Signs.

There are two primary qualifiers for the great American city.  The first is the presence of decent Ethiopian food.  I like Ethiopian food, I'm not nuts for it.  Probably why I find it such a reliable indicator, that in its failure to arouse me personally it still manages an emissarial statement.  The second is that of at least one annual birthday dance party honoring Morrissey.  

Pittsburgh, I learned today, qualifies on both terms.  

Lately I've found the signage of this city curious.   The first example concerns our annual birthday party honoring Morrissey.  Among the selling points of the bash, listed first in fact, is 'Fresh Pastries.'  But then at some point after the sign was posted--the copy I saw was posted in the vestibule of Brillobox, 'Delicious Pastries' had been crossed out.  Barring either a myopic act of vandalism or an equally bizarre tribute band named 'Delicious Pastries' I had to conclude that there was a falling out between the venue and the baker, or between the party-thrower and the baker.  Or perhaps between the three of them.  It amused me to imagine--whatever the cost to actual human emotion, the fraught exchange, the revoking of baked goods, and finally, the revised notion of a Morrissey dance party with no baked goods, as had been promised.  Even bakers have problems.  But in the end we all stand to gain from celebrating Morrissey's birthday.  Here's hoping they patch things up in time.

$$$

The other rash of signage I mention touches on a sensitive subject here in Bloomfield:  three slain police officers.  Before I come off glib let me, for the sake of all due respect, say that officers Eric Kelly, Stephen Mayhle and Paul Sciullo III died valiantly on Saturday April 4th of this year, killed by an enthusiast of the Second Amendment and outspoken opponent of our Zionist state.  Infamy being a kind of fame only vaguely--and I'd say imperceptibly, dimmer in apprehension I'll refrain from repeating his name.  Sufficed to say the community has, as the saying goes, come together in the face of it.  There was a service up the street with bagpipes and a choir.  I took Ella for a walk and watched the procession.  I wrote to my parents, and recall a sense of grief I had not felt for fallen law enforcement since September 11th.

In the time since the shootings I've witnessed a distressing proliferation of flyers papers nearly every store front along Liberty Avenue.  It started with one that appeared, as do candidate election placards in regular distribution.  But over the weeks more personalized ones have popped up--a barbershop down the street posts seven--and a sandwich board.  The message, though given to slight variation consists of three basic tenets:  we show gratitude; we remember (vigilantly staving off the abnormality that is a forgetful mind); and we take single-faith comfort in knowing the slain police officers are with God now.  Several businesses have taken to peddling "Fallen Heroes" bracelets.  They're $2.00 each.  

There really is no way to segue through to my point now without coming off as a cynical, aloof collegiate liberal.  So fuck it.  The fact is these signs, these advertisements and souvenirs have become highly distressing.  They fetishize the grief, ignore the very valuable banalities of living, but most importantly they trivialize the world of death that surrounds just these isolated three.It s a funeral that refuses to end--an abnormality.  What began as personal expressions of grief and gratitude for honorable service has turned into a drone loop masking several unsettling elements of the crime and how it affects the community below its surface.  

First, when not mourning slain police officers many of us, to varying degrees of course, live in fear of them.  It makes the slayings no less tragic, and in fact as cop-fearing citizens many of us reveal our unconditional sympathies in just such moments.  We too were moved to great sadness.  The deferment of our fears has lasted nearly as long as the fundraising efforts. 

Another aspect of this incident which has been obscured is the poor custodianship we have, on so many levels, made of the Second Amendment to the Constitution.  As a gun-owner myself it wasn't until the Cheney-Bush Administration's Department of Homeland Security was instituted that the real impetus for this provision was felt in earnest.  Til then I just took it as an outdated entitlement to personal and organized defenses against the government (which it is) misused to ensure unstable persons will, on principle alone, be able to buy dangerous weapons (which it does).  I remain convinced that the Amendment is valuable to individual freedom.  But the all or none approach, as this incident bears out does not work.  Furthermore the one-sided focus on the victims is an unjust distraction from a great problem: The criminal element responsible for, and Constitutionally enabled in, the commission of these heinous acts.

I overheard a wingnut on the radio lay the blame on the police dispatcher for not giving proper advanced warning to the doomed officers.  Imagine the firestorm had air traffic been blamed for 9/11 as opposed to, you know, the terrorists.   

And you know I don't do myself any favors by writing things like that:  There are columnists and comedians who do it much better than do I, more articulately and fearlessly, with firmer insights into the framing legislation and debate.  But Jesus Christ, the signs.

