Failed Visionary
Queasiness, apathy and doom
spread over the sweetness… fear
of the stagnation and sorrow
that will have to seep out, fresh
from the source, all that death,
dirt and hurt: better for it to be absorbed
than apprehended, but who could withstand
such a force? A rallying call to weakness,
better leave it hanging. But dread is soon replaced
by regret, indifference by longing.
Tongue and Groove event. Hotel Cafe, Sunday March 18th, 6pm.
Michael Albo, Brendan Constantine, Eric Trules, Kathleen Wilhoite,
and JOHN TOTTENHAM
I am the stale receptor, the superfluous accumulator,
the redundant completist trapped
in his cave of musty retention,
buried under years of absorption… unaborted;
decades of consumption… consumed,
sacrificed at the altar of other people’s art,
while everything else fell apart.
Pondering, at last, all the pointless consolation;
questioning if it was really necessary
to devour entire genres until I was crapulous
from gorging myself on culture,
As if it were some kind of achievement
to accumulate all this knowledge
that will die with me.
So that on my headstone it will read:
that I read and lived a lot of fiction…
that Art ruined my Life.
A certain party was moved to pen this letter to Vanity Fail in response to the Nick Tosches’ interview with Johnny Depp that ran in their November 2011 issue. ‘The Truth About Johnny’s Demons’ read the attention-grabbing headline. The letter, naturally, wasn’t printed.
The truth about Johnny Depp’s demons is that he doesn’t have any demons. At least no more than any average guy. He’s a happily married multimillionaire who enjoys a glass of wine (Chateau L’Evangile 2002) and an occasional flutter at the Ritz poker table. An actor who smokes and drinks: Wow. Are we supposed to worry about him or regard him as some sort of martyr or hero because he indulges in a few perfectly normal ‘vices’ that don’t seem to have any negative effect upon his career or family life? Or do you have to pretend he is demon-ridden to sell this puff piece in which Tosches and Depp sit around telling each other how cool they are and dropping a lot of names in the process?
‘Johnny’ is a fairly gifted actor who got very lucky and enjoys basking in the reflected glory of other celebrity bad boys – “Hunter”, “Keith”, etc. He actually has the audacity to compare his vapid bowdlerization of a bad Hunter S.Thompson novel to Casablanca.
Tosches is somebody that one likes to think of as upholding a certain level of journalistic integrity, but here he lowers himself to the level of any other celebrity-worshiping hack. He is impressed with “the rare depth of (Johnny’s) reading… from Baudelaire to Beckett to Burroughs.” One can’t help but cynically wonder if Tosches would be as impressed with this level of erudition – which, judging by the cited authors, wouldn’t be out of place coming from any literate teenager – in somebody that wasn’t famous.
An actor who reads: Whatever next? Perhaps he’s even a musician. But of course: Johnny’s “a formidable guitarist.” As for Johnny’s apparent ‘literacy’, he can’t seem to speak a coherent sentence: “No, no, no. The idea of releasing that, like – no, no. I feel like it’s for, like, a few, you know?” Thanks for sharing the intricacies of Johnny’s thought processes. Printing this drivel is, in fact, an insult to any literate reader. It’s embarrassing to witness how flattered Tosches is by Depp’s patronage. My respect – for what that’s worth – for Tosches has diminished considerably as a result of this article. As for Depp, I never had any.
And yes, of course I’m jealous of him. What other reason could a man have for not liking Johnny Depp?
An esteemed critic weighs in with rapturously levelheaded appraisal of lavish Las Cienegas show. Huffington Post 12/10.
The footsteps of bored guards echo in the empty galleries.
A homeless patron wheels a laundry cart around.
Despite free admission, the place is empty,
these are the only sounds; and it’s easy to get lost
in the bleak, rural Dutch 17th century.
Beneath a cloudy, unforgiving sky,
two figures tramp down a muddy lane
toward a house half-hidden behind gnarled trees.
Cattle graze beside a river.
Beyond torn fencing fields recede.
Gazing into these serenely battered bygone scenes,
one is reminded of real life, real weather:
that it might still be out there somewhere.
Not here, far removed from European culture,
at the very edge of the western hemisphere.
Where, on a hollow, cloudless day
the collection’s fragile incongruity is quickly wiped away
by the umpteenth oblivious jogger running by
with a head set on.
There’s nothing in the air.
The sun, subtly vampiric, barely brushes against a world
where everything and nothing is in bloom:
a seductive vacuity, of lifeless trees
and lives of ease and loud complacency,
as soothing and beautiful as a cartoon.
Standard Hotel, West Hollywood. Valentine’s Night, Feb 14th. Complimentary wine served between 7 and 8pm. Readings by Ezrha Jean Black, Zak Smith, Sophie Sills and John Tottenham at 8pm.
A good humor man nurtures a roadside weed
With water from a Dixie Cup;
Street lights change superfluously in muggy stillness;
In a world of blinding blandness
A poisonous vacancy becomes beautiful.
A small crowd mills around on the sidewalk outside an art gallery. I am waylaid by an acquaintance who introduces me to his friends: a pair of women who are making the rounds. It’s fashion night, so, naturally, they are at an art gallery.
It quickly becomes apparent that we have nothing to offer each other.
“I have no nocturnal energy,” I say to one of them, a blonde from Texas.
“Maybe you need a stimulant,” she says.
“No thanks.”
“You don’t take stimulants?”
“Only during the day,” I say. “What does one do at night anyway but wander around drinking and making small talk with people one doesn’t care about?”
Her friend is thin and pale; she is wearing hot pants and high heels, and she has eyes of such vacancy that they are frightening to gaze into. Thirty seconds after being introduced to her, probably figuring that I’m not young, famous or wealthy enough to bother with, she returns to texting.
A fat man in shorts, T-shirt and baseball cap walks by.
“Obviously he’s out for fashion night,” I remark.
“What?” yelps the brunette, annoyed to be interrupted by a demand upon her attention in the non-digital world. She seems affronted that somebody might have the audacity to possess a sense of humor, maybe even a personality, which immediately marks them as an alien being from the real world, beyond the borders of the art-damaged sphere she inhabits.
I repeat my observation but she has already returned to the urgent business on her iphone, an aimless creature of the night, a black hole, looking for action, for the next place that she can stand around texting at.
I excuse myself and enter the gallery, where clusters of young people stand around playing with their cell phones and quaffing cans of Tecate.
A slightly raised circular wooden platform with lights around its edges occupies the room. It was once part of a famous singer’s stage set. An artist got his hands on it, and now it sits, stripped, in the middle of a gallery. Now it is art. Although, if it wasn’t in a gallery, one might not recognize it as such.
Every half hour the artist crouches down on the floor and spins the circular platform slowly around while fiddling with various switches that cause the lights to flash on and off. This performance lasts two or three minutes, for the duration of the song by the famous singer that is playing on the artist’s headphones, unbeknownst to the attendees. For this work the artist has received a substantial grant.
Back on the sidewalk, due to the exigencies of social protocol, I am once again thrust into conversation with my acquaintance and his friends.
“What were you doing in Dallas?” asks the Texan woman.
“I was with a band,” I reply.
Instantly, the stringy brunette looks up from her texting, her dead eyes come to life and something resembling an expression flickers across her pallid features. The magic words have been spoken. I am now worthy of interest.
“What band?” she asks.
“It doesn’t matter,” I say, refusing to gratify her feeble attempt at curiosity.
She returns to her texting, and I walk off.
Artillery, 2012.
John Tottenham 