THE NEW FICTION PROJECT 2015
THEY CALL IT THE CITY OF ANGELS:
SEASON THREE INTRODUCTION + ALL EPISODE ONE CHAPTERS 34 - 39
CHAPTER 34 / SEASON THREE / EPISODE ONE
Each Chapter is Written By Joshua Triliegi in a 24 Hour Period without Prior Notes.
All Chapters in Episode One were written between July 20th 2015 and July 28th 2015
BREAKFAST
The year after The Riots, life in Los Angeles continued. People went to work, children were born, time kept ticking and the story never ended. For those in the heart of the story, for those who were touched by the event, for those who lost and hurt and got burned: life would never be the same. An event that was your life, your experience, your history was being told by newscasters, mainstream publications and radio disc jockeys who knew nothing about what it was really like and never would know. The day after The Riots, a child woke, poured a bowl of Kellogg's corn flakes and watched cartoons on the television. The commercials in between told the child that when the milk was poured into the bowl, that it would, 'Snap - Crackle and Pop,' the child looked around the room, looked around the house, looked around the streets and noticed that every-thing had snapped, crackled and popped. The plastic had melted, the glass had warped, the wires lay open exposing copper, lead and silver, the perfect square box was now imperfect, corners were entirely melted off, the handle that changed the channels had broken and someone had attached a small vice grip tool in its place. The smell of burnt wood, ash and oil permeated the air. Helicopters, sirens and flashing lights became the norm. The curtains frayed at the edges and all along the sides been stained by fire, air, earth and water, the most basic of elements utilized in a fashion that created destruction, instead of construction. The rug was soaked and laden with tiny bits of broken glass, ember and grease stains. Smoke of all color and size wafted through the windows. Angry footsteps inhabited the ceiling, the hallways and alleys. A toy fire truck that lay in the backyard for years was now replaced with a real fire truck that roared incessantly passed its house, at all hours of the night and day. Police car sirens and lights engaged twenty-four hours a day, soldiers from the army reserves of the United States of America in camouflage standing on every corner, an entire world that, 'Snapped - Crackled and Popped.' And Life went on.
Houses went up for sale. Lots stood empty, Ashes piled up. Businesses were abandoned. Families were broken. Dreams were deferred. Third strikes were established by the law and people went to prison for stealing a pizza, a pair of shoes, a case of toilet paper. Men and woman in all manor, in all shapes, in all colors and sizes broke. Screaming through the streets, "Why?" But even a child knows that if you want to learn algebra, you don't ask why. You simply work on the equation, by learning the rules to the diagram, in geometry and trigonometry, there was no time to ask why. Even beer commercials directed the child to not ask why and shoe companies reenforced that ideology by telling the child to, "Just Do IT!" So the child did. Empty slogans had manipulated the population for 100s of years and so the population, in its desperation, in its pain, in it's agony and in its defiance, invented some empty slogans of its own and then quite suddenly, those slogans were inhabited, not so empty after all, for this was not a politician with a team of advisors, this was not a police chief with a speechwriter, this was not a corporation with a dozen brilliant ad executives working on a new account, this was the mother-f*cking-public, these were real people, this was a real event, this was the city of a child who ate corn flakes while watching television every morning before school and when its family and when it's friends and when it's neighbors and when its city began chanting the empty slogan that rang through the city like a Bell on Sunday, this child inhabited that slogan: No Justice / No Peace, Know Justice / Know Peace. Dragnet and One Adam Twelve and Police Woman and Baretta and Starsky and Hutch and CHIPS and The Million Dollar Man and The Bionic Woman, to quote a popular phrase in poetry, "...Will not seem so damn relevant, because the revolution will not be televised," and yet, It was televised after all. The transmission of images was blast across the city in the earliest hours of the event. The Parker Center flash-point had ignited hotspots all along the vertical and lateral thorough-fairs through the city of Angels in a giant grid that only those flying in airplanes and helicopters could view. With the exception of those multitude natural forces of life known as the animals, who watched in glee as the humans failed once again at their own game. A game of self extinction, an experiment of too many mice in a maze called Los Angeles.
Hawks circle overhead, crows cawed, seagulls glanced, thrashers, bluejays, sparrows, woodpeckers, pigeons, hummingbirds and all manner of birds flew overhead, bees returned to their hives, butterfly nestled under branches, spiders strengthened their webs, ants collected bits of this and that, squirrels climbed palm trees to get a better view, coyotes howled through the hills, deer looked on pensively, mountain lions patiently waited, possums stopped playing dead and walked along the tops of fences, a family of bears escaped from the zoo, an elephant stepped on its trainer in a parking lot downtown, snakes slithered to higher ground, raccoons sensed some easy pickings on the horizon and all the while domesticated dogs and cats sat with their owners, watching television. The first time it rained after The Riot, an inordinate amount of chemicals spewed through the streets, into the gutters, down the sewers, along the pipelines and on into the ocean: Formaldehyde, asbestos, concrete, plastic, tar, asphalt, rubber, fiberglass, aluminum, glass, lead, resin, stucco, lime, drywall, and the entire contents of dozens of 99 cents stores which included: bleach, roach killer, hair spray, comet, windex, baking soda, nylon, air freshener, butane, high fructose corn syrup, polyester, lysol, both the regular scent and the new and exciting pine flavor all rolled into one giant blob of city sludge and plopped itself into the intestines of the City of Angels, rolling through the LA River and dumping itself directly into the sea. Blue fin tuna, albacore, barracuda, lobster, sea bass and even mackerel were no where to be seen. There were no shark attacks to worry about. Sharks were too smart to swim in waters infested by chemicals of that variety. Within their very organism, they have a built in mechanism that can detect one ten thousands of an ingredient in the water from miles away. This device was originally evolved, no doubt, for survival, in search of something to consume, but due to the stupidity of the human race, the callous nature of the corporations, the shortsighted views of the now angry populist, this devise was used to avoid certain areas and avoid it they did. The chemicals that trickled down through the ashes, through the soot, through the smoke and through the tears had accidentally informed the organism, transformed the organism, reformed the organism and the child, who had sensed all along that all was not well, would never, ever, be the same again. Nor would the place that they call the City of Angels.
The little plastic box that had for decades transmitted ideas somehow still worked, the device that transferred images, sound and motion on a regular basis, continued to do so. Tony the Tiger, exclaimed to the child that the food it was eating, the contents it was consuming, the simple little flakes of corn in all manner of speaking and description could be defined in a two word phrase that was simple and easy to remember: "They're Great!" The big rabbit with the floppy ears was told time and time again that he was indeed a silly rabbit and that, "Trix are for kids!" The Frito Bandito, Captain Crunch, Count Chocula and a Lucky Charm with a Shamrock were also present, representing an old school variety of corn paste, flour, sugar and salt, added preservatives and in some cases food coloring that sometimes caused cancer, with a simple reminder that if you ever ended up in prison, you would indeed have to choose a cereal that represented something familiar to your general genetic make up. And of course there was the award winning commercial that had Mike-y and his brothers, representing a product that somehow encompassed the child's entire existence, by calling itself, 'LIFE'. "He won't eat it..." his brothers exclaim, as they put a bowl of blocked wheat style cereal in front of the freckled faced child, "...He hates everything." Then, quite suddenly, the boy begins to shovel the wheat blocks into his mouth as his brothers excitedly exclaim, "Hey Mike-y! He Likes IT!" For those with simpler tastes, you had Aunt Jemima and or Quaker Oats, in case you ever forgot who founded this country and what your position in the hierarchy was to begin with. Yes, the little box in the corner with the wire in the wall and the antennae on the roof still worked. And the child watched it. The picture was not as clear, the colors not as crisp, the audio was warped, the depth was foggy, the vertical and lateral lines often separated, but the endless trail of information, disinformation and programming continued on, it taught the child and eventually, the child had learned to transmit its own programs. The child and its family and it's neighbors and its city were all so busy programming, they had no time to wonder, just who exactly was actually eating the giant bowl of cereal that they were all now living in ? The entire city snapped, it crackled and it popped, surely someone was bound to eat it.
CHAPTER 35 / SEASON THREE / EPISODE ONE
Each Chapter is Written By Joshua Triliegi in a 24 Hour Period without Prior Notes.
All Chapters in Episode One were written between July 20th 2015 and July 28th 2015
CHAPTER 35 : DIGITS
Within minutes of entering America, Junior was dead and he didn't even know it. He had been directed to follow a diesel truck trailer, while a duplicate of his car was to distract his police escorts who were meant to get him to a hospital, so that an emergency operation could reattach his thumb. When the duplicate vehicle appeared, Junior dropped back behind the eighteen wheeler with a rolling ramp and drove his car up into the trailer. While his duplicate played decoy on into the hospital an unexpected event occurred. Before crossing the border from Baja into the States, an armed carload of 'exporters' shot their way through the border and drove up into America on the wrong side of the freeway, while Juniors escorted decoy had been exiting the freeway, on the overpass above, the runaway car, heading due north drove head on toward a south bound diesel truck that swerved off the upper level, flipped in mid air and landed directly onto Juniors decoy, entirely crushing the vehicle into an even rectangle of metal, the car looked as if it had been compacted by a machine at the auto wreckage yard. Whoever the driver had been, was entirely unidentifiable, there were absolutely no distinguishing marks to even survey, he had been flattened, not mangled. It was a strangely hermetic accident, blood had oozed from either side of what had once been a car door, but now looked like a suitcase with wheels, though, even they had buckled and folded inward on impact. For all official purposes, Junior was dead before arrival. In reality, he was actually sitting in his car, which was lodged in the back of a diesel truck that was now driving due east. His thumb sat wrapped in a shirt atop the dashboard, while his hand was soaking in a bucket of ice, he had made it across the border alive and was deep in shock. Having never actually looked under the back seat after he had the upholstering re-done, under the orders of his employers, and now that the goal to reenter America had been achieved, curiosity had got the best of him. He opened the door and the ceiling light illuminated the interior enough for him to lift the back seat with his one good hand, there, wrapped in a vacuum sealed plastic cover, was an ancient piece of fabric displaying the image of a man that appeared to be the man known as Jesus the christ. Junior didn't know what to believe, his entire journey had all been entirely unexpected. He had returned to his homeland to spend time with his father, to see the family ranch and to meet with the old Indian and now all that too had presented unexpected results. Would his life never return to some semblance of normalcy, he wondered ?
