The Bog of St. Philinte

2008-09-08T11:05:00.000-07:00

The Minotaur Speaks

In the darkness a line glimmers~
like a piece of spider silk, a tendril of its web~
quivers and pulls
around another corner,
then disappears in the gloom,
trembling in the rancid darkness, hot
and stale as a cellar,
binding the random corners of my chaotic home.

At one end clings the man the gods have sent to kill me~
(we’ll see about that!)~but the thread’s other end
winds and coils and shines,
leading . . . where?

Oh, farther into the maze where father Minos left me,
the bestial child his whore of a wife, my mother Pasiphae,
dropped nine months after coupling with the Thracian bull
whose member she had coveted~

mating monster with monster,
how did they expect to escape having a monster for their offspring!

And so Minos threw me into this foul place,
scrawled into confusion like a ball of tangled yarn,
no one can find a way out of, no matter how brave or cunning,
a darkness I explore to find but deeper darkness,
and there left me, to feed on sacrificial virgins,
the beautiful, pure-skinned, untouched
children of the Greeks.

I trip over their bones as I bang from wall to wall,
lost, hungry, bellowing in the dark,
still hearing the echoes of the weeping that come
from the maze’s mouth, where the others cower, crowd, and wait
their turn in the labyrinth, their death duel with the Minotaur.

The line tugs. Where does it go? It slackens again~who bound it
to the one Greek they promised would kill that abortion,
the bull-man~

as if I had no soul, no mind, no heart, no memory
of happiness under the sun’s gaze, and only howl and snort,
bucking my horns on the rocks in an agony of memory
of those few weeks I knew the bright flash
of day.

It tugs again, and thrums~he is looking for me, this Theseus,
with his smooth face, his eyes shining with bald terror,
imagining me~

one hand trembling on the rock face, the other
sweating at the end of the thread.
The thread! it may lead
back to the maze’s entrance, escape
out of this stinking darkness into the air and sun,

the immensity of light and breath of cloud and the sweet moon,
the high sky above me~could it?

Of course, it could!
Someone~
a lover?

someone who loves Theseus (even my mother didn’t love me!)

gave him, of the thread,
one end.
And the other
she holds, waiting for him,
standing patiently
at the dark hole where she saw him disappear,
frightened and hopeful,
feeling each quiver and jerk with fear,

to keep her dearest love from being killed and eaten by me.

What if I follow the line
it
shows,
so
white,
in
the darkness?

Lord sun above me, beyond this mantle of rock~
if I follow the thread, will it lead me back up to the flowery air
and the sighing
of the sea,
back to light and life and even
a hope for love
under the stars,
back to the heaven called day?

It slackens.
Grab it, now, beast!
It is so light~so frail~
how could anything so fragile be a promise a beast could believe,
a hope in this slaughterhouse, this fist of stench and weeping~
my hope?

I’ll let you guide me,
one way to my death
at the hands of Theseus, the other to my life
in a girl’s hands, bright with day.

Lead me, thread. And do not break
until I am dead
or free.
_____

2008-06-30T15:59:00.000-07:00

The Apotheosis of Hillary

Saturday, June 7, 2008: I was, and am, a supporter of Barack Obama for president. However, my satirical play notwithstanding, I have always had a very high regard for Hillary Clinton. If Obama had not been running, I would have supported her. However, by her speech today, Hillary has won, not only my deeper respect, but also my affection, by conceding defeat as graciously as she has. May she long prevail. Hillary for Vice President!

2008-04-24T19:18:00.000-07:00

The Assassination of Hillary

A play by Christopher Bernard

JACK ASSASSIN: A man in his early 40s, an unemployed travel agent. He carries a shiny new rifle. Near him, on the floor, stands a plastic water bottle.

SETTING: An attic with a window facing an unseen open space where a political rally is being held.

