November 12, 2014

November 12, 2014

For someone who is always on the front line of utter disaster, I’m pretty much in a good mood.  There is no question that I will one day die, and I find that comforting for some odd reason.   No matter what I will do, or say, I’ll still end up dead.  I’m not big on doubt or “why.” I pretty much take what is out there and ride it into the storm, or if I’m lucky into the calm.  Nevertheless I never could understand why people grumble about this and that, when in fact, there’s a beginning, the strange and sometimes wonderful middle, and then of course the end.  I’m hoping that someone will write a biography of me, after I am dead called “The Beginning, the Middle, and The End.” My only regret is that I’m not floating above people as they read the book - but alas, I think death is really nothing.  Nothing, like being blank.

On the other hand, I have a great deal of desire.  Mostly for the girls who are employed in banks, shops, and on the bus.  The more I don’t know about them, the more I plunge into love.   When I see a beautiful girl, contained in a shop, I feel like a visitor to a zoo.  They can’t go anywhere, but I, on the other hand, can come and go as wherever my desires lead me.  I often find myself humming the melody to “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You,” as I walk from one shop to another - not for the merchandise, but for the woman who sells the goods.  I like to think of myself as a piece of merchandise, and these ladies are handling me with the care, because eventually the goal is to sell, and damaged goods are not good for retail.   Or the customer.   Salesgirls boredom is a turn-on for me, and I’m not sure why?  I suspect that I trust indifference over passion, because after a while it becomes a narrative that one can read miles away.  “indifference” is an empty canvas where one can fulfill their desires on the blankness.  “Language is a skin: I rub my language against the other.  It is as if I had words instead of fingers, or fingers at the tip of my words.  My language trembles with desire.”

Knowing that death is ahead of me, I fetishize the living, as a theater piece.   I get high just thinking that I’m the driver and it doesn’t matter how fast or slow I go, I can throw myself at the mercy of fate, and let the wind behind take me to where ever the desires are.  “The Sun Ain’t Gonna Shine (Anymore), ” a song I remember hearing in a pub in East London called “The Blind Begger, ” and thinking how that could be the last song I’ll ever hear.   More likely it will be “My Death” by Jacques Brel (translated into English by Mort Shuman), but then, who knows?

So today, after writing this essay, I’ll go outside and wander through the town, perhaps to see the pretty girls who work in bookstores and imagine my life as a best-selling biography.   The map was made some time ago, yet I don’t feel compelled to follow that destination, or why not draw up a new map?  …”I am withdrawn from all finality, I live according to chance…”

June 27, 2014

June 27, 2014

 I like American pop culture, but I much rather wait and get my American culture through the eyes of the French.  Being an American, I feel I’m too close to my subject matter, and with the French being obsessed with my culture, I can understand it much better.   Rock n’ roll never made sense to me, till I started to listen to French rock n’ roll, because I feel that they are more in-tuned to the culture than I'm.  I can only reflect who I am through someone else’s eyes.  I’m always shocked to see a photograph of myself, compared to my image in a mirror.  It is almost as if there are two separate people.  The thing is I am not sure the reflection on the mirror is truly me, or the image captured by a photographer is the true me.   The confusion is something I can’t separate from my physical existence and how other’s see me.  Oddly enough, I don’t own that many photographs of me.  Due to family fame, all my images are in hardcover books that cost around $60 a pop.  If one chooses to do so, they can go into a bookstore and purchase images of me, that I don’t own, yet I become part of someone else’s life.

The first French rock n’ roll record, in 1956, is by Magali Noël, who was also an actress who appeared in many films by Fellini.  Boris Vian wrote and performed the song with her called “Fais-moi mai, Johnny” (Hurt Me Johnny).  The song was prohibited from French radio due to the sadomasochistic lyrics. I really never understood the appeal of rock, till I heard this song.  Around the same time Noël released a 10” vinyl album called “Rock n’ Roll.” There has been a running joke in America that France can’t properly “rock, ” but alas, that is so untrue, because the French totally understand what the “rock” is.  Americans only know the rock by instinct, like animals hunting food, it can smell the sex oozing out of the vinyl grooves.  The French understood that the music came from American black culture, and therefore virtually have an academic approach to the music and its artists. It is understood that the French always pick up what’s great about America, through their knowledge of a culture’s music.  Would classic jazz survive without the support of the French aesthetic?   But again, like people owning my image, the French can’t really own Jazz, but they can adopt it, and re-formed it into another image of sorts.  Josephine Baker, the great entertainer, became a huge star in Paris, and transformed herself into an image of an American, but in actuality more French than American.

All my life I pretty much wanted to live in Paris, because I felt that being an American in France would give me more of a self-image, that I totally lack, as I sit here in Silver Lake.  Nevertheless, I’m deeply attracted to American iconic figures like Doc Pomus, who wrote songs with Mort Shuman, who ironically enough became a huge singing star in France, and introduced the songs of Jacques Brel to the English speaking world.  Also sadly, Shuman passed away the same year Pomus died.   It is like that they traveled in a circle together and ended up in the same place at the end of that circle.   Creative people embrace their territories, like cats pissing to map out their areas of interest.  One time I wanted to send my urine to the corner of St. Michel and Saint Germain, thinking that I could own or at the very least have a presence on that corner.  But that is very much an illusion, and like a cloud I sort of float over these areas of interest, but I’m just a tourist here as well.