Crash

Wednesday, 5:45 PM, heading north on Leavenworth, I give the throttle a little pull as I hit the green light at California. Coming down the small grade in the other direction, a white SUV. Into my mind comes a flash of denial, then the thought this isn't really happening. It's followed a nanosecond later by shit- this is going to happen. Crunch. Boom. That sickening bass-laden thud of two heavy things colliding. I feel the grill of the SUV hit my leg. I'm looking down and seeing the pavement coming toward my face. All I hear now is the sound of metal scraping asphalt. I feel the bike falling toward ground. My hands leave the handlebars to prepare for the impact. Is the SUV still moving? I don't know. I'm off the bike. I'm on the ground. Get up. Get out of the street. I'm surprised to find I can do just that. I stand up. It hurts, but I can stand up. I can move. Everything is still attached. People are out of their cars. Seconds have elapsed.

I text someone expecting me shortly and tell them I am going to be late, but I will be there. This is before I realize what's really happened and that I won't be going anywhere later but to a couch, where I will sit all night covering the bruises and bumps in ice packs and watch Dexter.

"Are you okay?"

"I saw everything."

A man gives me his card, saying he witnessed the entire thing- to call him.

A woman says she was right behind me and can be a witness.

I see my ridiculously expensive eyeglasses lying on the pavement in the middle of the intersection. I ask a man if he will get them for me and he does. People are being incredibly kind.

The family of tourists from the SUV come over to me and begin to speak in very refined Spanish. I can't follow what they are saying. I ask someone to please call the police.

I hear the sirens. I see a paramedic truck. I wonder if they are here for me. They are.

I'm examined. I can answer their questions. They ask me how I feel.

Lucky, I reply, incredibly lucky.

They take me into an ambulance and give me the once over twice.

The police arrive and a similar interview takes place.

I text Margarita and tell her I was just in an accident and I don't think I want to go to the movies later. The paramedics offer to take me to the hospital. I decline. I think I'm okay. Bruised, shaken, rumpled, bleeding a bit, but okay, and I realize how much worse this could have been.

I call my mechanic and ask him to send someone for the bike. The cops finish their report. Everyone leaves, the bike gets picked up, but I'm still standing on the corner, waiting for Margarita to come get me. A friend pulls up to the intersection, sees the glass and bits of plastic scattered across it, sees my mangled bike now at the corner, then sees me, and motions you?

I reply with a nod as he's rolling down the window. "Are you alright? Can I do anything for you?"

I decline, telling him help is on the way. A few minutes later she arrives, and a long night begins that could have been much different in so many ways. Worse in so many ways.

This morning I awoke after a what felt like a sound night's sleep, but it was hard to lift myself out of the bed. This afternoon I went to the see the mechanic. "The bike is totaled," he said.

I'm disappointed by the news, but happy I can receive it. After all, I'm still here. Sometimes I forget I am a Viking.

The Pumped Up Kicks

I rarely listen to the radio anymore, and except for an occasional broadcast from the Met or the rare occasions when I've rented or borrowed a car, I could safely say I never listen to radio anymore. I tend to favor places that are quiet, so I don't frequent loud bars or establishments with music pumping through them, either. In other words, though I still like pop music I actually hear very little of it, and what I do is usually inspired by what I read or the recommendations of friends.

This means I typically hear about a new pop artist or a hit song long after everyone else has. It wasn't always this way, but it is now. I'm comfortable with that. It's okay that it was only this year I actually learned the title of the song "Clocks" and that it's by Coldplay, though it's been in my head for years.

Two years ago Maria Gostrey and I were in NYC together, and one night we found ourselves dancing in a dark, warm club in the Village on an extremely rainy night. Jay-Z's "Empire State of Mind" came on and the joint, which was full but not crowded, suddenly filled with palpable elation. I'd never heard the song before, but instantly knew it was a classic. Every time I hear it now I think of that night, of Maria in her red dress, and of walking in the rain toward the subway at 4:00 am. Only music and certain scents can conjure up Proustian memories in this unique way.

