8/29/09
ALBERT SCHWEITZER Quote
"In everyone's life, at some time, our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being. We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle the inner spirit." Albert Schweitzer
8/21/09
EXCERPT from IN HEAVEN EVERYTHING IS FINE
IN HEAVEN EVERYTHING IS FINE
The Unsolved Life of Peter Ivers and the Lost History of New Wave Theatre
C Josh Frank 2008 By Josh Frank with Charlie Buckholtz
Free Press a division of Simon and Shuster publishers
page XVIII "... in many ways he (Peter) exemplified the cross-pollination of punks and comics...
page XIX "He made a lot of decisions in his life, and many of them seemed to lead away from the success he so vitally desired. Some called him Peter Pan, the boy who refused to grow up and face facts, while others rooted for him till his last days. By choosing to live the artistic dreams that they themselves (often admittedly) had given up on, he exuded a fulfillment they could never quite achieve. With a bank account perpetually in the red, he became an unlikely role model - an icon of authenticity and a bottomless source of inspiration, emulation, and adoration - for a generation of pop culture heavyweights..."
(Peter is said to have disrobed freely since childhood.)
page 112 "It was a bad boy stage persona Peter had begun to cultivate only recently. Even his band mates were at a loss.... It all seemed a little too Hollywood. Peter had pulled a similar stunt recently at the Palladium in Hollywood, opening for the New York Dolls. He'd come out in a diaper, with a squirt gun inside it filled with milk, covered with a rubber penis He squirted milk onto the audience, which promptly booed him off the stage. At least with the Dolls crowd, Peter could be excused for expecting some punk-rock enthusiasm for his wild stage antics....
The Unsolved Life of Peter Ivers and the Lost History of New Wave Theatre
C Josh Frank 2008 By Josh Frank with Charlie Buckholtz
Free Press a division of Simon and Shuster publishers
page XVIII "... in many ways he (Peter) exemplified the cross-pollination of punks and comics...
page XIX "He made a lot of decisions in his life, and many of them seemed to lead away from the success he so vitally desired. Some called him Peter Pan, the boy who refused to grow up and face facts, while others rooted for him till his last days. By choosing to live the artistic dreams that they themselves (often admittedly) had given up on, he exuded a fulfillment they could never quite achieve. With a bank account perpetually in the red, he became an unlikely role model - an icon of authenticity and a bottomless source of inspiration, emulation, and adoration - for a generation of pop culture heavyweights..."
(Peter is said to have disrobed freely since childhood.)
page 112 "It was a bad boy stage persona Peter had begun to cultivate only recently. Even his band mates were at a loss.... It all seemed a little too Hollywood. Peter had pulled a similar stunt recently at the Palladium in Hollywood, opening for the New York Dolls. He'd come out in a diaper, with a squirt gun inside it filled with milk, covered with a rubber penis He squirted milk onto the audience, which promptly booed him off the stage. At least with the Dolls crowd, Peter could be excused for expecting some punk-rock enthusiasm for his wild stage antics....
8/18/09
MILTON KLONSKY Quote
From ONE DROP by Bliss Broyard, quoted page 367
"The Village, with its unpredictably digressive streets and twisting free-association byways, was divided from the straight and square-away world uptown like the ego from the id. - Milton Klonsky
8/16/09
8/14/09
THE ROAD NOT TAKEN - ROBERT FROST
THE ROAD NOT TAKEN
By Robert Frost
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no steps had trodden black.
Oh! I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I -
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
By Robert Frost
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no steps had trodden black.
Oh! I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I -
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
8/13/09
EXCERPT from IN HEAVEN EVERYTHING IS FINE
IN HEAVEN EVERYTHING IS FINE
The Unsolved Life of Peter Ivers and the Lost History of New Wave Theatre
C Josh Frank 2008 By Josh Frank with Charlie Buckholtz
Free Press a division of Simon and Shuster publishers
page 232
"Helm got the sense that Peter was in search of another alternative community to be a part of. Downtown was the LA art scene's Wild West, a seedy no-man's-land with a tight sense of belonging among its artist pioneers. The social infrastructure was exclusively grassroots, which reinforced the sense of community.There were loft parties, bands playing on loading docks, and one-night-a -week clubs where people packed obscure dead venues just by word of mouth.'
