K.S. ANTHONY: 2012

29 July 2012

Sitting in Poetry (original)

You probably should have just stayed in the corner with the reference books, giggling at Anguished English or reading the last words of famous people--Poe, Stonewall Jackson, some 18th century French aristocrat--before they died. But you didn't. Instead, you went to other corner of the bookstore where they keep Literary Criticism And Essays and Poetry because Malcolm Cowley suddenly popped into your head and you wanted to see if they had a copy of Exile's Return that you had no real plans of purchasing.

Why do these sections get tucked away in the corner? No one is ever in them. More people buy copies of Marie Claire or Men's Health than Sonnets From the Portuguese, though the fair Miss Browning probably holds a higher sales record overall.

As you step into Literary Criticism And Essays(home of essays by Orwell, the Fugitive Poets, and William F. Buckley, Jr.), you notice a brunette, maybe 25, sitting in Poetry.

"Sitting in Poetry" would be a good name for a class at Wellesley, you think.

She does not notice you. She is reading something: a slim book. You wonder what it is she's reading, but you also want to appear nonchalant. You don't want it to seem like you came over to hit on an obviously sensitive, intelligent girl who reads poetry. That would be boorish. You realize that you're wearing a polo shirt and chinos and you probably look like the kind of guy who makes a bet with his friends that he can sleep with the girl who is Sitting In Poetry and then break her heart. At the end of this movie, you realize that you actually like her, but by then it's too late: Flip, your best friend, tells her about the bet and she never speaks to you again...until you run into her later on in the summer when you...

What was the name of that movie, anyway?

She notices you fumbling around with some book in Literary Criticism And Essays. She looks up, your eyes meet, she smiles slightly and then looks back down at her book.

Pablo Neruda. She must be reading Pablo Neruda. Women love Pablo Neruda.

Maybe you should break the ice, say something off the cuff like, "I visited Neruda's house when I was in Chile last summer," and even though you've never been to Chile, you could explain it later, after you've been dating for awhile and it would become a big in-joke between the two of you. You'd be having dinner--tapas--with friends and you'd start telling Flip and McKenzie (Flip's girlfriend that he met in Aspen last winter or something) some story and Alexis (which is what you've named Sitting in Poetry) would chime in, innocently, and say something like, "was this like the time you were in Chile?" And you both would laugh while Flip and McKenzie sort of smile and order another pitcher of sangria.

Instead, you furrow your brow and put down the copy of shitty writing edited by Dave Eggers before she sees you and wonders if you're as big a douche as the guys who read Bukowski or Henry Rollins and fill cheap notebooks with lines about whores, beer, and coffee.

You're name-dropping authors to yourself and you feel pretentious.

She's pretty. Her eyes are probably nothing like the sun, but you want to defy the bard and say they are. And they could be, but at the moment they're locked onto the page and she's biting her lower lip, her fingers slowly peeling back the pages. She's wearing a t-shirt and jeans, but she probably wears gauze dresses with simple floral prints in the summer when she's sipping chardonnay and reading a dog-eared copy of Emily Dickinson while she picnics by herself under an old tree that her grandfather planted when she was born.

Then again, there are probably no trees in the city that anyone's grandfather planted unless he was working for the Department of Parks and Recreation.

You peek back over the shelf. She's closed the book and you see the cover. Holy shit. It's Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair. Neruda. You knew it. You wonder if this makes you a jerk or if it makes you her soul-mate. You're pretty sure it's the latter. You try to think of something clever to say. As you're trying to remember a fragment of something, anything by Neruda, you accidentally knock over a stack of books on a small table bearing paper signs that say "WRITERS ON WRITING" and "STAFF PICKS." You're an ass. You kneel down to start picking up the books and you notice two pale arms in front of you, helping you pick up the copies of Ray Bradbury and Stephen King that have fallen. She has placed the copy of Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair on its side on a bottom shelf and she smiles at you as you mumble something like "thank you" and haphazardly put the books back on the table where someone has left an empty Starbucks cup. She hands you one last copy of On Writing and smiles again before she picks up her copy of Twenty Love Poems and your heart begins to sing its own song of despair. She walks to the cashier and you watch as she pays in cash and leaves.

