Artistic Purity

When you watch live music -- like I did all the time in New Orleans -- sometimes you come upon those rare artists and rare moments when you can feel the "artistic purity" of the musician or singer shining through like pure moonlight skipping across the ocean's waves. I've seen it in other artists too, like painters, sculptors, poets, and dancers.

You see them connecting -- maybe it is their soul connected to God -- and losing themselves in their art, in their performance. It isn't rehearsed, not an act. You can't fake it.

Sometimes I have felt it in myself when I'm writing. It's what Tennessee Williams called, "purity of heart" which he said was about the only noble aim, in the end.

I witnessed this type of artistic purity last night when I was strolling along the boardwalk and observing the beach scene after dark. It turns Bohemian, especially on Sunday nights at Latitude 32, the cafe and hangout on the beachfront, next to another newer cafe, down the block from a pizza joint, and next to a new upscale lounge.

Javier Cabanillas was playing his set of bongos, madly, feverishly, in complete control. Sometimes the speed and precision of his hands became superhuman. He led the campy crowd through the grooves and beats, at times standing to clap and sing, bringing the crowd to its feet. Javier was so lost in his art he didn't notice me standing in the window, transfixed. I scanned the crowd and drank it in. A girl in skimpy shorts dancing awkwardly, couples rocking to and fro, people milling in and out, sipping coffee and smoking cigarettes. Another man, shaved bald, arms bulging from his sleeveless shirt, stood and squeezed in and pulled a few bongos from behind the piano and sat and joined in. A younger man kept time with a cowbell and rimshots on a drum set, and a pretty young girl sat back on a sofa and chimed in with tambourine.

They built to a crescendo and then ended a tune perfectly together. There was applause, and laughter, and joy and Javier stood, wiped his brow and took a long pull off his water bottle. He looked over and I gave him the high sign and clapped directly at him, nodding. "Robert!" he cried, and we exchanged smiles. He sat back, and they started up another frenetic beat. I watched and grinned and slowly faded out of the window, cleansed and pleased, and continued my stroll on the moonlit boardwalk.

It's Tough Serving Two Masters

Chekhov started his career as a doctor. When he began to write, he was pulled in two directions until his short stories started selling and he was able to be a full-time writer. Later, when reflecting on that period, he wrote of how difficult it was to "serve two masters."

To keep things going economically, to provide capital and time to invest in my writing, I research and publish information technology reports. It's been my primary career for over 25 years, but I really wish I could devote all my efforts to my novels, plays, screenplays, essays and poetry. (yes, poetry, but I will not publish it until I'm dead and gone!).

I was complaining about how serving two masters scatters my mind, how it frazzles me and prevents me from going all out as a writer. But a friend of mine listed all of the horrific life situations many famous writers overcame, and as he went, I realized, really, I ain't got it so bad. I mean, I live by the Pacific Ocean and also have a place in the beautiful mountains of central Mexico. In the last year or so, I've been to three Cuban cities, seen plays on Broadway, went to Las Vegas, San Felipe, La Paz, Cancun, Puebla, Chouloula, Ensenada, and seen bullfights in Tijuana, Mexico. My compatriot writers had it pretty tough: John Fante went blind and dictated his last few books and screenplays; Thoreau and Walker Percy had tuberculosis, which weakened them, causing Percy to write mostly lying down, and sending Thoreau to an early grave; William Burroughs was a lifelong heroin addict; Carson McCullers spent her life in depression; Hemingway was most assuredly bi-polar and an alcoholic, as was Faulkner, Fitzgerald, Bukowski, Capote, Tennessee Williams, Kerouac and many others; Poe was a flat out nutcase; Wilde was sent to a cold, damp prison, even Shakespeare was a pothead.

So you just have to play the hand you're dealt, and do the best work you can. And the craziness, the strain, the strife and struggle can be a great influence on the art itself.

Gore Vidal is Still Alive; Mailer Isn't

Gore Vidal said, "I never miss a chance to have sex or appear on television," and he's pretty much lived his life like that. I took his advice to heart a couple of times this week, but I'm still waiting on the TV moguls to call.

Recently, I watched Bill Maher interview an aged, skeletal Vidal sitting in a wheelchair. He was a hideous, scary sight, bony-faced and frail, but he still had his caustic wit. Early on in his career he said, "All writers are rivals" and, "Every time a friend succeeds, I die a little." He has outlived his rivals, Capote by decades, and Mailer, only slightly, as Vidal himself looks on the verge of death. In fact, I think that he would have been better served not to have appeared on TV in such a decrepit state.

I watched a comedian the other night say that Norman Mailer, "Drank, fought, had six wives and even stabbed the second one." He paused and said wryly, "I've never read one of his books, but I'm a big fan." Sadly, I believe this is true for most people when it comes to great writers. They've heard of them, even their books, but they haven't read them.

