Chickamauga (1962)

Meet Marlon Brando: A Rare Documentary, circa 1965

Conspiracy theory and inner life

I don't believe in conspiracy theories. In my experience, people are too sloppy and too prone to mistakes to make a good conspiracy work for very long. Human nature and my readings in history do not inspire that kind of confidence.

But.

What if you wanted to turn everyone in the world into a soulless automaton. Say, you're Doctor Evil, and you want to make money by making them work for you even as they fall into debt. 

The Romans, as always, have the original model for achieving this: bread and circuses. Keep the people safe from hunger, make them sleepy and sated for starters. Then you put on a helluva show. Nothing that will make the populi think, but an Event, based on sensation, excitement.

Well, you tried that. It worked pretty well, espcially when electronic media invaded the home. In all our self regard now, we forget how horrified a lot of smart people were about television when it first came 

Your first step would be to destroy their inner life. Their capacity to reflect, dream, come up with fantasies, ruminate and think. 

Days of Heaven — Sam Shepard

Fake isn't what it used to be

When I first traveled to Paris, seeing McDonald's on the Champs-Elysees bruised my tender illusions. Then I grew up, and realized that if the French wanted a Big Mac, they had a right to it, just like the kids in Boise or Dubuque.

Of course, I didn't go there. Not until, about a year into my stay in Paris, a genuine expatriate invited me to meet him at the place. No one revoked my Francophile card. In fact, the place was packed with Frenchies of all ages, something you couldn't say about the other restaurants on the Champs.

And upon reflection, McDonald's, KFC, and even Haagen Dasz are examples of globalization I can understand. They provide the benighted masses of Europe with delicacies that their own cultures -- no matter how fertile -- cannot.

In the 1980s and 1990s, coffee culture took off in the US. That was a fine thing, too. Back in the dark ages, marijuana was easier to come by than espresso. You had to earn it. Surly baristas, as I learned to call them, would glare at you darkly as they pulled at alarmingly complex machines. Perhaps they were composing lyrics, or trying to recall Pound's XXX canto, or just hung over. Cafes were filled with low rent bohemians, sketching, writing, reading, or pretending, too, anyway.

It was a lot like Paris: bad bathrooms, lousy service, indifferent hygiene, pretension swirling around thicker than the clove cigarette smoke clouding the air.

I loved it.

Those places all reminded me of Le Village Ronsard, a cafe in Paris that I tried, through regular visits and mighty acts of imagination, to convert into my version of Les Deux Magots. The regular waiter, who looked exactly like Harry Dean Stanton in a red vest and soiled white shirt, would bring out a morning cafe creme or the afternoon pression with a minimum of fuss and a smaller amount of cordiality.

Instead of resenting his impersonality, I honored it. None of that, "Hi, my name's Rainbeau, may I take your order?" nonsense. No pretense. There to do his job, and he did it. If he was moody, hell, shouldn't anyone be entitled to a bad day? I can't remember his ever being cheerful,  mais alors, he had to serve all those jerk ricans, American tourists. That'd bring anyone down.

Insanity on my part, mixed with masochism. But an afternoon at Le Village Ronsard was filled with drama. When Henri finally deigned to greet us with a merely chilly bon jour, instead of growling a glacial one, it was a joyful day. We, whether either of us liked it or not, had a relationship

Smart people took note of Parisian cafes and their messy American cousins. They took the cafe concept, streamlined it, juiced up the coffee with a  few extra hundred milligrams of caffeine to make it that much more addictive, threw in some familiar sweets, ditched the alcohol and standardized the back room operations. Thus was Starbucks delivered unto a ready nation.

And the nation saw and drank venti caramel lattes, and, lo, it was good.

In the meantime, Ralph Lauren, (born Ralph Lifshitz in the Bronx) had been packaging and streamlining Saville Row (among other inspirations).

Dallas, on TV earlier, showed rich Americans living in copies of wealthy British manors.

That was usual. I understood all of that. Real/fake. Authentic/copy. Sort of like what the Japanese did with cars, motorcycles, and cameras.

Then it got weird.

The British Royal family got caught wearing Ralph Lauren. They also moved into new places, houses they had built for themselves, places that weren't old castles dripping with atmosphere and soul. Manors that looked exactly like mansions some nouveau riche Texan would erect in River Oaks.

And then Starbuck's opened in Paris. Several, in fact. With happy-ish Parisians patronizing them.

They're real, but not genuine. But is that even the right question to ask -- can a Starbucks be authentic?Unless you consider that its essence is that of a smoothed-over copy. Can't fakes, or copies, be real -- as real in their replication -- as the real?

As real as Euro-Disney, which is a copy of an American version of a German version of a fairy tale?

