Jun 7, 2010
Jun 4, 2010
Jun 3, 2010
May 27, 2010
May 22, 2010
May 21, 2010
May 20, 2010
May 19, 2010
Verses
"Corn-Planter"
(author and date unknown---from Voices of WAH'KON-TAH*, ed. Robert K. Dodge and Joseph B. McCullough, 1985)
I plant corn four years:
ravens steal it;
rain drowns it;
August burns it;
locusts ravage leaves.
I stand in a circle and throw seed.
Old men laugh because they know the wind
will carry the seed to my neighbor.
I stand in a circle on planted seed.
Moles burrow through the earth
and harvest my crop.
I throw seed to the wind
and wind drops it on the desert.
The eighth year I spend planting corn;
I tend my fields all season.
After September's harvest I take it to the market.
The people of my village are too poor to buy it.
The ninth spring I make chicken-feather headresses,
plastic tom-toms and beaded belts.
I grow rich,
buy an old Ford,
drive to Chicago,
and get drunk
on Welfare checks.
*Wah'Kon-Tah is the "Great Mystery,"the sum total of all things, the conception of an impersonal, spiritual and life-giving power. The Dakotas believe that there are two kinds of songs: songs made by people, and songs that come in visions throught the spirits of Wah'Kon-Tah. It is from the voices of Wah'Kon-Tah that people gain spiritual power and wisdom.
There are many other names among the various Indian peoples--Wa-konda, Wakan-tanka, Nesaru, Manito--that signify the same meaning as Wah'Kon-Tah.
(author and date unknown---from Voices of WAH'KON-TAH*, ed. Robert K. Dodge and Joseph B. McCullough, 1985)
I plant corn four years:
ravens steal it;
rain drowns it;
August burns it;
locusts ravage leaves.
I stand in a circle and throw seed.
Old men laugh because they know the wind
will carry the seed to my neighbor.
I stand in a circle on planted seed.
Moles burrow through the earth
and harvest my crop.
I throw seed to the wind
and wind drops it on the desert.
The eighth year I spend planting corn;
I tend my fields all season.
After September's harvest I take it to the market.
The people of my village are too poor to buy it.
The ninth spring I make chicken-feather headresses,
plastic tom-toms and beaded belts.
I grow rich,
buy an old Ford,
drive to Chicago,
and get drunk
on Welfare checks.
*Wah'Kon-Tah is the "Great Mystery,"the sum total of all things, the conception of an impersonal, spiritual and life-giving power. The Dakotas believe that there are two kinds of songs: songs made by people, and songs that come in visions throught the spirits of Wah'Kon-Tah. It is from the voices of Wah'Kon-Tah that people gain spiritual power and wisdom.
There are many other names among the various Indian peoples--Wa-konda, Wakan-tanka, Nesaru, Manito--that signify the same meaning as Wah'Kon-Tah.
soul men (ramble then notes)
I used to think it was foolish to paint the town GENDER, to say "men do this as men" and "women do this as women." When I would catch myself constructing in that way (breaking down past break-ups), I'd stop, apologize, renege a little. Gender-ideas are so distended with advertising garbage, fun-house mirrors, false distance. "Traditional gender roles" seems a phrase of the Christian Coalition and the status quo quo quo, the kind of commercials for soap and beer that I sometimes find insulting, Jennifer Aniston vehicles, bullshit reasons for disallowing gay marriage. But Lo--there is a masculine and there is a feminine--essentially, naturally and culturally too---so many forms/informations. One can only guess-at gender identity; one can only gesture-toward notions of whole GENDER. But both pursuits are worthwhile, however faulty. These days, I think to be "gender blind" in personal and cultural matters is kind of ridiculous.
When I listen to R&B hitz of ayer y hoy sung by menfolk, I feel particularly addressed by menfolk (as with the Trey Songz tracks I wrote about the other week). But the genre with it's love-subjects and tender pace allows for menfolk who can traverse women's worlds, who have some of the feminine in them (as we have some of the masculine in us). It's a non-science. In a surface way, I can be quite harsh with unsexing-here (too tight pants, indifference to sports, hysteria, an inability to fix things, a certain criticality...). But in a soul way, I need a man to know how to try to understand me. This morning, Al Green's "How Can You Mend A Broken Heart" (1972) blew mi mente in that vein, as a relaying of my own experience by a man, "from me to you and you to me."
