Lisette Model

I'm feeling rather bland and flat today, but I really desired to post something more than my relinquishment of politics. I thought, why punish myself and anybody else, what's an image that's cheery? And this is the one that came first to mind.

Photograph by

Lisette Model

meanwhile

Meanwhile, I think I'm going to get off the political tip for a while. I could go on and on with my loathing for the Repuds and my contempt for the Dems, but I'm just one more poor shlep. For the actual news of the day, follow Firedoglake. I'll hang around here and cultivate my garden.
I think we're in for a bad time ahead. Probably followed by even worse.

PS - I want to write something about Obama without writing a million words about him. I'm greatly disappointed by him, as I feared I would be even as I voted for him. We need(ed) an FDR. We got just another corporate guy.
There's a tendency on the blogs to say Hillary would have been better. Uh-uh. Neither Hillary not Edwards would have been any better, and possibly worse. The Democratic Party is useless, the Republican Party is toxic, the US government is broken. The bad guys have won, the corporations are running things, capital is mightier than the constitution. I fear we're headed into a time of bad repression - which will only be abated by truly radical thought and means. Autonomy in the USA, it's coming sometime and maybe....

uglier

Meanwhile, things get worse on the ugly front, i.e., politics and governance.

Senate Republicans say things on the record about President Obama that are uglier than anything I remember ever being said about Richard Nixon, even after it was clear that he was, in fact, a crook.

Here's the sort of nastiness that goes on in the House Rules Committee - no cameras allowed.

The onslaught this summer is going to be full-on hideous. The Kagan nomination, the spill in the gulf, un/employment, health care, "all the things that he wants to accomplish require more spending, more borrowing and more debt for our children and grandchildren." There will be no respite.

enduring

This should be the first post of three or four inspired by a visit to Marina Abramovic: The Artist Is Present.

Marina & Me

In May of 1978 the Brooklyn Museum and Sharon Avery of Redbird Gallery organized a European Performance Series. This notice in the Village Voice is very likely the way I heard about it.
I met Sharon Avery there, who was lovely to me and very carefully matched me up with her assistant for the summer - hi, Laurie. I also met Barbara Heinisch, whom I came to think of as a friend and was happy to see when she came to NY in years after to perform her process paintings, incorporating the picture plane with improvisatory movement.
And it was there that I first learned about the endurance artwork of Marina Abramovic. She and her partner Ulay performed Charged Particles. They faced each other holding hands and spun around their common center for as long as they could. When they broke apart they continued spinning separately until they couldn’t spin (or walk, or stand) any more. I think this took just under an hour.
From childhood play, I knew what spinning for a short time felt like. I didn’t mind the vertigo at first, but time or age or experience changed things and I came to hate the feeling of the world seemingly spinning after you had stopped. (Or perhaps I had tried it again when Laura Dean’s spinning was a topic in my circle.)
Knowing that these people were experiencing a particular familiar disruption, even if self-inflicted, was distressing. Simultaneously I admired their dedication. They had set a task and determined to finish it - if performing a task until you are no longer capable of performing it can be called a finishing. I felt protective of them when they broke apart and stumbled around - they were ready to come to harm but emotionally and intellectually there was no reason not to hope to prevent that.
It was the opposite of a stock-car race - my secret hope was for them to be safe, not to be in peril.
After that performance, I took note when I came across stories about Marina or the two of them. I became a little invested in their lives. To travel constantly, without assurances, to live physically and spiritually by art, to be unselfconscious and beautiful and alert - this seemed like the most wonderful possible life that you - or I - could have.
(I see now, later) I wanted to be Martina Abramovic and to fuck her. The fucking was no surprise, she was my ideal type - dark and Slavic, slim, fearless, intense, seemingly outside convention. The being-her was something I don’t think I’ve experienced with any other crush, personal or distant. It certainly makes sense - I wanted to be dark and Slavic, slim, fearless, intense, outside convention. To be so as either Marina Abramovic or the partner of Marina Abramovic seemed equally attractive.
I had no particular feelings about Ulay - I think for me it was always about being Marina or her consort. When I read about the performance  they were planning to mark their separation, I remember I actually gasped - it was my own Performance Art People magazine moment.
I think I only saw Laurie once after she graduated from law school, an occasion which ended up in one of my stories. Barbara Heinisch I haven’t seen for many years. I Google her from time to time and I’m happy to see that she’s continued her work with a degree of public and critical appreciation - and she looks astonishingly much like she did thirty years ago. I was afraid to look up Sharon Avery because I had a baseless presentiment she was dead, but she is very much not, and continues to run a foundation dedicated to the art and memory of her husband, Oyvind Fahlstrom.
Hello Laurie, Barbara and Sharon. Hello Oyvind. Hello Marina.

two from peekskill

what

I find myself continuing to be provoked by the Marina Abramovic retrospective.
One of her questions, I think, is "What is this body, in which human beings live?" Another is, "If we exhaust the body, what is the nature of that which remains?"
I need more time to think and write, but if possible, go and see the show before it ends on May 31.
Marina Abramovic: The Artist is Present

!