(CURTAIN UP on JACK ASSASSIN, sitting near a window in a dark attic and cradling a rifle. A laptop sits open on a small table nearby. From outside, distant sounds of a crowd, applause, whistles, shouts, etc., alternating with an unintelligible speech being made by an unknown speaker. JACK ASSASSIN listens, then takes a swig from a water bottle.
(His cell phone rings. The sounds from outside continue over his speech, at a lower volume to prevent distraction.)
JACK ASSASSIN
(in a low voice) Jack Assassin. . . . Jimmy? … I don’t know, she’s not there yet…. Looks like the governor, mayor, some sort of congressman, correction: congressperson … bunch of girls from Frontenac, a choir … I don’t know, maybe they want to sing the Hallelujah chorus. Where’s Mel, does he have the truck? … good … good … nice … no, nobody’s been up here in years it looks, like I said … yeah … yeah … right … right … yeah, cool, right … Remember Travelgate!… Later … (He closes the cell phone and looks back out the window. After a moment, he cocks the rifle and sites along it toward a distant target, careful not to stick the barrel out the window. Sound of speaker, followed by a burst of applause, whistles, shouts, etc. He lowers the gun and watches.
(Suddenly he turns to the audience and walks, still holding the rifle, to the edge of the stage.)
JACK ASSASSIN
You probably wonder why the hell I want to kill Hillary Rodham Clinton. What am I doing? Do I still remember Travelgate? Who the hell does? Sorry! Maybe you’re right to forget. These are forgetful times. No one remembers Travelgate. All those White House travel agents, kicked out on their butts by evil Hillary, the very first month the Clintons were in office. Well, I remember it, the American Association of Travel Agents remembers it, and we aren’t about to forget on whose watch it happened. You remember how the Clintons had seven innocent office workers investigated by the FBI and then fired for incompetence, just so some friends of the Clintons could take over the business? You don’t? What’s the matter with you? You sure never tried making your living spending all night trying to arrange vacations in Borneo for bowling clubs in Davenport, Iowa! It was all over TV, you couldn’t have missed it! That wasn’t no “special effects,” people – those were real firings of real people! It was a conspiracy of the FBI, the Injustice Department, and the Clintons to take over the US of A for the liberal elite and put them all on expensive no-frills air carriers! It was the first battle in their war against the American way of life, make no mistake about that! They were gunning for the travel agents ’cause they thought, hell, they’re the most vulnerable, nobody’s gonna wanna defend them! And then we go for the janitors, then we go for the office clerks, and then we go for the factory workers. And then the religious folk, the fundamentalists, the evangelicals, and the Baptists, the Presbyterians, the Lutherans . . . well, maybe they can have the Presbyterians and Lutherans, those spawn of Satan! But they'll go on and on till no travel agent or employee is safe and we can’t even have Christmas vacation for the school kids anymore, and Easter is banished from the calendar! After Travelgate, look what happened - NAFTA! Then Whitewater! Then Monica Lewisky! No, we’re not letting the Clintons take control of this country again! Not again. Not on our watch. Not on this watch!
(Storm of applause from outside. JACK ASSASSIN goes back to the window.)
JACK ASSASSIN
(long pause) Holy Moses, look at the Secret Service! They really do talk to their sleeves…. Maybe they should look at all the windows in this building …
(He suddenly pulls back from the window, hiding. His cell phone rings.)
JACK ASSASSIN
