I'm OK. You're OK.

The Red and the Black

Verses

"Ride into the Sun"
Lou Reed (1969)

Looking for another place
Somewhere else to be
Looking for another chance
To ride into the sun

Where everything seems so pretty
When you're lonely and tired of the city
Remember it's a flower made out of clay

To the city
Where everything seems so ugly
When you're sitting at home in self pity
Remember you're just one more person
Who's living there

It's hard to live in the city
It's hard to live in the city
It's hard to live in the city

Stranded in Canton (Level Second)

Folk Art for Thursday

Verses

The India Song

Alex Chilton and Chris Bell (1972)

I'd like to go to India
Live in a big white house in the forest
Drink gin and tonic and play a grand piano
Read a few books
Far from what saddens my heart
Try to live away from it

Find a new girl
Who says she feels the same
Get to know her after the trip
Bathe in a forest pool
Her life a part of mine
And let no one know until I'm gone

View of a Room

Monk's Parlour (decorated c. 1827), Sir John Soane's House, London, GBR.

Spoonful

Take it easy. Watch for a bit. There are only three weeks left before the pups leave their nest. In the morning, you can watch mama feed them, but I like the afternoon napping best.

Love in this Club

Young turk, William Ayers

View of a Room

Entrance hall (decorated c. 1845), The Hermitage, home of President Andrew Jackson, Nashville, TN.

Stranded in Canton (Level First)

Lady Russell, semi-famed semi-transvestite of late 20th-century (countercultural) Memphis and New Orleans, one evening, punchy on quaaludes, coined a phrase--"Stranded in Canton." A sort of self-conscious touchstone for the marginal, it became the title of William Eggleston's sole video piece, filmed in the Delta in 1973 and '74; Stranded in Canton has been beautifully edited (after years of wrangling with Egg and his "predilictions") by our friend Robert Gordon.

The meaning of the phrase/title (its mystical interior narrative?) is, for me, obvious and nourishing, in the manner of a found poem that, upon review, seems to be of your own hand. To live in Memphis is to be a citizen of a colonial outpost, across a wide Sargasso Sea, in the heart of darkness, etc. It is gauzy, hot, bourbon-ed, lazily wild, tortured and slow, jolie laide. It is, all at once, the burning, crazed sinking vessel and the settled, shimmering shipwreck. This over-verbose swill I'm casting out cannot properly describe what it is to be "Stranded in Canton." So here begins another of my cracked theoretical series of crystalizing image, song, and speechification---

'The Post' Is the Poet of ______.

Oh, the city buoys us up--what a joy it is to read each day's Post cover from across the train car or atop the bodega stack! Today: SWAN SONG.

Spot the Sublime

BLESS

Go tell it on the mountain. I HAVE FOUND IT!! "IT" would be a collection of gleeful ditties that, in the midst of a particularly gory personal breakdown, has come along and to tell me that it's time to come back to life. Burn the pictures, move, throw away all of his clothes, buy a new TV and throw a record on. The last time I was sure I was not long for this world--late 2005--Lil' Kim's "The Naked Truth" flew down from on high and gave me hope for a brighter future. Lady Gaga's "The Fame" is my hope for 2008. "The Fame" is saccharin yet tough, with a touch of sweet, self-deprecating neofeminism that warms my cold, black heart. See "Boys, Boys, Boys", because making fun of hipster twits is always fun (and using them is even funnier):

This Is Bigger Than You and Me--

Founding Fathers: Rrose Sélavy

Let's Talk about Yesterday (and Tomorrow)

In reviewing my posts from yesterday, I found a blaring contradiction. First, invoking my Walter once more, I say--

"I contradict myself. So, I contradict myself."

Second, I address this contradiction, because it is paramount to one's understanding of the "high and low" thesis of our tag-line. I began the day by professing my love for the Gotti family, their hair and accents and home. I finished the day with a critical post about Ms. Lindsay Lohan and her "raspy, cocktail waitressing, sanitation-worker-assaulting heritage (and how desperately [she] try[s] to conceal it)." I have no doubt that one or more of the Gottiae have assaulted a sanitation worker (and, for that matter, used the word "colored").

