BILL CLINTON

How do you write about a famous person, major in shaping your life, shaping world history, as well as affecting what's happening to you and your world right now?

William Jefferson Clinton.

I voted for him when we were living in Redmond, Washington (during JC's few years in the television series, "Northern Exposure"). The look of Clinton, the sound of him -- he projected strength -- he was -- is -- articulate, knowledgeable, educated, not anti, but pro the social/political things that are important to me.

Education -- woman's right to choose -- racial equality -- compensating for the wrongs we've done in the past -- he was/is fighting to fix those things. Also gun control, religious freedom -- I can 't support someone who is preaching Jesus or their own belief in God.

I react to a politician the way I react to someone I happen to meet -- personally, instinctively -- liking them, trusting them, and sensing if they have power. I pull away -- if I sense anything odd, strange, too much, dangerous, wrongly seductive in that power.

Clinton is powerful, and like a good teacher with his ordered presentation of ideas, he's seductive, powerful. What Clinton says interests me, makes sense to me, doesn't require that I rush to join, or send money -- or do anything except listen and evaluate on my own.

Okay ... Clearly I like him, I like the look of him, and trust him. He has the ability to communicate with anybody, everybody. I love his spur of the moment sense of humor, his honesty, his ability to react to wherever he is, and whatever happens when he's speaking.

... "like" ... "love" ... all my superlatives... I'm aware that this is a paean, aware that all the admiring things I'm saying, I could be saying about Barack Obama.

Writing this, I shut out what's happened over the past year, in politics. We have a new form of political communication that utilizes high drama -- lies, shouting, invective, slanted reporting, distortion of actual events, deliberate misinformation.

Clinton hasn't bought into it. He handles it expertly.

His personal history -- womanizing, infidelities, the gory details that still echo from all the women who've come-out and told their stories -- Gennifer something, whats-her-name who sued him for making a pass in a hotel room, the specifics about his sexual doings with Monica Lewinsky – the 21 women Ken Starr, independent counsel, investigated – the "hundreds of women" a Washington Post reporter discussed in his book, "The Breach."

Nancy Gibbs' essay in a recent Time Magazine, about the "Other Bill Clinton who is leading the free world," helps me say what I want to say.

We need him. He's uniquely gifted, able to help us and people all over the world, to reach out, and help one another.

"Don't tread on me," is the motto on the Gadsden flag. During the American revolution it symbolized men fighting for freedom and independence.

Here's the seal on a $20 bill in 1778.

In 1775, an "American Guesser" (which historians think was Ben Franklin himself), wrote the Pennsylvania Journal, and said "The rattlesnake also has sharp eyes, and "may therefore be esteemed an emblem of vigilance." Furthermore, "... She never begins an attack, nor, when once engaged, ever surrenders. She is therefore an emblem of magnanimity and true courage ... she never wounds 'till she has generously given notice, even to her enemy, and cautioned him against the danger of treading on her."

Don't tread on William Jefferson Clinton.

TRASH INTO GOLD

Do you remember life before recycling?

Gee, it was nice -- just to throw stuff out, not have to separate, not have two bins in your house, or outside.

Recycling is a chore -- a bore.

Ron Gonen, a 32-year-old guy, is firing up the issue of garbage disposal.

He's made a business out of recycling -- a profit-making venture that encourages you, rewards you with cash, for what you've bothered to separate from your garbage. Enroll, and you get a container with a computer chip that weighs the amount you've recycled, rewards you with points that you can redeem at 1,500 retailers (like Bed & Bath, Target -- a lot of stores are jumping on the bandwagon).

I remember how stunned I was when JC and I were writing a musical about garbage, and we learned that each person in the US produces about four-and-a-half pounds of garbage every day.

We'd set up a temporary office on our roof during a heatwave. Worked nonstop on the plot -- before, during, and after a July 4th weekend -- while our son played in his playpen, Teechi, our Lhasa Apso snoozed, and remnants of lunch and dinner were on the grill above coals that were whitening with ash.

"Rosanne" -- that was the title. Rosanne was the name of a garbage disposal machine, that a baritone singer, "Bill." the inventor, and his dancer fianceé, "Betty" were promoting -- selling to the city --harmonizing about the junk they'd found in the sand, in a song we titled -- "Me & the Beach & Betty."

This marvelous idea (a sure-fire hit on Broadway, we thought), was inspired by JC's cousin Bill, a brilliant inventor, who'd created a garbage disposal machine -- gotten a $300,000 grant from a think tank group in California, to develop the idea of converting waste into atomic power that could run a city.

Collaborating in that heat wave -- phew -- JC was like a commander of a ship, terse, overly precise -- you do it HIS way, and HIS way is generally "according to Hoyle."

I was frustrated. Every idea I got -- all my wild, theatrical ideas were deflated by JC's approach. And his ideas, in my opinion, were stodgy, square.

