Critics Who Know Jack Read online

Artist : Tell us. Where did you study criticism and who are your influences?

  FC: You mean study? Where I went to College?

  Artist : Yes.

  FC: I was the rock critic for a regional magazine on the club scene. Mostly I liked The Doors. Some Grateful Dead. Can I open this (referring to his envelope) now?

  Theatre Critic: Yes, why can’t we open them now?

  Artist : Hmm?

  Dance Critic: (Opening his ahead of time) I don’t’ get it. What’s this? A painting? A monstrous figure biting into a smaller body? Dance? I’m . . .

  Artist: Goya. Saturn Devouring His Children. How would you analyze it from a dance critic’s perspective?

  FC: Oh, come on! The semiotic language in the shape. The still movement of the symbolic eyeless monster. The sign . . . the sign offers conjunction to the present-day slaughter of children throughout the world. The dance of the grotesque.

  Artist: (To film critic) Where is it you said you studied?

  FC: (Opening his envelope) Huh! A photograph of Al Pacino eating oysters on New York City’s Mulberry Street! Fantastic!

  Music Critic: (Opening his) Nice. Nice. A copy of the set list for the last Mötley Crüe concert!

  Artist : So, I guess everything is opened?

  Theatre Critic: No. Mine isn’t. Should I . . .?

  Artist : Where did you begin your study of theatre? Can you tell me . . .?

  TC: I never studied anything. I used to write but didn’t get any of my plays off the ground and then this critic the same day I was gonna get engaged, died. And I was asked to maybe take over the column for a while ‘til a replacement came along and then — well my wife-to-be ran off with another guy . . . so — I got the job — so to speak.

  Artist: Who was it that died?

  FC: Martin Kay. He was the Arts Editor and covered almost everything in his time. Had studied at U. Berkeley in California. Then went on to the Northeast and wrote many essays on Film, Dance, Music and Theatre journals before his columns appeared. A real savvy guy who knew all the arts and earned his way by building up from the ground level. Stupendous!

  Artist: So do you all find your way(s) by the seat of your pants?

  Theatre Critic: (Opening the last of the envelopes) What’s this? (He holds up a letter and then also looks at the reverse side)

  Artist: Photo of the Twin Towers going down with a mushroom cloud on the back.

  FC: (To the Artist) Wow! Where? — when was this? What movie?

  GRUEL (GREIL) MARCUS AND ROCK CRITICISM

  Influential and primary force Lester Conway Bangs was known to write his reviews of rock music on the premise of bringing the “star quotient” down to earth, and asking the most insulting of questions to begin his interviews. The first mistake of art is to assume it’s serious, Bangs stated once in his all too short lifetime. Take here, one Greil Marcus who expounds on the serious nature of rock music and its cultural influences. Most markedly in his analysis of Bob Dylan’s 1965 ground-breaking single Like a Rolling Stone. In fact, Marcus has written an entire book, Like A Rolling Stone (Bob Dylan at the Crossroads) on the history of the song. In the pantheon of rock criticism, Greil Marcus sits polar opposite to Lester Bangs.

  I enter now a brief segue way into the representation of opinion in the case of Marcus versus Bangs (Rock and Roll 101).

  • • •

  The Signifier (the forms a sign takes) + The Signified (the concepts that a sign represents) = The Sign (the whole that results from the association of the signifier with the signified). So wrote French philosopher, linguist and semiotician Ferdinand de Saussure.

  • • •

  Lester Bangs once sat on stage with a New York band and wrote a review in the midst of the performance. Greil Marcus goes on the reading circuit and professes authority regarding socio-cultural meta-isms, mostly pertaining to the world of rock & roll and its effects. Lester Bangs was paunchy looking, and visually seemed to be on an all-nighter in any photograph taken of him. Greil Marcus has that erudite, kind of hip-scholarly look with wire-rimmed glasses and short grey hair that a lot of film critics seem to acquire. Both are Californian. Bangs from small-town Escondido, Marcus from urbane San Francisco.

  Where Bangs is fairly relentless in his breaking down of the god-like status of rock stars, Marcus seems most eager to be part of the scene and presents adoring and awe-struck text. How do they both do this? The use of language. Their proximity to the subject matter. And in short, their signage (styles). Marcus is what you would have called a “smarty-pants” back in grade school. Bangs is the guy at the back of the classroom sleeping off a drunk or too many hamburgers and fries in his system.

  Bangs impresses with his raw and instinctive wit whereas Marcus builds an argument through his exposés. Marcus is predictable, whereas Bangs is not. Bangs seems to let the music he hears approach him. Marcus, on the other hand, seems to keep it at a distance. Insisting more intelligence and intent than may actually be there in the creation of a given piece. Bangs finds relevance. Marcus creates it. Marcus tries to find the hook of rock & roll’s relevance to society. Bangs stays clear on what the music evokes and fails to evoke, mostly as music to a fan, not as music meaning something other than music. Bangs seems to feel with his thought. Marcus thinks a lot, and mostly.

  Marcus is like Mick Jagger accepting knighthood from her royal highness. Bangs is like Keith Richards saying Mick accepting knighthood is a lot of *&%! — and not what rock & roll is about. Marcus sounds (the sound of the name) like an emperor’s first name. Bangs sounds (the sound of the name) like he’s meeting chicks under the boardwalk somewhere in New Jersey. Perhaps de Saussure would say one is a rock & roller. The other is a journalist of sorts. But you know how the French are about anything American. Especially rock & roll.

  BEAUTY AT THE CAFÉ (BAD ESPRESSO 2), OR:SEMIOTICS MY ASS!

  Speaking of signs! Five-foot-ten. Long black hair. Red lipstick, a Starbuck’s latte, a dog and a yoga mat! And she sits and sits and sits and lingers totally dressed-up and looking more than her best. You have your espresso across the street. It’s more organic and less pretentious there. More like a small town or European café. On your side of the street, dudes come in with half-beards and ill-fitting straw hats like Jimmy Stewart in Mr. Hobbs Goes on Vacation.

  Is this woman waiting for bad-acting teen idol Fabian (Forte)? Is he going to sing something so oily that his teeth are gonna take on that early ‘60s too-hip-to-be-square radioactive gleam? Would she dig him if he went down on his eager knees and pleaded a ‘Venus’-inflected croon to her goddess-ness? How many bad coffees can you have in one day waiting for this to happen? Is this a TV ad for toothpaste or shampoo? Does Dick Clark own this moment? Would Fabian dare sing La Donna è Mobile as an over-sound to a Mobil gasoline ad? And — who’s watching who? Who’s the who to watch? Is there anything left to see? What could possibly be on TV? Does DVD count as TV? Is there a way to answer that on Google? Can I text you on it? Can you get back to me? Here’s the photo!

  Holy cabooses! Hello Dolly! Wow, we are gonna have ourselves a big adventure. Really? Don’t you have to do something more than sit at a café or Tweedledee-dee/Tweedledee-dum with your thumbs to a little black pocket machine? Don’t you have to move? Isn’t adventure about action versus sitting watching and talking about it? Hold it! Some guy is going over? He’s not Fabian but he’s got good teeth. He’s carrying a Luigi Pirandello play, and resembles a European (French) professor. Looks like he’s got bags of money to spend in bohemian fancy.

  You’re thinking you should take your organic espresso to the park. Too many dogs this time of day. Won’t work. You are still sitting watching. You light a smoke. It’s your last one and then you’re gonna leave you tell yourself: “Yeah, just one more.” Why? To see if she moves? Your semiotic curiosity is expanding and your head feels like Max Headroom’s about to explode. Now there’s teeth! Make the moment. It’s all you got otherwise it’s dogs at the park. Enter the myth.

  “Hey,
Mikey!” you call to a friend walking by the guy about to speak to Miss Red Lips. Everyone turns. Not because they are Mikey but because you’ve screamed it, but you’ve got her attention. She’s looked up. Why? Because everybody else has. That’s the key. Anonymity. There is no commitment in that for her. Wants the world’s attention but careful to be viewed not giving it back. Poseur(ess)? Perhaps? But the dude looks French so they might sort it out?

  Noting her zodiacal necklace he says: Le significance de le poisson (the significance of the fish) c’est que le poisson est sans eau. (is that the fish is without water). She laughs. Kenn ah byee yeww a café? he enquires sort of Depardieu-like, rustically. “Well, I already own one,” she responds. “But yes, I would love another latte. Sans oh (water), of course.” She giggles her best Alliance Française pronunciation. Why ovv couurssse! (who hasn’t heard a Frenchman say that?). He curtseys his head, and goes in to purchase at the forever line-up/ pay first /see what you get? Starbuck’s counter.

