More Death: Andrew Wyeth

What is it about the week of January 16? Now news comes that Andrew Wyeth and John Mortimer, the father of Rumpole, both died this weekend. And I'm not feeling too well myself.
Wyeth was 91 years old, a refutation to the "live fast, die young" school of art. What makes Rembrandt Rembrandt and Hokusai "the old man mad with painting" was their ability to dive down deeper and deeper towards the great mysteries. Someone asked Hokusai about old age, and he said it was frustrating because he thought he was just starting to get pretty good; another 90 years, he said, and he might accomplish something. And Wyeth was in a line of great artists: father N.C., and his children, Jamie in particular, continue to do amazing things.

My favorite Wyeths have something human in them: Tom Carpenter in "That Gentleman", the hair on the back of Helga's neck, a dog squinting in the sun, Betsy standing in the snow by an old stone tower.

But what always amazed me, leaves me gobsmacked at the technical skill, was Wyeth's ability to paint inanimate objects-- a landscape, an empty room-- and invest it with so much personality. A lace curtain, a pair of boots, even a weather vane on top of a roof has a story that stepped out of the room just a moment before. How did he do that?
I'll never know, but in an interview last year, he did leave a useful note to etch into my skin: "People only make you swerve. I won’t show anybody anything I’m working on. If they hate it, it’s a bad thing, and if they like it, it’s a bad thing. An artist has to be ingrown to be any good."

"I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed or numbered."

The summer I was 11 or 12, Animal World with Bill Burrud was on CBS, and of course I watched that. Immediately after was another summer replacement show, a British series called The Prisoner, created by and starring Patrick McGoohan. And now Pat tells me Patrick McGoohan has died at age 80.
From the opening credits, I was entranced, stolen away to Faery by paranoid elves. I didn't understand half the things that were being said, like a kid overhearing an argument between grown-ups, but The Prisoner crawled into my bones and became part of my soul. Orwell had an intellectual understanding of the modern state in Animal Farm and 1984, but McGoohan understood it intuitively. "If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever."
1984 caught that in prose, Animal Farm has the power of fable, but The Prisoner was poetry. And this Winston Smith was an Irishman, a combination of anger and wit that was going to be a lot harder for Them to step on.
Apparently it started with an anecdote about a village populated by retired spies, a community of people who knew too many secrets for the government to ever let them out of its sight. You could tell your more literal minded friends that The Prisoner was a sequel to McGoohan's Danger Man series (Secret Agent over here). What was that line in the Johnny Rivers theme for Secret Agent? They've given you a number, and taken 'way your name.
What if the The Village had a sinister purpose? What if John Drake was taken prisoner, who knows by what side? Whose side was anyone on? An old naturalist Andre Gregory met told him that the modern metropolis was a model for the new concentration camp, where the prisoners police themselves and are very proud of the prison they've built around themselves.

It just occurred to me how often Number Six is a trickster hero, for all the storms of anger and secret agent fisticuffs: situation hopeless, no escape, keeping one step ahead of a crooked house and a sardonic smile that he saved for himself.

Sometimes it was "Invictus" staged by Dali, and sometimes the metaphor was more obvious. A Wild West episode was banned in America because Number Six's refusal to carry a gun might be seen as a rebuke to the war in Vietnam, which tells us more about Americans than it does about The Prisoner. The last episode descended into Magical Mystery Tour indulgence, but what the hell. The damage was already done.
All I knew, God break my bones but never bend me, was which side I was going to be on whenever forced to choose between bully or underdog, between the push-button mentality and the human act. I am not a number; I am a free man. And let them laugh. As Gordon Lightfoot suggested, if we cannot beat the Devil, we can try to give him a few unpleasant memories.

Who Watches the Watchmen?

I said what about my eyes?

"Keep them on the road."

I said what about my passion?

"Keep it burning."

I said what about my heart?

"Tell me what you hold inside it."

I said pain and sorrow.

He said, "Stay with it."

