[American Studies] on Gordon Parks's [American Gothic]

            The study of the African-American and the study of America are one in the same; a people struggling to make a home in a hostile condition made hostile by their very angst.

            If a people are rendered invisible, it is a twofold-fault; the oppressor wielding intolerance and the oppressed for allowing what is being wielded to continuously hit target at will. The oppressor knows how to oppress, as once upon at time, they were the oppressed and possess the memory and methodology of how their dethroned oppressors were so effective until their sackings; the oppressed knows only the blindness that comes from the swollen, blackening eyes were clouts cease to land, because the oppressed knows from their former oppressors the mistakes those oppressors made which allowed them to break free; they allowed them to see, to gather and obtain visions, they allowed them to dream.

            History never repeats itself, every event in history, whilst having all the seemings of similarities, are bred by different circumstances and different events. A woman holds a broom in one hand and a mop in the other, a background of the American Flag. Her black skin represents the oppressed, one of the few of the American lands, her gender implies she must also mind men of all races, lest she fall victim to an opposing gender only content with her subjugation, the mop and broom, cleaning tools, are the tools used to sweep injustice under the rug of an American Ideal gone awry, which we see in the background, fifty stars, fifty states, fifty separate tales of horror and heinous forging of an American Empire.

[The Exterminating Dream III] Moveable Easels

            A true artistic ideal is the one that obliterates all in the name of its very creation; the artist, is this creative animal that lives a quiet life amongst the noise, behaving only recklessly on paper and canvas. With every urge to create arrives a frantic urge to recreate, what they have created and what has been created by another, ideal in need of updates, albums left to wither and denied their right to bloom in a new generations forfeiting their own right to turn around, take a step back and discover what it is that caused what they love today to become.

            Every man (anthropos) must account for their bruises and heal those very wounds if indeed they are to move past them; the artist deny such healing, expose the grotesque of the deep, impacted injury, photography, paint it, describe the hideous preludes and epilogues surrounding the impact, becomes the wound and becomes beautiful because of them. The trends of today, they are embrace and are happily left to be had by the sycophants fixed on being misers of gray matter; the art of yesterday becomes the billboards for the artist of today to not aspire to become as, to be aspire to become as they are, as for every individual, comes an individual stylism unique to their personality, their environment, fears, indifference and ambivalences, the very thing that breeds them.

[To Be a Man] A Poem

[To Be a Man]

There’s only one way to be a

better man; & that way,

is not the way of a manufactured

man,

A phantom of a phantom,

where compromised become of

defects, defection,

& feet falling forward cease

to footsteps from behind;

So there is a flaw,

there seem to be many,

I hear tell, as the census takers

take no time in figuring,

then from them,

the man,

who is not so much more worse off

than the next being applauded,

sees in himself acclimation,

henceforth never a change,

a wink dwindling beyond as far

as I will ever see-

[From the Age of 5] on Dorothea Lange's [Damaged Child]

            Leo Tolstoy once wrote, “From the age of 5 to the man I am now, is but a step; from birth to the age of 5 is an appalling distance.” Every childhood can be said to be plagued by the length it takes to cross such appalling distances. Every adult can remember some point in time in their childhood where they first experienced danger, peril, a closing window or a grip suddenly slipping loose of its object, sending them into what might have seem the longest free-fall, the true lesson and introductory of physics.

            When a child receives love, a child receives all potential this world has to offer; when denied that love, they become another species manoeuvring off instinct to simply survive. Once survival becomes a child number one instinct, a return to a state of compassion or want of compassion is almost nil or an improbability; orphaned children usually don’t take to crying because they know it’s no point, it’s a waste of energy, and as for skills, they are honed over a long stretch of loneliness in a world that has taken from this, for some unfathomable reason, a family, so what they never find is a reason to care for anyone else beyond what they need and who they need to scuttle, to survive.

[Nourishing Humankind] on Brassai's [Transmutation]

            The objects in this life changing form to continue living this life in innumerable, time immemorial, grandiose. So against all things that change form, or are forced to, those that refuse to evolve, find not a single strand of change, we hail and remain in awe of its ability to survive even the fittest.

