STAR POWER; or, WAY TO GO OHIO, part 10

the wexner center for the arts is undeniably something. and -- it should hope -- columbus will always have that. through the 30th of december, 2012, its gallery displayed annie leibovitz's master set, a collection of one-hundred fifty-six photographic prints selected by the photographer herself to document the story of her legacy. the daily mail reported that leibovitz hadn't intended for the set to be a show, but that the idea for a show at the wexner center just clicked. it is, apparently (this also by leibovitz's word), a legendary place among artists, and it was the place that, apparently, came up with the idea of showing the set. not surprisingly, it was the first place to have shown it. not being an artist (or what the wexner center considers to be an annie leibovitz, anyway), i hadn't had a sense of legend myself, although i suppose i wasn't without an inkling. about a decade before i went to see the master set at the center i had seen issey miyake get an award there (the award from the wexner center, the wexner award), and a few years ago i had been to see that andy warhol exhibit (remember other voices, other rooms?) when it was up at the wexner as its only stop in north america. and i'll admit that there was a special something about standing in front of a print of leibovitz's portrait of warhol next to the same friend with whom i'd experienced the portrait of warhol put up those few years ago in the same gallery. and that, although the moment with warhol itself may not have been the stuff of legends, might be the best way of describing the experience of the master set. i don't know that i'm a particular fan of annie leibovitz. in particular, that photograph of scarlet johansson that the wexner center used for its promotional enlargements is not a favorite of mine (neither among the photographer's other work or among photographs at large). but the master set is about contexts: the context of the set, the context of the artist and the context of her subjects. like her or not, annie leibovitz is famous; and both by definition and as its result, annie leibovitz has had access to fame. i liked leibovitz's photo of linda ronstadt because it was a picture of linda ronstadt. but i wouldn't have known if i hadn't been told by the placard -- although you might have, simply because people might know this particular photo of linda ronstadt by annie leibovitz. no part of linda ronstadt's face is visible in the photo, but because we know that the subject is her, we look at the photo and think that the picture of a woman in hose and a romper-nightie sprawled across the hastily made bed while she fumbles for something on a bedside table is so very linda ronstadt. wild chicken-and-egg goose chase: had linda ronstadt always conducted herself to make us see her this way, or did annie leibovitz decide just what people would be seeing of linda ronstadt? why do i have the reaction that i have when i know almost nothing about either figure? the stuff of legend. and the thing about annie leibovitz is that, regardless of whether she was photographing a decision by linda ronstadt or she was making a decision about linda ronstadt on our behalf, the most important thing is that annie leibovitz got to be there. the one-hundred and fifty-six portraits in the master set are a portrait of annie leibovitz, both assertedly and implicitly so, and each one is essentially just a photograph of something being photographed by that one photographer in particular. their various stylings are just the famous personae of the famous artist. it's only because you've taken the time to stop to look at a very possibly unremarkable photograph of linda ronstadt that was taken by annie leibovitz that you then have made the time to see and to remark that the pattern on the lamp on the bedside table is almost identical to the pattern of the wallpaper.

