trules rules

i’m drivin’ hard along the I-70. just west of kansas city. pushing 90, eyes on
the rear view, lookin’ for the fuzz. the radio’s tuned
into K-MAX, blaring kelly clarkson, carrie underwood, and miley
cyrus, the young estrogen tri-fecta! my foot’s heavy on pedal,
and i’m dreamin’ of “oklahoma joe’s”
which has the best pork ‘n beef ribs either side of the
mississippi. you know, the kind that fall off the bone and melt in
your mouth? with the savory and sloppy, one-of-a-kind trademark
“oklahoma joe’s” finger-lickin’ barbeque
sauce? yeah, “joe’s” is situated in the back of that
little mom ‘n pop gas station off the highway, and i’m
headin’ there before my eyes droop closed and my head hits the
wheel. it’s three in the morning and i’ve been doin’
some hard drivin’. my hair’s greased back, and i’m
thinkin’ roy orbison, tom petty, and kansas city here i come.
KC, home of charlie “yardbird” parker, count basie, and
wilbur harrison, jazz music floatin’ in the air 24/7 along 18^th
and vine, back in the day. back in the day….

nah, never mind.
none of that shit is true. i’m in kansas alright, but the I-70
is taking me to lawrence, the quite civilized college town, home of
the mighty jayhawks, where my friend, moose, a tenured university
professor in geography, will be celebrating his 60^th
birthday on tuesday, three days hence. moose hasn’t shaved his
karl marx-like beard in three decades, and his brilliant, well chosen
ideas about ecology, farming, and home schooling haven’t
changed a lick in that amount of time either. i’ve flown in
from LA, where i’ve been living my middle age, going on 25
years now. ricky, skeeter, and chico have flown in too, from new
yawk, bethesda, and yuma, arizona, and they too, actually we four,
have already hit the big six oh. moose will be last, but we all grew
up together in the new yawk-long island suboibs of levittown back in
the day. you know the day: the post war, idyllic baby boom decade of
eisenhower and his buttoned down 50s. we sang in the “times
they are a changin’” 60s, along with bobby, joanie,
vietnam, the kennedies, pol pot, watergate, we shall overcome, sex,
drugs, and rock ‘n roll. of course, some of us sang, sexed, and
drugged differently, but that’s the interesting part….

i have a thing for kansas. it has to do with red ruby slippers, a new heart, a new
brain, and courage. you know, oz? as in, “wizard of”? how
many times did we all watch it? back in the day? i must have seen it
seven easters in a row, all in black in white: judy in black and
white, toto and auntie em in black and white, ray bolger, jack haley,
and bert lahr, all in black and white. glinda, the good witch, frank
morgan as the blowhard wizard, the munchkins, the wicked witch, and
the yellow brick road. i’ve been trying to follow it ever
since. that road. but where is it? what is it? following the yellow
brick road? what’s it mean? what’s the metaphor?
following your heart, your dream, your bliss? or walking down the
road of your parental units’ expectations? becoming their “son,
the doctah?” or becoming your own man? breaking or following
tradition? making money? becoming a “success”? in whose
terms? the world’s? your own? putting your mark on the planet
or retreating into your own private idaho, i mean, kansas? yeah, i’m
turning 60, i’m in kansas, and it’s time to evaluate,
reconnoiter, look into that all too harrowing mirror of life…

there’s three things i’ve been holding on to these last many years. when i
was young, i didn’t hold on, i looked ahead. i was led by my
ambition. i strived, i produced, i was driven. i took on the entire
world, sword and shield in hand, and i fought. i fought and i
thought… that i was invincible. i didn’t marry, didn’t
need permanence, i was foot loose and fancy free. i was an “artist”.
but now i think that maybe i was wrong. because i didn’t always
win. i fell down. i got hurt. i lost. after forty years, i got tired
of fighting. ricky, chico, and moose used to call me the “man
who never compromised”. and perhaps i was. chico always
preached “life’s a trade off, man”, but i didn’t
agree. i thought if you kept striving, kept your integrity, and never
gave up, that’s all there was to it. but now i think
differently. you see, the three things i’ve been holding onto
are home, job, and marriage. the big 3. security cards. three things
i never strove for, never wanted, didn’t believe in. why?
because it wasn’t the way; it wasn’t “be here now”,
live in the moment, like a rolling stone. it wasn’t free love,
trust the universe, fuck the man. were we wrong? we baby boomers? our
hippie, then yuppie, now bobo (bourgeois bohemian) generation? is
george will, the right wing columnist, right? were we self-indulgent,
narcissistic failures? were our blue jeans, long hair, and change the
world ideas just another youthful fad? do our kids, our mortgages,
our millions, our illusions, our illnesses, our 401ks make us just
another notch on the gun belt of life?

but see, my big 3 securities, home, job, and marriage, are far from it. secure. take a
look. my home. i don’t own one. never have. never wanted to.
i’ve always rented. seventy five bucks a month for my first one
bedroom in chicago when i was twenty two. a hundred and twenty five a
month for a three bedroom on halsted after that. then i house sat,
living on a hundred bucks a week for seven years while i danced.
moved back to new yawk, into the hotel woodward on 55^th
and broadway, seventy-five bucks a week. scalped broadway tickets to
pay the rent. moved into a beautiful, hand-built loft on 23^rd
and park, before guliani gentrified manhattan. sublet it illegally,
lost it in court. then LA, rent-controlled santa monica for ten
years, and now “lucretia gardens” in quickly becoming
gentrified echo park. i sublet the downstairs and the guest bedroom
to afford the pricey rent with one of the best views in the old
hollywood hills. but security? hah! the landlady can give me 60 days
notice any time she feels like it. it’s a free-standing, 3
bedroom private house. it’s not governed by rent control. the
lovely landlady, who i’ve had a decent relationship with for
over 14 years, can kick me out any time she gets the inkling to sell.
in fact, she gave me the 60 days notice a year ago, and i had to beg
to pay her $400 a month more just to stay. which is where i am at the
moment. but notice, i say “moment”…