            The woman, the female of the human species, has only undergone few shifts, giving over cultures from matrilineal to matrilineal, upgrading their social status to equal those patriarchs in the latter portion of human existence but never a physical or genetic shape shift. The breast, the confidence, the pride, the illicit and nurturing spearhead of the woman can be said to be the representation of woman in all regards; from infancy, men suckle the breast of their mother to gain nourishment to grow, men in intimacy suckle the breast to assuage their own desires and light a flame to her erogenous zone, the double mastectomy necessary to spare a woman’s life when under the plague of irregular and rogue cell production have been said to lead to a woman’s melancholia, feeling that part of their very femininity has been forfeited. And as the world races for arms, kills itself with arms and ends their own lives at the barrel-end of the same arms used to take away the life of the next unfortunate, humanity remains because the woman remains, abundant, at the ready and willing to entertain the faltering male patriarch she’s forever in wonder as to why any culture would have been left in their coarse and incapable hands.

[Mother & Child] On Diane Arbus's [Woman Carrying Child in Central Park]

          William Tammeus once quoted “You don't really understand human nature unless you know why a child on a merry-go-round will wave at his parents every time around and why his parents will always wave back.” Diane Arbus captures this very image, the bond between mother and child, an indivisible, unbreakable bond, both indefinite and defying all definitions of both natural and social world.

 

          A child nestled in the arms of his mother falls directly into the social compact, the very few, infinite. We were born individually but we weren’t meant to live that way. There is a vast craving for the contact of another, for the love of another, of others, an unspeakable bond which becomes ample to explain all, leaving nothing unsaid even without anything having been said.

 

          The day is a gloomy one, or one advancing quickly, unstoppably into the evening, people are scattering or conglomerate in the backdrop, allowing the scenario to unfold, possessing character into sharp disbelief and what is left, what is stark, apparent and accurate, is an artistic ideal that obliterates everything, a shot of one woman who nourishes a child deep into a dream-world, keeps him safe while he’s dreaming, which nourishes a future, where all humanity finds continuum.

[Suffer the Little Children] on Apolo Torres's [Girl on side the Building]

            Street art can be defined as everyday reminders and representative of the beauty we can easily lose in melancholia during our everyday monotony. Perhaps the most fulfilling of mention, too, one of the most hideous of street art able to be found the world over, is Apolo Torres’s [Girl Reaching Above the City].

            There are skyscrapers, a sea-set in the sky above the city, an adorable child on the tip of her toes, extending herself, a backpack on her back representing growth in intellect and education. At the base of her feet, there is a snack she’s unaware of, winding around her legs and a Pit-Viper impishly looking up at her. We cannot assume but we can establish what snakes have always represented since biblical times and how childhood, that moment where the future generations grows, learns and blooms, are ensconced in potential victimhood, surrounded by a jungle of predators seeking to prey upon their naivety.

            Apolo Torres’s depiction, which can be found alongside an apartment building housing families, is a necessary image, a frightening image, the sort one has no desire to see yet find themselves unable to turn away when the event unfolds. If ever there are any visions the masses should take in, it is the art, representing life, representing danger, representing a will for longevity in the form of caution.

[When They Come] on Henri Cartier-Bresson's [Acapulco Market, 1963]

            They come, they go, but she stays and never goes.

Flocks of tourist descend upon the place she always called home and because she has always called this place home, there is nothing significant that she can place her finger on as to why anyone would love it so much. She looks to her right, apprehensively, with apprehensive eyes, clean bar and bottles, aware that with travel, comes travellers who want to blend their experience with a bit of drunken delirium, one-night stands, lingering nostalgia and hindsight, where all markets, girls at bars and regrets will never be to be no more.

            Henri Cartier-Bresson could have easily been one of those transients to the exotic unexplored becoming the exploited cliché destination, his photograph complicit, an aggravating accessory so beautifully displayed in immortality, still image of a woman who clearly has indifference to who comes, who goes, because she’ll never go to return.

[Hold on to Nothing] on Bresson's [Simplified Pool]

            Wrap your legs around me, throw your body back into the effortless, lazy tides and feel how the breeze blows for you, how the water chills your skin and my touch a-lines……..

            You are naked before me now, then again, you’ve always been, a spectacle a man as myself adores, always with a sense of drama, always able to cajole a smile, lift you free of anything that may dare to keep the true you from me, from nature, from all that belongs to us at any given moment.

            Now if this tide turns, I’ll turn you along with it. If the water chills you more than any body should be chilled, I’ll find a way to bring myself closer, an impossibility we both would be astounded to witness. So hold on to nothing as I hold on to you, never let go of your drift and buoyancy a-top of the surface as I stand on both feet, waist deep, waiting for you to wake from your dream world, and come into the one I am brewing of you……

[No Matter Where We Are] On Kubrick's [Couple Kissing in an Alley]

            It doesn’t matter where we are, who is watching, or why we have not a semblance of understanding of where we are whenever we are near one another; all that we know is that we are defeated when attempting to keep our hands off each other. Amour Fou, the French call it, everything, every desire consumed by fire, every passion falling over the brim, overflowing, flooding every rational state, every sense warning us that we are no good for each other.