fast forward and rewind. this past weekend i was in cincinnati. and although i wasn't there specifically for the exhibit, i wanted to see a specific exhibit there before it closed. on sunday, we drove up through eden park to the art museum at just before noon. unfortunately, the exhibit was at the taft museum downtown and was ending that day, so we couldn't stay to take advantage of everything else that we hadn't gone specifically to see. fortunately, the taft is free on sundays too.the exhibit -- which i'd seen advertised on the back of a bathroom door on the last day of a visit to the queen city in december (and before i'd been to the wexner to see the portrait of leibovitz) -- is also collection of photographs. star power: edward steichen's glamour photography. on the bathroom door advertisement that i'd seen there'd been a picture of greta garbo: that most famous one, the one on the cover of that life magazine from 1955. but as it turned out, that photo of garbo was taken by steichen in the twenties, and it was originally published in an issue of...vanity fair? steichen photographed for both that magazine and for vogue, and back when the both of them were under the relatively recent redirection of condé nast. does that say anything? condé nast himself said that he'd wanted to make taste for the taste makers. to deliver to his advertisers, out of those millions of americans, the one-hundred thousand who mattered. the other poster image for the exhibit is a closeup photo of the face of gloria swanson, taken with the intercession of a black lace veil. that famous photo. of the famous gloria swanson. steichen also photographed marlene dietrich, joan crawford, fred astaire, katherine hepburn and gary cooper. winston churchill and amelia earhart. who knew anything about june maccloy from toledo, ohio? but we find her famous in the taft because she was photographed by him. he also did high fashion photography, and the placards explained, without nuance, the nuances of his techniques. the blackest blacks and the whitest whites, and every necessary piece of lighting to make sure they appear as they should. the important parts of a celebrity portrait are the most obvious features. they should stand out. the enduring stuff of legend. fay wray is best known for playing the female lead in king kong, but steichen photographed her as ophelia, the role she never played. one of his most famous photos, one of the placards says, is neither of john barrymore nor of hamlet, but of the latter being played by the former. what the placard forgets to assert (although maybe it's understood implicitly) is that john barrymore playing hamlet was being photographed by edward steichen. which is the most remarkable? what are these silver screen and other legends? who is it that has and keeps creating celebrity? condé nast's elite empire hardly survived the first depression, but the legacy it imparted to edward steichen has been inherited by the legendary photographers of the present. the master set, annie leibovitz's glamour photography: one-hundred and fifty-six figures playing themselves being photographed by annie leibovitz. i have another invitation to the wexner center for this sunday. supposedly it's free that day too. i haven't even looked up what's showing, but i don't expect it to be the stuff of legends. nonetheless, i'll go and i'll see something else where i saw annie leibovitz's portrait of the legendary artist of whom i'd seen another, different portrait in the same place. hmm. in that other leibovitz photo, linda ronstadt's romper-nightie is red, but i doubt that anyone cares.

THE LIMITS OF SELF-CONTROL

the thing is, i haven’t seen that jarmusch movie. and the other thing is that I haven’t read siamese, which was the first volume in stig sæterbakken’s “s trilogy” and might, i suppose (had i read it), have somehow informed my reading of self-control, the second volume in sæterbakken’s (so-called) trilogy. as for that first thing, i stand by my title. it might sound clever to anyone who has actually seen the movie; and now that i’m reading the synopsis online, i’m seeing that the movie, like self-control, is also about a solitary man with communication troubles. good. there’s that.

as for that other thing, i welcome the challenge. maybe my thing could be writing about second volumes of scandinavian trilogies. (then again i’ve only seen “the girl who played with fire.”) after all – and except maybe among the more devoted fans of the ewoks – i think the consensus is that “the empire strikes back” was the finest of that particular series. in saying so, however, i don’t mean to imply the inferiority of siamese or volume three. i haven’t read the former, and the latter has yet to be translated into english. of course that doesn’t mean that i won’t read either or both, but as of this writing i’m only familiar with “s” number two, which was translated from the original norwegian by seán kinsella. (and as of this moment i’ve just taken the time to confirm that the titles of the books in norwegian also begin with that letter – although i wouldn’t say “s” because i don’t know how that’s read in that other language.) but they seem to say that the (so-called) trilogy is, as they say, loose. good. there’s also that. so now for a bit of self-control…

but the thing is that this book, it made it kind of hard for me to maintain. it’s not terribly long, and, structurally, it’s very well balanced. but i do have to say that reading it was painstaking. andreas feldt, the solitary protagonist of self-control manages to keep it together – or some semblance of “it” anyway – but he’s also pushing it for sure. his story is a narrative of constant psychological brinkmanship, in which he’s engaged with both himself and all of the people who engage him – who we should probably suspect are engaging themselves in the same way.  (i might have called this “everyone on the verge of a nervous breakdown,” except that it isn’t at all clever and has nothing to do with the title of the book – although that movie by almodóvar is one i’ve actually seen.) i mean, wasn’t breaking down at the café or anything, but as i was reading, self-control was definitely wearing away at my composure.

