Sunday of almost no money I walk in the street market, looking but not touching, then come home and sit around and think and write about all the good things that have come down the last two weeks, poetry reading after poetry reading. I only read at one of them but it was fun to go and just sit and listen to the others.
All those years I was so hungry to read out loud and I practically never did. Until I turned fifty and moved to Mexico, I hardly ever shared my poetry in public. Now that I am reading, I find a great, additional pleasure in just sitting and listening to others. Goes to show you. Moderation in all things.
BABEL
Valentines day, just Wednesday this past week, Tere and I went out in the evening to celebrate the saint's day, or as it is known in Mexico: "el día de amor y amistad" – the day of love and friendship.
We went to the movies at Plaza Monarca. You know the scene: a mall movieplex. Postmodern global culture. Except here it comes with chili and tortilla chips. What's that? You say over there where you read that you too have tortilla chips and salsa, too? And nachos? Well I guess this globalization thing cuts both ways. We are all of us rubbing shoulders up against each other in these last years before the icecaps melt and the world as we know it ends forever amen. Shut up Danial denial.
The main road on the way to Plaza Monarca is so full of potholes you know why the late editor of Zeta once refered to this State as "Bache" California. Yes, bache=pothole uh huh yep. Look I snuck in another apocalyptic metaphor. We had to slow down and zig-zag. I joked that the warning sign with the bent arrow does not mean "curves ahead" no, it means "prepare to dodge around potholes" and my God have mercy I sort of knew how to say it in Spanish "dar vueltas para evitar los baches" or something.
Yet even that was the lesser of monsters, only a peripheral boulevard. Faced with the choice of deciding which movie-plex to go to, we chose against fighting the worst ugliness of traffic struggling all the way down toward the River Zone for one larger movie-plex at the new Macro-Plaza, no, no, no: we would avoid the biggest and the worst. No, not go into Insurgentes or big river roads, no, just drop through the nearer Alamo valley over to Cucupa and Gato Bronco. Went to the smaller mall, Monarca, along the road that Chuy (who has Maria Felix's car in his garage) says was built just so he could go visit his mother.
Along the way I reminisced out loud to Tere about the newspaper week before last that had a headline Tijuana held captive by traffic, and the map of overcrowded roads and not-so-crowded roads. She laughed at me – "Oh, Daniel, you and your maps and poems!" Reached over and pinched my cheek.
I insisted Tere stop on the way and let me buy her some gas. We'd agreed a week before that since she had invited me she would take me out to the movies and buy the tickets (I took her to Apocalypto and Perfume in the past two weeks), BUT even though it were half-price night I felt hey I gots to buy something. I am the man, yes. Liberated but still macho, I guess, in my own bohemian way.
Before leaving her place we also exchanged little gifts and cards. I actually wrote her a poem. I ain't very big on writing love poems. Hardly ever do. Takes years for me to work my way up to one and usually the woman has thrown me out by then. Sigh. Change the subject didn't I. Yes anyway... I gave her a little hand-made inlaid jewel box, since I can't afford to buy her jewelry (well not anything big yet, although I have already bought a few small pieces for Christmases and birthdays you know pins and perfume that sort of thing) and a candle and candle-holder for her meditation she loves candles. She gave me a magazine with an article about the Chepe train I went on last June and hope to ride again in a couple months after the Hermosillo writing congress (we'll be honoring Ernesto Cardenal). Jeez we are poor little people but it is really nice to have someone you love as a friend yes. Especially for an old selfish loner like me. I just wish I'd sent more valentines to family members. Yes. Sigh.
Anyhow we saw Babel; it's running again on a re-release for pre-Oscar post-nomination money troll. Tere's seen it before but wanted to see it again. T'is a disturbing, mostly well-made piece of art that somehow, in spite of all its beauty, is somehow... well, just a little short in some way.
It seems to lack something, I am not sure how to put this because the film is so gosh darn good, I mean gee whillikers Mrs. McGillicutty, am I just nit-picking at lice-splitting hairs here, or... is the film just a bit too cliché and simplistic? Are the characters too formulaic? Did they bite off more than they could chew and end up with a big group of characters who are... a little too simple, too one-dimensional? The troubled youth, the problem marrieds, and the border hasslers. The characters are clear, and well portrayed, well acted, but... time is so limited, and the triple, interlocking story, of what could have been three lingering, detailed movies, is turned into three interconnected short stories, that left me wanting more than the simple characters and plot devices.