            If we can do anything for ourselves, let us not come into each other’s presence, let us divide, even differentiate those commonalities, even lie if necessary, break the enslavement we’ve created ourselves for one another; for once, let’s be attentive to all who witness long enough to know that we will destroy one another and if we aren’t careful, be the death of one another.

[The Dream to the Highest Bidder]

            Harlem through the lens of Parks can be considered America through the eyes of the working class and the underprivileged. A “For Sale” is dictates that one’s lifetime of hard work and sacrifice, that “pursuit of happiness” can be auctioned off to the highest bidder, that one dream can be easily siphoned off if survival of the fittest is the evolutionary term we know it to be, the excuse we see it to be today; an excuse to explain away our own selfishness, murder without regard to the laws, paying the bribe, which is the only thing that separates them and other scofflaws.

            A contract without the lifelong owner’s consent nor consultation, a fee passed between two hands covered with black gloves, heads covered with black hats, no refunds implied in a market where implications are never the need when currency makes it redundant.

            And what is to become of those dreams dreamed so long that they are no longer capable of self-renewing? Those night terrors feared so long that those who have feared them all their life have become inseparable to their very myth? No monopoly in human suffering exists in the grand scheme of profit, and no one is immune to becoming a victim when the buyer possesses more than you happen to possess.

[The Rise & Revolt] On Gordon Parks's [I Am You]

            In an effort to separate ourselves from the most undesirable penalties or events, we vilify; it’s an uncanny, unfortunate defense mechanism but humans, humanity, has proven it is willing to do whatever it takes to survive, even if that survival determines the demise of another species, a dictated lesser species.

            In Gordon Park’s [I am You], an African-American man emerges from a man-hole in the ground. The camera captures this emergence at an equivalent level as would be someone willing to see eye to eye, wanting to see this man rising. Below our feet, there is another world, where all things unwanted are discarded and flow with the collective rest into the oblivion of those walking above short-term memories.

            But what happens when someone discarded refused to be discarded, beyond that, when the one refusing to be discarded, in their very refusal, inspire the rest to denounce their disenfranchisement? Parks photographs the beginning of a revolution, how it takes one of many various forms, and what appears to us a man just emerging from a pot hole, its representation for the capitalist, adrift in their greed, fearing a revolt, fearing a resurrection from the once silenced.

[Fall of the Jazz Season] Stanley Kubrick's [Jazz is Hot Again]

Even if we have never enjoyed nor heard them, most can recall the names of Miles Davis, Thelonius Monk, Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Chet Baker and the likes. What too can be injected into the knowledge you may or may not have known, is the shared opiate dreams they all once frequented in dreams. Heroin itself can be blamed for the fall of the decline of the Jazz season.

Stanley Kubrick's [Jazz is Hot Again] can be seen as an idiom, or rather, step upon the already ailing corpse where Jazz lay in utter agony, cries unheard, aid unwilling to be sent. Whatever the obsequious of reasoning, the power and might of Jazz never saw the 80's and Miles Davis's [Kind of Blue] was the sum of what Jazz was, and still might be again, when life again is lived and books again are read.

The weary musician rests after a set, the set in representation is the era where Jazz rose, spread like an unrestrained, uncontrolled ravish upon Swing and Bebop, staining Europe with the scars of having once been the last great hub of an art then, as now, underrated and misunderstood.

[A Second-time Rendezvous] on Christer Stromholm's [Nana]

Who was she? Where'd she come from? At which point did she notice Stromholm and his camera? One can look at the photograph of [Nana] taken in Paris during the 1950's and draw blanks to numerous questions. All that we know, is that Stromholm spotted her, his unquestionable depth of eye, at which time she spotted him and what followed was a photograph of [Nana] captured for all time.

Stromholm was lenient, ubiquitous, a hair-triggered snapper who rarely missed any vision worth pursuing, which again, we are brought full circle to the question as to who she was and why it is that Stromholm felt the need to circle around twice, an act rarely committed due to his very disposition, to revisit this woman?

Were they lovers? Mutual admirers? Him the artist driven and pulled by the compulsive, creative urge and she the whore whose only virtue was a whore's existence? Did she, in this slaggish existence, demand money of Stromholm or allowed him to titillate himself while she enjoyed the beloved intrigue of being notice?

All questions, no solid answers; but what we do have, is [Nana]'s and Stromholm's rendezvous, in black and white record........

