June 12, 2014

June 12, 2014

When I visited Amsterdam sometime in the early 90s, I began to keep a daily journal.  I had obsessive thoughts that when I leave this world, there will be no record of my existence.   I can’t accept the thought that I have been here for sixty years, and yet, there is nothing to show for it.  The journal would not be made for those who are with me now, but for future generations to know what it was like to be “me” in the 20th and 21st century.   A series of decades that were full of insecurities and alienation.  Not only emotionally, but also the fact that one could not possibly connect to the world around them.   It angers me that people participate in the voting system, which is obviously a farce.   Most cases you are choosing Heckle over Jeckle and you are getting heck results where one moves a mere inches instead of yards.

I often felt like Cinderella in that my life was pushed around by people I have no control of.   I felt ugly, yet when I see myself in a mirror I think I do have some good features, but alas, people can’t look beyond the image, and therefore I decided “OK, if that is what they want, I’ll give them the image.” I commissioned a painter to do a portrait of me, but dressed in the style of the late 19th century.  Since I just wanted to convey a sense of false riches, I insisted that the portrait should be about something of one's class and as a gentleman of wealth.  I had to sit for the painting for at least 8 hours.  It wasn’t so repentant of a process.  I sat in my seat staring at the painter, and meditated as the time slowly moved along.  One of my favorite films is “Goldfinger,” and I insisted that the image of the golden girl be placed somewhere behind me.   He placed my portrait as someone sitting on the end of a bed, with the golden girl either dead or laying on the top of the bed.  For me it had some erotic overtures, but often death and life are sort of sensual tango, and one gets charged from it.

I slowly realized that I can live a life, but since I’m writing the journal as well as having my portrait done, I can control my narrative as it happens.  The world is one thing, but with my participation in that world I can somehow make it “my” world.  The obsensity of someone like Hermann Göring living off the art of the Jewish population that he wished to obliterate, and riches that he never earned but stolen, strikes me as an act of desperation in trying to make yourself a presence on this earth.  I must learn not to imitate someone else's mistakes.

One of the best dressed men that made an impression on me is the British blues singer Long (due that he was tall) John Baldry. The essence that he stood out due to his height, which could be regarded upon as a minus, but alas, his dress sense or style turned that into a plus.  I imagine myself in his role as a dandy, and not someone who surrounds themselves from other’s wealth.  If I make a mark on this world, it will be through my character - no matter how damage that may be.

April 30, 2014

April 30, 2014

Luigi Russolo’s “art of noise” is probably the most profound pieces of music I have ever heard.  To me, it is the genuine soundtrack to a horrible century. The beauty that is destructive, yet all of us are attracted to the disaster as a moth is drawn to a flame.  Become too close to the heat and the wings will burn off.  I often felt that love for the great 20th century art, cinema, can lead one to leap into the void. It is not a question of cinema itself, but also all the by-products that goes with it.

It has been pointed out that Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun were devoted to the cinema, and especially to its actress Marika Rokk.  Hitler was at the same time a fan of Mickey Mouse.  What he saw in the mouse is something that I am not clear about.  Nevertheless, Goebbels gave Hitler 12 Mickey Mouse cartoons as a Christmas present in 1935.  Eva and Hitler had their own private screening room, but to me that becomes part of the problem.   Going to a movie theater is fantastic on many levels, one, being that you’re in an audience.  Being with an audience is so different from watching a film by yourself or with another person.

The first time I went to a movie theater was to see a Brigitte Bardot film in Larkspur, but the one screening I remember the most is when my dad took me to see a James Bond film called “Goldfinger.” The most exciting part of the movie was being at the Grauman’s Chinese Theater on Hollywood Bouvelard.  Oddly enough, I have seen all the Bond films at least twice, except for “Goldfinger.” I can’t imagine watching that film in any other location except for the Chinese theater.  To see that film now, at another location, would be like removing one of my arms - “Goldfinger” will be always attached to the feelings and sensations of going to the Chinese theater.

I have a faint memory of seeing Tod Browning’s “Dracula, starring Bela Lugosi and David Manners, at the Chinese Theater and hearing that there were actual bats inside the theater.  I was led to believing that bats often fly across the projected screen, but I have never seen it happen. However, to this day, it is one of the first things I think about, while in the theater, and waiting for the film to start.

I am also touched to know and have seen the hand and foot prints of Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks, outside the theater.  One can imagine the angels that pranced around the property, where in Hitler and Eva’s theater, with the lights out, demons feeding off on the darkness.