Sometimes the universe sends you a message. Today, as I was de-cluttering my flat and shredding miles of files, I came across the obituary for Edward Eisenberg, who died on August 31st, 1997, making today his 15th yahrtzeit.
I knew Eddie from Gay Youth, and from Gay Activist Alliance. And then I lost touch with him when I went to Japan. Though I saw him at a Gay Youth reunion at the LGBT Center in the mid 90s — somewhere there is a photo of me with him and Michael Knowles from that day.
Is this some odd psychic propinquity? Things like this don't feel like just chance to me. Meaning however, is more difficult.
Today is the final day of The Artist is Present at MOMA. Yesterday I went with my friend Frank and arrived just moments before, as it turned out, our friend Jensen was to take his seat before the Artist. It felt like a moment of grace to be able to bear witness to him as he was received and totally seen, completely taken in, by Marina Abramovic in the performance piece that seemed to me to be more an encounter with holiness.
The charged square space filled with the emptiness of presence gave it a sense of the Holy of Holies. In her white dress, Abramovic seemed like the Shekhina herself. Or Quan Yin, Kannon, Avalokiteshvara, Bodhisattva of Compassion, bearing all the pain and heart of all those who entered her space.
And all this before I went upstairs to discover her other pieces. From the Memento Mori of the model below the skeleton, to passing between the Scylla and Charybdis of the two models in the doorway, to the crucifixion without nails that is Luminosity, it was an experience of the museum as a cathedral, a meditation space to participate in, rather than simply consume.
The press and discussions that I had heard all dwelled on the titillation of the event. Or perhaps I just did not bother to read deeper into the articles I saw. Because there have been few shows more powerful. And I am only sorry today is the last day, and that I didn't take advantage of the time earlier to enter that charged space myself and sit before the artist.
My friend Jensen, in the photo above, entered the space at 2:40 on Sunday afternoon. He had joined to line to do this at 1:30am the night before. He was in that seat for less than 15 minutes, but watching him go through all the emotions that arose it was clear each second there was experienced with the complete naked intimacy.
And all I can think of are the words of the Kadosh prayer:
Holy. Holy. Holy. All of creation is filled with the glory and presence of the Divine. (And in this case, the Divine Feminine)
The image of Marilyn Monroe standing above the subway grate as a gust a air blows her dress up high is an American cultural icon of the 20th Century. Nicholas Roeg's film, Insignificance, opens with the the filming of this famous scene in The Seven Year Itch re-imagined from the POV of the film crew — and the man under the grating who turned on the fan. Roeg's film, far from camp, is among other things a meditation on the prison of sexism: my favorite scene in that film is when Monroe, with the aid of toys bought at F.A.O Schwarz, explains the theory of relativity to its author, Albert Einstein.
In the ad below, this image is appropriated once again, in the service of selling Dean's Scotch:
Created by a team at Scholz & Friends NRW in Germany, their explanation, at Adsoftheworld.com notes that:
"Dean’s Whisky is especially mild. Which is why it appeals not only to
rugged guys. The advertisement’s unusually humorous, feminine look and
feel are designed to arouse the interest of a new target group and
raise awareness of Dean’s Whisky above and beyond its loyal customer
base."
Arouse the interest? Who is this new target base? Is this ad running at gay magazines in Germany? In women's fashion magazines? Inquiring minds want to know.
Scotch is one of the few hard liquors that retains an aura of masculine privilege. This might have the effect of undermining their image with the base customer. This isn't to say that I don't like the ad. I think it's hilarious and playful. The image of a man in a regimental kilt uniform is hardly fey. There is every possibility that the core consumer for this product is secure enough so that if they saw this ad they'd laugh. Then again, because this is a "mild" Scotch, it might not have very much of a base with the traditional Scotch drinker, so that an effort like this won't hurt.
I wonder what Marilyn would make of it though. Or what she'd make of the photographs of Japanese artist Yasumasa Morimura. I first saw an exhibit of his self portraits at the Saatchi Gallery in London: images of the artist in drag as Marilyn, Audrey Hepburn, Garbo, Liza Minelli. You can see the photos on the gallery site, where the question is asked:
"Morimura is more than just art's most famous drag queen. Dealing
with issues of cultural and sexual appropriation he is constantly
exploring ideas of image consumption, identity and desire: Can Brigitte
Bardot be as innocently flirtatious with angular Japanese features?