job? i’ve been at one job for the last 22 years. at a prestigious private university
in southern california. for 17 years, i was an “adjunct”
faculty member. my contract was good for 6 months at a time. i never
knew whether or not it would be renewed, if i’d have a job the
next semester. fortunately, my students liked me, and my various
deans kept me on. i saw most of my fellow adjuncts go the way of the
world; new deans like to get rid of as much dead wood as they can,
hire their own men and women. five years ago, my third dean made me
full time. still no tenure, still no security. two years ago, i was
up for promotion. if i wasn’t promoted, i’d have no job
at all. fortunately again, my colleagues approved my promotion. i
like my job. i help form ideas in the minds of the young. i plant
seeds and watch them grow. i work only 8 months out of the year, and
my job and my art have allowed me to travel all over the globe. but
security? hah! i can still be let go on a year’s notice. if i’m
lucky, i’ll retire in 6 years. move to bali or the philippines.
open a little bed and breakfast. try to stretch my sad little 401k as
far as the oriental world will allow it. i’ll start all over
again. chicago. new york. LA. the great asiatic void. no guarantee.
no looking glass. no ruby slippers. no home. like a rolling stone…

then there’s
the last of the big three, marriage. i married for the first time at
54 years old, to a young indonesian girl, less than half my age. she
didn’t speak much english and we shared few cultural references
between us. bob dylan? richard nixon? who’re they? george
washington, abe linclon, the same. we’ve been together for
seven years now, married for five, and what a long, strange road it’s
been. full of challenges that other marriages, which are, a priori,
full of challenges, never had to face. immigration. ESL classes. home
sickness. seven written tests to pass the DMV’s driver’s
test. language, language, language. age. age. age. culture. culture.
culture. wedding rings have gone flying across the room. plates and
paintings too. i don’t think many men in my position, in an
equivalent relationship, in my marriage, would have stayed. but i was
finally ready. and fully committed. i loved this girl and i wanted to
make the marriage work. she tested me in every way. she was a
twenty-five year old woman going on 16. she wanted money. things. she
wanted freedom; she learned what independence was here in america.
often at my expense. i considered separation and divorce many times
over the first five years. my friends and family told me to quit, to
get out before the damage broke me altogether. but i persisted. i
stayed. i earned this young woman’s trust. this june, we’ll
be celebrating her 30^th birthday. we’ll have a truly
international group of friends joining us in our 60-day-notice house
on the hill, and we’ll be happy together. but security? hah! as
much as i’ve invested in my marriage, as much as i’ve
already gotten out of it, deep in my hippie-artist heart, i truly
know that it could dissolve, break, disappear, like quick silver, at
any given moment. sure, in kansas, marriage is supposed to be
permanent, enduring, “forever”, but looking at LA’s
unglamorous reality, and the national statistics on divorce, i know
that… things change. and that no matter how “secure”
one tries to make oneself, sometimes, life simply has other plans….

i look at ricky, skeeter, chico, and moose, all fine fellows each, collectively as
well. three have been married twice, and twice divorced. the moose
has been married just once and both his kids are out of the house,
one a resident at KU medical center, the other a first year med
student at KU’s med school. they’re both fine young
people. we went out to dim sum and oklahoma joe’s with them
both. what can it be, that three fine fellows are thrice divorced,
while just one, the moose, is still seemingly happily married and the
proud father of two medically inclined children? could it be the
water in kansas? the grain? dorothy’s “there’s no
place like home”?

touchy-feely kinds of question, me thinks. but i like the last of the three answers:
dorothy’s “there’s no place like home”. i mean, the moose married earliest of us all; he was the one who
retreated fastest from the world, to the myopia and safety of kansas.
he got a tenured college job, had kids early, bought a farm,
capitalized in real estate, and made, seemingly again, “all the
right moves”. while each of the other three had unhappy or
unsuccessful marriages and chose to move on in their lives. the moose
knew what he wanted and sealed his options tight. he built his world
up, and inward, to insulate himself and his family against the
hostilities and vagaries of life. ricky and chico were lawyers,
working for the man most of their lives. skeeter sold software to the
marketplace and became rich. he too, was dependent on external
buyers. only the moose (and myself) constructed the “world
according to me”. we retreated into our own private idahos, or
in moose’s case, kansas, and we basically marched to the beat
our own drummers. we’re the most set in our ways, me as an
“artist”, he as an “academic”, and we’re
the most opinionated and stubborn of “da boys”….

life? what does she think of all this humanistic mumbo jumbo? well, only life herself
knows, but me thinks she’s smiling at us all, knowing that no
choice is ultimately “better” than another. that each
human being makes his own choices, based on a personal alchemy of
history, genetics, practicality, and emotional need. according to ike
eisenhower and the buttoned down 50s, the moose has done “the
right thing”: held down a single job, created a monogamous
marriage, built a nest egg, and raised two winning kids. but from my
point of view, he’s a long way from oz. i wouldn’t trade
lives with him for all the corn in kansas. nor do i think, would
skeeter, ricky, or chico. moose simply doesn’t take any
chances. he’s adverse to risk, to experimentation. he likes to
plan ahead and to create a future he can count on. he knows what he
thinks, limits his intake, including the meatless diet he never
varies from, and he likes to keep things under control. ricky’s
had one job his whole life and two failed marriages, but late into
middle age, he’s first making discoveries about who he is and
what he likes: jazz, classical music, zen buddhism, and asian women.
chico is an accident happening. he knocks things down, drops and
breaks things, has done it his whole life; but you never know what’s
going to happen wid da chico man. he’s a barrel of laughs and a
pain in the ass, but he’s still alive. and skeeter, well, he’s
already retired; he can do whatever the hell he pleases. he followed
his mathematical bliss and cashed in; now he’s ready to marry
for a third time and start off on a new mentoring career. his life
and his smile are open roads….