So it is with a confessional heart and the sincerest desire to get off the burning path into the cool spring grasses of inconsequence that I come to the photograph included above.

Seen in the tableau are a bag of wheat flour, a bottle of Angostura bitters, a photograph of Truman Capote taken in the 1950's by, I believe Arnold Newman--or maybe Irving Penn, and in the foreground a plastic bottle of distilled white vinegar wearing an ill-fitting stopper.  You see, last night as I sat watching It's All Fair Weather at Gooski's with Dave & Sarah,  John, the bartender uncorked a bottle of Blanton's bourbon.  The cap is a  pewter racehorse--perhaps a subliminal emblem for its complementary effect on the mint julep, sitting atop a real cork stopper.  On removing it John said, 'I always tell myself to hold onto these.  But what would I do with them?'.  So I grabbed it, knowing I would wake up to find my hoodie pocket smelling of (a better brand of) bourbon the next morning.  So I awoke and so it did, and so it still does.  Somewhere in my reasoning too was the idea of creating a momentary piece of art in which the stately stopper was tucked into a cheap bottle of no real consequence.  King for a day.  There you have it.  I made good, but the effect, even I have to admit, is kind of poor.  I suppose there is some fabulous consolation in that I tried.  

Truth be told I discarded the stopper after snapping off the picture.  And I suppose that when all other messages of expression fail they succeed at least in lighting the end.

Update:  It's Delicious Pastries not Fresh Pastries.  Delicious Pastries.  They're a band.  Kinda sounds like they're in the wrong line of work.  I regret nothing.

The way we were.

It might've been that auspicious first single, or the even the dramatic art work--the Deutsche Grammophon-inspired Ringleader cover was a nice, if flagrant, nod to the august stuff inside.  But this image of a lording Moz with a swaddled child in his arm is as cryptic as it is indulgent.   

I eagerly disparaged apologists who covered for the two most recent Moz lp's--as vigorously as I defended the spotty, but occasionally magnetic, Maladjusted.  Morrissey has been suffering at the hands of critical and spectatorial frenzies all his professional life.  And if anything their erratic pronouncements have tilted even further in his favor over the past few years.  

Morrissey represents the belated child of a generation--the love mistake errantly shot, young, into the Thatcher/Reagan years.  His glam post-punk emerged from Roxy Music and the New York Dolls in much the way that Neutral Milk Hotel's obscene yodel emerged from his early-Smiths vocal style; or Richard Hawley's rockabilly crooner reboot from solo Moz tunes like "The Loop", or the earlier's James Dean-idolatry, "Nowhere Fast".  Apart from late Quentin Crisp and maybe late Truman Capote in Murder By Death, the solidified notion of a cool old queen in popular culture remains inchoate--Antony's growing up fast and scarred in the spotlight, but as the Man said, these things take time.  In their (perfectly reasonable) gambits for the posterity purse the New York Dolls have come to resemble Aerosmith.  Nothing wrong with it, just not exactly what one likes to think of when envisioning the natural progression of glamorous scum.  

But Morrissey, despite all missteps along the way, might just be that vision.  Now more than ever.  Why else would we still wait up?  Why else would critics still forge sweatily to find his hidden, sometimes tissue-thin, virtues?  

Having paced his career spectacularly--if unwittingly so, the Morrissey emerging here relishes a bolstered Smiths revival, invigorated in his ongoing business with this rotating band.  But its not just a planetary alignment that makes this outing different from recent previous ones.  In fact the prior two, nearly equally over-praised, 2003's You Are The Quarry & 2006's Ringleader of the Tormentors, each share the magnitude of Years of Refusal--a sustaining air of a comeback.  The only difference is that the singer and band alike seem to be finally willing to embrace it, and move with its celebratory energies. 

Sadly, like any icon of Morrissey's ever emboldening status, the infiltration of reverence has its costs.  There are dull moments to Years of Refusal that must have, in the studio, seemed both natural and filial.  "Black Cloud" & "All You Need is Me" (minus a few tack-sharp lyrical turns) are sincere, if couch-comfortable by now.  In them overt desires to satisfy Morrissey's need to self-actualize--not to mention that gang's dedication to abetting him,  sometimes trump the simmering pursuit of a catchy tune.  The music works out of that faintly rockabilly heritage guiding much of the post-Bona Drag solo era, but it's generalized guitar rock personality resists the hooks and wants for ever more of the seductive barbs that once enlivened the younger man.

