"A man does not set out saying, 'I am going to be a Bohemian,'" Arthur Ransome said, "he trudges along, whispering to himself, 'I am going to be a poet, or an artist, or some other kind of great man,' and finds Bohemia like a tavern by the wayside."
From a quite young age to the present day, I have enjoyed walking in solitude.
I recall rather distinctly an episode from my fairly early youth. It involved my decision to skip the predictable activities of the group of boys my age whom I usually played with, and to go off on a walk by myself. I was already something of an outsider from the common experience of these boys, because every school day I walked the half-mile to my Catholic school. I usually walked alone or with kids my age since my two older brothers had no patience for walking with a younger kid. It was a great walk with a splendid comic book selection and a pinball machine in a corner store, two parks with baseball diamonds (empty on school days), and a row Dickensian tenement buildings looming over the final stretch, all along the way.
I had followed those brothers to the park in our neighborhood as well, again without encouragement from them and their age group friends but tacit protection nevertheless as I was quickly labeled the "wise punk." My mother was also a walker and never acquired a driver's license. We would take cabs and buses, and also walk home from downtown, or from her old neighborhood church and its great park, with a bandstand and a pavilion to bay views, and fireworks on Independence Day. So I was used to walking from a young age.
There is a natural joy in walking. We see it in the toddler struggling to remain erect, and in the child that begins purposeful walking toward a destination. The joy of walking deepens when we begin to walk for edification or for recreation. It is an emotion that I have tried to retain throughout my life. I remember for example the enjoyment in taking a walk with my mother after dinner, bundled up on a cold December night, to walk a few blocks and survey the neighborhood Christmas displays.
My mother was middle-aged when I was born and she was the memory babe and the reader of her family of seven kids, and she passed immeasurable knowledge onto me as well as ineffable, intuitive qualities, and always had an abundance of time and attention for us. Kerouac was known as "Memory Babe" in his French-Canadian American youth, and was called "Ti Jean" at home in not too distant Lowell. My mother's name at home was "Ti Noire."
The great story of my right of passage into the age of reason, as always precociously, involved me getting separated from my mother and brothers in the crowd one day in front of Ste Anne. It's an admirable neo-gothic church built by the French-Canadians who came to South-eastern New England. There had been a parade that day and in the hurry afterward I found myself alone. Resourceful and prematurely mature, I never did panic, though I was very young at the time. Neither did I ask for help--I had walked the route before with my mother and I started up it again. I climbed precipitous Middle street to Second street with its view all the way to Swansea, then past the ceremonial great rock and down wide Plymouth avenue
Almost home, I was walking alongside it when Mrs. Wolstencroft, the lady who lived next door, drove past and spotted me. Naturally there was rejoicing upon the arrival of the remaining family unit. They were of course much more frightened than I think I had been.
A few years after this, I was sent off in a cab with a large bill to stop at an art supply store then continue on to a Saturday art school at a local college next. The building was next door to the crenelated granite armory and stately "People's University" Library downtown. I seem to remember the pleased amusement of the art supply store proprietor to serve such a self-possessed young kid. The downtown was fully operational in those days with a towering City hall and Granite Block of stores all fashioned out of local stone. This was before the sixties came along and a huge interstate highway was plowed through the middle of the city. I remember it then, looking from the art class window out over the landscape falling toward the bay. I remember a nightclub visible from there, maybe called the Americana Lounge, with paintings of silhouettes dining and dancing, a puzzling and sophisticated veneer, a world long-since disappeared.
I return to the day I ditched stick ball or some such pursuit to go on that walk by myself. My thoughts and my direction was entirely my own, and they were comprised a great new state of being. Freedom is second only to the love of God as the experience that brings the greatest feeling of growth to an individual. And I can still revisit the freedom and joy I felt that day as I toured familiar streets under my own steam. In my mind's eye, I can see the "Little Woods" I walked past that day, a place of minor intrigues and much Tarzan or Tonto impersonation. It was at this precise point, as I reached the wood side and was out of sight of my immediate neighborhood, that I place the beginning of my Bohemian life.
The old guys who worked at the local magazine, candy and tobacco shops would comment that I was a man about town when I showed up solo to score licorice babies and flying saucers.* It helped matters that my mother trusted her children. By no means did she bind us to the immediate vicinity of her kitchen window as many of our mates' mothers did.
Although the myriad of crime, confession, scandal, and girly magazines suggested a world of transgression just beyond my reach, I gravitated to more intellectual and more humorous rebellion. The comic books gave way to Famous Monsters of Filmland, then to Mad magazine, then to Beatle books, Bob Dylan, Howl, Kerouac, Kesey, Evergreen Review, Ramparts, Tim Leary and so forth. It represented a progression from images disapproved of by the authority figures in my life, to underground expressions proposing a whole forbidden way of life, not necessarily sinful but certainly more outlaw and erotic and so even more threatening to repression and status quo morbidity.
I became so independent that one evening toward the end of summer a small delegation of my old chums from the backyard gang came and knocked at our door looking for me. They missed me and wanted me to come outside and regale them with my ostensible new hipness.
* Flying saucers was a type of candy with sugary pellets inside two "saucers" of starch dyed pastel-colors. They had a texture like the little unleavened bread rounds used for the Holy Eucharist which we received at Mass. they were not good to eat but they were sputnik weird. Thirty years later, I bought one in a tiny shop in Westport, Massachusetts and kept it until it collapsed.
Memories of the world of penny candy stores deserve their own journal entry. As an example of how different that world was, those little doll-shaped licorice candies were called "nigger babies." For similar candies in printed boxes, the name read "black babies". The penny-candy style were much better.
I will resume this thread concerning my early Bohemian formation before long...
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
Laureate of the Berkeley Poetry Renaissance
To arc back to the beginning of this journal, I recall my first encounter with a luminary of Berkeley's rarefied realm of Poetry...
On my third day in California, I arranged for a solo outing. The brother with whom I was staying in nearby Contra Costa county took me into Berkeley in the morning with a plan to rendezvous after his work day was over. I began the day in the Telegraph Avenue area taking in an assortment of its offerings--in the form of capucino cafes, record shops, a Japanese lunch spot, and most of all various bookstores.
It was a dim day in early January, yet it was ravishing to me a few days after the frozen New England I'd just left. Only the year before, 1978, a blizzard had left so much snow private automobile travel was banned for six days--it was sort of heavenly though. Trains and buses were running and I traveled sixty miles to explore the streets of Boston and Cambridge, bustling with foot traffic alone.
Winter can get old and wearying in Massachusetts, and I had twenty-five of them under my belt by then. Here in California the growing grass was green and some flowers were actually in bloom. In a text book style store on Bancroft Way, I found books on separate shelves devoted to individual publishers. I gravitated to the New Directions shelf and encountered some interesting titles for the first time, ones I had only seen listed in the back-lists included on the end pages of beloved books--Rimbaud, Borges, Bob Kaufman.
Upon leaving the store I crossed over to the UC student union building . Within minutes I observed something that fulfilled my most naive notions of stepping into scenes from a Kerouac novel the minute I got here. It was a person famous in the world of obscure poetry browsing around the student stores-- Robert Duncan, a name synonymous with the Berkeley Poetry Renaissance. He was a forebear of the Beats and a real high-artifice poet of an even older type. He had an expansive forehead with long white sideburns and wore a coat with a built-in rain cape. His "frontispiece" included a jeweled art-nouveau bolo tie on a flowered shirt, anachronistic even then. His eyes were remarkable and are much-noted--they were as large and sensitive as can be imagined; moreover, one eye was slightly lazy and seemed to look off into the poetic marvelous at all times.
He in fact was a mystic of sorts descended from California theosophists. His florid early poetry was celebrated and he was indulged from an early age as someone profound beyond his years. Young Robert Duncan put in his mandatory Rimbaud phase, finding his way to New York city as a desperate young poet. He published an early crie-de-coeur entitled "The Homosexual in Society" that was a milestone in the queer rights movement. It alone would entitle him to a place in cultural history. He quickly established relations of one sort or another with all the poets and poets manques of his time--Pound, Patchen, Anais Nin. Avant-garde poetry was and is a quite small pond.
Eventually, he returned to Berkeley where he became the biggest fish of his school rivaled only by Jack Spicer (who actually emerged as more of a group leader after he had decamped to San Francisco.) I had become interested him along with the rest of poets identified with the San Francisco Poetry Renaissance which followed and flowed into what became known as the Beat generation. Two other well-known poets of this group were Mary Fabilli and William Everson a.k.a. Brother Antoninus. (I will devote a future entry to Mary with whom I became friends.)
Most of the best-known Beat poets were also Berkeley dwellers including Gary Snyder, Philip Whalen, Allen Ginsberg, Philip Lamantia, and Jack Kerouac who even moved his supportive mother here for a period.
Duncan's poetry was elegant, classical in ways, reflective of European modernism and somewhat old-fashioned because of that. His work is like California Surrealist painting somehow. And his life partner Jess could be roughly described as belonging to that movement.
Diane diPrima had called Duncan the greatest living poet at a reading of hers I attended at the Smith College library in 1975. (People smoked a big joint of gold Columbian at that reading without any conflict---ah, those were the days). I had been reading more of him following that and had even bought a rare book of his by mail order from City Lights books in San Francisco. It was his Selected Poems one of the more scarce volumes in the Pocket Poets Series from 1959. The series had made a considerable seismic waves the previous year with Ginsberg's volume Howl & other poems. I was collecting them, interested in every forgotten copy of any underground poetry press I could find.
I thought immediately of the tried and true method for graceful meetings with authors one esteems. And I recalled that the New Directions rack I had just examined had included one of his best books, The Opening of the Field. Before hailing him, I dashed over to obtain a copy of it to ask him to sign it. He seems almost startled to be recognized by a young person out of the passing stream. This was despite the large number of his books and papers in the Bancroft library a stone's throw away, despite his prominent role in local literary history.
To be a success at poetry is like being a failure at any thing else, I once heard a perspiring acolyte of Duncan's admit. This particular poetry maven has Duncan's old hat on his old hat-rack by the front door of his home today.
As a young poetry hustler myself I naturally had my own self-published chapbook to press on Duncan. He may have even had me sign it to him, though it seems doubtful in retrospect. We spoke for a while, a conversation now lost in time, and bid a friendly adieu. He said perhaps he see more of me in the poetry scene.
And he did. Following what was reputed to be a reclusive period, he seemed to be making a lot of appearances in the following year. There was even talk of forthcoming new books from him, something he had declined to publish since the Viet Nam war. I was at the majority of these events--generally with an estimable old book. He signed them usually with some drawing and noted seeing me again in the inscription. I saw him give an art lecture at the Oakland museum; I attended a reading by him at the UC Alumnus hall, and before long we became acquainted.
This was until the afternoon I was talking to him and a few other poets at the Berkeley Art Museum (now UAM). The event was a Wallace Berman retrospective. Berman's Semina artwork/magazine had published Duncan, as well as diPrima and Michael McClure who were all there to read and talk about him.
An anthology of English language Surrealist poetry that included Duncan's work had been published by Penquin. It also had the work of my poetry professor and friend of a few years earlier, James Tate. Tate had always disowned the identification of his work as Surrealist yet had agreed to be included. I wondered how Robert felt about the designation, adding that I hadn't thought of him as a Surrealist. This possibly did not sit very well with he who is Poet in all Poetry.
One poet who was long recognized as a Surrealist was the aforementioned Philip Lamantia. He was one of the models for what I wanted to pursue in poetry. I was influenced not only by his poetry but also by his essays and his association with the American Surrealist movement centered around Franklin Rosemont and Arsenal, The Journal of Surrealist Subversion out of Chicago. Lamantia had been an early associate of Duncan's but somewhere in the volatility of their storied lives, they had experienced a decisive split.
Philip was discussed in the introduction to that Surrealist poetry anthology, as both the perfect exemplar of its subject and also because of his pointed refusal to be published in it. The Surrealism he adhered to came with well-defined doctrines and a revolutionary ideology. These were not major concerns of this collection nor were they precepts owned by Duncan in his many essays and interviews. I will devote at least another entry to Philip who died in 2005.
In those days you really could hear and get to know many of the renowned Beat poets. The Bay Area poetry scene was still happening and a monthly Poetry Flash newletter listed readings galore. Gary Snyder's statement around then was that since the Six Gallery reading in 1955 there had not been a day here without a poetry reading of one sort or another, and it was true.
I got to know even the reclusive Lamantia and was once sitting next to him in City Lights basement, a rather close catacomb of books and odd chairs even a church pew. It matched the strange holy roller left-overs painted on the walls, "Remember Lot's wife!"
The event was an exceedingly rare reading by the legendary David Gascoyne, one of the greatest poets let alone Surrealist poets in the English language. After achieving high regard for his books in Britain, he had slipped into a depressive state. He was eventually living in a clinic without speaking. Then objective chance brought a woman to his clinic to read to the patients. Without knowing he was present, she read one of his poems aloud and it brought him back from his lost place. It was an unmistakable triumph of l'amour fou (mad love) that charged the occasion of this reading at which the woman, now his wife, was present.
Also present was another major visionary poet of the epoch, Robert Duncan who sitting a few feet away from us. Now, that he seemed somewhat disinclined to greet me a few years after our slight acquaintance was unremarkable to me. This was especially so since I was sitting with another person who seemed mutually disinclined to say hello to him. But that was what was illuminating to me to see-- how calmly these two poets well-known to each other for forty years could ignore each other. It was a lesson in the ways of poets for me that is now a familiar drill whenever it occurs. Harold Norse was there too, a good but I'd be reluctant to say visionary poet. A few other poets had turned out for this poet's poet who was almost completely unknown in this country, but rather few civilians. A couple sat in front and polished off a quart or so of the cheap wine on the house. They would occasionally ask him to repeat his name which Gascoyne, between exquisite dream-like poems, would do.
There are photos of Duncan with Lamantia from that day, and there is no unfriendliness implied by my description of their demeanor together. A few years later, Philip's wife and long-time City Lights second-in-command, Nancy Peters described to me the experience of flying to a poetry festival seated between the two. Both talked continuously, listening not to each other but each expecting her to hear himself in full. But she said that they were friends again if a little precariously so at times.
Since I quoted one San Francisco poetry scene-maker, mover and shaker, (without naming him) I will include an exchange with another. This was at Tosca on Columbus Avenue in North Beach, the customary poets' drink after yet another reading, that day at Canessa Park.
"Hey, Adam, is hell other people?"
"Hell is other poets."
Those last books of Duncan's came out in 1987. Groundwork: Poems Before the War, Vol. I and II, they were actually off-prints of his own type-scripts so no typo or spacial change could occur. Frankly, it rendered a typographic dullness on the page as a result. I went to a publication party for it at a bookstore in Berkeley. I brought my old hard bound first edition of Roots and Branches, one of my favorites, not expecting to be among the many people buying his new one that day myself. I was an old book collector--a few excerpts of Groundwork would suffice.
There was a nervous and expectant staff; there was a table of respectable victuals; there was a free letter-press broadside of a new poem; and there was not at that moment any other apparent attendees. Berkeley being what it was, people may have been en route and arrived soon after. We greeted him, got the broadsides signed somewhat solemnly, and had to cut out. I had made an prior agreement to just pass through the event. For my companion meeting Robert Duncan had even less of a thrill than it still held for me at that time.
A year or so later the obituaries for him ran. Poetry Flash devoted an issue to this pater familia of the scene, second only to Kenneth Rexroth for that title. At an event at Fort Mason cavalcade of poets read their work in homage to him. I made a table display of my collection of his books, obliging interested parties to handle only the sturdier editions. And in an adjourning room a videotape of Robert Duncan speaking played on to an empty chamber.
I continue to hold Duncan's poetry in high regard. An interesting biography of him expanded my reading. At one point I re-acquainted myself in order to give a tutorial on him to a student of diPrima's who wanted to impress the teacher. I am grateful for the fleeting access fate granted me to him and to his performance. As if by objective chance, other than family, the first face I knew in California was his.
"In sound and sense it is the music of inner relationships that moves me."
Robert Duncan
On my third day in California, I arranged for a solo outing. The brother with whom I was staying in nearby Contra Costa county took me into Berkeley in the morning with a plan to rendezvous after his work day was over. I began the day in the Telegraph Avenue area taking in an assortment of its offerings--in the form of capucino cafes, record shops, a Japanese lunch spot, and most of all various bookstores.
It was a dim day in early January, yet it was ravishing to me a few days after the frozen New England I'd just left. Only the year before, 1978, a blizzard had left so much snow private automobile travel was banned for six days--it was sort of heavenly though. Trains and buses were running and I traveled sixty miles to explore the streets of Boston and Cambridge, bustling with foot traffic alone.
Winter can get old and wearying in Massachusetts, and I had twenty-five of them under my belt by then. Here in California the growing grass was green and some flowers were actually in bloom. In a text book style store on Bancroft Way, I found books on separate shelves devoted to individual publishers. I gravitated to the New Directions shelf and encountered some interesting titles for the first time, ones I had only seen listed in the back-lists included on the end pages of beloved books--Rimbaud, Borges, Bob Kaufman.
Upon leaving the store I crossed over to the UC student union building . Within minutes I observed something that fulfilled my most naive notions of stepping into scenes from a Kerouac novel the minute I got here. It was a person famous in the world of obscure poetry browsing around the student stores-- Robert Duncan, a name synonymous with the Berkeley Poetry Renaissance. He was a forebear of the Beats and a real high-artifice poet of an even older type. He had an expansive forehead with long white sideburns and wore a coat with a built-in rain cape. His "frontispiece" included a jeweled art-nouveau bolo tie on a flowered shirt, anachronistic even then. His eyes were remarkable and are much-noted--they were as large and sensitive as can be imagined; moreover, one eye was slightly lazy and seemed to look off into the poetic marvelous at all times.
He in fact was a mystic of sorts descended from California theosophists. His florid early poetry was celebrated and he was indulged from an early age as someone profound beyond his years. Young Robert Duncan put in his mandatory Rimbaud phase, finding his way to New York city as a desperate young poet. He published an early crie-de-coeur entitled "The Homosexual in Society" that was a milestone in the queer rights movement. It alone would entitle him to a place in cultural history. He quickly established relations of one sort or another with all the poets and poets manques of his time--Pound, Patchen, Anais Nin. Avant-garde poetry was and is a quite small pond.
Eventually, he returned to Berkeley where he became the biggest fish of his school rivaled only by Jack Spicer (who actually emerged as more of a group leader after he had decamped to San Francisco.) I had become interested him along with the rest of poets identified with the San Francisco Poetry Renaissance which followed and flowed into what became known as the Beat generation. Two other well-known poets of this group were Mary Fabilli and William Everson a.k.a. Brother Antoninus. (I will devote a future entry to Mary with whom I became friends.)
Most of the best-known Beat poets were also Berkeley dwellers including Gary Snyder, Philip Whalen, Allen Ginsberg, Philip Lamantia, and Jack Kerouac who even moved his supportive mother here for a period.
Duncan's poetry was elegant, classical in ways, reflective of European modernism and somewhat old-fashioned because of that. His work is like California Surrealist painting somehow. And his life partner Jess could be roughly described as belonging to that movement.
Diane diPrima had called Duncan the greatest living poet at a reading of hers I attended at the Smith College library in 1975. (People smoked a big joint of gold Columbian at that reading without any conflict---ah, those were the days). I had been reading more of him following that and had even bought a rare book of his by mail order from City Lights books in San Francisco. It was his Selected Poems one of the more scarce volumes in the Pocket Poets Series from 1959. The series had made a considerable seismic waves the previous year with Ginsberg's volume Howl & other poems. I was collecting them, interested in every forgotten copy of any underground poetry press I could find.
I thought immediately of the tried and true method for graceful meetings with authors one esteems. And I recalled that the New Directions rack I had just examined had included one of his best books, The Opening of the Field. Before hailing him, I dashed over to obtain a copy of it to ask him to sign it. He seems almost startled to be recognized by a young person out of the passing stream. This was despite the large number of his books and papers in the Bancroft library a stone's throw away, despite his prominent role in local literary history.
To be a success at poetry is like being a failure at any thing else, I once heard a perspiring acolyte of Duncan's admit. This particular poetry maven has Duncan's old hat on his old hat-rack by the front door of his home today.
As a young poetry hustler myself I naturally had my own self-published chapbook to press on Duncan. He may have even had me sign it to him, though it seems doubtful in retrospect. We spoke for a while, a conversation now lost in time, and bid a friendly adieu. He said perhaps he see more of me in the poetry scene.
And he did. Following what was reputed to be a reclusive period, he seemed to be making a lot of appearances in the following year. There was even talk of forthcoming new books from him, something he had declined to publish since the Viet Nam war. I was at the majority of these events--generally with an estimable old book. He signed them usually with some drawing and noted seeing me again in the inscription. I saw him give an art lecture at the Oakland museum; I attended a reading by him at the UC Alumnus hall, and before long we became acquainted.
This was until the afternoon I was talking to him and a few other poets at the Berkeley Art Museum (now UAM). The event was a Wallace Berman retrospective. Berman's Semina artwork/magazine had published Duncan, as well as diPrima and Michael McClure who were all there to read and talk about him.
An anthology of English language Surrealist poetry that included Duncan's work had been published by Penquin. It also had the work of my poetry professor and friend of a few years earlier, James Tate. Tate had always disowned the identification of his work as Surrealist yet had agreed to be included. I wondered how Robert felt about the designation, adding that I hadn't thought of him as a Surrealist. This possibly did not sit very well with he who is Poet in all Poetry.
One poet who was long recognized as a Surrealist was the aforementioned Philip Lamantia. He was one of the models for what I wanted to pursue in poetry. I was influenced not only by his poetry but also by his essays and his association with the American Surrealist movement centered around Franklin Rosemont and Arsenal, The Journal of Surrealist Subversion out of Chicago. Lamantia had been an early associate of Duncan's but somewhere in the volatility of their storied lives, they had experienced a decisive split.
Philip was discussed in the introduction to that Surrealist poetry anthology, as both the perfect exemplar of its subject and also because of his pointed refusal to be published in it. The Surrealism he adhered to came with well-defined doctrines and a revolutionary ideology. These were not major concerns of this collection nor were they precepts owned by Duncan in his many essays and interviews. I will devote at least another entry to Philip who died in 2005.
In those days you really could hear and get to know many of the renowned Beat poets. The Bay Area poetry scene was still happening and a monthly Poetry Flash newletter listed readings galore. Gary Snyder's statement around then was that since the Six Gallery reading in 1955 there had not been a day here without a poetry reading of one sort or another, and it was true.
I got to know even the reclusive Lamantia and was once sitting next to him in City Lights basement, a rather close catacomb of books and odd chairs even a church pew. It matched the strange holy roller left-overs painted on the walls, "Remember Lot's wife!"
The event was an exceedingly rare reading by the legendary David Gascoyne, one of the greatest poets let alone Surrealist poets in the English language. After achieving high regard for his books in Britain, he had slipped into a depressive state. He was eventually living in a clinic without speaking. Then objective chance brought a woman to his clinic to read to the patients. Without knowing he was present, she read one of his poems aloud and it brought him back from his lost place. It was an unmistakable triumph of l'amour fou (mad love) that charged the occasion of this reading at which the woman, now his wife, was present.
Also present was another major visionary poet of the epoch, Robert Duncan who sitting a few feet away from us. Now, that he seemed somewhat disinclined to greet me a few years after our slight acquaintance was unremarkable to me. This was especially so since I was sitting with another person who seemed mutually disinclined to say hello to him. But that was what was illuminating to me to see-- how calmly these two poets well-known to each other for forty years could ignore each other. It was a lesson in the ways of poets for me that is now a familiar drill whenever it occurs. Harold Norse was there too, a good but I'd be reluctant to say visionary poet. A few other poets had turned out for this poet's poet who was almost completely unknown in this country, but rather few civilians. A couple sat in front and polished off a quart or so of the cheap wine on the house. They would occasionally ask him to repeat his name which Gascoyne, between exquisite dream-like poems, would do.
There are photos of Duncan with Lamantia from that day, and there is no unfriendliness implied by my description of their demeanor together. A few years later, Philip's wife and long-time City Lights second-in-command, Nancy Peters described to me the experience of flying to a poetry festival seated between the two. Both talked continuously, listening not to each other but each expecting her to hear himself in full. But she said that they were friends again if a little precariously so at times.
Since I quoted one San Francisco poetry scene-maker, mover and shaker, (without naming him) I will include an exchange with another. This was at Tosca on Columbus Avenue in North Beach, the customary poets' drink after yet another reading, that day at Canessa Park.
"Hey, Adam, is hell other people?"
"Hell is other poets."
Those last books of Duncan's came out in 1987. Groundwork: Poems Before the War, Vol. I and II, they were actually off-prints of his own type-scripts so no typo or spacial change could occur. Frankly, it rendered a typographic dullness on the page as a result. I went to a publication party for it at a bookstore in Berkeley. I brought my old hard bound first edition of Roots and Branches, one of my favorites, not expecting to be among the many people buying his new one that day myself. I was an old book collector--a few excerpts of Groundwork would suffice.
There was a nervous and expectant staff; there was a table of respectable victuals; there was a free letter-press broadside of a new poem; and there was not at that moment any other apparent attendees. Berkeley being what it was, people may have been en route and arrived soon after. We greeted him, got the broadsides signed somewhat solemnly, and had to cut out. I had made an prior agreement to just pass through the event. For my companion meeting Robert Duncan had even less of a thrill than it still held for me at that time.
A year or so later the obituaries for him ran. Poetry Flash devoted an issue to this pater familia of the scene, second only to Kenneth Rexroth for that title. At an event at Fort Mason cavalcade of poets read their work in homage to him. I made a table display of my collection of his books, obliging interested parties to handle only the sturdier editions. And in an adjourning room a videotape of Robert Duncan speaking played on to an empty chamber.
I continue to hold Duncan's poetry in high regard. An interesting biography of him expanded my reading. At one point I re-acquainted myself in order to give a tutorial on him to a student of diPrima's who wanted to impress the teacher. I am grateful for the fleeting access fate granted me to him and to his performance. As if by objective chance, other than family, the first face I knew in California was his.
"In sound and sense it is the music of inner relationships that moves me."
Robert Duncan
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
Son Trouve
Thinking of my three favorite environmental sounds of Berkeley, the ones that summon a strong sense of place...
In earlier entries to this journal I gave voice to my resentment of several noise sources in my immediate vicinity. To refresh, they were the loud disco boom-boxes employed by the Asiatic dance gangs that collect around lower Sproul plaza, the trucks and tour buses on Bancroft way that idle their engines far beyond the legal time limit, and, the most intolerable but least frequent annoyance, the Taiko drummers who bang out their identity politics in the same general area.
But really, despite any impression I may have yet made, I actually celebrate more than I find fault. In that vein, let me praise my three favorite sounds of this locality. These would be sounds I dig in particular, as opposed to the more universal salvation of sounds as widely defined as let's say bird song.
And they are: the sound of morning doves calling especially in the early twilight of a summer's eve when the fog is vigorously rolling in; the train whistles along the tracks through far West Berkeley as they echo off the hills; and the life-enhancing music that peals off the carillon bells in the Campanile on the UC campus.
I lived for fifteen years in a much quieter residence on Woolsey street, the last street in South Berkeley. The place was locked in the center of block, flocked by rich trees, and it was reached by a long driveway separating it from street noise. It was there that I grew so accustomed to the plaintive but somehow encouraging sound of the doves calling back and forth in the cool of an evening. The fragrant smoke from an outdoor mesquite grill frequently accompanied what is now a vivid sense memory. I see less of the once ubiquitous morning doves and hear them still less of them these days in my more urban part of town--I hope it is not because they have become more scarce in this habitat.
The trains, the trains-- they won me over to Berkeley in a strange way. I relocated here but intended to settle in San Francisco. Berkeley can often seem somewhat dull and insular in comparison. But over time the things we see everyday become sacred and that goes for the sounds we here. I have long had a love affair with trains and many of my heroes were train-riding, or at least train-identified, from Alfred Hitchcock to Jack Kerouac and Bob Dylan etc. To me there is nothing more evocative than the sound of trains as they pass in the night, suggesting unknown realms of possibility. And the sound of trains are profuse in the great night that envelopes the populous eastern shore of San Francisco Bay.
There once was a sense of solidarity among most residents of this chilly and saintly shangri-la. Like-minded people had gravitated here with a strong shared sensibility that included an appreciation for what was right with the place. This was followed by the coming of the nimby-
the not-in-my-backyard type, often a property speculator. Several such bought homes along the railroad tracks in Berkeley, knowing full well what that entailed. Then they proceeded to complain to the powers that be that they were egregiously disturbed by the train whistles. Just as with the lobby against legal medical marijuana dispensaries, long-running street fairs, and San Francisco's traditional night life, the East Bay nimbys tried to get restrictions on the train whistles. These are the house-flipper types who were a big engine of the latest economic crisis in the "Highway 61 Revisited" brand of late capitalism that characterizes the current US scene. Well since this latest bubble burst perhaps we can relegate them back to the democratic margins where they belong. Thus far they have failed in their attempts to stifle the trains.
The romantic siren call of all my years living in earshot of those ever-traveling trains, the summons on the precipice of sleep so many nights, eventually inspired my own far-reaching adventure by rail. In 2005, my North America travel pass in me pocket I crossed North America, including Canada the wide part, twice in 28 days. As I left this part of the world on the 11 o'clock Starlighter to Seattle, I thought of how I was at that moment boarded on one of those poetic, oneiric trains. Moving past the Marina, sounding off the hills, and drifting through nocturnal chambers of the town, I had joined the sound that had stirred my soul for decades.
And the bells, the bells, the bells that toll from a glorious towering perch atop the campanile. They are essential and intrinsic to my perception of where I live. They were recently the raison-d'etre for a carillon festival held on campus. Players from far-flung places came to offer their grooves. The sound of these fabulous bells underscores all that is pleasant about the controversial campus. I came to a liminal point sitting on a wooden bench on the Campanile plateau, and listening to a carillon-playing adept perform one of Erik Satie's "Gymnopedies." I reached the conclusion that classical pieces and other old chestnuts played on these great bells was my purest and best loved form of music. It is just waves of sound emanating from percussion on a tuned metal bell-- no opportunity for distortion, no amplification, and no pro-tool sweetening of wrong notes.
Just the ringing of the hours alone is important to me. But again this has been constrained in cranky over-wrought Berkeley--another fuss-budget crabbed about the "disturbance" caused by bells tolling the time. So they only toll to nine in the evening or some such. While for myself, having grown up in a city of Catholics, where the bells tolled the hours, called us to church, and gave us an agreeable and sustaining sense of community--I say, like Bob Dyan sang,
"Ring them bells.'
In earlier entries to this journal I gave voice to my resentment of several noise sources in my immediate vicinity. To refresh, they were the loud disco boom-boxes employed by the Asiatic dance gangs that collect around lower Sproul plaza, the trucks and tour buses on Bancroft way that idle their engines far beyond the legal time limit, and, the most intolerable but least frequent annoyance, the Taiko drummers who bang out their identity politics in the same general area.
But really, despite any impression I may have yet made, I actually celebrate more than I find fault. In that vein, let me praise my three favorite sounds of this locality. These would be sounds I dig in particular, as opposed to the more universal salvation of sounds as widely defined as let's say bird song.
And they are: the sound of morning doves calling especially in the early twilight of a summer's eve when the fog is vigorously rolling in; the train whistles along the tracks through far West Berkeley as they echo off the hills; and the life-enhancing music that peals off the carillon bells in the Campanile on the UC campus.
I lived for fifteen years in a much quieter residence on Woolsey street, the last street in South Berkeley. The place was locked in the center of block, flocked by rich trees, and it was reached by a long driveway separating it from street noise. It was there that I grew so accustomed to the plaintive but somehow encouraging sound of the doves calling back and forth in the cool of an evening. The fragrant smoke from an outdoor mesquite grill frequently accompanied what is now a vivid sense memory. I see less of the once ubiquitous morning doves and hear them still less of them these days in my more urban part of town--I hope it is not because they have become more scarce in this habitat.
The trains, the trains-- they won me over to Berkeley in a strange way. I relocated here but intended to settle in San Francisco. Berkeley can often seem somewhat dull and insular in comparison. But over time the things we see everyday become sacred and that goes for the sounds we here. I have long had a love affair with trains and many of my heroes were train-riding, or at least train-identified, from Alfred Hitchcock to Jack Kerouac and Bob Dylan etc. To me there is nothing more evocative than the sound of trains as they pass in the night, suggesting unknown realms of possibility. And the sound of trains are profuse in the great night that envelopes the populous eastern shore of San Francisco Bay.
There once was a sense of solidarity among most residents of this chilly and saintly shangri-la. Like-minded people had gravitated here with a strong shared sensibility that included an appreciation for what was right with the place. This was followed by the coming of the nimby-
the not-in-my-backyard type, often a property speculator. Several such bought homes along the railroad tracks in Berkeley, knowing full well what that entailed. Then they proceeded to complain to the powers that be that they were egregiously disturbed by the train whistles. Just as with the lobby against legal medical marijuana dispensaries, long-running street fairs, and San Francisco's traditional night life, the East Bay nimbys tried to get restrictions on the train whistles. These are the house-flipper types who were a big engine of the latest economic crisis in the "Highway 61 Revisited" brand of late capitalism that characterizes the current US scene. Well since this latest bubble burst perhaps we can relegate them back to the democratic margins where they belong. Thus far they have failed in their attempts to stifle the trains.
The romantic siren call of all my years living in earshot of those ever-traveling trains, the summons on the precipice of sleep so many nights, eventually inspired my own far-reaching adventure by rail. In 2005, my North America travel pass in me pocket I crossed North America, including Canada the wide part, twice in 28 days. As I left this part of the world on the 11 o'clock Starlighter to Seattle, I thought of how I was at that moment boarded on one of those poetic, oneiric trains. Moving past the Marina, sounding off the hills, and drifting through nocturnal chambers of the town, I had joined the sound that had stirred my soul for decades.
And the bells, the bells, the bells that toll from a glorious towering perch atop the campanile. They are essential and intrinsic to my perception of where I live. They were recently the raison-d'etre for a carillon festival held on campus. Players from far-flung places came to offer their grooves. The sound of these fabulous bells underscores all that is pleasant about the controversial campus. I came to a liminal point sitting on a wooden bench on the Campanile plateau, and listening to a carillon-playing adept perform one of Erik Satie's "Gymnopedies." I reached the conclusion that classical pieces and other old chestnuts played on these great bells was my purest and best loved form of music. It is just waves of sound emanating from percussion on a tuned metal bell-- no opportunity for distortion, no amplification, and no pro-tool sweetening of wrong notes.
Just the ringing of the hours alone is important to me. But again this has been constrained in cranky over-wrought Berkeley--another fuss-budget crabbed about the "disturbance" caused by bells tolling the time. So they only toll to nine in the evening or some such. While for myself, having grown up in a city of Catholics, where the bells tolled the hours, called us to church, and gave us an agreeable and sustaining sense of community--I say, like Bob Dyan sang,
"Ring them bells.'
Sunday, June 29, 2008
If We Should Live Up in the Trees, Part Two
What else can be said when confronted by the police occupation of Memorial Oak Grove?
To resume, I offer my perspective on the passive tree-sit protest and the University's extravagant overkill response.
When word first spread of UC's plans for the stately, shady oaks on a gentle hillside, a number of people felt compelled to take up residence in certain trees. The first of them was a notorious anti-car activist and mayoral candidate named Running Wolf. He began residing in a redwood slightly north of the grove's center. A Native American himself, he emerged as leader and spokesman for the protest which soon was bound by evidence that this was a First Nation burial ground.
These young people built little human nests in the trees. Challenging of course, but they freely came and went via ropes and climbing gear. The police lurked at a distance. Meanwhile banners were hung between the trees and a table was set up with literature and refreshment. Frequent spontaneous musical events erupted, all in a peaceful, locally-supported manner. Lots of long-time area residents began to frequent the grove to talk to the young raggle-taggle heroes willing to spend each day and night out in the elements to save these trees.
More important, the tree-sitters resist for principles that many, many hereabouts share, principles for benefit of all. Trees are, after all living things that make life possible for all other living things that depend on air. This is opposed to the will and pleasure and financial clout of some for whom competitive college football holds a higher priority. A powerful minority imposes its will over the local popular will and tough luck about it.
Other trees will be planted elsewhere we are told. Fine, but that doesn't replace having our life-giving trees here. The glaringly apparent truth is that UC has plenty of alternate sites for its gridiron gladiators available a short hop away.
These decisions are made by administrators who are often short-timers from the world of corporate finance who walk off then with huge bonuses. They leave the average citizens to live with the consequences of their schemes. This type has been running wild for a long time, but they ran amok in the last seven years. And as of 2001 they have had access to unlimited resources for any ugly move they can paint as an issue of national security.
I found myself more and more attached to the grove, a very pleasant place with a cool breeze and the feeling of a refuge. I found myself in far-reaching conversations with the new inhabitants, including a young journalist with long blond dreads. He went up the main occupied oak for an interview, a sheer ascent aided by rock-climbing apparatus. I would have gone too, if I were maybe twenty years younger. The perches where the sitters spend their days are quite high, a few boards suggest a floor, provisions are tied-up in hanging bags.
On other afternoons, I played harmonica and sang with one other musician or joined a circle of many. I had a nice ground-to-tree-haven chat with a young girl. She had a charming elemental pseudonym, one characteristic of the names chosen by the group such as "Ayr". This was Winter of 2006-2007, extending into the following Spring. There was a lot of joyous activity on the ground: the gentle installation of a whole network of communicating cables, ropes, and hammocks, community democracy, and counter-cultural celebrity appearances. Country Joe MacDonald came and sang the songs of Woody Guthrie. Hand-painted signs and banners etc. mushroomed in the grove, rallying people and spreading the word. And of course the mainstream media came and went, pimping their usual sensationalism. This was followed by gaggles of politicians such as the hobbit-like former mayor and some city councilors who were hoisted to a large makeshift platform in the trees. The town was seen as standing on its hind legs for once.
Meanwhile, UC's calmer heads with colder hearts got their legal, political and propaganda game on. The months went by. Events would occasionally grow tense--the police snatching tables and gear, and then recede again into uneventful stretches. Arrests did happen but they were still scarce in the first six months of the action.
Over near the north side redwood tree-sit, I found an estimable Oak that I could manage to climb. I would pleasantly lie on a lower branch, relax, and watch the scene. Often somewhat caramelized, I just had to pay attention and not roll over. I imagined what it must be like to live in these trees round the clock--the skill and balance one must learn to thwart the constant pull of gravity, mistakes were irretrievable. I wanted to spend time up in these sturdy, elephantine oaks. I put in regular appearances to make a public statement--that we local residents use and esteem this grove. What if we occupied every tree?
While the lawsuits opposing the university plans for a "high-performance" sports training center made their glacial progress through court, UC started to wax a bit antsy. It was as if they were too accustomed to an extremely tilted playing field to accept due process for very long. They were constrained from making changes to the grove by the initial court orders, but were too wound-up to content themselves with just endless patrols and shakedowns, or with merely keeping police spies in the vicinity, slyly videotaping visitors.
The protest had begun on "Big Game Day" at the end of last football season. So to prepare for the new season's opening game, UC made a transparent effort to isolate this widely supported peaceful action. After it was already in place, they announced that they were building an enclosing fence for public safety. Shock and awe, baby.
Gone was public access to the center of the grove. The information and support table was pushed-out to the sidewalk. And with the fence, of course, an expanding number of full-time guards. The plastic rationale for making such a radical alteration to the site, in apparent disregard of the courts orders, was that crowds of football fans might commit acts of mayhem against the tree-sitters.
In other words, they were doing it mainly for the safety of the tree-sitters. To give the devil his due, there had been opportune agents provocateurs from the presumed football fan base who had hurled projectiles into the inhabited trees on a few occasions. Yet I called their rationale plastic because, like the one for the invasion of Iraq, it seems as malleable as a toy Gumby left out too long in the sun.
And of course subsequent events would all bear out the analogy.
I will return to my tale in the forthcoming Part Three.
To resume, I offer my perspective on the passive tree-sit protest and the University's extravagant overkill response.
When word first spread of UC's plans for the stately, shady oaks on a gentle hillside, a number of people felt compelled to take up residence in certain trees. The first of them was a notorious anti-car activist and mayoral candidate named Running Wolf. He began residing in a redwood slightly north of the grove's center. A Native American himself, he emerged as leader and spokesman for the protest which soon was bound by evidence that this was a First Nation burial ground.
These young people built little human nests in the trees. Challenging of course, but they freely came and went via ropes and climbing gear. The police lurked at a distance. Meanwhile banners were hung between the trees and a table was set up with literature and refreshment. Frequent spontaneous musical events erupted, all in a peaceful, locally-supported manner. Lots of long-time area residents began to frequent the grove to talk to the young raggle-taggle heroes willing to spend each day and night out in the elements to save these trees.
More important, the tree-sitters resist for principles that many, many hereabouts share, principles for benefit of all. Trees are, after all living things that make life possible for all other living things that depend on air. This is opposed to the will and pleasure and financial clout of some for whom competitive college football holds a higher priority. A powerful minority imposes its will over the local popular will and tough luck about it.
Other trees will be planted elsewhere we are told. Fine, but that doesn't replace having our life-giving trees here. The glaringly apparent truth is that UC has plenty of alternate sites for its gridiron gladiators available a short hop away.
These decisions are made by administrators who are often short-timers from the world of corporate finance who walk off then with huge bonuses. They leave the average citizens to live with the consequences of their schemes. This type has been running wild for a long time, but they ran amok in the last seven years. And as of 2001 they have had access to unlimited resources for any ugly move they can paint as an issue of national security.
I found myself more and more attached to the grove, a very pleasant place with a cool breeze and the feeling of a refuge. I found myself in far-reaching conversations with the new inhabitants, including a young journalist with long blond dreads. He went up the main occupied oak for an interview, a sheer ascent aided by rock-climbing apparatus. I would have gone too, if I were maybe twenty years younger. The perches where the sitters spend their days are quite high, a few boards suggest a floor, provisions are tied-up in hanging bags.
On other afternoons, I played harmonica and sang with one other musician or joined a circle of many. I had a nice ground-to-tree-haven chat with a young girl. She had a charming elemental pseudonym, one characteristic of the names chosen by the group such as "Ayr". This was Winter of 2006-2007, extending into the following Spring. There was a lot of joyous activity on the ground: the gentle installation of a whole network of communicating cables, ropes, and hammocks, community democracy, and counter-cultural celebrity appearances. Country Joe MacDonald came and sang the songs of Woody Guthrie. Hand-painted signs and banners etc. mushroomed in the grove, rallying people and spreading the word. And of course the mainstream media came and went, pimping their usual sensationalism. This was followed by gaggles of politicians such as the hobbit-like former mayor and some city councilors who were hoisted to a large makeshift platform in the trees. The town was seen as standing on its hind legs for once.
Meanwhile, UC's calmer heads with colder hearts got their legal, political and propaganda game on. The months went by. Events would occasionally grow tense--the police snatching tables and gear, and then recede again into uneventful stretches. Arrests did happen but they were still scarce in the first six months of the action.
Over near the north side redwood tree-sit, I found an estimable Oak that I could manage to climb. I would pleasantly lie on a lower branch, relax, and watch the scene. Often somewhat caramelized, I just had to pay attention and not roll over. I imagined what it must be like to live in these trees round the clock--the skill and balance one must learn to thwart the constant pull of gravity, mistakes were irretrievable. I wanted to spend time up in these sturdy, elephantine oaks. I put in regular appearances to make a public statement--that we local residents use and esteem this grove. What if we occupied every tree?
While the lawsuits opposing the university plans for a "high-performance" sports training center made their glacial progress through court, UC started to wax a bit antsy. It was as if they were too accustomed to an extremely tilted playing field to accept due process for very long. They were constrained from making changes to the grove by the initial court orders, but were too wound-up to content themselves with just endless patrols and shakedowns, or with merely keeping police spies in the vicinity, slyly videotaping visitors.
The protest had begun on "Big Game Day" at the end of last football season. So to prepare for the new season's opening game, UC made a transparent effort to isolate this widely supported peaceful action. After it was already in place, they announced that they were building an enclosing fence for public safety. Shock and awe, baby.
Gone was public access to the center of the grove. The information and support table was pushed-out to the sidewalk. And with the fence, of course, an expanding number of full-time guards. The plastic rationale for making such a radical alteration to the site, in apparent disregard of the courts orders, was that crowds of football fans might commit acts of mayhem against the tree-sitters.
In other words, they were doing it mainly for the safety of the tree-sitters. To give the devil his due, there had been opportune agents provocateurs from the presumed football fan base who had hurled projectiles into the inhabited trees on a few occasions. Yet I called their rationale plastic because, like the one for the invasion of Iraq, it seems as malleable as a toy Gumby left out too long in the sun.
And of course subsequent events would all bear out the analogy.
I will return to my tale in the forthcoming Part Three.
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
The Sidewalk Struggle
Most crucial for the Flaneur is his pedestrian right of way...
In recent years there has been considerable public controversy over the enforcement of public order on the public sidewalks of central Berkeley. Ah yes, the operative word here is "public", a word like the word "liberty". Without care, such words lead easily to political rhetoric, something which I pledge to keep to a minimum.
Essentially, the forums and the law that resulted were concerned with how the homeless and other problematic types behave on the sidewalks of various business districts. These laws against yelling, lying down, sitting, semi-lodging, defecating, and aggressive pan-handling were apparently needed to add the specificity now required to similar laws which are already on the books. Much fanfare was emitted from the old crony in the mayor's office about the urgent need to keep sidewalks clear.
This bit of laughable hypocrisy seems especially galling from the old newspaper thief in light of unbridled abuse of the right to clear sidewalks not only by the private sector but by the city under his watch. Huge, incredibly intrusive, parking meter pay-here machines now jut three feet into sidewalks along Bancroft. When people stand in front of and puzzle over them they effectively block the busy sidewalks. Most appallingly, the city didn't even bother to remove the poles of the old decapitated parking meters. They just capped them and left them there for people to negotiate around and bump into.
Downtown the city added bike racks, of wavy tubular steel, that not only fully extend into footpath but, when bikes are added, block it entirely. People who dismiss my case as being comprised of trivialities may one day experience additional ache or difficulty walking and be expected to speak from the other side of their faces at said time.
These bike barricades add to the "advanced" obstacle course and traffic death race that is downtown Berkeley today. The motorists not only risk your life by cutting you off on right turns into your crosswalk, they think absolutely nothing of entirely blocking them to force pedestrians out into traffic to cross the street. Oh and if a motorist happens to hit you outside the crosswalk, it is entirely your fault. I was apprised of this by a Berkeley cop after I was knocked down in front of the California Theater in 2005.
The motorized police force doesn't seem to notice much pedestrian endangerment as it occurs, or if they they do, to mind it very much. Recently, they have given out more tickets for jay-walking and have lowered the fine for riding a bicycle on the sidewalk. Police were not writing them because they were said to considered them to be too high. Then you get this lip service from elected officials and campus what-nots, who drove to work that day, along the lines of "if we could only get more people to walk," by which they mean other people.
Back on the sidewalk, the second issue is the tolerance, not to say bias, for the businesses who block the sidewalks, who privatize them for their commercial hustles. For example, I start with perhaps the most disgusting and just about the closest to my home--the Wells Fargo bank. To see it at its most heinous one should visit it around noon in late September. Tables fronted by street hustlers in white shirts and ties use free pizza grab students and con them into signing up for credit cards. Any sleazy enterprise that wishes to set up a table there and pay Wells Fargo is welcome to ply their trade standing directly in people's way. This is in addition to the constant stream of ATM users there, two huge filthy concrete trash receptacles, and always, always, several large plastic rubbish cans on wheels. Try to walk by sometime when the new students hoards are spawning through and the hustlers with the clip-boards are pushing for eye contact and a greeting.
Like the occupation of oil-rich foreign countries, apparently any shitty grab of the public domain is deemed urgent and necessary in petroleum-based post-late capitalism. Restaurants want to set up tables covering more than half the walk? Why that's redolent of sales tax!
Naturally the biggest most imperious business in town, the University, would be most flagrant. It shows disregard for individuals' right of way, the right to have it be kept clear and clean of the effluvia of greasy hustles, and the right to be free of damned vehicles on the sidewalk. Take a look for example at the sidewalk opposite what is arguably one of Berkeley best structures, the First Congregational Church complex (FCC). This would be Dana street between Durant and Channing Way. The University uses it's sidewalk as a port of excretion for it's massive unsustainable residential towers which fill the entire Eastern side of that block. They have at least two large metal dumpsters at least half and often entirely on the public sidewalk on Dana. Add to this big plastic cans on wheels on the right of way. And when the parking spots get filled, there are often up to two or three vehicles parked on the sidewalk. A general squalor prevails around all these blockages, usually including piles of detritus on the ground. Across the street people congregate at FCC not only for regular worship and church affairs, but concerts and current event forums. It's grounds are well-looked after and several flowering trees thrive despite the busy street traffic nearby. The tower clock has been repaired as well. If only the University would be such a good neighbor, behaving and cleaning up after itself.
What we have seen is the extreme measures the University is willing to take to assert its presumed sovereignty over Piedmont Avenue sidewalks in order to punish the tree-sitters and their supporters. That topic is still to be addressed in this journal, but it will be.
What I don't see is the University taking responsibility for the toxic effects it attempts to externalize.
In their grand disregard for the world's exhaustion, academic elites are concerned with other elites, those to whom others serve meals and for whom others clean up messes.
In recent years there has been considerable public controversy over the enforcement of public order on the public sidewalks of central Berkeley. Ah yes, the operative word here is "public", a word like the word "liberty". Without care, such words lead easily to political rhetoric, something which I pledge to keep to a minimum.
Essentially, the forums and the law that resulted were concerned with how the homeless and other problematic types behave on the sidewalks of various business districts. These laws against yelling, lying down, sitting, semi-lodging, defecating, and aggressive pan-handling were apparently needed to add the specificity now required to similar laws which are already on the books. Much fanfare was emitted from the old crony in the mayor's office about the urgent need to keep sidewalks clear.
This bit of laughable hypocrisy seems especially galling from the old newspaper thief in light of unbridled abuse of the right to clear sidewalks not only by the private sector but by the city under his watch. Huge, incredibly intrusive, parking meter pay-here machines now jut three feet into sidewalks along Bancroft. When people stand in front of and puzzle over them they effectively block the busy sidewalks. Most appallingly, the city didn't even bother to remove the poles of the old decapitated parking meters. They just capped them and left them there for people to negotiate around and bump into.
Downtown the city added bike racks, of wavy tubular steel, that not only fully extend into footpath but, when bikes are added, block it entirely. People who dismiss my case as being comprised of trivialities may one day experience additional ache or difficulty walking and be expected to speak from the other side of their faces at said time.
These bike barricades add to the "advanced" obstacle course and traffic death race that is downtown Berkeley today. The motorists not only risk your life by cutting you off on right turns into your crosswalk, they think absolutely nothing of entirely blocking them to force pedestrians out into traffic to cross the street. Oh and if a motorist happens to hit you outside the crosswalk, it is entirely your fault. I was apprised of this by a Berkeley cop after I was knocked down in front of the California Theater in 2005.
The motorized police force doesn't seem to notice much pedestrian endangerment as it occurs, or if they they do, to mind it very much. Recently, they have given out more tickets for jay-walking and have lowered the fine for riding a bicycle on the sidewalk. Police were not writing them because they were said to considered them to be too high. Then you get this lip service from elected officials and campus what-nots, who drove to work that day, along the lines of "if we could only get more people to walk," by which they mean other people.
Back on the sidewalk, the second issue is the tolerance, not to say bias, for the businesses who block the sidewalks, who privatize them for their commercial hustles. For example, I start with perhaps the most disgusting and just about the closest to my home--the Wells Fargo bank. To see it at its most heinous one should visit it around noon in late September. Tables fronted by street hustlers in white shirts and ties use free pizza grab students and con them into signing up for credit cards. Any sleazy enterprise that wishes to set up a table there and pay Wells Fargo is welcome to ply their trade standing directly in people's way. This is in addition to the constant stream of ATM users there, two huge filthy concrete trash receptacles, and always, always, several large plastic rubbish cans on wheels. Try to walk by sometime when the new students hoards are spawning through and the hustlers with the clip-boards are pushing for eye contact and a greeting.
Like the occupation of oil-rich foreign countries, apparently any shitty grab of the public domain is deemed urgent and necessary in petroleum-based post-late capitalism. Restaurants want to set up tables covering more than half the walk? Why that's redolent of sales tax!
Naturally the biggest most imperious business in town, the University, would be most flagrant. It shows disregard for individuals' right of way, the right to have it be kept clear and clean of the effluvia of greasy hustles, and the right to be free of damned vehicles on the sidewalk. Take a look for example at the sidewalk opposite what is arguably one of Berkeley best structures, the First Congregational Church complex (FCC). This would be Dana street between Durant and Channing Way. The University uses it's sidewalk as a port of excretion for it's massive unsustainable residential towers which fill the entire Eastern side of that block. They have at least two large metal dumpsters at least half and often entirely on the public sidewalk on Dana. Add to this big plastic cans on wheels on the right of way. And when the parking spots get filled, there are often up to two or three vehicles parked on the sidewalk. A general squalor prevails around all these blockages, usually including piles of detritus on the ground. Across the street people congregate at FCC not only for regular worship and church affairs, but concerts and current event forums. It's grounds are well-looked after and several flowering trees thrive despite the busy street traffic nearby. The tower clock has been repaired as well. If only the University would be such a good neighbor, behaving and cleaning up after itself.
What we have seen is the extreme measures the University is willing to take to assert its presumed sovereignty over Piedmont Avenue sidewalks in order to punish the tree-sitters and their supporters. That topic is still to be addressed in this journal, but it will be.
What I don't see is the University taking responsibility for the toxic effects it attempts to externalize.
In their grand disregard for the world's exhaustion, academic elites are concerned with other elites, those to whom others serve meals and for whom others clean up messes.
Monday, June 23, 2008
If We Should Live Up in the Trees
The Flaneur now approaches a topic he has been avoiding...
The Daily Californian is a somewhat contemptible free tabloid associated with the University of California Berkeley. I peruse it over breakfast for bits of local information and to gauge current student thinking. On a day in the Fall of 2006, I read in the Daily Cal that neighbors of the south-eastern sector of the University were astir over plans to renovate Memorial stadium. UC intended to cut down a grove of esteemed oak trees to make an ancillary building for "advanced" athletic training. Academic marketers say "advanced" when their counterparts in commercial marketing would say "extreme."
That afternoon I set out to see the oaks in question whose lives were threatened. There were no specifics on their precise location, so I walked up through the beer-stained streets of fraternity row toward the stadium entrance. From the front entrance area, I scanned a stand of eucalyptus on the hill above but could not determine where the oaks could be.
No reason not to, I entered and surveyed the shabby old spectacle of the stadium for the first time. In its emptiness, it was a nice aerial perch for sky-watching. One couldn't help but feel the precariousness of this giant concrete bowl built as it was on a sheer hillside. And that was before it was well-documented to be on top of the seismic fault most likely to deliver the next big quake.
Now they want to make it bigger and better for the late-Roman Empire-esque society that flocks here in droves pricey tickets in hand to watch the war-surrogate sport of choice. They are hard to miss, the overweight sports enthusiasts in chauvinistic colors streaming through in their rudeness leaving mounds of waste in their wake. The general, or head football coach, that brought them victories now demands this tribute. To off-set the costs of this latest massive building project the University would add a steady schedule of events at the stadium, such as rock concerts too large for the nearby Greek theater. The template for this, one assumes, would the Paul McCartney concert which was held there some years ago. That was when UC assured the neighborhood they had easily managed traffic plans and were confident sound levels would be reasonable. The results were something to the contrary with little or no apology. This eat-our-dust trope is fairly constant in UC's behavior.
I found out soon afterward, that the imperiled oaks were much closer to home. They were part of the delightful peaceful landscaping along Piedmont Avenue as it travels along the University's shoulders. On the hillside just beyond the I-House, they sweep the eye into the curves of their admirable branches. It is as if a patch of the old coastal live-oak forest had been spared for the edification and health of all who come by it. Like the stadium itself, it had been dedicated to WWI veterans and had been named Memorial Grove. As the controversy surrounding it grew, information came out that had also been burial ground for Native Americans and thus sacred another time over.
By the time I arrived there, developments surrounding this example of the disheartening march of "progress" had again made the news. A number of young folks with more allegiance to the earth than to the mad parade of consumption decided to occupy the trees. They were not content to wait like the Mayor and the risk-assessing home-owners, for law suits to optimistically prevent the destruction of the grove. They knew they only way to thwart the arboricidal tendencies of the suits that make the decisions at this pompous self-important corporation called a school, was to physically guard the trees against them.
Does the charge of arboricide sound harsh? Please bear in mind this wanton attack on the aesthetically pleasing oak grove is just one example of UCs coming chain saw massacre. They intend to denude most of the wooded hills behind campus, cutting thousands and thousands of mature trees. The stated aim is to rid the place of non-native eucalyptus and other trees and to replace them with California native plants which are more fire-resistant. Theoretically all well and good, except what would such a massive disruption mean for all the wildlife living in those trees? Moreover how can anyone predict what the immediate ecological effects will be? What if we have extended drought following the deforestation? Or if el Nino washes away the attempts at replanting? And all the while the air-cleaning and carbon absorption of those trees formerly standing will be lost. It may also be taken for granted that development in the form of additional buildings and facilities will accompany this clear cut.
Once again we see the drift between what arrogant authorities in government do and the will of the people, not to mention the good of the environment. This arrogance of power, it is no secret, has gone totalitarian under the current unitary presidency. For the profit of an ever-tightening greedy elite any dirty deed is done expeditiously. UC is now green-washing British Petroleum blood money, competing to develop the next generation of nuclear weapons, and advertising its brilliant human-rights negating law Professor Yoo's close ties to the White House to raise funds. A Blackwater-esque private security firm has now been installed by Homeland Security at the Lawrence Berkeley Lab where they sit with jaundiced eyes looking over UC's shoulder at the rest of town.
Over time I have begun to wonder if the prolonged campaign of aggressive persuasion short of organ failure that UC has steadily escalated against the tree-sitters, hasn't been the brain child of the illustrious Dr. Yoo.
Much more of this dilemma will follow in later entires to this journal.
The Daily Californian is a somewhat contemptible free tabloid associated with the University of California Berkeley. I peruse it over breakfast for bits of local information and to gauge current student thinking. On a day in the Fall of 2006, I read in the Daily Cal that neighbors of the south-eastern sector of the University were astir over plans to renovate Memorial stadium. UC intended to cut down a grove of esteemed oak trees to make an ancillary building for "advanced" athletic training. Academic marketers say "advanced" when their counterparts in commercial marketing would say "extreme."
That afternoon I set out to see the oaks in question whose lives were threatened. There were no specifics on their precise location, so I walked up through the beer-stained streets of fraternity row toward the stadium entrance. From the front entrance area, I scanned a stand of eucalyptus on the hill above but could not determine where the oaks could be.
No reason not to, I entered and surveyed the shabby old spectacle of the stadium for the first time. In its emptiness, it was a nice aerial perch for sky-watching. One couldn't help but feel the precariousness of this giant concrete bowl built as it was on a sheer hillside. And that was before it was well-documented to be on top of the seismic fault most likely to deliver the next big quake.
Now they want to make it bigger and better for the late-Roman Empire-esque society that flocks here in droves pricey tickets in hand to watch the war-surrogate sport of choice. They are hard to miss, the overweight sports enthusiasts in chauvinistic colors streaming through in their rudeness leaving mounds of waste in their wake. The general, or head football coach, that brought them victories now demands this tribute. To off-set the costs of this latest massive building project the University would add a steady schedule of events at the stadium, such as rock concerts too large for the nearby Greek theater. The template for this, one assumes, would the Paul McCartney concert which was held there some years ago. That was when UC assured the neighborhood they had easily managed traffic plans and were confident sound levels would be reasonable. The results were something to the contrary with little or no apology. This eat-our-dust trope is fairly constant in UC's behavior.
I found out soon afterward, that the imperiled oaks were much closer to home. They were part of the delightful peaceful landscaping along Piedmont Avenue as it travels along the University's shoulders. On the hillside just beyond the I-House, they sweep the eye into the curves of their admirable branches. It is as if a patch of the old coastal live-oak forest had been spared for the edification and health of all who come by it. Like the stadium itself, it had been dedicated to WWI veterans and had been named Memorial Grove. As the controversy surrounding it grew, information came out that had also been burial ground for Native Americans and thus sacred another time over.
By the time I arrived there, developments surrounding this example of the disheartening march of "progress" had again made the news. A number of young folks with more allegiance to the earth than to the mad parade of consumption decided to occupy the trees. They were not content to wait like the Mayor and the risk-assessing home-owners, for law suits to optimistically prevent the destruction of the grove. They knew they only way to thwart the arboricidal tendencies of the suits that make the decisions at this pompous self-important corporation called a school, was to physically guard the trees against them.
Does the charge of arboricide sound harsh? Please bear in mind this wanton attack on the aesthetically pleasing oak grove is just one example of UCs coming chain saw massacre. They intend to denude most of the wooded hills behind campus, cutting thousands and thousands of mature trees. The stated aim is to rid the place of non-native eucalyptus and other trees and to replace them with California native plants which are more fire-resistant. Theoretically all well and good, except what would such a massive disruption mean for all the wildlife living in those trees? Moreover how can anyone predict what the immediate ecological effects will be? What if we have extended drought following the deforestation? Or if el Nino washes away the attempts at replanting? And all the while the air-cleaning and carbon absorption of those trees formerly standing will be lost. It may also be taken for granted that development in the form of additional buildings and facilities will accompany this clear cut.
Once again we see the drift between what arrogant authorities in government do and the will of the people, not to mention the good of the environment. This arrogance of power, it is no secret, has gone totalitarian under the current unitary presidency. For the profit of an ever-tightening greedy elite any dirty deed is done expeditiously. UC is now green-washing British Petroleum blood money, competing to develop the next generation of nuclear weapons, and advertising its brilliant human-rights negating law Professor Yoo's close ties to the White House to raise funds. A Blackwater-esque private security firm has now been installed by Homeland Security at the Lawrence Berkeley Lab where they sit with jaundiced eyes looking over UC's shoulder at the rest of town.
Over time I have begun to wonder if the prolonged campaign of aggressive persuasion short of organ failure that UC has steadily escalated against the tree-sitters, hasn't been the brain child of the illustrious Dr. Yoo.
Much more of this dilemma will follow in later entires to this journal.
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
Still Inside the Museum
This continues an earlier entry on a visit to Berkeley Art Museum...
The Buddhist art gallery was a Bardo plain in microcosm--a cosmological palette-cleanser or a destination of its own. By the next level, the exhibits had returned to conceptual art science projects, so to speak. The effect of the ropes installed in the open atrium got even better from above; they were like oblique harp-strings.
The highest gallery was certainly the most wiggy of them all--Joan Jonas' fun house. Three two-sided flat-screens hung at intervals. They featured tableaux of the artist and her dog superimposed on landscapes of ocean waves or desert chaparral. Beyond them a projection screen rises from the floor with a mountainous landscape, as uneventful as the shoulder of a desert road. In an opposite alcove, another film with sound consisted of a performance by Jonas. She whirled lots of fabric around on poles and was wrapped in it, I was reminded of George Herms' similar art actions. A life-size cardboard cut-out dog keep watch should anyone else try to act-out. Before any sense of meaning in it all could stick with me, I stepped into the small elevator down.
I drifted like a dandelion down to the lowest-level galleries. Matrix Redux, a retrospective of the museums most innovative series, seduced fifteen minutes of my voyeurism. The piece-de-resistance for me was a nearly transparent piece made out of roplex (kind of like rubber cement). A fluted drape of it hung beneath elaborate shoulder panels like humming-bird wings, with almost invisible stenciled decoration. It looked like a an evening gown shed by an insect-fairy.
I noted with relief that those billboard-sized Hans Hoffman monstrosities are now hung in an off-the-beaten-path gallery where few ever venture.
My last stop was to be in the ring-side gallery where Matrix usually goes down. There were the enlarged photographs of space showing the clandestine satellites of our black-budget secret government. They were riveting in themselves but the heart of this work, Trevor Paglen's The Other Night Sky, was in a black chamber of its own. Entered through curtains, the space is dominated by a spinning globe, surrounded by white cubes for spectators to sit on. As the globe spins the continent nearest the viewer gets brighter, and throughout one sees crowded satellite traffic projected onto it, as if observed from deeper in the solar system. I was transfixed for ten minutes or so and I began to feel light-headed, almost zero-gravity.
Paglen is an academic here in geography as well as an artist having his first solo show. He has produced a book based on his photographs taken from great distances of secret government installations throughout the Southwest mainly. It is entitled "I Could Tell You but Then You Would Have to Be Destroyed: Emblems from the Pentagon's Black World." Another book documents CIA "special rendition" torture flights.
His work makes a statement larger than the one made by Manuel Botero's paintings of chubby people being tortured as inspired by Abu Ghraib. They were exhibited in segregated room at the University library and were almost as cute as alarming, somehow normalizing, evil made more banal.
Paglen's work is unsettling in a way more vague but deeper; it portends an overarching agenda of no-good.
This cultural sojourn just got more and more cosmic as I went along. I was glad I smoked before leaving home.
The Buddhist art gallery was a Bardo plain in microcosm--a cosmological palette-cleanser or a destination of its own. By the next level, the exhibits had returned to conceptual art science projects, so to speak. The effect of the ropes installed in the open atrium got even better from above; they were like oblique harp-strings.
The highest gallery was certainly the most wiggy of them all--Joan Jonas' fun house. Three two-sided flat-screens hung at intervals. They featured tableaux of the artist and her dog superimposed on landscapes of ocean waves or desert chaparral. Beyond them a projection screen rises from the floor with a mountainous landscape, as uneventful as the shoulder of a desert road. In an opposite alcove, another film with sound consisted of a performance by Jonas. She whirled lots of fabric around on poles and was wrapped in it, I was reminded of George Herms' similar art actions. A life-size cardboard cut-out dog keep watch should anyone else try to act-out. Before any sense of meaning in it all could stick with me, I stepped into the small elevator down.
I drifted like a dandelion down to the lowest-level galleries. Matrix Redux, a retrospective of the museums most innovative series, seduced fifteen minutes of my voyeurism. The piece-de-resistance for me was a nearly transparent piece made out of roplex (kind of like rubber cement). A fluted drape of it hung beneath elaborate shoulder panels like humming-bird wings, with almost invisible stenciled decoration. It looked like a an evening gown shed by an insect-fairy.
I noted with relief that those billboard-sized Hans Hoffman monstrosities are now hung in an off-the-beaten-path gallery where few ever venture.
My last stop was to be in the ring-side gallery where Matrix usually goes down. There were the enlarged photographs of space showing the clandestine satellites of our black-budget secret government. They were riveting in themselves but the heart of this work, Trevor Paglen's The Other Night Sky, was in a black chamber of its own. Entered through curtains, the space is dominated by a spinning globe, surrounded by white cubes for spectators to sit on. As the globe spins the continent nearest the viewer gets brighter, and throughout one sees crowded satellite traffic projected onto it, as if observed from deeper in the solar system. I was transfixed for ten minutes or so and I began to feel light-headed, almost zero-gravity.
Paglen is an academic here in geography as well as an artist having his first solo show. He has produced a book based on his photographs taken from great distances of secret government installations throughout the Southwest mainly. It is entitled "I Could Tell You but Then You Would Have to Be Destroyed: Emblems from the Pentagon's Black World." Another book documents CIA "special rendition" torture flights.
His work makes a statement larger than the one made by Manuel Botero's paintings of chubby people being tortured as inspired by Abu Ghraib. They were exhibited in segregated room at the University library and were almost as cute as alarming, somehow normalizing, evil made more banal.
Paglen's work is unsettling in a way more vague but deeper; it portends an overarching agenda of no-good.
This cultural sojourn just got more and more cosmic as I went along. I was glad I smoked before leaving home.
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