Would Marilyn Monroe be as sexy if she was Japanese - and a man?"
Having lived in Japan where I both enjoyed and endured drag acts where these Western film icons were portrayed by Japanese men, I was less interested in the questions posed above than the questions around Japanese identity and the effect of Hollywood and American cultural dominance on the traditional Japanese sense of beauty. I am curious about what the reaction to images is in the debate/discussion about the feminization of Asian men in the West within the Asian and gay Asian communities.
Within the discussion of constructed femininity, Morimura throws a light on the minstrelsy of Marilyn; how her image was just as much a creation out of the fantasies of men as Thomas D. Rice's blackface Jumpin' Jim Crow was a creation out of the fantasies of white men in the 19th Century of black men.
Good grief, I hope to God I am not turning into a queer theorist. Ewww.
The big China story this
week is Google blowing the whistle on cyberspying and censorship. This is of
personal interest to me because I chat online with a gay Chinese man in Chengdu
every week, and there are subjects he doesn’t know about, and things he doesn’t
have access to.
Once I found myself cutting and pasting the sentences from a
censored story into the chat window so he would know what I was writing about.
But of course, this was risky business and he made it clear he didn’t want me
to do that in the future — our conversation is simply about gay life in the US,
since in Chengdu it isn’t anywhere near as open as it seems to be in Beijing,
where this week, what is billed as an officially sanctioned male beauty pageant (you can see a video of these shirtless young men here). I suspect my friend in Chengdu can't get to this video link however.
Late Breaking Development That Should Be No Surprise: Police Shut Down The Pageant — Full Story Here.
That's a sea change from
just a few years back when homosexuality was a criminal offense. Bu then, in a
country where a one child policy and the preference for male children has led
to a male/female ratio that makes it hard for a straight guy to find a wife,
taking the pressure off gay men from marrying as cover just might help a
little. In fact, it also helps take some pressure off the regime, since a
country with several million frustrated young men has got to feel like a powder
keg no matter who is in power.
I have no idea what's
behind the ruling Communist Party easing up on things in Beijing, but it's
still not easy if you're in the provinces. And I’m not just talking Chengdu.
Mongolia for example. If
you're in NYC this month, stop by the LGBT Center on 13th Street — in the lobby
there is an amazing exhibit documenting the lives of LGBT Mongolians living in
the capital city of Ulaanbaatar.
Beyond the Blue Sky,
created and produced by Brandt Miller, includes amazing portrait photography by
Miller and Mareike Günsche and a film by Miller and Sean Devaney.
The photographs are
intense and dramatic. While some of the men in these photos are shirtless, each of the subjects’ faces covered by a khadag — a
ceremonial scarf made of a sacred blue cloth representing the eternal sky and
used at funerals to wrap the head of the deceased.
Each photo is accompanied
with an oral history — a life story of each subject, transcribed by Miller
— that captures the universal longing all lgbt people feel, that all
people feel: the need for love and intimacy that is not merely recognized, but
celebrated.
Miller, who was in
Mongolia on a Fulbright Fellowship, was a co-founder of the first LGBT Center
in Ulaanbaatar.
The exhibit will be on
view at the NYC LGBT Center on 13th Street through April. If you go
there regularly as I do, take some time to stop and see it all. If you don’t go
to the Center, consider stopping in. There are so many groups that meet there,
and social services provided, it can be easy to overlook the fact that the
Center is indeed a central arts resource for the community too.
Here is a video interview with Miller, followed by the video documentary made with Sean Devaney:
It’s U.N. Day this week, an international holiday observed for the most part only by schoolchildren and diplomats. And when I was a schoolchild in the 1960s, and optimism and idealism about the U.N. ran high, every October 24th, we’d sing the U.N. song:
United Nations on the march, with flags unfurled. Together fight for victory, a free new world.
Back in the day when I believed the U.N. could save the world, I collected stamps. And so in honor of U.N. day (and in fact, the 20th through the 24th is U.N. week) I’m posting photos of my favorite U.N. first day of issue commemorative stamps.
The first two, in fact, aren’t really U.N. stamps — they’re a post office mistake. Because at the same time the USPS was honoring the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (thank you Eleanor Roosevelt!) they were also honoring John Muir (who well deserved the honor). However, my UN first day envelope has the John Muir stamp on it. Not worth much from a philately point of view, but interesting.