andreas feldt is a father, and in an uncomfortable conversation with his daughter he breaks the tension by lying and telling her that he and her mother are getting a divorce. she’s startled. he gives her the money she’s come for and she leaves. andreas feldt is a machinist, and after he finally speaks his mind to an incompetent superior, he allows the tone of his interaction with the man to be shifted when the man tells him that his wife is ill. andreas feldt has friends, and after he shuts down a supercilious line of conversation started by an old friend and coworker, he then regrets his skepticism and allows his friend to continue with his blowhardiness (although only by fixating on his urge to jump on top of his friend and bite his nose – an urge which he represses). andreas feldt pops off but then is quick to silence himself. he teeters in the air over the other side of the line but always pulls himself back. andreas feldt is either master or a moron as regards the execution of his self-control.

i could understand. okay. but for the sake of eventual articulation i decided to make a flow chart. a diagram, i thought at any rate, might be a nice outlet for my own distracted nervous energy. “self-control,” it starts. and it goes from there in progression with andreas’ pushing its limits. it moves to over-analysis, to anxiety…and to violence and nausea. it goes through anger and indifference but branches along the way into an interconnected web of bitter disillusion, identity confusion, rationalization and compulsiveness. “it was as if I had based my entire life on the kindness and consideration i could derive from my immediate surroundings, which comfort i now had to accept no longer existed,” andreas realizes after deciding that, huh, maybe he will leave his wife and his job. “i felt like a fool,” he says, “like someone whose development has been at a standstill since his youth and has never been corrected, who’s never been made aware of the grotesque disparity between reality and his perception of reality.” then andreas feldt is a man with a pocket full of bank notes who will show this more or less likeable young woman an okay time before leaving the café while she’s in the bathroom.

“and suddenly i became aware of how fast my mind was racing…from one thing to the other at a furious pace, without me being able to hold on to a single thought.” so i stopped with the flow chart because in the course of those realizations of andreas’ i realized that i was essentially just charting the development of a panic attack. and anyway, the progress of self-control was probably better mapped as a periodic function. an oscillation between indulgence and restraint, except that the function wasn’t regular because the peak of indulgence kept getting higher and each successive plunge of restraint was more abrupt. maybe. so maybe it wasn’t periodic at all. but maybe it would be possible to map an asymptote above those peaks to represent a limit, that limit of self-control past which the social fabric would start to unravel. my mind had been racing from one thing to the other and i focused it by forgetting the movies and thinking about math.

so let’s back up to the book. no more charting. i also liked the social fabric metaphor. it’s a good metaphor for self-control. staying within its limits means keeping hold of the golden thread that keeps you in participation. but, as andreas is well aware, “even the slightest misdemeanor or memory lapse and that golden thread of trust, which has been laboriously spun for so many years snaps right in two.” but sometimes you just have to let go. andreas has all those bills in his pocket and he’s at the restaurant where he goes before he goes to the café and meets the likeable girl. “i'd gotten halfway through my drink,” he says, “when i suddenly felt the need…or the obligation, rather…to do something grand, something completely unexpected…outrageous if need be…make a splash…whatever the cost.” so were self-control and self-control about austerity and abnegation or the opposite? the golden thread is fragile, sure, but in the end are we happier (freer?) if we do what we want and let it break? what, andreas, are you trying to say?

he says quite a bit, but I don’t think he actually says – or anyway not in so many words. whatever the social concern neuroticizing us, stig sæterbakken seems to be saying that our collective neurosis is as kafkaesque as ever. or maybe it’s even more complex than that. foucault! deleuze and guattari! COMPLEXES! and film theory? the limits of self-control. get it? are we practicing restraint or are we giving in to repression? maybe i just wanted to figure out a way to create a walk-on role for paz de la huerta…even though i couldn’t have put a name to her face until recently. but i’m taking a chance. to make a splash. outrageous if need be. even though i haven’t seen that jarmusch movie or read siamese. but then, “foolish, i thought, to imagine you can entrust yourself, your future, to a choice in that way.” take a break.

if it wasn’t quite like the place had changed totally, then it was like hours had passed since i’d gone to the toilet. now the café was almost completely full…it was dark outside and the windows were black. but maybe it was only because i’d instinctively held onto the impression i'd gotten of the place when i arrived there earlier in the evening, when it was still sparsely occupied and the room had a lot of daylight and activity outside it; maybe i'd been sitting trying to hold on to that atmosphere without noticing that it had gradually changed.

what was i saying? self-control. back to the book. some self-control. my silly charts. because i was finding it hard to maintain. a solitary man with communication troubles. because andreas’ story was reminding me of something else. because my agitation was over being reminded of my preoccupation with something else. paz de la huerta could play the likeable one’s drunk friend… or something else hidden way back from the limit of my self-control. but no, i didn’t say. that’s the thing.