You hope that she will turn around and look back at you one last time and you promise that if she does, you will talk to her. Ask her out for coffee. See if she wants to grab a drink. Say something brilliant. Read the poems that she never shows anyone. Kiss her beneath the tree that her grandfather planted and fall asleep on a wine-warm April afternoon.

She doesn't turn around. And already you know that she has given you no further thought.

You find yourself alone, sitting in poetry.

Love is so short. Forgetting is so long.

20 May 2012

Right, so I guess I have some catching up to do.

 2011 ended. By November, that was the best I could have hoped for. It had been an almost entirely bad year. I had a few stalwart friends who acted as my shrouds and stays and plenty of fair-weather friends who paid lip service to the idea of friendship.

By late 2011, R&S--one of the worst ideas I've ever had--was up to several hundred (600 or so at that point) supporters. If any good came out of the organization, it's in the fact that I made some--literally a handful--of very good friends. That fact aside, it was an albatross.

The photos to the left were taken at a private party in the basement of The Standard Hotel. The band pictured is Camp Freddy: an L.A.-based outfit composed of seemingly everyone who has had any kind of impact in Rock and Roll in the last 30 years.

On the left is Steve Stevens, on bass is, I believe, the former bassist from Jane's Addiction (whose name escapes me, I was never a fan of the band), Courtney Love, and Billy Duffy of the Cult.

Whatever one might say about Courtney Love, the only thing I know for certain is that she can sing. Her cover of Cheap Trick's Surrender was one of those moments that felt absolutely historic. I don't mean to romanticize her, but there's something painfully tragic about her presence. Watching her on stage is like watching a woman composed primarily of scar tissue who has, somehow, managed to do what many in her profession have failed to do: survive their job.

There were quite a few surprises that night: covers of Billy Idol, The Cult, The Sex Pistols, and Deep Purple (Glenn Hughes showed up and sang Highway Star). It was strange, to say the least.




 This is Sebastian Bach, the former singer of the seminal 80's/90's band Skid Row. It can be very difficult to get a picture of Bas with a camera phone because Bas moves far faster than shutter speed.

It was Bas who got my friend Sarah-Sol and I into this gig. How I know Sebastian Bach is a long, strange story, but he has, as I am constantly saying, been one of the most consistently decent people to me over the last year or so.

Distractions like the Camp Freddy gig and Bas' shows with Steve Stevens at The Iridium kept me from losing my mind during the fall semester and, indeed, during much of the spring semester.

Beyond that, it's been a long time since I had a straight male friend. I realize that sounds very strange, but if you go to my other site, you'll see what I mean.
 Bas played a bunch of songs from his Skid Row days, though he released an album last year that showcases his voice as well as anything he did 20 years ago. Still, people want to hear "Youth Gone Wild" and "18 & Life" and "I Remember You." I have no idea how many times he's had to sing "Youth Gone Wild," but I'm sure it's too many.

It's weird to see friends with such public lives. I cannot fathom what it's like to live your life under the microscope of not only press coverage, but the infinite needs and demands of the public to whom, for better or worse, provide you with the audience for your talent. Sebastian Bach has literally been a "rock star" for his entire adult life. How do you know who your friends are? How do you know who you can trust? How do you not see the entire world as one big, weird joke?

Then again, perhaps that's exactly what the world is. 

I spent more time binding--or rather rebinding--books, mostly for friends. FSF is still, for whatever, reasons, my favorite writer to rebind, partially because there are so many cheap paper copies of his work that deserve better bindings and partially because, well...beautiful words deserve beautiful bindings.

This is a rebind of a paper edition of The Beautiful and Damned that I did for a friend in hardcover Florentine wraps and quarter calf-skin. The end papers are also Florentine.

 If you're going to have a copy of The Prince, it might as well be in Florentine paper, lest the ghosts of Machiavelli and the Medicis haunt you for allowing ugly Penguin editions to disgrace your shelves.

I gave this copy to my consigliere as part of my gratitude for her good counsel over the last year. It's important to have good counsel. Ask King Lear.


I want that glib and oily art/
To speak and purpose not; since what I well intend,/
I'll do't before I speak. (1.1.227)

Fall semester came to close and as it did, I spent a few nights seeing Bach play a few sets with Steve Stevens at The Iridium.



