Belief By The Yard

 Miklos Onucsan, Self-Portrait By The Yard (detail), laser-cut wood beam, 2010



      Last Monday as my wife lay dying (we didn’t know it at the time; she has since recovered, thank heaven), I was ensconced (voluntarily) in an aerie/office pod high in Philadelphia’s  skyline, viewing obliquely (through two glass walls) an ugly “art by the yard” corporate collection painting showing the late Andy Warhol with his hands bound, his mouth covered by a gag.  

  

     In the midst of two long job interviews for part-time underemployment,  which I was ultimately denied after a series of weird conversations replete with  fulsome serial compliments and repeated requests for assurances of immediately-if-not-sooner availability, I didn’t mention “Andy Gagged” at the time.  


         Instead, I stuck to my plain pilgrim’s tale, which hasn’t changed for interview purposes since my last company was sold several years ago, and I fell amongst what they call these days the “eat what you kill” crowd.” 

            

    Since that sale, however,  I can honestly and accurately attest that my professional skills have remained highly honed and my judgement has grown more acute, based on: (a) additional and broader life and work  experience; and (b) Not Yet Being Senile (although I have previously encountered some possibly senile lawyers and businessmen who were still devilishly effective in their work).

      This job, which paid less than I usually charge and am used to making,  interested me because I would like again to work on a regular schedule among colleagues I might enjoy knowing for a business that will pay me without haggling, dunning, forcing the issue.
 

  I finally realized, though (at the exact time I learned that my wife was being rushed into emergency surgery) that  despite what the lovely agency woman who  sends me on these fool's errands had been telling  me, my so-called interviews were merely pretexts for some entity in Human Resources, Human Capital or Talent Acquisition (several of the current noms de guerre given to the ruthless corporate function formerly known simply as Personnel) to be able to Tick A Box evidencing that meaningful consideration had been given to hiring an “Old Person” for the job.   Oh well – you can’t time your Epiphanies.

Tim Hardin (1941-1980)



    During Monday’s (and the rest of the week’s) driving time fugue states, which arrived between school transport and hospital visits, Tim Hardin’s remarkable song “Reason To Believe”  regularly came to visit  my mind, each time sketching its aching ambiguities there.  Hardin died old while still quite young a long time ago now, though I remember hearing the news of his passing clearly and being sad about it.   The love of life that must have led him to write such an original, heartbroken work, and the pained regret of the song’s realizations, never leave you after you’ve heard the song once.  


   My wife told me about seeing Hardin perform when she was in high school (sadly, she said, he was in a sorry state of insobriety and disarray -- his mordant humor – if that’s what it was – notwithstanding) at the late, great Main Point in Bryn Mawr.  The club site on Lancaster Avenue, a place of glorious memories, is now a recession-destroyed former photography studio.   Every morning I pass it driving my daughter to school and I always remember my first visit there in August 1969 when my friend Anne Schwab from Wynnewood took me to see Magic Sam, the inspired Chicago blues guitarist, perform there. (I've been told by deep blues aficionados actually seeing a Magic Sam performance was akin to sighting  a rare celestial object.  He really was terrific.)

 

Magic Sam (1937 - 1969)



   In the quiet submerged rage that formed over the week's days and nights, I thought also about  Sonny Bono’s song “Laugh At Me” (both Sonny’s and Mott The Hoople’s versions), wondering how we’ve arrived at a corporate America that is so dysfunctional that people are actually paid professional salaries to waste hours of their own and other people’s time asking fake, pointless questions under false pretenses in pantomime conversations when short and precious life should be about asking real questions and thinking hard about what the answers might possibly be.  


  Departing the interview premises after three and a half  parched, empty hours, I asked my final interlocutor whether  I might take a look at the “Andy Gagged” painting.  I wanted to make sure that the image was what it appeared to be and also learn the identity of the painter whose gifts snagged the interest and purchasing power of the corporate art acquisition expert.  


   Inspecting the label and painting more closely, I was unfamiliar with the artist’s name.  Later, searching through Google Images, I found no  reproduction of the work, although I did see a lot of  crude and unpleasant bondage pictures  that oddly projected more art, purpose and power  than inept, pathetic and false “Andy Gagged.”   

  My wife's health is improving daily, the most important thing, and my daughter's spray-painted black plastic sheet canvas, which will soon be decorated with major fluorescence,  is taped to the driveway waiting for Berwyn Banksy to create Art.  


  I sincerely apologize for all the parenthesis-framed clauses in this post.  It’s something I usually try to avoid, but somehow they seem to mimic the on-ramps/ off-ramps/ roadblocks/detours that have landmarked my life  this whole nutty week.  


  I recall many instances reading (usually, I think, in the Sunday New York Times or the Village Voice) the expression/cliché:   “the banality of evil.”   It always made me uncomfortable, seeming at once smug, useless, conspiratorial, collaborative and .   .   .  .  banal.    Evil exists – I have seen it -- and doesn’t seem the least bit banal to me.

Miklos Onucsan, Self-Portrait By The Yard, laser-cut wood beam, 2010


 

Magic Sam: She Belongs To Me (link)