AnimaMundi

Jude Ciccolella

I met Jude Ciccolella, who plays Mike Novik on the TV series 24, while working at the Albany NY County Department of Social Services in the early 70's. We hit off right away. He and I both loved music, literature, drinking, women and humor. Chick, the name he went by in those days, had passion and determination. Like me he was looking for someone and something. We both knew that we hadn't started to find it, but at least we knew that much, sort of. One Friday night we heard a knock on the door of our apartment. I opened the door and Dick walked in quite drunk and reeking of a onion-laced submarine sandwich that he had just devoured. I said Chick come in. Chick is about a foot taller than I and at least 2 feet wider. What could I say? Sorry Chick, no more room at the inn. He could have easily flattoned me into one of those stand up cardboard figures. Besides I liked him. He came into our apartment, uttered a few things and fell on the floor face down. We would have had to call for help to move him. Chick was/is not a featherweight. I got a blanket and covered him up. He was gone before we awoke the next morning. Chick loved Brando. He would always talk about Brando's style of acting. Brando was one of his archetypes. Not long after he told me that he was leaving for acting school. The next and last time that I saw him in person was in NYC in the early 80's. Kathy and I had gone down to the city for a weekend and we were staying near Madison Square Garden. After we checked in we went in search of lunch. Right around the corner from the hotel I spotted Chick on one end of a couch that he was being moving into someone's apartment. I walked up behind him and asked him for a quarter. He did a double take and then we both laughed. He told me that he had got advertisement gigs, living up in Morningside Heights and was still plugging for some acting jobs that he could get his teeth into. Then he started showing up in quite a few TV commercials. I knew then that he was going to make it. He did and I am happy for his success. He went after it, perservered and worked hard. He derserves it.

The Royal Library of Alexandria

My "watch the dance" dream brought to mind another. Many moons ago or about 40 plus years ago, long before I had ever learned of the Library of Alexandria, I had an intriguing dream about the library. I don't have many dreams like this that I can re-member. How many have I had that I don't recall? The dream was mysteriously haunting and its images have faded over the years, much like the scrolls and lecture halls under the waters of the Mediterranean. I do remember a woman guide who showed me the brilliantly colorful display of the wisdom of the ancients emanating in waves from different levels/rooms of the library. The dream of this grand repository of muse inspired knowledge is branded on my memory. Years later, I learned about the existence of the library through reading Carl Jung and from E.M. Forster's book Alexandria: A History and Guide. In the introduction, Lawrence Durell calls this book a small work of art containing some Forster's best prose. For four centuries Alexandria was the center of learning in the Western world. On October 16, 2002, the New Library of Alexandria was opened. Later in the 13th century, Palermo became another great focus of intercultural exchange. The city and Frederick II, Stupor Mundi , were not so distant in time and space from the nexus of Alexandria. However, Frederick's legacy is unjustly tempered by his lack of allegiance to the Pope and interest in Islam. Anti-Papism and pro-Islam was never good for publicity.

Harshly Made Money

Joan Didion's "Slouching Towards Bethlehem", contains an essay about the mansions of Newport, RI. I remember touring most them in the mid- 80's. After one sees all the marble and crystal, something says that the obscene display of wealth had "nothing to do with pleasure and nothing to do with graceful tradition, a sense of how prettily money can be spent but how harshly money is made, an immediate presence of the pits and the rails and the foundries, of turbines and pork belly futures. So insistent is the presence of money in Newport that the mind springs ineluctably to the raw beginnings of it." The kitchen at the Breakers Vanderbilt summer cottage is separate from the main part of the house because of the potential of a damaging fire. The dimensions of the kitchen alone is that of a two story three bedroom family home. One of the guides mentioned to us that a Vanderbilt descendent comes each year and stands in line just like us ordinary folk. Didion's essays are still powerful today. She doesn't come across as dated, even though some of the places and contexts she write of no longer exist. The vanished, like a film dissolve, is part of her style.