me? i’ve settled into the comfort of routine and middle age. but… along
with my three permanent in-securities, home, job, marriage –
there’s also the very first of life’s insecure
touchstones, good health. you see, i had cancer in ’89 and i
could have cashed in all my chips, but for the lucky diagnosis of
hodgkin’s disease, which was one of the most treatable and
curable of all cancers. but what i learned very quickly from my run
in with a life-threatening illness, is that it’s a good
spiritual and practical approach to appreciate every day that you’re
alive, and to concentrate on all that you do have, as opposed
to all the things you still want or don’t have.
and with my upcoming hip replacement… i’ve come to
accept the fact that life could turn me upside down at any
unpredictable moment. and that ultimately, life’s opportunities
and surprises, and the reactions and choices i’ve made to them,
have kept teaching me and showing me that there is, in truth, no
security in life. that nothing is stable, nothing is permanent,
nothing is reliable or forever. yet somehow, i’ve come to
accept this proposition and live my life according to it. i mean,
look, i teach “improvisation” for a living. what does
that mean? it makes me learn spontaneity and impermanence anew every
day i teach. they say that one teaches what one has to learn. it’s
true. like when i travel, i don’t make an itinerary; i just go.
each day, i follow my nose, my instinct, and trust at the end of the
day, i’ll have a place to stay and enough money to pay for it.
sure, i spend a lot of travel time making decisions: where to go,
when to go, where to stay, what to see, but it’s my favorite
way to travel. in fact, it’s the only way. the way i live….

so on the night before the moose’s actual birthday, da boys all settle down in
front of the new kansas flat screen to watch one of our collective
favorites, “cool hand luke”. ricky and chico have most of
the lines down to the exact inflection of the southern prison drawl:
“shaking it here, boss”, “spendin’ the night
in the box here, boss”, and “what we have here is a
failure to communicate”. the latter makes us all howl, as
warden strother martin beats the indomitably non-conformist luke to
the ground with his impotent club of frustration. we all love luke,
the christ-like hero of the film, as played by the young and
steel-eyed paul newman. unfortunately, we’ve all forgotten how
grim the movie becomes, as luke is hunted down time and again after
each failed prison break. personally, i’m devastated by the
film and luke’s stubborn demise. when he bitterly admits to
dragline just before he’s gunned down by “the man with no
eyes”, that “i never planned a damn thing in my whole
life”, i can’t help but identify with him. luke and me.
consummate anti-heroes. ultimate outsiders. rebels without a cause.
yeah, that’s me, boss, never planned a thing that worked out in
my whole life. just grabbed that ring of opportunity and held on for
dear life….

so now i’m back in sunny california. i heard the missouri river over-flowed from
torrential rains just after we left kansas, and president dubya has
declared most of the midwest a national disaster area. good thing da
boys got out in time. all but one of us, that is. the moose is still
there, probably ‘til the end of his days. me, i’m still
makin’ plans. in six years, i’ll have been at the
prestigious university long enough. i’ll face my fears, look
myself in the mirror again, and kick myself out of my little house
and home. well, not really mine. hell, the native americans say none
of us really “own” anything anyway. yeah, i’ll kick
myself west. far west. so far west that it’ll be east. far
east. bali or the philippines. in fact, i’m taking reservations
now. if you want to spend a little time at my far out, far east,
villa manila, then just drop me a line. it’ll be like an
informal time share. you come visit ‘n stay with me on my 70^th.
or 80^th. if i’m still kickin’, that is….

but right now, i’m
drivin’ south on california’s I-5, from san francisco to
LA. i just put my dad in an assisted living community. he’s
crawlin’ towards the end of the line, and he needs a little
“assistance”, if you know what i mean. it’s not
easy to do, but who said life was easy. she certainly didn’t. i
got the radio up loud, and i’m tearing down the highway. not
highway 61, a la bob dylan, circa 1965. no, it’s hard to catch
ol’ bob on the interchangeable bakersfield-merced-modesto-san
joaquin fm radio stations these days. instead it’s john mayer,
amy winehouse, and kanye west. three of my favorites. not to mention
jack johnson, death cab for cutie, groove armada, rx bandits, the
shins, or the big bad voodoo daddies….

but look, the hills
are covered with a spring carpet of yellow mustard seed. the entire
countryside is in bloom from the recent late winter-early spring
rain. even the barren I-5 is singing. “the hills are alive”…
with wild green grasses topped with feathery coxcombs. with pink,
flowering fruit trees, oranges, lemons, peaches, budding with new
life. the cow shit still stinks around mid-drive, coalinga, but it’s
a beautiful day for the ride home. home? home is where the road takes
you. home is where the road goes. just follow that yellow brick road,
right dorothy? or in this case, just follow the wild yellow mustard
seed………

is it rollin’, boys????

still, i love the walt disney concert hall. right here in good ol’ wildfiring, earthquaking, mudsliding, and rioting LA. why? why single it out from all the other great buildings in the world? well, maybe it’s because i saw it grow out of the earth, from a giant hole in the ground on first and grand, into the most dazzling and inspiring piece of architecture within a five minute drive from my own front door. yeah, i think that’s it. it’s personal. the disney concert hall is my personal favorite. and that’s what people really mean when they say “it’s my favorite. it’s the best. how can you even mention your favorite in the same breath with mine, asshole?” no, what they really mean to say is “it brings me pleasure. it appeals to my sense of beauty, size, imagination, engineering, religiosity, scope, detail, style, my sense of ‘je ne sais quoix’?” 

why don’t you come along with me? let’s start on the northeast corner of first and hope. right across the street from the back end of the music center’s dorothy chandler pavilion, where mr. gehry has put a granite stairway that seems to offer 24 hour access to the concert hall’s tranquil rear gardens and urban park designed by melinda taylor and lawrence reed moline. let’s go just a short while after one of the concerts have let out, say a mcoy tyner or barbara cook concert, as clay and i like to do, when you get the full effect of the moody and tactile night lighting design.  

