Tuesday, May 20, 2003

William Morris ('Willie' to his pretty, cheating wife?) believed, sometimes, that an aesthetic of Craftsmanship and Beauty might subvert the Squares and uplift the Poor. I don't see it worked out. Last William Morris show I saw at J.P. Morgan's place. I mean I don't see it worked out. 'St Ambrose Tot Me To Spell' was the name of a painting I did but it became another painting. 'Moose and Squirl' I think. I was an acolyte (sp?), a steppenfetchit, at a Shrine of Ambrose up on Madison across from what was Gristede's but then Intermix and maybe still is. A Shrine of Ambrose ending in a coffin room where I slung Communion. Ambrose was the Pope who coverted Augustine. A Hymnist - a really pretty successful hymnist. A PopStar. Milan was the burning center of the World and Ambrose #1 on the charts. My Shrine of Ambrose a place of Many Tongues. One of the effects of the Music of Many Tongues as it was sung in my Shrine of Ambrose was that spelling was wildly eccentric and creative. I loved it. Leo Castelli used to try to correct the Italian Menu with an uncharacteristic desire for the mundane and conventional, but he learned better and quit. Mr. Hans Paoli was our concert master. He was an incredibly handsome man and fascinating to watch. He had a great love for music which was interesting to me in that many of those who labored with us and had known him longer than I thought he did not care for music because he went light on the canned stuff and never ran the radio in his car. We didn't have no canned, click track noise running in the dining room for instance. Once a girl says to me: "Quin, it must be horrible for you, a musician, to be here where there is no music". She had different ears than me. Prettier ears, but different. Paoli was a quiet, reserved conductor didn't let people into his mind much but it seemed to me that of all the facets of philosophy and life he and I would find agreement on practically nothing. Oftimes there were dissonances in the Music of the Shrine of Ambrose, but it was a place where people who, while everywhere else in the World they killing each other, sat for a time quiet so they could take some nourishment. Get some healing. I'm pretty much ready to jam with any voodoo boy espousing any kind of mythology it end in less blowey uppy shit. And making some money's always nice. I remember Paoli once said: "Last Tango In Paris, yes, it was a very beautiful movie. The filming." I said: "I saw Last Tango when I was too young, truly. It was sort of disturbing." I shrugged. He shrugged. He smiled. He had a wonderful smile and I hope he still does and has reason to use it a lot. I saw "Last Tango In Paris" with Bill Pulkingham, eldest of Betty Jane's children, in London the Winter of 72. It is a convention of old timey criticism that there is something innate in a movie seperable from when and how it hit you and indeed that that thingyness is a requirement of communication but when I was over on Madison before the Whitney closed it I used to loiter in Books n Co and skim the Foucault and the Baudrillard and I was twigging they were suggesting maybe otherwise but my reading ability all messed up by the ADD. My writing ability too. I look at a word and it loses all its clothes and I'm looking at its nipples or its knees and I forget who it is and I invite it to swim in the wrong sentence. Course sometimes I like to invite words to swim where they out of place just to keep things mutating. Momma used to tell me that her daddy Jap would, through an admiration of erudition and scholarship, sometimes misuse words but just this morning I was thinking how she also told me that Amos n Andy was Jap's favorite show and I've known Momma to bobble spoofs so sometimes Jap may have been just messing with her. Mutating. Miscegenating. In the Beginning there was just one word and I guess you used it for everything. Just this morning I was thinking that if I can get that damn Zeppelin over to Dos Passos I could probably figure a way to put Leo Castelli on it. Maybe he already knew Mrs. Montoya from when she was a model for that dadaist. This morning Mrs. Montoya is more Kiki than k d holmes. I hear Max Anderson from the Whitney's going to Yale. Max, watch out for Geronimo's skull. 11:16:00 AM    comment []