"Who could fail to read the sermon in the stones of Newport? Who could think that the building of a railroad could guarantee salvation, when there on the lawns of the men who built the railroad nothing is left but the shadows of migrainous women, and the pony carts waiting for the long- dead children?" 

The Second Sex

What with the centenary of Simone de Beauvoir's birth coming up, you would think that the seminal feminist book, "The Second Sex" would have been accurately translated by 2008. Not so, but you can read about her sex life here, if you are interested or want to for the 10th time.

Via Maud Newton

Winter Solstice Ramblings

Alfonso's dark moody Barolo-Amarone-Ripasso-tinged musings started me a-thinking about a solstice meditation.

Hedley Lemarr in Blazing Saddles: "My mind is aglow with whirling, transient nodes of thought careening through a cosmic vapor of invention."

Tomorrow is the longest night-shortest day of the year, the winter solstice. In this part of the world, it occurs at 1:08 am EST. We are supposed to have about 9 hours of daylight. As if it is not dark enough, nature being what it is, conspires to make it darker due to lack of sunlight. Grey December and the "sky is a hazy shade of winter... Funny how my memory slips while looking over manuscripts of unpublished rhyme, drinking my vodka and lime." Summer is born on the winter solstice, as winter is born on the summer solstice in June. The solstice in Europe used to be on the 25th until Pope Gregory XIII changed the date to the 21st in 1582. Thus, he got a calendar named after him. How convenient, helpful and less pagan for the Pope to do that for us holidazed folk.

"On the night of Winter Solstice, as seen from a northern sky, the three stars in [Orion]'s belt align with the brightest star in the Eastern sky [Sirius] to show where the Sun will rise in the morning after Winter Solstice."

On the night of the solstice, the Sun ceases to decline in the sky and the length of daylight reaches its minimum for three days. In Greek mythology, the seven days either side of the solstice were Halcyon Days. After this, the Sun begins its ascent from the pit of darkness and the days grow longer. A Sun reborn and a return to light. Nature's elegiac-swan-song night sea journey reiterated in the individual, like Jonah in the belly of the whale. It was the time of the year when all the cattle were slaughtered so that they would not have to be fed through the winter, i.e. fresh meat/chestnuts roasting over an open fire. Most of the beer and wine was fermented and ready for drinking at this time. The months of famine, January-April, would weed out the unhealthy. You get the idea. Serotonin levels are low, melatonin high, circadian rhythms out of whack. Sorta farblunget. The clave is 2-3 or 3-2. Evergreen yourself up and bring that light to the top of the tree. Rekindle and re-source. Why in tarnation do they put a star on top of the tree anyway? Most are looking for what's under the tree, non?

In the spirit of St. Nicholas of Bari, maybe a Pugliese red would be more appropriate rather than an overpriced Brunello. I'll have to brood over it for a while. Thanks, Alfonso and Terry, my most recent friends of centered vino. You are scintillae in a deep dark glass of red wine of the earth.

