tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post1739603508874750985..comments2024-01-28T03:56:39.351-08:00Comments on TOM CLARK: Gag Reflex: Federico GarcĂa Lorca: Paisaje de la multitud que vomita (Anochecer en Coney Island)Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger12125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-83231195562192319762015-04-21T04:23:58.127-07:002015-04-21T04:23:58.127-07:00Quite beautiful.
Really does bring this round fu...Quite beautiful. <br /><br />Really does bring this round full circle.<br /><br />(Those threads do keep getting more and more tangled, as we roll along, and things -- lives -- inexorably grow further complicated, and seem less and less coherent...)TChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-6093576236945904912015-04-21T04:01:20.109-07:002015-04-21T04:01:20.109-07:00Ah, Cardiff..now you *are* bringing back memories....Ah, Cardiff..now you *are* bringing back memories..it's a strange thing but if you're an immigrant it's easier to associate with Wales or Scotland or Ireland. One would never dare, on the other hand, of calling oneself English! (one of the advantages of dual nationality is that one can always get away from the shame you talk about).<br /><br />And so, the blood still races when Wales crush England in the rugby!<br /><br />I love those old piers. On Sundays we used to go to a dark one (what else in the dark country) at Penarth.<br /><br />My reflections (with your permission..it's okay, you don't have to post it):<br /><br />At Penarth pier, as a young boy, you look down through the planks to the sea; the movement of the world, the slow rocking against the fragile creation of human hands. Old people shuffle past you, from another world, death on their purple lips. It seems like this moment is forever: memory is the stillness of the soul in the world. Snow clears, the frost bites back from the windowpanes, seasons turn and wisdom escapes you. This series of attachments hidden, like an underground stream, the fabric of our lives woven from far too many various threads to have any coherence.billoohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10716970909272480118noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-21449973566579000792015-04-21T03:10:15.125-07:002015-04-21T03:10:15.125-07:00KK was mad beyond Spike Milligan's maddest dre...KK was mad beyond Spike Milligan's maddest dreams (fortunately for Spike Milligan).<br /><br />On the gimcrack holiday resorts, perhaps the essence of what we have been talking about might be distilled from some of the off-season images in this set from <a href="http://tomclarkblog.blogspot.com/2012/07/wooden-boy-sea-view.html" rel="nofollow">Llandudno</a>...<br /><br />... and as the shades of evening come down... our conversation, and MamboZ's great photos, also put me in mind of the twilight-reflection passage in this classic CI "artfilm":<br /><br /><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NkJVtA052k0" rel="nofollow">Little Fugitive: Nightfall scene</a><br /><br />And for CI docu-history (caveat: this vid has "freakshow" content post-8:00):<br /><br /><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSF8I2tDdy0" rel="nofollow">Coney Island of the 1940s</a><br /><br />Compare-and-contrast Vomiting Multitudes (transAtlantic version): brilliant anthropological study of Cardiff wildlife, seen through the lens of a researcher from "outside" (i.e. from Poland -- not that the Poles aren't wild party animals "in their own right" but...):<br /><br /><a href="http://tomclarkblog.blogspot.com/2014/04/a-guide-to-men.html" rel="nofollow">A Guide to Men</a>TChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-73485242457422715782015-04-21T02:36:39.211-07:002015-04-21T02:36:39.211-07:00Tom, the Kinski anecdote sounds like something Spi...Tom, the Kinski anecdote sounds like something Spike (Milligan) would come up with!<br /><br />Only been to Wivenhoe but, yes, those small places are quite nice.<br /><br />I don't know what people actually did in Colchester-except get drunk or dream of escape (perhaps joining the army was a way of escape). <br /><br />"once a .." that reminds of a series that I've always been meaning to watch: Disappearing World (Granada). Only now perhaps it's not just indigenous or traditional societies that are disappearing.billoohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10716970909272480118noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-50978678602491971612015-04-20T22:33:02.778-07:002015-04-20T22:33:02.778-07:00Chicago was the epicentre certainly, the size of t...Chicago was the epicentre certainly, the size of the black community made it a major factor in the city, and there were clear neighbourhood demarcations and divisions; streets across which, after dark, no black person dared venture.