[No Rest For the Ticket] on Stanley Kubrick's [Man With a Gun]

"An old man and I fell out,
i'll tell you what it was all about;
he had money and I had none,
& that's the way the noise begun."

It is timeless, since the gun has become an innovation, it has become the leading weapon of criminals in societies the world over, weapons for nations to conquer the next, a source of fear amongst those unarmed. There is predator and there is prey, there too, is the circumstantial predator and the incidental prey; so where then is this line drawn, at which point would we decide to disarm the fearful protecting themselves, which would surely lead to a one-sided slaughter at the hands of criminals who'll surely refuse to be unarmed and or unarmed for long.

Auden, writing in his [The Prolific and the Devourer] stated;

"I and the public know,
what all school children learn,
those to whom evil is done,
do evil in return."

Now we can discuss the vigilante and the vigilante's nearest kin, the fool with a cause, whose taken up arms at the whims of the charismatic man deciding that societies must fight back against the criminals, which in lieu of taking the law into his own hands, hypocritically himself turn criminal.

Kubrick's [Man With a Gun] denotes every thought that may come at the very sight and stare of his photograph, which today, with turn of events (school shootings in America, war in Syria) it is most necessary today, in this 21st century of human time recordings, where we all must gather and take from Kubrick's photography perhaps our next step on how not to only defeat the man with the gun, but rather how to keep this man from deciding that the gun is a necessity initially.

[To Have Met You] a poem

Can we be destined,
both,
to perpetual wildness?
If there are two of us,
you know,
danger from those who aren't
us two,
is inevitable-

-bayonet-led, a chainsaw-finish,
absinthe chaser to save us the
misery of our hidden
existence-


-Dontrell Lovet't

[Honeytrap] a poem

Baby lady,
static & gravy
I lose all taste of metallic
lips to lips
doubtful one,
silly worrisome fun,
expect that & that only,
missing me only causes me
to miss you,
then moreso are we haunted
by an opened door-

-Dontrell Lovet't

[Grounded Cafe] a poem

Out this window,
a brave new world stares
just back over my shoulder-

the Calinis abrade
the view;
not a bad distraction,
sudden glamour, blooming
coquettes, blushed, brushed
beauties, diploids done up so
wonderful, one is obliged
to praise the union of once apart
haploids-

since i've nowhere to go &
nowhere to go is the sole reality,
how grateful one must make of me,
to even get a glimmer past,
proper stolen gems side-
pocketed,
just as anyone else would commit-


-Dontrell Lovet't

[Nothing a'Matter With Old Fashion] on John Coltrane's [I'm Old Fashioned]

It's an abject truth; yesterday passed, today will pass and tomorrow too will join the bygone. In with every step of the passing, there is the physical evidence of aging, aging within flesh, within mine, into a strange, new generation insufficiently warlike and sufficiently influenced by the either-or differentiation.

One doesn't need seven minutes of Coltrane to mention this, one only need to stare out of a window, on any day of their existence and see life for what it is; a dredge, a morass of struggle, a tiresome, bleak obstacle, contoured with plentiful fortune along its every degree of latitude and longitude. But while we are mentioning Coltrane, we'll just allow Coltrane to lecture on the values of cherishing the bygone, even if its solely sentimental, not just a trend taken from the hands of the next, handed down like heirlooms of which the holder has no knowledge as to why or how.

It took my very own aging to under Coltrane, to understand his notes and perhaps too, it may become identical to most who've/who're waking from the 'confidence of youth' trance, when first they begin to fell finally human, the long endured stress placed upon their body now becoming apparent......now, we are in Coltrane's world..and now, we look back to cherish what we took for granted and rejoice at the very erroneous belief of 'Invincibility Relativity,' surrendering to age and change.

[Abject Threads] a poem

 

Look firmly, fair, thoroughly

upon this organic matter, animal

nihilist, all knowing, alien, neither yours,

even never myself self-possessed,

if only to know the tale of a world

a-twirl, all the same rotting-

-today I’ll contemplate if so

I shall cut the thread measured yesterday,

spun just before,

die with youth and the vigor of

truth, bright burning blights and

abject failure still a-fight with might-

-aging knows no sense of awaiting a

welcome, tends to ignore every courtesy

nor gives not another face as to make possible

the existence of idiom-


-from Collection of poetry [Just a Body]

[The Harness] a travel poem

 

            So field the fields of dreams,

which may or may not be,

where home homes constant constants

constantly care-filled;

I care not those cares,

care less to carry

any other harness other than

the one on my back-

 