(opening it) Jack Assassin. You have to keep calling here? …. I can’t, the goddam vibrator doesn’t work … (a sarcastic laugh) she’ll get a vibrator she’ll never forget! … No, I didn’t…. Wi-Fi? Sure, I hacked into somebody’s node, hell it’s probably the Secret Service’s, it works fine … Not that again! … Do you really ..? Look, we decided… Said who, said what? You really want to get us all killed, don’t you … All right already! (He closes the cell) God damn technology! (He scrabbles in his backpack.) “No theatrical sense!” What is he talkin’ about, this ain’t Broadway! (pauses and glances back at the audience with a sarcastic look) Not yet! (pulls out a small eyeball computer camcorder and glares into the lens) “I’m ready for my close-up, Mr. DeMille!” (He settles the camcorder on the sill and aims it.) It’s not enough to post it on YouTube, now everybody’s got to see it in real time. And give everybody a chance to triangulate my position and catch me before I’m half-way down the stairs, ever think of that! I guess he hasn’t seen Vantage Point! Triangulate (he pauses, remembering), Whitewater, Ken Starr, wag the dog, it depends on what is is … Those were the days! But never again! No way are we letting those people back in the big house. Better the black guy than that.
(His cell phone rings.)
JACK ASSASSIN
Jesus H. . . .! (opens the cell) Jack Assassin. What now? … You can’t see anything? You a pissant director?.... OK, OK, keep your pants on … (goes to the window and adjusts the camcorder) … How’s that, Hitchcock? …
(In the distance the girl’s chorus can be heard singing America the Beautiful.)
JACK ASSASSIN
What? Now you can’t hear anything? … (puts cell down, rustles in his backpack for a microphone, plugs it into the laptop, places it next to the camcorder) … I’m a friggin’ Hollywood studio! … (into cell:) How’s that, Ingmar? … Good! Now, will you please let me go back to being an assassin, like I want to be? Thank you! (closes cell; listens to the chorus, lifts his rifle and aims through the window; at the end, he joins in, singing:) “with brotherhood, from sea to shining sea.”
(Distant applause. He continues to aim at the chorus.)
JACK ASSASSIN
Pretty blond, pretty redhead, pretty brunette … (lowers the rifle, than aims again, cocking the rifle) …. ugly Betty, ugly flatface, ugly wirehead … (puts his finger on the trigger: hold)…. POWPOWPOW! (lowers the gun and turns to the audience, grinning) Only kidding!
JACK ASSASSIN
(walking up to the stage edge, still carrying rifle)
You just hate this, don’t you? “I paid good money to see this show, and these a-holes are sticking me inside the head of an expletive-deleted assassin of our favorite political hero! Shero! Hillary Rodham Clinton! The next president of the United States of America! Do they think this is funny? Do they think this is entertainment? Do they think I’ll like this or, worse yet, it’s good for me? It’s not even a good sermon! If I want that, I can go to a Unitarian church! Just when I thought it was safe to go back to Berkeley Rep, they fling this at me.” Yep! Pretentious self-reflexive postmodern amoral anti-intellectual bull manure from the a-hole of America! Right! (he lifts rifle and scans the audience with it, then lowers the gun) Scared ya, didn’t I? “He is an actor, right? I mean, this is a play. Right? He isn’t really going to kill anybody? This is a stage rifle, it isn’t really loaded - is it? Wouldn’t be fair. We paid to see a play, not get killed.” (He stares at the audience, still holding the rifle. His cell phone rings; he opens cell, reads the caller’s number) Personal call, excuse me. (turns his back slightly) Yeah … Yeah yeah … yeah … right, two-percent …. I know I got one-percent last time, I’m sorry … I’ll be home late so don’t wait up … promise! … (closes cell) As if I didn’t have enough to worry about! … I’m telling you, next time they gotta get another guy for this assassination kee-rap, I’ve had it…. Where were we? Oh, yeah, you’re wondering if this is just a play … I mean it must be, it’s got a script, I had to memorize my lines and my blocking … the director’s gonna give me notes after the performance, he’ll say things like, your timing was really great at the top of your first monolog, but do you think you can speed it up on “is this a play” speech? It drags a little. And I’ll say, sure. But what is my motivation? And he’ll give me a look fit to kill. Then I’ll go home, feeling exhausted and abused. You, now, bought tickets and are sitting of your own free will in this theater, watching, with more or less interest, wondering where the hell this is going (as if I, the director, or, god help us, the writer knew – and I know for a fact he doesn’t!). You, my dears, could leave at any time. Except, of course, you won’t, out of a feeling of embarrassment. (He points the rifle once again at the audience, slowly scanning it.) Even if you felt your life depended on it. Because, after all, it’s just a play. It’s not life. It isn’t real. None of it is real. (Sound of distant cheers.) … That’s gotta be her! (rushes back to window) …