So ended the fall of 2011. My GPA was high enough to land me on the Dean's List and my sanity, miraculously, remained intact. 

 For my great-great-great grandmother's 200th birthday, I visited her grave in New Bedford, MA and stayed at a small bed and breakfast that had, unfortunately, some very alarming clown paintings in the bathroom.

I don't have any kind of clown phobia, but if I did, it certainly would have been preyed upon by paintings like the one you see on the left.

New Bedford is a dead little town, surviving on the remains of a fishing industry and tourists who come to see the whaling museum. It's far cry from its place in the whaling industry of the 19th century. My ancestors' portraits hang in the museum, but whatever legacy and fortune they have is now only found in blood.
Still room for one more. It occurred to me that there were no graves less than a hundred years old. 

"And, as for me, if, by any possibility, there be any as yet undiscovered prime thing in me; if I shall ever deserve any real repute in that small but high hushed world which I might not be unreasonably ambitious of; if hereafter I shall do anything that, upon the whole, a man might rather have done than to have left undone; if, at my death, my executors, or more properly my creditors, find any precious MSS. in my desk, then here I prospectively ascribe all the honour and the glory to whaling; for a whale-ship was my Yale College and my Harvard."

--Herman Melville, Moby Dick


Death to the living, long life to killers, success to sailors' wives, and greasy luck to whalers.

150 years ago, you'd have seen tall ships and barrels of whale oil. Now...trawlers and tugs.
After New Bedford, I went a bit sea-mad, and as the spring semester came to a close, I started hanging around the tall ships that serve as tourist vessels that sail the Hudson. Later, I learned to sail on a Colgate 26: a light, fast keelboat. As I write this, I am still suffering from dock rock: the curious feeling of seasickness while on land. I'm fine on a boat, but sitting still on terra firma makes nauseous. Blame it on the tourists.

"Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off—then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball. With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to the ship. There is nothing surprising in this. If they but knew it, almost all men in their degree, some time or other, cherish very nearly the same feelings towards the ocean with me."

--Herman Melville, Moby Dick

The spars and rigging of The  Peking: one of the largest barques ever built. A steel-hulled behemoth.

The schooner America 2.0, modeled after an America's cup winner from the early days
of that race. Built mainly to try to compete with....

Clipper City. 158 feet long with masts going up 120 feet, this is NY's largest sailing vessel.

The schooner Adirondack, seen from Clipper City's deck. 


Liberty, seen under the reeflines of Clipper City at sunset.

The new Freedom Tower is now taller than the Empire State Building. The glass looks almost obsidian, though this picture doesn't pay it justice. 
Some other schooner--not sure which--out on the Hudson. This might be the Shearwater.

It's enough to give you some semblance of hope. Sometimes. 

21 March 2012

Airports

I always fall in love a little when I am at an airport.

There's something about the sense of possibility--the sudden epiphany of transience, of lives intertwined, of paths crossing--that makes an airport the perfect place to fall in love for a minute, or if your flight is delayed, a few hours.

You could be heading home to a perfectly secure life: know the way the new leather upholstery in your cart left at the airport will smell or the way the stairs will creak or the key will stick in the lock when you finally slide out of the black vinyl seat of a cab and up your front steps, but none of that trumps the intoxicating anonymity and the feeling that the world is wide when you're at an airport.

You pass strangers, hoping to catch someone's eye. You search their faces, looking for something you recognize: a sudden pursed smile, eyes that pause long enough to glance and take your breath before you can mouth hello. A warmth. A humanity. A mutuality. A belonging that you did not know before, but suddenly feel with all of your heart as though it was packed and folded up with the gym clothes that you never wore to the hotel gym because you never even went.

The airport is not like the street. Everyone has been x-rayed, searched. They've paid for a ticket. How bad could they be? The airport is like a great baptism. Sure, there are unpleasant people--the scowling, angry ones who sigh deep sighs and dramatically stare at their watches and look back at you in line at the gate or security, hoping to find some acknowledgement, some camaraderie in shared frustration--but for the most part, the airport, left to those who have been given the rare gift of time and patience either by their design or amused Fortune, is a place where the heart has space to wander and to wonder.