A couple of other favorites include two stamps, exactly the same, but different colors, for the UN Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space. There’s a different envelope for each color stamp. A fantasy boyfriend I spent several years with dedicated his life’s work to this cause, so when I see these stamps I think of him. For those of you who don't use the phrase fantasy boyfriend in this way, I mean it as someone I spent time with, fantasizing a relationship that was not there. Another word of that is self-delusion.
I remember when I was 4th grade and Dag Hammarskjold was killed in a plane crash (and clearly shot down). It was, as I say, an idealistic time, and Hammarskjold was much admired in the world. So he was beatified almost immediately (not by the church of course, I mean in the media). And there were stamps commemorating his life for several years in a row. It was only after I had come out in college that I learned Hammarskjold was gay. And I wondered how his sexuality influenced his pursuit of peace. And what he would have thought of the modern gay rights movement had he lived.
Then there are the stamps honoring the IMF and IBRD. The International Bank of Reconstruction and Development was founded during WWII as a way of financing the rebuilding of Europe and Japan after the war. It’s a division of the IMF, which was founded under the auspices of the U.N. during the war (when the U.N. was a nascent organization itself).
The mission of the IMF is to “foster global monetary cooperation, secure financial stability, facilitate international trade, promote high employment and sustainable economic growth, and reduce poverty." Unfortunately, we all know the IMF has used its resources to support military dictatorships over democratically elected governments, and does so to this day in Sudan and Syria. Hammarskjold would be appalled I am sure. Nice stamps though. And they were issued as part of the ideals of another age. Not to totally dis the U.N. — I know much important work is done there, from HIV prevention education in SE Asia to UNICEF rescuing child soldiers (Ishmael Beah, adopted son of my friend and teacher Laura Simms is one of those former soldiers). So while I may not feel positively about many things that are happening over on 42nd Street at the East River, I am glad I live in a world where the U.N. exists.
Today I go to the USPS and there are stamps of the Simpsons. In a weird way, the Simpsons is a lot more honest than the IMF. So no arguments from me.
Robert Indiana: "I knew Andy very
well. The reason he painted soup cans is that he liked soup."
Andy Warhol gave Campbell's the best free advertising in the world with his famous soup can series. And it's taken more than 40 years, but finally Campbell's is returned the favor to the lgbt community, with a series of ads running in the Advocate. Agency Spy reports that Campbell's choice of media buy, along with featuring a lesbian couple with a a child in the ad has gotten the AFA's knickers all in a twist (I so love that phrase):
The AFA recently said the following on their Web site, in an article entitled, "M'm! M'm! Bad! — Campbell Soup Company embraces homosexual agenda,":
"Campbell
Soup Company has openly begun helping homosexual activists push their
agenda. Not only did the ads cost Campbell's a chunk of money, but they
also sent a message that homosexual parents constitute a family and are
worthy of support. They also gave their approval to the entire
homosexual agenda.
In defense of the ads, three of which included New York City chefs, a Campbell's rep. told Slog,
"We support all types of families, regardless of how they're defined,
[and have done so] for more than 100 years. We advertise in a variety
of different media outlets that appeal to a broad spectrum of society.
That's what we're doing here, and that's what we'll continue to do."
Another company rep. told AdAge, "The LGBT audience is the
third-largest in the country behind African-Americans and Hispanics,"
said Ms. Graham. "And we're very in tune with which brands embrace the
community and whose messaging and imaging reflects that."
So all you boys in Chelsea and WeHo, and to all the women in Gowanus and Park Slope: go buy yourself a can, invest in some art and nutritious body warming food. And send the folks at Campbells a letter, cause you know they're getting tons from the minions of the AFA
Businessweek reported that in October there were 40 invitations on Evite for Depression parties -- no details as to whether, like the old "Harlem Rent Parties" of the '30s whether guests were expected to help pay the month's mortgage to keep the hosts from becoming homeless...which brings us back to our month-long contest for a new Bush era name for the Hooverville. Details and prizes below. Meanwhile, some other depressing facts from Businessweek about the new Depression: Netflix reports a 10% rise in rentals of The Grapes of Wrath, while unemployment statistics rise to 6.5% (not counting the underemployed). And today the Chinese government, taking a page from FDR, announced a stimulus package of over $500 billion. Bush? MIA, just like he was in the National Guard.