"I'm Throwing My Arms Around Paris" is one of a fine number of tunes to dispel these doubts.  Set to a shimmering orchestral Pretenders-pop sound--not unlike the "Boxers" single, its melody sticks, and the irresistibly narcissistic metaphor of Morrissey as Helen of Troy is the arrogant stuff for which he was first (and best) loved.  That it may just be a paean to his new city of residence is purely beside the point.

The un[der]examined sidemen heard on Years, push against caution, lending a professionalism to Morrissey's revitalized passion.  "It's Not Your Birthday Anymore" shows that core band (drummer, Matt Walker, lending a particular kind of explosiveness) in lock step with that singer, the awkward soaring, animal target; three years ago this would've sounded by-the-numbers.  We get melody, we get a spark back.  The underlying irony is that Morrissey hasn't really changed his authorial voice.  He's still the same vicious, graying masochist.  But with a lift in his sincerity the need to make excuses for him has been gratefully alleviated.       

 

Haiku.

I have come to regard Twitter as the 21st century answer to the haiku;  the participant is forced to consider and reconsider words at length, re-phrase and patch until what one hopes to express is captured in 140 characters or less.  Of course this can lead to ivy posters, whose banalities cover one's walls.  If you count toilet paper sheets as you peel them off for use it veritably recalls Thoreau's consumer-consciousness, but kindly do not report these statistics.  Not each time at least.

Anyhow, I should hold my tongue, having been more than liberal in my effusions.  Brings me to today's meditation on a Twitter message I composed last night but never sent:  

Dear Morrissey,

I am pleased to see you're interacting with your public.  Given the strand of celebrity you endure it must be difficult to appreciate Twitter intimacies without succumbing under all that heavy-breathing and repetitive ass-kissing. Christ, the volume alone!  That said I find Boz a terrific songwriter, and you, with your voice, perhaps this generation's Dean Martin.  I'm 33 now and have grown sparing with compliments.  May the short math bear out the magnitude of my regards.

My reason for writing--it is quite late here;  if you still live in Rome, as I'd read you did some time back, the evening is only getting started, is silly.  I picture you drinking molasses-colored wine on an oriental rug, eyeing your landscape.  Hopefully you are pleased you decided to keep the gardeners on in the winter--a time, as borne out in Lawrence Weschler's fascinating book, Robert Irwin: Getty Garden, when those activities are most crucial.  Provided you kept them on.  And of course as a former Los Angeles resident the Getty reference was not misspent.  Provided you have a garden.  Hell, regardless.  

A man doesn't need a garden to appreciate a garden.  

There are things at work compelling a person such as me to reach out to a person such as you.  I remember the letter you wrote as a kid to NME snarking on the clique discriminations between glam and punk.  There is no writing without confidence.  And as assuredly as it's the journey not the destination it is the bickering not the resolution.  So thanks for the colors.

This is silly mostly because there is no reason;  I feel like that old man in Jospeh Heller's Catch 22 in the culminating chapter, The Eternal City--and no, come to think of it, the Rome association was not planned.  Anyhow the Americans march in to liberate Italy from  the fascists.  They find a bitter old man who wants no part of it.  He's aware of the downward arc of his culture and finds this imminent salvation both naive and condescending.  He just wants to die already.  I thought of that feeling again several years ago when the Italian journalist, Oriana Fallaci, died.  The way she accelerated a xenophobic agenda towards the end of her life reminded me of so many of the great anti-heroes.  Our love belongs to their confidence, their resolution.  They have seen the last chess moves earlier than the rest of us, and they are not smiling.  The last piece I read about Fallaci (before her 9/16/06 New York Times obituary) was an extensive, highly conflictive biographic study written for The New Yorker.  Ms. Fallaci railed against the Muslim world and its encroachment on continental cultures; it was unselfconscious and sickening.  During the course of the interview the author described how Ms. Fallaci cooked for her, and did so in an almost grandmotherly way, as if demonstrating a nurturing inclination, despite a world view that abraded it.  I bring these things up because they tie your present home soil to a feeling of spiritual decline that permits me to express without known direction, as if it is done blindly or it is not done at all.

What I'm working at is a little ethereal--I'm practically self-hypnotized--though the guys at the bar where I work would just say I'm beat--and I know there is no strategic point to which I'm coming.  This thing is a safeguard against treatises like this.  People must express themselves in haikus to one another.  Regardless of message.  Having arrived without one, and taken up more than my allotted 140 characters in the shake I'll say goodnight.  Good evening.  May your Rome rise from the bickering,  may you have even greater success still with the new record.

Warmest regards,

The auld lang syne.