this is obviously the day-time view, but you can imagine the dark desert los angeles sky, with its smattering of stars twinkling amongst the skyscrapers, as we climb the steps at the lower right. this is an offbeat approach because the steel façade is not quite as elegant as it is around the front side at the southern, grand avenue entrance. you can see sort of a steel “pot belly” stove to the center left of the stairway, behind which can be seen the actual “guts” of the structure. but we won’t see that until later, because we’re proceeding straight ahead from the top of the stairway into the gardens. 

let’s walk straight ahead here, past the pot belly steel stove on the left, along the verdant and shadowed, white concrete path. towards the garden’s signature centerpiece, “a rose for lilly”, a hand-sculpted fountain in the form of a giant rose, designed by mr. gehry in honor of lillian disney, whose favorite flower was the rose, as a gift from her grandchildren and great-grandchildren. the fountain was inspired by mrs. disney’s extensive delft china collection, the outstretched rose petals covered in an intricate mosaic, composed of some 8,000 broken pieces of blue and white royal delft china, specially imported from holland for this project. 

honestly, clay and i are not big fans of the delft rose fountain. clay thinks it’s kind of chintzy, and i agree, sort of pretty in a naive way, but soulless, much like many of the disney cartoons and products of uncle walt and his progeny. but there are several benches, just to the west of the fountain, where i like to sit and meditate under the stars amongst the six international species of flowering trees, each with a differently coordinated blooming schedule: the hong kong orchid tree’s fuchsia flowers revealing their delicate selves in fall, madagascar’s snowball tree’s pink flowers in winter, mexico’s naked coral tree’s red petals in spring, china’s pistache yellow, orange and red leaves in fall, brazil’s tipu tree ocher flowers in late spring and summer, and latin america’s pink trumpet tree, naturally bearing her pink trumpet flowers in early spring. clay likes to nestle into the shrubbery of the hundred different expensive and exotic species, in between the benches and the rose fountain, and i’m amazed at how calm he appears, off leash, as he soaks up the ambience and no doubt meditates in dogese. 

after say, half an hour of nighttime communion with the sky above and the garden below, clay and i proceed to the south westerly corner of the garden’s exterior and make a hard left turn, where we can choose between the easterly view out onto city hall from the top of the south grand avenue stairways, or the much more inviting maze of concrete and steel architecture that mr. gehry has fashioned into two fanciful mini amphitheatres. we prefer to wait to get up a little higher in the outdoor stairwells for our city views, so i usually entertain clay with a monologue or soliloquy or two, which he patiently endures before he is rewarded with the steep, swirling ascending staircases which he so enjoys.  

“to be or not to be, that is the question, my dear canine soul mate. whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to be touring the exterior aesthetic intricacies of mr. gehry’s convoluted masterpiece by night, for free, or whether ‘twould be worth the exorbitant and emasculating eighty five buckeroos to soak up the inspiring sounds of the LA philharmonic, perchance within the inner chamber of los angeles musical sanctity and pretension?” 

clay barks politely, either when i’m done or he’s bored, and we proceed upward, onto the steep triangular section of steps in the southeast corner of the building’s exterior. the steps don’t lead anywhere, except to a spectacular view of downtown LA, looking east over pristinely white-lit city hall, along the long corridor that will soon become the trendy grand avenue project, an intended champs elysee of the west, and beyond, into the bowels of the city’s old factory district, now still an odd mix of quickly gentrifying lofts and still dangerous squatters’ quarters along san julian and main streets. clay likes the sight of this juxtaposition between the extreme poverty and wealth of the city, and he knows he’s one lucky and sophisticated dog to be given such an opportunity.  

we gingerly descend the steps and proceed northerly amidst a narrow corridor of steel which now completely obscures the easterly view, but which gives us both this unique feeling of making our way along the inside of a gorgeous sardine can. clay likes the maze-like feel of the tour at this point, where the building’s walls tower and swirl around us, and i particularly like the ability mr. gehry has given us to actually touch the steel with our paws, so to speak. the steel, which looks so sleek and shiny from a distance, is here much more granular and unpolished on the inside of the construction. making our way alone through the maze here, with its dark and abandoned curves, gives us the feeling of being thieves in the night. we like it. 

now we’re climbing higher up another curving stairway, along the east side of the building. what with not being able to see any of the city beyond, and with not another human being or guard in sight, we get a distinct feeling of… trespassing. we like that too. its’ dark and mysterious, and definitely not on the city tour. intrepid clay scampers up the stairway, far ahead of me, still happily off leash, like he’s in his own personal urban park, as i take my time, huffing and puffing my way up to the high point of the building’s stairways. i take a breather as clay comes back to get me: “what’s taking you so long, old man? let’s boogie.” i smile, take a deep breath, and proceed, now along the distinctly northerly part of the exterior tour.

it’s my favorite part, because as the narrow stairways descend, gehry leads us into the center and bowels of the great concert hall. here you can simultaneously look down into the rich redwood interior lobby through the exterior glass windows at the back of “pot belly stove”, and up into the decidedly unfinished nuts and bolts of the structure, inches away from its massively welded girders and support structure. if clay could speak, i know he’d be joining me and asking: “how the hell did they do this, man?” i mean, not only are the curving and swirling surfaces of the building giving us a completely different and spectacular view every few steps, but it’s so viscerally and amazingly thrilling to see how the building was so mightily forged and constructed. a building paul bunyan or zeus, himself, would undoubtedly embrace. 