Too bad that Proposition R, the ballot measure in San Francisco to rename the local water treatment facility "The George W. Bush Sewage Treatment Plant" failed to pass. But you still have a chance to give Dubya an enduring memorial by renaming the Hooverville for his incompetent leadership. Entries accepted through Thanksgiving (tho today, the day after the election, feels like Thanksgiving to me). Details follow:
In the 1930s, as the Depression threw millions out of work — and foreclosures threw thousands of families out of their homes — shantytowns sprung up all over the country, makeshift shacks and sheds thrown together from discarded wood and packing material to house the newly homeless in vacant lots, public parks, wherever they were tolerated. Sometimes they weren't tolerated and the police acted to hide the problem in the name of cleaning up the neighborhood. Right. Well. This is a familiar story in New York City. These shantytowns were called Hoovervilles, after the president who presided over the worst financial disaster in American history — until Dubya's deregulation led to our current ongoing crisis. Above you can see the Hooverville that sprang up in Central Park. But there were local Hoovervilles all over the country. You can actually download an excellent presentation on the subject for Oklahoma schoolkids at Oklahoma Council on Economic Education site. This brings us to an art installation in Madison Square Park created by Tadashi Kawamata, and paid for by the Madison Square Park Conservancy. Shacks, "tree huts" have been built and installed as art. Reminiscent of treehouses I knew as a kid, my first response on seeing one was delight. Then, as I looked around and saw them in several trees, all I could think was that the money spent on this so-called art could have been given to Habitat for Humanity, which actually makes houses for people. But then, the board of the Conservancy all probably have so much money, for them this is simply play. I think it is in extremely bad taste. Of course, for some already living on the street, these are better digs than what they've got and are in move in condition. I supposed they're guarded at night just so that won't happen.
What is worse, I think it is an unintended harbinger of what is to come in our public parks none too soon. Except that they probably should be renamed for Dubya. Or maybe Greenspan. So this brings us to the contest: What do you think the new Hoovervilles should be called?
I'll pick 3 winners for first, second and third prizes. To be awarded the day after Thanksgiving. What are the prizes?
First Prize: $100 donated to Habitat for Humanity in your name, and a copy of the B52s CD Cosmic Thing. Why that CD? Loveshack, baby.
Second Prize: $50 donated to Habitat for Humanity in your name, and a copy of the B52s CD Funplex. Why? Cause it's a revolution I can dance to.
Third Prize: $25 donated to Habitat for Humanity in your name. No CD. Wish I had put my 401k in CDs. Don't you?
I was standing in a store on Spring St. in Manhattan called Untitled that sold art post cards. Some time in the mid 70s I went there and bought several dozen — 10 of which I laid out on my bed with the intention of creating a narrative from the images and then writing a little chapter of the story on the back of each to mail to a boyfriend who was
away at college in Bennington. One of the postcards I didn't use was the one above, which was a limited edition postcard created by Joe Brainard. I didn't even know who he was or that he was an artist and a poet.
Around the same time, I started reading poetry by the New York School after coming across some poems from the group in Mouth of The Dragon. And it led me to Brainard's memoir, I Remember.... This hypnotically beautiful mantra of memories moved me greatly. It didn't shy away from his queer life and loves, juxtaposing the most soul stirring moments with the absolutely everyday — all related in a way that spoke to all the senses. What is so amazing is that this poem has become the template for teachers in schools around the country for teaching children how to write poetry (minus the racier bits).
What a handsome man he was. I first saw a photo of him at a retrospective of his work that traveled the country — I happened to see it at a museum in Berkeley. Recently a book was published of his artwork that centered around a popular 20th Century comic character, Nancy. If you don't know his work, go take a look at his website. You'll be surprised to discover just how much of his work informed everything that came after him — and how much of his work inspired Warhol. I actually think Brainard was the wittier and more accomplished artist — Warhol was just more of a merchant and showman than Brainard was interested in being. If you like what you see of JB's work, you should also check out the site of his friend and sometime companion, Kenward Elmslie.
JWT in Shanghai is running some ads to convince the Chinese to donate organs, with a campaign for the Red Cross that shows organs with bodies inside Am I on drugs or is there something really bizarre and disturbing about an organ donation campaign running in a country where prisoners have their organs removed (sometimes before execution) for sale?