Too bad the idea (what a brilliant idea it was), never got off the ground! A month later we auditioned it for Phil Burton (Richard Burton's stepfather), who headed the American Musical Theater Academy, and Phil, in his scholarly, knowledgeable, English-accented way, thoroughly deflated our script. So, we immediately did it for Alan J. Lerner's number-one assistant, who was JC's pal, and drinking buddy, who said, "Nobody wants to see a musical about Garbage."

They were wrong, but that's show biz. What I loved, still love about cousin Bill's concept -- I can't explain it scientifically, but it was based on using the Air Force's discarded jet engines to power a garbage machine that could "eat"everything (except bottles and glass).

Bill was working on that problem, when he got side-tracked into another government project, but that problem (separating out bottles and glass), is being solved right this very minute, today!

By Ron Gonen – he's got people separating stuff --bottles, glass, paper, metal and other valuable recyclables -- teaching his enrollees about trash. inspiring them, motivating them -- not just because it's the law, but because it benefits them, financially, and economically.

The government booklet says four-and-a=half pounds of garbage is 29 pounds per week and 1,600 pound a year. According to Wise.com, with the the garbage alone, you could form a line of filled-up garbage trucks and reach the moon. Or cover the state of Texas two-and-a-half times. Or bury more than 990,000 football fields under six-foot high piles of waste. According to WM Recycle America, LLC, we throw away enough aluminum to duplicate the full commercial air fleet of the U.S.

Golly -- if went back and recycled that play -- ho ho -- I'd make the baritone a 32 year old singer dancer like Ron ...

I'm picturing us up on the roof, Jc commanding the ship ... me ... a peppy, zesty, indefatigable first mate . We'd create an opening song about weighing your junk, using the rhyme scheme from the song we wrote .....that wonderful old script ...

Well, maybe it's good that I don't know where the old script is.

Here's a truism about old projects (like my unpublished novels, and plays, off the shelf -- out there on my Website, The Readery).

Projects that almost happen, but don't happen ... they're a part of you. Like an amputated limb, you keep thinking you can still use it -- reach, walk, touch, stride. Whatever that part of you did, it lives on somehow -- in reflexes, in a feeling that you can grab on, stride from here to there.

There is where?

I mentioned just the other day in a post ... JC and I, the two of are us tip-toeing toward a way to get Em's Talkery to a larger, broader audience ... maybe audio, or the two of us reading posts, audio and video podcasting.

GENDER BENDERS

Browsing "Art Exhibits" while I was writing about art --
BOING!
I saw this picture.

A headline --

I AM MY OWN WIFE

An interview by Erica Ogden --
"As a new generation discovers artist Genesis P-Orridge, he fulfills a quixotic long-term project: turning himself into his late spouse. P-Orridge (he pronounces the initial letter, as in pee-orridge) started out as ...

I skimmed ahead ... the man was an actor, a maker of collages, an icon of the London avant-garde in 1976, when he did an exhibit called “Prostitution” aimed to inflame the art world -- pornographic photos, sculptures made of used tampons, transvestite security guards.

The critic describes him: "...what I see, when he sits down on his bed, is that his potbelly props up his C-cup breasts ... strands of his platinum bob ... lips slicked pink with gloss ... looks like a funhouse version of Courtney Love ... he has refashioned himself to look uncannily like his late wife, the woman with whom he has come to share an identity, a profile, even beauty marks."

P-Orridge describes his marriage to Jacqueline Breyer, a tall blond who had dabbled in dominatrix work, who was enthralled with him, referring to him -- an occultist with 13 penis piercings—as Bunny. "... as she and I became more and more obsessively in love, we had that whole feeling of ‘I wish I could eat you up. I wish I could just take you, and I become you and you become me.’ ”

He explains they did it -- with an East Side plastic surgeon -- had breast implants, then eye and nose jobs. In subsequent years they received $200,000 worth of chin implants, lip plumping, liposuction, tattooed beauty marks, and hormones. And dressed in identical outfits. And each mimicked the other's mannerisms.

When Breyer died at 38, of stomach cancer, he went on with the project. Summing it up, P-Orridge says, "We're artists. Artists do art. It's not rational."

Here's her/him holding a picture of himself as a boy.

I looked at his collages -- mud, garbage that looks like vomit, sex organs superimposed on other body parts -- ugly, grotesque arrangements designed to shock, to arouse you the way pornography can arouse you and make you red-faced, embarrassed. You can have a look-- just Google his/her name.

I'd seen the ABC news show on Chastity Bono.
P-Orridge and Chaz/Chastity are worlds apart, yet connected.

The news about Chastity being a lesbian caused minor headlines a few years ago, along with words about her pursuing a sex change.

But we had Dick Cheney's gay daughter, along with old and new scandals -- Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse, the lies that got us into war with Iraq, the Valerie Plame story that kept flaring up -- and we were already involved with who was going to be out next president.

I complain about the media seducing us, with ads, and over-promotion of scandals, but my head jerks around when I hear a name. The pictures on the TV of the puffy mannish Chastity/Chaz immediately evoked Cher.