JACK ASSASSIN
(over the following speeches, speakers can be heard in the background, with occasional bursts of applause from the audience)
Holy shit, it’s the Man. Who the hell organized this thing! (makes a call on his cell) Hey, Jimmy! You lookin’ at your screen? No? Well, get your butt over there! We got somebody, but it sure ain’t Hillary. Unless she’s so lesbo, she’s turned into a drag king version of her own hubby! … See? … (he pulls cell from ear as Jimmy shouts profanities on the other side; they can be heard over the phone; ASSASSIN replaces cell to ear) … Calm down … I know they aren’t appearing together, they haven’t since King’s birthday and he upstaged her.… they’re not stupid, they won’t appear together again till they get to Lincoln’s bedroom, har-har! … who organized this thing, is his head up his . . . ? … yeah, you talk to Ace … (closes cell and goes back to watching through window) … Damn! … (cell rings) … He said what? … Well he doesn’t know his butt from a hole in the ground, tell him that for me, I was sent here to assassinate somebody, and it may just be him! … You don’t have to tell me, she’d win by a landslide, can you imagine the . . . ? … OK, call me when they’ve made up their mind … (closes cell) Shit! Shit shit! Shit shit shit! Shit shit shit shit!
(JACK ASSASSIN walks to the stage edge and addresses audience.)
JACK ASSASSIN
This is too much! The fuckups upstairs! Can you believe this? Sure you can, you’ve been around the block – (looking at woman in audience) I know you have, babe – nothing ever works out the way you plan it. But this bullshit! Well, I guess when you’re doin’ this kinda work, you gotta expect Satan at every corner … If we were organizing a peace conference between Palestine and Israel, you’d expect shit to happen; when you’re screwing an entire state to make a few bucks on your share price, like Enron did (remember Enron?), you expect things to go like a piece of cake – the world belongs to Satan, and it’s supposed to like evil, right? But it’s one thing to tackle Satan, it’s another to have to fight fuckups in your own organization. … Anyway, if you ever organize an assassination, remember to get your intelligence right, got it? That reminds me of something very pertinent in today’s news, I can’t re-… (cell rings) …. Jack Assassin. (respectfully) Yes, Mr. Ace … I understand sir, I was just waiting here for my cue, and out he came onstage … Yes, the instrument is in working order, everything’s ready … You can see it on the screen? … Yes, well Jimmy wanted me to put it on camera … You think that’s a bad idea? Well, it might slow down my getaway… Yes, sir …. yes, sir …. no, sir … no, sir … no, sir …. right away, sir …. (closes cell) … whew! … (JACK ASSASSIN unplugs the microphone and camcorder, and closes his laptop, and puts them in his backpack; Bill Clinton can be heard speaking unintelligibly over a PA system in the background) … Ace is right, this isn’t a Macworld Expo … You know what he said? He said, are you an assassin or are you a nerd? I guess you can’t be both. Not in his universe.... He has a point ….(JACK ASSASSIN watches through window; with grudging admiration:) He sure knows how to make ’em eat out of his hand …
(Long applause and cheering, followed by the chorus singing Amazing Grace)
JACK ASSASSIN
That tune always gives me goosebumps. (He watches out the window.) … Hot damn, why the hell did they have to bring him in! Now I’m confused … I couldn’t shoot him even if I were ordered to, it’s her I hate … I know, I know, Travelgate happened on his watch, but I wanted to shoot Hillary! … Now I can’t shoot anybody! … (he picks up the rifle) … What am I doing with this? …
(The chorus ends and the audience can be heard cheering.)
JACK ASSASSIN
Damn! Damn! … (to the audience) Well, what would you do? …
(Long pause.
(Resignedly, JACK ASSASSIN breaks apart his rifle and puts it in rifle sack.)
JACK ASSASSIN
There’s nobody out there I can shoot. I can’t shoot Bill – hell if I did, the whole country’d vote for her! (He heads for the door, carrying backpack and rifle pack. Half way out, he turns to the audience one last time) I’ll just have to vote for Obama! (He closes the door; at full volume, the chorus starts singing the Hallelujah chorus.)
CURTAIN