<br /><br />I had a job which took me deep into the heart of the South Side, a black area where I was constantly aware of not belonging.<br /><br />Other big cities of the interior of the country of course had their own sizeable black communities, Detroit, St Louis, Kansas City in particular.<br /><br />Oklahoma has lately been in the news due to a "reserve" (pay-to-play) cop "accidentally" -- and fatally -- shooting a black man.<br /><br />A friend who grew up there has commented, apropos this post, that at the amusement parks in the Tulsa of his youth, there was no black "talent" of the sort I've mentioned here. <br /><br />Possibly a rose-tinted memory.<br /><br />Racial mistrust and tension remains a continual negative element in American urban life.<br /><br />On the somewhat gentler subject of Essex coastal villages, at the time I've spoken of I was living in Brightlingsea, once a thriving fishing village, by then somewhat depressive, never developed to the degree that went on in those highway-to-heaven stops up the road -- Frinton, where the Butlins was, and Clacton, a nearby "gated community" for the ersatz swells. <br /><br />Sad places, those. <br /><br />Ah, Colchester, home to the storied military prison.<br /><br />Klaus Kinski told the harrowing yet hilarious tale of his military career -- an unwilling teenage recruit in the German army at the end of the war, when equipment was scarce, he was (or so he claimed) issued women's clothing in lieu of a proper uniform, and, at first sight of Allied soldiers, surrendered on the spot... and soon found himself in, of all places, Colchester.TChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-4695998524018079502015-04-20T21:05:47.575-07:002015-04-20T21:05:47.575-07:00Well, school and home were about 3 miles away (as ...Well, school and home were about 3 miles away (as a kid I had no idea of distances-and still don't!..a bit of Bronk there for you).<br /><br />Butlins! Jesus! there's a blast from the past! For us that was a treat of sorts (S. Wales wasn't particularly rich). I've got to say: I still love the greasy chips (sorry!).<br /><br />But there was something odd about that place and I've never really thought abut it until your post. This will make me sound like a miserable bastard, but all that fake happiness was like the sickly sweet candyfloss-which for some odd reason is also called cotton candy in the land of the pure.<br /><br />Frigid grey waves..wasn't Frinton-on Sea by any chance? The waves never moved there (I want my money back!). I lived-if that's the word- in Colchester for three years and now-and-then visited these depressing places (lots of retirement homes, if I remember correctly. Called, rather cruelly by some of the locals, the highway to heaven.<br /><br />Tom, what you describe, though, sounds truly ghastly, if not horrific. Was that just Chicago or do you think other places were like that as well?<br /><br />billoohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10716970909272480118noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-14033241410607928062015-04-20T07:37:31.601-07:002015-04-20T07:37:31.601-07:00Were you at school near there? I have a dim recoll...Were you at school near there? I have a dim recollection of that resort park being the product of an unhappy Welsh holiday which caused Billy Butlin to resolve to return and fancy things up a bit.<br /><br />Something about the coastal holiday resorts of the British Isles, ineffably forlorn.... the rows of wee bide-a-wee cottages... the greasy chips. The inevitable water slide.<br /><br />I dwelt some years on the Essex coast in a village that "boasted" several of those features. The tepid sunshine, frigid grey waves, bracing (biting actually) North Sea air & c.<br /><br />Just up the road there was a Butlins camp, a sort of more expensive do-over of those same "classic" features, all steeped of course in a steady flow of drink.<br /><br />I grew up in the broad shadow of one of the classic oldtime amusement parks, Riverview in Chicago. It had many of the same "thrill" rides that were found at Coney Island -- the giant rollercoaster at Riverview was called "The Bobs". <br /><br />I remember Coney Island as squalid and dirty. I remember Riverview as squalid, dirty and barbarous. Perhaps American barbarity of that epoch increased as one advanced into the general darkness of the interior.<br /><br />Riverview had "freak" shows that troubled my youthful conscience.