Worthy Of This Great City

by Mike Miller

September 2000 - later start, demolition will begin in October – City Commerce Director states opening is set for 2002

  October 2000 - opening pushed back six months - Commerce Director skeptical

  October 2000 – developer: there’s no way we’ll stop now

  April 2001 - developer still not ready to start

  May 2001 - naming rights deal near - significant step in closing funding gap

  October 2001 - Penn’s Landing Corp. tells developer to put up option payments or retreat

  October 2001 - project in doubt

  Once in town I adjusted to the pace of local development, the way it happened while you weren’t exactly paying attention instead of with a string band and fireworks. With the Landing, I perversely started to enjoy feeling like an accurate prophet of doom. During this same time discreet sections of the waterfront to the south and north towards Northern Liberties were successfully exploited in a reasonable, effortless manner. Only a mile north of Center City, in the Fishtown section, they opened what’s still a successful casino.

  David was reiterating those idealistic community demands, describing multiple points of entry over the highway, each with its own anchor enterprise. There was no mistaking his quiet satisfaction over the mayor’s sudden backing despite the blatant strategizing behind that move. Why couldn’t they all work together? It wasn’t impossible. Hands spread, appealing to our reason.

  Okay, so that was the point of this little field trip: getting out to the public his willingness to work with the mayor, incorporating that riverfront casino into the otherwise intact PennDesign proposal, the good guys joining forces in the name of the citizenry. Why not?

  “But as the mayor has correctly pointed out, the way the Columbus plans stand now it would be impossible to integrate that proposal with the community requirements. Not with Columbus remaining anything remotely like what’s envisioned now. If that can be remedied, then certainly I’ll look at it again.” Of course he would, and of course Columbus was being hurriedly revised to meet the new standards, and of course David would welcome their cooperation but meanwhile why not collect some free public approval?

  He stood there silently, almost smiling at us, waiting.

  This coltish, eager young woman from our tabloid sister, all long brown braid and an undergraduate’s uncouth body language, jumped into the silence. They like them scrappy and competitive over there; it’s pure over-compensation. “Can we talk a little about your recent exhibit?”

  Because our presence, believe it or not, was largely due to some of David’s paintings of mediocre merit stupidly loosed on the populace. When suddenly certain people had something to say about it and tried to develop an issue where there wasn’t one, stirring up bile, wasting my and the public’s attention.

  “Of course we can. I completely understand your interest but frankly I don’t know what else you think I can tell you? That is the point of art, you see? It speaks for itself.” That grave nod again, validating our necessary inquiry but delivering his response in exactly the same patient, instructive tone he’d used with the children.

  And he turned to lead us back up to the parking area, attempting to direct the conversation onto the Landing and other generalities, but we all knew that wasn’t going to happen. Not when his opening for that particular exhibit featured a premier party stuffed with celebrities and the media hype typical of a Hollywood scandal. Made us look.

  When this all started Megan and Carmen indulged in a kind of ecstatic frenzy, delighting to question our moral mentor, heaping on the scorn. I found their behavior infinitely more objectionable than David’s silly amateurish art but equally embarrassing. Not that the paintings in question were technically worse than his usual merely competent output, just confusing: a white goat, bathed in brilliant sunlight climbing our famous Art Museum steps, a pile of droppings steaming it his wake; a stout motherly type dangling (dropping?) an infant off a roof, into jungle; Christ on his cross, fully naked, thoughtfully smoking a joint. The oil colors were muted and dreamy, the figures cut sharp against their backgrounds, often outlined in black. What the hell was any of it supposed to mean? Nothing very original, if you ask me, but at the same time what was the problem? I mean, so what?

