TOSH’S JOURNAL (Richard Hell, Wallace Stevens, Jack Parsons, & Graham Greene)
October 2
“I’ve had a perfectly wonderful evening, but this wasn’t it.” This evening was me wandering around the ground floor of the Shinjuku station with my eyes closed and just having the crowd pull me in the direction of not my choice. For once, I didn’t want to be conscious of where I was going, and closing my eyes at the point when everyone is leaving the station after the trains arrived was an excellent way to look for direction.
I opened my eyes at the staircase that leads one to the east exit of the station, and I felt “human nature is like water. It takes the shape of its container.” So this is where I’m, and this is the direction I should take. I walked up the stairs and came upon a series of neon lights. It was close to 8 in the evening, and I found myself at the Kinokuniya Bookstore in Shinjuku-Dori. Without a thought in my head, I found myself on the sixth floor in the English books section. It seemed that they had every edition of Graham Greene’s “Ways of Escape,” and I found this passage in the book: “Writing is a form of therapy; sometimes I wonder how all those who do not write, compose, or paint can manage to escape the madness, melancholia, the panic, and fear which is inherent in a human situation.” I have to say he makes a good point. As I read on, among the crowd there, I came upon another quotation: “But it is impossible to go through life without trust; that is to be imprisoned in the worst cell of all, oneself.” Alas, that is true, but I can only find solitude and happiness when I’m, or what one calls, “oneself.”
I’m stranded. As a fellow spy, Graham knows that the world of solitude is the only place one can feel at home. Happy at home? Happiness is an illusion, and I don’t believe in magic unless it’s connected to Jack Parsons, a fellow traveler of pleasure. To project oneself by the power of the mind and imagination is not that different from taking an object and making it go to outer space.
“Death is the mother of beauty. Only the perishable can be beautiful, which is why we are unmoved by artificial flowers.” The great insurance executive Wallace Stevens wrote that, and he’s correct, but then again, has he heard of Shinjuku? Artifice is death, but it’s imagined by someone alive, and there lies the irony of feeling alive and being attached to the real world. If one can stay conscious of both the artificial and the natural world, then you can beat the odds of not getting lost. But once you fully accept one over the other, then you’re a lost soul. “It’s great to be anywhere as a writer. It saves you from implication in the ugliness of the place and justifies your being there. You can spend all day jerking off as long as you describe it well.” That statement alone is why I’m such a massive fan of Richard Hell’s work. All my life, I have lived on the margins of society, and even though I can touch the world, it is a landscape that doesn’t want anything to do with me. The beauty of rejection is similar to wander around Shinjuku. As long as they keep the neon lights on, I can exist in one’s own cell. - Tosh Berman
I loathe brutes. I’m not a fan of the brute male type at all. I think all men need to be feminine and rely on wit, a sense of proper fashion, and always be brave when danger arrives at their doorstep. What is truly a turn-off is brutish men who cry and seek assistance. If there is one thing that turns my stomach inside out, is the masculine voice crying out for understanding and sympathy. My first reaction is to reach out for a whip, and not touch them with the tool of my trade, but make them think that there is more significant pain out there, and one needs to be tough to cope with it. In most cases, they whimper more.
Due to circumstances that are obvious to any person who is under a brain, I had to take up another identity to fight these characters who have no backbone or principals. The first thing I did was organize a Members of the League, who worked in total secrecy and only answer to me. The members of excellent standing are Pinkie, Dallow, Cubitt, Spicer, and Rose. We meet once a week at various locations in the Silverlake area of Los Angeles. Mostly on the property that was once the Coffee Table. I had the business torn down and kept the basement, which has secret steps, hidden from the street level, leading to the dungeon. I call the meeting in order by reciting a poem that I wrote:
“We seek him here, we seek him there,
Those masculine thugs seek him everywhere.
Is he in heaven? - Is he in hell?
That damned, elusive Pimpernel.”
The Pimpernel is a small plant, with creeping stems and flat five-petaled flower. That is the reason why I limit the membership to the League to five. The stems start from the flower but eventually will grow on to attract others in our battle against the brute. I want everything to be attached to the flower itself. A flower is a wisp of a life that survives in a cruel world, and with the Pimpernel as its image, we strike back. We will destroy the brute. Wherever he may decide to live or roam, we’ll be there to suck the air out of his lungs. - Tosh Berman
Very rarely has my father dealt with his memory of a place or time. He looked at the world as "now," and history I think meant a lot to him, but he was a person who existed for the present. So one would never ask him what it was like being in a recording studio with Charlie Parker. My father is dead, and I'm curious to know these things now, for instance, what did Parker say or do in that recording studio in Glendale, California? To hold that much culture on one's shoulder, one would think someone needs to share that information. Alas, as time marches on, the faces and names get cloudy, but surely Charlie Parker is important enough to share that tib-bit of details regarding what it was like to be in a room with Charlie Parker.