Al Green's lawyer in Memphis once told my Papa that Al was the only client who addressed him as "baby." A&P LOVES men who can pull off casually calling other men "baby!" And this quality--masculinity that is unruffled by/occasionally incorporates a feminine timber of affection and emotion--courses through Al and his catalogue. Like, masculinity that allows soul-level-femininity (or really, soul-level equality between men and women, all people...) is ultimately, most- masculine. It's a matter of artfully balancing sameness and difference. I like a man to do things that I can't do; I like to do things that a man can't do. But I also like/need the Venn diagram, the human universals, connectors. Al Green is such a MAN that his sometime preening and vulnerability serves to heighten his HUmaness, not assail his unassailable manhood---right? In "How Do You Mend...",
a devotional guitar and organ, Sinatra/Disney strings, a spare, mournful drum that is not dance but a memory of dance.
He could be a throaty woman!
"I was never told"----an innocent?
"The sorrow"---like Our Lady Of_____!?
...string tremor, like weather, about weather (Memphis love in Memphis storms on Memphis porches)--"I can still feel the breeze."
An admission, "and mine is!"
A question, a cry for aid...
"No one told us"----partnership
"How can you mend?"
We mend--mending
Only a woman can do 'the mending'?
Green is some kind of priest athlete, within and without the music when he sounds 'on his knees' (CHURCH)
(SEXXX)
(There will be both women and men making art every year!)
When I listen to R&B hitz of ayer y hoy sung by menfolk, I feel particularly addressed by menfolk (as with the Trey Songz tracks I wrote about the other week). But the genre with it's love-subjects and tender pace allows for menfolk who can traverse women's worlds, who have some of the feminine in them (as we have some of the masculine in us). It's a non-science. In a surface way, I can be quite harsh with unsexing-here (too tight pants, indifference to sports, hysteria, an inability to fix things, a certain criticality...). But in a soul way, I need a man to know how to try to understand me. This morning, Al Green's "How Can You Mend A Broken Heart" (1972) blew mi mente in that vein, as a relaying of my own experience by a man, "from me to you and you to me."
Al Green's lawyer in Memphis once told my Papa that Al was the only client who addressed him as "baby." A&P LOVES men who can pull off casually calling other men "baby!" And this quality--masculinity that is unruffled by/occasionally incorporates a feminine timber of affection and emotion--courses through Al and his catalogue. Like, masculinity that allows soul-level-femininity (or really, soul-level equality between men and women, all people...) is ultimately, most- masculine. It's a matter of artfully balancing sameness and difference. I like a man to do things that I can't do; I like to do things that a man can't do. But I also like/need the Venn diagram, the human universals, connectors. Al Green is such a MAN that his sometime preening and vulnerability serves to heighten his HUmaness, not assail his unassailable manhood---right? In "How Do You Mend...",
a devotional guitar and organ, Sinatra/Disney strings, a spare, mournful drum that is not dance but a memory of dance.
He could be a throaty woman!
"I was never told"----an innocent?
"The sorrow"---like Our Lady Of_____!?
...string tremor, like weather, about weather (Memphis love in Memphis storms on Memphis porches)--"I can still feel the breeze."
An admission, "and mine is!"
A question, a cry for aid...
"No one told us"----partnership
"How can you mend?"
We mend--mending
Only a woman can do 'the mending'?
Green is some kind of priest athlete, within and without the music when he sounds 'on his knees' (CHURCH)
(SEXXX)
(There will be both women and men making art every year!)
blood diamond
According to a Lorain Police Department report, an officer working the North Ridgeville High School prom was approached by school administrators who had received several complaints about the "highly intoxicated" Halter. When told of these complaints, Halter replied, "This is my fucking prom, this is bullshit."
Halter, her speech slurred, denied drinking alcohol and cursed out the school's principal and assistant principal. "You are fucking bitches, this is my prom, I'm not drunk," said Halter. After refusing to take a Breathalyzer test, Halter attempted to swing a chair at cops, and then began "smacking her forehead into the chair handle causing her nose to bleed."
