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OPEN SPACE 21 THINGS THAT MATTER
A collection of essays, poems, etc around the theme of "THINGS THAT MATTER".
448 pages, Paperback
Published June 1, 2018
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July 22, 2019
review of
OPEN SPACE's Things That Matter
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - July 4-22, 2019
To read the complete review go here: https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/...
I've praised OPEN SPACE's publications before & I'll do it again. This is a h(e)aven for open-minded & caring intellectuals. Given that the majority of the contributors are composers/musicans & that they've been given the theme of "Things That Matter" a situation is created where responses to the theme are, perhaps, less predictable than they wd be if everyone solicited were exclusively political activists.
From Steve Cannon's portion of Russell Craig Richardson's early 2018 interviews collected under the title "On Ornette Four conversations around Ornette Coleman":
"What it was, is a whole bunch of artists and musicians, they lived there, what had happened, the City had abandoned that schoolhouse, so it was empty, and they just — you know — moved in and took it over, that's all. You know, and they did a combination of things, meaning they made it habitable in terms of a performance space, an of course rehearsal space at the same time, you follow?
"And they fixed it up. You know, brought in the heat, brought in the air conditioning, all that kinda stuff, that was needed to make the place habitable, and stuff like that, you know? Didn't last that long, they ended up arguing among themselves, fighting among themselves, but by that time Ornette had moved out" - p1, Steve Cannon
[I quoted the above for this review on July 9, 2019 — the same day I went to my friend's place for a BBQ in the afternoon. My friend said: "Have you ever heard of Steve Cannon?" I replied: "The name sounds familiar but it's probably not whoever you're about to tell me about." "Cannon was a beloved NYC poet who founded A Gathering of the Tribes, or something like that, who just died 2 days ago." "Yeah! That's the same guy!! I just quoted him in a review I was writing this morning!!" We were both very impressed by the coincidence.]
From Leonard Easter's portion:
"At one point, Ornette acquired a 'sweetheart option' to purchase a former school building on Rivington Street, on the Lower East Side. He wanted to form a community center, of sorts, encompassing a musical recording and educational space that would appeal primarily to kids. Of course, he took up residence and rehearsed there, loft style - it was kind of funny because each classroom had a distinct function: he lived in one, performed in another, etc. However, it was tough for him to raise the necessary funds to finalize the eventual purchase of the building. I know that he wanted to form a non-profit for this project but eventually everything fell through and he had to relocate.
"It was difficult because he not only lived there, but he tried to renovate and maintain it himself. He became a bit discouraged when, late one evening, someone broke in and smashed him across the back with a crowbar causing one of his lungs to collapse. He did eventually recover, but there was that lingering fear factor for a while that he wasn't going to be able to ever play again." - p 6
Notice the differences between the 2 versions: In the 1st, Coleman was squatting; in the 2nd, Coleman had a financial deal w/ NY City. The latter seems more likely to me but what do I know? Then again, the 2nd description quoted is from a lawyer talking so it's probably a lie, eh?!
From Jack DeJohnette's portion:
"You know, Ornette's concept of Harmolodics, I think it was a need for him to take charge of what his music was, so that critics wouldn't brand it. Cos the critics were branding music all the time. And so, I had my music - I called it multi-directional music - and Ornette... you know, that was a way of the musician taking charge fo what that music was being called, so when anybody referred to Ornette's music they would say 'Harmolodic'." - p 9
I can relate. I've spent most of my life self-defining. I think it's important. The 'problem' is that lazy perceivers (the vast majority) lose interest in things that don't have pre-fabricated contexts. It's too much trouble to 'think' outside the box., in other words it's too much trouble to THINK at all.
Then there's a "Review of Baraka & Taylor at the Poetry Project (2000)" by Christopher Funkhouser. Given that Amiri Baraka is at least someone of interest to me & that Cecil Taylor is one of my favorite pianists AND that I gave a performance at the Poetry Project way back on Monday, May 27, 1985 ( http://idioideo.pleintekst.nl/MereOut... ), this catches my interest considerably.
