July 9, 2003

• Watched some TV tonight. Two brilliant things stuck out like an (ahem) sore thumb.
  
  First was David Letterman. I was flipping through the channels and there was Dave with a doctor in the guest chair, and they're giving a recipe for a pasta dish. The doctor begins unwrapping a bandage from Dave's thumb. It turns out Dave had sliced his thumb open while preparing the dish at home, so while the doctor put three stitches in the gaping wound, the guy in the deli down the street made the pasta dish.
  
  There was brilliant side-by-side video of Dave's bleeing thumb with sutures being applied, and a guy sauteeing onions and tomatoes.
  
  It's this kind of surreal entertainment that restores my faith in television as a medium.
  
  The other brilliant thing was that Lou Reed and Laurie Anderson were on Charlie Rose. I love Laurie. My heart sank when she hitched up with Lou, but really, the New York art junkie thing is probably more her style than the unemployed guy with no real form of artistic expression beside his 'blog.
  
  Be that as it may. Lou spent most of the time talking about Andy Warhol, and Laurie looked like she was maybe having a not-so-good day, or maybe she was stoned or had recently ingested LSD. Or maybe she's really like that.
  
  Hearing their discussions reminded me of the very few art people I've had the chance to sit down with and really hash out Big Meaning kind of stuff. I've had so few of those experiences for a few reasons: Firstly, there aren't that many people to have the discussion with in the first place. Second, I suck at meeting people. Third, they're probably out there wondering who they can trust to open up in that kind of way.
  
  I was thinking specifically about David, dharma buddy of long ago. We sat for hours at a stretch in that taqueria at Richmond and, uh.. Heh. I've forgotten the street names in Houston. But we sat there for hours arguing about Buddhism. People would come in and eavesdrop for a while and roll their eyes, and eat their burrito or whatever, and then leave, and we'd still be there talking about emptiness and the bodhisattva vow.
  
  Or, more accurately, he'd be talking about that stuff, and I'd listen for a while, and then interrupt and steer a little bit. That's where I'm best: steering. I sit and watch people get close to the rhetorical precipice, the one they really don't want to go over, the one that scares the crap out of them so their whole system of reasoning conspires to disallow their considering it, and then I point it out to them, such that they understand that it isn't the end of the world, and I'm not here to fuck up your shit, just to help you get ankle-deep in the big scary wading pool.
  
  It was all so easy with David, because it was all one-to-one, and he's pretty far along.
  
  Before David it was the Marxists. There were some poets who would gather and I liked that they were talking about Big Deal stuff, but I could never really align myself with any of their arguments, because they all believed they knew the whole story. What was needed, they'd say, was a radical reinterpretation of history and culture, furrowing its fertile ground and planting the seeds of revolution. Sounds like fun, but mostly wasted effort. I'd offer that, perhaps, maybe, uh.. maybe what's needed is that people stop seeing each other as commodities (nods of approval), kind of like you people are doing right now (nodding stops). I gave no indication of making a joke, because I wasn't joking. Not in that sense, anyway. Moment of silence. The truth isn't so sexy as planning to turn the world into a Marxist paradise.
  
  I remember going to the coffeehouse one time, and running into this group, and there was this lovely young woman who repositioned herself to sit next to me. She was slim and petite and was wearing a purple velvet thigh-length Jackie O. style dress with matching elbow-length gloves. A pearl necklace hung around her lovely little neck, and her hair was in a tight bun behind her head. She can't have been too far out of high school. She fiddled with a long cigarette holder like the prop it was. She turned to me and asked,
  
  "So. Are you a radical?"
  
  All I could think to say was, "I believe in whatever works."
  
  "What do you mean by that? It's a yes or no question."
  
  "I believe that there's a time to be radical, and a time to not be radical. The good of the people can only be achieved by what's effective, not by what's idealistic."
  
  "Oh."
  
  She turned away and re-entered the discussion at the table, ignoring me.
  
  Wading pool too deep.
  

  • 5:31 am
  • 6 Comments