That is when he noticed the light emanating from the trunk. He re-lodged the back seat cover and there was just enough space between the interior wall of the diesel trailer and the drivers side door, to walk to the back of the car. The trunk had been broken into when Junior had been lured into helping the group of men raise the tower bell in the Plaza Park, just south of Boulevard Revolution. He now assumed that the entire event was a ploy to distract his entering America with the current contents of his back seat, but when he opened the trunk and lifted a blanket, he discovered that he was in a world of trouble, deceit and misery, much larger than he could ever have expected. There under the blanket sat more paper currency than he had ever seen in his life, stacked, sealed and organized in a giant block, next to that was an equally daunting object that scared the living daylights out of the man, something he would never have expected, something he had been promised would never ever be a part of his employment, something he abhorred more than death itself, the very thing that had ruined more lives and created more misery and devastated more men than Junior cared to recount. How many times had he watched men slowly dissolve into nothing ? How many times had he heard about so and so being found dead on the streets ? How many times had he watched as his fellow inmates writhed in pain and in total out and out torturous conditions turning this way and that for hours on end as if they were lizards who had lost a tail, squirming, screaming, moaning, begging, sweating it out while the guards walked by and chuckled ? How many times had he wondered what life for him, his friends, his relatives and even the world would have been like without the very thing he was staring in the face ? How was it that he, Junior, a simple man, could possibly be carrying a most sacred object known to believers across the entire world and also have in his possession the substance that was possibly the very worst and most disgusting element ever invented ? A substance so vile, so despicable, so ruining, so demonic that through the years he had actually thought of this substance as, and there was no other way to put it: The devil himself. There in several blocks of transparent material was the purest of the pure, the worst and above all evilest thing Junior had ever know existed. If the natural shock that occurred from losing a thumb, just less than an hour ago had provided a buffer between him and his feelings, creating a comfort zone, sedating his body and mind from the pain, blocking the nervous system from excruciating and jolting physical effects, all that had abruptly ended: Junior woke up. He tied a rope from trunk to bumper and waited for whatever was next, he knew whatever it was, that his life would never be the same again.
An hour passed and Junior noticed that diesel truck must have pulled off the freeway and onto a smaller street or road, when it came to a stop, he heard the driver unhitch the trailer from the cab and then the cab pulled away. He stepped to the back of the trailer and noticed a double latch that opened from the inside, not knowing what to expect, he grabbed his thumb from the dashboard, tucked in his shirt and slid the dismembered finger down the front, with his one good hand, he grabbed a blackjack from the back seat and slowly and quietly attempted to lift the door to the trailer. As he did so, he realized he was alone, in pitch darkness, he jumped from the trailer and there to the North he noticed a brightly lit cinder block cube of a building. Junior was now out and out frightened. He had been scared, he had been fearful, but he had never actually been frightened before and somewhere in his constitution, somewhere in his make up, some where in his fortitude, he found something of himself that was new territory and now he knew there was no turning back. He walked back up one of the small narrow wheeled metal perforated ramps that followed the trailer, he unhinged the rope to the trunk, opened an old tool box and found a padlock that he had once used to secure his locker in junior high school. Junior silently pulled the trailer door shut and walked toward the brightly lit building in the middle of what felt like an abandoned army base in the middle of the desert. There were no signs out front, but when he looked inside, it was clearly a medical facility, with a flat-topped front desk attendant and several nurses dressed in scrubs and operating garb. He could see no patients, he could see no security guards, if he wanted to keep his thumb, he had no choice whatsoever, except to simply walk into the place, and as he did, the attendant, who was youngish, clean shaven, clear eyed, simply said, "We have been expecting you sir." Junior just looked at the man. "Due to the dire situation, there will be no forms to fill, we are ready to take care of you now." A nurse walked up and asked for the missing finger. Junior, who had shed not a single tear throughout his entire ordeal, reached into his shirt front and handed the girl his thumb. His eyes watered, he took a deep breath, looked around the facility and decided that whatever the hell was going on, first and foremost, he wanted five digits on each hand and so, he sat in the lobby and waited for the attendant to make the next move. The nurse unwrapped the finger, laid it out onto a stainless steel tray and stared at the object for what seemed like a very long time, then she abruptly, looked up at Junior and exclaimed, "Believe it or not, you are a very lucky man." The attendant smiled and called for the patient to be admitted.
Junior had refused to be put to sleep, the operation lasted almost eighteen hours and he slept through much of the operation. He had now been wheeled into a room with a window facing the trailer which could barley be seen in the now two a.m. moonlight. Several bottles of medication sat on the table to his left, his keys and the contents of his pockets had been put into a small basket, his pants had been washed and folded, his shirt and socks had been replaced, the blood that had poured from his hand had been washed clean from his shoes and he was the only person in the room. His hand was wrapped in gauze and an aluminum stripped device protected it from any possible damage. Junior began to review the series of events that had preceded his accident. The first call he had made to his people prior to leaving the US all had seemed appropriate and valid, the voice seemed to be the usual, the directions, the action, the procedural aspects all in line with a familiar tone, but the second call, made from the Bull fight arena, there was now something definitely wrong with that call. He couldn't quite focus on exactly what it was, but something was askew. The voice was just a little different, the change of plans seemed totally out of place, the entire directive was not at all in line with a protocol that he now could put together in a cohesive way. Junior had always been promised that under no circumstances whatsoever would he ever have to come into contact with the substance that was now sitting in his trunk. Nor was he ever asked to be put in a position of ever returning to prison without proper warning of the assignment up front. Either he had clearly been lied to, or someone redirected, intercepted or tapped his conversation and interjected or straight out impersonated someone from his organization. There was a third possibility, but he didn't even want to think about that. The only way to find out, was to head north, enter the harbor and find out for himself. Junior quietly put on his clothes, shoved the bottles of medicine in his front pockets, opened the sliding glass window, jumped out and walked into the cold dark night. He fumbled with the combination lock, could not for the life of him remember the numbers, finally giving up, simply bashed the thing with a rock, slid the door upward, backed the car down the ramp and drove down the moon lit dirt road with no lights on for over half a mile, when he could no longer see the facility in the distance, he turned on his lights and headed toward civilization, if you could call it that. On the way out, he passed several burnt out bunkers, defunct check points and now wireless radio towers. It was a ghost town and Junior still had no idea that, officially, he did not exist.
By the time Junior drove into the Harbor, it was just past four in the morning, for the obvious reasons, he neither went home, nor did he go directly to meet his so-called people. He had been racking his brain while driving and still had not come up with any true or obvious conclusions. Having not eaten in over twenty-four hours, he needed a cup of coffee, he had to figure this out and found himself driving in the direction of Ma' Fritters Coffeehouse, where his father, Louis had been a busboy all those years. It was absurd for him to fathom the fact that, in less than a week, he had actually repositioned his father on the family ranch and been through what seemed like a lifetime. He parked the car a half a block away, positioned it so that he could see it front and back and was pleased that the waitress, nor the busboy recognized him as Louis' son. He ordered breakfast and as was the tradition, the waitress brought over the days paper. Junior, who had gotten in the habit of voraciously reading anything and everything, while in the joint, turned the page of the metro section and there, near the bottom, was a small article that had an extremely familiar image, it was a picture of him, taken a few years back by prison officials, the headline read: Recently Released Ex-con Dies in Auto Accident. The article described the events at the border, the fishing accident cover story, the visit with relatives and the actual accident on the way to the hospital. Now Junior knew that possibility number three was more than likely. He left a ten dollar bill on the table and walked. It was still before five, fog covered the streets. Junior made a decision. He drove up to the home of his brother in law Chuck and his sister Celia's through the alleyway, opened the garage door, where Chuck kept his sunday car, a completely restored woody station wagon and unloaded the contents of the trunk into Chucks wagon: the money and the drugs. Than he quietly closed the garage door and drove four blocks east to a storage facility parking lot that housed old boats, cars and rental units for storage. He pulled his car onto the lot, tucked the fabric artifact from beneath the back seat around his torso and threw a tarp from the trunk over his own car, fastening the corners one by one with his good hand. The placed was closed and a security guard sat in the front office. Junior held up a fifty dollar bill, the man slid open the window and accepted the bill, but said nothing. Junior took a hundred dollar bill and an insurance slip that had his plates, his insurance and the vehicle i.d. and pointed to the tarp. "Put this on the old man's desk." Again, the man said nothing, took the bill and slip and walked over to the old mans desk. Junior eyed the man's newspaper on the counter, grabbed the metro section and walked out into the fog.
CHAPTER 36 / SEASON THREE / EPISODE ONE
Each Chapter is Written By Joshua Triliegi in a 24 Hour Period without Prior Notes.
