Dear Miss Valland,

Tower of Babel

Ashland Avenue near Archer, Chicago

I want to get in close but I can't. The wall is too high. There has to be a way in, but I am already running late & I don't want to keep my friends waiting. What was this factory that is coming down and why does its destruction sadden me so? What does it represent? I wanted to show you this picture and also quickly to say how much I love my Spanish class at Cervantes. Today I sat down to do homework in earnest; now that I have decided to certify as a translator, I can't slack off anymore. You know you are getting good when you start taking issues with the ideas expressed in the pedagogical materials. Estoy mejorando...every day in every way.

Ranunculus asiaticus

Ranunculas, Rose, ranunculas. Specifically the Persian Buttercups—plump and tight like mini cabbages, doll-size peonies. As they begin to die, the petals become bladelike, and thin and dry like onionskin paper. Dems the flower on the DMV seal. (And what is the bird?) Onionskin paper. Rose, here comes a reverie. Falling on my head like a new emotion. Mother. Legal secretary. Summer days at the office when a babysitter could not be found. A great Victorian in Bayshore with a wide, wraparound porch. I would sit in the conference room—the former dining room with big wooden doors that slid into the walls—and write poems and songs. Who was that young lawyer? He always wanted to know what I was writing. One afternoon, he helped me up on the massive, long table as the partners entered the room and took their seats at one end. I performed my latest hit, a song called "Soda pop." They clapped. Politely. My mother saved my lyrics, typed on onion skin paper. I found it in her things after she died. Silly, silly. Believe me, they clapped out of politeness. Onionskin paper/when typewriters were queen/think I'll buy a ream. (The lyricist in me lives.) The bouquet of ranunculas are near death but I have a hard time tossing them. So I scan them. See above. Beautiful right? I choose the fattest, the ones that have retained most of their petals. Pollen dust falls onto the glass bed. The flowers have expelled their last breath; dancing their last waltz in a brightly lit but underheated ballroom.

Later in the day I attend a press conference at an Italian cultural institute. A jazz festival in Abruzzo is being promoted and I sit in the back waiting for the event to begin. The men file in—for they are all men up there—and their assistants, lovely women in heels stand in the back and the sides of the rooms, taking pictures, texting and flipping their hair. There is a video presentation to promote the wonders of the region, that are indeed wonderful. Candied almonds, olive groves, the sea. Earthquake survivors all. The VO is the only woman with a voicein that room—and it is lovely & seductive. The region offers, she intones,  "miles and miles of psychopaths." That's bicycle paths. Rose, some things should not be shortened. That's as good as it is going to get in there, even with the promise of a wine tasting to come. I slip out. I had enough of the cliche-a-rama of the presentation, the lengthy circle jerk of intros; each dude signaling the next dude up as being even more important...without further adoo-doos, I bid adios.

Miss you mom.

Ai WeiWei is way way cool

We love Ai WeiWei here at the DMV and wish we could be in NYC for the White Box Spring Benefit which will present him with the first Richard J. Massey Foundation / White Box Arts and Humanity Award the Wednesday, April 26, 2012. DJ Spooky will do the honor of presenting Ai with the award—a piece created by Iván Navarro. It's called Made in China, 2011 and it is comprised of a found hacksaw with a steel chain for a blade, displayed in a 2x2 foot plexiglass light box. A clever and apt homage. I wish I could be there for the auction of artist postcards (there are contributions by other DMV favorites Alfredo Jaar and Sarah Tse along with dozens of others). Ticket prices begin modestly with "The Peoples Ticket" at fifty bucks. The Chinese government has been trying to break Ai WeiWei—they destroyed his home and studio, imposed a $2 million tax fine, threw him into prison for three months—but they will not succeed. Ai is fighting back —last week he filed suit against the "Number 2 inspection squad" of the Beijing tax bureau. Fight the goons my brother. May thousands of contributions bloom. Ai's own website has been hacked by the Chinese government, so check out FreeAiWeiWei.org for updated information.

Above image: The lantern over my bed—Made in China.

