Sunday, November 20, 2016

A Respite




Toronto was, it turned out, the perfect place to visit after the horror and shame of what America did last week. Toronto people being polite, organized, patient and just civilized generally - a bit like Seattle actually, though far more multicultural (Toronto is one of the most multicultural cities on the planet actually with 50% of its population foreign-born)....Toronto also survived it's own harrowing experience with an off-the-rails political personality in late conservative populist Mayor Rob Ford (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rob_Ford), giving me a flicker of hope that we can get through this nightmare. Of course, a mayor is not a president, and Rob Ford actually had political experience, and while undisciplined in his remarks and a wreck in his personal life, was never considered a xenophobe, in fact representing a district that was 50% immigrant. Having said that, his scandal-ridden tenure led to accusations of domestic violence, prostitution, alcoholism and crack-smoking, to name just a few


But civilization has prevailed in Toronto and I traveled here for the Naked Heart Book Festival, which was the most diverse book fair I've ever been to, compounding the shame I felt for my own country which doesn't seem capable of pulling this off. It was really glorious to see something that I've heard talked about for the last 20 years actually happening before my eyes. Literally dozens of trans people and men and women who were East Indian, African, Chinese and Filipino, Mexican and indigenous, etc.  - and young! And not just one or two representatives of each group but dozens of people. It was like being in the world that I want to be in, that I'm usually in back at LAANE where I work. One of the main reasons I surmise, besides a more positive, inclusive attitude, is the availability of money for cultural events and the arts that (yeah say it - my crappy country) never provides. Funds allow young people and immigrants and people of color and all manner of broke writers (often the best) to attend and take part. Such people can rarely afford America's privatized, overpriced everything that yes, not only prevents, but actively excludes, damages and dumbs down what (increasingly for-profit) culture exists. You have to be part of academia to get any money to get you to book fairs in the US, and that's a whole nother can of worms involving privilege and politics, and a whole bunch of things that don't equate with the best writing.









The Latinx Panel featuring a super interesting and diverse array of Latin voices, representing Puerto Rico, Mexico, Argentina and Chile



Michael Erickson (who organized the festival, with a big crew of volunteers and the generous support of the Canada and Toronto Councils for the Arts. Michael is a true visionary and a high energy, generous person who bolstered my belief that the better angels of our nature can overcome all adversities, even a disastrous election). Michael is pictured here with Samuel Delaney, an amazingly accomplished elder writer of science fiction, unabashedly queer, wise, with that magic in his eyes. His standing-room only event was really something - everything he said was worth writing down, from funny comments on the misery of writing to things like "you have to be happy at least once in awhile so you know how to write about it," and answering a question about how to write good erotica, he quipped "pay attention while you're having sex!"

My friend and mentor Felice Picano, one of the pioneers of gay lit with his small presses and dozens of books spanning 5 decades, was interviewed by Jeffrey Round, a fine writer who I stayed with in the East End



A lesser known fellow, reading from his new book....

.



Jeffrey's house is one of these duplexes...I slept in the basement. I love dungeons. I had 4 happy, painless days here, which is a rarity for me these days...

I also enjoyed his roommate, Christian Baines, an Australian writer who took part in the book fair.

Jeffrey made us all Chicken Mole and invited over the legendary Ian Young, author of numerous important books and someone I feel very connected to on many levels and who I saw here with his partner Wulf the last time I came through Toronto 3 years ago.
l to r: Felice Picano, Ian Young, Wulf, moi, Jeffrey....Christian was on photo duty






Architecture, non-chain coffeeshops and public trans!! My tastes are simple really.

Jeffrey took me out to the Guild Inn Park, which is on the grounds of a former hotel and now the final resting place of many of the beautiful ornate facades, etc. of Toronto's early 20th c. buildings that got torn down....ghostly, peaceful, serene, sitting on a bluff over Lake Ontario






They do Shakespeare here in the summer :)

I had a little time Friday to look around the center city, and while loving the building, I skipped the Natural History Museum ....