While being handcuffed, Halter "began kicking, screaming, spitting and thrashing about." As she was walked out of DeLuca's catering hall, Halter--screaming obscenities--"let her legs go limp," so officers had to carry the teen to a patrol car. That is when Halter "cleared her throat and spit a bloody ball of spit" at Officer Kyle Gelenius, whose name tag was ripped from his uniform by Halter during the confrontation.
Seated in the back of the cruiser, Halter "continued to spit blood on the windows, the divider, and the roof," and kicked the vehicle's window. For her prom night meltdown, Halter was booked into the Lorain County jail and charged with assaulting a cop, resisting arrest, disorderly conduct, and underage drinking.
May 18, 2010
Two songs occurring upfront of my playlist are sort of teen suicide jams, but also shakes at the (this new, almost here) Great Revival.
First, B.o.B.'s "I'll Be in the Sky." Second, Lil' Wayne's "Drop the World" (featuring Eminem). Both, not so coincidentally, were featured in last week's episode of The Hills, gusts of Goth confetti (humid, I know) from this genius swan song season, which is so much about the crisis before and around religious conversions, the angst of the faith-seeker, the tin of the faithless OMG!
B.o.B. (Atlanta rapper Bobby Ray) is new (to me to me). His current singles are yes and no ("Nothin' On You" was on heavy rotation for a minute and then I got bored), but this one, presumably the next single, is so fresh--discoursing The Lord in Pop and also air travel. En general, I dig how he's doing this 90s (there it go) nerd-boy, vaguely jazzed Yankee hip hop, but with Southern accents and stories, ways of telling stories. And isn't that why God is in the lyric? The Eastern Seaboard is such a den of clever doubt and cynicism. Up here, men consumed with trying to be hard almost never take it to CHURCH*. En Sur, Tradition holds for everybody; "roots" matter as much as (and often more than) the self-reliant quest (though this track incorporates doses of both). You know? Anyhow, the chorus:
I was a man with no name,
Now I'm attributing mo' fame,
But all of this ain't gonna matter when I die and say goodbye,
So long, sianara, I'll have to catch you tomorra' baby
Cause baby-- I'll be in the sky
I'll be there
Ooh all right
I'll be in the sky
I'll be there
Ooh all right
I'll be in the sky
As ever, I've listened to it dozens of times, and still it emits this funny, addictive emotional smoke (vapor? The Vapors?) about success and airplanes and artists leaving and living alone and my fears and non-fears, the wicked powerful non-fear of dying (teen suicide mania), my grandmother, belief in G-d, but hubris too...
...I've been skeptical of this Wayne record with it's electric guitar noises and electric guitar face, but "Drop the World" is soo smart. It's full of that masculine angst that I'm non-thrilled by, "fuck all y'all!!!!!!" and stuff. But it comes off more like the glam-crazies than the punk-angries. My first thought about Wayne's chorus---
So I pick the World up
And I’ma drop it on your fuckin’ head.
Bitch, I’ma pick the World up
And I’ma drop it on your fuckin’ head
And I could die now--Rebirth motherfucker!
Hop up in my spaceship and leave Earth, motherfucker
I’m gone
Motherfucker, I’m gone.
---was a flashing memory of that scene in The BBC I, Claudius when Claudius realizes that Caligula is mad, running about calling himself Apollo (or somebody) and being as debauched and daring and violent and costumed as a god, or an imagined god. In song, Wayne has long described/inhabited this brand of madness, an imagined me-godhead to great effect. This passage also touches on Wayne's newness; he's a "Baby" and a disciple (symbolic son) of Baby. He is not wise; he is ALIVE, vibrant, burning, fast, engaged, ALL BODY, no victim of CYCLES, a victor of CYCLES ("Rebirth motherfucker!"), and foolish, brave. I don't know; the song makes me smile. And Em (who I love more when he's being less furious, but sobeit) has one fantastic line of Jesus-hubris (or something), "This world is my Easter egg/Yeah, prepare to die."
*I'm kind of wrong here, or duh there are exceptions---"You're Nobody Till Somebody Kills You" and I guess Nas pretended to be Jesus, but I've never really paid attention to him and now that he won't pony up child support for Kelis I think he's SUCH a chump and never will. Also, I don't know what to say about California. I know L.A. is considered a piece of the Bible Belt (it's mega-churches and COGIC congregations are astounding). And I'm so down with their New Age ideas (like those incorporated into Christian Evangelism by The Hills' Spencer and Heidi Pratt!).....