 

DMV archives

Honey Sweetheart (underlined twice) some day we will go and see this too.

With love, your darling Fred S

— as written on the back of this undated, unstamped postcard found today at an antique mall in Milwaukee

The Capitol Building in Madison, Wisconsin designed by New York architect George B. Post...this postcard was probably created around 1917, which was the year this building was completed. And Fred S was right to want to bring his sweetheart here—there are murals, allegorical paintings, glass mosaics, furniture and floors of Wisconsin hardwoods, walls and pillars of Italian marble. Grandeur in dairyland. And this time last year, the site of inspirational protests that gave us hope dear Rose, it did indeed. Union workers and protestors occupied the space, camping on the floors under the granite dome for weeks. Solidarity forever. Recall Scott Walker my honey sweatheart cheesehead neighbors.

House arrest

Returning to the car, on some side street in Lincoln Park, post breakfast w/ friends last week, I stop to take this picture. We'd eaten at a downscale, downhome spot offering the basics with bonus free newspapers by the cash register for customers. Eggs over easy. A story about a pimp who trolled the west side, seducing teen girls, forcing them into prostitution, then beating and branding them. (No I don't want no scrub...) Here'a a revolting factoid; the girls were tatttoed with "Chedda make it betta" — I tore the article out of the paper. I found it this morning while organizing my life for the week. Why, you ask, did I keep it? Maybe because months ago I was exploring the west side when I passed what looked like a possibly interesting junk store. So I turned off the main street to go around the block. The street ran along railroad tracks and there were several young girls, tarted up and open for business. The article reported that six girls testified  how they were forced to "walk the track" ...and I remembered that day and those girls. The fuckwad pimp with a ridiculous name (not worth mentioning) was sentenced to 50 years and, as part of his punishment, he should have his favorite saying tattooed on his face. Where is Lisbeth Salander when we need her?

The article was disturbing. So was this doll. When my nieces were little, they were obsessed with Cabbage Patch dolls to the point where they wouldn't go anywhere without them. On a visit, I refused to drive them to Disneyland with the dolls in the car. My benevolent auntie routine had its limits.  I wanted them to be practical: Why carry them around? What if they get lost? (What I really wanted was for them to not be attached to ridiculous crap.) Wisdom prevailed. Or Mickey Mouse did. We took off and hit major traffic. Eventually, we could see an accident up ahead was causing the delay and as we inched towards the flashing police lights and emergency vehicles, the girls kept asking ridiculous questions; powered by the belief kids have that adults have super powers and can explain everything. What is is it? What happened? And endless Whys. "It's a familiy of Cabbage Patch dolls, " I said, finally. "They've all been decapitated."  And now let's have a moment of silence.

Beatus noise

In one of many Quads @ University of Chicago post concert

Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God, ends at the organ's pipes in Bond Chapel. The inscription, six of the 11 Beatitudes, cut (with laser-like precision) out of narrow panels of wood, wrap around the top of the very high, wood-paneled walls in this Gothic revival space—a sort of non-electronic ticker tape. We've gone to hear some joyful noise (trés electronic) by Damion Romero, a sound artist who lives in Los Angeles. Romero built a 4-channel, drone/vibration instrument that took me out of the top and sides of my head all at once and left me feeling as if my entire body had been pummelled while cherubs looked down from on high. This full-body sound massage, courtesy of Lampo and the Renaissance Society, was the perfect pairing of performance and space. Baptists built this campus; it's easy to forget that in the land of "great books" & the invention of the atomic bomb. Bible-thumpers of means paid for this soaring space. Thank you very much. Bond Chapel & cloister was built by Coolidge & Hodgdon in 1926. Go in daylight  and study the stone creatures on the exterior.

