Something Solid: Aughts Philly: Genius Loci

West Philly swung, night by night, around all of us.
I couldn’t not notice— Diana was delicately gorgeous.
She spent lots of time in the room next door.
One night, deep into the wee hours, & as
the entire house tripped (taken off, it
seemed, into distant universes, sucked into
black holes, or even flipped the switch into
primordial ooze & chaos), I swung dumbly
into Kevin’s open door, found Diana tripping
on the bed, in tee & panties. As I sat down
on the bed, all that occurred to me was to
follow my instincts. The genius loci of that
place & time was all about nothing else, &
the sense that Diana, whose elegant lashes

& sculpted cheekbones belied her wildness,
existed as an archetype I came to worship
at the shrine of, even as music roared from
down the wood-floored hall, Mary & Abby
slept on the other side. Diana’s appearance
was an operation of sorts; how could I resist?
Everything swings, she seemed to say, around
me first— who was I to ignore her? Aroused
or not, I wouldn’t dare. Not then. In that house.
Did the harvest moon call us cheats? Now,
in the moment, it didn’t matter. We were too
young then, there, too stoned, too on fire to care.
Outside, the after-hours idiots sitting in Clark
Park’s grass-bowl toasted us, with bottles & stubs.

           George,

          Strange dream last night. I was in bed all over again, in my apartment. I awoke, in the dream, to find Jena Strayner crawling across the floor, not far from the bed, as though she were a caterpillar. Only, she was a brunette this time, and didn’t look older than ten years old. Her face remained unchanged. I asked her what she was doing here. She slithered backwards slightly, propped herself up on her elbows, looked me dead in the face, and said, “Because you are my husband, I am eternally damned.” The feeling in the air was charged with menace. I felt something issue from her head, land next to the couch. It was a kind of whirligig— a congeries of raw consciousness data to fall into, veering off into the insanity of perceived damnation. I had an ESP moment, and knew that she was anticipating her death, in her mind’s eye. But because she was ten years old, a brunette, and a caterpillar, all the menace-n-macabre crap in the air was charged also, with a tinge of the absurd. The sting of it was that when I woke, I did feel a strange energy in the apartment, a sense of the whirligig being real. I did live through my share of macabre moments with Ms. Strayner. What could be more macabre than room 510 of the Atherton Hilton? Or up-all-night in a trailer in Liverpool, Harrisburg ‘burbs?

        In waking news: with Dana now flaunting the guy she’s seeing, I’m left to scope out other diversions. One is Kris, who I’ve finally been able to establish contact with. While she was unchaining her bike today, I managed to talk to her about a pertinent issue— the Grind no longer has a permit to allow outside seating. This means that we have to drag chairs from inside outside, on the few warm sparkling autumn days we have left. Today is one. Kris, up close, is vastly more sardonic (and shrewish) than Dana is. With her voluptuous proportions, she actually reminds me a little of Liz Taylor in Taming of the Shrew. The difference is that Shakespeare’s Kate has no real sense of irony; Kris does. Kris has in her eyes that knowingness which says, quite plainly, once I’ve seen you with your pants off, I own you; once I own you, you become so magnificently ridiculous that you’re to be held in my back pocket (nowhere else) interminably. If you want to call Dana and Kris the Doublemint Twins, Kris is certainly the more sinister of the two twins. What redeems her is honesty. Dana’s veneer of niceness is always holding her back, especially considering how transparent it is. Kris just scoffs and rolls her eyes. Salt on the surface.

       One thing that is worth saying about Dana Blasconi: she comes from country stock, but she is by no means a typical country girl. True country girls always err towards the timid, the meek. They lack gumption, nerve in general. For Dana Blasconi to begin in the sticks, and wind up kicking serious ass (hokey contrivances and all), as she does here at the Grind in Center City Philly, bespeaks unusual courage, and an equally unusually robust sense of self. Dana didn’t settle for the country deal at all. I can’t not link her in my mind to Jena Strayner, who superficially partook of country life, all its lack of amenities. Jumping into a shotgun marriage which included all kinds of pornography-worthy sex, with the damned degenerate who happens to be writing this missive, was about raw courage, country values be damned. Jena Strayner belonged in Center City Philly as much as Dana does. Just as Dana belongs…anyway, both of them earn, for whatever it’s worth, kudos from me about what it means to rebel fruitfully in the world, whatever stump-dumb aegis you happen to begin under. By staking a big claim on living a big life, however much I criticize them in my writing (this applies more to Dana), criticism will always be tempered by warmth and admiration.

       By the way, Chip did finally show up today. We got, unfortunately, into a rather nasty argument. Chip is one of those semi-artist meatheads who insist (and it is a very American position) that an artist should be judged by the size of his or her audience. So, Bruce Springsteen becomes better than Beethoven, Allen Ginsberg superior to John Keats, and the Abstract Expressionists ride high over Goya. Chip even goes far enough to say that Bruce rivals Ludwig in musical complexity. I hit him with every imaginable jab — what art is to me (which has, built into, layers of snobbery which I embrace), what constitutes cultural hierarchies that actually work (over centuries), why America has seldom been taken seriously by world artists (and Larsen). I know, of course, what the subtext of Chip’s argument is— I’m every bit the artist you are, and my opinions matter as much as yours. Well, no they don’t. At the crucial, culminating moment, I revealed to Chip that 1) he is not an artist, 2) he’s not even as good as I am at playing rock music, 3) his opinions on the arts, particularly the higher arts, are all hokey contrivances that are by no means commensurate with mine (I did lay it on thick). He got up abruptly (we were sitting outside), told me he’d never talk to me again, and drove off. I saw the man clearly, as I never had before; behind all his thought, the imperative to compete (on all levels and in all ways); the presumption of equality (misapplied to a realm in which there is no equality); and the philistinism that informs both post-modern art and rock music. America, Larsen says: more freedom, but among kiddies.