May 10, 2010
WHAT ABOUT STYLE
THAT AIN'T EVEN yr style
another styles of men
Friday night Pillow and I were talk talking about (gulp) that Tavi and her blogsite and (gulp gulp) those harpies at blogsite Jezebel who L.O.V.E. her serious. And, specifically, a weeks long interchange between Tavi and her fans (@Jezebel and stuff) about Sassy Magazine, her collection of Sassy Magazines, lots of scans. It is remarkable to observe women in their twenties and thirties embracing/celebrating the embrace/celebration of their own Youth Information by a starry-headed tween receiving it for the first time....it's really clarifying the butter for me----I'm getting flashes of Gestalt!
I have two memories of Sassy Magazine:
---About 8; dentist's office waiting room; someone has left the issue with Kurt and Courtney on the cover underneath their seat; I bring it home (it's not so transformative or special to me).
---About 9; my friend's hot older brother's girlfriend leaves an issue on their sun porch; I pick it up and leaf through it, but I can hardly recall its contents because we found a Penthouse Magazine under hot older brother's bed that same afternoon and its contents (stuff hot older brother thought was hot) left a greater mark...At the time, I had subscriptions to Seventeen and Vogue and Harper's Bazaar, and I liked to buy YM too. I watched Aarron Spelling shows and tons of network sitcoms and My So-Called Life and the full MTV. I listened to "alternative music station," 96X, and shopped for "grunge clothes, skull caps, baby tees, babydoll dresses, barrettes, body suits, mini-backpacks, body glitter, ankhs and sunflowers" at Contempo Casuals and The Limited Too (and [thrills!] Todd Oldham and Betsey Johnson, in moderation).....these were the popular choices, the choices that "might bring me in the range of older and sexy (??!!!)," that ranged from childish to child-tryin'-to-be-a-teen-ish.
Between 1990 and 1995 (Sassy was published between '88 and '96), Courtney Love and Brenda Walsh and Kurt Cobain and Taylor Dayne and Six LeMeure and Chloe Sev- and Donnie Wahlberg and Janet Jackson and Joey Lawrence and Snoop Dogg and Cher Horowitz and Axl Rose and Rayanne Graff and Perry Farrell and Whitley Gilbert (and and and) were, for me, as one---a lot of "grown" folk. I got to feel cool by absorbing and reflecting any of a conglomerated-"adult material," and by, in turn, rejecting kid stuff, being a kid.
As far as I can tell, Sassy was an (possible) origin point for some still-kicking Popular hipster-ism as conceived by Generation-X (like, Chloe Sev- and Spike Jonze were interns and there were DIY projects), a volume full of spunky angst and a load of anti-Pop/anti-Big80s sentiment, cynicism, some irony, 70s redux. The teens (and writing/editing 20-somethings) of Sassy got to feel cool by dividing up my conglomerated-"adult material" into columns/piles of YES and NO, indie/"hip" (YES) and commodified/canned (NO). This was the essential line of "still-kicking Popular hipster-ism as conceived by Generation-X."---REJECTION, REJECTION of Pop and everything. One might call hipter-ism rejection-ism with a complicated strand of ironic acceptance (that is really just more rejection). This ironic acceptance strand morphed/mushroomed until it became the foggy/unwieldy/apolitical and mean punto del hipster-ism in the Aughts.
So, maybe in this naturally occurring 90s redux (of which I have been a willing participant since 2006, in my hollow fashion), people young and older, are attempting a return to "purer" ideas of hipsterism/rejectionism, feminist political ones, indie/'zine/vegan ones. And good on them. But I'll never be able to draw out stuff that wasn't there to start with: anti-Establishment feeling (WE LOVE AN ESTABLISHMENT!).
WE LOVE LOVE LOVE AN ESTABLISHMENT.
See, Tavi (how random to even know who she is, Internets!) wrote this about Sassy,
So, in 1992 or 3, Birkenstocks and Uggs were in a magazine that focused on more obscure fashion for dorkier teenage girls. Nowadays, an outfit from Pink or Abercrombie is incomplete without either of these shoes, and a gold-plated iPhone whose memory is overloaded with Justin Bieber videos can commonly be found conveniently hidden inside an Ugg boot as part of texting-during-class strategies. Not quite sure what to make of this.
