Critics Who Know Jack

by Joseph Maviglia

  With her last words the phone goes dead. You think to call back but you can’t get Dietrich out of your head. The one where she’s a sort of Baroness who has a sweet eye for Spencer Tracy and Montgomery Clift has his brain tampered with by the Nazis. And Spencer Tracy “awe shucks” his way through her flattery as he goes to sit as judge on the horrific wars crimes at Nuremberg. You decide that night to go out and rent a movie. You watch and you think of Olga in Nashville. The loneliness. You also think of Nathanael West and Miss Lonelyhearts. You think of Montgomery Clift again. His broken nose in the rodeo scene in The Misfits. You think of how stiff an actor Clark Gable was.

  After the film you play Return of the Grievous Angel by Gram Parsons. You hope Olga gets a chance to hear his music along the way. Her beauty stays with you. You might travel to Nashville after all. Maybe you won’t and just go on to San Francisco. Just hoping that if you do you won’t hear tacky Tony Bennett songs. White Rabbit by Grace Slick and the Jefferson Airplane would suit you just fine.

  BALL CAP BACKWARDS

  Da reason I wear da pricetag on my hat

  an’ ma pants hang down showin’ underline line like dat

  is da reason I do what I do.

  Da reason you’re a fool ain’t too cool — you go ta school

  for all dat tomdickandharry tomfoolery.

  Schools — it don’t mean %$#@ ta me — get some livin’, get some free.

  Don’t be standing’ lookin’ at me! You fool! I said — yo!

  He made it up on the spot. There I was just coming out of an in­ternet cafe given my home PC went down. A spot outside of my regular neighbourhood run but I had to stop in and check on emails and maybe pull up a document or two that had been attached to Hotmail. I came out for a smoke break and guy was standing there with his three friends. All of them Hispanic yet he was of African-Canadian descent.

  “What’s with the price tag?” I ask.

  “You gotta smoke?”

  “Yeah, but what’s with the hat? What do you guys do?”

  “Ah, c’mon man! You gotta a smoke for me and my friends?”

  “Sure. You guys into music?”

  “Rap, man. C’mon, gimme a smoke. Whadda you do?”

  “Sing. Write songs. Poems. Here.”

  He moves in close for a light as that’s something he needs too. His friends want smokes all around and I light them all up.

  “What kind of songs, man?”

  “I could do one for you. The words anyway.”

  “Shoot!” he says pointing his index finger, holding the smoke to his mouth and tilting his ear in.

  Just when you thought the thing would run

  slow in the dancing confound of love

  you realized a note, forgotten, expansive

  on its own . . .

  “%&$* — man!” he interrupts before I finish the verse. “What’s that %&$*?”

  “You do any?” I ask.

  “Ha haha — ha — me? Yeah, we do. Gimme another smoke man — one more ppleaaase man?

  He reaches to grab the pack from my hand and as I swipe his hand away, he sways back, his cap falling off his head. A full pack of smokes in its cup.

  SMART-ASS TALK

  (Independence Day versus On The Road)

  Will Smith smokes a cigar with Jeff Goldblum. They are about to run an explosive device into an intruding alien, mother spacecraft and give us all that sense of sacrifice and survival against forces so set on destroying humanity.

  Sal Paradise sits on the roof of his run down jalopy in the midst of a Mexican/Guatemalan jungle and says to himself the ecstasy of the bugs landing on his body in a steam of dense sweat makes him reflect on the richness of the country-side and the beauty of the woman whom he meets at a Tijuana bus-stop, whom he has made love to a few chapters back.

  Characters in both Independence Day and On the Road are buddy-travelling. In the former, all will be understood and resolved by the smart-ass courage of the protagonists — America and the rest of the dumb world will be saved by American Cowboy bravado and spunk dressed in fighter-pilot and hip scientist mode. In On the Road, the narrator Paradise through his travels with Moriarty finds the underside, the marginalized, the destitute, the hungry in the country, small towns and cities, and celebrates every moment of non-conventionality. Half living in criminality. Dean Moriarty talks hip. He is seeking knowledge and so is Sal. They do not know what their adventure will be.