  Then there was a photo of one painting on the tabloid’s front page: a circle of Caucasian children holding hands while sitting in the middle of traffic, cars speeding by to either side and one heading directly for them. Questions were raised but at its worst it was pretty half-hearted, I think because whatever the symbolic meaning there remained something sanctified about art and most people didn’t want to trespass. Isn’t art supposed to be offensive? But David’s mysterious images really were felt as a betrayal, a subversive slap to his largely traditional constituents. His district preferred that he stick to painting naïve cultural clichés, Hispanic children or exuberant neighborhood scenes in primitive colors applied with broad strokes of the palette knife. This wasn’t overt, you understand; outwardly everyone was supportive, loudly so. But one opponent in particular, another Democrat, gave out with some low opportunistic mutterings about David being out of sync with his public or even senile. I mean for about five minutes this was being discussed in the city although as I say, it never developed any real momentum.

  The Askews were at the opening, of course; it was at a tiny gallery on Pine Street, a place you wouldn’t look at twice walking by. Ruth has this conflicted relationship with David: sometimes she writhes under his notice like Crystal, but I can tell she respects his opinions and his experience. It’s like she’s a little girl safe hiding behind her father but darting out to stick her tongue out and get his attention. She and Thom were staring at a painting of an abstract sculpture, and she was basically reaming him out, deriding his opinion of the painting and conceptual art in general in that arch, instructional tone you use with cultural inferiors.

  “Whatever the medium, a statement is just that - a statement. Art requires more.” The taunting was mitigated by obvious fondness but still uncomfortably acerbic. She might be furious.

  There followed a lengthy pause, but Thom must have tacitly, graciously encouraged a renewed assault, because she resumed her argument with that same condescending, outsized patience. She was wearing a very unfortunate shade of bright blue. “Art has a purpose: it’s about making things beautiful so they can be grasped, incorporated, and left behind. That’s what beauty means. You can’t just appoint something art if it doesn’t work. You do not have that prerogative.”

  “Alas poor Koons, he’ll be totally shattered; Hirst will wail. All these many decades chasing a tragic delusion.” His manner gently reaching out to me there off to his side, inviting me in, but I ignored him, feigning interest in a nearby portrait. Ruth’s superior, practiced flow was making my temples throb.

  “Writing but music and poetry too, all the arts are pioneers clearing the way for reason. Poesis means to create, not to instruct. And yes, alas.”

  I’d heard the speech before, and I was seething with quiet fury for him. She almost never mocked his affectations in public like that.

  “Which is why that thing is just junk.” Indicating the statue depicted on the canvas, a mildly unconventional but mostly boring conglomeration of random curves of polished steel atop a rather frumpy pebbled stone base; it looked like a giant had smashed a pitcher on the patio. Never mind the confusing aspect of it being painted into a canvas.

  “Outside the scope of the argument because hideous by anyone’s criteria.”

  “Well, yeah, that’s true. And not that conceptual art is necessarily bad, either. Some of it’s truly transcendent, not at all sterile, not requiring some ironic, despairing explanation. But that’s only when it’s escaped.

  I saw David wandering around being courteous, seeing to the wine and hors d'oeuvres but generally keeping a watchful distance and a supportive eye on his handsome, anxious wife. He was also plainly a little drunk; when I acknowledged him across the main gallery he smiled broadly, apparently mu
ch pleased with himself. I watched him address Margery, leaning in affectionately while she gently inched back, looking grim. Later when he came over to me he confided without prompting: “I can remember much of my infancy. This is unusual, I know. But I remember my mother holding me on her shoulder and burping me, and I even remember shitting myself and having my mother come change me! I remember how I felt then, how I was a wholly integrated person. And that’s what this is about. That’s where it comes from, that wholeness.” Making a wide gesture to the walls of canvases.

  Tragic that someone can be, fundamentally, an artist, without ever being a good artist. The pundits, both political and aesthetic, were not appreciative, but he ignored all of it. I mean he genuinely thought his derivative crap mattered, which I thought kind of terrific in an understated, suicidal way.

  “He was trying to be controversial and he nearly succeeded. Look, there are clear messages in his stuff and they aren’t especially nice.” Carmen was in our vacant cubicle, swiveling with her short legs peeping out from under her flowered caftan, catching a sunbath. “Lucky he’s not up for reelection, otherwise he’d have had issues with the Democratic Committee pronto.” So ostensibly neutral yet purely radiating venom,

  “That’s ridiculous!” Which it was and she knew it. They made me tired. All this about a man’s evolving ideas of beauty, and whose business was it?