(a zen exclamation - play it loud)

μ!

I went to the Marina Abramovic retrospective at MoMa today. (I just accidentally typed a μ.) Aesthetic thoughts another time, I think. But experientially....
M.A.’s work is often about bodily endurance, usually with herself as the test bed.
I saw M.A. perform with her partner, Ulay, at the Brooklyn Museum in 1978. They faced each other holding hands, and whirled until they broke apart, then continued whirling separately until they couldn’t any more.
μ μ μ μ μ.   I’m going to leave it at that, for now.

Andrew's popsicle

Not that it doesn't scare the bejeebers out of me.

Had a thought while reading this: Palin might regard the job of President as being easier than that of talk-show host. And she might not be wrong.

the 1 ur with

Interesting development in the language. As the media (taking the Times as the example) refers ever-more matter-of-factly to LGBTQ people and their "partners," I'm starting to see references to unmarried straight people and their "companions." Viz this article about Andrew Cuomo and Sandra Lee.
It would be a shame if this became a signifier of one sort of couple to the exclusion of others. On the other hand, if "companion" became a universal term (and it certainly could work for the polyamorous), perhaps it could be the basis of nondiscriminatory law in an inclusive society.
I'm old enough to have lived through quite a few culture shifts. It wasn't that long ago that a holder of electoral office who lived with a woman not his wife would be destroyed, not uplifted, by an article about that relationship. And the New Yorker has become pretty casual about mentioning a man's husband or a woman's wife. My brain may still trip over an old assumption, but it's a welcome wakening.

a popsicle redux

A couple of weeks ago, I pos(i)ted that Sarah Palin will be the Repub candidate for president in 2012, no matter what the Mayab have to say about it. (Yes, Mayab, as my friend Richard has taught me.) I had a lot of fun writing about the precedents that will guide the Repubs, so much fun that I exhausted myself on the topic and just about for anything else. Let's precede in a more jugular vein....
The great models of the modern Republican presidency are Reagan-Bush and Bush-Cheney. They are each a magic dyad of affability and ability, crinkly smile and sinister smirk, popular charm and privatized greed, the instantaneous and the invisible, the plane and the fractal, I could go on. Each was a roaring success, in terms of changing the public discourse (as then-candidate Barack Obama smartly pointed out about Reagan and was stupidly savaged for) and popularizing the ideas and mechanisms of transferring public wealth to their supporters' pockets.
Reagan-Bush, Bush-Cheney. Republican success stories, never forget.
With Bush-Quayle, they slid the taskmaster into the Prez role and nominated the empty head for Veep. If Quayle had shown some show-biz razzle-dazzle, and GHWB had been able to evade one gaffe (no new taxes) with the agility RR brought to a multitude (arms for hostages, expanding the deficit, refusing to abandon lies and fantasies no matter how often the record and his own administration corrected him), Bush-Quayle might have been a two-term presidency. BQ2.
But maybe not. In a puppet play, the puppet has to be the one out front, or it's not much of a show.
Bush-Cheney was a successful recreation of the Reagan-Bush franchise. You know, many of us were kinda surprised when George Bush won the Repubnom. This guy? Not-Jeb? Bonzo incarnate? W the drinker, W the dodger, the cokehead, the nosepicker, the Bush in Arbusto, the handholder of Saudi royalty? There was nobody smarter, more experienced, more able?
We missed the point, we missed the point entirely. For the good of the act, the second banana had to get top billing. Abbot was nothing without Costello, as well as Costello zip sans Abbot.
If they had consulted (and drugged) me, I think I could have won the Repugs a third term up top. I was sure that at some point Cheney was going to step down "for health reasons." His replacement would be chosen completely with the next ticket in mind.
It could be a pretty boy, who'd take the top-puppet spot in 2008 and leave decisions to a new veep puppeteer; or it could be a senior puppetmaster, who would segue from one veepness to another, with his hand sliding up the ass of a new pretty boy of their choosing.
It might well be that the Repudenda didn't want the office that much last time. They saw the chickens heading home, and strategically abandoned the roost. Some obligations to the Old Guard were paid off and some patriotic cred simulated by naming McCain. If this is so, that brings us so deep into the ifs that I don't know if they knew exactly what they were getting when they promoted Sarah Palin from ticket-taker to co-star.
Regardless, the Repuds are stuck with or saddled by Mooselina now. Palin is their Reagan. All the qualities that made it impossible for me to believe that Reagan would win a second term or W win* his first - willful ignorance, cupidity, vapid patriotism, eggshell depth, Teflon(R) integrity - these are positives.
The devil's game now is who will be Sarah's Bush (GHW, not W). White, male, ties to the industrial-military complex, spook past, scary, devoted to unbridled capitalism and the Imperial Presidency. My first guess was John Poindexter, but he's five years older than Cheney. No history I can find of heart attack or other bad health, tho. Richard Perle? He's Cheney's age, no disclosed ill health. He's been on both sides of invading Iraq, but that might be an advantage given recent events. But is he scary enough? Can he make a baby cry just by entering the same room?
The candidate may well be bubbling up as I type, somebody too scary for me to even conceive of, a true color out of space. Be very afraid.

