"Misia: The Life of Misia Sert" by Arthur Gold and Robert Fizdale (Alfred A. Knopf)

Superb biography on Misia Sert, who was a wealthy iconic model as well as a supporter of artists Renoir, Vuillard, Bonnard, and Toulouse-Lautrec. Wherever she sat, it seems that she was the magnet or in the presence of greatness in the art world. From writers to artists to composers to close designers, she knew everyone, and everyone seemed to want her support and friendship. At the moment I can't think of a better book on European art from the 19th-century to the World War II era, where things fell apart in the world of the arts.

"Misia" is written by Arthur Gold and Robert Fizdale, which is the sole reason why I picked this book up. In my vinyl hunting, I have come upon two great albums by Gold and Fizdale, who play duo pianos, and focused on early 20th-century music, specifically the excellent Paul Bowles. Gold/Fizdale, a gay couple, seem to be at the very heart of the boho music world of the 1940s and 1950s Manhattan world. Besides writing this remarkable biography (1980), they also had a local New York City cooking show as well.

"Misia" is brilliantly told through various letters and journals by those who are in Ms. Sert's social world, as well as her letters to such cultural icons like Jean Cocteau and her best friend Serge Diaghilev, whose personality comes out gloriously in these pages. Cocteau was a hustler for his work, and Diaghilev was a hardcore hustler for his vision of the ballet and combining the most exceptional talents in art, music, and dance in one space, and on one stage. Misia also helped a young Coco Chanel start her world as fashion goddess, and may and may not have been lovers. The book is a gossip's dream of classic scandal on everyone from Marcel Proust to Erik Satie. It's fascinating to me that I know all the participants in this world, except for Misia Sert! There are people like her who were extremely important for any scene to get started, and she was the finance/friend that kept the ball rolling - especially to someone who was a combination of financial ruin and mess, Diaghilev.

The book is full of bitchy witticisms and an essential title for anyone who even has the 'slightest' interest in art culture from those times.

May 29, 2014

May 29, 2014

Josef von Sternberg’s “The Blue Angel” always made an impression on me, due to the fact that I had a major crush on Marlene Dietrich when I was a teenager.  I identified with the character played by Emil Jannings, in that I too had a hard time receiving attention from a female.  Or perhaps, not the right type of attention.  Throughout my years, I must have seen that film in almost every format possible.   What I love about it is how the Professor (Jannings) was in a  position of power and influence, and then struck down by a great beauty, and therefore loses his stature in life, where he ends up in his once classroom, dead from remorse, clenching his desk… I love that.

As Oscar Wilde once said “We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.” Which is perfectly valid in some cases, but I tend to be on my stomach, face-face with the pavement.  Failure is something that I find totally fascinating.  I feel that if you don’t experience the moments or days of failure then you haven’t really lived.  To wake-up and to face a major disappointment on a day-to-day basis, is exactly what I call living in real-time.

My favorite author, Max Brand, wrote a novel “Destry Rides Again,” about a cowboy who is good with a gun and a pair of fists, but everything else is questionable, especially when he loses his horse and even worse, his saddle in a game of cards.  To rub more salt into his open mental wound, he is framed for a robbery he took no part in, and eventually goes to prison for six years.   When he gets out early for good behavior he swears revenge on the jury that convicted him wrongly.  Brand also invented Dr. Kildare, which sadly I never read “The Secret of Dr. Kilkdare.” Nevertheless, I am fascinated with Brand, because as a writer I’m totally in love with the fact that he wrote 500 novels, and his total literary output is approximately somewhere between 25,000,000 and 30,000,000 words.  My current count so far this year, is 44, 683 words, which mean I’m heading towards my favorite role in life - a failure.

The sad thing is that I will not have the ability (so far) to go down the depths of my collapse compared to the ballet dancer Vaslav Nijinsky, whose failure after the “The Rite of Spring” (Le Sacre du printemps) was pure depression and madness.  The production was on a rocky start as Nijinsky choreographed the original production of the ballet, that led to a riot in Paris on its opening night.  It has been reported that the composer of the music for this ballet, Igor Stravinsky wasn’t totally solid with the idea of Nijinsky as the choreographer.  Yet he went along with Sergei Diaghilev, who championed the brilliant dancer.  When Nijinsky went off and got married behind Diaghilev’s back, he refused to use his choreography for future productions of “The Rite of Spring.” Eventually this led him to a spiral of madness, where at this time he did write a brilliant journal “Diary” that captured the twisted relationship he had with Diaghilev.  I too keep a journal, but it reads like a shopping list.  So, as we both approached the bottom of the emotional well, Nijinski, although a failure, is a much better artist than me.  And that makes me feel even more of a failure.