Baraka "continued by reading a series of shorter poems, including "Pilgrims Progress" (where both god & the devil are addressed as "motherfuckers"), and "Lo-Ku's" ("the african-american version of haiku", e.g. "you can pray all day/and get no answer/but dial 911 and the devil will be there in a minute"), all interspersed with AB scatting." - p 14
Are there any creative people anywhere in the world who get enuf respect to enable them to speak for awhile w/o having their audience get restless? I truly wonder. Take Funkhouser's commentary on Taylor's part of the reading.
"Since he was speaking of vibratory essences, I shouldn't have been surprised when, after 30 minutes or so, cell phones began to ring. Half the audience was visibly agitated because of the reading's duration; there was restless commotion in the back. Others traveled about in the space of the poem and moment. An artist was sketching. When Cecil sensed people's impatience, did he stop? Hardly: A false ending, followed by a sigh of relief from the beleaguered, was followed by more poetry. Cecil kept going, lightly prancing behind the podium! By the time he quit, the audience was 1/3 of what it had been." - p 17
Ok, these are 2 amazing guys, they're not going to live forever, maybe this is their last reading. Still, it was too much for people: Ho Hum, there are so many amazing people in the world, I'm impatient to get out to my favorite bar. Whatever. Maybe they were both being self-indulgent old bores. Maybe if the audience lllooooovvvveeeedddd them I'd be sickened by reading about it. I hated it when full houses at the Andy Warhol Museum hung on every word of Stan Brakhage's self-aggrandizing bullshit.. on every word of Kenneth Anger's insidious psychic vapirism & con artistry.
This publication is more vast than my review will adequately touch on. This review will skip over sections. Another reviewer cd only focus on what I leave out & still be very thorough. There is no chase to cut to. Next I quote Benjamin Boretz, perhaps THE elder of this astonishing cluster of minds.
"So are the things that matter not things at all? Or are they things metaphorically separated from the mattering attributed to them, the mattering which they are felt to have occasioned? When I play music for you, and it doesn't matter to you, I know by something that happens in my being that we have together conjured a space of mutual nonconsonance, that where we each are is not quite in the same world, or at least not the same room. That kind of experience (which one has had) makes me think of that primal shock of originary cognitive dissonance which simultaneously and instantaneously forces every infant's revelation of other, self, and the world; the moment that compels the discovery, really the invention of thought, as an emergency tool conjured in panic to restore sanity, equilibrium, cohesion. From the outside, ontological creativity appears to be volitional, "the chosen"; but from within it reads like Stravinsky's "I do not seek, I find". And, "I know there's a real world out there, because not all of my fantasies work" (-BB) - pp 26-27
Then there's David Lidov's take on the theme:
"The THINGS-THAT-MATTER gauntlet would have been easier to snatch in '68 or '72. I might have said stopping the war matters. My late wife was chronically ill and couldn't take the air downtown. I might have said not living downtown mattered.
"Matters to whom? Even back then, I would have quickly yielded if challenged. With less than a minute of reflection, I would have been ready to acknowledge that my concerns didn't matter outside my personal world's time, didn't matter to the Milky Way or the cosmos beyond." - p 29
When Dorota Czerner, one of OPEN SPACE's editors, offered the opportunity for me to contribute to the issue that will hopefully follow the one I'm reviewing here she sd I cd address the issue of "THINGS THAT MATTER" if so inclined. I find the issue dauntingly large given that almost everything I've ever invested energy in in my whole life might be THINGS THAT MATTER to me. I'm an anarchist, a political activist — but I'm also a writer, a critic, a d composer, a usician, a performer, a moviemaker, & a person who's been many other things as well in order to make a living. All of these things MATTER to me & to other people.
