Sunday, March 30, 2003

Having A Coke With You

is even more fun than going top San Sebastian, Irun, Hendaye, Biarritz, Bayonne
or being sick to my stomach on the Travesera de Gracia in Barcelona
partly because in your orange shirt you look like a better happier St. Sebastian
partly because of my love for you, partly because of your love for yoghurt
partly because of the fluoresent orange tulips around the birches
partly because of the secrecy our smiles take on before people and statuary
it is hard to believe when I'm with you that there can be anything as still
as solemn as unpleasently definitive as statuary when right in front of it
in the warm New York 4 o'clock light we are drifting back and forth
between each other like a tree breathing through its spectacles

and the portrait show seems to have no faces in it at all, just paint
you suddenly wonder why in the world anyone ever did them I look
at you and I would rather look at you than all the portraits in the world
except possibly for the "Polish Rider" occasionally and anyway it's in the Frick
which thank heavens you haven't gone to yet so we can go together the first time
and the fact that you move so beautifully more or less takes care of Futurism
just as at home I never think of the "Nude Descending a Staircase" or
at a rehearsal a single drawing of Leonardo or Michaelangleo that used to wow me

and what good does all the research of the impressionists do them
when they never got the right person to stand near the tree when the sun sank
or for that matter Marino Marini when he didn't pick the rider as carefully
as the horse

- Frank O'Hara

Wednesday, March 26, 2003

Hamilton's answer to the democratic peace proposition, that most cherished stricture of american political science:

'But notwithstanding the concurring testimony of experience...there are still to be found visionary or designing men, who stand ready to advocate the paradox of perpetual peace between the States, though dismembered and alienated from each other. The genius of republics (say they) is pacific; the spirit of commerce has a tendency to soften the manners of men, and to extinguish those inflammable humors which have so often kindled into wars. Commercial republics, like ours, will never be disposed to waste themselves in ruinous contentions with each other. They will be governed by mutual interest, and will cultivate a spirit of mutual amity and concord.

'Is it not (we may ask these projectors in politics) the true interest of all nations to cultivate the same benevolent and philosophic spirit? If this be their true interest, have they in fact pursued it? Has it not, on the contrary, invariably been found that momentary passions, and immediate interests, have a more active and imperious control over human conduct than general or remote considerations of policy, utility, or justice? Have republics in practice been less addicted to war than monarchies? Are not the former administered by men as well as the latter? Are there not aversions, predilections, rivalships, and desires of unjust acquisitions that affect nations as well as kings? Are there not popular assemblies frequently subject to the impulses of rage, resentment, jealousy, avarice, and of other irregular and violent propensities? Is it not well known that their determinations are often governed by a few individuals in whom they place confidence, and are, of course, liable to be tinctured by the passions and views of those individuals? Has commerce hitherto done any thing more than change the objects of war? Is it not the love of wealth as domineering and enterprising a passion as that of power or glory? Have there not been as many wars founded upon commercial motives since that has become the prevailing system of nations, as were before occasioned by the cupidity of territory or dominion? Has not the spirit of commerce, in many instances, administered new incentives to the appetite, both for the one and for the other? Let experience, the least fallible guide of human opinions, be appealed to for an answer to these inquiries.'

(Federalist Paper No. 6)

Tuesday, March 18, 2003

and then i'm reading merleau-ponty on montaigne:

[Montaigne] saw that he was not required to choose between himself and things. The self is not serious; it does not like to be tied down. But is there anything as certain, resolute, disdainful, contemplative, solemn, and serious as an ass? It is unconditional freedom which makes us capable of absolute attachment. Montaigne says of himself: I have been so sparing in promises that I think I have kept more than I have promised or owed. He sought and maybe found the secret of being simultaneously ironic and solemn, faithful and free.

from 'Reading Montaigne', in Signs.
so it appears that there will be war.

Wednesday, March 12, 2003

I badly want not to betray. yeah ok even before I wrote that I knew how stupid it sounded. it has, however, the rather dubious merit of being honest.

'There is something more than food, humor, a turn of phrase, a gesture of the hands: there is something more.'
(Adrienne Rich, of course.)
the Boston Symphony Orchestra playing Mozart and Mahler at Carnegie Hall tonight. I can't tell Mahler from Mozart (well okay maybe Mahler from Mozart) -- I always fall asleep when listening to classical music for any extended period of time -- I think I go just so I can go back home with the music echoing just outside of memory and the fleeting impression of beauty. Indie rock concert at Irving Plaza last weekend (Interpol -- remember the name) -- but that's a different kind of music, that's something to truly lose yourself in, not to the music so much as to the rush of sound and smoke and alcohol -- though I find that losing oneself is harder and harder to do. And strangely perhaps easier to do it to classical music, because it requires you to engage with it on more levels. And La Boheme the weekend before, and the ballet after that -- Balanchine to Gershwin, all light and sparkling and charming -- and then a terse modern black-and-white piece by Peter Martin, all edges and tension and elegance -- and then a wonderful tribute to Fred Astaire. I never thought I'd like the ballet, but like the Mahler tonight, one leaves with one's mind still full of light, and that seems something to be -- thankful for?

'Music arrives, searching for us. What hope or memory without it. Whatever we may think. After so many words.' (from Adrienne Rich's 'A Long Conversation').