Altered States

Nach dem Regen - After the Rain 24 x 20 cm

SINFONIA

Luciano Berio’s “Sinfonia”

could be listened to as a Da-Da tone poem,

a bewildering, inspired, irreducible

Modernist confection

or as a witty, deeply

sophisticated sub-species of schizophrenia

dictated to the composer by the spirit of madness.

How sane am I today?—the music seems

to be asking you—How sane is anybody…any day?

Collateral 

damage from the past washes up     

and it’s Oh Christ, what do we do now?

A new colleague approaches you, says  ”Look, I’m growing my beard,

feels great, going to the gym twice a week, feels great, my name’s

Chris, by the way.” He’s clean-shaven with bits of TP stuck

to his razor cuts. So, like, where’s the beard, dude? Is just one of

several questions you would like to ask him if you weren’t   

backing out the door as if under attack. You are wandering

through the souks of North Africa in the midst of a

scratch n’ sniff system of hash, incense, musky perfumes, wood smoke.

People are smiling, joking, talking fast as they walk backwards,

talking backwards as they walk fast, taking time to caress

a camel hair doo-dad, shop for magic spells, greet a cobra. It’s so pre-rational!

In just a week you’ll be discussing the Value Added Tax with a client  

or doing the crossword, impatient, irritated. And yet your life has changed.

Maybe you will grow a beard. Cast a spell on your secretary. Start a rug collection.

L. Berio - Sinfonia

Royal Concertgebouw, Amsterdam

Fröhliche Weihnachten - Merry Christmas

Frohe Weihnachten - Merry Christmas

We want to thank you for your interest and wish you a very Merry Christmas and a creative and healthy New Year.

Wir danken für Euer Interesse und wünschen Euch ein frohes Weihnachtsfest und ein kreatives und gesundes Neues Jahr.

ARIZONA

You want heat? I’ll give you Phoenix

the year JFK was shot, a couple of ladies

sitting around the pool scorched

a leathery plum-tinged brown verging on puce

and it’s not even eleven in the morning

some local kid frying an egg on the burning

concrete at pool side, saying Hey look

at me and everyone yawning, oh like I’m really impressed, it

being an old trick usually reserved for relatives from Minnesota

or North Dakota pale soft creatures in bathing caps cowering

beneath the crushing weight of our solar existence

the lawns irrigated so you could splash people who

walked by on the side-walk then run away ankle-deep

in coolish water, that was the summer, 115 degrees every freaking day,

that mom farmed us out to a couple of bachelors who shared

the most cluttered apartment in the history of Western Civ.

and that my brother and I cleaned for fifty cents an hour.

Mom said they were CIA agents. They wandered around in a daze

drinking strong-smelling fruit juice early in the day, as I imagine  

Frank O’ Hara once did, joking bitterly with each other, promising

a dollar bonus if we didn’t break a single one of their sticky glasses. 

Margie walking to Deya

Auf dem Weg nach Deya - On the way to Deya 38,5 x 28,5 cm

MARGIE

Yes, Margie, Roanoke is in Virginia, and a wall of blue mountains

forms a backdrop in the rain and there’s an airport too

mainly for transit flights between G.I. towns

like Fayetteville and Columbus and a few other camouflaged enclaves

and thence to somewhat better known destinations. Once when

passing through on my way to I don’t know where and

   just enough of a “cherry” to be wearing

the uniform when on leave or TDY, I was cornered by a short, young woman

in flowing hippie drag who tried to sell me a copy of the Bhagavad-Gita

or some kindred scripture—I wasn’t up on Hindu mythology—and I 

was ready to blow her off when she told me I looked handsome in uniform—  

   what could I do but give her

a couple of bucks, and thus end up incongruously with a book from whose 

cover a multi-limbed deity with blue skin smiled out at the material world? 

When she moved almost dancingly away I noticed 

   a fairly well-disguised limp. She might have been

wearing bells around her ankles. It’s even possible I heard

their tinkling, vaguely mystical music, not at all like that of an ice-cream truck,   

two or three blocks away, on a summer afternoon, and you

   skip-skipping into the house for money. It was your club foot that made you

skip-skip instead of run-run. And the girl’s limp made me remember that foot, Marge,

                             and how you treated it

the way a loving mother treats her afflicted child, with affection and subdued pain.