The idea of "THINGS THAT MATTER" strikes me as a human scale idea. I'm not convinced that "the Milky Way or the cosmos beyond" have any sense of THINGS THAT MATTER so, unlike Lidov, I have no problem w/ addressing the issue on a human scale. I was completely opposed to the Vietnam War in 1968 & 1972. I have no problem or hesitation saying that such opposition was one of the THINGS THAT MATTERed to me then. I'm still opposed to ALL war. I'm still opposed to the mind-boggling tendency of human beings to cause suffering for other life, both to the same species & to non-humans. I think THAT MATTERs. If one watches the Robert H. Gardner History Channel 'documentary' about the Vikings then one hears the dramatic narrator intone at the end something to the effect that, yeah, the Vikings were brutal but they expanded world trade, etc. My reply is: anything that 'requires' mass murder isn't worth it. Certainly there cd've been less-greed-&-murder-based ways of expanding trade. Today's 'Free Trade' was yesterday's Viking raid. We still live in a world of state-sponsored terror (what was once the Roman Empire) & Barbarian terror (the Huns). It still sucks for the rest of us, the ones who get killed &/or traumatized who really don't care about having a golden goblet. This MATTERs to anyone caught in the crossfire & to plenty of the rest of us who can actually feel sympathy for our fellow human beings.
Lidov continues:
"Years later, I understand that that false question of mattering to the cosmos has never been anything but a cover-up for discouragement. When young, I could quickly push it away with fantasies of what WE could accomplish: Stop the War! Care for all the children! Empower the workers! At my present age, the "We" progressively gets pretty diffuse for the standard reasons, plural is shrinking toward singular. I will not be able to clean up the plastics in the oceans. I will not be able to stop Netanyahu from wiping out the Palestinians or Assad from gassing folks. I will not be able to stop global warming. But, Ah-Hah, I may well be able to enrich your understanding of that crazy piece by LvB—if only I don't get discouraged!" - p 30
"that crazy piece by LvB" being Ludwig van Beethoven's last Bagatelle in his last set, Op. 126. Somehow, Lidov gets to Nero:
"Was the matricidal and Christian-slaughtering Nero Claudius, rumored to be plucking his cithera through the great fire of 64, really not distraught by the plight of Rome? Wikipedia says he was quick to organize food relief. As with Richard M Nixon, some good points surfaced afterwards." - p 39
Well, let's consult Suetonius about that little myth about Nero, shall we?
"But he showed no greater mercy to the people or the walls of his capital. When someone in a general conversation said:
"When I am dead, be earth consumed by fire,"
he rejoined "Nay, rather while I live," and his action was wholly in accord. For under cover of displeasure at the ugliness of the old buildings and the narrow, crooked streets, he set fire to the city so openly that several ex-consuls did not venture to lay hands on his chamberlains although they caught them on their estates with tow and fire-brands, while some granaries near the Golden House, whose room he particularly desired, were demolished by engines of war and then set on fire, because their walls were of stone. For six days and seven nights destruction raged, while the people were driven for shelter to monuments and tombs. At that time, besides an immense number of dwellings, the houses of leaders of old were burned, still adorned with trophies of victory, and the temples of the gods vowed and dedicated by the kings and later in the Punic and Gallic wars, and whatever else interesting and noteworthy had survived from antiquity. Viewing the conflagration from the tower of Maecenas and exulting, as he said, in "the beauty of the flames," he sang the whole of the "Sack of Ilium," in his regular stage costume. Furthermore, to gain from this calamity too all the spoil and booty possible, while promising the removal of the debris and dead bodies free of cost he allowed no one to approach the ruins of his own property; and from the contributions which he not only received, but even demanded, he nearly bankrupted the provinces and exhausted the resources of individuals." - http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E...
I trust Suetonius's account. As for Nixon? Wasn't he responsible for the deaths of huge quantities of people in Vietnam, Cambodia, & Laos? Whatever "good points" might've "surfaced afterwards" must be very small in contrast. THINGS THAT MATTER to me often involve fariness.. kindness.. Cruelty begets misery begets cruelty begets misery. It's literally a vicious cycle. Guilherme Zelig:
"From age fifteen João was a mason. Ebony black, already by that age he had lost his parents. Had to go to work. By twenty-three he'd started a family of his own. The only thing he knew how to write with a pen was his name. He would leave home for work early having taken his morning coffee, made by his wife. Would get back late, and sometimes stopped by the bar to take a couple of beers. But one time João lost his life. The police mistook him for someone else, they had assumed he was involved in a robbery in the posh area of the city." - p 60
So they killed him. Just like that. No chance to prove that he was at work at the time of the robbery. Ignorance, stupidity, hatefullness, racism, quickness-to-kill, impunity. More suffering added to the world. This is one of the THINGS THAT MATTER.