<br /><br />The park was a lurid racist circus. The freaks were, typically, black. I particularly recall a black woman, bare to the waist, holding a baby... with her third arm.<br /><br />Perhaps the most popular attraction at Riverview was an "amusement" called, frankly enough, "Dunk the N--r".<br /><br />For 50 cents (this was the costliest "amusement" in the park) one was given a half dozen baseballs to fling at a black man in a cage. The target. He would be sitting in a sort of bucket seat affixed to a sling, over a tank full of incredibly filthy water. His job was to incite you to anger by brazen taunting. In front of him was a sort of gong, attached to a spring-action device that, upon direct hit, caused the sling to collapse and the bucket seat to dump the black man into the tank. That was plainly unpleasant for him. Urban legend had it that the cage-sitting job was one of the better-paying "positions" available to blacks in the city, bringing the sitters something like $300 a week.<br /><br />Kids came and went, unsupervised, all through the summer.<br /><br />Altogether it was, one might say, educational. Traumatic. Indelible. <br /><br />When I think of Riverview and Coney Island the routine shame of being an American intensifies for a moment, then lapses back again to the permanent dull throb.<br /><br />Possibly just high blood pressure, nothing so elevated as conscience.TChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-14194393932747222272015-04-20T03:55:37.983-07:002015-04-20T03:55:37.983-07:00Tom, I grew up living very close to a place called...Tom, I grew up living very close to a place called Barry Island. A bit naff but maybe similar to Coney. Ended up taking any visitor there (a bit like your cousins in your story!). <br /><br />I don't think I could ever go back to one of those places again..and don't even mention the words 'fun house'!billoohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10716970909272480118noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-12784436512287058192015-04-20T02:27:45.649-07:002015-04-20T02:27:45.649-07:00Yes, and unbelievably enough, he's become not ...Yes, and unbelievably enough, he's become not only a national celebrity, but to many a hero.<br /><br />Personally, I'd prefer to venerate and protect a pig. They're a lot prettier, not to mention smarter.<br /><br />American prestige always manages to come up looking an awful lot like just another ugly blemish on history.<br /><br />Nostalgic fondness for "time-honoured" cultural rituals -- up against common sense, dignity, hygiene, respect for animals, and the natural revulsion that makes people gag when violently disgusted... er, change "people" to "foreigners".<br /><br />Some Jersey relatives dragged me to Coney Island once. Distant relatives they were, cousins in fact, they talked with the strangest accent; I could make out only the occasional word. This was in the 1940s, before I had achieved the age of consent -- a virtual innocent. <br /><br />At a concessions stand one of these putatively well meaning relatives bought me a long stick with a tacky puff of pinkish frosted sugar attached to one end ("cotton candy"). Somehow I dutifully consumed it, everything but the stick that is.<br /><br />My mistake that. If I'd simply eaten the stick and thrown away the frosted sugar puff gunk when no one was looking, I might have avoided becoming ill on the way back from that momentous adventure.<br /><br />At least no pig had to die in order to suck me into the swirling maelstrom of the vomiting multitude, from which, it is to be feared, there is finally no escape.TChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-36216453252757063452015-04-19T23:01:22.598-07:002015-04-19T23:01:22.598-07:00Motivated by the prestige. Good grief!Motivated by the prestige. Good grief!billoohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10716970909272480118noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-47136333636814234952015-04-19T08:56:18.912-07:002015-04-19T08:56:18.912-07:00Not to mention a shot of mustard.Not to mention a shot of mustard.TChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-12450198764574435952015-04-19T08:42:02.480-07:002015-04-19T08:42:02.480-07:00What an array of crazy. I loved the giant slide - ...What an array of crazy. I loved the giant slide - and I also loved Nathan's, just not 100 at a time. I read Poet in New York when I was a freshman at Columbia having mystical visions. 30 years later I learned that I was in the same dorm room that Lorca stayed in. That's worth at least one hot dog.Hiltonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04497545378045907642noreply@blogger.com