4/25
There’s a new sign as I enter Morningside Park: KEEP THIS FAR APART with a demonstrative arrow <——————>. She remembers High School Phys Ed and the “two armlength” rule for safe calisthenics. I say that my friend in Canada tells me that there they are advised to keep a hockey stick apart. We all seek our own cultural references.
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| New sign in Morningside |
It’s one of those stunningly beautiful spring days.
There’s a young woman sitting near us, painting. She asks us to watch her stuff as she accompanies her boyfriend to the restroom. I that see she’s painting the walk way through the southern third of the park.
She returns. Walks with us awhile. We check out the feral cats on the rock face across the pond.
Do they find sufficient rodents scampering between Morningside Heights and Harlem to survive? Or are they part of a feral cats feeding program? I notice how many turtles are visible in the pond today. There are new fresh flowers blooming, including on the little island in the pond. Someone must have planted them, cared for them. How do they access the island?
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| painting in the park |
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| feral cat |
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| new flowers |
We say goodbye to our artist friend, leave the park, through the waning hour of the green market. Head into Central Park to circle the Meer. See two followers of that strange Chinese Falun Gong cult in their classic poses.
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| Falun Gong |
As we walk, we talk about the recent revelations about the Prince-DeVos-Koch brothers cabal. Their role in the protests, reminiscent of the Tea Party manifestations. In Democracy in Chains, Nancy Mears has well documented the decades long strategic plan of the radical right to subvert democracy and establish authoritarian control over the country, its politics and economy. At this point, the victory is close to complete. Carried out by a coalition of old line economic libertarians joined by conservative evangelical Christians, their model was tested by Pinochet’s Chile with a constitution that has bound them long after his ouster, leading to the social upheaval of last fall. McConnell and his cohorts don’t even attempt to hide it any more as they seek to use the pandemic as a means of further solidifying their hegemony. Every act of congress only continues to direct the flow of money and power away from the vast majority of Americans and to the extremely small cohort of elite at the top. (Hear Jamie Cahill’s Intercept podcast https://theintercept.com/2020/04/22/coronavirus-and-the-radical-religious-rights-bumbling-messiah/)
The virus gives us the opportunity to turn around and go another direction. But it increasingly seems that the struggle to accomplish that will be long, hard and mean.
She laughs and says “Remember how you thought you could never hate anyone as much as Nixon? Then came Reagan, Bush....and now this guy…”
A goose glides down and slides to a stop on the Meer, its feet skimming across the water as it lands. A red winged black bird alights on a branch very close, its song clear and bright in the air.
In these days of quarantine, I am taking more and more pleasure in small and simple things. A host of turtles are sunning themselves on a rock and as I contemplate turtles…and geese ..and blackbirds…I marvel once again at creation and it’s intricacy. There is no why needed for a turtle and its shell or the song of the blackbird, they just are.
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| Redwinged blackbird |
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| turtles in the sun |
****
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| chili |
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| cooking chili |
****
Tonights’s cultural highlights:
My friend Kristen Leigh Mitchell is streaming live from the Four Saints Brewery in Asheboro, North Carolina. Things must be looser there as at least she, her husband Joe on sound, and the owner serving up craft beers are there. She is a singer-songwriter and theologian and writer who helped me develop my understanding of the connection between creativity and resistance, liberation in the fullest and roundest sense of that word. How artists cannot be demanded to essentiallly be handmaids to religious or social movements simply creating didactic sermons with morals tied up in neat bows. Art doesn’t illustrate the WORD, it is a WORD of its own, to be in dialogue with THE WORD and other words. Inductive and sensed as well as explicit. She finishes with John Prine’s Angel from Montgomery and her own Gratitude, understanding as Walter Breuggeman made clear, resistance begins with doxology. (https://kristenleighmusic.wixsite.com/kristenleigh)
My friend Marie Mazziotti is one of New York City’s iconic singers.. She can do the blue color work of four hour nights at an Irish pub or win over an audience of tourists at a Times Square bar to realize she’s not just background music. With over 1500 covers and 35 originals ready in her repertoire, she can not only read a room but play a room. I was honored to record with her once for her last ep, Hearing Double.
(https://open.spotify.com/album/2he0zLgsNYXL5NKXSB14gR?highlight=spotify:track:06kw8dmh58lMl3opCktoyB.). Tonight she’s the featured artist in a benefit for Leukemia and Lymphoma, Band Together. She makes certain the evening’s goal is met long before her set ends.
Heide Hatry is one of the world’s cutting edge artists. Visual art, neoDada ethos, performance art, she is both transgressive and fiercely humanist in her work. Known most widely for her portraits created from crematory remains, exhibited as Icons in Ash, she explores those boundaries of human experience. (https://www.heidehatry.com/) Tonight she is one of more than 80 global artists live streamed from Pakistan in a video/performance event entitled The Trojan Donkey. Her own piece, The Time to Defend, is her own response to the current moment. (https://www.facebook.com/search/top/? q=The%20Trojan%20Donkey%20%20Heide%20Hatry&epa=SEARCH_BOX )
The text of her confrontational performance:
THE TIME TO DEFEND OURSELVES IS OVER
THE ENEMY IS WITHIN INSIDE THE WALLS
BENEATH THE MASKS WE WORE TO APPEAR
MORE LIKE IT
WE’VE BREATHED IT'S AIR FOREVER
ABSORBED IT
WITH OUR FOOD AND NURSED IT
AT OUR BREAST
SPREAD IT WITH OUR WORDS
NOW IT’S TIME TO TEAR DOWN
THE CASTLE
FORSWEAR THE FRIEND WHO COUNSELS PEACE.
As I watch her, I am thankful for the strange beauty of the experience of collaborating with her in performance pieces connected to her Icons…exhibits.
Another day in coronavirusworld has ended.
KEEP THIS FAR APART
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