Vicious Bandwagon

"It always bothers me to see people writing ‘RIP’ when a person dies. It just feels so insincere and like a cop-out. To me, ‘RIP’ is the microwave dinner of posthumous honors."

 

Photo(s) by Jglo

We lost a biggie last week, with the passing of quintessential New Yorker, not quite glam rocker, punk rock godfather and irascible, not lovable poet "curmudgeon", Lou Reed.

Musically, Lou and most of his incarnations were secondary to my listening interests:  influential, sure.  Groundbreaking, no doubt.  Could he play guitar?  Listen to his attack, with Mick Ronson, on "Vicious" - but to my ear, something was always missing.  He couldn't sing to save his life, first off!  That droning, aggressive monotone in which he spoke his songs was clearly effective in serving the material -- imagine "Sweet Jane" or "Walk on The Wild Side" delivered any other way -- but in the end, it was alienating.

And that's exactly what the man, and the material, wanted:  you didn't connect with, or "get", Lou Reed ... You didn't "relate" to Metal Machine Music ... and even if you did, or claimed to, you weren't wanted.

As a listener, Lou Reed could take me or leave me.  And I was generally indifferent to Lou Reed.

Though musically (creatively, artistically), I may have found his 'don't give a fuck' shtick vaguely compelling in an arm's length, respectful way ... personally, in terms of the guy's overall comportment - Lou Reed, by most accounts, was a twat.  And I'm sorry (no I'm not), but he doesn't deserve the canonization he's been receiving from members of the press and others who suffered his "curmudgeonly" abuse, and it's somehow excused now -- no longer painful or professionally embarrassing -- because he's dead.

Typically hypocritical, and desperate to be loved-sounding.  "I was there ... a part of things.  I get Lou Reed!  And now he's no more, but his music lives on and I feel that too:  Look, I'm downloading "Perfect Day".  Isn't that neat?".

It's like the selfish parent refusing to let go, and dressing the baby in punk and rock t-shirts; or the onrush of simpletons suddenly buying Steinbeck ... misled by the vaguely slinky title into thinking there's something Fifty Shades-kinky about East of Eden (before diffidently stalling on page fifteen, when it's realized there's no page of biblical passion!).

It's like a CE (Christmas / Easter) Christian ... High Holiday Jew, or an idiot who lines up to wait to eat out:  just a bandwagon jumper ("I don't even like hamburgers!"); or a 'friend', 'fan' or 'follower' without knowing why.

But you know people get all emotional / and sometimes man, they just don't act rational / You know, they think they're just on TV - Street Hassle (1978)

Simply put, enough with the Lou Reed eulogies.

Apparently, Lou Reed could be an asshole.  I never met the man, but I did deliver musical gear to his wife once (at the time, I think, his girlfriend) ... and she was an asshole!

No, that's not true.  At all.  Let me state unequivocally, that I'm joking:  Laurie Anderson, in the seven-second glimpse that I caught of her while I was humping an amplifier into place, was certainly civil ... and likely, she knew and loved the "real" Lou Reed, not the "Lou Reed" of (velvet) underground music ... the (john) caged "artist", the New York doll from "out on the Island" ... the asshole that comprised "Lou Reed" - which the real Lou Reed would deign to show us ... real people rarely the way they're perceived ...

There he goes now ... May that spirit of punk be left in peace, to rock on undiluted.

"Walk on The Wild Side", ©Jeff Glovsky

Public Solitude

There's a little place I go to have breakfast each morning.  Like religion, at 6am I'm there, and like clockwork, I order the same daily bread and coffee.  Everything else in my life can be chaos, but this breakfast time -- "hour of the pearl" as JS called it ... "interval between day and night when time stops and examines itself" -- is sacrosanct.

In New York, just before loud hordes shatter each day, and in Munich, before tourists pour onto the canvas -- and in any place I find myself with a café or diner open early enough -- I avail myself of public solitude.  Yet even when the loud hordes come, and the tourists pour forth, there is nothing as disturbing to my thoughts and balance, as the girls from South Africa who've been joining me lately ...

Sitting a few tables away, they'd first joined me for breakfast having arrived on an overnight flight, apparently.  They were chatting in their distinctive weird accents, about how their hotel wasn't ready yet ... the smoothness of their flight and landing, their overpriced, high speed cab ride into the city center, etc., etc.  All of the usual traveler noise, excitedly making this small talk between them ... counting their new currency coins and comparing breakfast selections and flavors to what they knew and were used to.  Etc., etc.

And this was all fine.  I liked hearing them, and enjoyed not being the only one in the café for a change.  Although once, in Zurich, I staked out my breakfast nook, and soon found to my chagrin that I would be sharing my hours of the pearl in Switzerland with Guenther, a "real" writer ... who would already be there at six each morning, occasionally drunk from the night before, dressed like Tom Wolfe, ein Traum in Weiß, and demanding the waiters bring him pencils.

Like some Hemingway asshole, Guenther would make these belligerent demands without saying "please", and get all pissed if one of his subjects dismayed him.  One day, a waiter brought Guenther a little box of colored pencils, saying something like, 'to encourage your artistic side, guter Herr'.  I don't know if the waiter was trying to be cute, or if he'd developed a sort of bemused, grudging respect for "the artist" and was attempting sincerity ... but in any case, old Guenther got heated!  Yelling "Ich brauche nur eine!" and proclaiming himself a WRITER, not some "Schwuchtel Künstler", he proceeded to carry on until the "Hund" of a poor waiter found him only one pencil, and not a colored one.

I was thinking of this the other day when the South African girls first joined me for breakfast.  I wondered what they thought of me, sitting there with my legs crossed, reading out loud to myself as I'm writing ... "Ich brauche nur eine!", I felt like shouting, as both of them sat down, at six in the morning, at a table near mine in the empty café.

Then they began nattering and chatting excitedly ... distinctive weird accents reviewing their travel, and outlining upcoming plans for their stay.  This was the first day, when they arrived.

And it was fine.

But now they're coming in each morning, and sitting and eating and sipping beside me completely in silence ... Ignoring not only myself -- the only other patron in our Hour of the Pearl café -- but also each other, preferring instead to be fully engaged by their electronic devices (a little netbook style laptop for one, a stylish smart phone for the other) ... on which they poke and tap feverishly, while sitting and eating and sipping beside me, wholly oblivious to their surroundings ... to each other, to me, to the new country they're visiting ... Heidegger's thoughts on "idle talk" and "passing the word along" ...

Unaware, or not really caring too much, about the nothingness that surrounds us all, instead sadly -- disturbingly -- contributing to it.

"Hole in the Atmosphere", ©Jeff Glovsky

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