  On the other hand, Goldblum and Smith know exactly what their adventure is and we do too. You can’t miss it with all the stars and stripes and melodramatic hyperbole of a musical score. And it’s all designed properly (that is to say politically correct) as there are the African-Americans digging the whites who happen to be President (Caucasian) and Scientist (Jewish). And predictably, the African-Americans are either nurse or fighter pilot (service jobs). Interestingly though both fighter pilot (Smith) and President speak in heroic platitudes about the state of the world and the get-up-and-go it’s gonna take to beat back the alien foe. And his smart-ass talk is at its height in a previous scene with Smith dissin’ the aliens as he drags one back in his parachute to the lab for all the smart-ass scientists and politicians to analyze. (It is interesting that this film was made on the back of the 9/11 attacks on American soil. Un-subtle rhetoric and jingoism is one of American film-makers’ go to themes for big dollars.)

  Sal (Kerouac) is taken by Moriarty’s (Neal Cassady) constant quest and need for movement. Moriarty is a marginal character if you were to view him in society at large. Petty car thief, stealing his way into every woman’s bedroom, getting his nose broken and half drunk, bennied-up through most of the book. But to Sal he is a “saint.” The Saint of the Road, and action, able to withstand anything the road throws at him and say “give me more.” His smart-ass talk does not pretend to solve the woes of a country. The writer (Kerouac) intends for Moriarty to only be all that he is and his ruddy and tough enthusiasm infects Sal’s quest for meaning in life through movement. I.e.: Movement is meaning in On the Road.

  If one was to play a bit of interspersing of narratives and put Dean Moriarty and Will Smith in the cockpit of an alien jet attacking the mother ship, Dean might say something akin to: “Yaz! Yaz! We’re gonna ball this Jack!” And Smith might return with: “Damn! Let’s do it!!” There indeed would be a kinship. The differences however in the creators’ intents stand out. Smith represents triumph before it triumphs with flaring machismo and a loving wife that supports it. Even a President who is saved by this jingoistic swagger. Kerouac’s Moriarty just wants to keep going. He could probably live on the alien ship or planet and explore, befriend and “dig it,” whereas Smith would be cursing it as though tattooed to an ever-lasting umbilical cord twined in red-white-and blue-ism.

  Two different modes of travel with signs along the way. One smart-ass exploring the road (America) and the other beating up aliens that don’t even exist but for the fear factor in post-9/11 America that the film-makers were most happy to exploit. The difference between fiction (On the Road) and sci-fi hyperbolic fantasy. The difference between a quest for involvement and exploring the unknown (Moriarty) and an expression of crushing the unknown or naming the unknown as evil and “alien.” And the manifestation of superiority in the world — Independence Day. Both American, but one less superficial in narrative and characterization than the other. To Moriarty’s “Ball that Jack?” Will Smith might say: “What country you from, man? This is America!”

  I CAN’T GET NO SATISFACTION ANDDARKNESS AT THE BREAK OF NOON ANDGINSBERG’S HOWL

  (Poetry and only the Suggestion of it)

  Urban. Dark. Nuclear. The standing of the spirit against urbanity’s curse. Advertising. The hypocrisy of a system that takes away all aspects of individuality. And in contrarianism lies the key to identity. Bobby Z. Dylan sings It’s Alright Ma (I’m Only Bleeding) aiming his voice from what feels and seems like one of the most alienating mornings, afternoons or evenings New York City can muster up. The choi
ce he makes is to not cave to the overwhelming barrage of capitalist driven miasma of the surrounding urban landscape and its effect on the spirit. He chooses attack.

  And in the attack there is no lack of poetry, as much as a song can carry poetry, and even change the nature of poetry or add to its force. The long lines and phrasing, a distinct influence of both Allen Ginsberg’s Howl and Kerouac’s prose, brings “an idea” of jazz vernacular to simple oral/folk music rhythms. The voice never hesitates, nor does it lilt in full rests but there is a warning in the half-breaths that a truth is being spoken. That if not having to be heard, at least has to get out before the writer can move on.

