Grand Grey Lynx

Bon jour,

Comment?

Recently asked what my favorite period of visual art was, I had to stop short and address the subject through a broader, more general appeal.

For me the best stuff happened in America between the end of WWII and the middle of the 1960′s…give or take half a decade. But not only in visual art. This is the GREAT TIME for journalism, art, film, music, dance, poetry/lit – everything! Social Justice…Spiritual Consciousness…True Human Liberty…

This is not to say the BEST in the history of the world. Who knows? Who cares? This is my favorite period and the one that is most influential where my own projects are concerned.

I also started watching Jean Luc Godard’s Histoire(s) du Cinema.

It is a poem.

The Old Man

Chapter One – The Old Man

The old man stared at the spinning fan in the window. He peered through the blink-a-black light, his eyelashes fluttering before his agitated vision.

He heard a hornet humming past his left ear. Then another. Then another hornet, closer and faster, like the next one, and the one immediately following it.

The cars passsed by like armored boars, snorting and growling, masticating and belching all black roads between here and there; shitting carbon colored clouds of bleak, black, bad history and torment.

The Old Man sat upright on the sidewalk near the intersection of Hart and Altman. He’d fallen asleep again.

Chapter 2 – Wake Up Little Snoozy

Tea comes from China. Whether it does or doesn’t is of no importance to us dear reader, but it was important to the Old Man as he dunked a small, white, wet bag on a string into and out of the still, steaming water.

Tea comes from China. He thought the thought for a long time. He didn’t hold the statement in his head like a scribble on a chalkboard. It breathed. It was draped in musculature and wet with function and consciousness.

Tea Comes from China.

Chapter 3 The Devil Rides West

The television was turned up loud, but he didn’t really notice loud noises anymore. As his senses receded he felt safer in the world. As his hearing dulled to a soft, still, hushing wave, he became more like an animal, more aware of his faculties, having begun to perceive the limits of their definitions. He began to interpret the input from the environment around him in terms of fight-or-flight – like a monkey or perhaps a grand, grey lynx. Sounds were either vitally important or of no consequence.

Their was little to flee from in the small apartment on Altman. But there was fight in the Old Man.

Chapter 4 The Conquering Hero

The Old Man stood up and turned slowly, committing to an about-face like a reluctant mule. He raised one hand above his eyes to shield them from the bright, burning light. He began the long walk home.

The End