... Cher with her young boyfriends, her pubic-hair-revealing costumes -- daring, dazzling, chameleon -- waist length black-haired, platinum-blond, scarlet-red curls -- capable of lullabies and slutty, come-on crooning -- going for what she's in the mood to go for, fearlessly.

Yes, I'm a Cher fan. And Chaz -- the struggles he/she will be having ... well, what interests me is Cher -- how she feels about it.

I figure Cher's glad her child is grown up now, and can make her own decisions. I figure Cher said exactly what a Mother needs to say -- "Go for it!"

If the "it" -- the child's objective isn't what Mom would recommend, MOM LOVE trumps fear, and pushes away practicalities. So we'll watch from afar, as Cher's re-inventing another fascinating new self, while we read. about Chaz's doctor creating a penis for him.

And probably read and hear more about P-Orridge getting his fifteen minutes of fame.

Why , why do I bother focusing on Chaz/Chastity, or Him/Her P-Orridge?

It seems ... so ....
wrong?
wasteful?
dumb?
Is it recreation?
Am I learning something new?

I don't know. But now, more than ever, with all the scary bad news in the air every day-- sex change news, is absorbing, interesting, distracting.

ART IS LONG, TIME IS FLEETING

Here's a turned-around poetic version of the title of this post:

Art is fleeting, time is long,
And the grave is not my goal.
Since dust I am--to dust returning
First with words I save my soul

I don't know a lot about "Art" -- except my art -- dancing, writing, and acting.

But Tony Hawk, a skateboard artist, inspires me. What he does is an art, and a sport. I've seen the guys practicing in Union Square when, in the early evening, it's empty except for pedestrians cutting across the 50 by 150 foot empty area. (It's used for the out-door market twice a week).

Average kids, poor kids, old kids, young kids, all types, sizes, races, plug away at tricks, skids, hops, slides, turns, jumps, landings, leaps ... like dancers. Ouch! Ow! Curses, moans, in between over and over rehearsing, practicing to achieve.

Tony Hawk is forty-one. Skating, trying new skate board tricks, creating video games, reaching out and expanding what he loves and has been doing since he was nine years old -- that's art that I know and respect -- "Practicing to achieve," and expanding.

One of Frank Stella's son's, "M" went to school with my son; and was always practicing Origami sculptures, speaking in psychoanalytical jargon, the language of a fatherless, motherless, mixed-up child in and out of various therapies, who didn't have a safe home, a place where he felt he really belonged.

Frank Stella, one of the most successful new, young, American artists about forty years ago, was in his "shapes" period -- colorful triangles, squares, semi-triangular, semi-squares laid upon one another. I found it boring. Stella's work has changed over the years -- for me, it's a boring vision of un-interesting things that momentarily caught his eye.

Stella had three wives, and created quite a few brothers and sisters for M, but never made his son feel like the son of his real father. A 2009 article on Stella quotes him as saying" "Art made my life." I would amend that -- "Art unmade my son."

The first play I wrote is MY ART. It's titled -- "One Fine Morning in the Middle of the Night..." (the rest of the title is merely implied ... "Two dead boys got up to fight, back to back they faced each other, drew their swords and shot each other... ")

That first play of mine contains all the elements of what drives me to express myself -- the utter opposition within me -- to succeed, to fail -- to reach, not to reach -- to strive harder when I need to strive less. And in "One Fine Morning... " I created a character called "Artist" (a vision of what I didn't want to be) -- a blank-faced, toneless artist, who painted white on white shapes -- works of genius, that no one could see -- who also composed music with soundless chords -- who also danced with no movement, just stood there, stock-still.

Playwright Em was facetiously making her statement -- art is art, if it communicates.

Two major artists have been in the news.

Wassily Kandinsky, at the Guggenheim Museum, currently, creates abstractions that perhaps express his inner realities, fascinating assemblages of colors -- echoes of his dreams perhaps, but no hint of what the echo was echoing.

His paintings have never awakening much of anything in me, other than "Umm, hmm."

That is not the case, with Georgia O'Keeffe, at the Whitney Museum. Her colorful, textured, richly detailed curves, pistils, endless, dark, internal holes, mysterious tunnels mesmerized me, continue to mesmerize me.

Is it her sensuality? "She's Hot," said brash, clever, art critic Jerry Saltz, of New York Magazine. He ended his review, summarizing what her paintings represent in one small sentence -- "Fuck sex."

I guess it's Saltz's way of expressing his thrall with the woman, who connected so wildly, so passionately with the photographer, Alfred Stiegliz. O'Keeffe communicated, and continues to communicate.

Whatever paintings of hers you see, you have an adventure.

(What I'm saying -- the words make sense, but am I communicating what I mean about ART?)

Move me -- touch me -- reach me -- speak with or without words -- with sound, movement, brush strokes, shapes -- temporal or tangible, on any visible or invisible canvas ...

Tell me something -- with what you've created -- to me that is "Art."