Russell Craig Richardson appears again starting on page 64:
"THNGS THT MTTR
How It Is
All women are the property of all men. Any one man. Any man
All children are the property of all adults. Any adult at all
All poor people are the property of any wealthy person
(All black people are the property of any and every white person)
Set against which, Three Miracles
Being
Awareness of Being
Contact" - p 64
I find the How It Is section to be deliberately provocative. Richardson may believe it's true. There are certainly many people eager to complain about being victims that wd at least profess to believing the parts relevant to them to be true. In my personal experience, many women are very successfully domineering & control the men in their lives w/ a mind-boggling viciousness. Children are hypothetically protected by adults to help them grow past dangers they're initially unaware of. But I wdn't exactly call them "property", as Richardson does. Anyone who's spent time around young children & their parents might find the parents being led around by the nose as the child subjects them to violent selfish mood-swings. All poor people are likely to be ordered around by most wealthy people as servants regardless of the circumstances but does that make them "property"? Wealthy people might not want "property" that has to be cared for, poor people are cheaper than slaves when we can be used as disposable tools. Even at the height of slavery in the US & elsewhere there wd've always been 'white' people who refused the attitude that 'black' people, or ANY people, are "property". I find these generalizations of Richardson's unproductive & offensive. For one thing, it posits all the power in the oppressor but I think we all have power. But I like Richardson & I'm interested in his writing so I read on:
"Once Upon A Time, there was an artist who decided to incorporate danger into his art." - p 64
I think of Chris Burden having himself shot &/or SRL having machines fight each other in ways dangerous to any observers.
"The artist gets on with his life, sleeping, reading, writing, eating, thinking, making art. The artist's movements are restricted to a space no more than six feet in front of this wall. A red line is drawn on the floor to make this zone visible." - p 64
I think of Tehching Hsieh & his one yr long performances such as the one where he lived in a small jail cell for a year without any entertainment materials, without communicating, eating only bread & water twice a day.
"The target area is potentially 50 feet wide x 10 feet high. The artist will always be in this area. When the klaxon sounds, the artist must freeze in his current posture and wait until the shot is fired. Or not fired." - p 65
I think of the Soviet propaganda cartoon, "Shooting Range" (1979) by V. Tarasov, in which desperate US citizens resort to being human shooting range targets to make a living.
"Once Upon A Time, I decided to read a book in a language I do not fully master. Each time I came upon a word whose meaning was not clear, I noted it down, and tried to guess the meaning from its context. Later, I looked up the words thus listed, and verified their meanings."
[..]
"adoquines (n) something to do with a dark street at night? "cobblestones" - p 68
I read this OPEN SPACE over what was probably a few mnths, always reading multiple other bks during this time. I finished reading it on May 24, 2019. Today is July 14, 2019. 51 days have elapsed since I finished reading the whole thing, at least another mnth since I read Richardson's article. What his opening provocations have to do w/ his 'fairy tales' that follow is beyond me. It's tempting to at least skim the article to refresh my memory. This wd be easy & wd enable closure. Instead, I think I'll finish this part of the review in a way inspired by "I decided to read a book in a language I do not fully master." Unlike Richardson, I won't check the correctness of what I speculate.
Richardson's grim provocative beginning, which I don't agree with, is countered by:
"Three Miracles
Being
Awareness of Being
Contact""
His "Three Miracles" are the 3 fairy tales he tells. These "Three Miracles" are not only NOT "Miracles" b/c they're not outside the possibilities of human nature & 'laws' of nature & they do nothing to counteract the grim 'laws' of oppression. They are, however, far more likely to inspire positive action in a world that's all too often like walls closing in on victims whose destruction is watched for the entertainment of people who've long since lost their connection to others thanks to the privilege that's cauterized their humanitarian potential.
