Fire in the Sky, Snow on the Subway, Band on the Run, Thinking of Riots, Flames and the Way Back Home
We just dropped off the teenager in Boston, snow on the ground, looking at the trees thinking about the next steps, out at the year ahead, wondering how to approach the years to come. On the one hand, we could try the same as the last eight years or we could try something different? What's the definition of insanity? We protest. We react. We do the same thing over and over. This time, it's up to us to think of something new, to create something better for each, more care, more connection, more dialogue with those who are different, with young people, with outsiders, with those who are different. I’ll be reading and talking with friends and traveling and teaching and trying not to sweat it too much, trying to learn about the world and its people, digging into old books and new, Democracy Shaken Not Stirred, Fatima suggests, the Navalny Bio, Something on Your Mind, the story of karen dalton, reading Nightwood with the teenager, watching Babylon Berlin with mon amour, making our way into the winter.
When I see the fires in L A, I think of the riots, the climate chaos, the evacuations, the road into an uncertain future. Looking at the flames, I recall the fires that stretched through the sky the week I was graduating from college in 1992, LA Riots and fires, past and present, the ones still burning this week, creating climate refugees, ever changing us. Like the 2025 fires, those flames in 1992 seemed to signal that something was wrong. Something was terribly wrong inside the earth with our relationship to the lived environment. We’re not treating each other with care, not treating the planet or our ecology with the nutrients it needs, too many cars, not enough care.
Our teenager flew out to LA last week, to get back to classes at UCLA. Out of the snow, into the fires, running out San Francisco on Thursday, canceling gigs and appointments, a band on the run. I feel like we’re doing the same thing, running away from the storm, always trying to get away from it if it's possible. But where do you go? LA is burning. North Carolina flooding, Hurricane_Helene, the Gowanus polluted, threatening to flood. The climate is heating, flooding, creating refugees on the move. And no one seems to want them. We were running from it all, from museum to city, to museum, to winter hike all January long.
Jan 3
Walked across town to the Museum of Modern Art. "I think of myself, standing in a world that is never standing still,” Robert Frank wrote. “I’m still in there fighting, alive because I believe in what I’m trying to do now.” Life Dances On: Robert Frank in Dialogue—the artist’s first solo exhibition at MoMA. Floor after floor, gallery after gallery we walked through the January afternoon.
Said goodbye to a friend, separating, I was leaving, she was.
I feel connected and in sync with the estranged, the loneliness of others, all the feelings, the fear, the trepidation, the anger, the desperation, the depression from those who’ve done their best, feeling after feeling through time, cycling, a panic here, a downward dog there, not too high, not too low, one after another. So, how do I meditate on it all? Accepting and not accepting, Moving forward and backward, accepting the grief and stress, panic about her future after a great day yesterday, public catastrophe, private losses, exploring thesis research with the kid at the Shed, in Hudson Yards.
We walked to Luna Luna: "...a fun house of carnival attractions by visionary artists of the 20th century, including Jean-Michel Basquiat, Sonia Delaunay, Keith Haring, David Hockney, Roy Lichtenstein, and more. The brainchild of artist André Heller, Luna Luna first opened in 1987 in Hamburg, Germany, as a spectacular fairground. And then, by a twist of fate, the park’s treasures were forgotten in storage in Texas for 36 years...." Art or playground, commodity or museum, it wasn't at all clear. We talked about the museums and rides, trips to Luna Park, the stories through the years and years of it all.
Jan 6th
All my life I've gone to the Met, with my mother and brothers in the 1970's before a late lunch in Chinatown. I walk through the doors and it feels like home. I greet St James by the Christmas Tree, thinking of the Camino and our journeys through Spain, to witness the remains of Saint James the Apostle said to be located in the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela. According to legend, Saint James' disciples carried his body to Spain after his execution and buried him in what is now Santiago de Compostela. In the 9th century, a hermit named Pelayo discovered a hidden tomb containing the remains of a beheaded man, which he believed to be Saint James. The news spread quickly, and pilgrims began to travel to the site to pay their respects at the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela, built over the tomb of this apostle of Jesus. It has been a pilgrimage site since the Early Middle Ages, and the traditional pilgrimage route to the saint's grave is known as the "Way of St. James".
