let's see a drive-in movie!!!!

Mothers of America. let your kids go to the movies! 

--frank o'hara

flattened noise

on my walk home from the office 

the other day when it was brightly lit

& going on hot weather i was surprised 

by the courtesies i witnessed 

by the drivers who all seemed to

observe my self as a solitary self

e.g. stopping for me at the crosswalks

unlike some other days when 

it would be like a mad max daze

of kill or be killed 

but there i was tuned to my own inner drama

as the world adjusted to my presence

again so it seems

as if i had a song to sing 

the audience gathered in hushed anticipation

for the singer to become the song

or the song to become another noise

may you sing it flat or sing nothing at all

dragstrip girl [1957]

 

the Unofficial Start of Summer begins this weekend so i wanted to get a jump start on my sunny holidays!  which means looking for a drive-in movie to watch without going to the drive-ins.  i'm such a drag.  i rarely go to the theaters & i have not been to our local drive-in in several years.  why?  i can't explain it.  the theater going experience, which was a kind of ceremony to me, faded.  movie theaters, & especially drive-ins, had magic.  even during the Cable TV & VHS eras.  they were places to not just see a movie but to perform the sacred rituals of purchasing your ticket at the ticket counter, examining & admiring the movie posters on the walls, & participate in the bustle of the snack bars.  i mean all these things still exist, of course.  & maybe i'm just an old codger.  i took a few film classes at university.  which i enjoyed the hell out of.  but part of the magic of the movie going ceremony was that you were ditching class to see them rather than studying them in a formal setting.  going to the movies was an anarchic, dreamy set of experiences rather than a category on a college syllabus.  today's movie going experience for me lacks that anarchic sense of wonder.  

but yeah even so, i still love the movies.  very much so.  the cheesier the better.  from my beloved genre of horror to cheapies like this hot rod flick starring the likes of john ashley as rich kid, & primary juvenile delinquent, fred, steve terrell as fellow hot rodder but overall good guy, jim, & the lovely fay spain as the eponymous dragstrip girl, & fellow thrill-seeker, louise.  she is the new girl in town, & at nearly the ripe old age of almost 19 [yeah, i know!  what a doozy!  but then again, this pic was made in the late '50s when the term teenager was, arguably, in new usage] louise loves nothing more than her hot rod going real fast.

fred & jim both belong to the same car club & both fall deeply in heat for louise.  they've never met a chick like her.  but here i was disappointed in the writers of this script.  i thought maybe, just maybe, louise would become the leader of this gang & showcase spain's talents as a young woman who lived by rimbaud's credo, TO ENJOY FREE FREEDOM WITH HORRIBLE OBSTINACY.  who am i kidding!  this was the 1950s!  it wouldn't be until the early 1970s that single women could open their own bank accounts!  oh fucking shit!

instead, bad boy fred & good guy jim savagely compete for the affections of pretty louise.  their hot rod gang, which includes character actors frank gorshin, who would later star as the riddler in the batman TV show, & pin-up model/actress judy bamber, hang out at the local pizza joint where they drink malteds & dance to that crazy jazz music, work on their cars at the garage, & annoy the local peace officers.  ashley does a pretty credible job at being a creep.  i think this might've been his first movie role.  according to wikipedia he got the part when he accompanied his girlfriend to the open reading.  the casting agents liked his tuff guy good looks & asked him to read cold.  they dug him.  he got the part.  his girlfriend did not.  

but what about louise?  spain is lovely indeed.  & she kicks butt as louise.  if this flick was made in the present-day i suspect the movie would center around her character as a more deliberative agent in the plot.  but she does get to race at the conclusion.  louise' parents are pretty cool too.  dad bought the hot rod for her & overall loves & encourages louise to be her own woman.  directed by edward l. cahn for American Internation Pictures this movie does not wear out its welcome moving at a brisk pace for 69 minutes.  this is a cheaply made, shot in six days, flick perfect for drive-in movie going.  even if i didn't have that experience of breathing in the exhaust fumes of the cars from my childhood, or hear that wonderful crunching of tires on gravel, or trying to listen to the movie out of a tin can for a speaker, & taking my gut, & perhaps even risking my life!, on a culinary adventure at the snack bar where the popcorn is greasy & the hamburgers approximate digestible food, i did have a pretty good time watching this summertime flick.  

it's friday nite & you wanna hear music that speaks to its age

& our age too

life in poetry

this morning it was summer.  not officially or unofficially, of course.  but the weather turned hot.  as usual for this time of year.  anna asked me if i wanted to walk to the midtown farmers market with her before it got too hot.  you bet, i said.

now, the midtown farmers market does sell produce & other edible goods, like organic nuts & beef, but it is primarily a marketplace of stalls selling all manners of things, like textiles & other goods, & food stalls too.  this being Sac much of the foods for sale are richly diverse cuisines.  but one thing i did before we walked the 12 or so blocks into midtown was read some poems.  on the john.  as usual.

my friend the poet/novelist eileen tabios developed a credo to which i've also adopted which is the goal of the poet is not to create a career in poetry; it is to make a life in poetry.  eileen also quotes a possibly fictive danish poet paul la fleur who said, 'to be a poet is not just about writing poetry; it is about finding a new way to live.'  another credo that i've adopted as well.  what does that mean?  well, a poet is living at a certain slant on life.  it is also about being a poet in however fashion one chooses to make.  