  Megan looked over, lip-gloss in hand; all these women put on lip gloss in public now. “If nothing else, it shows a serious lack of judgment.”

  “What the hell’s the matter with you, anyway? It’s just bad art!”

  But they were both through with me; I got defensive jeers, I was abandoned. That’s how badly they needed to attack the man; it went that deep and personal.

  One unexpected consequence of David’s artistic contretemps was June giving up her riding lessons because, she told me, she overheard the stable’s owner, a decent, dowdy Virginian, denigrating David’s whole Hispanic culture as crude and superstitious. Or so June claimed, but later she told someone else she actually overheard a nasty remark about herself. Whatever happened, she felt compelled to sacrifice her passion for horseflesh.

  David meanwhile moved forward with no more than a nod to his concerned constituents, over time restoring that fraction of his reputation undermined by the longing to make beauty.

  One evening at this Cuban place on Walnut Street he indirectly touched on his paintings. Resettling his bulk in a low, square leather armchairs, his crude features illuminated by one of those tiny restaurant candles: you mostly saw the deep cleft dividing his nose and the spongy, pitted landscape of his complexion. He was slouched at an elegant angle, both wary and at his ease. It was noisy with girls’ shrill voices but he seemed to consider it a suitable venue for conversation. “Now listen,” he said, shifting his torso towards me. “It’s channeling, I would say. The spirit leads and it creates what I need to create. Sometimes it’s things I don’t quite understand myself, except I know how they feel. Often it’s the same thing over and over. Often my own face!”

  It all blew over quickly, of course, and today if you mention it everyone seems surprised, as if it all happened decades ago and possibly to someone else entirely. But he’s been given notice; he’s being watched.

  It was all still fresh that afternoon at the Landing, and I thought he seemed not so much defiant as irritated with mankind in general, and I sympathized. Of course the politician understood our business perfectly well, and eventually he nodded, acknowledging the implied quid pro quo. Pausing in his ascent with the river below and behind him and the city looming ahead, presenting an unintentional image of progress, a muscular evocation of tankers and earth-moving machines. “My paintings reflect my god-given soul. That’s why it’s not for me to justify them. But I think,” and he paused, searching out words. “I think I was trying to surprise my old ideas.” And then he waved a dismissive hand back at us and continued his climb.

  I own one of David’s canvases; it’s from several years earlier and if it’s not great art it’s still affective. A tall, very thin man in a simple gray business suit much too big on him is walking out of the canvas towards you; behind him a street of shabby rowhouses retreats into a translucent smudge of horizon. This man has great determination in his mouth and chin, but his posture and his eyes reveal an expectation of defeat. I don’t really know what dignity’s supposed to mean - I suspect it’s something we made up, like human rights - but that painting is all about heartbreaking dignity.

  CHAPTER TEN

  This young woman bearing down on us seemed vaguely familiar but it took me a minute to place her, so during that interregnum I employed the old self-denigrating grin and modest shrug. Then I remembered: Manetti’s table that night at Luigi’s, barely identifiable now because she’d dressed herself up like a good Catholic girl, complete to a discreet but clearly visible gold crucifix at her throat. I was with Ruth, getting the story on her involvement with PhillyCares, and we were crossing the hospital lobby towards an exit when here was this person determined to intercept us. Ruth for her part was physically assuming her own distancing celebrity demeanor but I couldn’t tell if she’d recognized the girl or if it was an automatic response.

  Halting directly in our way, a tentative hand reaching out to Ruth. “Marlene Angeli. I’m so happy to run into you again.” As it was already late evening I found that statement slightly ominous. Marlene took an obligatory glance round. “I don’t mean to hold you up,” she said, making it clear she fully intended to be very inconsiderate.