Like many, the holidays make me nostalgic, but it's a nostalgia often cloaked in dark shadows. The ghosts of Christmas past are often not pleasant company for me and for many I know they bring bitter madeleines with them. This year isn't any going to be any different. I just returned from a funeral in L.A..

I've mentioned before I've taken to listening to music on my phone as I walk to and from wherever it is I'm going. Many of the songs in the queue are darker ones by the Stones: "Hand of Fate," "Stray Cat Blues," "Midnight Rambler," "Paint It Black," "Gimme Shelter," and lately I've been playing "Crazy Mama" over and over again, relishing the lyrics and whiskey-soaked sound of the song:

... You can scandalize me
Scorn my name
You can steal my money
And that don't mean a doggone thing
'Cause if you really think you can push it
I'm gonna bust your knees with a bullet...

... If you're gonna keep on comin'
I'm gonna take it all head on
And if you don't believe I'm gonna do it, yeah

          Just wait till you get hit by that bullet...

Don't think I ain't thought about it
It sure make my shackle rise
And cold blood murder
It make me wanna draw the line,

Well, you're crazy mother
With your ball and chain
You're plain psychotic, ooh
Plain insane

And if you don't believe I'm gonna do it, yeah
Just wait for the thud of that bullet, ooh
You're crazy mother, ah yeah
You're crazy mother, yeah

I know- it's only rock and roll, but I like it. However, as the days have grown shorter and the shadows darker, it's begun to feel like I was listening to Johnny Cash's version of "Hurt" on an endless loop. Feeling stalked by a jackal (formerly the Femme Fatale) recently didn't help matters. I realized I needed to shine a light into all of this, but where to start? Florence & the Machine's "Dog Days Are Over"? The last movement of Beethoven's 9th? What the hell was I going to listen to now?

Then I heard a perfect pop confection via NPR Online- Canon Blue's "Indian Summer." I've always appreciated songs like this- simple, hook-laden, irresistible pieces of pop perfection. The lyrics are a sad current running through it, and the song has a definite yearning quality, nicely refuted in the refrain "No you won't ever reach me, won't ever reach me..." but it hit me hard and the shadows in the words couldn't obscure the poppy brilliance of the music and melody. Add some  "Yellow Pills," by 20/20, "Hey Ya" or "I Like the Way You Move" by Outkast, and I'm well on my way to a queue chock-full of happy-sounding songs. Feel the music, ignore the words- and resume walking. There'll be no listening to this.

Last Thursday night The Swede came over for dinner. As I was preparing the meal before he arrived I was looking for some music to play. I decided to queue up an album by a band whose name I've often seen lately but haven't ever heard- Foster the People. Their warm, friendly name sounds like an Obama/2008 slogan and  people I know on Facebook like them, so they seemed a perfect fit for two people sharing a meal and catching up on the past month whose favorite bands respectively are ABBA and Madonna (in his case) and Black Sabbath and the Rolling Stones (in mine).

I loaded it up on MOG and the first song had a catchy hook and steady beat. The Swede arrived and we talked over the music coming from the other room as I fried potatoes, sauteed vegetables and clanked around in the kitchen waiting for the meat to warm. All I could really discern was this insistent beat you could dance to and easily memorable melodies. After dinner we sat in the living room having dessert, continuing our conversation about his recent visit to Sweden and his travels in Egypt (he's just returned- I was there in '97). A couple of hours went by. I must have accidentally hit repeat on the album, because it kept playing over and over- I recognized the ear-candy hooks as we talked but had the volume down and neither of us were really paying too much attention, though we agreed it sounded good "for young people's music"- a joke we have between us.

It sounded so good I loaded it onto my phone the next morning for my walk to work. I found the beat for "Pumped Up Kicks" irresistible bubblegum, but the distorted vocals gave it a tart bite until the glorious chorus kicks in, floating over it all in a 10cc/Style Council/Swing Out Sister kind of way.

As I hit Market Street I heard the lyrics "... better run, better run, faster than my bullet" clearly for the first time in the chorus. What? The song has fucking whistling in it. Where are these bullets coming from?

