Wednesday, December 19, 2001

Limited Inc. flew out to LA yesterday. We
are spending a week at a friend's house.
Last night we went to Track 16 to hear a
series of male and mostly bald Southern
Cal writers read sketches or stories on
the rather vague theme of holidays. The
one female writer, a statuesque, frizzy
haired blond, read what she called a rant
in a voice that had seeped through Mae
West and Janis Joplin to arrive in her
throat, jazzing up what was otherwise a
rather weak referencing to what all the unwashed and disgruntled, or the leather clad and the smokers, know about Christmas � what an essentially sad time it is to stage a holiday, and how bogus its cause, and how mendacious its sentiments.

Track 16 is an art gallery stuck in a warehouse district, the m.o. for galleries from San Antonio�s Blue Star to the bright and shining tax dodges of Providence, Rhode Island. Still, Limited Inc is moved by the replacement of boxes of screws, or tubs of cement, or shelves of PVC pipe, by track-lit spaces that direct one�s attention to what�s hanging on the wall. Is this the only universal left to art, that track-lit symbol of the work�s isolation? That self-standing which wavers teasingly between art and a box of U-Valves?

Still, this is too melancholy a thought to express our happiness about being at Track 16, and seeing these good hearted people turned out to applaud their friends, or perhaps turned out in curiosity, or a genuine interest in new talent. The MC was one of those youngish (say around 32) balding men who�ve gone through the hair loss process happily, and gleam with such unabashed nudity of forehead that the eyes slip, catch on the heavy eyebrows, and then on down to the nearly fattish cheeks beneath. Broadbeamed in a gray comfortable suit which was not altogether suitish � his blue sneakers defining a limit to any assumption that his gray suitcoat might lead you to make � he read his story in a voice that seemed to issue from some velvet lined cell. The story featured tits � tits, I believe his phrase was, out to Sunday � and this, it seemed, was the real theme of these stories. In all of them, tits stood in for the eternally feminine, negative but observably bouncy space.

The deal about this reading was that, unlike readings I�ve been to in NYC, these guys were stand-up. They were funny, or at least the audience, and not just that part of it composed of friends, laughed. But even so, in the original medium in which these stories and sketches existed � ink on paper � it was all subpar. Whereas NYC writers read as though it were a death march through the vocables that they were making for your sake, reader, yet one feels some basic comfort with the written as written. As if reading were not a bad habit to be denied, not something to be negated in performance. Maybe this is what we feel is so often wrong with LA writing � this urge to please or shock immediately. It is the sign of an unconscious cultural fear of being caught reading.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Some people can good cope with their problems, also so hard problem like hair loss, balding. They do net using hair replacement or hair transplant, and living happy with their bald head!

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