        There’s an anti-climactic feel to the Grind these days. Little dramas develop, coalesce, sputter into nothing. Tensions play themselves out on subterranean levels. People don’t say too much, and what they say often amounts to a series of non sequiters. Also, the simple (but very painful) truth: I miss being young. My body of work sits on my back like Baudelaire’s chimera. It also takes the form of a long-suffering mistress, requiring sorely needed, seldom received attention. But lovers and friends and contexts also create bodies of work, and at a certain saturation point you find yourself gazing blankly at a pile of bodies. To the extent that I can tolerate the sensation, I take my scalpel to the distempered parts of all these bodies, including my own. I can do dish about all this human stuff, but then art levels squish into it and the whole thing becomes a palpitating mess. I made the choice as a young man to surround myself with artists; this is surely my just dessert. Blue icing? Sometimes. But at least as hearty as Trish’s eight thousand ways to do rice-and-vegetables.       

       Sauteed,
            Adam

P.F.S. Post: Waxing Hot

The dialogue series Waxing Hot on P.F.S. Post began in 2005, when P.F.S. Post began, and has continued into the present day. This pdf collects the six central dialogues which constitute the series, in this order:

Rachel Blau DuPlessis (Philadelphia, USA)

Andrew Duncan (Nottingham, UK)

Chris McCabe (London, UK)

Bob Perelman (Philadelphia, USA)

Gabriel Gudding (Illinois, USA)

Steve Halle (Illinois, USA)

Worth noting that the Halle dialogue was also featured in UK print journal Tears in the Fence; and that the Perelman dialogue is a reprint from Rain Taxi.

Something Solid: Aughts Philly: Riot Grrrl on P.F.S. Post

Riot Grrrl, double sonnet from the Aughts Philly section of Something Solid, on P.F.S. Post.

Riot Grrrl is also available as an individual mp3 file on PennSound.

Something Solid: Aughts Philly: Undulant on P.F.S. Post

Undulant, sonnet from the Aughts Philly section of Something Solid, on P.F.S. Post. 

Undulant is available as an individual mp3 file on PennSound. 

Something Solid: Aughts Philly: The Studio on Argotist Online Poetry

From the Aughts Philly mid-section of Something Solid, the double sonnet The Studio is now up on Argotist Online Poetry. Many thanks to Jeffrey Side.

The Studio is also available as an individual mp3 page on PennSound. 

from LTDM (Letters to Dead Masters): "#11"

         Percy, 

         In December 1915, Picasso wrote a missive to Gertrude Stein which begins, “my life is hell.” The world was largely a charnel ground, then and now. And as you live through the decomposition of an empire, you realize that everything gets burnt, nothing is spared. But then, I wouldn’t be having these thoughts if I watched television. It is an opiate for the masses on an unforeseen scale; a thought-repellent that guarantees, like certain sedatives, a good night’s rest. What do I do between 7 and 11? Nothing— I look at the walls, note how shadows start creeping with greater and greater rapidity in August, then try to ignore the light created by the top of the utilities building across the street (as it flashes the time, temperature, advertisements, etc). That kind of time, raw time, filled by interior realities rather than exterior ones, has been losing ground for sixty years. That’s why the academics can never be too penetrating about someone like Beckett; you’ve either lived with raw time or you haven’t. It doesn’t have to be a lazy wallow— all kinds of surprising connections manifest, as your mind creeps out into the universe. Who knows, you might think; maybe there are races of beings out there who’ve subsisted for 200 billion years. They probably perceive us to be spoiled babies. If you choose to stay grounded, you may have the realization that each of your lovers secretly hates you. The human race who bother to love at all, love what they hate and hate what they love. That’s why Trish Webber, for example, was always giving me things and then taking them back: devotion, attention, willingness to submit in a wifely way. Love and hate in her could never resolve. The application of a non-palliative becomes palliative just in itself, in this kind of daze, with thoughts of this depth— you feel subtle currents run through you, moving you towards some kind of totalized realness or reality. Throw in kids and a wife, and you can forget about raw time; on this level, I still savor bachelorhood. A conventional situation will never do for me; I have no idea how I’ll be permitted to configure these things. Except freakishly. 

                Talking about conventional situations, I got to the Grind early today, in order to give me some time with Picasso unimpeded; I like his early stuff. Across from me sits Reed, who fronts a large jazz-rock band in the mold of the Weather Report. He’s got on a Gilligan hat, and a black vest over a blue polo; he’s working at his laptop. This guy is my friend on Facebook, and I’m on his e-mail list. After we exchange brief nods, I realize he’s lost about fifteen pounds since I last saw him. He’s either four or five years younger than me, I’m not sure. But he carries himself with the affected assurance of the eternal up-and-comer; the one who always wants to tell you, boy have I got plans; and this time (for once) there’s no looking back. Truth be told, I was in this position for many years; I’ll never forget that claw in my stomach that always said the same thing— something remains unproven, and you may or may not be able to prove it. That’s the arts— a high school with few graduates. And if you’re a poet, you can graduate and stay broke. To be Darwinian, I’ve got all the varsity “Vs” I need, and this guy doesn’t. All the same, I wish him the best. Especially as there aren’t too many graduates in Philly, and our version of “Arts High” is the inverse of Ridgemont— slow-paced and dull. But you better not start whining about what’s in Manhattan, because nothing is. 

                Yours,                                        

                     Adam