The Myth of Family and Childhood

Thomas Moore's "Care Of The Soul" (c.1992) was probably the only NYTimes best seller that I have ever read. Some people consider it new agey, but I think that is beside the point. Paraphrasing and quoting in spots: Part II is entitled "Care of the Soul in Everyday Life". Chapter II under that is sub-titled "The Myth of Family and Childhood." At the start, Moore quotes William Blake: "Eternity is in love with the productions of time". You know this is not going to be about another silly love song by The Beatles. He says that soul feeds on the concrete vernacular of the particular. Details, quirks, infinite variety of life. Since the family is loaded with major and minor crises, characters, success, failure, ups and downs of health, it is the primary source of nourishment to the soul. Many of us reading this were born in the golden age of the family. If we could only return to that, eh? Was it really that golden? Let's face it, families of any era are both good and bad. We're big on dysfunctional now. No friggin' family is perfect and most have serious problems. It's John Waters not Ozzie and Harriet Nelson or Leave It To Beaver and Butthead. Romantics and simplistic sentimentality have no place here. The pathological family is not something to be fixed and cured, as therapists like to say. It is the family events that have affected us deeply that need some reflection. The soul enters life through cracks in the smoothly functioning fantasy family. The family is a microcosm of society and also recapitulates the mythic origin of humanity by being close to the earth. Families filled with ordinary human foibles soiled by Dys-Dis (mythical underworld). If we whitewash it and don't connect with this mystery, we lose the soulfulness that family has to offer us. Family is most truly family in its complexity, its failures, weaknesses, beauty, horror. Facade of happy, so normal vs. behind-the-scenes craziness and abuse. TV sit-coms of sweet successful families followed by the news at 11. Did he really stab her 38 times with a butcher's knife that he had just used to carve the turkey? I recall an aunt saying that she was going to throw herself in the river. She never did of course, but the dramatic threat was intensified by running screaming through streets in the direction of the river. I remember my father crying in a contorted almost fetal postion on the couch crying in relief after the histrionics had ended for the day. Then, all was well again. I also remember my uncle at a wedding reception in this same aunt's backyard in summer. He was happily drunk and had removed his shirt. He liked beer a lot and there was plenty of canvas. The comic Ruth Buzzi then drew a face on his bare chest with magic marker. You know where the two eyes were. He loved it as did she and we all laughed from our bellies. A gambler uncle at a crap game in White Rock told of a band of masked men who raided the place and took the cash along with all the men's pants.

Family is to individual as origins of human life is to human race. The family history provides a matrix of images that saturate an individual all through adult life. People are too damned literal. Family stories and character can be transformed into myth through repeated tellings. The true story tellers are few and far between. We are all the poorer for it. By not honoring our stories and running away from the dark side, we feel trapped by seemingly inescapable family bullshit. Whether we know it or not, our ideas about the family are rooted in the ways we imagine the family.

Father, Da, Dad, Daddy, Papa

"We are all looking for a Father", said a poet once. The personal father has a lot to do with how we father our own soul. Today we have replaced secret wisdom with information. Information doesn't evoke fatherhood and initiation. It evokes power and control. What helps author our own lives? Becoming intimately acquainted with one's own life and casting out upon its waters are a good start. In part, we are always on the sea. It's then we see that reason, ideology and opinion are not all they are cracked up to be. The sea is fate, unknown and unexpected.

Mother, Mama, Mom, Mommy...

"O Singer of Persephone!

In the dim meadows desolate

Dost thou remember Sicily?"

Oscar Wilde  "Theocritis: a Villanelle

Mother, the word itself is very powerful. The Greek myth of Demeter and Persephone told of a mythic family so highly revered it was ritualized in the Eleusinian mysteries. Sometimes one discovers soul and the underworld against one's will. That pesky will to power, where there is no love. The dark depths are always alluring. Ask any Goth, alcoholic or drug addict. You might get lucky and find a Goth who is an alcoholic and a drunk. Saves time. Narcissistic lures vs. familiar wholesome values. Affectionate caring and bitter emotional pain. Madonna and mater dolorosa. We are drawn to the very experiences that will spoil our innocence, transform our lives and give us depth and character. What the hell are we doing here if this wasn't so? Rather than endure these potentially transformative phenomena, people go shopping or take another hit of St. John's Wort. For all you Martini drinkers, here's where the pomegranate comes in. In the Greek myth, mother Demeter goes from mortal nanny to revered goddess and asks that a temple be built to her. In her sorrow for her lost daughter, she also refuses the fields to bear fruit. This is serious stuff, since you know what happens if we get no fruit. No more martinis. Zeus arbitrates with Hades through Hermes about Demeter's daughter, Persephone. Hades relents and sends the daughter back to her mother, but not before putting a pomegranate seed in her mouth ensuring that Persephone must spend one-third of her life with him and the rest with her mother. Interesting that we sleep one third of lives more or less. A close death just occurred two weeks ago. We have never bought pomegranates this often up until a few weeks ago. I have been juicing them for Kathy to make vodka martinis. I made one last night. I name each one differently. The next one will be called the Demeter or Persephone-Kore martini. The myth can be a meditation on death itself, one's own brush with death or the death of someone close. The profound maternal affirmation of life allows such deaths to affect us, wonder at the mysteries of the underworld and send us back into life transformed. The pomegranate seed is the seed of life-from-death. The fruit looks sunny deep red on the outside and yet has a vast interior of dark black Hades seeds (arils, I've since from POM). Hermes, the quicksilver messenger/ arbitrator, is vital for our ability to see through ("Hermeneutics" the art of reading our experiences for their poetry) our self-destructiveness, depression, flirtation with danger, addictions. Initiation, death, survival, resurrection. Just a few weeks ago we had the pleasure of meeting some fine people at Barbone for dinner. Subsequent to that there was a passing mention of this myth and Zoloft. At that time, I did not know of the tragic death of a person close to one of the persons we met at Barbone and of the imminent death of my aunt.