To read the complete review go here: https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/...
OPEN SPACE's Things That Matter
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - July 4-22, 2019
To read the complete review go here: https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/...
I've praised OPEN SPACE's publications before & I'll do it again. This is a h(e)aven for open-minded & caring intellectuals. Given that the majority of the contributors are composers/musicans & that they've been given the theme of "Things That Matter" a situation is created where responses to the theme are, perhaps, less predictable than they wd be if everyone solicited were exclusively political activists.
From Steve Cannon's portion of Russell Craig Richardson's early 2018 interviews collected under the title "On Ornette Four conversations around Ornette Coleman":
"What it was, is a whole bunch of artists and musicians, they lived there, what had happened, the City had abandoned that schoolhouse, so it was empty, and they just — you know — moved in and took it over, that's all. You know, and they did a combination of things, meaning they made it habitable in terms of a performance space, an of course rehearsal space at the same time, you follow?
"And they fixed it up. You know, brought in the heat, brought in the air conditioning, all that kinda stuff, that was needed to make the place habitable, and stuff like that, you know? Didn't last that long, they ended up arguing among themselves, fighting among themselves, but by that time Ornette had moved out" - p1, Steve Cannon
[I quoted the above for this review on July 9, 2019 — the same day I went to my friend's place for a BBQ in the afternoon. My friend said: "Have you ever heard of Steve Cannon?" I replied: "The name sounds familiar but it's probably not whoever you're about to tell me about." "Cannon was a beloved NYC poet who founded A Gathering of the Tribes, or something like that, who just died 2 days ago." "Yeah! That's the same guy!! I just quoted him in a review I was writing this morning!!" We were both very impressed by the coincidence.]
From Leonard Easter's portion:
"At one point, Ornette acquired a 'sweetheart option' to purchase a former school building on Rivington Street, on the Lower East Side. He wanted to form a community center, of sorts, encompassing a musical recording and educational space that would appeal primarily to kids. Of course, he took up residence and rehearsed there, loft style - it was kind of funny because each classroom had a distinct function: he lived in one, performed in another, etc. However, it was tough for him to raise the necessary funds to finalize the eventual purchase of the building. I know that he wanted to form a non-profit for this project but eventually everything fell through and he had to relocate.
"It was difficult because he not only lived there, but he tried to renovate and maintain it himself. He became a bit discouraged when, late one evening, someone broke in and smashed him across the back with a crowbar causing one of his lungs to collapse. He did eventually recover, but there was that lingering fear factor for a while that he wasn't going to be able to ever play again." - p 6
Notice the differences between the 2 versions: In the 1st, Coleman was squatting; in the 2nd, Coleman had a financial deal w/ NY City. The latter seems more likely to me but what do I know? Then again, the 2nd description quoted is from a lawyer talking so it's probably a lie, eh?!
From Jack DeJohnette's portion:
"You know, Ornette's concept of Harmolodics, I think it was a need for him to take charge of what his music was, so that critics wouldn't brand it. Cos the critics were branding music all the time. And so, I had my music - I called it multi-directional music - and Ornette... you know, that was a way of the musician taking charge fo what that music was being called, so when anybody referred to Ornette's music they would say 'Harmolodic'." - p 9
I can relate. I've spent most of my life self-defining. I think it's important. The 'problem' is that lazy perceivers (the vast majority) lose interest in things that don't have pre-fabricated contexts. It's too much trouble to 'think' outside the box., in other words it's too much trouble to THINK at all.
Then there's a "Review of Baraka & Taylor at the Poetry Project (2000)" by Christopher Funkhouser. Given that Amiri Baraka is at least someone of interest to me & that Cecil Taylor is one of my favorite pianists AND that I gave a performance at the Poetry Project way back on Monday, May 27, 1985 ( http://idioideo.pleintekst.nl/MereOut... ), this catches my interest considerably.