But what is most disappointing is that writers of note are not treated with much respect by the public in old age. No one was particularly paying attention to Mailer in his last years, Tennessee Williams was shunned and derided for decades, and many others have lived in obscurity or even poverty until years after their death when their brilliance was finally discovered. That's sort of discouraging, but if you are true to the art, you really must care only about the work itself.

Vidal also said, "Many writers who choose to be active in the world lose not virtue but time, and that stillness without which literature cannot be made," which is part of the struggle: one must survive so one must sell books, and to do so you must promote -- which takes away from the quiet and stillness needed to really dig deep and create good works.

On the other hand Vidal proclaimed, "In America, the race goes to the loud, the solemn, the hustler. If you think you're a great writer, you must say that you are."

Technology and Writing

Technologies impact what is written, what gets published, and even impacts the characteristics and content of the writing. Novels used to be shorter, due primarily to the arduousness of writing and proofreading by hand, and the cost of typesetting the book. Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men is just over 100 little pages, and Fitzgerald's Gatsby isn't much longer.

Today, popular writers churn out books using pretty standard language. There's a lot of copy-pasting going on, a lot of formula writing that is pushed on the public. Basically, popular novels today are like watching TV. Pretty canned. I believe writers in the past created works that were more like watching live theatre where there is spontaneity and risk.

And I wonder if writers like Chekhov or Oscar Wilde would have made it today or if they would have labored in obscurity. I like the purity in their works, untainted by technology (although I know I am losing something with translations of Chekhov).

Technology of the times affected other writers. When portable typewriters became available, Hemingway had one, Tennessee Williams had one, and it changed their lifestyle and made writing just a little bit easier, and more portable. A laptop computer today provides amazing advantages.

But I wonder what is lost by not writing by hand and crossing things out. I don't usually do that, unless there isn't a computer available. But when I started my Katrina book, I wrote on the back of an envelope, then re-wrote that and continued writing in a journal. When I finally got to a computer, I was zooming out 3,000-4,000 words a day, and I was able to edit and improve the work on the fly. Of course, there were many edits after that, but they were rapid-fire, since I completed the book in less than a month.

Technology allowed me to publish my first book, and it is allowing me to post this from Mexico, while listening to the local New Orleans radio station.

But I still wonder what is lost with the rush of technology we have available. Certainly that combined with the oligarchic mass media cuts out many true artists, those who are on the fringe, are being muffled or trampled, depriving the world of, perhaps, some great works.

A Day with F. Scott Fitzgerald and "Gatsby"

Yesterday I walked to a small Mexican cafe and had "huevos Mexicana" with beans and potatoes, sitting next to two Mexican police. I had a book with me so I figured they'd think me harmless.

Then I walked to the local coffee shop and and read a couple of chapters of "The Great Gatsby," by F. Scott Fitzgerald (he was named after his famous relative, Francis Scott Key, who wrote the words to "The Star-Spangled Banner," but he was called only "Scott"). Turning each page I was just awed by his lyrical prose. It's so deft and smart and pleasant to read that "lyrical prose" doesn't do it justice. And Fitzgerald wrote this in his twenties! He died at 44 and I just kept thinking how far behind I am, how I will never catch up, and how, maybe, I should just forget about writing at all.

Walking home I thought that if I work at it hard, things will be different in 10 years.

Most people don't know that Fitzgerald lived in New Orleans for a while. In 1920, he took a room at a cheap boarding house on Prytania Street, in the historic and grandiose Garden District. With $600 from winning the O. Henry Prize (by the way, short story writer O. Henry fled to New Orleans to avoid embezzlement charges from a bank in Texas) he bought his future wife Zelda a platinum and diamond watch and went to Montgomery to propose. But she wouldn't marry him until, "This Side of Paradise" was published the following spring.

Fitzgerald and Hemingway were ex-pat friends in Paris, and Hem had great respect for Scott's writing. But they argued, as writers do. I heard a story that after Fitzgerald wrote a long written critique of a new Hemingway novel, Hem scrawled, "Kiss my ass," after it. But I'll bet he re-read the critique and took it to heart and improved his writing.

Later Hem wrote elegantly about how natural and effortless Fitzgerald's talent was. He wrote this in the preface to, "A Moveable Feast" one of my all-time favorite books:

His talent was as natural as the pattern that was made by the dust on a butterfly's wings. At one time he understood it no more than the butterfly did and he did not know when it was brushed or marred. Later he became conscious of his damaged wings and their construction and he learned to think and could not fly any more because the love of flight was gone and he could only remember when it had been effortless.

Fitzgerald was destroyed by drink and his crazy wife Zelda, who was in and out of mental institutions, and who encouraged him to drink and write short stories for fast money, rather than to focus on novels (a source of contention between Hem and Scott). Zelda was a Southern Belle, the daughter of an Alabama Supreme Court judge, but a real firecracker who later was recognized as a leader for women's rights. Scott called her the"golden girl," and "the original flapper."