I hit repeat and turned it up, so the song didn't have to compete against the streetcars rumbling down the street. Four blocks to work. I heard the vocal in a different way- as a disaffected squawk. Holden Caulfield had suddenly been replaced by Jared Lee, as I realized the most delightful-sounding song I've heard in ages featured this chorus:

All the other kids with the pumped up kicks,

You better run, better run, outrun my gun.

All the other kids with the pumped up kicks,

You better run, better run, faster than my bullet

I liked it, but found it disturbing. I listened closer:

He found a six-shooter gun
In his dad's closet, in a box of fun things
I don't even know what,
But he's coming for you, yeah!
All the other kids with the pumped up kicks,You better run, better run, outrun my gun.All the other kids with the pumped up kicks,You better run, better run, faster than my bullet

Listening to it again, the chants of "Run! Run!," which precede the whistling section, now sounded like an homage to the "Run rabbit, run!" scene in House of 1000 Corpses.

I love the brilliant irony of the song's lyrics and sound. It isn't the first time this has been done of course, but it's the best example I've heard in a long time. I also appreciate the irony that I discovered this ear worm while trying to avoid songs with dark and violent lyrics. Like Crazy Mamas, I seem to attract these elements of darkness even when trying to consciously avoid them. I may as well give up running- it appears there's nowhere to hide anymore.

It's a fitting song for the year- at least the one I've had. 

While another mugging took place across town, I was having dinner with an artist...

Two evenings prior to the opening of her show at the McLoughlin Gallery last week, I was having dinner with Christy Lee Rogers and her companion. After we left the restaurant and I was escorting them back to their hotel,  we spoke of the lovely weather of this particular evening and what a pleasant rarity it was, among other things.  It was only later I discovered that while we were seated at dinner, the Femme Fatale was busy enacting a vicious mugging of Penelope. The perverse nature of the revulsive attack, and its aftermath, brings the long-running subplot of the bizarre love tetrahedron to an ugly denouement, both here and in reality. I write of it only to tie the final knot in the thread.

Now, back to dinner.

Christy and I have maintained a loose correspondence since we first met a couple of years ago in Los Angeles and this  was our first chance to have an extended conversation, which took place over Thai food at Ler Ros. When I first saw Christy's Sirens collection I was deeply moved by the beauty and mystery of the images, so it took me a little by surprise to discover the artist behind them was an open, warm and engaging personality. For some reason I expected her to be more elusive, guarded perhaps, about who she is and how she approached her art. She was neither, and during dinner we had a long, revealing conversation, touching down in numerous places.

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Two nights later I went to the opening of the show, which coincided with the monthly First Thursday Art walk. There were plenty of people about the entrance of 49 Geary and milling through the corridors of the building, which contains seventeen or eighteen different galleries, but soon I entered owner Joan McLoughlin's warm, well-lighted space, and saw Christy standing in front of the triptych Sackcloth and Ashes, talking with a couple of people while others stood around apparently eavesdropping. I espied her companion, went over to say hello and he led me through the exhibit, entitled "Odyssey," which makes sense as the palette of her work has expanded beyond Sirens to include images with more color, male subjects, subjects whose gender is hard to determine, and the one in Battle of the Flesh looks an otherworldly feline.

Battle of the Flesh

Her new work presses further into ambiguous territory while looking back with deliberation toward the Renaissance in its use of color and depiction of cloth, though the view is submerged underwater and seen with a contemporary eye. Though she claims it was just a fortuitous result, the green spectre haunting the subject of Innocence evokes an infralapsarian nightmare.

Innocence

Also on exhibit in the gallery is the delirious work of Dalia Nosratabadi, a globe-trotting Iranian woman who lives in Belgium. Her images are also created from water- in this case reflections viewed in puddles, which she photographs and then turns upside down to creating a disorienting vision of the world that's recognizable yet looks like a parallel universe. The exhibit is called Eau La La!, which nicely captures its energy and sense of playfulness.  Imagine Narcissus, armed with a passport and a camera, found the world reflected around him a much more interesting subject. Dalia, her husband, and their baby were present and I asked if she was doing any local shooting while she was here. She hadn't yet found any satisfactory puddles, so I suggested some corners downtown where she might have some luck. I would love to see what she could create here. The exhibit contains large digital images she's shot around the globe- it's compelling work that really captures the energy, confusion, and chaos of urban life.