The Child is Father of the Man

A poet wrote : "The words are wild".

For Christians, there's no better time of the year to write about the child born under lowly conditions exposed to fate. However, mythology from many cultures contains this motif. The Christians do not have eminent domain. Childhood and children have undergone some significant changes, not all good and healthy. We now see children in high heels and makeup, on anti-depressants, in porn and on and on. The child is a dual symbol of power and weakness. Revered to the point of nausea and abused horrendously. Something's wrong with our images of the child or how we perceive those images. Grow up already! You are acting very immature. The inferior child, as something to be rid of or grow out of. Small, inadequate, unknowing, the child contains something of soulful import. The more we deny it, the more childishness we betray. Our society finds it difficult to accept the exuberant spontaneous joy of childhood. We pay lip service to the child, but this country ranks low on the list of how well nations take care of their children. The year of the child, childcare, advanced childcare, afterschool care, pre-teen groups... Progress says that we are more intelligent and developed than our ancestors. In turn, adults are more intelligent than children. Our values are infected with this denigration of the humility of childhood.

"Primitive man is no puzzle to himself. The question "What is man?" is the question that man has always kept until last. Primitive man has so much psyche outside his conscious mind that the experience of something psychic outside him is far more familiar to him than to us. Consciousness hedged about by psychic powers, sustained or threatened or deluded by them, is the age-old experience of mankind. This experience has been projected itself into the archetype of the child, which expresses man's wholeness. The 'child' is all that is abandoned and exposed and at the same time divinely powerful; the insignificant, dubious beginning, and the triumphal end. The 'eternal child' in man is an indescribable experience, an incongruity, a handicap, a divine prerogative; an imponderable that determines the ulimate worth or worthlessness of a personality."---CG Jung

Vintage Videos

NY Magazine has made available some great vintage NYC videos. James Brown live at Studio 54, Grandmaster Flash, construction of the Empire State Building, Fania AllStars Live at The Cheetah Club, Woody Allen's Manhattan Opening Scene in Spanish 1979, Salvador Dali What's My Line 1952 et al. Great stuff!

Revolution #?

I believe that the only true and lasting changes to consciousness, culture and civilization start with the individual. Yes, there have been revolutions and coups, but look at the outcomes. Even individual transformation is painfully slow. Try changing your eating habits or try changing mine. Very small incremental changes in human behavior versus the St. Paul-on-the-road-to-Damascus radical transformation. So much has been written about the 60's and rock, that it has become a little boring, especially for those who missed it for one reason or another.

The Telegraph UK has this review of "There's A Riot Going On": Revolutionaries, Rock Stars and The Rise and fall of 1960's Counter-Culture" by Peter Doggett.

