Invitation

Das Licht auf der anderen Seite - The Light on the other Side 52 x 36 cm

INVITATION

I used to like people, would dream about them…mindlessly…magnificent

animals is what Nietzsche called us, and I even acquired a few of my own, kept them

around the house till, half-past dead with boredom, I had just enough strength

   left to throw them out. Like most empires at a certain stage

of their decline, I dream mainly of food, small pleasures, tiny divertimenti.

And alcohol. And the wild weed I cultivate amid corn and cucumbers. But now that

you’ve wandered in…my new friend!...let’s hang out together beneath the trellis

and eat olives and feta cheese in a cucumber salad and drink retsina and smoke from

the pipe of wisdom. Maybe I’ll give you that massage I promised in a moment

of mindless lust. Let’s talk of old times we’ve never shared

because the best parties are sometimes those that have no reason to exist…like some

poems…then I’ll switch on the boogie box…can’t imagine never dancing again. You? 

Let's Dance - David Bowie

Winter

Im Baum - In the Tree 36 x 52 cm

WINTER TO THE CORE

Located in the deeps of cold fog and snow drifts  

is a museum in which a sun burned meadow by Monet   

hangs in a heat haze of July or August, young ladies   

in long gloves underneath parasols, and

across the room is a Renoir girl—

hands red, 

roughened by work—

the liquid green light of oak and chestnut leaves

surrounding but not touching her as she lingers on a porch,

the look of resignation on her face so consummate….

But who can get there? The wind comes clawing 

icily out of Russia, as far away as the Steppes, an awful hint on its breath

of the Red Army shitfaced on bathtub vodka

freezing the will, leaving it ravished and half consumed 

half way to the bus stop. All that’s left as the snow and ice swirl

by is the birthday call to a close friend who could just kill you for “reminding” her.

Winter - Vivaldi

performed by Julia Fischer

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

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

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