not really, not really at all, as a song by the sublime Harry Warren, e.g., “At Last” or “I Only Have Eyes for You.”
SEA OF TRANQUILLITY
Three clarinets, attached bell to mouthpiece, bell to mouthpiece, bell to mouthpiece, make what might be thought of as a fairly long “tube,” glistening black, decorated with what the catalogue is pleased to call, incorrectly, “silver filigree.” The tube leans against an off-white wall. Title: “These Silvery Things Are Valves Like.” Nothing else appears to be in the gallery, save for an attentive guard, in an (but of course!) “ill-fitting” uniform that could “use the services” (but of course!) of a dry cleaner. We say: “He’s his usual gracious self!” We say: “He didn’t even bother to come to his own farewell party!” We say: “How we gonna give ‘im his gift?” The guard examines the clarinets/tube and it becomes clear that he is, or may be, an integral part of the exhibit, like he’s art. We say: “He’s probly part of the exhibit, like, art!” We say: “As far as I’m concerned, he can go piss up a rope! Look at that ill-fitting uniform on him, Jesus.” The catalogue suggests that the artist who created this majestic piece rarely interacts with his colleagues, but is aloof, disturbingly private, and, in matters aesthetic, his usual gracious self. He is a practicing poet, and also the reluctant spokesman for those who love life, laugh over a bottle of good Cabernet, feel that nature is extremely important to all human intercourse as long as it stays out of the driveway, and attend their own farewell parties. Alternative titles for the piece, culled from the visitors’ book that rests on a lectern at the gallery entrance, are: “Breaking Up of Our Summer Concert,” “Orchestra en Plein Vent,” “A New Year Contraband Ball at Vicksburg,” “Dos a Dos or Rumpti Iddity Ido,” and “Sporting a Toe.” “And they ask why,” a woman, rumored to be the department chairman—and who looks like a bag of rags tied in the middle—says, “he makes the big monkey!” A quick check of the monthly-meeting minutes notes that she may have actually said, “the big money,” although there are some who argue for the fey, “the bug money.” The clamor increases as the academics and their guests await the free box lunches and the mineral water, but the clarinet installation restores silence. For once.
STRAIGHT WALL
A long flat slab of the finest marble from the celebrated although by now wholly exhausted quarries of the small Tuscany village of Sfogliatelle is balanced, on one edge, elegantly if precariously, atop a volume of dead poems of some local notoriety. Their floating vocables urge new ways of seeing if not reading, of reading if not seeing, or of thinking a little if neither reading nor seeing. So the placard above the receptionist’s desk states: said placard and desk depend from the saccade-like nervousness and twitchiness of the slab’s darker side. Bolted to the slab are magazines that feature some of the finest writers of our time, but not, thank God, all of them. Many of them are in collaboration on contemporary thoughts: “The Future of the Village”; “Frozen Custard Rediscovered”; “How a Tough Street Kid Became an Oscar Contender”; and many others. Their prose, which is refreshingly irreverent, is the norm. The magazines have been sprayed with a faux-gold lacquer which has then been “sown,” while still wet, with cigarette stubs, ashtrays, insects, a small Burundi vase, a report detailing the bad news for an unknown yet beloved person as to his incurable disease, or, perhaps, diseases (the report is in the demotic Greek spoken by Weehawken diner owners), many excellent words from here there and everywhere, a sepia-tone photograph of a small glade in Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx, smeared with what may be brown paint, Fox’s U-Bet chocolate syrup, or excrement, and a glob of a truly ghastly crème de cervelle,
SEA OF TRANQUILLITY
Three clarinets, attached bell to mouthpiece, bell to mouthpiece, bell to mouthpiece, make what might be thought of as a fairly long “tube,” glistening black, decorated with what the catalogue is pleased to call, incorrectly, “silver filigree.” The tube leans against an off-white wall. Title: “These Silvery Things Are Valves Like.” Nothing else appears to be in the gallery, save for an attentive guard, in an (but of course!) “ill-fitting” uniform that could “use the services” (but of course!) of a dry cleaner. We say: “He’s his usual gracious self!” We say: “He didn’t even bother to come to his own farewell party!” We say: “How we gonna give ‘im his gift?” The guard examines the clarinets/tube and it becomes clear that he is, or may be, an integral part of the exhibit, like he’s art. We say: “He’s probly part of the exhibit, like, art!” We say: “As far as I’m concerned, he can go piss up a rope! Look at that ill-fitting uniform on him, Jesus.” The catalogue suggests that the artist who created this majestic piece rarely interacts with his colleagues, but is aloof, disturbingly private, and, in matters aesthetic, his usual gracious self. He is a practicing poet, and also the reluctant spokesman for those who love life, laugh over a bottle of good Cabernet, feel that nature is extremely important to all human intercourse as long as it stays out of the driveway, and attend their own farewell parties. Alternative titles for the piece, culled from the visitors’ book that rests on a lectern at the gallery entrance, are: “Breaking Up of Our Summer Concert,” “Orchestra en Plein Vent,” “A New Year Contraband Ball at Vicksburg,” “Dos a Dos or Rumpti Iddity Ido,” and “Sporting a Toe.” “And they ask why,” a woman, rumored to be the department chairman—and who looks like a bag of rags tied in the middle—says, “he makes the big monkey!” A quick check of the monthly-meeting minutes notes that she may have actually said, “the big money,” although there are some who argue for the fey, “the bug money.” The clamor increases as the academics and their guests await the free box lunches and the mineral water, but the clarinet installation restores silence. For once.
STRAIGHT WALL
A long flat slab of the finest marble from the celebrated although by now wholly exhausted quarries of the small Tuscany village of Sfogliatelle is balanced, on one edge, elegantly if precariously, atop a volume of dead poems of some local notoriety. Their floating vocables urge new ways of seeing if not reading, of reading if not seeing, or of thinking a little if neither reading nor seeing. So the placard above the receptionist’s desk states: said placard and desk depend from the saccade-like nervousness and twitchiness of the slab’s darker side. Bolted to the slab are magazines that feature some of the finest writers of our time, but not, thank God, all of them. Many of them are in collaboration on contemporary thoughts: “The Future of the Village”; “Frozen Custard Rediscovered”; “How a Tough Street Kid Became an Oscar Contender”; and many others. Their prose, which is refreshingly irreverent, is the norm. The magazines have been sprayed with a faux-gold lacquer which has then been “sown,” while still wet, with cigarette stubs, ashtrays, insects, a small Burundi vase, a report detailing the bad news for an unknown yet beloved person as to his incurable disease, or, perhaps, diseases (the report is in the demotic Greek spoken by Weehawken diner owners), many excellent words from here there and everywhere, a sepia-tone photograph of a small glade in Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx, smeared with what may be brown paint, Fox’s U-Bet chocolate syrup, or excrement, and a glob of a truly ghastly crème de cervelle,
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