Yet, in spite of these perhaps cliché characters and plot situations (as I saw them), the movie worked for me as a theme-vehicle and a visual piece of eye-candy. Eye-candy, especially. I don't know about you but that's what I go to the movies for, to see a great big beautiful visual and hear a fantastic audio, I want to see and hear things that are beautiful. Now, they can be horrifying and ugly and shocking, but I want them excellently and elegantly portrayed. Or simply, if simplicity is beautiful. Yeah, that's why I go to the movies. To experience visions and hear voices and music. I am looking for a kinesthetic, kaleidoscopic, stereophonic experience. I want to see a great big "moving" picture with lots of noise, whether music and/or language. That's why Koyanisqatsi remains my favorite film.
And Babel delivers what I want: a broad palette of colors and movement. Its landscapes are vast and stunning, its portraits of character are intense and emotionally moving (even if a bit simplistic and caracatured). As a physical construct, the film gave me value for price paid, even if I didn't have to pay it myself. Did I mention theme? The "Babel" of failure to communicate across borders, frontiers between culture, between nations, between people; of language, emotion, deafness, speech.
It was also kind of cool to see the local border on film, even though the scenes in Tijuana were illogical. Like they drove out of their way just to drive the kids past the whores on the streetcorner, no, no, no, if you were going to go out to that wedding in the country, you would not drive all over those different parts of town like they did in the movie. That's the problem with my knowing the territory where they pointed the camera. I can't just let the feeling from those places sink in, no, no, I have to analyze it and say hey they're driving the wrong way – that street doesn't go there! Danny, Danny, Danny, shut up and just let the artistic license be real.
But it ain't real, it's art!
Film School, 1969
When I was 18, and 19, I lived for a year and a half in Westwood, Los Angeles, studying at UCLA. Nominally I was a theater arts student but I took some film classes, too, and was, of course, slightly seduced by the notion of working in "the industry" until I found out what kind of 27-hour days they work and more. Still, like most Americans, and citizens of planet Earth, I had been bewitched by Hollywood. Fortunately, I knew then, as I know now, that intelligences vast and cool were surveying our planet with... oh, sorry, that's H.G.Wells. What I knew then, and know now, is that my real love is scribbling and performing poetry. But... there was a moment, or two, when I thought about... "the industry." *Sigh* : Earth to Mars... Earth to Mars...
Reading Marlene Dietrich's biography by her daughter Maria Riva brings back my... memories and fantasies. Used to go to screenings where producers and actors would talk and answer questions. Saw a projection of Medium Cool at Paramount we had to walk through broken city streets with fake buildings to get there. A couple times I climbed over a back fence at the Century lot and wandered through the ruins of 1890s New York. I saw the looks in the corners of the eyes of the people working there. Either they wanted my young ass or they thought I didn't belong there. Either way I had more fun sneaking in and walking out. Didn't have to put up with or put out for anyone. And that was the bitter truth I saw about that damn industry. You have/had to put out. The work is grueling and long and the lights are hot and make-up sucks. No, no, no, give me poetry any day. Even if there is no money. So I went to work in offices instead where all I had to worry about was filing and typing and making my share of coffee.
And you know, it's funny, or not really, but I bitch and moan about long hours and hot lights and endless takes and retakes, but But BUT I will sit at this damn typewriter keyboard for five hours straight without even going to the bathroom, and then eat a sandwich and come back and do it all over again, and then settle down with pen and paper and spend five more hours grinding my brain against a couple of poems that I want to translate exactly perfectly right, and where's the difference between spending 17 hours writing and re-writing or spending 17 hours working under hot lights in stinking make-up WELL DUH DANNY you don't have to wear makeup or work under burning lights oh yes I guess that is the difference.
So maybe I do have it easier as a writer. Except that I am so gosh darn independent that I refuse to write the way anyone else tells me to I just do it my way.