Not at all how Josef Goebbels felt about his club foot, or Oedipus about his,

as they swung their burdens into the darker shades

                                                             of history and myth, and became them. 

Arvo Pärt - Collage sur Bach

Hotter than Hell

When we chose the music for  this Greek blog post we were again reminded of how strange and nice it is that we have a very similar music taste even though we grew up so far apart from each other - two worlds basically. AND we both love the Mediterranean! So here goes: Some Greek music for you.

So far up 38,5 x 28,5 cm

PELOPONNESIAN HEAT

There’s a whisper in the pine woods. Very pretty.

Makes you want to write poems. Then it sounds

like girls in flip-flops and kitchen clogs

on the steps of The Quaintest Taverna

You Ever Saw. Your quill begins to molt. Soon, sprawled

in the hot dust, bloated like some sexual insect,

you can’t even walk anymore. Girls tumble by, fanning the world

with their thin cotton dresses and shadow-casting

eye lashes. The thick blossoms of oleander bushes

smell like scorched milk and on the rocks below the cliffs

where an odor of burning jasmine lingers the women too

are burning in the sun. Seen from the old town walls

the hills on the other side of the gulf, violet

and smoky, are on fire as you crawl off into the shade, seeking relief—

an old man perched on a donkey smiles at you, lips parched, eyes

damp with pity, and says, “The heat, it is like Africa.” 

Aphrodite's Child - The Four Horsemen

Turquoise Contemplation

Ich hatte mal ne türkise Vase - Once I had a turquoise vase 38 x 28 cm

Many years ago - more than 30 for sure - I visited the relatives of my friend Alan and his mother had a red flower infront of a turquoise painting. I never forgot that color combination. I loved it.

So, Alan, this is to you!

CONTEMPLATION

                                    If you look long enough into the abyss

                                    the abyss just might look back.

                                                                  Friedrich Nietzsche                                              

On a good day when I

look at a work of art

I experience a state of mind

I call ecstatic contemplation.

I am lifted up to a pleasant mountain

pavilion fluffed with scented cushions

and here’s a water pipe, thank you so much, loaded 

with a cutting-edge substance, and the tip

of this pipe, connected to my mouth, 

is held in place there by a half-naked girl

whose twin sister is down at the other end

giving me, shall we say, a lovely foot massage?

But no, I don’t think that’s what art does;

I think that’s what middle-age does.

Otherwise multitudes of robust

consumers upon whom our economic  

health depends would abandon shopping malls

and theme parks and KFCs and we would have

to wait hours to get into the Dallas-Ft. Worth

Museum of Fine Arts on a Monday evening,

the Cowboys playing the 49ers at home to empty seats.

We would have to book the Prado, the Uffizi

years in advance. Ecstatic contemplation

is an out of body experience, and

there’s a hidden risk to self-esteem.

It’s not meant to be easy. First,

you stand back and wait for a Russian aesthete

to cell phone photograph his hot-panted

friend teetering on her spike-heeled tight-

rope athwart the “Primavera,” say, or a

little garden scene by Leonardo as if it

were a new Jag or Porsche. Then, after

they depart, you find yourself, if all goes well,

cut off, out of the world, lost in a dream

of perfect skin—those Italian masters were

notorious voluptuaries, and even Mary, virgin mother  

of God, looks hot—shimmering silks and fabrics    

in intricate golden lit folds and creases. If you stand   

there long enough the picture waking from its

own dream will notice it’s being noticed

and start to contemplate you; vaguely androgynous   

angels with rainbow wings will take you in   

if none too ecstatically, and it’s like that line

in the Rilke poem: You Must Change Your

Life the Archaic Torso says to the Great Poet, i.e., thou art

a dud compared to me, a slob, and my maker wouldn’t waste

five minutes of his valuable time rendering you—

or, as a certain king once put it, “it’s now or 

never,” so there’s no time to waste.

Omar Faruk Tekbilek - Ayasofya