On the second floor we visit Lorenzetti and Duccio works at the Siena show on the rise of painting ... "Siena: The Rise of Painting, 1300–1350 examines an exceptional moment at the dawn of the Italian Renaissance and the pivotal role of Sienese artists—including Duccio, Pietro and Ambrogio Lorenzetti, and Simone Martini—in defining Western painting. In the decades leading up to the catastrophic onset of the plague around 1350, Siena was the site of phenomenal artistic innovation and activity. While Florence is often positioned as the center of the Renaissance, this presentation offers a fresh perspective on the importance of Siena, from Duccio’s profound influence on a new generation of painters to the development of narrative altarpieces and the dissemination of artistic styles beyond Italy."
In 1991, I lived in Siena, first learning about this work. It always reminds me.
Next we explored the "Mexican Prints at the Vanguard" show, reflecting on our current fights against Fascism... as well as our trips to Mexico City. The teenager is taken by the images of the Virgin Guadalupe. So am I.
Next door, we explored the Sun Ra film "Space is the Place" in the "Flight into Egypt: Black Artists and Ancient Egypt, 1876–Now..." show. The college kid knew more than I did, seeing reflections of Egypt from LA artists they've gotten to know. The teenager talked about the Betye Saar works, as we explored "Thematic sections featuring works from The Met collection and international loans from public and private collections trace subjects including how Black artists and other agents of culture have employed ancient Egyptian imagery to craft a unifying identity, the contributions of Black scholars to the study of ancient Egypt, and the engagement of modern and contemporary Egyptian artists with ancient Egypt."
Tired, we find ourselves wandering past the The Temple of Dendur from the Roman Period completed by 10 B.C. where years ago we threw pill bottles in the water to protest overdoses fueled by the Sacklers, who fund this wing of the museum.
On we walk through the stories of the universe and our illusions, in representations of "Mandalas: Mapping the Buddhist Art of Tibet." They remind me, i’m very small. I've been coming to this place all my life...learning about the world here.
That Sunday night, we made a fire and chill with Babylon Berlin and the adventures with Rath and Charlotte through Weimar Berlin.
Monday, snow and the kid was off to LA. And they are off... walked through the snow to catch the train to jfk, to send the kid back to LA, had a 'real' nyc moment, including a prolonged knife fight on the train, some fine extemporaneous uses of the english language, a gut wrenching vision of the kid with three bags making their way to the airtram, a goodbye wave, a three hour flight delay, piles of snow in the window, people crashed out on the train, hiding from the elements, wrapped in blankets... off to catch mon amour for dinner, bob dylan and pete and judy in the movies, folk songs at the gaslight, the snow pouring in the distance....back home to nico...books and friends... an empty bedroom. Changes.
From NYC to LA. And we kept on moving, band on the run from LA to San Francisco, one way, out to the airport. Upstate, with the college kid on the run from fires in LA, the teenager and two friends and I set out for a winter hike through Doodletown "an isolated hamlet in the Town of Stony Point, Rockland County, New York, United States. Purchased by the Palisades Interstate Park Commission during the 1960s, it is now part of Bear Mountain State Park and a popular destination for hikers, birdwatchers, botanists, and local historians. It is located north of Jones Point, west of Iona Island, and southeast of Orange County. The former settlement is now a ghost town. Listening to Woody Guthrie records, we picked up fellow passengers in Queens, made our way through the the Bronx, over the George Washington Bridge up the Palisades, hiking through the frozen marshes of Iona Island, over railroad tracks, searching for the remains of Doodletown, up trails through the woods, past a damn, through an abandoned watermill, through the remains of the lost ghost town, singing American Pie on the way back home.
The next day, seeing mom and friends, hatching plans for other escapes, trying not to fret about those things out of my control, listening to Willie and Bob, making our way into the winter unknown, up to Boston, past Dorchester MA and Shepard Street, back home to the empty nest.
PS. Its terrifying looking at our country today.
As my friend Diane Curtis puts it:
"Garland should have appointed a special counsel in January 2021, not November 2022.
The Department of Justice should not have a rule prohibiting prosecution of a sitting President.
Congress should have declared him ineligible for office under the insurrection clause.
The Supreme Court should not have declared the President immune from prosecution.
The corporate media failed in so many respects I can’t even list them.
And 75 million Americans chose to endorse a convicted felon, a man found liable for sexual assault, defamation, and fraud, an overt bigot.
Every part of our democracy failed spectacularly: executive, legislative, judicial, press, people.
At the federal level, it is no longer a functioning democracy.
I still hold out hope for at least some of the states.
Be clear-eyed about where we are, please. Only then can we move forward constructively."
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/14r1JHvR1tq/