it’s a shame, but our tour is almost over for the night. a little like coming down after orgasmic sex (not with each other), clay and i descend the post bowel, northern stairway, around the back of the stout and giggly “pot belly stove”, until we arrive back, full square, at the top of the northeast corner stairway at first and hope. clay’s ready to do the whole thing again, but me, i’m apparently good only for one two hour tour a night. so with much dog regret, we descend the hope stairway, down to first street, back to our car, back to… reality. 

i hope you’ve enjoyed the tour with us. you’ll have to come back for the interior tour another time, when you can afford to fork up the eighty five bucks for a concert of your choice, and i can accompany you, dogless, of course. but hey, you got the complete exterior “disney” tour. the gehry version, that is, as opposed to the always-crowded orlando or anaheim ones. i do have to admit, as curmudgeonly as i may be, it does seem that the great and grand children of the rumored anti-semite king of animation and moguldom, have indeed done something beautiful and awe-inspiring in their “uncle” walt’s name. or perhaps it was mr. broad, mr. gehry, and the corporate and fundraising city board members and powerbrokers who did it for them. but as i said at the outset, my dog and i are two grateful “customers” — although we don’t pay one red cent for our tour — or our appreciation. and although uncle walt may not like it that way, we both agree, that’s exactly the way it should be. 

so — a begrudging but genuine thanks, uncle walt. and “ruff, ruff”!!! 

i usedta be a cowboy. when i was 5 years old, i had a gray and white flannel western shirt, blue jeans, and baby cowboy boots. my eyes were pure, clear, blue, and innocent, and i tried to be a good boy and to do everything my parents wanted. i watched all the cowboy shows on tv in the 50s and 60s. i was a fan of roy rogers, lash larue, the cisco kid, hopalong cassidy, the rifleman, brett maverick, the lone ranger, davey crockett, andy devine, and richard boone as a bounty hunter in “have gun will travel”. not so much gene autry, and my mom didn’t let me stay up for “gunsmoke”. as i got older, i saw shane, high noon, the man who shot liberty valance, red river, shootout at the ok corral, cat ballou, bad day at black rock, the gunfighter, and how the west was won.

a suburban new yawk intellectual jewish kid from longisland, i was taken in by the american west and the myth of the trailblazing, pioneering cowboy. he was always in the right. he fought bad guys, savage indians, drunks, outlaws, and interlopers of all kinds. he was the chin-jutting sherriff, the ice-in-the-veins marshall, the fearless but persecuted homesteader, the immaculate justice-toting gunslinger. he was wild bill hickok, wyatt earp, buffalo bill cody, doc holliiday, billy the kid, jesse james. even when he was bad, he was good. i had all kinds of toy six-shooters, a cowboy mural on my yellow pastel bedroom wall with a hand-painted corral and a bucking bonc, and i had the complete, 80 card, 2 set editions of davey crocket cards. i still do, somewhere in one of my old camp trunks.

so it was not until long after my loss of innocence, my identification with my criminal and outlaw uncle, and the tv cowboy shows having sadly faded into the fickle memories of us eisenhower kids and our ravenous tv program execs, that i came to realize the de-constructionist truth. that the spanish and european conquistadors, columbus, cortez, pizarro, the high and mighty “fathers” of our hemisphere, almost on equal par with my beloved cowboys, had virtually raped the land, annihilated the native people, and destroyed the culture to establish omnipotent colonial power in the americas. that they had enslaved and corralled the indigenous people, eradicated a majority of them with european disease, and brainwashed them with stubborn chrisitanity.

that this culture of power, righteousness, and dominance simply spread to the holy american west came as a surprise to me as i passed adolescence and slowly outgrew my infatuation with my heroic and sacred cowboys. how could it be that never in miss bandiero’s 11th grade american history class, which i loved so dearly, did we learn that the frontier american government cruelly and disingenuously repeated the same humiliating scenario with the native american indian population, breaking treaty after treaty, and wiping out the majoriity of the native population with disease, encarceration, and military superiority. sure, tonto was the lone ranger’s safe and wise indian tv sidekick, but cochise, crazy horse, sitting bull… these were all real indian chiefs… who fiercely fought and opposed american domination and genocide before their hearts were so brutally buried at wounded knee, south dakota. and my main man, fess parker, who played tv’s davey crockett, and wyatt, and jesse, and the bills, these were some tough and bitter hombres who, along with upholding the law, also no doubtedly broke it repeatedly, killing good guys, bad guys, indians, outlaws, and who knows who else in the not always justice-keeping and teflon history of the west.

then i went away to college. buffalo, new york. (an unconscious homage to the bills?) and there i met professor norman holland. and his language and aesthetics of film. i fell in love anew. with the samurai. of course with toshiro mifune in “yojimbo” and “sanjuro”, and with all of kurosawa’s “seven samurai”, but also with inagaki’s “samurai trilogy”, and the blind but prolific swordsman, zatoichi. the samurai was a more sophisticated symbol for me to identify with and to romanticize. he was a loner. he was disciplined, both ascetic and aesthetic. a warrior. never would a woman interfere with his quest. his job. his higher principles. he was a trained and ritualistic fighter. a swordsman. not just some hotheaded cowboy with a gun. sure, he was a paid mercenary, but he did have some discretion as to who he would defend, who he would accept money from. i wanted to be a spiritual and life-long warrior. i wanted to be a samurai.

so i went through my young adult years as a samurai. well, not exactly. but as an artist. first, as a modern dancer. i trained every day. i was disciplined. i had artistic, ascetic, and aethetic principles. i lived for my art. not money. i sacrificed. i didn’t get tied down to women. i was free. free to move on when and where i wanted to. i tried to be strong. honest. principled. then i became a clown. a professional one. samurai, you ask? well, yes. i was still disciplined. i trained at and taught what i did. i lived on 100 dollars a week, if i was lucky. i made people laugh, sacrificing my own nobility and pride. look at mifune in early kurosawa samurai movies. yojimbo. sanjuro. he was a fool. he flopped, fought, raged, and drank. a samurai clown if ever there was one.