  The poetry? A maturity in song lyric unknown but maybe for the works of Bertolt Brecht with the accompanying music of Kurt Weill. Taking on the forces that create oppression in life though Bobby Z’s attack is more a defence than a full out alternative to surviving society’s constraints. Unlike The Rolling Stones’ Satisfac­tion, It’s Alright Ma has lyrical depth and length that moves it out of pop-song category. Nothing like either appeared before 1965 though both show the range of song that became popular as the decade progressed. At one end (The Stones) with their hard edge and often Motown-influenced Blues, releasing a three minute pop rush articulating an almost James Dean-like stance of “nothing that has been presented to me works for my generation” (my interpretation). At the other end, Bobby Z with a ferocity and velocity of image and percussive acoustic guitar, articulates what to avoid, not in a grand political quest for re-evaluating “society’s pliers” but a path for his own individual freedom, from society’s hypocrisies and constraints.

  Though both It’s Alright Ma and Satisfaction seem to come from the displeased new generation of youth, Bobby Z’s articulation is more akin to the “angry young man” literature and play-writing of late 1950s British Theatre. By their articulation they re-shaped the cultural landscape. They are saying that what has worked for previous generations, doesn’t work for them. And as The Stones’ song has an aspect of posing to it, its full-blooded extension is Bobby Z’s richer articulation. This trait and the long lines and verses give It’s Alright Ma a poetry that many other songs of the era only suggest. With Bobby Z we have true poetry set to music. With other songs of the period, we have music with lyric that suggest poetry but really isn’t outside of its own context and, let’s say, only carries poetic intent.

  There is no real vision in Satisfaction. Nor is there really insight. It’s Alright Ma has both vision and insight and celebrates the individual’s perception. And in an uncanny way, articulates a joy that society’s constraints and hypocrisies can be detected and named. “Moloch” from Allen Ginsberg’s seminal beat poem Howl comes to mind. Moloch, the Sanskrit god who demands high sacrifice and symbolizes the causes of ruin — (as Ginsberg intended the metaphor for capitalism). And in turn, Dylan finds continuum in the voice against capitalism’s corruptive forces. What sphinx of cement and aluminum bashed open their skulls and ate up their brains and imagination? says Ginsberg’s Howl, while Dylan’s It’s Alright Ma says: Advertising signs they con / you into thinkin’ you’re the one / that can do what’s never been done / that can win what’s never been won / meantime life outside goes on / all around you.

  So as The Stones’ Satisfaction hints at alienation and articulates aspects of youthful anger, it does not contain the maturity of the individual voice against corrupting forces in a studied, timeless and archetypical manner. Great, visceral pop-song that Satisfaction is, Dylan in his work of the same period (mid 1960s), finds the fusion of popular culture (rock music) and high culture (poetry), which Satisfaction only hints at and suggests. And Mr. Bobby Z. sets a poetic-lyric standard, if not for himself, for other musician-songwriters to aspire to, or take note of.

  TITLES

  What titles do is embrace and suggest, say it all in a phrase or word. Make you want to open a book or allow you to recall a song or work of art. Kings and Queens have titles. So do judges and ministers in various forms of government. Titles do what a full text cannot do. One bad title can be firing-squad time. It is hard to recover from a book with a bad title. They can take forever to come up with or come in a flash and flood as if from prophetic skies.

  The titles for these segments run the gamut. From simple — “The Internet Café” to “World Cup Jazz” — a bit more suggestive of something that may in fact never happen and needs a name. For the most part these titles came in through the early spring air (mid-autumn as I write this), as I walked out for my early a.m. espresso. As a songwriter I have always thought that once you have a title you are half-way (and sometimes more) on the way home. I had no intent to have these come. It was a dreary day of chilly April with no sign of clearing skies in sight.

  But like a good poem or song, the titles kept coming (almost in separate lines) with rhythm and clarity. Ringing the typewriter bell here and there. So I imagined the titles being filled not on a computer monitor but a typewriter. The beauty of a typewriter is that it allowed mistakes and you can hear them. And not being one to go back over text in the immediate moment or time and time again, the actual typos or thoughts of them before I began, sort of gave me a free run. I knew I had to go back, ‘cause my typing skills ended with Mrs. Wegg in grade ten. Mrs. Wegg had halitosis and that in turn gave my fingers some accuracy as I had trouble with her stopping over me for long.