And as languages die, and cultures fade, as eccentricities are drowned in pharmaceuticals and pieces of life are packaged for lifestyles, what can you make of it, or consider how to resist? Or is that idea of resisting and boycotting just posturing and impossible, and in the end, not helpful towards preserving -- what, exactly? The old Ronsard cafe, which was just itself (no mattered what fevered nostalgia I brought to it). An un-ironic diner which I would self-consciously appreciate, thus destroying it's very un-ironic presence?

Or just sit back, plug in, take in the AC, dip my scone, swirl my biscotti, and wonder.

Wonder how long it will be until the form, aesthetics and culture of the shopping mall finally conquers everything.

The Worst Sound...

The drone of lawnmowers on Sunday afternoon.

Hommage a lettres de moscou

Inspired by Vincent's Moscow shots, I took this in the Paris Metro.

James Rhodes - Etude for the Left Hand Op. 36

Families, part one

As a kid, you suspect everyone else's family is better than yours. At least, I did.

Growing up, the other families seemed less restrictive, or better regulated. More fun. Even when you encountered families demonstrably worse than yours, you still harbored the belief that your family was defective, strange, weird, and boring while everyone else's was better than to good old mom, dad, and sis.

Want proof? Matt and I were good friends in the seventh and eighth grades We were in the same Boy Scout troop.  We bonded over Tolkien, big time. Despite sharing my obsession with Elvish, he was smart, good at math and science, sharp in English. He looked a bit like Henry Kissinger -- same glasses, same curly hair, but in his case it grew wild. 

Unlike my other friends, he kept his address secret for a long time.

Once he invited me over, I understood why. His front yard was a dried-up desert, the lawn just a vague, brown memory. Their living room was jammed with crap, and the curtains never opened. I didn't -- and don't -- care too much about tidy lawns or clean front rooms, so that I even noticed this to begin with shows you how bad it was, relative to the other, nicer places in the neighborhood.

Matt's mother was an alcoholic who'd croak out a cheery, Maryland accented hello when you walked in. She only changed out of her quilted bathrobe to visit to the Three Kings bar in a strip mall. 

Did I offer thanks that I didn't have to clear out empty whisky bottles to make a path through the house to the backyard? Or that cigarette smoke didn't sting my eyes when I sat in the kitchen back home? Or consider that it was maybe a good thing for me that my parents had regular habits, drank maybe once a year and then not in front of me? 

No. 

I envied Matt. I wondered if I could move in. He could stay up as late as he wanted. Eat what he wanted. He just had to fix it himself. He had a trampoline in his backyard, and no one bugged us about safety when we jumped on it. He didn't have a dad to bug him about mowing the lawn. 

He didn't have a dad, or a lawn.

His sister was older, and used to smack him around for fun.

Better family, all the way around.

Eulogy for Michael Vigdorchek

I’m here to pay tribute to Michael Efimovich Vigdorchek, my father in law and one of the greatest men I’ve known.  He led his life with courage, with wisdom and with kindness and generosity.

Michael was born in Kursk, in the former Soviet Union. His father, Yefim, was a doctor so treasured by the wives of the local party bosses, that his medical talent probably saved his family from the Gulag. When the Second World War broke out, Michael and his mother were evacuated.  He often recalled that when the train they were riding on came under bombardment, his mother stood in the open doorway of the cattle car they were in to protect him from the shrapnel that was exploding next to their train.

He came back home to Kursk and became a brilliant student, earning perfect scores on his university entrance exams. Because of quotas aimed at excluding Jews from prestigious institutions, he wasn’t able to go to his first choice to study philosophy. Instead, he went to the Mining Institute and launched a brilliant career in geophysics.

On one geological expedition in the Siberian wilds, he stood between a bear and a young woman who was with his team. It was a brave and gallant act. And it would lead to his winning the hand of that young woman in marriage. His union with Elena, close, passionate and enduring, lasted for more than 60 years, right up to the time of his passing.

In many ways, Michael led a fine life in Leningrad. He traveled on more expeditions, published scientific books and papers, and established a stellar reputation for himself. From what I know, it sounds like a life full of laughter, culture, debates in the kitchen, visits to Georgia and Armenia, a time filled with friendship and achievement set to the music of Vysotsky and Okudjava.

A fine life, except that he had to live, with his wife and his daughter, in the shadow of a totalitarian state that casually murdered millions of its own citizens.

Back here in the US, we used to play a kind of mental game. We’d wonder how we’d act if we landed in a dictatorship, or we’d try predict how we’d behave if the Nazis invaded us.  Would we act like Solzhenitsyn? Or would we turn into collaborators into grubby informers who preferred safety to honor? Of course, you’d like to think you’d make the right choice. But you wonder.

Michael never had to wonder. He knew.