All Chapters in Episode One were written between July 20th 2015 and July 28th 2015
CHAPTER 36 : BROTHER
Mickey was running late. This was not an uncommon occurrence. Through the years, he had been known as an easy going dude, who enjoyed the company of everyday people and everyday people reciprocated in kind. Mickey had been touched by a long since past casualness that had once pervaded Americans everywhere. He always had time to listen and this old fashioned activity did not derive from some idea of politeness or even a social responsibility, he simply enjoyed hearing and telling stories. As far back as he could remember, Charles and his friends, who had included an extremely wide variety of storytellers sat around, night after night, talking, conversing, excitedly describing events past and recent in a way that, in todays world, had been entirely lost. Mickey's ability to make appointments often neglected to build in a certain amount of time, for that very thing he loved so much to do and invariably, he was often playing catch up with those he loved, most notably, the love of his life: Moon. Now that Charles had returned and the family had cohesively bonded, getting together on a weekly basis over a family dinner, had become the norm and Mickey always seemed to be the last to arrive. Cally would be the first to exasperatingly announce. "I'm ordering anyway..." and Maggie would say, "Your'e waiting for your brother." Charles, who had indeed once been a soldier in Vietnam, a roadie for rock and roll royalty, a doorman for one of the toughest bars in America and one of the West coasts most prominent builders of Harley Davidson motorcycles had mellowed during his lost years. The man was still strong as could be and yet his sensitivity was more than beautiful. "Why is that," Maggie asked herself ? In the old days, Maggie had watched as Charles once lifted a man above his head by the collar and pant leg and threw the guy into a six foot wide mirror that had a logo for Flynn's Irish Whiskey that stated: It was Simply The Best. The unsuspecting man had reached over and simply grabbed the breast of Charles best friends wife, who had taken her beer mug and swung it into the guy's jaw and then Charles finished the job. Maggie watched from across the bar and could not understand why that had turned her on, all she knew is that it did. Now all these years later, she watched as Charles took his giant hand and ever so gently removed the dangling hair from his daughters face, with a single and graceful gesture. The hand that had turned a million spark plugs, slugged countless fools, even pulled a few triggers back in Vietnam, was also now, so graceful, so smooth, so reflective. The road had been good for Charles, where most men crumble, this man had clearly triumphed.
Venice beach was full of musicians, artists, pro, con and otherwise. Very rarely, these days, could anyone actually, 'discover' a new act or a viable mainstream breakthrough for the current markets music scene. Maggie had been known and affiliated with music from another time period. She had been interviewed in countless documentaries about artists such as Bob Dylan and anyone connected with the late sixties and early seventies, where she had made a mark managing bands, tours and all variety of popular musicians including folk, rock and country. When she had been asked to help organize a fund raiser for the inner city youth after the desecration of the riots, she wanted to gather a line up that would encompass the very cultures who had invariably clashed due to the divisions throughout Los Angeles. Already she had commitments from artists like Tom Waits, Fishbone, a couple of the guys from War and Isaac Hayes, but she needed some new acts. Maggie didn't mind doing her part, but underneath all the showmanship and unification, this 'do right' woman was a shrewd and calculating business woman with several children and a career of her own. It had been almost a decade since she had actually, 'discovered' a new act or artist and brought them from the streets to the clubs to the studio to the radio and on into the major marketplace, which had already moved from rock to punk and new wave and now back to rock with the so-called 'grunge' scene coming out of Seattle. Punk and New Wave had entirely eclipsed many of the artists she had represented and it left Maggie feeling, a bit out of touch. She could understand this new scene a little more than what had happened musically over the past decade. The basic melodic chords, the return to rock & roll riffs, the garage style aesthetic had a familiar ring and was getting the kind of play on radio that turned the tables in her direction. So, when she noticed a couple of kids, playing a few songs in the boutique directly across the street from the restaurant where everyone was waiting for Micky, she excused herself from the table. The boy played guitar and sang, the girl played a small keyboard and sang, then they did a duet a cappella. They utilized folk, reggae and soft rock elements with an upbeat vibe that was exactly what Maggie needed to round out the line up. When she asked their name, they both answered in unison: She Said / He Said. Maggie listened to a few more tunes and immediately booked them to open the show. When she asked who their manager was, they both answered in unison: We are. The boy explained that they had recently received a small investment from a local businessman who had recorded a live single that was currently being remixed and it would be ready for distribution soon. She saw the opportunity and invited them over to the house on Sunday.
Maggie returned to the restaurant to find one of her early rivals sitting in the chair she had left at the table. A woman whom she had not seen since those early days, and who had vied for Charles affections, way back when. She hated to admit it, but the lady had barely aged at all. Her hair had grown longer as had her dress and as Maggie now perceived the situation, so to had the woman's teeth. As she walked up to the table, Maggie remembered her name and quickly placed it into context, she tried to conceal what Moon and Cally and her girlfriend Jezz all noticed, that, for the first time in years, Maggie was actually jealous. Now all the girls perked their ears to hear what Charles and the lady were discussing. The lady, with long golden hair and tight blue eyes, was recounting a story about Charles and an obscure musical tour they had all endured long ago. Charles laughed and kissed the woman, like a man might kiss his mother or his sister on the forehead and asked the manager for another seat and a round of drinks. The lady noticing Maggie's arrival, sat up to surrender the throne, but Maggie feigned disinterest and took the new seat handed by the waiter, on the other end of the table with Moon, who was now completely perplexed and had never seen Maggie in such a state. "We just arrived from New York," and "still own the house on speedway," the lady explained. Now Maggie stared at her and remembered everything. She had been the only other woman who had received Charles' affections prior to Mickey's birth. Maggie tried to take the floor by announcing her new musical discovery, across the way, but it came out forced and didn't take hold. Charles began to recount a mammoth party that had been the last time he and the lady had seen one another, the final concert of the tour in which they had previously discussed. Charles, one of the few people that could casually drop the names of some of the greatest musicians that had ever lived in a manner that was neither braggart nor brazen, described the final concert, the party and the after party that had the entire restaurant listening. A large man, both in spirit and in personality with a booming voice, a handsome and chiseled face with a humble yet trustworthy tone. No wonder Mickey liked storytellers, his dad was one of the best. Maggie looked on with ringing ears and burning eyes as Charles finished his story and everyone laughed aloud. Then he turned to the lady and said, "So, what exactly happened to you after that night ?" The lady looked around the table, now realizing that all ears and eye were on her. "Well, for one, I had a son ..." and as she said so, a young man who looked exactly like Mickey's twin walked into the room, "Here he is," she said, as an artist might unveil a new work of art to the world. Moon gasped.
Charles, who was slow to display any type of automatic reactions or responses in general, put his hand out and shook the young man's hand, "My name is Charles," and the younger man took his hand and shook it,"I'm an old friend of your mom's," he explained. "I have heard a lot about you," the young man said and turned back to his mother, who was by now beaming in all directions. Now Moon, Cally and Jezz, were all trying to add up the details of Charles recent story with the young man standing before them, who looked, not 'sort of' like Mickey, he looked exactly like Mickey. Same age, same build, same eyes, same everything. His manner of dress and his style of grooming was not at all like Mickey, but his actual physical make up was a downright doppelgänger. "So, your mother tells us you're just in from New York," Charles noted aloud. The young man looked again towards his mother, who added, "He has just passed the bar." Charles looked into the other room, which housed a lounge and didn't entirely understand the reference. The lady looked at Charles quizzically, "He's a defense lawyer working for a firm here in Los Angeles." Charles finally caught up, "Congratulations, I'm glad you choose the right side of the law," he laughed and everyone joined in. By now, he could not help but notice the way all the women in his life were now staring at the young man standing next to him. Charles called out for another chair and the young man sat down. Finally, Moon asked, the young man how old he was, when he answered, everyone could see the human calculator on Maggy's face doing the math, they too began calculating. When the results were in, as it turned out, the young man was exactly one year older than Micky. Charles explained that they were waiting for his son Mickey and by all means, if they would like to join them for dinner to do so or to drop by the house sometime. The tall, graceful lady declined the offer and they both began to stand and excuse themselves from the table, "It was such a pleasure to see you again," she countered, glancing in Maggy's direction, who was now, quietly, politely, imploding inwardly. The lady raised her wineglass, "To old friends." Charles raised his beer mug and everyone joined in, 'Salute,' - 'Cheers,' - 'Asante.' And then Mickey finally appeared in the front window, he glanced in through the glass and for a split second, the image of his reflection and the young man's met in perfect unison. The young man and his mother walked out the front door as Mickey entered and sat down in the seat his twin had just inhabited. Maggie rose and took her original seat next to Charles. She didn't say a word. Everyone was quiet. Moon just stared at Mickey, who said he was sorry for being late. Cally looked at Jezz and smiled. Maggie looked at Charles, then at Mickey, she took a deep breath, exhaled and stated aloud, "I think we are ready to order."
CHAPTER 37 / SEASON THREE / EPISODE ONE
Each Chapter is Written By Joshua Triliegi in a 24 Hour Period without Prior Notes.