EARTHBOUND!; or, OUT.OF.THIS.WORLD.

a friend and i were talking the other day about collectibles: the things that we were told in the nineties would be and ultimately weren't. most of our comic books aren't worth what we paid for them, not to mention that we also paid the comic book stores that were selling us all of those collectible editions for all those mylar bags and backing boards. but the thing is that there are those other things, the ones that you never particularly thought would be particularly valuable, but that you kept because you thought that you were going to want to have all collection of the things yourself. you liked video games in the nineties, and so now you have a collection of them in plastic storage containers in a basement somewhere that haven't been touched in a decade. but you're a different kind of nerd now. the thing is, those other nineties nerds (however they affiliated), the ones that grew up to be the kind of nerds with money, well, those nerds want what's in those containers. you didn't realize it until now because you never gave a thought to the things being collectible. but the thing is that now they are. and you can sell them to make up for the psychological debt that you owe yourself for all of those comic books (or those dolls...). the best part is that you have a few games that everyone (who wants nineties super nintendo games) wants. and one in particular. people are crazy for earthbound. and sure, it was an interesting game. it also makes sense, what with the popularity amongst adults of the be-happy-twee of "adventure time," that an rpg about a boy and his quippy dog (in a just-different-enough world of oddities that nonetheless stays consistent to its own internal logic) has gained a cult following. (to the point that i wasted more time than i probably should have trying to find out if pendleton ward had ever played it.) the problem is that people are CRAZY about earthbound. there will be threats. there will be derision. the collector's market of today is also the bazaar of modern american entitlement. of course, after i know that i can get it i feel entitled to my several hundreds of dollars. or else maybe i'll keep it for myself. but no, not really. i put it in the old super nintendo to test it and it worked...but i got nothing. hopefully i will, though. unfortunately, in the testing one of the inserts seems to have gone missing. catastrophe! i want in and out of this tulip bubble before it bursts. out, you might say, of this world.   

WAY TO GO OHIO, part 9

"columbus never came here, but when the city sleeps, what our dreamers discover is that we have always created our own collective inside joke, one still looking for a punch line, that begins with 'columbus never came here, but...' that's why our city," ... ...

so continues the wall at 88 east broad street. a visiting native who's been living in the pacific northwest for the past eight years asked me to drive him by the other day to see it. and there it was, except for the last part. but in the week or so of meantime the contest judges for the brooklyn born paraprosdokian have finally stopped extending deadlines, made a new selection, and have made the addition to the wall. who cares if the project was supposed to end in december? but that's it: does anyone care? it would certainly stand to argue that the city's identity crisis has already been spelled out -- without the predication of that final clause.

everyone goes to the pizza place in olde towne now, and someone waiting for a table remarks that the city must be recession proof at seeing the place so full on a thursday. aren't they saying the recession is over? and don't they say that the weekend starts early? which was the older news? the other paper will cease publication at the end of the month. "the other paper?" it's old news, no one reads it, although that's probably less to do with the cultural bent of the city and more with its acquisition in 2011 by the dispatch. there's a new sign in light bulb lettering at the bottom of the short north that's absolutely garish -- and nothing new. an oyster bar! they scream. they'd seen one when they'd visited that one city, and now there was one down the street. the urban influx generation's finally getting its proverbial wal-mart. and that's why the city... ...

the next deadline is january 16. have you put in your submission??