& but still, being a poet, having a life in poetry, often can be hard work, but it is not a job.  hell, poetry does not enrich, nor does the fame fly high, nor are there any groupies waiting backstage.  poetry is a lifestyle choice.  you make poetry your life by engaging with it all the time.  even when you are not writing you are reading.  whatever task or activity the poet pursues or engages with, whether it be skydiving, or knitting, or writing code, or shoveling snow, will refresh her poems.  

so does reading poems.  the poet is always reading poems.  poems become part of the poet's DNA.  so to prepare for this morning's walk to the midtown farmers market, which is now a pretty big gathering place for people to shop, eat, meet, & celebrate, i read one of my favorite of favorites poem by my man thom gunn, 'At the Barriers' dedicated to his friend & mentor robert duncan.

in the 'Postscript & Notes' section at the back of gunn's collected poems the poet states that the poem commemorates a street fair held in august 1988 in san francisco.  a detail that occurred to me this afternoon was gunn's age at the time of this street fair & my age now.  gunn was born in late august 1929.  i was born in early june of 1967, the Summer of Love.  which means that when gunn attended that fair in '88 he was probably 58, possibly 59.  i will be 58 next month.  that is a minor detail but one that i get a kick out of because gunn loved life.  he loved to party.  he loved people.  he loved gatherings such as crowded bars, rock concerts, & street fairs.  he did not grow old & disavowed the pleasures of living.  i am a bit more circumspect with my life in contrast to gunn's.  but i am growing old too & still enjoy the fuck out of life.  i don't live a chemical life like gunn did [which did eventually stop his heart at the tender age of 74], but i do enjoy coffee & beer.  shit, i am even sporting a pot belly because of my enjoyment of beer & cheese!  horrors!

gunn himself would probably argue with me about my credo, again, adopted from eileen tabios, on how to live a life in poetry.  he saw himself as an elizabethan/jacobean poet in modern days.  i see myself as an ordinary human being who has no career but is doing his damdedest to live my own life in poetry.  which includes my own DOMESTIC BOHEMIA: my wonderful nearly 30 years of marriage to anna, our son nick, my friends in the art, & outside of it, our cats, & all the responsibilities of trying to be a good man & citizen in this fucked up world.

now then, 'At the Barriers' is one of my favorite gunn poems because of within his lines is his love of our flawed human being.  for even in holidays, we find our lives are most profound

          If trade is suspended and this is a holiday

          it does not mean that the real business of life is suspended;

          in holidays the real business is most engaged.

          We wake drowsily to ourselves, we yawn, we stretch,

          we stretch our sympathies, this is a day of feeling with

          we circulate, we greet our friends, converse in groups,

          the competitive spirit is stifled;

          in small beginning our varied loves are based.

gunn then goes into a description of two Leopard Slugs mating he had seen on TV.  the slugs are hermaphroditic & merge their juices & bodies into a single mass of desire.  a metaphor for the street fair, the midtown farmers market, for sure.  for what is humanity but a collection of individuals but our cultures, our civilization, have also merged into a complex, complicated, electric mass.  but rather than leave it there on the slugs mating for gunn is a poet, not a prophet, & he can only record his own sense data even if he imagines the larger crowds of 'men attracted to men & women attracted by women,/all together, though there are mixed couples too, all are welcome.'  there is competition in even this holiday gathering 'but there must be complication and conflict, humans cannot get by without them...'

yep, even so the 'arcady' of the street fair is still rife with suffering.  yet, gunn still affirms goodness.  how can he not?  for goodness is too woven into our DNA, as well as evil.  for we are 'each an Arcadian' whereby in multi-ethnic, multicultural CA we all draw 'attention to our differences, our queerness, our shared characteristics,/as if this were an Italian-American street fair, or Hispanic, or Irish/but we include the several races and nations, we include the temperaments, /the professions, the trades and arts, some of us alcoholic bums,/our diverse loves subsumed within general amity,/and "returning to roots of first feeling"/we play, at the barriers, the Masque of Difference and Likeness.'

whew!  i need a cigarette!  i especially dig that small little detail of 'us alchoholic bums' for gunn's self-awareness of the poet's own enormous appetites with gentle humor.  for what makes us human but our own flaws.  we all have them.  i love this poem.  i love my man thom gunn with all his wrinkles & love of being a human being.  for finally, i think that is what paul la fleur might have meant regarding being a poet is finding a new way to live.  part of that new way, to me, is understanding how fucking flawed i am.  how flawed we all are as a species.  but then again, those various flaws make us special.  & our civilization. flawed as it is, is astonishingly great.  it really is.  we are living SciFi days.

i won't qualify that last sentence of the above paragraph.  we can argue it till the cows come home.  i will end with my own qualified status as a poet, as a human being.  as another poet said, my life is made of the world.  i will do what i can.  put that on my fucking tombstone!

          

     

it's fiday nite & you gotta remember to 'fight the power'

this is one of the great intros put onto film.  it hits all the marks! this movie's theme, & this song, has not aged a bit.  where the fuck does that leave us now!?

good morning, america

it's saturday nite & i fucking love brandi carlile!

happy mayday!