All Chapters in Episode One were written between July 20th 2015 and July 28th 2015
CHAPTER 37 : DADDY
Fred felt divided. Ta had been hinting that if they moved in together, they would save money, have more quality time and could possibly even take longer vacation time later in the year. She even did the math over a three year period and had mentioned, the exact numbers they could save, she was, after all, a rather calculating woman. Fred had gotten use to living alone, he had made peace with his losses and even enjoyed the solitude. Running her own business all these years had made Ta into an enterprising lady and her sense of initiative and 'can-do' style is what attracted Fred to her in the beginning, after months of campaigning, she won the debate and had finally convinced Fred. She had planned to put her townhouse up for rent and was looking forward to starting the beginning of her new life with Fred and right in the middle of the move, Ta received a startling phone call from the government in South Korea. The call opened up an entire chapter of her life that she had all but forgotten. Ta had never discussed her childhood with friends or associates much, nor did she speak much about her parents. She was not secretive, many people who had found their way from the north of the country to the South had difficult transitions and discussing assimilation and the actual difficult arduous physical challenge to cross into the South was not something people wished to converse about casually. Ta had been extremely lucky, having stowed away on a boat at an extremely young age, had made her journey and her entire teenage years in the South seem normal. She had never mentioned her father to Fred or anyone and had not even known if he was still alive. Ta had assumed that he was dead or maybe even worse, in a concentration camp or as they were called in the North, a work camp. As it turned out, Ta's father had once been a ranking officer in the North and when her mother passed away, an Aunt had put Ta on a boat to the South and had died doing so. That was decades ago, since then, she had heard nothing of her father in those years and could hardly remember his voice, his face or anything about him. The only object left in her townhouse was the telephone message machine She pressed the play button on the recorder and heard the voice of a woman from the government, "Hello," she formally greeted in Ta's native language, she gave her name, her location and the department she worked for, which was immigration, then she explained that a man describing himself as Ta's father had defected from North Korea over ten years ago and had finally made his way to Seoul, then Ta could hear the woman tell the man to say hello, "Hello, daughter, I am your Dad."
Ta heard the voice and began to cry. This was a chapter in her life she had willingly forgotten. The painful journey, the loss of her mother, the death of her aunt, the entire experience and deep rooted pain of leaving everything behind and starting anew had never given her time to heal or to even reflect, and now, after all this time, she did not want to deal with it. But there it was, sitting in the room with her. She sat in the empty apartment and cried like a child, she screamed aloud, shrieked and rocked back and forth while sitting on the floor. She had returned to the place simply to take down the floral patterned curtains, and now, she ripped them from the walls and yelled into them as loud as she could, muffling her own voice and the pain that had been hidden. Feelings of abandonment and helplessness overtook the woman and she fell to the floor like a child and broke. Hours passed, it had gotten dark, Ta awoke, turned the recorder back on and listened to the voice again, "Hello, daughter, I am your dad," and again, "hello daughter, I am your dad," and again, "hello daughter, I am your dad." She looked out upon the city lights gleaming, the boulevard below was busy, the other apartments across the way, so full of life, families eating dinner, old men and women watching television, kids running in and out of rooms, she had been running from her past towards success for so long that life itself had become something that Ta had disconnected from. How many times had she watched as families came in and out of her restaurant without once consciously thinking about her own childhood, her own family, her own past, in America and in Seoul. A successful business had been her everything and now she looked out the window into the lives of her community and felt a giant empty cavern. The townhouse was empty, the curtains were down, the lights were off. Ta took off her clothes, walked into the bathroom and turned on the shower, the bathroom had been stripped of all her girly items, the liquid echoed when it splashed to the tile, there was not enough water in all the world to wash away the pain. Ta walked out into the empty living room naked and stood there, dripping water onto the floor, she watched the night, and hours passed. Fred who had been waiting at home for her to return eventually called and when Ta answered, he hardly recognized her voice, "Hello," he said, "Hello," she answered back, "Are you my daddy ?" she asked, and Fred, laughingly played along, "Yes, I am." Then Ta began to cry and Fred didn't understand, but he simply listened quietly. "Will you come and get me ?" Ta asked with the voice of a little girl he had never known before and Fred, now confused, simply said, "I am your daddy and I will come and get you." Ta dropped the phone, stared into the night and Fred arrived.
Alex and Fred had become partners after Alex's father had passed away. The loss of the liquor store had created a bond between the boy and Fred. Now They had a water dispensary and a yogurt shop. Alex had been a weird kid, nerdy, not exactly popular among his pears, even considered out of step and maybe a little slow. But when it came to music, Alex was actually way ahead of the curve. He had gone to school to become a sound engineer, having tried his hand at playing piano and even drumming, he settled on engineering and sound mixing and everyone in his immediate family and even his girlfriend, who was now pregnant, had always felt that he should grow up and just get a regular job. Fred had given Alex that job and now he had time and money to invest in the music. He bought mixing gear, microphones and started creating all types of sonic experimentation, from electronica style tracks to mood music that sounded like cinema soundtracks. When Fred had asked Alex if he knew of any bands that could play for the opening party of the new yogurt business, Alex answered yes and called some friends he knew. Without Fred knowing, Alex had actually gotten the band to agree to be recorded and remixed with a distribution deal for a single track to be owned by Alex as a producer, in exchange for remixing the concert for the band. He had even gotten a contract signed. Since that time, the band, who was a guy and a girl duo, had now been asked to play a live fundraiser with some serious headliners, which put Alex in the position of owning a new single from a band that had only played local clubs and gigs up to that time. When Alex got news from Ryan's little brother that, She said / He Said was the opening act to a major Concert, he went into superdrive and created a standard track, a special remix and a dance club electric mix that went out to local radio stations, the disc - jockeys that he knew from school and he handed a stack of cd's to the band for promotion. To imagine that this was the same kid who, months back, had in desperation, tried to burn down a palm tree to collect insurance on his father's business, was almost impossible. With the loss of the boy's father, his pregnant girlfriend and his own particular introversion, Alex had lost all hope. Fred had done what he felt was the right thing to do, against all common sense, he had not only forgiven the boy, he had seen something that no one else could see and now, it was paying off. Alex ran the yogurt shop in the daytime and prepared for the child on the weekends. He began to dress differently, he handled himself in a whole new way and everyone in his family noticed that he had actually become a lot like his father. With Fred's partnership and with Fred's trust, the confused and angry boy had now quite definitely, simply become a man, while no one was looking, Alex had bloomed.
When Ta told Fred about the phone call, he was neither surprised nor worried. They sat at the breakfast table and Fred began to tell her a story about working in the factories. He described the way he and Sam had saved their money, the way they had made a pact to succeed, the way they had followed through with a dream that had now recently ended in flames and smoke and anger in a new country in which a history had preceded that they could not even fathom. Americans, he explained, knew nothing of our real history and maybe, we too, know very little of theirs. How many times had he been called Japanese, Chinese, Vietnamese, anything but Korean. They know nothing of the actual desecration of our country, the civil war, the rebuilding of the South, the trade deals, technological and new manufacturing that went into making South Korea a viable and modern day trade partner with the world. And here we are, in the middle of a city that is tearing itself apart. "Maybe we are here for a reason," Fred said, "maybe our basic understanding of indifference and division and struggle and rebuilding is exactly what we have to contribute to this country." Fred was avoiding the real problem and could see that Ta was waiting for him to approach the phone call. "What I am trying to say is that you and I both have a history. Whatever yours is, I accept. Now what do you want to do?" Ta was looking to Fred for those answers and she simply stared out into space, blank. Fred's house was covered in boxes, clothes, furniture and all the items that had represented Ta's existence were now strewn throughout the place. He looked around and then looked back at her. She was, to him, absolutely and downright beautiful. Her hair thick and deep black, her shoulders whiter than ivory, her eyes, dark and watery, fingertips cold and sharp, breasts that lifted with her very breath, long legs that extended to and fro, her feet delicately sculpted, he had always seen her as a woman and now was seeing her as a little girl. Whomever had created this woman, this lady, this girl, deserved to be taken care of and Fred knew then what they had to do. Fred walked down the hall into the den, turned on the old time jukebox and selected a tune from long ago, it had been popular years before the war and joyfully described the simple pleasures of having a home. Ta understood what Fred was saying and without mentioning a word, she stood up, walked into the living room and together they slowly danced to the music, arm in arm. Each one wondering what it would be like to return home after all these years as the lyrics of the tune happily chanted, 'Home is a place you can never forget, no matter how far, you can ever get, no matter the people, that you have met, home is a place you can never forget.'