2008-01-07T21:47:00.000-08:00

A Hummingbird in the Tenderloin

How about that?
And so far up -
In the weave of foliage of the
Tree by the window above the
Corner where homeless,
Crack heads and hookers hang
Out, waiting for their checks, being
Forsaken together –

A small object bracketed by a blur
Of wings
Zips and stills,
Hoping for a blossom
Into which to insert the soft sweet hook
Of its beak
As for nectar
Among the waving hands.

But it is too late for nectar
In these neighborhoods.
It vanishes -
A humming memory,
Briefly interrupted by sirens.

2007-12-30T17:01:00.000-08:00

Psychologie de l’univers

The universe is a psychopath on which we fleas
Are hitching a ride – had you thought of that, smarty? -
Lees in the bottle that do not please,
Result of the impurposive wrath
Of nothingness, that other arty psychopath,
Violent, mindless, heartless, soulless, with the endless
Cunning of chance (as it were, as it can’t, as it hasn’t
Even a peanut of brain to guide it,
However superbly apposite its beautifully timed
Destructions),
Kneading us
To lusty handfuls and fardels born
Of dust
Before, or after, the battle
You cannot hope to, though you’ll forever hope to
Win,
However you saint,
Sly, cheat,
Or sin,
You’re beat,
Or I ain’t
Smarty.

2007-12-18T19:44:00.000-08:00

Hangover: A Sonnet

The savage dance wasn't what we imagined
and the ancient warnings didn't make us free.
A smell of gas fed the sorry engine,
for better or worse, of the end of history.
Presidents came and went, dictators fell,
countries gagged on markets and grew fat,
or consumed their children in war and fire. All
churned and revolved around fear and desire. Yet
we tried to be wise, in a drunken world,
though only drunkenness seemed the appropriate way
to fit and flounder together. Both young and old,
we saluted the night even as it broke to day,
and, startled, looked at each other, disheveled, sweaty,
like gamblers putting down their final bets.

2007-12-04T20:40:00.001-08:00

The Fierce Thanks

It was easy for you to sneer at God,
despise the weak gifts of the earth, disdain your life,
and weigh your reward in scales of empty hands:
what was harder was to pull out of the scrod
the lump of jewel the fire licked to ashes
futilely, out of mud and time
the sentient act of grace, electric water
resolved in standing bone and meat, the fire
of mind consorting with the shifting sun
and the strobing universe of dark and light
in our accident of nerves and waking dream
we call our lives: to thank the dreadfulness
and reigning chaos for its munificence,
faithful that it, like us, can know and see
and even feel out of the dark that whirled
you into vagabond being, between flies and comets.

2007-12-04T20:37:00.001-08:00

The Ghost Fleet of Suisun Bay

Huddled like chicks on a cold morning
under the feet of the sun:
boxes of wet vacuum
squeezing into squares of shadow
under a sky smiling like a blank check:
defeated, humiliated, aging,
corpse-leaning, froglike
with dragon flies on their tongues,
pancaked into seclusion
and hypocritical nightmares
of security – like so many of us!
Mothballed veterans of the subprime,
warlike vacuities of dehiscence,
wrecks that avoided pitfalls
onto mud bank or reef
only to wallow in safety
like houseboats moored in a swamp,
they missed the grand detour
into battle, cyclone, Captain Death Wish,
the screaming myth and the headline,
they safely decline to mortality,
blankly shocked at their own squalor,
their prudent declension to death:
birthpangs
squawking behind cocktail napkins,
the perverse once witness of flocks
of frothing crows and trash gulls,
limping between the Farallons
like gimpy whales:
tucked into the seasonal bay
like a gaggle of otiose and obsolete senior citizens,
wintering for decades,
they rust and pollute and decompose and flower,
giving their discharges
like sick babies,
rotting under their nanny, the grinning sun.
The train passes them hourly, the commuters yawn,
peck at their laptops, flip through their newspapers, yawn,
check out their email, text message, dither, yawn,
glance at the ghost fleet, blink, shrug, squirm, yawn,
between the morning launch and the wreck of evening.

2007-12-04T20:36:00.001-08:00

Nothing Like

There is nothing like growing old
to feel the tightness of the light
swaddling you like a baby, and the air
breathing in your face from the compass winds
pointing always elsewhere, and the slick
mud at your feet, in your hands, on your backside
sledding you down the backyard hill of home
in the spring thaws, coldly comforting, and the fire
that licks at the edge of the letters in your hands
from almost forgotten lovers – the smoke tartens
and bitters your nostrils with memories you would swear
were only hallucinations most of the time –
but no such luck: the fire warms the air
and dries the mud to dust that clouds the light
until the burning letters burn your hands
and you drop their frail and delicate, curling ashes
to your boots and watch they fly off like black moths.