It makes me a little sad. What does she mean by "obscure" and "dorkier" (I think these represent some of the Great Lies of hipster-ism), and why isn't she texting her friends in class?
Justin Bieber and decorative cell phone covers and passing notes in whatever form are GREAT. And klar-ly Tavi gets hers by feeling suspicious of and superior to "commodity culture cheerleaders"--the olde high school insider and high school outsider story--which is NOT ENLIGHTENED (and just runs and runs). It's anti-fun, anti-human, quite sinister, really.
She'd do best to understand both worlds, "inside" and "outside." In so doing, she would find there is little space between them (especially now)...that they don't even exist except in real-talk education and money matters (like, those are the only things that divide us, when they do). And that knowledge enough to navigate it ALL (while being ultimately self-reliant) is key...
(Anyhow, her "schoolyard outsider/dork pose" feels super disingenuous now that she's famous.)
Tavi throws around the word "subversive" when discussing Sassy Magazine. She thinks Generation X was subversive. She is wrong; Generation X was not subversive. They were all tragic about how they couldn't be subversive like their parents had been/done, about how the old subversive material had been consumed and rehashed so totally by "the Man," about how their parents had become "the Man."
OMG Whatever!
Subversion (how vague) without real socio-political ends (vaguer still, sorry) is subversion-as-style. And that's cool. But Tavi, being so young, and her nostalgic Gen-X fans at Jezebel, being so narrow, seem convinced that subversion-as-style is more meaningful and legit' than most other styles. And it just ISN'T.
THAT AIN'T EVEN yr style
another styles of men
Friday night Pillow and I were talk talking about (gulp) that Tavi and her blogsite and (gulp gulp) those harpies at blogsite Jezebel who L.O.V.E. her serious. And, specifically, a weeks long interchange between Tavi and her fans (@Jezebel and stuff) about Sassy Magazine, her collection of Sassy Magazines, lots of scans. It is remarkable to observe women in their twenties and thirties embracing/celebrating the embrace/celebration of their own Youth Information by a starry-headed tween receiving it for the first time....it's really clarifying the butter for me----I'm getting flashes of Gestalt!
I have two memories of Sassy Magazine:
---About 8; dentist's office waiting room; someone has left the issue with Kurt and Courtney on the cover underneath their seat; I bring it home (it's not so transformative or special to me).
---About 9; my friend's hot older brother's girlfriend leaves an issue on their sun porch; I pick it up and leaf through it, but I can hardly recall its contents because we found a Penthouse Magazine under hot older brother's bed that same afternoon and its contents (stuff hot older brother thought was hot) left a greater mark...At the time, I had subscriptions to Seventeen and Vogue and Harper's Bazaar, and I liked to buy YM too. I watched Aarron Spelling shows and tons of network sitcoms and My So-Called Life and the full MTV. I listened to "alternative music station," 96X, and shopped for "grunge clothes, skull caps, baby tees, babydoll dresses, barrettes, body suits, mini-backpacks, body glitter, ankhs and sunflowers" at Contempo Casuals and The Limited Too (and [thrills!] Todd Oldham and Betsey Johnson, in moderation).....these were the popular choices, the choices that "might bring me in the range of older and sexy (??!!!)," that ranged from childish to child-tryin'-to-be-a-teen-ish.
Between 1990 and 1995 (Sassy was published between '88 and '96), Courtney Love and Brenda Walsh and Kurt Cobain and Taylor Dayne and Six LeMeure and Chloe Sev- and Donnie Wahlberg and Janet Jackson and Joey Lawrence and Snoop Dogg and Cher Horowitz and Axl Rose and Rayanne Graff and Perry Farrell and Whitley Gilbert (and and and) were, for me, as one---a lot of "grown" folk. I got to feel cool by absorbing and reflecting any of a conglomerated-"adult material," and by, in turn, rejecting kid stuff, being a kid.