![CHAPTER 38 / SEASON THREE / EPISODE ONE Each Chapter is Written By Joshua Triliegi in a 24 Hour Period without Prior Notes. All Chapters in Episode One were written between July 20th 2015 and July 28th 2015 CHAPTER 38 : ERRANDS Jordan learned how to ride by riding. He took the new motorcycle to Lompoc, checked into an old motel about a half a mile from the prison and called it a day. Next morning, he was the first in line for visitors and had to wait a couple hours to put in his request. Jordan always had big eyes for life, always watching, always looking, had an eye for details. In a place like this, that was not necessarily a good thing. He eventually got the message that Mac would be available at two in the afternoon, went outside and waited another couple hours. Looked at the joint, metal everywhere, concrete, steel, wire, posts, galvanized, extruded, exposed and painted. Doors and gates clicked and locked and clicked and opened, cameras on every post and doorway and lookout, armed guards and security and sheriffs and people working for the man of all variety, shape and size. Not one of them exposing their eyes directly. Hiding, from what he thought ? The sun drifted across the sky and Jordan's mind with it. The question was not how the hell was Mac? The question was who the hell was Mac? He didn't know his old man from Adam. Oh he had some early memories and lots of stories told by aunts and uncles about how Mac had been with Malcolm in those days when being black meant something very different from what it means now. How Mac had been targeted ever since his association with Malcolm, how he'd been set up time and time again, for this and for that. How his intentions to lift up those around him had often done just that and ever so swiftly, he would find himself being dragged down because of his efforts. Jordan was as straight as an arrow. He knew his way around, was no fool, but he was not what they would call entirely streetwise, had never done time, never even been arrested and did not intend to either. It was getting close to two, Jordan walked back inside and waited with the rest of the visitors. He sat and watched what prison does to those associated with those unfortunate individuals who lived in this place. Wives, kids, lawyers, friends, girlfriends, everyone seemed to be beat down by the experience. A constant barrage of amplified audio announcements, lines to stand behind, forms to fill out, times to stand and times to sit and times to wait, permission to eat and permission to drink and permission to relieve oneself, always with the disdaining eyes of men and women in uniform, while a very thin, almost invisible veneer of soot & finite filth seemed to cover everything and everyone, the sun was hotter and the shade was colder, a place of exaggerated everything. It seemed unreal and yet Jordan knew it was actually more than real, more real than anything on the outside. Mac sat at a table in the farthest corner of the room, facing outward. Jordan watched his father watching him as he walked up to the man and shook his hand. He noticed right away that there was no finite soot on this man, who looked healthy, big in spirit, whites of his eyes, clear as a piece of paper, skin moist, hands big, nails clean and trim, voice deep, clear, unbroken. Jordan opened up the conversation, "They say, you're a big man in here." Mac looked at the boy and out chuckled a small bitter breath, "A big man in here ain't nothing much compared to a small man out there." Mac continued, "I saw you on the television, retrieving the 'family heirloom'..." he laughed, "... that was something boy." Jordan replied, "Oh yeah, that was something, something that nearly cost me my job, put my privacy in jeopardy, my relationship into turmoil, got me the kind of attention I never wanted." Mac, looked at his son, "Well, it seems our family has always been in the middle of history in one way or another, looks like you got the same dna as the rest of us." Then Jordan mentioned that his momma, who went by the name of Baby, was staying with him and they were all concerned about Mac's welfare. Mac replied "For the record, Mac was never on no damn welfare, but I appreciate the thought." Then he continued, "Look, I heard you got some friends in places that could mean something to me." Jordan went blank, couldn't think of who Mac was referring to. "Your biker pal... and the lady lawyer... thats a powerful hand you're holding son. In here, politics and friendships, favors and returns on investments mean the difference between life and death, food and starvation, between day and night. Look, I need a favor. And I realize, I got no place to ask you, 'cause I never give you nothing but life itself, but I got something I need done and ain't no one I can trust anymore, been in here too long, people taking advantage of my game on the outside." Jordan stared at Mac, "I'm not a hustler." Mac stared back, "I'm not asking you to hustle. But I got nobody else I can trust, son." Jordan heard the word son and he looked Mac in the eyes. "How did you know about my ... friends?" Mac didn't have to time explain how things worked from top to bottom. "Look, I know things, just trust me on this." Jordan had always mistrusted anyone who had ever told him to 'trust him on this', but because this was his father, he let it go. "We don't have much time here, where you staying ?" and Mac rattled off the names of six different motels that were possibilities and Jordan replied, when Mac mentioned his. "Late tonight, a man will be stopping by with a few things for you and a to do list, If you do things right, I might have a chance to get out of here. Can you do this ?" Jordan didn't know what to say, if he said no, he was just a punk, if he said yes, he was in deep shit. He nodded his head no, but said, "Yes." Come three in the morning, with his clothes still on, lights on, passed out on the couch, Jordan heard a rap on the door. He looked out the eye-hole and one of the whitest, the straightest, the most police officer looking guys he had ever seen was at the door, mustached, freckle faced, yolked up, full on middle American male. Jordan opened the door and the guy said he was making a delivery for 'Mac' with a duffle bag in hand. Apparently, his dad was a big man after all, had dudes that could do things when necessary and do it they did, for a price. Whatever that price was, Jordan did not know, nor did he want to know. Already, he was regretting the decision, but now it was way too late. He stood there, staring at the dude. "Would you mind letting me in ?" Jordan did mind, but all of that was way too late, he let the guy in. The man threw the duffle bag on the bed and pulled out a list, he handed it to Jordan. It was a full itinerary, looked like a damn bus stop schedule, Jordan thought. Then he reached in and pulled out an envelope, when he took out the contents, there on the table lay an airline ticket, a list of addresses and a stack of cash that look pretty thick, real thick, thicker than he wanted it to look, damn. When he opened up the ticket it read, Destination Detroit Departure 9:00 AM. and then he re-read the itinerary. The man pulled out a new suit, shirt, tie and shoes that, when Mac had sussed up Jordan's size, he assumed would fit. "What the hell is all of this?" Jordan asked. "I am just here to make a delivery that never happened, understand?" And he walked out and drove away. Jordan looked out the window, black car, dark night, no license plates. Jordan just shook his head no, as he had done before he had actually said, Yes. He was way out of his league, then he looked at the airline ticket and realized he had to toss the duffle bag onto the bike and head out toward the airport, now, if he was ever going to make, "A nine a.m. flight to goddamned Detroit," he muttered to himself. He drove into the night with the sunrise eventually to his back, found a car park near the airport for his bike and stepped onto a shuttle. Jordan got into the airport, darted into a stall in the restroom and changed into the clothes that Mac had left for him. When he stepped out and looked at himself in the mirror, among the international, business class and everyday working stiffs, he saw his reflection in the mirror, looked down at the suit, the tie, the shoes and realized that he looked like a pimp from nineteen sixty-eight, pin striped suit, deco-page tie, black shirt and two-tone Stacy Adams shoes that were two sizes too big. He approached a row of a half a dozen sinks which were all inhabited by guys shaving, plucking ear hairs, washing their hands, three of the sinks immediately became available. Jordan bought a disposable razor from the attendant, got a shave, tipped the dude and boarded. Jordan thought about Detroit. The place of his birth. How long had it been ? He'd been living on the West coast for long enough to forget much of it. He'd spent a good amount of time in Oakland and eventually settled in Los Angeles, each, he thought, had a different degree of blackness. People liked to think of blackness as chocolate. It was always being compared to and packaged as this or that degree in music and in popular culture. Before he had become an adult, he thought of this comparison and wondered what that was all about? Now that he was a man, he would say to himself that LA was black like milk chocolate or like Martin Luther King, he didn't mean it in a disparaging way, it was just the way he saw it, as different degree of blackness. And he felt that Oakland was like a purer chocolate, with cocoa and possibly a Huey Newton or Bobby Seal representing. But Detroit, to Jordan, was serious blackness, dark chocolate, as black as black culture could get and right in the middle of it, was Malcolm X. And out of that came Mac, his dad and Baby, his mom and now him, Jordan, a child of true blackness, a very real blackness, Detroit Motor City stuff. In his mind, the only place blacker was the continent of his origin itself. Than he realized that all this was mainstream thinking. He was dreaming a child's dream and he needed to wake up and wake up quick. Jordan pulled out the itinerary and looked at what needed to be done. His first stop was the Hall of Records, where he was to request and make copies of a full detailed description of a court case with dates, names and numbers listed in capitals, than in parenthesis it stated: [ bring four rolls of quarters, two for spending and two for comfort ]. What did that mean ? "Two for comfort ?" he said out loud, than, under his breath, "Goddamn it, Mac..." The stewardess asked if Jordan wanted anything, a cocktail, a beer, Corvousier? Jordan just looked at her quizzically, "Yeah, I'd like a large cup of coffee." Than, as she walked away, he added, "Black," and several passengers turned in his direction. He had pre-rented a vehicle when he had checked in and when the plane arrived, he was again shuttled to a near by rental lot, where he was given a brand new black cadillac sedan. He asked the lady at the desk, "Don't you have anything a little more ... nondescript ?" A term had had heard though never used. "Well," and then she pointed toward a small white ford, a light green pinto and several passenger vans. "Never mind, this will be fine..." Now he was really fronting. Well, he knew one thing, Mac and baby would definitely be proud of him. Then he realized that he had not called home in the last 36 hours. What was he going to tell Wanda and Baby? I'm in Detroit, driving a big black Cadillac, dressed in a pin striped suit, green two-tone shoes with a wad of cash and I'm just running a few errands for Mac?](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgw5qVzYLUcf9P4DHqQ6Lb2wRnuqlZCcfIWliJ4Q3UTfYKjNf727_KcH77dh2lJ1LeTX-OgmUnq7jh01iMN4eaJiyErjfyThWCZvXCQ-36Tr47rpuT76XEC-6nE94QPPVh761B2l3e5ZRY/s1600/web+THEY+CALL+IT+THE+CITY+OF+ANGELS+2015+EPISODE+ONE+SEASON+THREE+Joshua+Triliegi+-+1.jpg "CHAPTER 38 / SEASON THREE / EPISODE ONE Each Chapter is Written By Joshua Triliegi in a 24 Hour Period without Prior Notes. All Chapters in Episode One were written between July 20th 2015 and July 28th 2015 CHAPTER 38 : ERRANDS Jordan learned how to ride by riding. He took the new motorcycle to Lompoc, checked into an old motel about a half a mile from the prison and called it a day. Next morning, he was the first in line for visitors and had to wait a couple hours to put in his request. Jordan always had big eyes for life, always watching, always looking, had an eye for details. In a place like this, that was not necessarily a good thing. He eventually got the message that Mac would be available at two in the afternoon, went outside and waited another couple hours. Looked at the joint, metal everywhere, concrete, steel, wire, posts, galvanized, extruded, exposed and painted. Doors and gates clicked and locked and clicked and opened, cameras on every post and doorway and lookout, armed guards and security and sheriffs and people working for the man of all variety, shape and size. Not one of them exposing their eyes directly. Hiding, from what he thought ? The sun drifted across the sky and Jordan's mind with it. The question was not how the hell was Mac? The question was who the hell was Mac? He didn't know his old man from Adam. Oh he had some early memories and lots of stories told by aunts and uncles about how Mac had been with Malcolm in those days when being black meant something very different from what it means now. How Mac had been targeted ever since his association with Malcolm, how he'd been set up time and time again, for this and for that. How his intentions to lift up those around him had often done just that and ever so swiftly, he would find himself being dragged down because of his efforts. Jordan was as straight as an arrow. He knew his way around, was no fool, but he was not what they would call entirely streetwise, had never done time, never even been arrested and did not intend to either. It was getting close to two, Jordan walked back inside and waited with the rest of the visitors. He sat and watched what prison does to those associated with those unfortunate individuals who lived in this place. Wives, kids, lawyers, friends, girlfriends, everyone seemed to be beat down by the experience. A constant barrage of amplified audio announcements, lines to stand behind, forms to fill out, times to stand and times to sit and times to wait, permission to eat and permission to drink and permission to relieve oneself, always with the disdaining eyes of men and women in uniform, while a very thin, almost invisible veneer of soot & finite filth seemed to cover everything and everyone, the sun was hotter and the shade was colder, a place of exaggerated everything. It seemed unreal and yet Jordan knew it was actually more than real, more real than anything on the outside. Mac sat at a table in the farthest corner of the room, facing outward. Jordan watched his father watching him as he walked up to the man and shook his hand. He noticed right away that there was no finite soot on this man, who looked healthy, big in spirit, whites of his eyes, clear as a piece of paper, skin moist, hands big, nails clean and trim, voice deep, clear, unbroken. Jordan opened up the conversation, \"They say, you're a big man in here.\" Mac looked at the boy and out chuckled a small bitter breath, \"A big man in here ain't nothing much compared to a small man out there.\" Mac continued, \"I saw you on the television, retrieving the 'family heirloom'...\" he laughed, \"... that was something boy.\" Jordan replied, \"Oh yeah, that was something, something that nearly cost me my job, put my privacy in jeopardy, my relationship into turmoil, got me the kind of attention I never wanted.\" Mac, looked at his son, \"Well, it seems our family has always been in the middle of history in one way or another, looks like you got the same dna as the rest of us.\" Then Jordan mentioned that his momma, who went by the name of Baby, was staying with him and they were all concerned about Mac's welfare. Mac replied \"For the record, Mac was never on no damn welfare, but I appreciate the thought.\" Then he continued, \"Look, I heard you got some friends in places that could mean something to me.\" Jordan went blank, couldn't think of who Mac was referring to. \"Your biker pal... and the lady lawyer... thats a powerful hand you're holding son. In here, politics and friendships, favors and returns on investments mean the difference between life and death, food and starvation, between day and night. Look, I need a favor. And I realize, I got no place to ask you, 'cause I never give you nothing but life itself, but I got something I need done and ain't no one I can trust anymore, been in here too long, people taking advantage of my game on the outside.\" Jordan stared at Mac, \"I'm not a hustler.\" Mac stared back, \"I'm not asking you to hustle. But I got nobody else I can trust, son.\" Jordan heard the word son and he looked Mac in the eyes. \"How did you know about my ... friends?\" Mac didn't have to time explain how things worked from top to bottom. \"Look, I know things, just trust me on this.\" Jordan had always mistrusted anyone who had ever told him to 'trust him on this', but because this was his father, he let it go. \"We don't have much time here, where you staying ?\" and Mac rattled off the names of six different motels that were possibilities and Jordan replied, when Mac mentioned his. \"Late tonight, a man will be stopping by with a few things for you and a to do list, If you do things right, I might have a chance to get out of here. Can you do this ?\" Jordan didn't know what to say, if he said no, he was just a punk, if he said yes, he was in deep shit. He nodded his head no, but said, \"Yes.\" Come three in the morning, with his clothes still on, lights on, passed out on the couch, Jordan heard a rap on the door. He looked out the eye-hole and one of the whitest, the straightest, the most police officer looking guys he had ever seen was at the door, mustached, freckle faced, yolked up, full on middle American male. Jordan opened the door and the guy said he was making a delivery for 'Mac' with a duffle bag in hand. Apparently, his dad was a big man after all, had dudes that could do things when necessary and do it they did, for a price. Whatever that price was, Jordan did not know, nor did he want to know. Already, he was regretting the decision, but now it was way too late. He stood there, staring at the dude. \"Would you mind letting me in ?\" Jordan did mind, but all of that was way too late, he let the guy in. The man threw the duffle bag on the bed and pulled out a list, he handed it to Jordan. It was a full itinerary, looked like a damn bus stop schedule, Jordan thought. Then he reached in and pulled out an envelope, when he took out the contents, there on the table lay an airline ticket, a list of addresses and a stack of cash that look pretty thick, real thick, thicker than he wanted it to look, damn. When he opened up the ticket it read, Destination Detroit Departure 9:00 AM. and then he re-read the itinerary. The man pulled out a new suit, shirt, tie and shoes that, when Mac had sussed up Jordan's size, he assumed would fit. \"What the hell is all of this?\" Jordan asked. \"I am just here to make a delivery that never happened, understand?\" And he walked out and drove away. Jordan looked out the window, black car, dark night, no license plates. Jordan just shook his head no, as he had done before he had actually said, Yes. He was way out of his league, then he looked at the airline ticket and realized he had to toss the duffle bag onto the bike and head out toward the airport, now, if he was ever going to make, \"A nine a.m. flight to goddamned Detroit,\" he muttered to himself. He drove into the night with the sunrise eventually to his back, found a car park near the airport for his bike and stepped onto a shuttle. Jordan got into the airport, darted into a stall in the restroom and changed into the clothes that Mac had left for him. When he stepped out and looked at himself in the mirror, among the international, business class and everyday working stiffs, he saw his reflection in the mirror, looked down at the suit, the tie, the shoes and realized that he looked like a pimp from nineteen sixty-eight, pin striped suit, deco-page tie, black shirt and two-tone Stacy Adams shoes that were two sizes too big. He approached a row of a half a dozen sinks which were all inhabited by guys shaving, plucking ear hairs, washing their hands, three of the sinks immediately became available. Jordan bought a disposable razor from the attendant, got a shave, tipped the dude and boarded. Jordan thought about Detroit. The place of his birth. How long had it been ? He'd been living on the West coast for long enough to forget much of it. He'd spent a good amount of time in Oakland and eventually settled in Los Angeles, each, he thought, had a different degree of blackness. People liked to think of blackness as chocolate. It was always being compared to and packaged as this or that degree in music and in popular culture. Before he had become an adult, he thought of this comparison and wondered what that was all about? Now that he was a man, he would say to himself that LA was black like milk chocolate or like Martin Luther King, he didn't mean it in a disparaging way, it was just the way he saw it, as different degree of blackness. And he felt that Oakland was like a purer chocolate, with cocoa and possibly a Huey Newton or Bobby Seal representing. But Detroit, to Jordan, was serious blackness, dark chocolate, as black as black culture could get and right in the middle of it, was Malcolm X. And out of that came Mac, his dad and Baby, his mom and now him, Jordan, a child of true blackness, a very real blackness, Detroit Motor City stuff. In his mind, the only place blacker was the continent of his origin itself. Than he realized that all this was mainstream thinking. He was dreaming a child's dream and he needed to wake up and wake up quick. Jordan pulled out the itinerary and looked at what needed to be done. His first stop was the Hall of Records, where he was to request and make copies of a full detailed description of a court case with dates, names and numbers listed in capitals, than in parenthesis it stated: [ bring four rolls of quarters, two for spending and two for comfort ]. What did that mean ? \"Two for comfort ?\" he said out loud, than, under his breath, \"Goddamn it, Mac...\" The stewardess asked if Jordan wanted anything, a cocktail, a beer, Corvousier? Jordan just looked at her quizzically, \"Yeah, I'd like a large cup of coffee.\" Than, as she walked away, he added, \"Black,\" and several passengers turned in his direction. He had pre-rented a vehicle when he had checked in and when the plane arrived, he was again shuttled to a near by rental lot, where he was given a brand new black cadillac sedan. He asked the lady at the desk, \"Don't you have anything a little more ... nondescript ?\" A term had had heard though never used. \"Well,\" and then she pointed toward a small white ford, a light green pinto and several passenger vans. \"Never mind, this will be fine...\" Now he was really fronting. Well, he knew one thing, Mac and baby would definitely be proud of him. Then he realized that he had not called home in the last 36 hours. What was he going to tell Wanda and Baby? I'm in Detroit, driving a big black Cadillac, dressed in a pin striped suit, green two-tone shoes with a wad of cash and I'm just running a few errands for Mac?")
CHAPTER 38 / SEASON THREE / EPISODE ONE
Each Chapter is Written By Joshua Triliegi in a 24 Hour Period without Prior Notes.