....and headed for the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) as Jeffrey had raved to me about some Canadian artists called the "Group of Seven who aimed to develop the first distinctly Canadian style of painting."


Lawren Harris






Tom Thompson, who spent a lot of his life canoeing through the northwoods...finally vanishing mysteriously...painted the below works



Some other works I enjoyed ...






Man becoming a thunderbird



This artist wanted to depict what Crazy Horse wore. I burst into tears - always a weird experience...the last time was when I saw the below photo of a 12-yr-old Mexican boy with a gay uncle who halted 11,000 rightwing anti-gay marriage religious types in Guanajuato earlier this year


Such things always surprise me as I don't cry easy...but some things speak directly to your soul. Queer allies are something that always does it, and I've read a lot about Crazy Horse and the Oglala, and feel connected through my sweatlodge practice as well as my cross-country bike trip that involved him in a story too long to tell... so I wrote it instead in A Horse Named Sorrow

What Black Elk said: "..he was a queer man and would go about the village without noticing people or saying anything. In his own teepee he would joke, and when he was on the warpath with a small party, he would joke to make his warriors feel good. But around the village he hardly ever noticed anybody, except little children. All the Lakotas like to dance and sing; but he never joined a dance, and they say nobody ever heard him sing. But everybody liked him, and they would do anything he wanted or go anywhere he said"

It's the freedom that makes Crazy Horse a great American hero...things he said when they tried to get him to settle on a reservation, like "Work? What is this work? I live." Thank you, Crazy Horse, my thoughts exactly. So much of America is posited on what it destroyed. It's all about wanting something and having no concept of being it. Consumerism explained. And yes, I'm talking about freedom. Sad what we've come to.

But I had to places to go, and it was a short walk to meet with John Gray at the Canadian Music Center (I love real cities after being in LA for so long where you basically can't have an urban experience of any real quality, urbanity being about accessibility to culture and people).


John Gray, who is the center's archivist and an accomplished composer, showed me around (he loves microphones, raving about a Latvian pair and some other German ones). We closed up and went off to Mullins Pub where he read to me from his autobiography. ...fascinating life: growing up on a boat with his painter father, meeting JFK as a boy at the White House when the Kennedys bought one of his father's paintings (John was about 9 and said JFK mussed his hair and it annoyed him as men were always doing that)



As many of you know, I'm leaving for Mexico soon, planning to stay for 6 months at least. I'm not sure what I'll be coming back to, but I'm not running away as this has been in the works for a long time (have been trying to escape LA since 2011 actually), though I'm disappointed and basically starved by my country so much so that it's not healthy for me to stay here. I'm running to something that feeds my soul and I will do all I can do from there to fight this monstrosity of an election and that man they chose to lead their mental health support group. Good luck and shame on them all because as a queer, as person who is trying (albeit I suppose not hard enough) to be generous and understanding, I feel betrayed by my people and country (and I know it's none of you reading this blog). I'm not a nationalist person, so yeah, I appreciate America's good qualities, but it's basically just the place I was born - a pretty city with a bridge that thrilled the soul, and a few hours away a range of mountains that showed me something I've never found anywhere else and that are with me always. But I never liked the anger, the religion, the anti-intellectualism and tribalism. I loved and love the mountains because they were the one place I found that I suppose struck me as un-American (or pre-American), just as they also represented the promise and ideal of America, offering freedom and equality to all beings - trees, varmints, lichen, humans, Mexicans! The ideals of the enlightenment basically, which has sadly been thrown under the bus this month.



