“the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes, aww!” — Jack Kerouac
Open Letter to Red States Revisited
Here we go again…
There is a letter going around. An updated version of the same letter that came out after Barack Obama was elected in 2008. It goes on and on about what is wrong with the red states, many of them southern, and what is right about the blue states, many of them northeastern. The only problem with its logic, or lack thereof, is that blue states are mostly blue cities surrounded by red countryside. Granted, this is coming from someone who now lives in Ohio, in a blue city, who was born in Florida, in a blue town, and who was raised in Louisiana, in the bluest city ever, which has as much to do with the surrounding water as with political preferences.
The “open letter” is supposed to be funny, I know. And yet, I take it now just like I did in 2008: as divisive, troublesome, wrong-headed, and not really all that funny. Besides, if the blue states separated themselves from the red states, they’d miss out on Delta blues, Mardi Gras Indians, Dixieland jazz, hushpuppies, cornbread, soft-shell blue crab and some of that other gorgeous seafood that only comes from the Gulf of Mexico and the gorgeous meals that are only cooked up and served in the south, and a way of life that is based on a sense of place and a slower rhythm and neighbors that call to each other from their porches and stoops to come have an iced coffee, a slice of pecan pie.
The south defines who a lot of us are, and despite what self-righteous, blue-minded folks might think, I would move back home in a minute, to the big bathtub of wrong-minded, red-tinted fools. Because no matter where we live, we surround ourselves with like-minded friends, and if you have to color your friends, mine are of many hues, none of which include blue or red. How about the black and gold of a football team? How about the rose-gold of a sunset over the Mississippi River? How about the dark brown roux of a shrimp-and-okra gumbo? Those colors make a lot more sense to me.
There’s no less appreciation for all that is northeastern. When we want to see Broadway shows, hear Harvard lectures, eat Maine lobster, we’ll go and visit our friends in the so-called blue states, which are perhaps known better for their wry humor, intellectual asides, and cerulean waterways. We don't have to live there to share the same views. But we also don’t have to be unkind to each other, based on where we live or come from or would rather be.
Just sayin’.
Annie, Sandy, Chloe
Annie Liebovitz’s exhibition of her Master Set opened at the Wexner Center for the Arts in September. Hordes of beautiful and not-so-beautiful people showed up for the opening night to view the beautiful and not-so-beautiful people, the made-immortal icons of Annie’s art. The Cashes and Carters, the Obamas, the Neville Brothers. Meryl, Nicole, Whoopi. Emmylou, Lucinda, Roseanne, Patti. John Lennon and Yoko Ono, Billy Carter and Margaux Hemingway, Meg and Jack White. Soldiers, heads of state, longhorn steers, poets, politicians and their brothers, singers, dancers, cyclists, weightlifters, actors, artists. Indeed, Annie has described hers as “a life through a lens.”
Then came October, which ended in a storm of the century, though we seem to be having a lot of those lately. Katrina, Ike, Isaac, others in between. And then, like a sister that no one paid enough attention to, that sat around and fed off too many wrong-headed ideas about hurricanes, who loaded up on fistfuls of salted fish and seaweed, Sandy punched her way through the Caribbean and past the Carolina coast to fall hard on the Northeast, slapping Virginia and D.C. on her way up to New Jersey, New York, and Connecticut. Not a nice girl.
Chloe is complicated, but November seems to have given her enough room to settle in. Not that she wasn’t already settled in. A tuxedo cat of large proportion and larger personality, Chloe seems to have decided that biting is indeed her preferred form of communication, the food bowl can never be full enough, and reaching through the open back of a chair to swat at fine-spun sweaters or corduroy trousers or whatever passes by is terribly pleasing. Much more pleasing than chasing the field mouse up the serviceberry tree and hours later giving up the pursuit to boredom.
Three autumn months gone, gone, going. Three names. Annie, Sandy, Chloe. Artist, storm, feline. Each has owned the world in her exceptional way. Vision, destruction, insistence. Focus, deluge, seduction. Film, surge, teeth.
2012 Best of the Net Nominations
Thanks to Len Kuntz and all the editors at Metazen, the itty bitty story I mentioned in a late June post, "White Stripes," has been nominated for the 2012 Best of the Net. Who says art doesn'tmake for more art? Thanks Meg and Jack!
That little turntable is spinning and so am I.
Bonjour Tristesse
Another Jean Seberg moment. Moving backwards in time: from 1960 to 1958; from Breathless to Bonjour Tristesse; from black-and-white Paris to a startling Technicolor Riviera; from Jean-Luc Godard to Otto Preminger. The jumps are wild, and yet Seberg, as Cécile, remains the gamine, this time guileful and in Givenchy.