June 3, 2020 (In the Year of the Trump Virus)

June 3, 2020 (In the Year of the Trump Virus)

For the past two months, my neighbor's cat has been visiting us regularly.  She hangs out by our front door, and I have spent a great deal of time hanging out with the cat on our front steps. I don't allow the cat inside, due to my wife is allergic to cat fur.  Still, when I work outside, she comes to the backyard and hangs with me. She craves attention, so I often spend time petting and chatting with her.  I haven't had a pet cat or dog since I was a child. I moved around a lot, so I never felt the need to have an animal as a pet. Also, I feel weird about owning an animal.  I know having a pet around can make you feel good, but there is something wrong about owning a living creature that bothers me to the core of my being.  Saying that now, I'm nervous that the cat is not around anymore. I looked forward to seeing her, and I don't even mind her meowing for an hour.  Her sounds are perfume to my senses.

As I write, people are demonstrating in various parts of Los Angeles and the world.  Mostly peaceful, and the other day, on my way to my mother's house to drop off some goods, I saw a bunch of kids with their parents doing their version of a march in the neighborhood.  Things may move on, but I do feel that there is significant damage to President Virus, and he may not survive this time.  I say that, because I sense a mood in the air, and I think people are tired of his lies, lack of character, and just being under the attack of this over-grown spoiled child in a man's body.

Today, I worked on a Philip Guston video talk, which hopefully will take place tomorrow.   I'm also working on a film script, and I need to make some significant changes in its structure.  I never worked with other people in a writing job, and I'm learning a lot in how to compromise and hopefully make a better script. I feel like F. Scott Fitzgerald or William Faulkner when they were hired by a Hollywood studio to become a scriptwriter.   The glamour of such work is a turn-on for me.  It's different from working by yourself for a book project or essay.

As of this writing (5 PM ), there are 1,155 new cases of the virus and 46 deaths in Los Angeles County.

September 25, 2014

September 25, 2014

Your lack of strength and backbone shocks me. I think the only reason that I let you be around me is that you’re an inspiration to me.  I note everything you do here, and I mediate on that list, and eventually I will do the total opposite.   If you turn left, I’ll go right.  If you go back, I go forward.  I wake up each morning to read your Facebook page, because it is exactly like watching a car accident in slow motion.  One knows the end of the narrative, but I can’t help myself watching the gradual drain down the sewer pipes. That is your life.  You have an instinctive genius in doing the wrong things at the moment when you should make changes for the better.  I wish that you were big or important enough as a subject matter to take a bet against in Las Vegas.  Your predictable choices and how you follow them are a peaceful meditation for me.  But that’s here or there.

I mostly spend my time comparing the two versions of Glenn Gould’s “Goldberg Variations.” The first version in which he recorded in 1955 is perfection.  Yet, just before he passed away in 1982, he did a new recording of the work.  Gould studied and learned this piece entirely without his teacher.  He instinctively knew that he had to slow down the work. What is interesting is that he made a comment that “the mental imagery involved with pianistic tactilia is not related to the striking of individual keys but rather to the rites of passage between notes. ”

With respect to the second and much later recording, Gould felt that the initial recording of the piece was too much of a pianistic affectation, and that it needed a more introspective interpretation that included more calculated phrasing and ornamentation. What is fascinating that he had the ability to look at his work, and willing to take and accept the time difference, yet, he is still working on it. “I believe that the justification of art is the internal combustion it ignites in the hearts of men and not its shallow, externalized, public manifestations. The purpose of art is not the release of a momentary ejection of adrenaline but is, rather, the gradual, lifelong construction of a state of wonder and serenity.”

What appeals to me regarding the two versions of The Goldberg Variations is that he takes his past and makes something new out of it.  The past is still there, but he added either a footnote or a totally different work, based on one’s past.  William Faulkner wrote that “the past is never dead.  It’s not even past.” The need to make up one’s identity is just as important when you deal with your past.  That is the reason why I get so annoyed with the nameless artist above (the first paragraph), because he chooses to whine about his condition, instead of doing art or making his life better.  He knows what he can do, yet, he rather plays to his audience.  Going back to Gould, he makes a good comment: “I detest audiences - not in their individual components, but en masse I detest audiences.  I think they’re a force of evil.  It seems to me rule of mob law. ”

Robert Bresson, the filmmaker, wrote beautiful advice in that “the most ordinary word, when put into place, suddenly acquires brilliance. That is the brilliance with which your images must shine.” To dwell in one’s misery for the purpose of bringing you second-rate attention, is surely, over time, will make you lose your audience.  And that is a bit of a problem.  Because you only live through your audience, not your now so-called art.