"Some of Peter's friends thought he was searching for something more than a new group of collaborators and friends. Peter was still Peter - upbeat and focused on his work - but something had changed. His friends sensed that the separation from Lucy affected him more deeply than perhaps even he knew. He seemed lost. His woman friends in particular .... could tell that Peter was sad, that he didn't understand why things hadn't worked out, that he was feeling a sense of failure...'
Page 257
"Meanwhile, many of his friends had chosen instead to focus on the one or two things they did best, had leveraged their talents, and hit it big, achieving the kind of success that always eluded Peter. The wear and tear of constant struggle was beginning to show.... Peter sensed he was being left behind... And there was money. Having mortgaged everything on his dream, Peter was essentially destitute. The minor celebrity he was attaining on new Wave Theatre could not pay for dinner. With increasing frequency he started showing up at friends' houses around mealtime, partially for the company and partially for a free hot meal...'
Pages 256-257
In the last decade before his death he (Peter Ivers) had recorded four original records and a demo for a fifth, Nirvana Cuba, which was intended as not only an album but also as a musical performance to be staged and filmed. He had created videos for a number of the Nirvana Cuba songs and secured a National Endowment of the Arts grant for his video work. He had written an iconic song for an iconic movie and a handful of other highly regarded songs and scores for theatre, television, and film. He had countless other original songs in various stages of completion...
8/1/09
EXCERPT from I'LL BE YOUR MIRROR - ANDY WARHOL
From the Afterward by Wayne Koestenbaum
3. The culture police want to limit creators to one medium, one stance. Paint, but don't make films. Write essays, but don't star in soaps. Be a docent, but don't be a public indecency. Warhol spread himself thin; the interview is one more slices of bread he insisted on buttering. Space hog, he laid permanent claim to the word interview by publishing a magazine with that name. His own liminal behavior, whether seen or unseen, exposed the inter within the view; vision, according to Warhol, is always cut, interrupted, interposed by a wedge of thirdness. Warhol's interviews, gathered here, play the wedge fame with indisputable mastery.
5. Andy wanted to be left alone, and yet he paradoxically pretended to seek interpersonal encounter, into the unsafe space of the interview, he inserted not his own, vulnerable, actual body, but a replacement body, a mannequin, a dummy. It looks like me, but it's not. I'm elsewhere,. I seem to be answering your questions, but don't be fooled. Transcendentally indifferent to your groveling, literal-minded suppositions. I protect you from my barbed fury by absenting myself from the scene of polite exchange. I'm priceless: off the market. I'm only pretending to take part in art's barter system.
I'LL BE YOUR MIRROR The Selected Andy Warhol Interviews Thirty Seven Conversations with the Pop Master Edited by Kenneth Goldsmith (individual writer-interviews are named in these excerpts.
3. The culture police want to limit creators to one medium, one stance. Paint, but don't make films. Write essays, but don't star in soaps. Be a docent, but don't be a public indecency. Warhol spread himself thin; the interview is one more slices of bread he insisted on buttering. Space hog, he laid permanent claim to the word interview by publishing a magazine with that name. His own liminal behavior, whether seen or unseen, exposed the inter within the view; vision, according to Warhol, is always cut, interrupted, interposed by a wedge of thirdness. Warhol's interviews, gathered here, play the wedge fame with indisputable mastery.
5. Andy wanted to be left alone, and yet he paradoxically pretended to seek interpersonal encounter, into the unsafe space of the interview, he inserted not his own, vulnerable, actual body, but a replacement body, a mannequin, a dummy. It looks like me, but it's not. I'm elsewhere,. I seem to be answering your questions, but don't be fooled. Transcendentally indifferent to your groveling, literal-minded suppositions. I protect you from my barbed fury by absenting myself from the scene of polite exchange. I'm priceless: off the market. I'm only pretending to take part in art's barter system.
I'LL BE YOUR MIRROR The Selected Andy Warhol Interviews Thirty Seven Conversations with the Pop Master Edited by Kenneth Goldsmith (individual writer-interviews are named in these excerpts.
NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE LINK ADDED
Still love to read from books and shiney sheet magazines - it's not the same looking into a computer screen - but in a rush I can still give a look-see to what's new in my favorite magazines on line....
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