When I first arrived in Tokyo in 1989, it was the same time that Hibari Misora passed away from pneumonia at the age of 52.   I never heard of her before this visit to Japan, and I was struck by the attention in the media when she died.   If one to compare Hibari with another, it would need to be Judy Garland.  She was a child star who made recordings as well as films.  She is very much (and rightfully so) the Queen of Enka.  The tragedy of her life is quite dramatic with such incidences such as a fan throwing hydrochloric acid on her face, but luckily it didn’t cause scarring or loss of her sight.  Also her brother Tetsuya Katō was prosecuted for gang-related activity, which led her to be banned from Kōhaku Uta Gassen for the first time in 18 years.  This is to this day a very popular music program broadcast over the NHK network.   Misora was so offended by this action that she refused to appear on NHK programming for years afterwards.  On top of that she was diagnosed with avascular necrosis brought on by chronic hepatitis.  

At the time of her death, I didn’t have a cent or yen on me, yet I just wanted to focus on writing and nothing else.  But the people above had a specific influence over my life, in that in many ways, all of them had either hardship or lived in a manner that was damaging to their career or talent.  I wanted to eliminate everything from my life and just have my talent come through - and in my death, I want to be acknowledged as an artist that had a tragic life, yet his writing lived on to influence generation after generation.   Sadly, at this time, this is not the case.

March 31, 2014

March 31, 2014

I woke up this morning with the recording of Glenn Gould’s version of Johan Sebastian Bach’s “Goldberg Variations.” I have the music hooked up to start automatically at 7:00 am every morning, which wakes me up.  This is intended to be Gould’s final recording before he passed away, and I always prefer this version than his much earlier one.  For me it represents an entire lifetime and it is in this specific recording.  As I get older, I have less time for youth and all of its silliness.   Often I want to walk around with a hammer and destroy every image of youth that comes upon my eyes.   It is a type of psychotic reaction, but it greatly amuses me as well.

They say beauty is only skin deep, but with age, it becomes a connoisseur talent to choose the difference between the pearl and perhaps a coarse stone.  Through out my life I always felt my profession was one where I show pearls before swine.   Basically this is the job of the curator, and if one has to force a category on oneself, then that is what I am.  I take all of  you out for a stroll into the woods, and we come back with goodies that I selected for you.   In other words, I am sort of the perfect date.

Sergei Diaghilev, was someone who I greatly admire, because he didn’t really do anything, except show taste.  Through out his life, he has located the most unique pearls, and presented to an audience.  Some hated it, some were transformed, but none were bored.  To have vision is a beautiful talent, and sometimes artists cannot do that for themselves.  What I do is recognize your talent and make you better.  Or not.

Richard Chamberlain, who started off as being an idol on the Dr. Kildare show, which also led him to a series of hit recordings around the early 1960s, became a serious stage actor when he went to London to perform in repertory theater.   He’s an example of an artist who created his own career, where if you follow him from Dr. Kildare to teen idol music to Broadway and then eventually Shakespeare.  It is obvious he had a strong vision of what he wanted to accomplish, and he did it with the genius of Napoleon planning an attack.   It is like he couldn’t wait to do away with his youth.

What I have gained from all of this is to always move forward, and not spend time looking backwards.  I greatly admire the films of Nagisa Oshima, because it seems to me he distances himself from his past, to explore his culture in such a way, it is almost like he’s a scientist in a laboratory.   All that knowledge one gains from one’s history and others has only one purpose.  And that is to go forward and not look back.  Orpheus, in mythology, was a figure who used his art to lead others to a better place.  He even attempted to lure his wife Eurydice, from the Underworld.  He succeeded in bringing her back from death to life. In a way, he was a curator, who transformed life as an on-going adventure.  Youth is not aware of the pitfalls or has the vision to conceptualize the need to move on.   Youth is looking back, and aging is moving forward.