2007-12-04T20:31:00.000-08:00

A Bird in the Slums

Every morning for years you woke to a bird
cat’s cradling a song outside your window
in the slum building you lived in: strange word
sounding against city cement as from a country hedgerow.
Its song welcomed each day to you, you
to each day; a random, serendipitous gift,
a peculiar gift, like those of light and snow,
of wind and dew and warmth and rain, as if
the generous randomness of life itself
had settled, unseen (you never saw the bird),
outside your window, calling you awake,
calling you alive, out of the dark,
before the dawn, a witness of itself,
the flesh clothing its song as it spoke its word.

2006-12-12T18:08:00.000-08:00

Response to faintstarlite’s video “Marriage?” on YouTube:

First of all, congratulations on your candid and generous-hearted videos. It’s wonderful that you are asking this most important and difficult question. Let me try to offer an admittedly weak attempt at an answer.

I have been in a close relationship for many years - I think of myself as emotionally married, you might say, and neither my partner nor myself sees a good reason (yet) to legalize our relationship, neither of us being either religious in a traditional sense or very impressed by the legal reasons for marriage. (I should mention that we have built a series of legal and financial ties that serve similar purposes as marriage.) We have a very strong commitment to each other, partly (I think) because we are not legally mandated to do so - an aspect of marriage that I personally strongly dislike: imagine being legally mandated to love chocolate for the rest of your life. You might be strongly tempted to dislike chocolate for a day or two, if only to show your independence.

Personally, I feel marriage to be truly necessary only when a couple intends to have children, since children need solid emotional support and strong legal and economic protections. I also believe that, once a couple has children, they should not be allowed to divorce until all the children have attained full majority and are well launched as adults: the emotional strains of divorce on children we are only now beginning to grasp, including a high incidence of inability to form strong or lasting attachments, and even a high rate of psychosis, as reported recently in the media.

In a long-term commited relationship, call it marriage or not, what is vitally important is for each of you to understand that your relationship as of central importance: if you do that, you will do nothing to endanger it. And that is, I believe, the basis of any successful relationship, whether it is as simple as that with the neighborhood grocer or the most intimate relationship of your life.

There is one unfortunate condition, however: neither member of a relationship, marriage or not, can control it, and the attempt to do so will, I think, certainly doom it. It takes the firmest commitment by both sides to make it succeed; it takes only one side to destroy it.
Another important point as I see it is the ability to compromise, often on very serious matters, always presuming that the relationship is central; if it is, and if it gives happiness, apparent compromises will no longer seem so difficult, especially when you realize that the happiness of your partner is an essential component of your own. That may be one definition of love. Lastly, in this very superficial comment, I entirely agree that contempt is the surest destroyer of any relationship - most surely of a marriage. I hope you find these comments a little helpful.

2006-11-06T19:22:00.000-08:00

Who should lead us?
The cretinous, the crazy, the know-nothings of this earth,
the talentless and shrunken-hearted among us
(and they are legion),
or the brainy, the talented, the sharp, knowing, and wise and
great-hearted of this earth
(and they are few)?
"No brainer," you say. Then how did we get here?
Because we chose a leader who never made anyone else feel even
stupider than he was!
So, let's ask again:
"Who should lead us?"
An elite of the mind or the flower of the mass
that covers the land like burnt grass,
suppurating in malls and gagging in bars,
spreading like kudzu in a foul wallow,
staining our cities and uglying our towns,
scarring the fields with concrete and foulness,
infecting our capitals with stupidity and vulgarity,
cupidity and duplicity,
and nearest proximity to asininity,
American Idol to a vicious god,
and turning the globe into a slow-cooking oven
that will turn the blue planet into a white waste;
a dull and crushing horror
that bombs and bleeds and jails
forever whoever it dares:
a C-student out of Yale
who never broke a book
that didn’t look like the Bible,
and now leads us on,
like a sexual player at a senior prom?
Who should lead us – a body with the makings of a mind,
a conscience, a fear of catastrophes to come,
and a tender, an almost timid love for all of Earth’s green kingdom,
or a charming dunce and dry drunk with a fixation
and a firm delusion squatting in his skull,
all the confidence of a blissful fool,
and a brain that scares no one, tagged with terrifying convictions?
Mass or mind? Like the rest of us – or better?
Choose – if you dare!