Looking back across that giant lake to what feels right now like a land of shame and meanness...talking to a nice Canadian man...he sat down next to me and I moved my computer cover from the seat ...he was actually sitting two seats away and said politely 'that's ok, you dont have to move it.' I told him: 'Well, I appreciate the politeness here, it's kind of how I am'. And we started a conversation about it, and he agreed with me as he travels to the states a lot. We talked about Canada and the book fair and the arts budget, which he thinks is too generous. We agreed that balance is good. He asked me what to expect from Salt Lake City, where we're both headed. I've been a few times. I said they're likely more polite than California, but it's an American city and religious, so it's boring. The Rafters basketball team has been walking by as we speak - I'm not a fan, so it's just tall people. There are young folks scurrying about and asking for autographs and I'm just thinking, how weird to be that tall and does it cause them pain eventually to live in bodies that big?

I'm sad to go home, I feel disappointed and angry at humanity, I worry about the little kids - especially the Mexican, Central American and Middle Eastern ones.


It was sort of sweet to be here when Leonard Cohen passed away. It sounds like he went peacefully. I met him once at the Mt. Baldy Zen Center. I'd gone there to see my friend who was a journalist who'd become a monk so he could write about the experience. He fell in love with a nun and they kicked him out for breaking his vows. I didn't know this when I visited, so I knocked on the door. And who answered it? Leonard Cohen. He said Larry wasn't there anymore.


This is sort of typical for me. I meet my creative heroes in the strangest ways. I once followed Allen Ginsberg around North Beach as he stopped to peer in windows on a foggy night. I passed Gary Snyder on a trail over Bishop Pass in the High Sierra. I just said "Hi", thinking 'If you meet the Buddha on the road, short of killing him, you can at least not make a big deal out of him'. I never acknowledged I was a fan to any of them, thinking they must get that all the time and I want to be one of the ones who doesn't treat them that way

I'll leave you with another song which always cuts right to what's it really all about...it's the truest song ever written about love and friendship and loneliness


Wednesday, October 12, 2016

You Should Know the Score By Now

New York! It's always a thrill to enter this city. "La Capital" as they say in Argentina. Capital cities have that vibe of everything converging in a culture or nation. Mexico City has it, Buenos Aires has it, and New York has it in spades. Makes you remember how amazing, despite all its dramas and shortcomings, this country is. It's hard not to feel overwhelmingly motivated and positive here, and even when folks complain, it's still New York. San Francisco seems mired in misery about rising rents and gentrification, but NYC, no matter what happens, can be defeated by nothing. It's a god or goddess of sorts...it's everything that's best about America....and it makes you feel something about the human spirit..fuck yeah, look at this! Look what people can build! Richard LaBonte said, "it's majestic"...yes, like a big fabulous castle...or as captured by George Gershwin and Woody Allen in true romantic writer mode:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uyaj2P-dSi8

A song I always sing when I visit, probably because I first visited New York City as a high school student in 1979 when this song was on the radio...with all its sweet, plaintive disco sadness... listen to all the words...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_sObuwA0VOE

You're no tramp, but you're no lady, talkin' that street talk
You're the heart and soul of New York City

I'm the same. I'm not the heart and soul of NYC of course...I'm not sure what I'm the heart and soul of, but I'm no tramp nor am I a lady...I'm something in between, talking my sweet talk....

My other favorite Manhattan song..courtesy of Blossom Dearie....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzGWuJheJ_4

And if women are singing the city's praises, why isn't it singing back to them?

http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/city-of-women

This guy poured me coffee at a diner and I said, "you must be Mike"..."No" he answered, "I'm Chris -- Mike and Kyle are my band mates"



The lovely little Queens rowhouse that I stayed in while Mark and Bill were off in Barcelona and Portugal. Bill and Mark are my oldest gay friends, a couple who've been together 32 years. Both amazing people and champions in a million ways - they took me to my first ACT UP meeting, they did yoga with me for years, they both inspired me with their activism, their art, their generosity and goodness, their humor, their ability to live and be happy and do what they love - to serve others and to enjoy, which is my goal as well. Their love for each other has inspired me and put the lie to all those who have tried to dismiss gay love...Fuerza Bill and Mark, love you both so much

Then and now....