As far as I can tell, Sassy was an (possible) origin point for some still-kicking Popular hipster-ism as conceived by Generation-X (like, Chloe Sev- and Spike Jonze were interns and there were DIY projects), a volume full of spunky angst and a load of anti-Pop/anti-Big80s sentiment, cynicism, some irony, 70s redux. The teens (and writing/editing 20-somethings) of Sassy got to feel cool by dividing up my conglomerated-"adult material" into columns/piles of YES and NO, indie/"hip" (YES) and commodified/canned (NO). This was the essential line of "still-kicking Popular hipster-ism as conceived by Generation-X."---REJECTION, REJECTION of Pop and everything. One might call hipter-ism rejection-ism with a complicated strand of ironic acceptance (that is really just more rejection). This ironic acceptance strand morphed/mushroomed until it became the foggy/unwieldy/apolitical and mean punto del hipster-ism in the Aughts.
So, maybe in this naturally occurring 90s redux (of which I have been a willing participant since 2006, in my hollow fashion), people young and older, are attempting a return to "purer" ideas of hipsterism/rejectionism, feminist political ones, indie/'zine/vegan ones. And good on them. But I'll never be able to draw out stuff that wasn't there to start with: anti-Establishment feeling (WE LOVE AN ESTABLISHMENT!).
WE LOVE LOVE LOVE AN ESTABLISHMENT.
See, Tavi (how random to even know who she is, Internets!) wrote this about Sassy,
So, in 1992 or 3, Birkenstocks and Uggs were in a magazine that focused on more obscure fashion for dorkier teenage girls. Nowadays, an outfit from Pink or Abercrombie is incomplete without either of these shoes, and a gold-plated iPhone whose memory is overloaded with Justin Bieber videos can commonly be found conveniently hidden inside an Ugg boot as part of texting-during-class strategies. Not quite sure what to make of this.
It makes me a little sad. What does she mean by "obscure" and "dorkier" (I think these represent some of the Great Lies of hipster-ism), and why isn't she texting her friends in class?
Justin Bieber and decorative cell phone covers and passing notes in whatever form are GREAT. And klar-ly Tavi gets hers by feeling suspicious of and superior to "commodity culture cheerleaders"--the olde high school insider and high school outsider story--which is NOT ENLIGHTENED (and just runs and runs). It's anti-fun, anti-human, quite sinister, really.
She'd do best to understand both worlds, "inside" and "outside." In so doing, she would find there is little space between them (especially now)...that they don't even exist except in real-talk education and money matters (like, those are the only things that divide us, when they do). And that knowledge enough to navigate it ALL (while being ultimately self-reliant) is key...
(Anyhow, her "schoolyard outsider/dork pose" feels super disingenuous now that she's famous.)
Tavi throws around the word "subversive" when discussing Sassy Magazine. She thinks Generation X was subversive. She is wrong; Generation X was not subversive. They were all tragic about how they couldn't be subversive like their parents had been/done, about how the old subversive material had been consumed and rehashed so totally by "the Man," about how their parents had become "the Man."
OMG Whatever!
Subversion (how vague) without real socio-political ends (vaguer still, sorry) is subversion-as-style. And that's cool. But Tavi, being so young, and her nostalgic Gen-X fans at Jezebel, being so narrow, seem convinced that subversion-as-style is more meaningful and legit' than most other styles. And it just ISN'T.
"It mortifies the soul."
...That's a phrase Abigail Adams used (so say the HBO mini-series about her hombre). A nice, funny Yankee phrase, deeply felt. And I'm not sure what part of me these pictures of Lady Gaga in Sweden mortify, but OH how they do! I get that she's in the midst of her protracted "Monster phase," but...
Lot Description
A PAIR OF GEORGE III BEAD-EDGED SILVER SALTS
MARK OF ROBERT HENNELL, LONDON, 1781
Also a pair of wine coasters in the George III style, sides pierced with intersecting arches, 1986; a pair of Armada dishes, 1966; and a third Armada dish with Tudor rose, 1969
The salts, 2¼ in. (5.7 cm.) high
16 oz. (496 gr.) (7)
Estimate
£500 - £700 ($735 - $1,029)
A PAIR OF GEORGE III BEAD-EDGED SILVER SALTS
MARK OF ROBERT HENNELL, LONDON, 1781
Also a pair of wine coasters in the George III style, sides pierced with intersecting arches, 1986; a pair of Armada dishes, 1966; and a third Armada dish with Tudor rose, 1969
The salts, 2¼ in. (5.7 cm.) high
16 oz. (496 gr.) (7)
Estimate
£500 - £700 ($735 - $1,029)
Lot Description
Albert Williams (b. 1922)
A summer bouquet
signed 'Albert Williams' (lower centre)
oil on board
14¼ x 18 in. (36.2 x 45.8 cm.)