© 2006 Christopher Bernard

2006-10-07T11:01:00.000-07:00

Patience with Agents

You must be patient
With your agent
In the foreign land called Publishing; oh,
She is your spy
Where you are shy,
And sometimes slips into betraying you:
The rejection slips
From her lips
Are her perverse way of loving you.

© 2006 Christopher Bernard

2006-09-30T19:50:00.000-07:00

An edited excerpt from a letter to a friend about the artist Andy Warhol, with passing jabs at several other American cultural icons:

You ask me what I think of Andy Warhol. Well. . . . To my mind, Andy Warhol was more a symptom than an artist. He was a child in a sandbox called modern art: a very shrewd child with an eye on the main chance, who knew that modern art is as good a con as any, and more fun than most – and highly lucrative if you play it right. There are many fools in this world, heaven knows - and we're all of us fools at least some of the time: Warhol chose his fools very carefully, and they came to him in glittery droves of the moneyed and the glamorous. He was a kind of fakir and guru to their tribes in the dank precincts of Manhattan in the 1960s and 70s – a rich time for such cons; if he were starting today, he may have chosen a more conservative approach, but make no mistake – he was in it for the con, not for the art, because his ultimate values were – or at least Warhol himself proclaimed them to be - the insipidly materialistic ones that run most of our lives.

By “art,” I mean (and here is my attempt to define art – always a dangerous thing to do!) a search for aesthetic rightness, existential truth, and spiritual meaning through the exploration of perceptible form, in whatever medium, with the hope that enough people will share our vision to pay us enough to pay our bills and let us continue our explorations. This (often highly playful, yet always deeply serious) search at the basis of genuine art I don’t see any sign that Warhol pursued: his goal was “success,” “being a star,” “shopping” - and he discovered such success was best achieved, in the art world, through a kind of high-flying deception. He did manipulate images cleverly enough to seem to be an “artist” in the true sense – and his opaque public utterances (wonderfully disingenuous as they were) made him appear more genuine than I think he was.

Warhol joins the ranks of Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley, Allen Ginsberg, Madonna, etc., etc., etc., as one more American narcissist in love with “celebrity,” with “being a star” – a mediocrity with no identity but with one or two talents, and a genius for self-promotion, who demonstrates to the “mass man” (American society as a whole) that all you need is a little luck with the Zeitgeist, a clever con, and a first-rate publicity department to make yourself famous, rich, even respected, reverenced, worshipped (vide Graceland, where Elvis is almost literally worshipped).

In that sense, Warhol is the quintessential American culturatus (I won’t dignify him with the name “artist,” which for me carries a serious (not always solemn!) responsibility – to oneself, one’s audience, the art one practices, and future artists): Warhol is a worthy “artist” only for a culture that made George W. Bush its president.

One of my own goals and personal ambitions is to help create a culture in America where such culturati aren’t taken seriously, are allowed a place in the sideshow tent of culture perhaps but never “under the big top” (insofar as culture is always a circus), or are laughed off stage or exhibited at freak shows sent on tours abroad to demonstrate the unerring tastelessness and stupidity of the American mind, even at supposedly sophisticated levels.

Despite my attack on Warhol, his work is still a bit of a problem for me if only because the man had talent, indeed he had enormous gifts – and he even had something like integrity, and almost an intellectual conscience; the disappointing thing is that he used those gifts essentially to make fools of the rest of us, especially those in the art game who want to be fooled: art critics, gallery owners, museum curators, and collectors (and then art teachers and students, and even young and impressionable artists themselves), in whose interest it is to puff a given body of “artworks.” He came along at just the time American artistic culture could use what he produced, both his products and his "rhetoric" – and was willing to go along with his little racket since it made so many people money – and no one was in a position to say he was wearing no clothes, because no one else was wearing any either.

