of any images, let me know….most can be found in a Google search. Just too tired:)

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That time of year thou mayst in me behold (Sonnet 73)
by William Shakespeare

That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou see’st the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west;
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death’s second self, that seals up all in rest.
In me thou see’st the glowing of such fire,
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the deathbed whereon it must expire,
Consumed with that which it was nourished by.
This thou perceiv’st, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well which thou must leave ere long.

– See more at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15844#sthash.2uxfUsNN.dpuf

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Love this vid of Harold Pinter recounting memories of Samuel Beckett and performing – in a maniacal rush – the last of ‘The Unnamable’, 1953. Its the third book in Beckett’s famous trilogy, which you can download here for free as I intend to! Have only read Molloy (ages ago) and part of Malone Dies, so looking forward to finding the time esp. after reading this 1958 NYT review.

Beckett is the kind of writer that makes one feel like a hack, he’s a visionary powerhouse. Pinter acknowledges this in a letter he wrote in early 1950s, which he reads from with great gusto as well. Bookended by the otherwise awkward anecodotal renderings, it makes for a strange ride ( I can imagine a Monty Python sketch of it).

“I’m all these words, all these strangers, this dust of words, with no ground for their settling, no sky for their dispersing, coming together to say, fleeing one another to say, that I am they, all of them, those that merge, those that part, those that never meet, and nothing else, yes, something else, that I’m something quite different, a quite different thing, a wordless thing in an empty place, a hard shut dry cold black place, where nothing stirs, nothing speaks, and that I listen, and that I seek, like a caged beast born of caged beasts born of caged beasts born of caged beasts born in a cage and dead in a cage, born and then dead, born in a cage and then dead in a cage, in a word like a beast, in one of their words, like such a beast, and that I seek, like such a beast, with my little strength, such a beast, with nothing of its species left but fear and fury, no, the fury is past, nothing but fear, nothing of all its due but fear centupled, fear of its shadow, no, blind from birth, of sound then, if you like, we’ll have that, one must have something, it’s a pity, but there it is, fear of sound, fear of sounds, the sounds of beasts, the sounds of men, sounds in the daytime and sounds at night, that’s enough, fear of sounds all sounds, more or less, more or less fear, all sounds, there’s only one, continuous, day and night, what is it, it’s steps coming and going, it’s voices speaking for a moment, it’s bodies groping their way, it’s the air, it’s things, it’s the air among the things, that’s enough, that I seek, like it, no, not like it, like me, in my own way, what am I saying, after my fashion, that I seek, what do I seek now, what it is, it must be that, it can only be that, what it is, what it can be, what what can be, what I seek, no, what I hear, I hear them, now it comes back to me, they say I seek what it is I hear, I hear them, now it comes back to me, what it can possibly be, and where it can possibly come from, since all is silent here, and the walls thick, and how I manage, without feeling an ear on me, or a head, or a body, or a soul, how I manage, to do what, how I manage, it’s not clear, dear dear, you say it’s not clear, something is wanting to make it clear, I’ll seek, what is wanting, to make everything clear, I’m always seeking something, it’s tiring in the end, and it’s only the beginning.” ― Samuel Beckett, The Unnamable

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Anyway, at the moment I’m applying for a teaching job, and in updating my CV came across this literary/writing resource I used when I taught a Critical Writing/Design Theory course at Parsons, should it be of help to anyone else.

Also, check out the work of artist-musician Larry Krone, who I’ve known for years and just did an interview with for Art in America on his amazing show at Pierogi, and upcoming one at Joe’s Pub (all info. included in either link). And before I forget here’s the latest in my Alternative Models series on Huffpo. It focuses on film/video orgs with programs I find radically smart AND community-based (my highest praise!) that I hope you will support!

OK, well I may weigh in tomorrow nite, not sure yet, but if I don’t, your mayor wishes you all a dazzling and dignified new year! (why dazzling and dignified? I’ve no idea…perhaps it’s my unconscious sayonara to Leigh Bowery, my chosen spirit guide of 2013?) And look good whatever you do, it always helps!