It comes as no surprise that I feel like Pinkie in Graham Greene's novel "Brighton Rock, which was also an excellent film starring Richard Attenborough. I'm so full of anger that I take out - anything, anyone, anywhere. I want to destroy so I can be devastated. My existence is so full of holes, that if you drew it on paper, you would need to have a mouse sticking his head through one of the cheese holes. Because that is what my life is like, Swiss cheese.
Then again, I should relax a bit more. One thing that is important to live is to laugh. I sometimes forget how significant it is to be able to walk into a movie theater, hopefully, a comedy, and just putting your angst aside and laugh what's on the big screen in front of you. What's in back of you can wait till the film is over. The thing is, I project Pinkie's face over everyone in the movie. I laugh, but it is like swallowing air, and it makes me sick to my stomach. I'm searching like a manic that there is some humor, either being said or implied. For all I care they could be showing "Night and Fog," and I would be laughing my head off. I sit in the theater, and I feel my scar on my cheek. I remember when I got into the fight, and he slashed my cheek. It didn't hurt for some reason, and when I went into the bathroom to examine the wound, I was intrigued by the cleanness of the cut. I took my thumb and little finger on my right hand, and open the cut to see if blood would come out. It reminded me of a woman's vagina, as I opened and closed the wound on my face. Thinking about the cut on my cheek in those terms made the pain bearable. It seemed like it didn't happen. I often dream at night that I have a loose front tooth, or an open scar on my body that is bleeding in front of the public, and when I wake-up, I feel that those physical dreams are quite real. It takes me at least five minutes to recognize that I was dreaming and the fact is that I don't have a loose tooth or a scar on my cheek. Yet, I play with my cheek, thinking that I have such an injury.
I wonder at times if I'm here or not. I often felt that I'm in someone else's dream or vision of a life that is not exactly mine. Perhaps Charlie Parker didn't exist, nor did my father. I feel I have seen something, and I can remember the scent of my father's shaving cologne, but as one gets older the senses get duller, and you eventually have a memory of having the experience of smelling such a scent. I imagine Joan of Arc, who heard voices from another world, as she knew the game was up and had to face the bonfire, that she had no choice but to follow the voice that came within, and surely not from another source outside her body. At the very least, I have the physical copy of the album cover that my father did for Dial Records, which is the first time Charlie Parker has appeared on a disk. That's real, and my memories are a movie as if it was directed and written by Preston Sturges.
“I’ve had a perfectly wonderful evening, but this wasn’t it.” This evening was me wondering around the ground floor of the Shinjuku station with my eyes closed and just having the crowd pull me in a direction of not my choice. For once, I didn’t want to be conscious of where I was going, and closing my eyes at the point when everyone is leaving the station after the trains arrived was a good way to look for direction.
I opened my eyes at the staircase that leads one to the east exit of the station, and I felt “human nature is like water. It takes the shape of its container.” So this is where I’m and this is the direction I should take. I walked up the stairs and came upon a series of neon lights. It was close to 8 in the evening, and I found myself at the Kinokuniya Bookstore on Shinjuku-dori. Without a thought in my head, I found myself on the sixth floor in the English books section. It seemed that they had every edition of Graham Greene’s “Ways of Escape,” and I found this passage in the book: “Writing is a form of therapy; sometimes I wonder how all those who do not write, compose, or paint can manage to escape the madness, melancholia, the panic and fear which is inherent in a human situation.” I have to say he makes a good point. As I read on, among the crowd there, I came upon another quotation: “But it is impossible to go through life without trust; that is to be imprisoned in the worst cell of all, oneself.” Alas, that is true, but I can only find solitude and happiness when I’m, or what one calls, “oneself. ”
I’m stranded. As a fellow spy, Graham knows that the world of solitude is the only place one can feel at home. Happy at home? Happiness is an illusion and I don’t believe in magic, unless it’s connected to Jack Parsons, a fellow traveler of pleasure. To project oneself by the power of the mind and imagination, is not that different from taking an object and making it go to outer space.
“Death is the mother of beauty. Only the perishable can be beautiful, which is why we are unmoved by artificial flowers.” The great insurance executive Wallace Stevens wrote that, and he’s correct, but then again, has he heard of Shinjuku? Artifice is death, but it’s imagined by someone who’s alive, and there lies the irony of feeling alive and being attached to the real world. If one can stay conscious of both the artificial and the natural world, then you can beat the odds of not getting lost. But once you fully accept one over the other, then you’re a lost soul. “It's great to be anywhere as a writer. It saves you from implication in the ugliness of the place and justifies your being there. You can spend all day jerking off as long as you describe it well.” That statement alone is why I'm such a huge fan of Richard Hell's work. All my life I have lived on the margins of society, and even though I can touch the world, it is clearly a landscape that doesn't want anything to do with me. The beauty of rejection is similar to wander around Shinjuku. As long as they keep the neon lights on, I can exist in one's private cell.
Happy Birthday Elliott Gould
-
Happy Birthday to one of the all-time greats and one of the coolest of the
cool Elliott Gould. From my 2019 New Beverly interview with Elliott Gould
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