then i became an actor. a solo performer. dependent on myself. my own words. i put myself out in the universe and demanded to be heard. to be seen. i failed many times. i succeeded many others. it was a constant challenge. a constant battle, being an artist. so little support or encouragement from my culture. from my government. a constant financial struggle. but i was on the path. some western samurai-warrior path of being an artist. demanding the most of oneself. never compromising. a purist. a clown. an outsider. a dying breed.

my youth passed. dancer, clown, solo perfomrer, teacher….. i was in my 40s. living in LA. in 1969, i had gotten myself arrested in deadwood, south dakota, long before mr. milch and HBO discovered it - for wreckless driving. i spent time in wild bill hickok’s jail, and i was chained to the mountain-sized indian, neck. i was released on bond and never returned for trial. perhaps i’m still wanted in them thar black hills of south dakota.

anyway, in 1992, clint eastwood made the movie “the unforgiven”. it was dark and ornery, and there was something specifically about it that quickly put it atop my all time list of cowboy movies. what was it, you ask? it was - the killing. specifically, how hard eastwood made the killing. no longer were cowboys just firing bullets into the bodies of their enemies; no longer was a single quick-on-the-draw gunslinger just firing and wiping out whole crews or families of james-es, billies, or willies. no. because here was legendary gunfighter, william munny, taking on one last job. for the money. not for the glory. not for revenge. not for truth, justice, or the american way. just for survival. a cowboy who’d lost his wife, who was no good at farming, and in fact no good at anything but killing. and now, an old man, he’s not even up for that. yet here he is, riding off to the town of big whiskey to kill one more time. finally, the movie has munny do it, kill, not heroically, but painfully, and in the process, eastwood forever blurs the lines between heroism and villainy, between man and myth. squeezing the trigger of a gun, staring a man in the face whose life you’re going to take, would never again for me be an act to celebrate.

and then there’s the great gangster movies, and in our time, the godfather trilogy and 8 years of the sopranos.

here’s vito corleone and tony soprano, mafia dons both, following the infamous trails of al capone, bugsy siegel, and all rest of the fictional and real cold blooded killer-inheritors of the american west. killing for family. for honor. for greed. killing for power, sex, money; killing for killing sake. and here we are, the adoring and mesmerized public, waiting with each baited scorsese breath for the next gang land execution. the next garroting. the next bullet riddling. the next brutality. all in the name of entertainment.

and now i’m 59. 60 next month. life’s been moving along. my hip’s bad. i’m still teaching and i’m going to china next month on another adventure. last night i rented “harakiri” on netflix, and all over again, i’m put in touch with the power, the restraint, the beauty of japanese samurai culture. it’s 1630. beginning of the centuries-long institution of samurai. of seppuku. it’s the story of 2 down-on-their-luck feudal samurai who have lost their job fighting for their sponsors. it’s a time of peace, and once again, these trained mercenaries can’t farm or live without the sword. they suffer in poverty. and they come to the ruling clan of samurai with a favor to ask. can they commit harakiri (”seppuku”, the painful bowel dismemberment ritual) in the ruling samurai’s courtyard? thinking first the son-in-law, then father-in-law, are not serious about their requests, but only trying to be sent off with some money in their pockets, the ruling samurai force the 2 men to commit harakiri. the younger man doesn’t even have a steel blade; he is forced to do so with a bamboo sword, with which he naturally does a messy and painful job.

enter the father-in-law. played by the fierce-eyed nakadai tatsuya. he is told the brutal story of his son-in-law’s harakiri and asked if he still wants to go through with his own. without acknowledging his relationship with his son-in-law, he agrees to it. but not before telling his story. an amazing one - in which he first tells of his son-in-law’s heroic sacrifice of selling his samurai sword for a bamboo one in trying to save the life of his wife who is in a difficult labor without doctor or medicine. that is why he shows up to commit harakiri with a bamboo sword. but the proud and stubborn samurai clan don’t want to hear any whys. they only want to carry out the harakiri and not be taken for easy touches.

next, after throwing down 3 small wrapped packages on the seppuku mat, the father-in-law tells of how he tracked down 3 members of the ruling samurai clan, the 3 who witnessed his son-in-law’s brutal self execution. he tells of his individual encounters with each, as he subjugates each in battle and rather than kill his opponent, he instead humiliates each man by cutting off the “top knot” from his head, thereby allowing his hair to fall down “like a woman”. the samurai clan leader, who has been patient enough to hear the father-in-law’s long story, is outraged that 3 of his men not only have been beaten by a “starving country ronin”, but that they have lied about their lack of appearance at the ritual. he orders the father-in-law to be chopped down. but the father-in-law kills 4 samurai with great courage in a final battle with the entire clan, and he has to be shot down before he is conquered and vanquished. in the end, the samurai leader lies and makes sure that none of the heart-breaking truth is recorded for posterity. for it is far better to lie, thereby keeping one’s dignity and reputation, than to have empathy for a opposing samurai or to record the truth.

to my surprise, “harakiri” quickly replaced all the other samurai movies i had ever seen as my favorite. because of its power. its discomfort. it was, in fact, an “anti-samurai” movie. much like “the unforgiven”, “harakiri” was an anti-violence movie. it uncovered the truth underneath the all-powerful, unblinking samurai myth, and showed it to be a sham. just as hopalong cassidy and the lone ranger were ultimately made-for-tv kiddy entertainments, and most probably wild bill hickok, wyatt earp, and bat masterson were far from being the ideal heroes of cowboy lore, and just as vito corleone and tony soprano were finally only brutal thugs with colorful families and photogenic, senisitve sides, so were these impeccable samurai finally and merely human, vain, and ignoble.

