Landscape 3: Rembetiko

All day it had rained, interrupting a hesitant summer that was late already. I pulled out a sheet of rolling paper, picked a tuft of Golden Virginia tobacco with my thumb and finger tops, and rolled a thin tsigaro. I struck the match against the box and lighted the cigarette with its flame. I inhaled a breath of relief, squeezed my left eye and looked around. The house of the community was filled to the last seat. New seats were passed along over the heads of people waiting for their drinks, cocktails in white plastic cups or cans of Mythos, at the bar, three tables covered with a white bed sheet. A half crescent of chairs was lined up on stage with microphone standards at waist length. Three socialist red curtains hung from the ceiling against the back wall, the stage lightened by six colored light bulbs, green, red, yellow, blue, yellow, red, hanging from a thick black electric cord. The pie baker walked to and fro, occupied and nervous, with a wasteful haste. The petrol man sat quietly at the far end table of the bar with the bottles of tequila and Red Label Johnny Walker. He greeted every familiar face with a broad Ikarian smile and dark frowned eyebrows. I recognized the doctor with his long pony tail, his droopy eyes, who studied the high number of cancer occurrence on the island. The room filled with smoke, leaving a hazy air of ashy smell and the tones of a lost era of open markets, crowded streets, tiny waterfront tavernas, passenger ships and refugees disembarking. The melancholic ruffling of the bouzouki, the bass of a classic guitar, the tearing of the violin and the soothing of the accordion, dancing away on the clouds of drifting mist in the early morning.





BBC Documentary on Rebetika Part 1

Cityscape 2: New York

1.
Steam rising from a drain at the intersection of Broadway and Grand streets. It pours north along Broadway, shrinking back like a startled animal with each passing car before starting its journey again.

2.
They are filming in the supermarket at the corner of Mulberry and Prince. What does it mean to look at the city from the perspectve of a writer and as a filmmaker? Part of me thinks that the filmmaker is doomed to see only a fragmented world, to understand the landscape in terms of how well it can be framed and to the extent that stories can pass through it. Perhaps the Writer is better able to blur the lines between cities of the mind and cities of reality and to build bridges between them. Or perhaps not?

3.
An empty white pickup truck parked along the side of Crosby Street. Its windows are open. Laughter from a Spanish radio station spills into the street.

4.
Thinking about Charles Dickens and V.S Naipaul as I wander toward Prince street. Both seem to find comedy in the pettiness and triviality of everyday life. Dickens finds this heart warming and laughs with it. Naipaul, despite rendering everyday worlds lovingly, seems to laugh at it. I'm thinking specifically of Great Expectations and The Mystic Masseur.

5.
A group on a Pizzeria tour of New York are hundled together outside Ray's Pizza. At the front of the group a boy waves Pizza menus and tells stories. People smile and laugh at his jokes, the same jokes that rise toward my window each Saturday. I know parts of his routine by heart. I find myself observing the group now as Charles Dickens, now as V. S. Naipaul.

The Frenzy, Frank

'But ... where is the frenzy, Frank, the bang, the boom, buddy, the slang, the oof, the awe, man, the puzzling pinnacle, the dithyrambic dazzle, the mind blowing wit! Where is it? I don't see it. It is missing.'

'Because I want to portray the slow digression in the opening, I wanted to introduce the daunting detail of every day, the common element in every one's life, you know, the benign, the petite, the insignificant, the ordinary.'

'Well, I can't publish it like this. You need to drag in the stranger with a hook, grab their attention with a forceful act, persuade the casual reader, create their curiosity and awaken their empathy.'

'That's exactly why I start so small. Everyone can immediately identify with the plain, the prattle of coffee on the kitchen counter at seven in the morning. It's a symbolic dripping through the filter of every day life.'

'But it doesn't distinguish the antagonist, you must create the extraordinary, the fantastic, what is special, there's nothing heroic in there now.'

'Precisely my point, the drama is hidden in every common person, the theater of life is present and enacted in every person's life, and it starts on an empty stage, the tragedy slowly unfolds, never does the reader recognize when fate takes a turn, by the hour but without notice, the big drama in life comes in the form of a subtle sadness.'

'No, no, no... I can't sell such sensitive, gay nonsense, it's too intellectual, too transgressive, if you want to sell your work, you cannot think like a playwright, think like a Hollywood director, the big picture, brother. Where is the explosive opening, the disastrous event, the fireworks, think Broadway! If no body dies, no body cares.'