1010 Xiang Hao

Viewed together in one space, the work of these two artists creates an irresistible juxtaposition- Joan McLoughlin has a keen eye. You can see for yourself until December 3rd.

Bend Over Times Square

Afterwards, we headed off for another meal and conversation, this time to Morac, where I found myself stimulated by the conversation taking place, the incongruous blonde Sirens floating through the room, and the décolletage of one in particular. Thankfully, no one was mugged that night, but crime season is now over- there's no one left to victimize.

Strange Magic

Last night got strange. Strange in that way where suddenly things are outside the known boundaries and no one really knows what's going to happen next but everyone's having fun at the moment and is willing to ride the train to wherever the next station is. It was as if all of a sudden we decided to become alternate versions of ourselves. Or looked at another way, maybe we were all just being ourselves, all at once and altogether.

It didn't start off unusually. I met GG at Urban Tavern for dinner. She was late, as I expected she would be since she usually is, but why complain? There's something immensely pleasing about watching a six-foot tall redhead (I suspect she's actually taller than that but won't cop to it) in a tight black dress slit all the way up the side in pearls and heels saunter up to your table. She towers over me and something about that has always excited me (she was seated the first time we met- I had no idea). I know it does nothing for her.

I'd ordered drinks for us while waiting and soon we were discussing the latest machinations of the Femme Fatale and what had happened with Penelope. After dinner we took a cab over to Davies, in which I noticed she was wearing thigh-high stockings. These always have a certain, well-defined effect on me. We picked up our tickets with minutes to spare and settled in to hear Vasily Petreneko take the reigns from MTT, leading Joshua Bell and the orchestra in the first guest conductor-led performance of the season. The last time Petrenko was here he impressed me so much I declared he should be MTT's successor when the day finally arrives. After last night I'm not so sure. Nothing went wrong, but the magic wasn't there in the same way. Some of that may be my response to the incredible performances I've seen led by MTT in the past month.

It began with an absolutely delightful version of Shostakovitch's Festival Overture taken at a breakneck pace. Flutist Tim Day again rocked it, as he has so often in the past month. If only the rest of the evening had the oomph behind it displayed in the opener it would have been an enchanting evening. Joshua Bell came out after it was over in an ensemble that was a sartorial mistake, though no one seemed to mind. Bell, a favorite of the audience for obvious reasons, did justice to Tchaikovsky's Meditation, from Souvenir d'un lieu cher, arranged by Glazunov, and though it was smooth as silk, the performance lacked passion and fire.

Though GG (and much of the audience) disagreed with me, passion and fire was also absent from Glazunov's Violin Concerto, which followed. Yes, Bell performed superbly, but there was something missing from it all. A bite, a hunger to take this unjustly rarely performed piece and make its performance something special wasn't there, despite Bell's command and amazingly fleet fretwork.

The absence of fire continued after the intermission, when it was just Petrenko and the orchestra performing Elgar's First Symphony. Like the Glazunov, there was nothing wrong with it, and sections bloomed beautifully, but it seemed a bit perfunctory, the orchestra never becoming seriously engaged with it all despite Petrenko's efforts. I know I'm in the minority with this response but there you have it. After the serious glory of what took place on this stage in the past month, last night was a bit of let-down. It had to happen sometime, I just wouldn't have expected it to come under a performance led by Petrenko.

Afterward, GG and I made our way over to Sugar to meet Isabella and the Swede (formerly the Elder Swede but since the younger one is pretty much MIA these days I'm officially discarding the epithet).  Isabella and the Swede had been out on a "date" of sorts, though only in the platonic sense. Isabella had wanted to meet GG for awhile, based no doubt on my appreciation of her, always expressed in no uncertain terms.