Baraka "continued by reading a series of shorter poems, including "Pilgrims Progress" (where both god & the devil are addressed as "motherfuckers"), and "Lo-Ku's" ("the african-american version of haiku", e.g. "you can pray all day/and get no answer/but dial 911 and the devil will be there in a minute"), all interspersed with AB scatting." - p 14
Are there any creative people anywhere in the world who get enuf respect to enable them to speak for awhile w/o having their audience get restless? I truly wonder. Take Funkhouser's commentary on Taylor's part of the reading.
"Since he was speaking of vibratory essences, I shouldn't have been surprised when, after 30 minutes or so, cell phones began to ring. Half the audience was visibly agitated because of the reading's duration; there was restless commotion in the back. Others traveled about in the space of the poem and moment. An artist was sketching. When Cecil sensed people's impatience, did he stop? Hardly: A false ending, followed by a sigh of relief from the beleaguered, was followed by more poetry. Cecil kept going, lightly prancing behind the podium! By the time he quit, the audience was 1/3 of what it had been." - p 17
Ok, these are 2 amazing guys, they're not going to live forever, maybe this is their last reading. Still, it was too much for people: Ho Hum, there are so many amazing people in the world, I'm impatient to get out to my favorite bar. Whatever. Maybe they were both being self-indulgent old bores. Maybe if the audience lllooooovvvveeeedddd them I'd be sickened by reading about it. I hated it when full houses at the Andy Warhol Museum hung on every word of Stan Brakhage's self-aggrandizing bullshit.. on every word of Kenneth Anger's insidious psychic vapirism & con artistry.
This publication is more vast than my review will adequately touch on. This review will skip over sections. Another reviewer cd only focus on what I leave out & still be very thorough. There is no chase to cut to. Next I quote Benjamin Boretz, perhaps THE elder of this astonishing cluster of minds.
"So are the things that matter not things at all? Or are they things metaphorically separated from the mattering attributed to them, the mattering which they are felt to have occasioned? When I play music for you, and it doesn't matter to you, I know by something that happens in my being that we have together conjured a space of mutual nonconsonance, that where we each are is not quite in the same world, or at least not the same room. That kind of experience (which one has had) makes me think of that primal shock of originary cognitive dissonance which simultaneously and instantaneously forces every infant's revelation of other, self, and the world; the moment that compels the discovery, really the invention of thought, as an emergency tool conjured in panic to restore sanity, equilibrium, cohesion. From the outside, ontological creativity appears to be volitional, "the chosen"; but from within it reads like Stravinsky's "I do not seek, I find". And, "I know there's a real world out there, because not all of my fantasies work" (-BB) - pp 26-27
Then there's David Lidov's take on the theme:
"The THINGS-THAT-MATTER gauntlet would have been easier to snatch in '68 or '72. I might have said stopping the war matters. My late wife was chronically ill and couldn't take the air downtown. I might have said not living downtown mattered.
"Matters to whom? Even back then, I would have quickly yielded if challenged. With less than a minute of reflection, I would have been ready to acknowledge that my concerns didn't matter outside my personal world's time, didn't matter to the Milky Way or the cosmos beyond." - p 29
When Dorota Czerner, one of OPEN SPACE's editors, offered the opportunity for me to contribute to the issue that will hopefully follow the one I'm reviewing here she sd I cd address the issue of "THINGS THAT MATTER" if so inclined. I find the issue dauntingly large given that almost everything I've ever invested energy in in my whole life might be THINGS THAT MATTER to me. I'm an anarchist, a political activist — but I'm also a writer, a critic, a d composer, a usician, a performer, a moviemaker, & a person who's been many other things as well in order to make a living. All of these things MATTER to me & to other people.