 

DMV archives

This was published the year after Dylan went electric at the festival,  famously pissing off the purists and generally shaking things up. It's a music factoid that fans of either or both folk music & Dylan know about...in my case, only in the most general way. As a little kid, I dreamt about being a folksinger, and tried to play along with my aunt's Joan Baez albums on my plastic guitar. Sadly, I had the impulse without the talent. Finding this issue (Vol. 16, Number 4) of the legendary magazine at a used bookstore recently was a thrill. It's been enjoyable to read arts journalism from a period that I use to wish I had been old enough to be a part of; and it's been fun to read a critique of the Newport Folk Festival one year after the electric Dylan affair. The writer, Bruce Jackson, went into considerable detail about how the foundation that puts the festival together functions. He wrapped it up nicely with an analysis of the life cycle of folk music—it develops/atrophies/revives; it does not exist without change.

"Depending on your box or ban or ax, you've got a different definition of the valid: the rugged academic wants something venerated by age; the kid grinding out songs about things he thinks bug him wants something that sounds significant, not genaology; the old banjo picker in the hills doesn't give a damn for the definitions or the arguments of either, he just wants a tune he likes. And on and on through every category you can name. People stare at one another and argue and put one another down and one another's music down and only rarely realize that most of their arguments, their vituperation, is irrelevant because they are simply not talking about the same things ..."

This piece was likely motivated by the electric-Dylan incident and & the writer wisely refrained from hashing it over, instead mentioning Dylan only once (and playfully along with another news figure talked about probably waayyy too much back then) in the last paragraph:

"Last year there was hysteria when Dylan revealed he turned on (his guitar); the flap was so great you might have thought he'd announced his songs had been gold-written by Barry Ghostwater. Now everybody's digging electric. Sic transit."

So it passes.

Silence not absence

In Garfield Park, the day after it nearly hit 70s in February

Adrienne Rich, poet, May 16, 1929 — March 27, 20012.

I go to my book shelf in search of Diving into the Wreck to share poems with friends and can't find it. I'm bereft. There is little to say. Somewhere in my boxes of clips is an interview with Rich, conducted via telephone, for a newspaper feature in advance of a reading in New Mexico in 1999 or 2000. The reading was packed when I got there and the organizers set up an extra row in the front, so I got to sit up close. Rich used a cane made of clear acrylic. Her interviewer was nervous and sat with her legs open, flashing the audience as her skirt slid up her thighs. Really.  I remember that, so what. The trivial stays with me, unfortunately, taking up  room where chunks of facts and poems should reside. Of course, the best part, Adrienne reading her work. We lost another literary hero recently—Barney Rosset, the first publisher of Beckett. Who are our Adriennes and Barneys today? OK, look dear friends of DMV, we've got tremendous resources online, you can look up Rich's work at the Academy of American Poets, Poetry Foundation's excellent site, and at the Lannan Foundation.

Somebody's idea of beautiful

House pide in the projects up the street

 At a red light on LaSalle the other day, a car bumps the rear of my car on the harsh side of gentle. I get out to inspect, see there is no damage, wave at the driver, and get back in my car. I am going to be happy and everything is going to be OK. I retired my rage last week and this little incident was a good a test as any that it had been banished along with other useless ideas and emotions.  At the next light, the driver has pulled up along my side and I roll down my window. She waves an empty ice cream cup at me says, "I was eating!" as if that is a perfectly reasonable explanation. "Enjoy! Be safe!" is my reply. And you know Rose, it was just as easy to go there as it would have been for me to call her a careless asshole. So look at this house on this crummy street. It has cheerfully individuated itself from the row of nondescript townhouses on the block. It's put on a little lipstick for the party, which is every day, and it says: " I'm happy! Come on over! I'm easy to find!  Look for the blue flowerpots!" 