laggard

Man, am I behind.

for our own good

The President is allowed to assassinate whomever he wants, for our own good.

screened

Transportation Security Authority, Protecting Passenger Privacy:

Strict privacy safeguards are built into the foundation of TSA’s use of advanced imaging technology to protect passenger privacy and ensure anonymity.

The officer who assists the passenger never sees the image the technology produces.

The officer who views the image is remotely located, in a secure resolution room and never sees the passenger.

Miami Herald:
Miami airport screener accused of attack after jeers at genitals

BY DAVID OVALLE

A Miami airport screener, agitated at continued ribbing after colleagues saw his body parts in an imaging scanner, attacked a colleague, police said.

A Miami International Airport federal security screener has been arrested for allegedly using an expandable police baton to beat up a co-worker.

The source of their conflict, police say: daily ribbing about the size of the screener's genitalia.

Dear,

I'm having fun reading a big library book on Dutch design, called False Flat. Daniel van der Velden's art gallery invitation below is not typical of most of the book's graphic gorgeousness, but it combines ART with found letters, two of my favorite things.

5/5

bixby

As I say, eco's not my subject, but having made money at advertising agencies for three decades I do know something about branding. And one of the environmental movement's biggest problems is their main brand, "global warming."
It wasn't foreseeable at the time, the specific manifestations of human stupidity being so protean, but the strong identification with "warming" is slowing acknowledgment that we the species are fucking up. It was cold today, where's your warming now, huh huh huh.
Had we known, "global disruption" would have made for much better branding. Easily applied, for example, to the flooding in Nashville this week, or whatever not-easily-associated-with-heat-by-dummies phenomenon is coming up next: the drowning of the Hamptons or a tornado in Los Angeles, whatever.
Less formally, one could refer to Weather Wilding or Coo-Coo Climate. We need something easily graspable, between "Uh-Oh" and "ohmigodwe'reallgonnadie."
(Yes, I'm a little cranky today. It's not the heat, it's the humanity.)

ecko wrecko

I don't "do" the environment. I recognize its importance (and how stupid is it that one has to state that), but it's not my topic the way civil liberties and free speech are. Hoping to maintain (because it would be delusional to think that in any but the smallest imaginable way I am helping to maintain) civil liberties and free speech is my contribution to the environmental movement. For example, didja know that the FCC is leaning against regulating broadband to maintain free speech?*
I don't expect the American government and associated businesses to do anything pro-environment until rich people suffer on a huge scale.
That could be something like the current oil spill in the gulf, or the children of wealthy communities sickened by a contaminated water supply, or some sort of economically non-discriminatory pandemic. It could be near- or totally-riotous protest by nonrich people with nothing seemingly left to lose. Or as I am increasingly coming to think of it, "America's last best hope."

*Maybe not (5/5/10).

fact

Lots of interesting conjectures to be made about the Times Square attack this weekend. But I'm going to restrain myself, and instead point out this from a NY Times interview with Raymond Kelly, current Police Commissioner of the City of New York:

Asked if he considered the failed bombing the work of terrorists, Mr. Kelly said: “A terrorist act doesn’t necessarily have to be conducted by an organization. An individual can do it on their own.”