  There could have been more titles but my guitar called me thus I offer these few pages as not more than the momentum of thought and perception and what Roland Barthes called “writing degree zero.” Titles? Titles are like a name given to you. Yet unlike a birth name they are selected usually by one parent. Not that all writers or artists are parents and certainly not vice versa. A bad title can sink a work of art or make it sound like there’s nothing else you’d need to do but let the folks down at the local cafes know the title to the latest novel or movie you’ve read or seen.

  Titles are enough to make you buy a product advertised on TV or through other media. Make you wanna buy a mop or kitchen gloves or that great automobile of your dreams or needs. Even mortgage purchases have nifty titles. And the people at the bank called “financial officers” as if they are in charge of the Brink’s truck and aren’t merely tellers. Even the banks are called “financial institutions.” A bit of vanity I suppose. To think of that little corner bank as though it was The World Monetary Fund or Treasury Department. Without language and its capacity to evoke, re-invent and create images in this manner, you don’t get titles.

  You can have titles changed. I.e.: What might have been called “The Main Street Subway Station” could be sold to ITA Insurance and those too old to take in the new name may get lost in their later years when needing assistance as their memory for short term ‘items’ fades. Value? Why not name some of the stations “The Picasso Lady,” “The Sunflowers,” “The Remington,” “The Jacques Louis David”? Because those painters are dead and gone and there is no money to be made by artistic squatting. Or you could name the stations after parts of the body. “The Heart Station,” “The Elbow,” “The Kneeling Station”? Although the latter would certainly not work in a dominantly Protestant town. Or historical titles? “The Civil War Station,” “The Hastings Station.” “Twin Towers Central.” Or even better still, after great rock & roll songs? “Stairway to Heaven Station” (don’t even need the article). “Rolling Stone Station” (not to be confused with the magazine). But the best would be “Vanity Park.” We need some mavericks in our cultural soup to get some language into the soul of the grey and whiteness of urbanity.

  Why are reality TV shows called “reality” TV? Most people I talk to who are aware or have tried to watch them call it @#&*! Poets seems to come up with good titles even though some of their poems are pretty bad. A great title and great poem is “The Wasteland.” A good title and bad poem is “I Have No More Bananas For Sale,” about a man who sees his task as moving up the society ladder from fruit-stand vendor to marketing genius. And to give a place or
product a foreign name seems to have been a wonder. I mean, how could you not want to purchase the latest automobile named “Le Car”? So elusive in its poetic suggestion. Or the latest film (make that movie) titled, Le Movie?

  One wonders that as language seems to spiral downwards whether there is a part of our cultural lexicon that is spiralling upwards? And where would that be occurring? It is hard to imagine a title like “The Immune Face of Gravity” with its new-age-like, semi-platitudinal syntax as being one. Though the title might suggest lightness, the pedantic strophes leave you nothing but earthbound. Take too The Unbearable Lightness of Being. It always feels like there should be another word at the end of this title. Maybe, “The Unbearable Lightness of Being Me, or Sam or Jane?” Perhaps the title is more poetic in its native Czech? One title you can’t mess with much is The Inferno. Italian, Latin or English, the title’s clear as hell and its gonna come off. To translate the title as “Hell” would bring it down, though the full title of his opus The Divine Comedy sounds decent in English, but certainly more powerful and sweeping as La Divina Commedia in Italian.

  No Logo by Canadian author Naomi Klein is a good title. Nothing better than no name and the capacity to mean something. Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out by Bruce Springsteen on his Born to Run album from the mid-’70s was a good title. On the other hand, Born in the U.S.A. was not. Its intent might have been clear but its irony wasn’t. Some titles are hilarious from the top and you just want to say them. Dead Skunk in the Middle of the Road by New England songwriter Loudon Wainright III (great name) comes to mind. A country singer from Canada’s capital, Ottawa, had a fantastic country-twang tune titled You’ve Got Sawdust on the Floor of Your Heart, squeezing out and satirizing the genre’s need for melo­dramatic expression.