Why am I critical of this B&T business in one place, and not in the t'other? I think it's an issue of "realness." In the magisterial film ATL, the affair of high school, star-crossed lovers, New New and Rashad, mostly consists of the two of them saying to one another, "Just be real with me." Word, New New and Rashad . . . word. The Gottis simply scream "free to be you and me." Lindsay, on the other hand, seems at odds with her past, at every turn playing the preening, pretentious actress who is too dumb to carry off preening and pretention. I seem to remember a phase in which she was crowing about moving to London and having a Fitzgerald-themed birthday party, as if the two were related? And, of course, the Gottis did NOT call Barack Obama "colored" on national television; they know better than to talk about politics--they talk about hair and "Daddy" and vacations.

I just wanted to clear things up, because, here at A&P, we don't just "snark" (a million apologies for using that hateful word) at high and low culture, we LOVE it. I genuinely love Victoria Gotti and Dog the Bounty Hunter and R. Kelly and Britney Spears. I genuinely love Caspar David Friedrich and Anthony Trollope and Art Deco textiles and Antonioni. A&P has little interest in irony. We are earnest folks, trying to build a bridge (no, not to nowhere) between low and middling and high. We address all culture, not just a portion of it, and we celebrate liberation, honesty, and self-awareness.
Speak on it!

And Fans Betrayed by Racist Legging Designer!

It was unclear through Linds' mentholated (do they make Parliament menthols?), skanked-out, Far-Rockaway-bar-haunting slur. I tried to convince myself that she said "post-race," not "colored," as reported (so truly warped is her speech impediment). Afraid not. I was totally approving of your life choices Ms. Lohan, until you reminded me of your raspy, cocktail waitressing, sanitation-worker-assaulting heritage (and how desperately you try to conceal it).

And Once More with the Italians—

Loon dictator of Italia, Silvio Berlusconi, makes mention of Obama's deep "suntan."

Trompe L'oeil Entertainments!

Wall Painting
c. 70 A.D.
Villa dei Misteri, Pompeii

Having already visited the Gotti family manse today, I thought it only fitting to address the root of their decorative goods and evils--the Roman house. Long ago, in eighth grade Latin class, Pillow and I salivated over these spaces. We too wanted atriums and household gods and stalwart Roman husbands named Longinus or Julius or Cato. At present, I am most sruck by the urge to fill one's walls with figures. A woman (slave?) holding a platter of fish meets our gaze. The others consider fabric, read poetry, hold documents, contracts? This is such a varied, strange, urbane little scene. It was made only a few years before the erruption of Vesuvius, and is, thus, brilliantly preserved. The positively erotic colors (and this is where the Gottis come in) were likely meant to express wealth and consequence, as, I'm sure, were the bizarre gestures of the sitters. They are also (and this may be pretty dippy) the shades of the South, of the heated and cooked. The image is so present and vivid--what a thing, to live among its players! Click to enlarge and study. Valete citizens!

A Song for You

Satin Dolls: He Travels with a Volume of Derek Walcott Poems.

Satin Dolls: Volumes Could Be Written about Your Red Sheath.

I'm OK. You're OK.

Extra-Dim Moonbeams

Barneys' catalogues generally amuse me. They, the models and creatives, are clenched, tense with extreme effort, simply trying so hard. In the case of this advert for a limited edition "peace tee" (?), drawn from their "Have a Hippie Holiday" number, I am unamused. Have I lost my sense of humor? Perhaps. But for this amount of goods, at this amount of price, shouldn't they seem a bit more potent than say, Urban Outfitters? Click image to enlarge (wretchedness). Click here to see the whole range.

Mia G. D. Farrow

Do yourself a favor, and read this today. I'm ashamed to have been operating under the assumption that we live in an era of nutbag celebrities--Mia takes the cake. She takes Lindsay's cake and Britney's cake and Mariah's cake and Madonna's cake and Courtney Love's cake and Angelina's cake and--my goodness--she eats it ALL DAY. I especially love the bit about Frank Sinatra offering to break Woody Allen's legs; it made me cry for missing Old Blue Eyes.
Bon Appetite.

Facing History and Ourselves: Adina Howard.

She says it better than I ever could. Figured A&P could use some: