All of the fucking depth of 1953 with all of it's perversity of privilege too

Incidental Music for a Falling Piano (ca.1992) fig 1.) piano to be dropped on concrete

I aimed high but it pulled left. I got the damn thing at a market in Mexico. You know, caldos and kids with vagrant eyes, That's what WSBill says on the phone. Yes I have been, He pushes the brim of his hat up and lights the stump of a cigarette on the stove's burner. Just like no one eats cake on a torn white sheet in the rain. Just like no one thinks of shit until it's too late. We're right back at the beginning again, He says as loud as he can. That's right back where my man in New York rankles and my family's frustrated again. It's this wife thing, He tells the cop. It's always the thing where she gets herself shot in half and then goes backwards into the bottom of oblivion, It's always the wife thing. Goodbye Joan, I'm going to be William Tell now, That's what I told her. Then I squeezed a psychic slug right at her apple.
It's expedient, so just go away and maybe you can get some typing done. Then they say, Goodbye WSBill we'll see you soon enough. As a man he's nearly 40 and he has a very immediate fear that the fascists are coming to rub out most of the words in the back of his first book, Junkie. That they're going to change everything, from the pronouns out. But if he's quiet then maybe Africa can save him. That's how los hombre invisibles comes around to wrapping his handgun inside a sock and he learns to swim.

Knock, knock, knocking on heaven’s door Knock, knock, knocking on heaven’s door Knock, knock, knocking on heaven’s door - B.Dylan

The remains of WSBill's stay in Tangier aren't substantial. He's traveling back with the very same luggage. His only addition is the new manuscript. The one that they assembled that summer. The boys were gone for Europe and his trunk was sent to the docks this morning. The sand outside the tiny hotel is warm and the ocean smells soft and fragrant. It's not at all like Louisiana or the low crook of river spit in Chicago. Not at all, WSBill thinks masturbation is out the question today. Instead he smokes some hashish and talks to the bartender about the benefits of having a good raincoat with great seams.
He likes to say, I'm the master of my fantasy and all of its failures. You are of this world, sunshine or no. There's no emancipation from the text once you've been included, That's all I have to say on that. It ends there. Not as ruthless as he'd like but WSBill can still appreciate that it's a rule. Its why his new manuscript seems to be a text that's reducible to its editors abilities rather than it being about the authors chops. The vignettes within it are sewn together with an attention to their seams. They're like scars; deep surgical evidence of the knife and its passing, of the hurt that binds us to our humanity our village to this apex culture many of us also share. Take my typewriter. I'll leave it in the hall. It'll be on the floor by the door. Take my typewriter, I don't need it anymore.
In the absence of the narrative's logic it stands to reason that an editor will find themselves the least blind person in any room filled with swirling entanglements. If we're to be sure of anything then it's that this must be the mirrors edge of what can be agreed on as the author and the space that defines that role. This from a man that's been gone nearly 20 years now, The more of it that you see then the more that you will come to understand this is a common thread within a network of causal duality. It's the arc of our decisions that reveals the context of the text and not the contributions of the author at all.
We're not authors any more than we're dinosaurs that're fucking our dinosaur holes right back to oblivion, WSBill turned to find his lighter at the edge of the bar, If you want to talk dirty then we'll switch it up. You can go fuck your god damned plastics. The future's in mind control. It's in the difference between exaggeration and the truth, last name first, first name last, and then it's all over for the middle initial.
The man in his white jacket continued to polish glassware. It wasn't surprising to him that things got dusty so much as they always got very greasy. He wasn't aware of any fat being in the bourbon, no butter or oil there. The piano's never greasy but the glasses are. Why is this, He wonders?
How many ways are there to tell the story of Giotto and his perfect red circle? The story about how Pope Benedict XI sent a messenger to Giotto and he asked for Giotto to send along a drawing to demonstrate his incomparable skills to the papal court. Giotto being the fellow that he was drew for the messenger a circle. It was said to be so perfect that it was as though it had been drawn with a compass or some other circle drawing machine that was even bigger and more round. Giotto then told the messenger, Go on and give this to the Pope. It turns out the Benedict being merely a man and a messenger himself was really very impressed with Giotto's red circle. He kept that damn thing near his head until his colitis got him in 1304.
Just since last year even, look at how big Giotto's name has gotten to be. It's the occasion of the restoration of the Art Institute of Chicago's stone facade in 1952. The cold weather has finally let up and now there's time enough to scrape the barnacles off old mare. There's the young peach tree out front. It was donated by the young Doctor that married into a wealthy family of tom fools and blind trust. The made one nurse and he had no choice. So now his practice is up the street. He enjoys walking by the front of the museum at noon particularly if the tree is in bloom. It's a wonderful day today is and the striking character of the Beaux Arts building is very keen with the blue strip of the lake behind it.
It's the same year that Klein Blue's in Japan. It's before Assisi with its hoisted sky filled with all of that monochromatic uniformity. But it is the year that Paul B finds himself completing the work of his, Picnic Cantata. This is a piece that's written for four women's voices. It has two pianos and some hesitant afternoon percussion that's almost absurd. Nearly as absurd as the letters that were exchanged by the Jean's C and G at the height of their shared silence among the quiet folk of Europe. 1953 wasn't that hard and it shouldn't have to be confused with 1952. The year when, Mountains and Sea would pool into the rich warm weave of cotton set before a 23 year old painter named Helen. She had become imbued with the deep sense that the material value of something named, soak staining could rally her stars and shoot her even further than the moon.
Sadly anything funny or witty that can be said about a pair of rubber underpants in 1952 will need to be appropriately evaluated from within the larger framework of sexist bullshit that a certain group of cowboy clad bumble seeds and their sophist pals have erected around themselves. It's a year when it would be nice to kick back and be able to like some tall Still paintings for what they are, but no. Instead these guys were drunken buffoons, they had to treat women like shit to better commandeer the turpitude necessary to prop up their dazzling tower of morally abrasive dick spam.
This is how the didactic text of one of those works should read, Shitard One (The Tall One), fecal matter on panel. Through a haze of infantilism this giant smear of black fat, dead matter, and bloody sop happily emulates the screeds of this drunken narcissist with an unequivocal joy and cruelty that viewers can practically revel in for themselves. These are things that we hang inside of a museum.
Enter the boyish R.Chenberg who would later ascend to the top of a tall ladder and expound on the, irrational city that surrounds us with it's offerings of facsimile, trash, and boorish contempt. It's like an enormous old c***. I remember back in Texas and then again later still in Madrid, we couldn't of had any of it for trying. But now I think of my failures as being real. I think of them like they're the biggest c*** out there and I'm going to fail hard just for it. That or I'll trip, trip or fall, either or.
R.Chenberg said some of this in the 50's when he was an equitable commodity. When he was seen as a bang bang kind of culture cannon. His untitled black paintings were huge. He mounted them on newsprint grounds. He'd pull the dailies out of the trash on 12th and then rush right back to his studio on Fulton. That's where he kept the brushes, things are as big as any great big Texas style broom had ever been. He used them to slop glue down and to apply the paint on top of the flattened newspapers. The dark pigment obscured or in some instances elevated the text and the images that were below the immediate surface. This caused the entire painting to lift up and become radically active as one continuous stochastic field, something perpetual on which the will could knead. It's all a matter of chance, of change, and the choices that can be made. The series can be interpreted as an extension of his, Erased de Kooning Drawing which itself is seen as being a development from the white paintings that preceded it. R.Chenberg didn't talk too much about the de Kooning drawing. '53 was a rough year for him and de Kooning made him question the value of the decisions that he had made, all that he given up to be here. If someone even mentioned the drawing then he would become quiet suddenly. It was like there was sad sad song playing behind his eye's. It was well known by most of the people at the Met that he had a huge heart for love. Many of R.Chenberg's friends felt that the Cedar Tavern was it's most likely epicenter.

Let's be sad now Let's fold our socks into the same drawer as before Let's wear plastic frames and calculate the cost of our lives Let's be lead then Let's be gold Let's be young and let's be old - Laundry after Light