A couple of quotes from the review:

"Lennon was also a generous patron of Michael de Freitas, the former pimp and drug dealer who reinvented himself as the black-power leader Michael X. In one press conference, Lennon exchanged locks of his and Yoko’s hair with a pair of bloodied boxing shorts that had been donated to de Freitas by Muhammed Ali. De Freitas was later hanged for murder in Trinidad."

"Sly Stone’s disappearance into a haze of cocaine and angel dust was typical. The LSD guru Timothy Leary was exposed as a government informer. Huey Newton was charged with beating a 17-year-old prostitute to death, fled to Cuba and was shot dead in 1989 over a drug deal.

Abbie Hoffman committed suicide. Jerry Rubin became a stockbroker, and was killed while jaywalking in 1994.

At least Mick Jagger managed to sort out his tax problems."

Without a doubt, influences from that time permeate our post-modern-absurdist psyche more than most would like to admit. I don't think you can right off the 60's with a drug hazed aliby and cop- outs. The 1,000 things are still churning and will be for eons. At least, that's what I think IMHO.

Outlier Kulture

Alan Bloom's book, "The Closing of the American Mind" is twenty years old today. The New Criterion offers this article about Bloom's observations about our instant karma culture.

"But Bloom is writing about rock music the way someone from the pre-rock generation experiences it. You’ve no interest in the stuff, you don’t buy the albums, you don’t tune to the radio stations, you would never knowingly seek out a rock and roll experience—and yet it’s all around you. You go to buy some socks, and it’s playing in the store. You get on the red eye to Heathrow, and they pump it into the cabin before you take off. I was filling up at a gas station the other day and I noticed that outside, at the pump, they now pipe pop music at you. This is one of the most constant forms of cultural dislocation anybody of the pre-Bloom generation faces: Most of us have prejudices: we may not like ballet or golf, but we don’t have to worry about going to the deli and ordering a ham on rye while some ninny in tights prances around us or a fellow in plus-fours tries to chip it out of the rough behind the salad bar. Yet, in the course of a day, any number of non-rock-related transactions are accompanied by rock music. I was at the airport last week, sitting at the gate, and over the transom some woman was singing about having two lovers and being very happy about it. And we all sat there as if it’s perfectly routine. To the pre-Bloom generation, it’s very weird—though, as he notes, “It may well be that a society’s greatest madness seems normal to itself.” Whether or not rock music is the soundtrack for the age that its more ambitious proponents tout it as, it’s a literal soundtrack: it’s like being in a movie with a really bad score. So Bloom’s not here to weigh the merit of the Beatles vs. Pink Floyd vs. Madonna vs. Niggaz with Attitude vs. Eminem vs. Green Day. They come and go, and there is no more dated sentence in Bloom’s book than the one where he gets specific and wonders whether Michael Jackson, Prince, or Boy George will take the place of Mick Jagger. But he’s not doing album reviews, he’s pondering the state of an entire society with a rock aesthetic...

Well, they’re the suits in the back room. What of the revolutionaries themselves? The last time I saw Paul McCartney on stage he was urging us all to give our money to Africa. Yet I found myself thinking of Sir Paul’s late wife. Linda McCartney had been a resident of the United Kingdom for three decades, but her Manhattan tax lawyers, Winthrop Stimson Putnam & Roberts, devoted considerable energy in her final months to establishing her right to have her estate probated in New York state. That way she could avoid the 40 percent death duties levied by Her Majesty’s Government."

Some good points, some so so points. But when I'm feeling down and need something to raise me up or when I'm up and want to stay there or go higher, I don't look to Mahler or Puccini or Tupac. I get out some Ella or Sarah, Ellington-Strayhorn, Professor Longhair, Scott Hamilton, Benny Carter, Johnny Hodges, Paulo Flores, Carlos Lamartine, Tito Paris, Teofilo Chantre, Kassav', Malavoi, Sam Cooke, Jimmy Rushing and on and on.

Art In Action On Radio

Elizabeth Underwood of New Orleans Gypsy fame and Art In Action will be featured on National Radio Project's "Making Contact" on February 14. The show, "New Orleans Now: Can Art Help Heal a Broken City?", is the right sidebar of National Radio's site.