The idea of "THINGS THAT MATTER" strikes me as a human scale idea. I'm not convinced that "the Milky Way or the cosmos beyond" have any sense of THINGS THAT MATTER so, unlike Lidov, I have no problem w/ addressing the issue on a human scale. I was completely opposed to the Vietnam War in 1968 & 1972. I have no problem or hesitation saying that such opposition was one of the THINGS THAT MATTERed to me then. I'm still opposed to ALL war. I'm still opposed to the mind-boggling tendency of human beings to cause suffering for other life, both to the same species & to non-humans. I think THAT MATTERs. If one watches the Robert H. Gardner History Channel 'documentary' about the Vikings then one hears the dramatic narrator intone at the end something to the effect that, yeah, the Vikings were brutal but they expanded world trade, etc. My reply is: anything that 'requires' mass murder isn't worth it. Certainly there cd've been less-greed-&-murder-based ways of expanding trade. Today's 'Free Trade' was yesterday's Viking raid. We still live in a world of state-sponsored terror (what was once the Roman Empire) & Barbarian terror (the Huns). It still sucks for the rest of us, the ones who get killed &/or traumatized who really don't care about having a golden goblet. This MATTERs to anyone caught in the crossfire & to plenty of the rest of us who can actually feel sympathy for our fellow human beings.
Lidov continues:
"Years later, I understand that that false question of mattering to the cosmos has never been anything but a cover-up for discouragement. When young, I could quickly push it away with fantasies of what WE could accomplish: Stop the War! Care for all the children! Empower the workers! At my present age, the "We" progressively gets pretty diffuse for the standard reasons, plural is shrinking toward singular. I will not be able to clean up the plastics in the oceans. I will not be able to stop Netanyahu from wiping out the Palestinians or Assad from gassing folks. I will not be able to stop global warming. But, Ah-Hah, I may well be able to enrich your understanding of that crazy piece by LvB—if only I don't get discouraged!" - p 30
"that crazy piece by LvB" being Ludwig van Beethoven's last Bagatelle in his last set, Op. 126. Somehow, Lidov gets to Nero:
"Was the matricidal and Christian-slaughtering Nero Claudius, rumored to be plucking his cithera through the great fire of 64, really not distraught by the plight of Rome? Wikipedia says he was quick to organize food relief. As with Richard M Nixon, some good points surfaced afterwards." - p 39
Well, let's consult Suetonius about that little myth about Nero, shall we?
"But he showed no greater mercy to the people or the walls of his capital. When someone in a general conversation said:
"When I am dead, be earth consumed by fire,"
he rejoined "Nay, rather while I live," and his action was wholly in accord. For under cover of displeasure at the ugliness of the old buildings and the narrow, crooked streets, he set fire to the city so openly that several ex-consuls did not venture to lay hands on his chamberlains although they caught them on their estates with tow and fire-brands, while some granaries near the Golden House, whose room he particularly desired, were demolished by engines of war and then set on fire, because their walls were of stone. For six days and seven nights destruction raged, while the people were driven for shelter to monuments and tombs. At that time, besides an immense number of dwellings, the houses of leaders of old were burned, still adorned with trophies of victory, and the temples of the gods vowed and dedicated by the kings and later in the Punic and Gallic wars, and whatever else interesting and noteworthy had survived from antiquity. Viewing the conflagration from the tower of Maecenas and exulting, as he said, in "the beauty of the flames," he sang the whole of the "Sack of Ilium," in his regular stage costume. Furthermore, to gain from this calamity too all the spoil and booty possible, while promising the removal of the debris and dead bodies free of cost he allowed no one to approach the ruins of his own property; and from the contributions which he not only received, but even demanded, he nearly bankrupted the provinces and exhausted the resources of individuals." - http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E...
I trust Suetonius's account. As for Nixon? Wasn't he responsible for the deaths of huge quantities of people in Vietnam, Cambodia, & Laos? Whatever "good points" might've "surfaced afterwards" must be very small in contrast. THINGS THAT MATTER to me often involve fariness.. kindness.. Cruelty begets misery begets cruelty begets misery. It's literally a vicious cycle. Guilherme Zelig:
"From age fifteen João was a mason. Ebony black, already by that age he had lost his parents. Had to go to work. By twenty-three he'd started a family of his own. The only thing he knew how to write with a pen was his name. He would leave home for work early having taken his morning coffee, made by his wife. Would get back late, and sometimes stopped by the bar to take a couple of beers. But one time João lost his life. The police mistook him for someone else, they had assumed he was involved in a robbery in the posh area of the city." - p 60
So they killed him. Just like that. No chance to prove that he was at work at the time of the robbery. Ignorance, stupidity, hatefullness, racism, quickness-to-kill, impunity. More suffering added to the world. This is one of the THINGS THAT MATTER.