If I’ve carried it but a step,

a million more may follow

following the comings and goings

coming wonderfully bittersweet;

like the dust would rise above

the horizon it knows its sky nearly

almost every moment preceding

momentary rises-

not a step forward I fear

to break, not a step backwards

again will I take,

nor should more weight with

detoured tack,

to never again fall, with

this harness on my back

So do truly the miles I’ve walked

bare memories more plenty than

the living and breathing, too, truly,

I pulsate vibrant with aliveness away

than I’ve ever face to face

            Not even partially can apologies

renders obsolete what those who know

of me reckon, how never dull my eyes seem

dreary dreams every second content

If John Henry was born knowing he’ll die a

steel-driving man, with that,

this man, so appaulingly far from a child,

can admit he’ll die,

with harness on his back

There was childhood in Texas,

then there was childhood in Louisiana,

a bustling teen in Illinois,

so speak next of the lifting teen

back on the Texas plains

            Sabine Pass will whimper,

what Chicago winds temper,

how birth brings hostages into this

life with trauma,

to those condemned bridges

tattering this expansive psychodrama;

if I am to participate

I do so without slightest wait,

if I am to wake and remain awake,

sacrificing for the sake of

sacrificing will never be

necessary to take

            Pity me not,

mind not my callous feet that rot,

cry less regarding my being

ignore any beliefs of my fleeing

and if so happens,

I may never double back,

question not, whether I died

with harness on my back-

[Almost Blue] Chet Baker's Opioid Sonata

 It’s the stroke of midnight, during a stroke of madness; I’m thinking of Chet Baker’s unashamed, unabashed, undeniable freefall into self-destruction, his very own, designed, composed, directed by the rise of his birth, fall of his physical ability, theatrics thoroughly thinned as so even the deniably flawed may come as they are, feel no intent at attrition, attribute meager prayer, leave as they came; if only to be reassured by a fanciful deity they’ve no belief in, that those very flaws they possess will ensure natural selection would defy its very own process of elimination principle, just to spare the fool.

            Take the lighter to the base of the spoon, wait for the sizzle of the tar, draw in the cc’s needed after the ever-rising tolerance, slip the tourniquet over the brachial, expose the bulging channels in the antecubital space, brace ready, hold fast for the pinch of the needle’s near microscopic puncture, wait for the flash of blood, the indication, now the thumb commences to press the contents, the centuries-old known to man, inside, seconds lapse, just but a few, until euphoria breaks the silence with its impish liege of serotonin and dopamine, the tip of the lagging unfiltered Lucky Strike, weakly held between the lips is lit, trumpet is clasped in clammy palm; Chet Baker is again born.

            An Opioid Sonata is the continuation by an alternative means made a way of life refusing to be lived by any other means. And if by some means, some miraculous occurrence, as the chance of genetics within the human species should arise, Baker’s Sonata rises to that very occasion. Nothing can be mistaken; sadness is no longer a near but distant cousin to melancholia; bliss is estranged, rather shunned, from blessedness. Then and only then, is the canvas for one to paint their own destiny a possibility because all that holds the individual hostage, are those self-impositions that render themselves uncompromising when they’ve overheard the pillow-talk in the late nights, when the orgasm has been weakened to be conquered by the timeless spasm where electrical currents can no longer detect the static of dwindling of neurons.

[Flamenco Sketches] 9 Minutes of Discourtesy from the late Miles Davis

 



       

            “So What!”

What is this life without worry, without any anxious moments to motivate? Take time to listen to what Miles Davis attempts to revert, not from his discourteous manner what made him so infamous as a man, but from this life, with a musical intelligence that made him so illustrious as an artist.

            The man who knows himself and knows nothing more of this world has too all and every right of claim to know just as much of the world outside of himself as a seasoned traveler who has trekked decades across the globe. And this man, this self-proclaimed aficionado of any and everything, carries not a single second of hesitation to join those ranks of the very few and as every educator who has the right to educate, he has earned such right by a consistency that gave no leniency, never a sabbatical, from learning. If a book is near, it is reared in days, consumed; if there so happen to be music, as Davis himself spills in a “kind of blue” fashion, rarely does he respond to this mood but creates, then shortly after, sets its pace, then, and only then, can he find the cadence in which his steps should follow.

            Call upon the bookkeeper, the one so entangled in the leather-bound covers shelved, adorned in their dark corner, let him then call the astronaut, become the origin of the rumor mill, so that man who has gone out of this atmosphere no longer has to despise his haunting incapability to have never step food upon another planet; surely, he’ll confide next to the woman who shares his bed, the one who has lost her identity when she gave birth to an offspring who has become all she attends, now, she can smile, not due to schadenfreude, but to the knowledge that now she’s alone.