it’s nice to walk around inside the memories of childhood. i have a synthetic, racoon-tailed davey crockett hat signed by fess parker, the disney actor, that i got on a trip to his medocino self-named winery. one day, maybe i’ll dig into my old black camp trunk to find my perfect, 2-set, 80 card davey crockett collection. in my mind, i can always go back to that yellow-painted, bucking bronc mural in the old westbury of my youth. maybe even one day, i’ll drive back through the sacred black hills of south dakota to see if there’s actually still a warrant for my arrest in 1969. but after watching and re-watching “the unforgiven” and “harakiri”, never again will i want to be a cowboy or a samurai. it’s hard enough being myself.

there is a difference between “hip” and “cool”; between “being hip” and “being cool”. hip cats know it, people worried about being cool don’t. and hell, i do, fer sure. it’s like the difference between fashion and style; between following the ever-changing but buyable trend or having your own sense of personal and self-generated bada-bing. between being “spiritual” and having “soul”. between having money and being rich. hipsters pride themselves on “knowing what’s hip”. people who “try” to be cool are more often, clueless sheep. hipsters don’t care what others think; coolsters do. hipsters live on the edge, maybe slightly over the edge, a little out of control, they push the boundaries, the norms. they gravitate to artists who do the same. dylan, picasso, miles, brando. these cats were hip. single names. invented new forms. defined hip for their generations. britney, christina, travolta, cruise, one names too, but only cool for a while. in and out of fashion.

do you have to be black to be hip? poor? dispossessed? an artist? i don’t think so. but it helps, of course. not having - is motivation, drive, ambition. makes you hungry. it demands you live in the moment, no cushion; it helps you invent new forms. not that fat cat rich people can’t be creative or invent things. they can. and do. but henry ford wasn’t hip. nor nelson rockefeller. nor even jackie, bobby or john f. kennedy. ray charles, sam cooke, otis redding, john coltrane, andy warhol, jackson pollack; the cats were hip.

the opposite of hip - square, daddio. from the old beatnik days. not too far from “uncool”, but still different. “uncool” - not in fashion, not fitting in with the pack. a nerd, a geek, someone different, someone ostracized. someone judged on the way they look or behave. but more externally so. a “square”? not too different… but more philosophically so. someone who just doesn’t get it. doesn’t want to. won’t try. sex, drugs, new music, new ideas. anything new, out of the ordinary. “no, not for me.” george bush - square. proudly so, but square nonetheless. conservatives in general, fundamentalists, not hip. folks who follow the biblical and family tradition. people who won’t think for themselves, or who, when they do, end up only with what was handed down, thought before.

are you hip, babies? have i hipped you?

what the fuck, trules? who cares, you say? are you the self-appointed cyber arbiter of “hip”?

well, no. definitely not. but you see, i’m afraid i’m losing my hip. my right one, to be exact. to long term, chronic and painful osteo arthritis. to a hip replacement. to a hip replacement i’ve been avoiding for the last three or four years, even though i’ve heard it’s the most highly successful joint replacement procedure going. i mean, who wants to replace their hip? i certainly don’t. i’m hip enough, man. i’m pushing 60 and i’m still wearing black 501 levis with the button fly. i mean, i saw jazz piano genius, mccoy tyner, and african singing maestro, salif keita, both, in a single week at LA’s hippest and most edgy edifice, frank fucking gehry’s disney concert hall. i mean, i married a young beautiful indonesian princess, 30 years my junior, married for the first time at 54 to a brown skinned beauty who hardly spoke any english and who seemingly had none of my cultural or generational hip-ass references like dylan or elvis or king or brando or picasso or miles or coltrane. i mean, if that’s not hip and edgy and risky and out of fucking bounds, my main messieurs et madames, then i don’t know what the hell is?

but yeah, i gots to replace my hip. five days in the hospital, two months recovery. crutches, pain, physical therapy, rehabilitation, more pain. all to reduce the pain i gots now because i’m losing my hip. no more cartilage. seems i wore it out from seven years of forced turnout – of my hip – when  was a modern dancer, age 21- 28. now i cain’t gets me outta no car without de pain. i cain’t play me no tennis like i done played for forty years of my life. i cain’t run, i cain’t sleep, i cain’t stretch, dance, even walk in de park widout de pain. i needs me a hip - replacement.

you see, i’ze getting old. like i sez, pushing 60. and i keep rememberin’ back when i was 25 and my pops was turnin’ 55 (five years younger than i am now). it was my pops’ birthday, and he was standin’ in the long beige hallway, outside my cowboy yellow painted boyhood bedroom. he poked his still young head in and said, “i can’t believe i’m turning 55 today. it seems so old. and i still just feel like little joey trules inside.” and i remember that. ‘til this day. it was so strong. and so surprising. that my dad, my father, 30 years my senior, still felt like a child, or maybe a teenager, inside his head. and that maybe everyone felt that way as they grew older and older year after year. still felt like “little joey trules inside”. and that maybe it would be the same for me. that when i was 55 or pushing 60, that maybe it would be the same. still feel like the younger version of myself inside. not feel like all the years my fully middle-aged bodied had accrued. and i do. and it does.

and my dad is going to be 90 this year, still 30 years older than me, his first born son. amazing how he keeps ahead like that. and his body is barely chugging along, after 3 heart attacks, 2 aneurism operations, after prostate cancer, after losing his dear and only wife of 57 years to a stroke, he’s still there. i wonder if he still feels like “little joey trules inside”. honestly, i really doubt that he does. but i promise myself to ask him this year on his 90^th , or on father’s day in june.

and what the hell? am i not hip anymore? do i dig john maier or kanye west? yeah, sure. but i still listen to jazz and often think rap, hip hop, and house are limited and one dimensional. do i give a damn about branjelina, the war in iraq, or the warming of the planet? (no to the first, yes to the next two.)  or does it even matter? what will i be, what will i become, with my artificial, new-fangled hip? will it get me back on the tennis courts? get me down in the hilly terraced gardens of echo park again, planting tomatoes, spinach, and zucchini in my backyard sprinkled with the ashes of my mother and hip, criminal uncle? will it afford me some old school or new school bedroom acrobatics with my young, still learning and still growing wife? and what if the operation goes badly? will i end up with a bad hip? be terminally hip? terminally un-hip?

and what finally, does it mean to be hip? to get a new hip? to have a new hip? to give up one’s old hip? one’s hipness? to grow old? to lose one’s  loved ones? to age? to die?

parta life, you say. fuck america, with its obsessive pre-occupation with youth. with it’s neurotic, unrealistic fear of death. look at mexico with its day of the dead. the dead come back for a friendly annual visit. look at indonesia with its hindu balinesian cremation ceremonies, where they believe the penultimate part of life’s journey is into the eternal afterlife. these cultures and people don’t fear death; they respect it, accept it – as part of life.

now that’s hip, eh babies?

whataya think? drop me a “comment”, eh?