Russell Craig Richardson appears again starting on page 64:
"THNGS THT MTTR
How It Is
All women are the property of all men. Any one man. Any man
All children are the property of all adults. Any adult at all
All poor people are the property of any wealthy person
(All black people are the property of any and every white person)
Set against which, Three Miracles
Being
Awareness of Being
Contact" - p 64
I find the How It Is section to be deliberately provocative. Richardson may believe it's true. There are certainly many people eager to complain about being victims that wd at least profess to believing the parts relevant to them to be true. In my personal experience, many women are very successfully domineering & control the men in their lives w/ a mind-boggling viciousness. Children are hypothetically protected by adults to help them grow past dangers they're initially unaware of. But I wdn't exactly call them "property", as Richardson does. Anyone who's spent time around young children & their parents might find the parents being led around by the nose as the child subjects them to violent selfish mood-swings. All poor people are likely to be ordered around by most wealthy people as servants regardless of the circumstances but does that make them "property"? Wealthy people might not want "property" that has to be cared for, poor people are cheaper than slaves when we can be used as disposable tools. Even at the height of slavery in the US & elsewhere there wd've always been 'white' people who refused the attitude that 'black' people, or ANY people, are "property". I find these generalizations of Richardson's unproductive & offensive. For one thing, it posits all the power in the oppressor but I think we all have power. But I like Richardson & I'm interested in his writing so I read on:
"Once Upon A Time, there was an artist who decided to incorporate danger into his art." - p 64
I think of Chris Burden having himself shot &/or SRL having machines fight each other in ways dangerous to any observers.
"The artist gets on with his life, sleeping, reading, writing, eating, thinking, making art. The artist's movements are restricted to a space no more than six feet in front of this wall. A red line is drawn on the floor to make this zone visible." - p 64
I think of Tehching Hsieh & his one yr long performances such as the one where he lived in a small jail cell for a year without any entertainment materials, without communicating, eating only bread & water twice a day.
"The target area is potentially 50 feet wide x 10 feet high. The artist will always be in this area. When the klaxon sounds, the artist must freeze in his current posture and wait until the shot is fired. Or not fired." - p 65
I think of the Soviet propaganda cartoon, "Shooting Range" (1979) by V. Tarasov, in which desperate US citizens resort to being human shooting range targets to make a living.
"Once Upon A Time, I decided to read a book in a language I do not fully master. Each time I came upon a word whose meaning was not clear, I noted it down, and tried to guess the meaning from its context. Later, I looked up the words thus listed, and verified their meanings."
[..]
"adoquines (n) something to do with a dark street at night? "cobblestones" - p 68
I read this OPEN SPACE over what was probably a few mnths, always reading multiple other bks during this time. I finished reading it on May 24, 2019. Today is July 14, 2019. 51 days have elapsed since I finished reading the whole thing, at least another mnth since I read Richardson's article. What his opening provocations have to do w/ his 'fairy tales' that follow is beyond me. It's tempting to at least skim the article to refresh my memory. This wd be easy & wd enable closure. Instead, I think I'll finish this part of the review in a way inspired by "I decided to read a book in a language I do not fully master." Unlike Richardson, I won't check the correctness of what I speculate.
Richardson's grim provocative beginning, which I don't agree with, is countered by:
"Three Miracles
Being
Awareness of Being
Contact""
His "Three Miracles" are the 3 fairy tales he tells. These "Three Miracles" are not only NOT "Miracles" b/c they're not outside the possibilities of human nature & 'laws' of nature & they do nothing to counteract the grim 'laws' of oppression. They are, however, far more likely to inspire positive action in a world that's all too often like walls closing in on victims whose destruction is watched for the entertainment of people who've long since lost their connection to others thanks to the privilege that's cauterized their humanitarian potential.
To read the complete review go here: https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/...
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