June 13, 2010

Gray dawn. Smolder of red tansy in the garden. Scarlet lily interrupting the rolling green of the back yard.

Just now fully recovered from the tribulation of first day of Studio Stroll, with its ten hours (nearly 12 for those who nervously got there to “prepare”) of tedium, labored politeness, heat, disappointment, occasional bright spots of meeting or reacquaintance. I have work far more fit to be seen than ever before, but it makes exactly zero difference to the bit of the crowd eddying up into my space. Did paint, though; did work on my novel. A man did come in with a grumpy blue macaw named Kinky.

The evening looked just as unpromising, ahead being one of those events you go to because you promise your friends you will, but which you dread and dread. It was the closing night of the long celebration for Ray Johnson at the Black Mountain Museum. I’m glad so many people have dedicated their time to his memory, but I never saw much beyond a hobbyest with means and loyal friends, and a tragic end. I’m thinking of Kelly next door, and the way her overheard day could be presented as epic: It was not just that she took her son to the park, it was that she took her son to the park as they were both pretending to be pirates. She called this ‘make believe,’ and it marked a watershed in American parenting. The poetry for the evening was meant to reflect Surrealism, and I suppose it did. One of the poets was boring and the other was partially my fault. I knew him when he was a baby poet, maybe had some influence. But he began talking the talk before he understood there was a walk to be walked. He still doesn’t understand it. He is context without content. The reading was essentially a presentation of credentials, as though he were auditioning for the role of Prophet.

Miles Davis cannot be mentioned in a poem unless the poet is up to something. This is one of the immutable truths.

The musicians were wonderful, especially a girl who sang operatically to an accordion. She gave me her card, and I could know her name in a minute. We went out afterwards to a new wine bar on Walnut, DJ and I and Thomas B and the accordion girl and a kid named Beau and a girl with a common noun for a name which I don’t remember, and Madison the puppeteer and Cody the Actor, and it was one of the finest evenings in memory, joyful and–yes-- poetic, and we drank $80 wine and I woke myself this morning with laughter. That was the reason the day was, at last, a success.

The Internet suggests that my old school, Hyre Junior High with its Ohioana mosaics, has been demolished. It was new when I went there. You expect a building to have a longer run than yourself.

Evening: the gallery stroll ends in sweaty disappointment. Why do I do this year after year?