(un)hiply yours,

-trules

I remember coming into “the City” from white bread, Long Island back in Eisenhower’s immaculate, buttoned-down 50s. Just as we’d cross over the Williamsburg Bridge onto Delancey Street approaching the Bowery, my father would say, “Roll up the windows and lock the doors.” This was always a little bit scary but odd to me, as we’d drive by all the homeless “bums” who surrounded our Chevy Impalla station wagon at the stop lights, each attempting to wash our windshields for any spare change we could offer. We’d offer none, for we were buttoned-down and rolled up tight.

The other thing and place we’d avoid at all costs was heading uptown to Harlem. You know, the place above 125^th Street where all the “Negroes” lived in their own, over-crowded, swarming-with-danger-and-violence, “ghetto”. I remember driving past the Apollo Theatre one time, reading the famous marquee… or was it a dream? I certainly never got out of the car to see any of my boyhood soul singer hero-icons like Aretha Franklin, Otis Redding, Bobby Blue Bland, or the Godfather himself, James Brown. Of course, I did drag my timid suburban friends with me to Central Park’s Wollman Skating Rink every summer where we saw the easier to swallow Motown acts like the Four Tops, The Temptations, and Martha and the Vandellas. Never did you catch me with Berry Gordy’s watered-down dream girls, the Supremes.

So, as you might imagine, it came as quite a thrill and surprise to me in the last weeks of 2006, as I found myself visiting New Yawk with my Indonesian wife, house sitting on 122^nd and Amsterdam. This was, of course, the cloistered world of Columbia University, where we had five ethnic restaurants on the same block, just down the street from Grant’s Tomb and Riverside Church. But just three blocks to the East was the Forbidden Land, Harlem, still with the jazz-deco Lenox Lounge and all the soul food you could eat. I could hardly believe myself walking through Morningside Park at 122^nd Street, up Saint Nicholas to 125^th Street, seeing all the street hawkers, pirate DVD sellers, and homeboys and homegirls “on the street”. Soho, Tri-beca, Wall Street, the Upper Westside, the Upper Eastside…. not.

As we walked past the Apollo on 125^th Street between Adam Clayton Powell Blvd (7th Ave.) and Frederick Douglass Blvd. (8th Ave.), my wife snapped me several times doing my best homeboy/Kanye West imitation. It was a kick for me, sort of a settling of a personal suburban score. The day after Christmas, we walked over to the Magic Johnson theatres on 124^th Street and caught the ten o’clock in the morning show of Dream Girls. I was the only honky in the house. Another soul point. And the movie…. just looking at Beyonce, listening to Jennifer Hudson, and watching Eddie Murphy do his best James Brown impression was both a soulful flashback to the pre-cover, R&B music of the day and, a contemporary cinematic treat. Both my wife and I walked out singing and “dancing in the streets”.

The next day, Wednesday, December 27^th, I saw it. The headline over the shoulder of a fellow passenger on the uptown A train: “James Brown Dead”. Followed by: “Body to Lie in State Tomorrow at the Apollo.” Damn. I was supposed to go visit a friend in Sussex Count, New Jersey, on Thursday. Hang out by the lake. Breathe the fresh air. But c’mon, one has to have their priorities straight, right? Here I was around the corner. I was “living” in the hood (almost). I had just seen Eddie do his Godfather turn in Dream Girls. And now The Man himself up and dies the next day. He’s going to be carried by horse and carriage through the streets of Harlem by the Reverend Al Sharpton, to a memorial at the Apollo right down the street. I mean, talk about synchronicity; talk about loyalty; talk about, “I’m going to the Apollo, honey. I’ll be back in a few hours.”  

And there I am. Ten o’clock in the morning on Thursday. There’s only a few hundred people this early, lined up on 125^th Street, squeezed in between the barricades and the dominating presence of the omnipresent press corps and NYPD. People are hawking James Brown t-shirts, dvd collections; 98.7 KISS FM is handing out 8×11 handbills “remembering James Brown”, but only one to a customer. I’m standing there in front of the theatre, amongst the teaming press corps, in my honky gray tweed overcoat, blending into the scene . No one is bothering me. The Chief of Police says hello, asking “Is your name Syd?” I say, “Yeah.” Why not? It’s still hours before the Godfather’s body will actually appear, hours before thousands more will curl around the corner onto to Frederick Douglas in a fury of mourning and party. It’s a carnival-like atmosphere, and I’m an invisible fly on the pavement.

Then all of sudden, there’s a great stir amongst the crowd. It’s pandemonium. I crane my head to see – the impossible. Pushing his way through the throng, in his sad-as-tears, soulful way, is… the Godfather himself. James Brown. It’s him! The press corps is popping and pushing. The crowd is moaning and screaming. The Godfather is being carried forward by centrifugal force – right towards me. I lift my camera above the crowd. I click the digital shutter. The Godfather is right there, a foot in front of me!. James Brown lives! He’s pulled another fast one. It’s sham. A publicity stunt. The Godfather’s walking there right in front of my eyes.