(Rumi)



Alan Moore and Dave Gibbon's Watchmen, the Citizen Kane of comic books, appears to have been turned into a beautiful film (though I'm a little vague as to whether the director, Zack Snyder, is the "visionary genius" mentioned in the trailer and not an "honest craftsman", since every shot is a computer enhanced re-creation of Gibbon's drawings and Moore's words.)
How do you explain to the uninitiated that Moore's Watchmen is sad and funny and horrific and haunting, that it is not for anyone under the age of 18, that it is one of those books that leave you forever changed, disturbed, unsettled? For my desert island library, I would prefer Moore's Promethea, but there's no denying that Watchmen is a masterpiece. It breaks your heart, but it's not an easily quoted book, because so much of the emotional impact of a given scene or dialogue depends on context, its connection with the rest.
I'm excited by the musical choices too-- Smashing Pumpkins' “The Beginning is the End is the Beginning” as good a theme for Rorschach as any, along with songs referenced in the original: "All Along the Watchtower", "Unforgettable", and I assume "Desolation Row".
Like everyone else who loves the book, and honors what Moore was trying to tell us, is worried that the film will simply illustrate the action sequences or spend its time tracking the doomsday plotline, too much Nixon and not enough Kitty Genovese.

In the original, the Watchmen's alternative history is only an interesting backdrop for the characters in the foreground. The heart of the story is in Rorschach's interview in prison and Jon and Laurie's conversation on Mars. That's a danger with almost any effects film, that the skills of the SFX crew can outrun the ability of the director and screenwriter to create a human being, and you wind up with monstrosities like Independence Day. If they keep Moore's script and let Rorschach be Rorschach, Watchmen could be the first superhero film to win and deserve an Oscar for Best Picture, with Jackie Earle Haley winning Best Actor as Rorschach.

The Puppy Debate

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Road to the Doghouse - Puppedential Debate

Barack Obama Interview
John McCain Interview

Sarah Palin Video
Funny Election Video

I've been soured on CNN for more than a year now (somebody take those graphics away from Blitzer! And who made these chair-warmers into pundits?)-- but have decided to forgive Anderson Cooper, at least, for moderating this debate.

My Political Manifesto , or, "Lookit the Nut Wit' Da Sign!"

The BBC is talking about the death at age 91 of Helen Gavronsky Suzman, apparently the best known Caucasian anti-apartheid activist in South Africa. I've never heard of her before this, but something she said in a recording struck me as so simple and profound that I'd like to attach it to any description of my politics.

It's weird that Americans don't have "politics" the way Europeans do; there's even a bestseller making the rounds about how we vote with our gut and not with our heads. (The thought that our stomachs have a brain almost as powerful as our cerebrum is a scary thought I'll save for a science-fiction story). This is what happens in a culture when schools function as employment agencies for coaches, and you let them teach civics and history as a seat-warming exercise-- before you scoff, I knew at least one high-school librarian who spent his day drawing up football plays.

I was complimented by a French Swiss once and I had to tell him that I really wasn't that smart, but just had the habit (unusual for an American, apparently) of thinking about why I believe what I believe.


Before this, I've been content with Brendan Behan's summary, that I first read at a bar in Chicago: "I have a total irreverence for anything connected with society except that which makes the roads safer, the beer stronger, the food cheaper and the old men and old women warmer in the winter and happier in the summer." This sums up the goals of good government, and implies the need to build a lasting peace (which, despite the chest thumping of warriors, will always be harder to build than war. Emotionally and materially cheaper in the long run, though.)

But there was something missing, that kept this from being a complete political manifesto, at least for me. Behan's phrase tells us what to build, and leaves policy up to us, but doesn't deal with the Problem of Evil, the killer ape within, what Jungians call the Shadow (and for once, I'm not talking about Lamont Cranston). This is the oversight that collapses philosophical anarchism (what do we do with those who won't co-exist peacefully?). James Madison addressed the problem in The Federalist Papers: "If men were angels, no government would be necessary." Our refusal to acknowledge the shadow killed the Sixties just as dead as CIA-sponsored drugs-- the Summer of Love was stabbed to death at Altamont, chopped into pieces by the Manson family, and shoved in a trunk by the Unicorn Killer. What, then, must we do?

I look through my other rule books: Camus, Confucius, Orwell and Paolo Friere, and re-read the political attitudes etched in my bones, in The Once and Future King, Travis McGee and the superheroes, Pogo and Heinlein and Hannah Arendt, Angel and "Rumpole of the Bailey". All these things have shaped my thinking, help me define my moral compass (buy me a Guinness and I'll go on for hours), but there's no simple phase that can fit on a sign and still be understood out of context. Even Travis McGee admits that his own manifesto, a banner embroidered by countless maidens, keeps trailing on the ground and getting stepped on.

Suzman to the rescue this morning, one last note of a grace from a woman I never heard of. Here, then, is the Helen Suzman amendment to the Brendan Behan manifesto. It was a simple answer (with profound implications) to the question of what started her on her long road :

"I hate bullies and I like simple justice."