  “We weren’t in any special hurry.” Ruth said, still professionally distant, and then she just waited until of course Marlene rushed into the silence, babbling girlishly. It was my own damn fault. It was because Ruth had cemented herself to PhillyCares, was veritably obsessed with that outfit, and I was fascinated by this dangerous determination and curious to follow the event. I’d monitored one of her remotes and a television appearance promoting the charity, and I suspected she was unwelcome presence basically forcing herself into the ranks of experienced year-round soldiers, a poseur demanding to be accorded undeserved respect. You’ll think I’m projecting but I knew her and she wasn’t concerned in the least with the beneficiaries of all this energetic effort. And what about all those remarks about the cheapness of obviously virtuous works?

  “Everyone misunderstands me. And you should know better because I’ve told you before that it’s about the sanctimony when there’s no moral courage required. I’m doing necessary drudge work, that’s all. Someone has to, always.”

  They’d been at the hospital to make an announcement in the children’s atrium, a half-dozen physicians and organization people with Ruth central, positioning themselves against that backdrop of crayon and light to declare a major initiative, a series of neighborhood fundraisers and broadcasts hop-scotching the city from the dilapidated west to the boring northeast, with personal appearances by various local entertainment and sports figures, the whole effort scheduled to wrap up with a sentimental, self-congratulatory children’s Christmas party and final remote. I understood them to mean this as the start of a tradition, PhillyCares asserting its arrival.

  And Ruth was going in with full support from the station, express approval even from Stanley, and why not? You wouldn’t turn down such a well-connected public campaign. Plus she’d calculated every minute and penny of her involvement in interminable meetings with Jimmy Blue, their chunky, blond promotions manager, shut up in his tiny closet of an office. PHA and PhillyCares between them brought the initial project down to reasonable proportions: a firehouse Halloween party, a popular South Philly diner on Thanksgiving, that sort of venue, which was clever. When I asked Ruth why the charity wasn’t doing online fundraising she seemed surprised and stood considering it furiously for a moment before finally shrugging the question away. “I don’t know. Why is there even still music on the radio?”

  I watched a news crew from a local network affiliate cross the lobby at a con
trolled trot, probably fleeing Mimi Norton and her intimidating cohort of devoted community activists. Lane and Tim Baylor emerged in their wake, crossing from the elevators with a polite smile, lingering in the light outside the entrance a moment before disappearing into a taxi. They had an aura about them, not exactly of glamour, more of implicit intent: they were people heading off to make something happen.

  And this Marlene was clearly very determined, but compared to Norton she was a mere amateur, relatively easy to dislodge. I looked at Ruth, wondering whether or not she was likely to commit another convenient if embarrassing public gaffe now I needed one, but she was listening to Marlene with a patient, patronizing expression, obviously flattered by this lesser daughter of South Philly.

  The girl was talking across me in a perfectly considerate voice with a South Philly twang lurking in it, a sort of dormant brutality. “I’ve heard you talk about the work you do with PhillyCares and I really admire you.” Biting with cute uncertainty into a lower lip clean of make-up. “Listen, I realize I’m imposing but would you mind meeting someone, a patient? I mean, I know it’s late but she’s like a really huge fan and I know she’d never forgive me if I didn’t ask.”

  “Of course, but I only have a few minutes.” And Ruth immediately adopted this flagging posture and an appropriate frown, the kind that implies a mild headache but no big deal.

  “Oh, that’s wonderful of you!” So we headed towards the elevators with Marlene practically prancing, but once in the car she faced us with an open, serious expression. “I know what you’re wondering, and just to get it out of the way, Jimmy really is my uncle, my mother’s brother.”

  I held up both hands in protest. “Okay.”

  “Well, it’s true so it should be okay.” And she shepherded us along the well-lit corridor, past all the doors into misery - a moan here, an inappropriately intimate glimpse there – then around the well-lit nurses’ station and abruptly into a standard double room. The window side was vacant; the nearer bed held an incredibly old and emaciated woman, a shrunken hunched dwarf, advanced age now her predominant physical feature. Her tiny body was swaddled in a hideous crocheted afghan, that kind with squares of lime green and pink and baby blue. Small, coffee-colored eyes peered up out of this cocoon. I could see a sallow countenance, a broad and stupid peasant face, but she remained unaware of us, focused on the suspended television currently blasting out something youthful and melodramatic. I deduced she was at least partially deaf.