  In the meantime a guy not named Mikey is sitting next to you asking for change. Taking a minute to rummage your pockets, you don’t see Miss Red Lips get up and leave across the street. The French professor walks out onto the Starbucks patio. Later, at the park, you see him kicking dogs away from his well-cuffed pant-leg — a real gunslinger — two lattes in his hands with no Miss Red Lips to be seen.

  THE CONSPIRACY THEORIST — MAKE THAT “THERAPIST”

  There’s always a psychoanalyst ready to listen to and dissect your issues about relationships or your existential woes. Trained or not in Freudian or Jungian theory, they pride themselves on offering paradigms imported from Victorian Austria. Of course this is all grafted onto North American fear, love of family, alienation, doing better than the Jones’ corporate-ism and cowboy-ism. So if you are in a session and you tell one that you dreamed of the World Trade Centre going down the night before it did, or you are old enough to say that you dreamed of John Kennedy being carried in a dark shroud — their eyes shine at the magnificent potential for really long sessions into next spring.

  Soon enough, they have you thinking of your dad and ma and siblings and your rise from womb to social order. You get a feeling your chief concern shouldn’t be the Towers or the health of the President but your own. Mental health that is. So you kind of agree and try not to take too many Valiums or sleeping pills to keep some sort of homeostasis (not Stasi) in your day and body. But you keep having these dreams of things that actually happen after you’ve dreamed them. You read all the qua-trained centuries of Nostradamus, and the Jungian archetypes and Book Of Runes.

  Yet your dreams persist. It’s like someone is visiting you in your sleep but you never get a chance to see who it is that’s telling you all this stuff that’s going to happen. But it does happen and you sit in the dark thinking there has to be some relationship between you and the world outside above the mediocre cleric job you do day to day. You know your Kafka but that doesn’t help. You even bring up the great writers and philosophers to your therapist and the therapist insistent and quiet, has you cast her as part of the conspiracy to deny you sleep, and leave you in fear of losing your mind. You have determined that you are the theorist and the therapist is the therapist.

  Conspiracy takes further shape. You dream that you have broken down a door and that feels good. Then you remember that the door was made of glass and you fear you might have cut someone in your rage. You didn’t know it was rage before the therapist suggested it was. You got to get out of this puzzle. You never liked them as a kid. The empty spaces in the puzzle always made you feel lonely. You’d always find yourself making up images in your head to fit the puzzle but they never did. But it was certainly more fun that way. Now some of those images make up the dreams you have. The ones about the Towers and the President. They seemed to be ones you remember from childhood. You can’t figure out why they recurred so close to the fact? Why you had them so early in life and then they returned? But they are the only two that ever happen. Again and again.

  The therapist has heard all this from you before. Nothing she says suggests it will be any different. You don’t like to think this is the way the gods cut your cards but it sure seems that way. The therapist must be in on it. It being the world of your fear. The therapist is always present. You have determined the therapist is part of the conspiracy. You wish you were on something else. You try Moby Dick and Don Quixote and your eyes grow tired of waves, harpoons and windmills.

  You are hollering down at a sidewalk thirty storeys below your feet. You grab onto a flagpole. Your hands are growing blue and numb. Jump! Jump!! Jummmp!!! you hear the holler from the small faces below. You let go and as you bounce to rest you see that the people holding onto the fireman’s safety net all have the same face. I am home, you say to yourself. The white frock that you see on yourself. The wheelchair. The smell of bad food. You will write a book about conspiracy theorists. You will begin after Jell-O is served. The Jell-O is lime green.

  WEATHERMAN WRONG? WEATHERMAN RIGHT?

  (More Signs)

  When you see the H on a weather map is that a symbol for a Hotel and is the L a symbol for fifty? When in Rome do as the Romans do. — which would be a lot better weather than the northern parts of the continent where this is being written from. So who was visiting Rome that gave way to that adage? Is this why Richard Nixon tried to eat with chopsticks in attempting détente with China in the 1970s? Is this what Richard Nixon, Lyndon Johnson, the Bush Clan and a whole lotta other presidents meant or mean when they decided (decide) to circumnavigate the globe?