For him, with his courage and his nobility of spirit, I don’t even think it was a choice. He simply acted with integrity and bravery. He never compromised with the oppressive regime. Never joined the party. Never allowed himself the easy self-deception and hypocrisy which is the cement of an authoritarian state.

Instead, in the middle of his life and with everything to lose, he took a large risk. He put his name on a list applying to leave the Soviet Union. Just being on that list, at that time and in that place, was considered treason. It amounted to social suicide and put him in the spotlight of a vicious bureaucracy. He lost friends. He was separated from his family.

And Michael left with his wife and daughter to start a new life with nothing but a few suitcases.

When he emigrated, he – and the Soviet state, and his friends, and his family – all thought it would be forever. Permanent exile, with no return ticket. He renounced everything he owned and knew to be free. Still, he didn’t hesitate. He did not waver. He wanted to be free, and share that freedom with his wife and daughter.

This is courage of the highest order, although Michael would be embarrassed to hear me say it. And I know that I am among others who made the same choice. I salute all of you.

In his new country and in a new language, Michael had an extraordinarily successful career. He joined Marathon Oil, and through the rigors of corporate life and through booms and crashes, he rose high. His creativity, his ability to synthesize, to think made him valuable, respected and rewarded.

But his ambition wasn’t driven by a need to score some numbers or gratify his ego. He was too large a man for that. Instead, it was driven by his love for his family, for his wish to secure them a future and to establish a legacy for his grandchildren. To bring the people he loved most safety and delight.

It’s the great irony of his life that he would return to Russia, after all. And in a way that one of his favorite writers, Alexandre Dumas would have appreciated. Instead of a pariah, he arrived back to his native land as a kind of corporate Count of Monte Christo, staying in fine hotels, wined and dined by oligarchs, and even returning to his home town in a limousine.

Lesser men might have let themselves be seduced by all the temptations offered by Yeltsin’s Russia. Michael didn’t waver then, either. He took the measure of the ex-KGB guys and the hustlers, and said they were simply gangsters. He could have, if he had wished, picked up a flashy gold digging wife and a big shiny Mercedes – the way a lot of his colleagues did, or indulged himself with a big fat Rolex. Instead, he wore a Timex. He saved his money, did his job for Marathon very well, and came home with stories and a few souvenirs. He didn’t even give in to the minor temptation of hinting about what a big deal he’d become.

He retired, reluctantly. He fought his first round with cancer.

Then he blossomed into a poet, a kind of Houston Pushkin, writing hundreds of poems which speculate, provoke, philosophize – a second, unexpected flowering in his life.

Michael fought two more rounds with cancer. His wife, Elena was by his side the whole time. He only made two complaints about all the pain and the hell he with through with the disease. Once, he confided that he hated the burden his care put on Elena. The second time, that he found it challenging to be still. His was a life, after all, filled with travel and the eager search for new horizons. The rest of it, the radiation, the chemo, the scars, the pain, he would merely shrug.

If I were to list all the reasons I’m grateful to him and all the debts I owe him, we’d be here for days, if not weeks. So I’ll only mention the most important one: He is the father of the love of my life, Tanya. I’m thankful to fate that we’ve been blessed with two children. It’s my pleasure to see echoes and traces of Michael in his grandchildren, in the color of my daughter’s eyes and the shape of my son’s hands. I hope that their resemblance to him will extend and embrace his to his deeper qualities – his humanity, dignity, generosity and courage.

I’ll miss the long walks we took together, with me trying to keep up with his brisk pace over the five miles or so he’d put in every day. 

I’ll miss his ferocious intensity when he had something big to say, some urgent advice to give, and he’d lock you in with his eyes - and you knew then you had no choice but to listen to him.

I’ll miss the evenings we shared on a porch, watching the stars come out, and drinking red wine. Michael, in his basso profundo voice, would quote Griboyedev, speculate about Nostradamus,  debate foreign policy, joke, share stories.

I’ll miss his counsel. I’ll miss his laughter which could be big and robust or darkly sardonic.

I’ll miss his radiant delight in his granddaughter’s paintings and his grandson’s music.

In every important way, he was a second father to me. My own father, who loves and deeply respects Michael as well, often told me how lucky I was to have such great in-laws and such a fine father in law. I knew then, and have always known, how right he was.

Michael loved all things French, and would appreciate that in French, father in law translates to “beau pére” or “handsome father.”  It’s very true. He was my handsome father in every way that counts.

He has left us. I hate to say goodbye to him. But I want to thank him for all his gifts, for the example of courage and integrity he set for my children and me – for his life filled with generosity and nobility.

Good night, and good rest, Michael.

Things that surprise me 2: that I am not in jail

I don't want to go into details, because I'm not sure the statute of limitations has run out.

This is water