RUDIMENTS 1151.

RUDIMENTS, PT. 1,151

(great matters, born)

Real simple. I was not looking

for anything really; just intent

on making my own way along

the scaffolding I'd been erecting,

upon which to pin the later

structure of my own life. I

didn't really know where any

of it was headed. It was maybe

1966, Winter, maybe December.

I'm not sure. As I said, I didn't

have a sure feed on what was

going on around me. Like it was

said by DeNiro  -  'I hear things.'

There were oddball reports about

society, coming out of strange

places. Dylan was in Australia,

talking about American baseball?

A transit strike in NYC, led by

some bizarre Irish guy, Michael

Quill? It was all brash effrontery.

-

And then, one day, sometime I

think in 1966, the first chink fell

into place. I had never been a

TV guy, hit and miss at most, I

was somewhere, and I saw on a

TV a very striking, white horse

mini-movie or something I didn't

know of. In some way was enough

to knock me out of a stupor I'd

been in. Something I couldn't place.

In those days, if you 'saw' something

broadcast you couldn't just hit a

'repeat' button, or tape or save it

for another look. Everything was

much more ephemeral. I had no

real clue what I'd just seen, and I

felt a little suckered and flabbergasted

too by the dumb simplicity of it all.

But, it was enough to have notched

me over, one section closer to my

newer reality.

-

I hesitate to admit what it was; in reality

 a very pedestrian Beatles early video,

or whatever it was to be called. Some

things about it, right off, that keeled

me : the use of the white horses in

such a setting, the strange 'destructive'

ending scene, out of the blue and, I

thought, rather nihilistic and missing

the point of the entire earlier part of

the clip. Anyone, after all, can destroy.

There was a certain paltry beauty to it

up until that point. In any case, I did

recognize everything, but it sang to

the rest of my mind somehow about

breaking out, seeing past the obvious,

realizing thought, grasping a greater

world  -  history and place. A past

legacy, with the old bricks, the

quizzical Beatle faces (quite the

ordinary turned somehow unordinary),

and the quickly-driven narrative with

strange place-words. A scene conjured

from nowhere. I realized anew that

'something' had me  -  I did not know

what it was, what it would be called,

nor to what it would take me, but I

immediately wanted to answer it.

-

Not to get carried away...it was, after

all, at another level no more than any

other entertainment industry rousting

brought forth to traduce the interested

public and drag them into yet another

buy of 'Product.' The Pop Industry at

work. In any case, there was something

other afoot here  -  multiple layers of

odd meaning that were calling to me,

I don't know where it came from, nor

whether it was of the pleasures and

details of ordinary life, or not; but

these guys had here done something:

like a bank safe, with the large

combination lock very near to clicking

open. Not there yet, but a few short

clicks away, those safe-lock clicks

the old mechanical doors used to

make. Inside? Untold riches about

to be opened?

-

What did any of this teach me? A year

later, a'slumming on the streets of

New York, this stuff was still in my head

and I'd joined the Revolution. I was intent

on the artistic idea that within the most

ordinary of objects and situations there

was great gold to be found. No one need

ever get all righteous or pouty over the

fixation of 'Art.' That 'Art' is nothing

but money-value placed upon it by

the usual tribal merchants and parasitic

traders who only 'call' it such for their

own filthy purposes of prestige and

profit, as if dealing dominoes or slaves.

No one ever addresses this, and the

fools in the street now sing instead about

manufactured media issues of rapacious

and acquisitory 'things.' If there was any

fortitude to this, or a felicity of purpose,

the tribal hens behind all of this would

be taken down first, and shot. But, alas,

street ignorance knows no bounds.

-

The connection then of creative fantasy

to everyday life was immediately

apparent to me in the streets that I

walked and the people I met. Everyone

was claiming, in their soulful and silent

way, to be something other than what 

they were. Had they only kept their own

fingers on their own steady pulses, and

caught the wave of constantly-streaming

importance and material, so much could 

be so different. We would not, I realized,

need to live as a society in the tired,

feebly-managed manner we did. A 

Golden Age loomed anew! Yet that stupid 

little video had touched the nerve, lit 

the wire, infused the corridor of all 

my later imaginings. From such small 

and trivial things are great matters born.