Silophone

On the grounds of Fragrant Farms in New Harmony, Indiana

It's too early for peonies, but with the unusually warm weather, I'm hoping I might see the start of this beloved flower (rununculas are another favorite, and I don't know why I love their little fat heads, Rose, but I do.) The peony is Indiana's state flower, but only as of 1957 (replacing the uptight zinnia, which replaced the banal carnation).  A woodblock print in the British Museum by Japanese artist Utagawa Kuniyoshi (1797-1861), depicts a wrestler with an all-body tattoo of peonies. I search for the book to show my neighbor who is about to complete a tattoo apprenticeship and is designing an elaborate leg piece that he will self-apply. In New Harmony, this farm is a major supplier of cut peony flowers in the states, but I will have to go back in May to see them. Last year, because of flooding, the peonies were not picked & the museum director I'd met the day before described a scene of fields of flowers poking up above the water. So now I hold an image in my head. I'm reminded of artist  Jim Hodges' massive curtain of stitched together fake flowers and petals, albeit horizontal; placed over the fields like a blanket. I see acres and acres of pink and red peonies bobbing on the surface of dark water. Peonies in New Harmony have a special historical/business connection but I am getting too far away from the original intention of this post which is the silo on the grounds of the deserted peony farm on a recent Sunday morning resounding with the deep gurling and cooing of a bird orchestra nesting inside.

Come hither, come hither, come hither

Somewhere along 130 in the land of Lincoln

Here shall he see

No enemy

But winter and rough weather

—Mr. Shakespeare from "Under the Greenwood Tree"

Some trees are budding early during these record warm days, yet overall the treescape is mostly barren of green. I pull over to the side of the road and walk into the plowed cornfield above. I'm on my way to the southwestern corner of Indiana, and, as eager as I am to get there, to arrive in utopia, I keep wanting to stop and make pictures. This kind of warmth without green is a strange, climatic event. Nature is confused. So am I. Hunters are forlorn about the early migration of geese and other water fowl to the cooler northwest. The vernal equinox arrives in the middle of, by the standards of winter, a heatwave.  And what will happen to the fruit trees if this continues? Hopefully there will be no late frost.  I drive past sepia and burnt umber forests where the sun, high in the sky, makes aboreal shadow stripes on the dirt floor. The trees are in a liminal phase, anxiously awaiting the right time to begin pushing out leaves.

Many rivers to cross

The Wabash River in New Harmony, Indiana

The keelboat carrying French artist and naturalist Charles Alexander Lesueur and Scottish geologist William Maclure from Pennsylvania to Indiana in 1826 was referred to as The Boatload of Knowledge (a counter to the Ship of Fools?). They came to join the utopian community that existed in New Harmony in the early 1800s. I came to report on an art project—involving, in the first phase, the dismantling, rejiggering, burning of a 19th century barn by Juan Angel Chavez. In spirit, I also journeyed here in 1826. 

I grab a cup of coffee and the newspaper (published in Evansville) at the inn. The front page refers to an inside story on a meth lab bust, the community calendar lists a tea party meeting and there is syndicated advice column by Billy Graham (born in 1918; I looked this up because I was convinced he was dead.) Red state stuff. In a letter to Graham, a woman describes how her "heart aches over a woman in my office who's constantly making bad decisions about her life" and how her efforts to befriend her were thwarted when "she found out I was a Christian and said not to talk with her about God." What can she do, she implores the aged evangelist, other than pray? In lieu of the daily crossword puzzle, DMV rejiggered and altered the response:

Praying for this woman is the most important thing you can do -- because only God can break through the hardness of her heart and open her eyes to her need of Him and only you can reach God.

Surely one of life's greatest puzzles is how we keep thinking we know what is best for everyone, including those who do not share our beliefs because we believe we are right and are more saintly than others -- although we ought to know better. Even when we've done them before, we keep going down the same road, hoping somehow that this time it will be different. But it never is -- because the consequences of our unwise or deluded actions never change. The Bible warns, "Even as he walks along the road, the fool lacks sense" (Ecclesiastes 10:3). Because, fools, by their very nature, lack sense. The troubador sings, "I wish that for just one time you could stand inside my shoes/You'd know what a drag it is to see you." (Bob Dylan, Positively 4th Street.)

Why is this? The reason is because you have a "disease" inside of you -- a "spiritual disease" also known as busybodyitis. And one of sin's greatest consequences is that it blinds us to our own sin. This is why the Bible warns not to be "hardened by sin's deceitfulness" (Hebrews 3:13). As Hank Williams said, "Why don't you mind your own business, cause if you mind your own business, you won't be minding mine."

After coffee, I take one of the inn's free bicycles and follow a trail that runs alongside Philip Johnson's Roofless Church down to the river.