All Chapters in Episode One were written between July 20th 2015 and July 28th 2015
CHAPTER 38 : ERRANDS
Jordan learned how to ride by riding. He took the new motorcycle to Lompoc, checked into an old motel about a half a mile from the prison and called it a day. Next morning, he was the first in line for visitors and had to wait a couple hours to put in his request. Jordan always had big eyes for life, always watching, always looking, had an eye for details. In a place like this, that was not necessarily a good thing. He eventually got the message that Mac would be available at two in the afternoon, went outside and waited another couple hours. Looked at the joint, metal everywhere, concrete, steel, wire, posts, galvanized, extruded, exposed and painted. Doors and gates clicked and locked and clicked and opened, cameras on every post and doorway and lookout, armed guards and security and sheriffs and people working for the man of all variety, shape and size. Not one of them exposing their eyes directly. Hiding, from what he thought ? The sun drifted across the sky and Jordan's mind with it. The question was not how the hell was Mac? The question was who the hell was Mac? He didn't know his old man from Adam. Oh he had some early memories and lots of stories told by aunts and uncles about how Mac had been with Malcolm in those days when being black meant something very different from what it means now. How Mac had been targeted ever since his association with Malcolm, how he'd been set up time and time again, for this and for that. How his intentions to lift up those around him had often done just that and ever so swiftly, he would find himself being dragged down because of his efforts. Jordan was as straight as an arrow. He knew his way around, was no fool, but he was not what they would call entirely streetwise, had never done time, never even been arrested and did not intend to either. It was getting close to two, Jordan walked back inside and waited with the rest of the visitors. He sat and watched what prison does to those associated with those unfortunate individuals who lived in this place. Wives, kids, lawyers, friends, girlfriends, everyone seemed to be beat down by the experience. A constant barrage of amplified audio announcements, lines to stand behind, forms to fill out, times to stand and times to sit and times to wait, permission to eat and permission to drink and permission to relieve oneself, always with the disdaining eyes of men and women in uniform, while a very thin, almost invisible veneer of soot & finite filth seemed to cover everything and everyone, the sun was hotter and the shade was colder, a place of exaggerated everything. It seemed unreal and yet Jordan knew it was actually more than real, more real than anything on the outside.
Mac sat at a table in the farthest corner of the room, facing outward. Jordan watched his father watching him as he walked up to the man and shook his hand. He noticed right away that there was no finite soot on this man, who looked healthy, big in spirit, whites of his eyes, clear as a piece of paper, skin moist, hands big, nails clean and trim, voice deep, clear, unbroken. Jordan opened up the conversation, "They say, you're a big man in here." Mac looked at the boy and out chuckled a small bitter breath, "A big man in here ain't nothing much compared to a small man out there." Mac continued, "I saw you on the television, retrieving the 'family heirloom'..." he laughed, "... that was something boy." Jordan replied, "Oh yeah, that was something, something that nearly cost me my job, put my privacy in jeopardy, my relationship into turmoil, got me the kind of attention I never wanted." Mac, looked at his son, "Well, it seems our family has always been in the middle of history in one way or another, looks like you got the same dna as the rest of us." Then Jordan mentioned that his momma, who went by the name of Baby, was staying with him and they were all concerned about Mac's welfare. Mac replied "For the record, Mac was never on no damn welfare, but I appreciate the thought." Then he continued, "Look, I heard you got some friends in places that could mean something to me." Jordan went blank, couldn't think of who Mac was referring to. "Your biker pal... and the lady lawyer... thats a powerful hand you're holding son. In here, politics and friendships, favors and returns on investments mean the difference between life and death, food and starvation, between day and night. Look, I need a favor. And I realize, I got no place to ask you, 'cause I never give you nothing but life itself, but I got something I need done and ain't no one I can trust anymore, been in here too long, people taking advantage of my game on the outside." Jordan stared at Mac, "I'm not a hustler." Mac stared back, "I'm not asking you to hustle. But I got nobody else I can trust, son." Jordan heard the word son and he looked Mac in the eyes. "How did you know about my ... friends?" Mac didn't have to time explain how things worked from top to bottom. "Look, I know things, just trust me on this." Jordan had always mistrusted anyone who had ever told him to 'trust him on this', but because this was his father, he let it go. "We don't have much time here, where you staying ?" and Mac rattled off the names of six different motels that were possibilities and Jordan replied, when Mac mentioned his. "Late tonight, a man will be stopping by with a few things for you and a to do list, If you do things right, I might have a chance to get out of here. Can you do this ?" Jordan didn't know what to say, if he said no, he was just a punk, if he said yes, he was in deep shit. He nodded his head no, but said, "Yes."
Come three in the morning, with his clothes still on, lights on, passed out on the couch, Jordan heard a rap on the door. He looked out the eye-hole and one of the whitest, the straightest, the most police officer looking guys he had ever seen was at the door, mustached, freckle faced, yolked up, full on middle American male. Jordan opened the door and the guy said he was making a delivery for 'Mac' with a duffle bag in hand. Apparently, his dad was a big man after all, had dudes that could do things when necessary and do it they did, for a price. Whatever that price was, Jordan did not know, nor did he want to know. Already, he was regretting the decision, but now it was way too late. He stood there, staring at the dude. "Would you mind letting me in ?" Jordan did mind, but all of that was way too late, he let the guy in. The man threw the duffle bag on the bed and pulled out a list, he handed it to Jordan. It was a full itinerary, looked like a damn bus stop schedule, Jordan thought. Then he reached in and pulled out an envelope, when he took out the contents, there on the table lay an airline ticket, a list of addresses and a stack of cash that look pretty thick, real thick, thicker than he wanted it to look, damn. When he opened up the ticket it read, Destination Detroit Departure 9:00 AM. and then he re-read the itinerary. The man pulled out a new suit, shirt, tie and shoes that, when Mac had sussed up Jordan's size, he assumed would fit. "What the hell is all of this?" Jordan asked. "I am just here to make a delivery that never happened, understand?" And he walked out and drove away. Jordan looked out the window, black car, dark night, no license plates. Jordan just shook his head no, as he had done before he had actually said, Yes. He was way out of his league, then he looked at the airline ticket and realized he had to toss the duffle bag onto the bike and head out toward the airport, now, if he was ever going to make, "A nine a.m. flight to goddamned Detroit," he muttered to himself. He drove into the night with the sunrise eventually to his back, found a car park near the airport for his bike and stepped onto a shuttle. Jordan got into the airport, darted into a stall in the restroom and changed into the clothes that Mac had left for him. When he stepped out and looked at himself in the mirror, among the international, business class and everyday working stiffs, he saw his reflection in the mirror, looked down at the suit, the tie, the shoes and realized that he looked like a pimp from nineteen sixty-eight, pin striped suit, deco-page tie, black shirt and two-tone Stacy Adams shoes that were two sizes too big. He approached a row of a half a dozen sinks which were all inhabited by guys shaving, plucking ear hairs, washing their hands, three of the sinks immediately became available. Jordan bought a disposable razor from the attendant, got a shave, tipped the dude and boarded.
Jordan thought about Detroit. The place of his birth. How long had it been ? He'd been living on the West coast for long enough to forget much of it. He'd spent a good amount of time in Oakland and eventually settled in Los Angeles, each, he thought, had a different degree of blackness. People liked to think of blackness as chocolate. It was always being compared to and packaged as this or that degree in music and in popular culture. Before he had become an adult, he thought of this comparison and wondered what that was all about? Now that he was a man, he would say to himself that LA was black like milk chocolate or like Martin Luther King, he didn't mean it in a disparaging way, it was just the way he saw it, as different degree of blackness. And he felt that Oakland was like a purer chocolate, with cocoa and possibly a Huey Newton or Bobby Seal representing. But Detroit, to Jordan, was serious blackness, dark chocolate, as black as black culture could get and right in the middle of it, was Malcolm X. And out of that came Mac, his dad and Baby, his mom and now him, Jordan, a child of true blackness, a very real blackness, Detroit Motor City stuff. In his mind, the only place blacker was the continent of his origin itself. Than he realized that all this was mainstream thinking. He was dreaming a child's dream and he needed to wake up and wake up quick. Jordan pulled out the itinerary and looked at what needed to be done. His first stop was the Hall of Records, where he was to request and make copies of a full detailed description of a court case with dates, names and numbers listed in capitals, than in parenthesis it stated: [ bring four rolls of quarters, two for spending and two for comfort ]. What did that mean ? "Two for comfort ?" he said out loud, than, under his breath, "Goddamn it, Mac..." The stewardess asked if Jordan wanted anything, a cocktail, a beer, Corvousier? Jordan just looked at her quizzically, "Yeah, I'd like a large cup of coffee." Than, as she walked away, he added, "Black," and several passengers turned in his direction. He had pre-rented a vehicle when he had checked in and when the plane arrived, he was again shuttled to a near by rental lot, where he was given a brand new black cadillac sedan. He asked the lady at the desk, "Don't you have anything a little more ... nondescript ?" A term had had heard though never used. "Well," and then she pointed toward a small white ford, a light green pinto and several passenger vans. "Never mind, this will be fine..." Now he was really fronting. Well, he knew one thing, Mac and baby would definitely be proud of him. Then he realized that he had not called home in the last 36 hours. What was he going to tell Wanda and Baby? I'm in Detroit, driving a big black Cadillac, dressed in a pin striped suit, green two-tone shoes with a wad of cash and I'm just running a few errands for Mac?
CHAPTER 39 / SEASON THREE / EPISODE ONE
Each Chapter is Written By Joshua Triliegi in a 24 Hour Period without Prior Notes.
