The Love Artist—Installment 3

00034:237:21


Dark crumpled against my brow. From where I walked the details of my city washed over me like a bad coat of paint—leftover construction supplies, architectural decisions made in haste, vinyl signs hung to cover years of neglect. Like a field of corn viewed from above everything resolved into a somewhat natural distortion, though: the blocks were rock—cliffs with windows—the street a river worn glassy and deep by years—by the years—of gurgling—no, —pulses—of traffic.

The freeway hummed and as I crossed the street the illuminated plastic letters describing every shop, the circling wires overhead, and the perfect new windows bisected by hundreds of municipal poles formed a composition so ghastly it resembled a mudslide. I fought like a relief worker to see a landscape. —Put on fatigues and an armband.

—I rubbed my stomach—not hungry, but it was after six and I could find no reason not to eat. My decision helped and finally the warm-gray buildings, rusting overhead tracks, and freeway and blued-out sky flattened out before me. Only by changing competition to composition —by arranging shit my own way—could I encourage in my heart a value to counteract the scraping pity my city almost always holds. I was going to be alone anyway, I told myself, there’s no reason not to make shit. —In most neighborhoods the people seem condemned to live just below their architecture: their leases and loan statements, their impossible two-dollar-a-pop visits with the fucking teller at the bank. —Shit they aren’t even gruff anymore, there’s no reason to hate them. —It takes a lot of work of course —to boil shit down like that —to reduce institutions and ideas—garbage and maimed pigeons and scraps of paper—to the human ether they must—by definition—contain —but what else could I do? —Give up my ass for the heat of their brand? Kill myself? Suffer my loneliness alone? —Fuck that.


My cheeks were warm in the late summer night, and I strung my thoughts on passersby—not their dress, which tended toward the juvenile, nor their poise, which was markedly slumped, but the unfuckable-with fact of their existence—that they were there at all. I slowed again and let the graffitied obelisks and advertising linghams tune my attention to the needs of our time. More than anything I needed a simple clue, an indication that I was alive—a fight. —If the laws of economics have proven right so far then the answer is clear for all who crack the code: for if —if and only if —for if and only if supply opposes demand—if E does in fact equal mc2—then without a single stretch we are a starving people.

—And I’m one of us —So starving is my thing you could say, or hunger my medium at least. Does this make me twice as hungry? —To admit? Do you have to believe to get full? —I have nothing with which to compare. I believe, though —and if hunger becomes scarce enough it could happen, somehow —that I get knighted —saved from irrelevance by the thing itself. —Do you understand? —There are many instances of a product becoming valuable without marketing—rocketing in price because the demand was so heavy and invisibly black.

—And this is the future, I’m sure —the market of anti-matter, the goods and services that prop up our actual GNP: nursing mothers, poets watching ponds, girlfriends that demand the talk —and here are traded our thinning real natural resources: youth and appetite, lust—well not that thin—potable airwaves, personality —or something like that. And this shadow—this sustenance—this shadow—mirrors our current ledgers so closely that many believe them the same thing. —That dinner is the table —a roast and mashed potatoes. I’m ahead of myself a bit but this is where the killings will be made I’m sure. —And then I’ll own the Dow Jones! (Dinner table? —what a fucking Romantic!) —I mean NASDAQ. And if you thought Small Product’ation was hot, wait ’til.... uh, —oh, fuck, uh… —oh! —They’re inverse! —That they’re inverse! —Inversely proportionate! —At least with the one we’ve put first first—so no matter how old your armed forces.. —and if you’re claiming Brooklyn —but the stock market’s up and test scores’re down…. —Shit, I don’t know, just check the suicide rate of black kids in the suburbs.

> > >


An old Town Car drove by. The two men walking ahead of me and the mother with child and groceries joined me in staring. The two passengers seemed a bit tarnished but they still deserved the awe in which inspiration always lives. —The aristocracy of our time, I guess,… —and no matter how fucked up they are running a cherry orchard’s never been easy..