Catharsis 1: Portrait of the Artist by an Italian Man

So the guy is a faggot. What do you want me to say? Yeah ok you could say he's nice but what do I care for nice. I ask him what he thinks about his team winning the Grand Prix. He don't know fuck all.

One time we are both stood by the till and he tries to ask me about the World Cup. I say, what do you know about the world cup? He don't know nothing, forget about it.

This morning I tell him he's shy. He thinks for a moment and says yes, do I think that's a negative thing? Do I think that's a negative thing? This faggot don't know nothing about the city. The city breaks you, you know? Like it makes you tough like in that film Taxi Driver. I tell him you gotta get strong like the city and he says or the city can adapt itself to me. I ask him to repeat himself 'cause I don't speak fag and then I say oh yeah, that'll be a cold day in hell, because the day New York welcomes faggots like him, forget about it.

He gets nervous around me which I like. I say don't get nervous, I don't bite, but I'm going to fire him next week so there you go, that's life.

Mid way through the day this girl comes in and he says its his girlfriend. She's nice you know like she speaks Italian and that. She says where you from and I say Sweden you know 'cause I'm funny like that. When she goes I'm confused a little and I say to him that's your girlfriend? I thought you were gay? I dunno if I ever thought he was but it makes him uncomfortable you know and I like that.

HTML Giants

Beauty lies beyond the eye
An open window to the soul
Who knows then how to bring her forth
Then knows the beauty of control

Unofficial Company Motto, written by Fabrice K. Gautier, President and Worldwide Creative Director, !Gautier LLC.

"Thank you for coming in so early." The company president said. It was icy cold in the conference room, despite the entire staff being huddled there. "I want to tell you two things"

"One. We are in the midst of a revolution. I want you to understand that this is a revolution sweeping throughout the advertising industry. It is an ugly revolution but a revolution nonetheless. We have prided ourselves for so long now on the power of poetry, on the power of beauty to strike to the core of the consumer. To elevate them. To make their purchase decisions matter. This relationship is now in flux. For every generation technologies emerge, they challenge how we perceive life, how we engage with one another. The written word is dead, I have destroyed all of my books and I urge you to do the same. The printed ad is dying, the magazine industry... Ah..."

His speech dissolved into sobs. There were many heads nodding thoughtfully around the room. The Deputy Senior Associate Group Account Manger stepped forward, resting a comforting arm upon the President's shoulders.

"This is a trying time for us all" The Deputy Senior Associate Group Account Manager continued where her president had left off.

"As an agency we intend to meet the challenges of a new world head on. When you return to your desks you will each find a questionnaire. Please fill this out and return it to me as soon as possible this morning. It is imperative that we are aware which of you is conversant in modern technologies and which of you is not. Thank you so much for your time."

The employees shuffled from the conference room and returned to their seats.

At his desk Mark studied the questionnaire that lay before him. It was a very simple 'yes' 'no' box ticking affair. Do you understand HTML, do you understand Flash, do you understand social networking. He was disappointed to find himself ticking 'no' for a large number of questions. He could operate a facebook page but he couldn't have told you how the thing was designed. He looked around at his colleagues. Each of them was staring down, a look of deep concentration fixed upon their faces. He looked particularly at the older Senior Associate Creative Directors. If new times called for new methods and new strategies, where would they fit in to all of this?

Later that afternoon, after a day of filling out purchase order forms and expense sheets, he was beckoned into the General Manager and New Business Director's office. The General Manager and New Business Director was a thin man in his early forties. It was his job to steer the ship so to speak, to oversee each of the accounts, and to generally manage. "Mark, please take a seat." He said.

Mark sat on the pilates ball that doubled up as chair. It was good for posture, but left its user bobbing in such a way that it was difficult to conduct serious conversations whilst straddled across it. It was for this reason that they had been banned from client meetings and new business pitches.

"Mark" He began. "I want you to understand that we value the work that you have done for us here."

Mark phased out.