"HOW TO QUIT"

don't get me wrong: i'm not necessarily saying that i want to. at any rate, i think i've already missed my chance for meaningfully declaring any resolutions for the new year. but the party doesn't exactly stop exactly on january first, so it's possible, maybe, that i'd actually make my more meaningful resolutions now. but the party never really stops, does it? and one way or another we keep going. so resolved: to make whatever decisions are required of me with each slice of life that i'm served up -- one way or another.

i bought the current issue of n+1. i didn't buy it at the main-chicago newsstand, but that is where i first picked up a print copy and remembered having started to read "the intellectual situation" online (a different party). and i think that the magazine -- although i think that it will be happy as i continue to buy print copies -- would have me quit my fawning devotion to print. so be it. i can acknowledge the criticism. the slice of intellectual life served up by n+1 is almost always so delectably sympathetic. and maybe i should quit my fawning devotion to that...but, like i said, it's probably too late for that for now. so i'll keep going.

in the current issue of n+1 there's an essay by kristin dombek. it's called "how to quit." and that essay couches the author's ideas on her serial relationships with "drunks, drug addicts, sex addicts, compuslive gamblers, and/or people on or recovering from deep, life-threatening benders" within her experience of trying to hold on to bohemian williamsburg (and to one particular holdout building). "if the old building was real, this building is a steam-powered time machine. if the new neighborhood is real, this building is a dream, or a crypt. in other words, all this building makes me want to do is drink and fuck." ... "this building is a question about how you live after a tragic reversal, thrown back into history and wondering what can be recovered by returning to the scene." as for the author's compatriots, the people, "with a dead parent or two, bipolar or otherwise depressed people, musicians, writers, and/or pathological liars," she doesn't know when she meets them. "at some point, a week or two into the friendship or the affair, i find out, but by then i'm already hooked, because the things these people do to ensure they don't have to live in the straight world are wonderful." and the author and these people ride their time machines together.

or maybe it's the other way around, and the essay's picture of gentrification is meant to be its focus, and the author's interpersonal relationships are meant to frame or to highlight or to augur it. inasmuch as either could be the case i'm sympathetic. it's all, anyway, much larger than the specific slice of life. in fact, this particular slice of life turns out to be also about death, about letting things die.

this is one way to quit: wait until the bitter end, when you have done all you can to make the time machine keep working. you have learned its inner systems, improvised workarounds, carted in the water yourself, but it becomes harder to keep it alive than leave it. what they call hitting rock bottom. the final tragic reversal may be slow, boring, and horrible. the time machine has turned into a crypt, but it is not a crypt if you go inside with the body. if you must raise it from the dead again, know the power it has is your own: bend over it like a vampire, fire it up like dr. frankenstein. when you are able to stop, there will be a moment when you have to just walk out of the building. it's not that living will be the opposite of addiction now; there can be more life because you know how to stretch out time, more joy because you have practiced the art of reanimation. you are a professor of transformation; you just need new tools. there is no outside or inside to it, no opposition, no right way to go, just this new way of seeing.

at the head of the preceding paragraph: "it is important to know that there are things that end." when i thought to write this i thought that i was going to take it somewhere else. i was going to backward from that conclusion, quote dombek's description of the double bind of recovery and the addiction of the addict to the discussion of the double bind. then earlier: "in paradise lost, it's satan who thinks the mind can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heavan. he is, famously, the best character in the movie." then i thought i was going to go back to dombek's description of the ritual of her ministrations to her lovers. i would have given the entire long paragraph. "i do not say no, i do not say this is fucking ridiculous...don't die. stay with me. never leave." then i was going to bring in that sarah kane monologue from crave (to "tell you the truth when i really don't want to"). and the comparison, by nothing more than the juxtaposition of two paragraphs, would have been restrained but poignant. a silent augur. the capricious wild card chimera of love. but i think a different thought in the morning, in front of this much more boring table in this different light. i am resolved to stop here. it's important to know that there are things that end. so i won't go on -- with this -- even if the party does, one way or another, implicit. feet dragging an emboldened face into the new neighborhood. fire it up, dr. frankenstein! and cheers to the tail of the end, which is also the lingering trail of the beginning.

WAY TO GO OHIO, part 8

steubenville. this is why the rest of us catch flak for liking football.