Back then when I was 18 and 19 I was only in school, really, because I didn't want to be drafted. Didn't want to go get sent to Indochina to suck up mud for a government that doesn't know what side of the freedom bread its liberty butter is jammed up on screwing around in foreign countries dying for corrupt governments. Bla bla bla we're at it again our men and women again in harm's way five years coming down the road it is time to bring them home.
So when I got 282 in the lottery I knew I wouldn't be drafted and pretty much that was the end of UCLA. Didn't go back to school until almost fifteen years later in my thirties when I went to UCSD and studied literature and film and video and communication theory. At least I had a slightly better idea about what academic subjects I really wanted to study to go along with my addiction to writing poetry yes.
But it has taken years and years for me to admit that I am an artist. We work-ethic Americans have this idea that art is not work, is not professional. But it is. And it has its games and rules and market strategies just like every other profession. And that is what I am engaged in now a great civil war to determine whether this person or any person so conceived can long endure, if I may steal a few words from Mister Lincoln, who stood up in congress in 1846 to speak out against the government invading another country, Mexico, and denounced the president for sending the troops in harms way and then saying to congress, okay, cough up the money, boys. Congressman Lincoln complained and promptly lost his next election, and when he did return to Washington, sixteen years later, we were then soon engaged in a truly horrifying war, a war where half of the nation ended up raped and plundered, a war that everyone thought would be over in just a few months in 1861, like the first world war was supposed to be over in 1914, like Babylon Iraq was supposed to be mission accomplished in 2003, like almost every war has been supposed to be quick and short and in & out, well, almost, not all. There are some who have seen how difficult things are and always will be.
But I think I have preached enough now. It's all pointless anyway. People will do what we want regardless of how we misuse language and resources and say "ir-regardless" heh hee ho. Me I just want, as always, to write and perform poetry. But now, with small cameras and powerful little computers, can make movies. So have come full circle from film school. Here. Small world, eh? Ej.
but still, the precious art of drawing a page is
It is horrifying, at times, reading the biography of Marlene Dietrich. It reminds me of all the sometimes subtle, sometimes blatant psychic terror culture I felt flickering around the edges of glamor and flashing lights, that year and a half when I lived in the hills between Westwood village and Bel Air, pretending to study movies and theater and general education and writing mostly mediocre poetry.
What did I know, anyway? I was only eighteen, hidden away in Dykstra and Sproul dorms, and then an apartment at 530 Veteran Avenue. Hung out so many nights with Steve and Sheila and Claude on Fountain where they had a big brick of the best damn weed I would ever smoke for years and years to come not until emerald skunk convinced me twenty years later to stop it was too much too strong yes well my friends always called me a lightweight, and I guess maybe that's why I'm still alive. I did say no. Sometimes then. Later always. Just? Unjust? No, I am still tempted, always, always, always. BUT it's only that my addiction to writing is so much stronger and much more very most jealous of all. Well, that and being pissed at my alcoholic father for dying on us.
And in between long days of books and class and eating and talking and walking and long nights of smoke and talking and walking with Jesse Garcia or Mike R., I would still feel it everywhere, that siren song that floated over the hills and flat valleys from Hollywood singing money money money and fame. No no no I realized I didn't want to work under all that makeup in those hot lights no matter how much I love performing and singing yes I do but I love writing even more yes yes yes I do no matter none of that I do not want to be famous.
I do not want to lose my freedom just to walk down the street and no one knows who I am except the people who actually know me and whom I actually know, yes, forget the mega fame and superstar success, no, just give me a few readers and other writers I can read and listen to and that will be enough. Just a little success, please, not a lot.
And let me see Santos Jesus Garcia again, please. I always wonder what happened to him, where he went, what he's doing.
And if he still remembers how we used to drive across town in someone else's car I forget who to get chili burgers at Tommy's Ptomaine Burgers at the corner of Beverly and Ramparts, and...
out in our autos we are cruising the lands of LA traffic dancing upon our freeway planet with the radio playing loudly searchlights swirling around our world premier fire screaming our glory into the sky HERE WE ARE here we are we need only inform the department of motor vehicles that we are god after all, didn't we say "we are glorious" ?– from 1970
Amen. Goodbye.
or well... goodbye for now at least
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