This is not an official pronouncement, but Kelly (formerly on the executive committee of Interpol) is one of the people most wired in to the American and international security apparatus.
I'll be posting soon about an American citizen held and about to be tried as a terrorist partly because of weak links to an organization that is not even on the official terrorist watch list.
It's possible that soon no links to any organization or person will be needed for extralegal detention and prosecution. Somebody powerful will be able to just point and say, "That one."

a popsicle soon

I've broken the tabu, and my head feels clearer, my body lighter, my soul less stifled than it has in months.
This must be what it was like decades ago (or maybe it was last week), to say, yes, I am a commie, or yes, I am a Jew, I am a homo, or yes, I once voted for a Republican. (Not all of these examples taken from my own life.)
I am putting my cards on the table. Sarah Palin will be the Republican candidate for President in 2012.
The last time the Repubs nominated somebody overtly intelligent it was Richard Nixon. He expanded food stamps, pursued desegregation with the first affirmative action programs, proposed legislation that led to the creation of OSHA and the EPA, and shook hands with the Red Chinese. Then he lost his political base and had to resign. They're not going to make that mistake again.
They pretty much had to run Ford since he took the fall for bribing (or "pardoning") smartypants Nixon out of the White House. Also, the same deal had made him a sitting President. That makes you a dead cinch for the nom unless they find you in bed with a live boy or a dead girl.
In with Jimmy Carter. I'll never forget Carter standing shoulder to shoulder in DC with Reza Pahlavi, Shah of Iran, wincing not with moral disgust, but because teargas had drifted over from where it was being dispensed against Iranian students protesting Pahlavi's torture corps. Other than that, which pretty much assured a hostile government in Iran once the Shah was overthrown, I thought Jimmy was an OK president. Now he's regarded with such general contempt that calling him "history's greatest monster" has become a trope on The Simpsons, America's most viewed guide to what to think about ourselves.
[I've recently become fond of the word "trope." It instantly elevates the intellectual presumption of any conversation or writing in which it appears, and since it only has one syllable, it lacks the smack of pointyheadedness. Using "trope" is also a trope. Trope trope trope.]
Sorry. I've digressed to the Dems, who are irrelevant to this discussion except as props for the Republican Party. Just like in real life.
Here was the brilliant turn in Republican strategy. They invented the inverse-Nixon (not the anti-Nixon - that was McGovern). They nominated a man without the brain of a Nixon. A man without the tortured soul of a Nixon. A man without the homely bodily instantiation of a Nixon. A man without history, a man without qualities. A man who took direction, never had a first thought, and shone with the light of a thousand thousand projectings. The Gipper.
This is the beginning of the Sarah Palin model. All flash, no filigree. Wait, I take that back. All filigree, no flash. Immune, freakin' immune from criticism and responsibility. Cop to Iran-Contra criminality and then mutter "I still don't think" arms were traded for hostages on the way out. Lose your way in THE ONLY PREPARED PORTION of the Presidential debates at the end of your first term and whisk your party to a historic victory. Become renowned for your chuckle.
The operating system (as contrasted to the slick user interface) of the Reagan presidency was George H.W. Bush, former Director of the CIA. Bush's life story is riddled with links to covert operations, oil wealth, and family privilege - he came from the milieu that had been grooming Reagan since the 1950s. He was the ur-Cheney, the sensible man of industry and power, the mind over matter of figurehead Reagan. (Holy smoke! Cheney was the ranking minority member of the Congressional committee investigating Iran-contra! Thanks, Wikipedia cross-checked with the NY Times!)
Easing Bush out of the Prez chute was not an option - added to all the reasons to go with a Veep is the matter of how much H.W. could incriminate others in Iran-contra and associated matters. (Jeez, I barely scratched the surface googling - george bush testimony iran-contra - and it was even worse than I remembered.) They made what many thought a dumbbell move at the time but in retrospect was a smart experiment in flipping the script - keep the OS, prepare the public for the next revision - Dan Quayle (aka Microsoft Bob, for the ancient among us).
Bush-Quayle, that pastoral duo, lost out to what critics decried as a slicker interface, but time would reveal as an attempt to reverse-engineer and personalize the Repub OS. That was (Macintosh) Bill. I liked him, even as I knew before he won the election that he had never met a principle he couldn't betray.
Yada yada, two terms of Clinton-Gore. Who did the Repubs run in '96? Oh yeah, Bob Dole.
Quick, who was Dole's running mate? I keep wanting to say Gerald Ford, but that's just because when Dole was Ford's veep-manque I giggled like crazy every time I saw the spoonerism "Dord-Fole." The answer is Jack Kemp. What was the question?
I'm so tired, and we haven't even reached the age of Kali Yuga. Can I take a break? I promise I'll tell you why the administration of George "W" Bush was an unqualified success, and how Sarah Palin will be the Republican candidate for Prez in 2012, maybe even if they find her in bed with a live girl or a dead boy.