Halloween

Lauren Cerand's "The Smart Set" airs on Maud Newton's blog every Monday. This week our hostess serves up some Halloween diversions from your boring life.

Tiara Era

I've always looked upon the tiara as a showy piece of jewelry that was at best dispensible. Rob Walker in his latest "Consumed" in the Sunday NYT explains the significance of the quinceanera or 15 year old milestone in the life of a Latina.

La Bella Figura

Italians, as I know from my Sicilian-Calabrian training, love drama. They also hate rules and laws with ferocity. They must look good rather than be good. They must cut an impressive face/stance in the world, La Bella Figura. Though, judging by some of the reviews of this book, Luigi Barzini seems to have not only described the Italian psyche more vividly, but also set a precedent.

Under The Stars Next To A Mountain

Maud Newton wouldn't mind camping out for the rest of the summer under the stars next to this mountain by herself.

Woodcut by Neil Welliver

Common Ground

Check out Lauren Cerand's Smart Set for many fascinating NYC cultural happenings. NOLA and Common Ground are not forgotten on July 4th.

Magical Realism

Rob Gonsalves' Magical Realism seems like Dali, Escher and Gabby Marquez conversing at dinner.

Mother's Day

Happy Mother's Day to all mothers all over the planet.

"In ancient matriarchal societies, every day was Mother's Day."

Robert Briffault

"The Mothers"

Consumed

Rob Walker, author of "Letters From New Orleans" and of the column "Consumed" in the Sunday NY Times magazine, has written an intriguing piece on "doctrine centered" and "other centered" purchasing behavior.

NYC Hearts Louisiana

Lauren Cerand's Smart Set appears Mondays on Maud Newton's blog. This week sees two events that show that NYC hasn't forgotten about New Orleans and the rest of Louisiana.

African Art Now

African Art Now: Masterpieces From the Jean Pigozzi Collection is an extraordinary collection of African artists in various media with accompanying bios.

Meditation on That

Lauren Cerand, the indefatigable author of Lux Lotus posts this on David Lynch of "Eraserhead" fame.

Close-Talker

Alternet has a piece about Linda Savan’s book “Slam Dunks and No-Brainers: Language in Your Life, the Media, Business, Politics and, Like, Whatever”. You know, many of those dead-horse words/phrases that make you cringe or want to stuff something into the mouth that keeps spitting them out. From the article: “Pop language definitely involves using Black language to “hippen” stuff up, “hip-hopify” stuff. It comes back to that old thing of trying to sound like an “Outsider”. The irony is that the language of an excluded people is used by the included people to sound more automatically effective, with a little edge or subversiveness or whatever it is. So, Black people are used as a symbol for that in this context, as the symbol of the outsider, as the “X”. There's a whole section on “X” in the book, as a matter of fact.”

While in Boston last week, I picked up a biography of the great pianist Mary Lou Williams (1910-1981) entitled “Morning Glory” by Linda Dahl. Mary Lou didn't drink like many musicians did, but smoked weed (like many musicians did) which was referred to as “jive” back then. It's a very thorough and well crafted book that really deals with the music of this genius. She was not only a great composer but also a phenomenal arranger. For many years she played by ear and couldn't read music. She used to be attracted to the musicality (horns mainly) of men rather than the men themselves. Her life spans the entire spectrum of jazz from its early beginnings in gospel, blues, boogie-woogie, Kansas City swing, bop and beyond. You can hear it all woven into her unique captivating style combining sensitivity with relentless swing. She contributed at least 47 compositions and arrangements for Duke Ellington between the 1940's and 1960's. The Duke called her “soul on soul”.

Curation Nation

From the LA Times " Fads Are So Yesterday":

When asked about today's obsession with cool, even Popcorn sounds peeved. She moans: "It's like everybody's hip now. It's exhausting. There's no discovery. It's not original." Read more here.