 

Bill never aged as you can see, and Mark only slightly, much like myself.... I love their neighborhood, which is still pretty pre-grentrification...lots of Greeks, Mexicans, women in burkhas...love it because it's unselfconscious...the few hipsters or yuppies (remember that word?) can be seen at the newer eateries, etc. - generally self-conscious, vain, and unfriendly, sad to say...but those who seek wealth and power are the same everywhere in all times (power and wealth are the booby prize of human life, or as Bruce Springsteen once said of the burbs - the door prize)......instead, seek connection, seek service, seek art, live in the heart not the head...those who do are spilling out of the trains in Queens, with lunch pails and snotty little kids, offering me directions and good wishes, welcoming me home...and what is home? For me, it's a friendly smile from a stranger in a faraway place, someone who gives with no expectations of anything in return other than the affirmation of we are all here together for whatever reason, lets be kind to one another



My good fortune: Leonel, who I met in Oaxaca in 2014, just happened to have moved here in the interim. I had no idea! We spent a lovely day walking the breadth and length of Central Park. For the first time, I didn't visit a museum, so strong was my longing for nature after a solid week of concrete and airports...and the bonus of getting to speak Spanish for 3 hours with this good, gentle man :)





High rent apt bldg flipping off us poor folks out for a stroll

Some of the folks at the reading...bottom left, Jim Eigo, an early champion of my work, and behind him Tom Cardamone, my favorite gay author...then left to right...Paul Masse, Greg and Donnie, Jerome, Kyler, Rich, Joshua and Chris. We had an amazing discussion afterward about art, life and pushing the envelope


Tom's artful pic:


And the Keith Haring murals all over the walls in the gay center's bathroom....now that's pushing the envelope for pubic art...you go, Keith! 


"Once Upon a Time” was an homage to the more care-free days of bathroom sex before HIV and AIDS ravaged the gay community in New York and beyond. These are not the Haring images we are used to seeing on buttons, magnets, puzzles, and clothes; this is the private, sexual Haring come to life in a grandiose and unapologetic celebration of gay sexuality. 


Chris, on our rainy walk down to Poet's House to see Alfred Corn, who was being feted by the likes of Edmund White...


Edmund White is probably the grand dame of gay letters, and he's the sweetest man you'll ever meet. I see him occasionally and was really happy to see him at Alfred's event...I happened to be reading his short story collection, Skinned Alive, so he signed it, and I passed along my book, which I hope he enjoys. Below, myself with poet Alfred Corn


Then it was off to meet filmmaker, Nicholas Giuricich, who'd read all my books, which is always that rare gift. We had a great time at a sports bar way down in the financial district, while the rain came down outside, and we shared a million stories. He's a sweet, sharp guy and he'll be coming to Mexico City when I'm there, so I look forward to more time hanging out and sharing our creative visions 


  I was here for way too short a time..I never visit New York for less than 10 days, and I was here only 3....tough to go...and it rained as I left..so sad, and yet the bus driver, in true New York style, was all New York Brooklyn accent and talking a blue streak about everything....this town is full of great people....and, of course, at my age, to quote our New York disco anthem, you should know the score....I'm not some big famous writer, but I do what I love and I'm happy for that and maybe the score is not what it's about, or "the score" is something else entirely...who knows? I feel very lucky and very loved by a special handful of folks....gratefulness is the greatest answer to the world, just as art is the greatest question. I'll take Manhattan and I'll take Trebor....

I asked Nicholas before we left: "Will you end up going to LA?"
"No, New York is where I want to be."
I smiled. I wanted to say, "Me too". But I think that time has passed, though I always wanted to live a few years here. Well, I'm grateful for Buenos Aires, Mexico City and to visit NYC whenever I can. That's the score right now!

Should we have Frank take it away?.....https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMfz1jlyQrw