Estimate
£1,000 - £1,500 ($1,470 - $2,205)
Albert Williams (b. 1922)
A summer bouquet
signed 'Albert Williams' (lower centre)
oil on board
14¼ x 18 in. (36.2 x 45.8 cm.)
Estimate
£1,000 - £1,500 ($1,470 - $2,205)
Verses
"Letter to N.Y."
Elizabeth Bishop
(1950?)
{first lines redacted!}
For Louise Crane
Where the road goes round and round the Park
and the meter glares like a moral owl,
and the trees look so queer and green
standing alone in big black caves
and suddenly you're in a different place
where everything seems to happen in waves,
and most of the jokes you just can't catch,
like dirty words rubbed off a slate,
and the songs are loud but somehow dim
and it gets so terribly late,
and coming out of the brownstone house
to the gray sidewalk, the watered street,
one side of the buildings rises with the sun
like a glistening field of wheat.
--Wheat, not oats, dear. I'm afraid
if it's wheat it's none of your sowing,
nevertheless I'd like to know
what you are doing and where you are going.
Elizabeth Bishop
(1950?)
{first lines redacted!}
For Louise Crane
Where the road goes round and round the Park
and the meter glares like a moral owl,
and the trees look so queer and green
standing alone in big black caves
and suddenly you're in a different place
where everything seems to happen in waves,
and most of the jokes you just can't catch,
like dirty words rubbed off a slate,
and the songs are loud but somehow dim
and it gets so terribly late,
and coming out of the brownstone house
to the gray sidewalk, the watered street,
one side of the buildings rises with the sun
like a glistening field of wheat.
--Wheat, not oats, dear. I'm afraid
if it's wheat it's none of your sowing,
nevertheless I'd like to know
what you are doing and where you are going.
Love In This Club
Alpha works in a restaurant--a rather popular restaurant in the M-town. This is important to bring up if you're not a fellow staffer reading this (I forget whether we have an outside appeal).
...To say Mother's Day brunch was the Spirit Rape of the Century is an understatement. God love all those who decided to come out today IN THIS ECONOMY...
In any event, my afternoon was mostly filled with drinking on the company dime, then drinking some more while seeing Iron Man 2 (ScarJo sucks dicks in hell), and then drinking a little bit more (so close to being a mafia wife minus any real mafia connections!). Lotta drinking, you see...
Then, while rounding out my drunken routine (McDonalds #2 with a diet coke, thank you), this song came on. Mind you, Memphis has a new "Generation X" station, which is extremely hit or miss (sometimes you hear Color Me Badd, mostly you hear Barenaked Ladies), but I had yet to hear this track. In years. And it sort of, for a whole four minutes, brought me back to earth.
Cuz sometimes your mom's dying on Mother's Day, and you're overworked and waaay underpaid, and guys that broke your face (and guys that threatened to break your face) just keeping showing up, but still, y'know what? It's all okay. I actually pulled the car over by Pillow's house (it's on the way) to stop and sing along (I still know all the words, after 15 years). Please do enjoy...
...To say Mother's Day brunch was the Spirit Rape of the Century is an understatement. God love all those who decided to come out today IN THIS ECONOMY...
In any event, my afternoon was mostly filled with drinking on the company dime, then drinking some more while seeing Iron Man 2 (ScarJo sucks dicks in hell), and then drinking a little bit more (so close to being a mafia wife minus any real mafia connections!). Lotta drinking, you see...
Then, while rounding out my drunken routine (McDonalds #2 with a diet coke, thank you), this song came on. Mind you, Memphis has a new "Generation X" station, which is extremely hit or miss (sometimes you hear Color Me Badd, mostly you hear Barenaked Ladies), but I had yet to hear this track. In years. And it sort of, for a whole four minutes, brought me back to earth.
Cuz sometimes your mom's dying on Mother's Day, and you're overworked and waaay underpaid, and guys that broke your face (and guys that threatened to break your face) just keeping showing up, but still, y'know what? It's all okay. I actually pulled the car over by Pillow's house (it's on the way) to stop and sing along (I still know all the words, after 15 years). Please do enjoy...
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