The Maslow Mystery

I preferred to say nothing. Silently, I sat at the bar, staring, thinking, ideas bouncing off the dancing horde anonymously, my thoughts, a pinball machine jittering visuals of excited pinheads forgotten in the corner, without lust, without interest, my words slammed against the obstacles of bodies, breaking on their surface. In a fraction of a second, the option of a full conversation was fast forwarded, deterring me from approaching, from participation. I had developed a second nature like a mosquito net to avoid eye contact. I hated the buzz of shallow glimpses of conversation, females tittering, males joking loudly, the drum ruffle of alternating bass and soprano, the syrinxes of silliness clamoring their staccato joys. I opened my book and read, interrupted by jotting down notes of thoughts, the mechanical and mistaken association of random impressions in my head. To actualize my self I ordered a Bloody Mary, stirred it with the celery stick and fished out the olives. Quietly I spent around an hour before I decided to leave. I had exhausted my thoughts, letting my frustration freely flow, and I didn't want to drink too much tonight. I walked home, the streets were empty, the night was unusually dark. No one noticed me, like I noticed no one. Even the most remarkable men were only noticed by their own belief they mattered. The others at most tolerate man. What a man can be, he must be, Maslow wrote. But there was nothing to be, nothing to must. Who was this Maslow but the five strata of a pyramid? Who was this man that took such notice of him self, and is this how we see our self, as the filtrate of random association on a measure of logic? When we see man, we see nothing but his shadow.

Rivers of the Underground: Cocytus

Alas, formidable river, Cocytus. Nor baptism nor deluge washed clean my soul. No interest, no profit paid my debts. Here a sinner, I am, carried by this stream of consciousness, a frozen soul. If life is treacherous, nothing so compared to Hades. What priceless joy I thought to last forever, now lifts me from these misers? The price of passage, little, I would exchange all the happiness in life. Who can say they know the currents of the Cocytus? At the center, buried to my waist, the traitors of self, at the navel of being three faces, the father, the son, and the spirit. The surface of Cocytus a mirror that reflects the image of god, the self that could have been, and the horrific eyes, most feared by all, forced to look away in eternity.

Death Ship: Part 6

Later that day the sea turns against us. In the moments after this video was taken a siren sounded, a voice urged us to return to our cabins.

For a moment I imagine the suddeness of the sea's rage is connected to the discovery of the body earlier this morning. Why should the sea care what happens onboard Le Dauphin?

Death Ship: Part 5

We had been at sea three days days when the body was found.

Having been assigned to 'clean up' duties, the lowest available, I have spent my days roaming the ship with a brush and black plastic sack. I move between the carpet layers, the carpenters, the painters. I sweep here and there. I have found two sections of the ship where I am able to hide, killing two, perhaps three hours at a time.

Spirits on board the ship are running low. The heat and sight of endless sea has made the air thick and lugubrious. It lays heavy, as another load for us workers to carry.

On a deck above the Asian men lay in the sun; smoking, sunbathing. Every so often the shrill machine gun fire of their laughter pierces through the heat and every man below imagines it to be directed at him. I miss a pile of unswept dirt, the carpet layer slices a misplaced finger against a backdrop of happiness.

For three days they have fed us nothing but rice.

We eat together; workers on one side of the canteen, non workers on the other. We sit in silence. They speak loudly in unknown voices.

They find his body half hidden behind crates in a storage room at the bottom of the ship. In his pocket they find a letter addressed to Melicertes Palaemon and so both newspaper articles had been wrong. There is a contact name and telephone number in Greece.

The discovery seals the workers into silence. Laughter still drip fed to us from the decks above. Eyes are cast up.

I overhear a Scottish carpenter say "that dead boy was one of us."

Yoko Ono Peace Message

yokoono
Thanks for following! love, yoko IMAGINE PEACE: Think PEACE, Act PEACE, Spread PEACE



c
dear yoko, peace is stagnation.
yokoono
my friend, peace is stagnation, an end to war, imagine peace. love, yoko
c
i love to disturb, move on, everything flows, my imagination is driven by battling ideas. peace bores me. c
yokoono
to fight is to suffer, you must elevate yourself above strive, peace, yoko.
c
dear yoko, you sound like a cow whose stomach is slowly digesting the same thoughts over and over. c
yokoono
dear c, you sound disturbed.
c
yes, yes, now you understand, and loving it. now you excite me for the first time.
yokoono
you run away it seems, you avoid peace, maybe you are afraid of love. if you hate, you hate your self. love your self. love yoko
c
afraid, not afraid, afraid, not. peace is scary for new thoughts. maybe you are just old. maybe you are tired.
yokoono
my friend, dare to imagine a world of love, love is ageless. embrace peace. yoko
c
a world full of love, is an empty space to me, only in a world of opposites, of strive am I happy. c
yokoono
maybe you never knew real love, dare to find peace, yoko
c
no thanks