I often think of Warhol as a sort of dime-store Duchamp – though without that legendary con artist’s intellect, despite his undeniable cunning: a con man, and “creepy” indeed. As a cultural phenomenon, Warhol is an example of a glaring weakness in modern art, and that is: gullibility. Modern art (or if you prefer, modernist art, as well as its step-child, postmodern art) – and this is part of what I think distinguishes it from the art of previous epochs and other cultures - stands or falls on the integrity of the artist as much as on his technical capacity, and sometimes even more so – in modern art, the display of technical finesse is rarely an issue, nor is there always a set of commonly accepted norms to judge a work’s success or failure; therefore, what we are left with is trust in the artist’s truthfulness, sincerity – authenticity - when we are placed before what is often on the face of it baffling and obscure work – and this trust Warhol’s example undercut (as Duchamp did earlier – subject for another rant!). The problem remains that modern art, without faith in the integrity of the artist, becomes little more than an enormous confidence racket, a game of “the greater fool” (as in investing) between artists, gallery owners, curators, and collectors, each creating a phantom of value (in the form of escalating prices – e.g., the $15,000,000 for the Campbell soup cans) out of what is, when all is said and done, “trash.”

What gives an artwork value and interest for me, personally, beyond the sheer pleasure of contemplating it, is the integrity of vision expressed in the work – is the value of the person behind the artwork, as a meditator on the human condition in all its ramifications, from the most seemingly trivial to the most extraordinary – without this, it has no more value than any other waste basket’s contents; with this, it becomes a treasure of the human race, something indeed (and I don't use the word lightly) sacred to man.

To me what gives art value is, ultimately, the artist: I don’t value Bach’s music because of its aesthetic qualities alone; if a computer had created it, it would have no value for me – it has value because a human being invented, produced, indeed created, it with all its aesthetic fascinations. Human beings, I believe, create meaning: that is our glory and our task. I certainly see it as my task and, with luck, my “glory.” Well, maybe just my “task”!

Warhol and narcissists like him, I believe, turn art into a confidence racket feeding their need for celebrity but merely aggrandizing the rich in the end: a game of self-delusion masquerading as cultural significance. I suspect that, like Marilyn Monroe, Andy Warhol was an empty shell, incapable of genuineness, authenticity, or truth: a fake human being – a con even to himself. And therefore, like the list of “American culturati” I gave at the outset of this ridiculously overlong and somewhat self-important rant against the poor little Czech boy who wanted to become a star (and got his wish in spades), he was a perfect blank on which many Americans could project their own wish-fulfillments regarding fame, success, meaning, culture, and, indeed, art itself.

I feel as if I ought to make some kind of bow at this point and modestly accept the applause of the audience – or the rotten eggs if there are any Warhol fans among them.

© 2006 Christopher Bernard

2006-09-19T11:51:00.000-07:00

A Child of the World

“Not alone,” he said. “However alone you feel,
the world that made you - of which you are made -
contains you, contained by you, bruisingly real
or a windblown phantom, as philosophy has said:
you're made, like the bird and the beetle it feeds on,
like the hammering thunder or the snapping rain,
like the fog and the rock, or the gemstone and seed,
from dust from collapsing nebulae drained.
The cat is your cousin, and the mouse where it lies
eaten where it lay in the cat’s path.
Your mind and your body and your soul are one
with the mud shining sunlight in your eyes and mine.
You are the world’s child. From this impossible truth,
humbling, even sweet, can shake you no wrath.”
And he vanished in the air
that hangs between cloud and earth and the fire
that burns forever in temporary stars.

© 2006 Christopher Bernard

2006-08-27T11:26:00.000-07:00

In this country of exiles . . .

In this country of exiles where I live
we watch each other with a flinching glare;
we grin, we are even polite; we don’t quite dare
point out, no matter how drivenly we strive
to make this home, it will never make it ours.
So we stalk the ground, smirking, pretending, careless,
marauders in the house, the girls fiery,
prim or scatological, postmodern, primitive,
the guys contemptuous. We know each other’s goods
too well: You can’t fool me. And I can’t fool you.
We’re both more than happy with our crimes,
and if the generations after us
must pay - let them! The world was just our tool,
our toy, our treason. For the dead there is no time.

© 2006 Christopher Bernard

2006-05-29T11:36:00.000-07:00

What all "young generations" share is a revulsion toward their parents' generation - a revulsion that is often justified. Every adult generation has so compromised itself as to deserve the contempt their children feel for them - even as their children are headed toward making the same compromises themselves, in order to bear the world, life, each other, and themselves, without running mad from disappointment, discouragement, and frustration. Life crushes us quickly or slowly - the latter without our even realizing it.