—The matron, the older one, seemed connected vitally to the huge car. She had one end of a plastic tube up her nose—the other disappearing somewhere below the dash —and I thought immediately of a painting—or a poem—I should do —to describe —or just show somehow —you know, —machines keeping us alive? —letting us live on their exhaust, —that kind of shit.

—But the pair looked straight ahead—through the unemployed gauntlet in which they lived a whole life. I thought of my family—and the years I had spent being driven places without a care in the world. My eyes fell and came to rest on my shoes—a gift from my mother, like my socks, —and my underwear, —designer, —Polo —and I couldn’t stop my head from hanging. I felt like a child. Softened by a hundred punches. Only the certainty of my gut’s wall; —pride —mixed with shame probably —or reinforced… —by a paste, maybe —or only.. —kept me upright.


00034:249:58

My pedestrians matched —which was odd for South Freeway, where individuality is usually a direct factor of low socialization. They were charged that day but for their eyes, their walk was direct and choreographed. Unbroken by the pleas for love that littered every intersection.


00034:252:42

It was a rare occasion that the city provided such hypnotic warmth and I let it possess me completely. That’s the secret to good living I think—to slow down intelligently enough to turn pain into a slight fetish —to create that keyhole of perspective that makes even the gruesome worth watching —because it is—or was anyway—whatever it is —because it’s true—or already happened as you watched it and so you might as well...

And I almost stopped to get a bearing, I wanted to figure out the components of my rare mood—to hold on—I wanted to include lust or build something useful —or to elaborate, but the idea found no support immediately. I walked on. —Without slowing or changing my pace, mind you —nothing had happened —just trying to hold on.

Some P’s balding tire squeaked along dutifully overhead. Swarming covered wagons they were—are. —And false images of saloons curdled in my mind, —and women in ruffles, men off-loading grain and huddled in storefronts discussing politics —something happening —anything happening —everything happening —at once, without the time or separation to jump from participant to bleary watcher but also getting it all in—from the corner of one’s eye —or just smelling it —as a record, and knowing, therefore, that it was real—and nearby. I jumped on the P—pretty common for me back then—and set out to abandon what I knew —looking for some beacons —of trees —or spotlights. —And I usually found something—or something was moving by—but once I get there—and have a good look—I’m often ashamed at the loneliness and sorrow that drove me to glorify such nothingness, such infertility, —such training at the hands of the unfortunate, —negative reinforcement. —But was also glad to have a few hours down.

...[tape garbled] turn tail and [tape garbled] , wrapping my city in paths of fascination and regret like a train that departs and returns, —or its track —and with freeways choked one way and clear the other, —airline routes, busses, the P; wires, fences —and whatever straight rivers shoot off those antennas, —off tracks —off, —off people like myself —missing just enough to go out and search but too lonely and scared to press on —worn down like the best paths —And so it is for me and my city. —And not unconsciously, or even unnecessarily I fear. —At home I yearn for the theatre of a businessman’s can-do handshake: “—Right Earl,” “—What’s a good time?” “4:30? —Monday?,” “Right, —okay,” —or the bottomless quiet of the office mouse who runs for the P but wants nothing more than to go unnoticed —or be noticed—is dying to do either, actually—anything, —but instead is downtown running from work to her stop, and wore sweatpants because she was late —and got in trouble because of it —with backpack bobbing, —and can feel your eyes.

—But I’d love to take home my favorites, those who have unhinged their jaw and taken the city whole like a snake, those who without reason (for the odds are enormous) still believed their own existence, those who have become —perfectly—purely—distorted. —If the city is knowledge in every form, molecules in every combination—raw data—then shouldn’t it follow logically that one or two pop out perfectly balanced. Having died and come back? Getting off on it even? —Sounded good.

I cast my gill net of a theory and was floored for a moment by my catch—lab coats and brown leather broke the surface of muscle Ts and talking tennis shoes, briefcases became clipboards and everyone seemed to be wearing glasses with black frames. I caught and held and turned away before the street’s oxygen could threaten my flame.