Unbeknownst to me, bets were placed about my own response to what would happen with this particular grouping, the terms of which I remain still in the dark about, only knowing that one was a winner and the other not. I have photographic evidence of what occurred, but I don't understand it and await an explanation for exactly what the hell that was all about. Just because I have photos doesn't make any of it clearer. All I'm willing to divulge at the moment is this morning I overslept, and I received an email from Isabella saying "you seem to generate a special kind of energy" and a follow up text calling me "an evil man" after I had sent her the pictures.


GG and I unexpectedly ended up having lunch together today, but it was the last thing she wanted to talk about. Her response upon seeing the photos was "haha, oh, mah god :-)." Read into it what you will. I'm keeping the photos to myself, because afterall, I love those two women.

Exposed

After having a pretty tasty lunch at Farm:Table the Femme Fatale and I went to view the recently opened exhibit at SFMOMA called Exposed: Voyeurism, Surveillance, and the Camera Since 1870.

To say this is a subject which interests me tremendously would be understating the fact. Living in a small, crowded city, you have two choices as I see it: you can ignore the fact that people are watching you and choose not to acknowledge them, pretending you actually have some anonymity here (which you don't), or you can watch them and understand you too, are being watched by others. This requires tacit acceptance that there is little in the City which goes unnoticed by someone. It's creepy, but it's also a tether to reality, and perhaps a community.


Harry Callahan, Atlanta, 1984

I live in a twenty-story building which is across the street from my previous apartment. I could sit in the living room of my old place and see into about twenty of the apartments in this building. I'd guess there are about 55 apartments in this building that can easily observe what happens in my former place if the curtains aren't drawn. For the record, I live in the rear of the building and can't see into my old apartment, which I think would be very, very interesting.

One day a few months after I moved here I was explaining where I used to live to a neighbor in the building, whose apartment faces my old one. As I was telling him about my former apartment he asked some questions, and suddenly a look of embarrassment came over his face and he got very quiet. I could tell he had seen something happen in my old place. This was all the more awkward because he knew an ex-girlfriend of mine professionally, who I was dating when I lived there. The conversation quickly ended, and I no longer point out my old apartment to my neighbors, though it's now been more than three years since I moved.

I used to date a woman who lived in an apartment building similar in size to this one, but over in Pacific Heights. I often found myself seated at her window watching people as I waited for her to get ready. On more than one occasion I noticed a striking woman enter the building across the street. Lights would then come on in a flat but there was never anything to see- just the woman entering or leaving the building. I asked the one I was dating if she knew anything about the one across the street- going so far as to point her out one night. She replied she'd noticed her too, really liked her clothes, seemed a bit mysterious in an Avengers-era Diana Rigg-way, but other than that she knew nothing.

Garry Winogrand, New York, 1969

A year later I placed a personal ad in the SF Weekly. It received only one response, which really didn't surprise me so much as disappoint me. We soon made a blind date for a drink at Enrico's. Two weeks later I was amazed to find myself in the flat of the woman I used to watch come and go from an apartment across the street. From her flat we would sit in the window and spend entire evenings entertained by goings-on of her neighbors across the street. The woman from whose apartment I used to watch the woman I was now dating dated had moved by this time. I could tell because I could easily see into that apartment. I swear this is a true story and I have some others in a similar vein I could relate as well.

But enough about me- this was supposed to be about the exhibit at the MOMA. Well, it's quite good and covers a lot of ground, ranging from surveillance tapes of numerous types, including Andy Warhol's Blowjob playing high in a corner (you have to look in a place you wouldn't normally look to see it- in other words, non-voyeurs may miss it altogether), vintage nudes, upskirts, paparazzi, news photos- there is really quite an array to see and much of it disturbing to view- there are a number of very grisly photos. It will be on the 4th floor of the museum through April 17, 2001.

Sadly, the museum won't let you takes pictures inside the exhibit. Something about this greatly offends me.  It's an excellent exhibit. Don't miss the Cartier-Bresson exhibit one floor below, which makes a perfect compliment.