  The phrase actually arose when St. Augustine asked St. Ambrose, Bishop of Milan, about eating habits as the bishop was preparing for a visit to the ancient capitol in 387 Anno Domini. He didn’t have a weather channel. No big Hs and Ls and swirling clouds and touch-screen radar with all sorts of allergy medication advertisements. He might have had pigeons but what did they know? Well, the flying kind anyway? There must have been some stoolies nonetheless in the high (poison this guy/poison that guy) intrigue of powerful Mother church. Speaking of immunity . . . Well, let’s get to that later.

  So a weatherman (person) can be wrong most of the time and right some of the time and working all of the time. How do you get work like that and keep it? Getting something wrong so often and still being employed? I mean, it’s valiant and all to show concern for our need to know what the weather is going to be like. To be informed. Like if there’s a fire in the hills and it’s going to come down and burn the cornfields. Or there’s a volcano erupting a few mountains over and you gotta clear the village of all goats and children.

  But in the city. Do you really need to know it’s raining by TV, when you can look outside or hear the clatter on your roof? What’s will all the information about the kids at the park at a festival of clowns or a big barbeque reunion? Isn’t it about being sold the idea that you need to know things are good? The “comfort” being sold to you by programmers? Can’t we just feel the weather in the city? I mean, what did we do before all the ads and traffic reports?

  Notice that whenever there is a disaster (not unlike whenever there is a political assassination) the clips are repeated ad nauseam to the point that we numb up and switch the channel to anything that avoids the tedium. So what is it that makes us like this kind of programming and then turn from it as if we were denying we ever engaged in watching it? I mean, a weatherperson is telling you what everybody else is telling you. Thank god they haven’t decided to put a happy face on the sun icons. What would they use for thunder? The face of Zeus? Then what happens?

  Should the icon be Allah or Jesus or Buddha or Jane (who’s Jane?)? And if I’m a Jane and I’m a man, what could that be saying? Would I get a job reporting the weather because of equal opportunity? Does it matter how wrong or right I am? And what if I’m left? Like left of centre (on the map usually west)? Is west left? Is left wrong? Is left gone? And so it’s Tea Party time in America. Strange with all the Starbucks and Seattle’s Best that we
are returning to tea. Are we talking continental Indian teas? Can we still be using the word Indian? Do they make good tea in Cleveland ‘cause they got Indians there and they swing bats? Like Tony Soprano!

  In fact, there’s a new line of bats at your local sporting goods store. They have The Canseco (big and lies a lot all over the field), The McGwire (doesn’t say anything), The Barry Bond’s BALCO Bat (signed by all the lawyers it took to get him off), and The Clemens (with which you are guaranteed to strike out — not a great seller). So who’s right and who’s left? The weatherperson (man/woman) telestrates your nearest hurricane, and they swirl counter-clockwise (left to right) in the Western Hemisphere and clockwise (right to left) in the Eastern Hemisphere. Thus confusing the geo-political issue more ‘cause according to the smarties at the CIA the east (right) is where all the communists are who are (left). Though a look to Central and South America coughs up a few radicals to these settings.

  I mean, wouldn’t it have been a treat to see Hugo Chavez give the weather report? Like a Mr. Hyde to Chauncey Gardner’s Dr. Jekyll. So the vagrancy of truth continues and it looks like it’s a full moon tonight. Ah oooooh! And if we close all the blinds and drapes and shut ourselves in we can avoid the simple things we already know and are available and tune in for more commercials and watch, watch, watch the experts tell us which way the wind is blowing.

  MISS DOWDY VERSUS PBS

  Any time I read a Dowdy commentary, I say: How did this person get the work? Doesn’t matter if I don’t get an answer. Then I think Camille Paglia, Anne Coulter and all the opinionated punditry and headiness of womenfolk chasing down the Gertrude Stein Prize for best hair-do. Let me say first off that my mother had hair on her legs and could lift a weight as well as any man from her southern Italian village. And you know what else? She could sing like a nightingale. And you know what else? They answered her. Now I’m not saying that’s the kind of woman that impresses me. I think Stein and Sontag and Adrianne Rich and Virginia Woolf and Madame Currie, Ma Barker and Einstein’s wife (what was her name?) gave it up as good as any man.