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A couple summers ago when I did a piece for Huffpo, inviting a number of writers I liked/knew – Rick Moody, Lynne Tillman, Greg Tate, Eileen Myles, Edmund White, among them – to share what was on their night stand, I never thought to just ask for a photo! And frankly, I’m glad I didn’t. Like all book nerds, I am wary of those who use books to impress or worse, as decor ala this Guardian article commemorating the so-called shelfie moment of 2013 with reader-solicited examples that focus on how the books/shelves look or are arranged. Of course there’s still voyeuristic fun to be had peeping inside a stranger’s apartment (who doesn’t like to check out other people’s bookshelves) so consider these shelfies, snapped haphazardly around my messy apartment tonite, your chance to peep mine. They may the first and last you’ll see from me!

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From John Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men, 1937, on the death of Lennie:

The little evening breeze blew over the clearing and the leaves rustled and the wind waves flowed up the green pool. And the shouts of men sounded again, this time much closer than before.

George took off his hat. He said shakily, “Take off your hat, Lenny. The air feels fine.”

Lennie removed his hat dutifully and laid it on the ground in front of him. The shadow in the valley was bluer, and the evening came fast. On the wind the sound of crashing in the brush came to them.

Lennie said, “Tell how it’s gonna be.”

George had been listening to the distant sounds. For a moment he was business-like. “Look acrost the river, Lennie an’ I’ll tell you so you can almost see it.”

Lennie turned his head and looked off across the pool and up the darkening slopes of the Gabilans. “We gonna het a little place,” George began. He reached in his side pocket and brought out Carlson’s Luger; he snapped off the safety, and the hand and gun lay on the ground behind Lennie’s back. He looked at the back of Lennie’s head, at the place where the spine and skull were joined.

A man’s voice called from up the river, and another man answered.

“Go on,” said Lennie.

George raised the gun and his hand shook, and he dropped his hand to the ground again.

“Go on,” said Lennie. “How’s it gonna be. We gonna get a little place.”

“We’ll have a cow,” said George. “An’ we’ll have maybe a pig an’ chickens…an’ down the flat we’ll have a …little piece alfalfa—”

“For the rabbits,” Lennie shouted.

“For the rabbits,” George repeated.

“And I get to tend the rabbits.”

“An’ you get to tend the rabbits”

Lennie giggled with happiness. “An’ live on the fatta the lan’.”

“Yes.”

Lennie turned his head.

“No, Lennie. Look down there acrost the river, like you can almost see the place.”

Lennie obeyed him. George looked down at the gun.

There were crashing footsteps in the brush now. George turned and looked toward them.

“Go on, George. When we gonna do it?”

“Gonna fo it soon.”

“Me an’ you.”

“You…and me.” Ever’body gonna be nice to you. Ain’t gonna be no more trouble. Nobody gonna hurt nobody nor steal from ‘em.”

Lennie said, “I thought you was mad at me, George.”

“No,” said George. “No, Lennie. I ain’t mad. I never been mad, an’ I ain’t now. That’s a thing I want ya to know.”

The voices came closer now. George raised the gun and listened to the voices.

Lennie begged, “Le’s do it now. Le’s get that place now.”

“Sure, right now. I gotta. We gotta.”

And George raised the gun and steadied it, and he brought the mussel of it close to the back of Lennie’s head. The hand shook violently, but his face set and his hand steadied. He pulled the trigger. The crash of the shot rolled up the hills and rolled down again. Lennie jarred, and then settled slowly forward to the sand, and he lay without quivering.

George shivered and looked at the gun, and then he threw it from him, back up the bank, near the pile of old ashes.

The brush seemed filled with cries and with the sound of running feet. Slim’s voice shouted, “George. Where you at, George?”

But George sat stiffly on the bank and looked at his right hand that had thrown the gun away. The group burst into the clearing, and Curley was ahead. He saw Lennie lying on the sand. “Got him, by God.” He went over and looked down at Lennie, and then he looked back at George. “Right in the back of the head,” He said softly.

Slim came directly to George and sat down beside him, sat very close to him. “Never you mind,” said Slim. “A guy got to sometimes.”

But Carlson was standing over George. “How’d you do it?” he asked.

“I just done it,” George said tiredly.

“Did he have my gun?”

“Yeah. Tha’s how.” George’s voice was almost a whisper. He looked steadily at his right hand that had held the gun.

Slim twitched George’s elbow. “Come on, George. Me an’ you’ll go in an’ get a drink.”