The ad above, one of several, is supposed to be lungs though it looks like kidneys to me (does it remind you of the humans in pods in The Matrix?). Others show livers and hearts. And it is true that is a shortage of organs for transplant. Only 50 to 60 kidneys are replaced a year in Hong Kong while the waiting list for transplants numbers around 500. But according to Human Rights Watch/Asia, about 2 to 3 thousand organs a year are cut from the bodies of executed Chinese prisoners. This is state sponsored theft (and desecration). I guess the ad campaign is encouraging private citizens to get a piece of the action, since transplant services are readily available to high ranking Party officials and cash-paying foreigners. Of course, there are those unfortunates who have their organs stolen. I seem to recall reading a science fiction novel about this in the 60s. Anyone recall what that might have been?
Here in New York City we have not avoided this controversy. Last year, 20/20 reported that the plasticized bodies in the extremely popular Bodies exhibit at the South Street Seaport were executed Chinese prisoners. The German doctor who invented the process that used to put these human bodies being put on display around the world, says he has stopped using bodies from China because some of them shows signs of torture. The exhibit in NYC now offers refunds after a lawsuit by the state attorney general.
I don’t know how much Chinese citizens know about the Bodies exhibit, but it certainly isn’t news on the street in Shanghai that there’s an illegal traffic in stolen organs. So what they must think when they see these ads? And what was the team at JWT thinking?
Oh yes, the images are striking, and you have to look at them. True. And that’s the first job of advertising — to get you to stop and pay attention. But this doesn’t go on to persuade me of anything
other than being certain not to accept drinks from strangers in a Shanghai bar.
That's the advertising exec speaking. Now let's hear from the Jewish Buddhist. One of the many meditations taught by the Buddha was the charnel ground meditation — one was supposed to sit amidst the burned and decomposing bodies to meditate on the impermanence of one's own body. In the Buddha's time, there were places where the remains were left to decompose or be eaten by wild animals. Because there are no charnel grounds in New York City — or much anywhere anymore — Buddhist monks have been going to the Bodies exhibit to take on this meditation. Certainly seeing these bodies is a powerful experience of the fragility and impermanence of our physical nature.
However the Jew in me recoils at this practice — and at the exhibit. Just as a living person is the image of the Divine, so to the remains, which should have its integrity, at least until it naturally decomposes. This very reaction is interesting though. The Buddhist in me says this is about attachment to the body. So I'm going to have to sit with this. Perhaps I will use the JWT ads as a meditation mandala on this subject.
No, the interrobang is not a new style of violent interrogation akin to waterboarding. It is a punctuation mark created by a real Mad Man, advertising executive Martin K. Speckter in 1962. A combination of the question mark and exclamation point, it is used at the end of a sentence to convey astonishment, disbelief or to ask a rhetorical question.
The word itself comes from a combination of the printer’s jargon for the question mark “the interrogation point” and the exclamation point — the “bang.” Unfortunately, the use of an interrobang at the end of the question in the headline is appropriate, since the fact that we are torturing prisoners is astonishing, unbelievable, and unfortunately true as Jane Mayer's appalling book, “The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned Into a War on American Ideals,” proves beyond a doubt. Perhaps we will read a headline that ends with an interrobang someday that says "Bush Administration Officials Arrested For War Crimes!?"
Speckter's new punctuation mark never caught on, even though Specter used it in ads his agency created for accounts like The Wall Street Journal. Seems much more appropriate to use for a tabloid though.
And typographers include it with some fonts. It’s even available on many computers. On a Mac, four different versions can be found in the wingdings 2 font. Simply hit the ` ~ key, the ] } key, the 6 ^ key, or the - _ key and you'll be able to add this unusual punctuation to your documents.
I have to say, I don’t like the use of it in advertising. It’s kind of cheap, like the star burst, which is hated by creatives and loved by clients everywhere. In fact, a rather amusing ad was posted today to adsoftheworld by an agency in Columbia that addressed just this issue of the star burst. You can see it below — it adds to my collection of print ads that use a toilet as the location of the action.
However, I do think the interrobang works well in comic books, and one typographer has created a variation of the interrobang for the Fritz font that I like very much, seen at right. And I do think the more traditional(!) interrobang works well in a
tabloid. Both are less formal venues. Which brings me to this venue: while the interrobang exists in some Unicode fonts, I can’t seem to be able to use it here except as a graphic. Too bad.
Then there is the symbol that appears almost entirely on the web: the copyright question mark. I have yet to determine its proper use though. Unlike copyleft, which offers up the usage of the material for non-profit use with proper attribution, I assume the copyright question mark is used when a web publisher uses material of uncertain copyright status, and wishes to make that known.