Scott and Zelda were always drinking and fighting. Tennessee Williams wrote the play, "Clothes for a Summer Hotel," about Scott and Zelda's tumultuous relationship. It takes place when Scott takes a visit to see Zelda at a mental institution in North Carolina, where she later burned to death after Fitzgerald's untimely death of a heart attack. It was Tennessee's last play to debut on Broadway but was a critical and financial failure (although it sounds interesting, doesn't it?)


Back to my day: After a stop at the grocery, and few glances from Mexican housewives, I walked home and took a short nap.

My neighbor, a defrocked lawyer (who is just another one of the miscreants who have landed in Tijuana), stopped by and brought a quart of beer so we split it. We talked about how he's been working hard on his Spanish and meeting a lot of girls and that I should learn more, and he taught me a new word. Then we talked about how crazy it is that they caught the leader of the big drug cartel, and that 150 people had been killed in TJ in the last 2 months. But that it doesn't affect us here at the beach. In fact, it doesn't affect anyone unless they are in the drug or police business, except that fewer people go out to nice restaurants after a recent slaughter (of drug runners) at one.

He headed back to cook dinner for his roommate, and I went over to the local seafood restaurant to watch the sun set over the ocean and return to "Gatsby." I read while I drank a few more Tecate beers and ate three shrimp tacos. I didn't bother with telling them that I prefer them not to be fried, since I was pretty hungry. I read as much as I could, between glimpses of the salmon-pink sunset and shimmering waves, and then I just closed the book and thought.

After a short stop at home I walked up to a little smoky dive bar, had a couple more beers with limes, ate some peanuts and looked over at the two incredibly cute and young senoritas.

"I really gotta learn Spanish," I thought.

Mr. Henry, James Dean & Tennessee Williams

A few years back in New Orleans, probably five now, I was at Harry's bar in the French Quarter working on my book (novel) manuscript. It was pouring down rain outside, and I was sitting at a table by an open window for inspiration. A man came over and started reading it and then offering his suggestions on edits. He turned out to be a PhD who oversaw many doctoral projects at Tulane. He invited me to come to his house for a little party--he was just stopping in to grab a couple of six-packs.

We stopped at Verti Mart on Royal for some vodka and went to his place on the lower end of Royal Street. There were a few old men there. We started drinking vodka on the rocks and they were telling stories. One old man was terribly drunk and he was going on and on about "Tennessee." I faded into drunkenness as he droned on. Was he talking about Tennessee Williams?

The next day I tried to re-hash the conversation. If he was really talking about Tennessee Williams, then I needed to hear his stories with a clearer head!

So I went back to the place that afternoon and the old men were at it again. This time I listened to Mr. Henry carefully. It seems he was a Barrymore on his mother's side and he'd done a fair bit of acting and directing in his day. His wife was Miss Lily, who used to play the piano and sing requests nightly at LaFitte's Blacksmith Shop on Bourbon Street. And Tennessee just adored Miss Lily.

Henry went to New York when he was 18 and did some off-Broadway shows. He said he and James Dean used to meet at Jim Downey's and drink 15 cent beers. "I never saw it, I never thought Jimmy was anything extraordinary. He would sit and complain about how much they'd cut his part. He wore glasses, and wasn't particularly good-looking, so he seemed unremarkable to me -- just another struggling actor. But when I saw him on the silver screen I knew Christ had walked on water! Oh, Jimmy! He was magnificent up there on the screen--and Kazan, Elia Kazan the director was an absolute genius who saw it in him! But poor Jimmy, he left us so young, and he had so much more life in him."

Then the man who I'd originally met started telling his Capote story. It seems he was at a dinner with a group along Cannery Row. "And Truman just kept going on and on about Marlon Brando's sex life, and the men they both had slept with, and heads were turning and he was getting louder and drunker and it was just embarrassing, so I stood up and slapped him across the face to shut him up. Later, I was driving him back to his hotel and he thanked me for that. Then he got out a picture of James Dean he kept in his wallet. He was obsessed with him, and he wanted me to take him to the scene of the crash. He threw a fit, so I took him there. Of course, there's really nothing there, just a plain intersection."

I got this from an AOL discussion site:

California State Highway 46 streaks eastward from the city of Paso Robles, near the northern edge of San Luis Obispo County, and cuts across gentle rolling hills and sweeping fields dotted with an occasional ranch.

It is a desolate, windblown vista, broken only by the squatty, weather-beaten buildings that make up the hamlets of Whitley Gardens, Shandon, and Cholame.

Almost twenty-five miles from Paso Robles, and less than a mile east of Cholame, the highway cuts through a gap in the Temblor Mountains, so named because the San Andreas Fault runs at their base.

Here the highway splits: 46 continues eastward to Bakersfield, and its branch, Highway 41, turns northeast toward Fresno.

This junction near Cholame was the epicenter for a shock that reverberated around the world over two decades ago, but not because of the constantly shifting San Andreas Fault.

Actor James Dean, idol to millions of moviegoers, was killed in a violent automobile accident at the junction.

Cholame, population five, consisting of a Chevron gas station, a small store, and a tiny post office, changed for all time since Dean’s death on Friday, September 30, 1955.