George let himself be helped to his feet. “Yeah, a drink.”

Slim said, “You hadda, George. I swear you hadda. Come on with me.” He led George into the entrance of the trail and up toward the highway.

Curley and Carlson looked after them. And Carlson said, “Now what the hell ya suppose is eatin’ them two guys?”

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I’m half way through Reinaldo Arenas’ The Palace of The White Skunks, 1982, and totally enraptured. It made me look up his poetry. That led to my discovery of this clip from the documentary Havana, 1990, by the Czech-born director Jana Boková . It features a poem by Arenas in a sequence directly appropriated by Julian Schnabel for his film adaptation of Arenas’ incendiary autobiography, Before Night Falls (a project that credits Boková as one of five screenwriters including – red herringly – Schnabel himself). I’ve not seen either film yet, and while the latter got rave reviews, I suspect I might feel as this frieze reviewer does who says: “The exotic aestheticization of the film does have a downside: the politics of the Fidelista and Arenas, whose insistent, hedonistic sexuality was as much about politics as personal satisfaction, are toned down. Arenas’ erotic quest is recast as more happy-go-lucky than rebellious.”

Did you figure out I’m not a fan of Schnabel’s? Anyway, I shouldn’t say I’m surprised that he would so freely take from a lesser known filmmaker, a woman and a documentarian, to boot. Someone without Hollywood connections. Its in keeping with his arrogance (which I’ve had the displeasure to witness). A grossly overrated artist (ok, the plate paintings were pretty brilliant) who turns out to a talented director, someone who knows how to assemble and lead talent. That doesn’t make him a writer or an auteur. It makes me wonder whether Boková fought for that credit.

In the same frieze review, the influence of Boková’s film is summed up this way, neatly sidestepping the matter: “Mr. Schnabel said he’d first heard about Arenas through a Cuban real estate agent in Miami named Esther Percal. ”She told me I had to see this documentary that Jana Boková made called ‘Havana,’ ” Mr. Schnabel said. ”So for $25 we bought a black-market copy of it in a bodega in Little Havana. It’s an oral history of Cuba, interviews mixed together with fragments of these people’s writings, including Virgilio Pinera and Guillermo Cabrera Infante. Reinaldo comes on and starts talking, and the guy is so funny and so modest. I was so impressed with him that I read ‘Before Night Falls.’ ”

A Variety review makes specific reference to the clip as if Schnabel created the aesthetic it borrows: “By heightening the color and playing around with film stock, Schnabel cleverly integrates archival footage — reportedly the only color film shot of the revolution — to illustrate the moment of excitement, optimism and political ferment, while Arenas’ poem, “The Parade Begins,” is heard in voice-over. This is one of several instances in the film in which the author’s writings are used to great effect and one of many skillfully handled narrative expedients….In addition to Arenas’ autobiography and other writings, Schnabel also sourced a BBC documentary on the author by Jana Bokova. Footage from a banned Cuban film titled “PM,” which is mentioned at one point, is seen over the end credits.”

Watch and see for yourself.

Obviously, Schnabel was/is sincere in his appreciation of Arenas, and I do want to see the film. I just couldn’t ignore coming across these two snippets one after the other, Schnabel’s popping up immediately (in my Google search for the poem), Boková’s precedent coming later. Is this the fate of small films and female directors in a greedy male-dominated industry? And maybe we should rethink our relationship to the notion of “appropriation” because, as I’ve said before, this is not the 1980s?

Granted, there’s no way to know how Boková feels, and I tried to find out. Perhaps she and Schnabel are great pals though there’s no evidence of that in the way of images or articles. Her Doc alliance bio says this: “She was the first to film the writer Reinaldo Arenas, about whom Julian Schnabel later made the feature film Before Night Falls, which was directly inspired by Havana.” A quiet indictment? Made me want to explore her films, if nothing else. You can watch the 1968 drama Hotel Paradise online, made just after she left Prague for Paris (how fortuitous that it includes a Camus storyline, given my post recent on him). Getting a hold of Bye Bye Shanghai, 2008, might be as easy as it gets though of course I want to see the BBC doc on Arenas first! The Cinémathèque Française gave her a retrospective in 2003, but that’s all the leads I’ve got at the moment. I wonder which version of himself Arenas would’ve preferred, Boková’s or Schnabel’s?

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