All Chapters in Episode One were written between July 20th 2015 and July 28th 2015
CHAPTER 39: LIARS
Stan was facing death in the eye. He had neglected to inform Dora, his wife and Cliff, his son, what the doctors had told him. And now he had to reflect on the how's and the why's. Dora had transformed their diet after Cliff's birth, cooking and eating organically grown foods, being conscious of varieties of meat, processing, preservatives and additives, even making a healthy lunch for Stan, which often times went unconsumed. The man had been stubborn, even short sighted and at times, he was downright foolish, when it came to his health. Now, as he walked through the desolate halls of the empty courthouse, with its marble floors and travertine siding and worn down concrete benches, he reflected on how many cigarettes and how many lunch combinations that included a piece of pizza, potato chips and a coke he had consumed. How many hours of his life had he spent in the company of counsellors, lawyers and liars ? All in an attempt to preserve justice for the people. He had, at one time, actually believed that one person could, would and indeed did make a difference and now, in the desolate hours, in an empty chamber, Stan was unsure if that was possible. He walked into his office, opened a locked file where he kept up a project he thought would never see the light of day or meet the public's eye and now, after all had been said and done, Stan decided that the project was his last chance at redemption of a system he knew was broken. Stan had kept a detailed diary of every important case he had ever resided over. While on the bench, he had written about each and every important twist and turn of the screw from prosecutors to defense, from his vantage point to observations on the jury, who had gone unnamed for obvious reasons. Between his most recent meeting with doctors, the final decision in the case that caused The Riots and his deep love for Dora and Cliff as well as his original and rather naive intentions in becoming a judge to begin with, Stan decided to go public with a book that could blow the roof off of a hundred years of abuses of power in America, which would, most likely, equal his retirement. The day he and Cliff played golf against The Governor, at the request of the President, was a watershed moment: a 'Game-Changer.' Stan knew life was not a game and yet, real lives and real laws and real people were being pummeled into a system that left them disrespected, disabled and dishonored for the rest of their lives. His stroke on the golf course had given him a voice that seemed unfamiliar. He opened the file and realized that the narration in his book, all those years, had that same honest voice. Stan got up off the bench, walked out and headed home.
Dora got a call from Jordan that seemed out of character. Normally, he was, how would she put it: Cool headed ? He had left a message explaining that he was in Detroit, attempting to gain access to a file on record regarding a court case that had pertinent information regarding his father Mac, who was doing time because an inside jail house snitch had opened up on a group of people whom his father had been associated with long ago. Apparently, he was having trouble getting a copy of the file released and wondered if she could have somebody in Detroit or anywhere assist, he gave the serial number, dates and names. In the background, Dora could here people stressing Jordan over their need to use the phone booth, then, he finally said, "I gotta go, see what you can do." Then he gave her Mac's serial number, identification and Location. Dora could hear Jordan taking some serious heat as he attempted to drop the receiver and hang up the phone. Since then, she had received a copy of the file, made a duplicate and had another sent directly to Mac at Lompoc. She had been studying the case and realized that it was tinged with a prison politic that had leaned heavily on racial divides within the actual prison system itself, the other unspoken laws, codes and power lines that average people never knew about. She put the folder aside and waited to hear from Jordan. Twelve minutes later a rust colored brick measuring eight inches by three inches by four inches was thrown threw the air, it came into contact with the plate glass window of her front office and shards of glass landed all over her front sofa, table and waiting room. Dora was never one to panic, she called a local security company that worked directly with her office and went to check on Cliff, who had been quietly watching what had become a new obsession of his, direct and unedited cable feeds from a satellite dish which had recently been installed in the law building that Dora leased. Within minutes, a witness identified a lady, driving a small vehicle, who had pulled to the side of the road, picked up a brick from the garden walkway, threw it through the window and drove directly into a parking lot three blocks away and ordered an ice cream. As the incident came to a head, it came to Dora's attention that the culprit had been the volunteer at Cliff's school who had lost her position because she and Stan had reported the fact that the volunteer had been dressing disabled kids in attire that was meant to send messages to a former boyfriend. When they asked Dora if she wanted to press charges, she asked around about the woman. It turned out, the lady had a large family, kids of her own and a husband who was already in jail and Dora decided not to press charges. Instead, she called some friends in the community and within days the window was replaced and the woman apologized.
The woman, who had some serious psychological issues of her own, had no idea who Dora actually was. When she heard the term 'lawyer,' she flipped out. Then word got out and the lady got schooled by people she had known all of her lives. Dora was practically a hero to folks in that community. How many times had she written letters to judges, lawyers, city council members, employers, social security employees, probation officers, churches, drug rehabs, mayors, congressman and senators on behalf of the rights of underage men and women, first time offenders, abused kids, wives and beaten down working class people ? Thousands and thousands, too many to list and too many to mention. When Stan got home that night, Dora told him about the window and then he told her about the book and they both just looked at one another they way partners often do. He knew very well that she knew how to handle herself and she knew that, if he was serious about the book, life as they knew it was never going to be the same. The phone rang, Cliff, who had been coming up with new surprises just about everyday now, answered the phone, "Hello, Yes, Just a minute," then he turned to Stan, "it's for you dad, some guy from something-something studio," then Cliff walked over and latched onto Dora. "This is Stan, Yes. Well, I don't know, I'd have to think about it. Do you mind if I ask how this came about ? You're kidding? All right, I'll think about it, goodbye." Dora and Cliff stared at Stan as he hung up the phone."They want me to consider doing a television show." Cliff turned his head excitedly in Dora's direction, who was nonplussed by the idea. Then she asked, "What kind of show ?" Stan walked into the kitchen, poured two glasses of wine and said, "A law show of some sort." Dora replied, "Of what sort ?" "I'm not entirely sure, they want me to go down there and do a few tests, apparently my little speech at the golf course, with this little man," referring to Cliff, "made an impression on someone who is handling the Presidents re election and they want me to host or reside as a judge over some kind of law show." Then he added, "He said they want to call it, 'Stan The Man'. Apparently Judge Woppner is old hat these days." Then Dora added, "Judge Woppner was old hat the day he was born and what about your book ?" Stan just mused at the whole idea and said, "Lets not get too far ahead of ourselves here. Cliff and I are making dinner." Then he walked down the hall, turned on the shower, walked back into the bedroom, there sitting on the dresser was the medication he had been given by the doctors, then he looked over at the book file that sat on the credenza. As he walked back toward the bathroom, Dora, who had deciphered Stan's condition by his prescriptions simply hugged him and whispered, "Do what makes you happy."
Cliff woke before anyone else and decided that he was going to make breakfast. He had painstakingly watched his father take two eggs, crack them in a bowl, pour the pre mixed powder and oil and milk and mix them with a fork for a minute straight. He had actually counted it to the seconds. Then the butter was put into the pan and small amounts of the mix were poured onto the grill and then each circle was flipped over after exactly ninety-seconds, cinnamon and butter and syrup were added, sometimes with berries or fruit on top and served up hot. He had made an incredible mess doing so, but he had done it. Cliff carried the giant plate into his parents room to discover the coupling parents completing some type of activity he had, prior to that moment, been entirely unaware of. "Hey, what's going on here?" he exclaimed while carrying the giant plate of syrup covered pancakes into the room and proudly presenting them to his post coital parents. Stan laughed out loud at the very fact that the boy had actually made a pancake breakfast and Dora, completely red in the face, quickly switched modes from the shy woman caught in the act of making love to a proud mother of a boy who had been improving his abilities and for a kid with his issues, actually over achieving. Cliff knew that he was different and being young and self conscious, he made a decision to be different in ways that he could enjoy and not different in ways that made him feel more in control of his everyday comings and goings. The first thing he did was began to pick out his own clothes, reorganized his entire closet, he stacked his books on the shelves in alphabetical order and soon both his parents wondered exactly what was going to happen next. His new obsession was watching people to see if he could tell wether they were telling the truth or lying. It had become his main activity and he was very good at it. Dora had to teach him when it was appropriate to expose his findings and just how to describe those particular observations. So, slowly and rather deliberately, he was introduced to words and to phrases that could describe a liar without calling them out: insincere, inauthentic, stretching the truth, coloring the situation, telling only one side and so on and so forth. To Cliff, it mattered not what you called it, the fun was in being able to decipher such an act, the body language, the blinking of the eye, the tone in the voice and sometimes, while he watched television, he noticed simply that the entire facade of humanity appeared to be doing what one of his favorite comedians would have no interest in rephrasing, which is why Richard Pryor had always meant so much to the boy: Because he told the Truth and he did it without all the clever phrases. Then Cliff just stood up and for no reason at all, simply said, in his best Richard Pryor attitude, awfully loud and very clear, "You - a - God - Damn - M*ther - f*cking - Lying - sumnabitch!" His parents were out on the patio.
Welcome to The SUMMER 2015 Edition of BUREAU of ARTS and CULTURE MAGAZINE. This Edition contains The BUREAU ICON Essay on Georgia O'KEEFFE, A Photographic Profile on Robert FRANK's Classic Book The Americans, INTERVIEWS with Photographer Alex HARRIS, The Portrait Painter Jon SWIHART, The Legendary SURF Photographer Jack ENGLISH and The BUREAU Summer Guest Artist: Irby PACE. CINEMA: On The Set of The Classic Film RAGING BULL. CUISINE: PALMS Beverly Hills & Pedro INOSCENCIO, Heir to The Throne: Jamie WYETH, BOOKS: David BROWNE's Opus on The Grateful Dead. Herb RITTS in Boston, Charles RAY in Chicago, Andy WARHOL in Phoenix, Peter BLUME in Hartford, FASHION: The Dandy LIONS Photography and New FICTION by Linda TOCH. +An Interview with The Bureau Editor's Mom, Maria Francesca TRILIEGI on her New Book. We are pleased to have New Readers in The SOUTH: Texas, Arizona, New Mexico and Louisiana at our Newest Community Site, BUREAU OF ARTS AND CULTURE: THE SOUTH. Links to Summer Events across the USA including, The CHICAGO Blues Festival, AUSTIN Biker Festival, Scorsese Collects in NEW YORK, 4TH of July Celebrations + so much more. The BUREAU EDITORIAL DIS - Organizations: Are Groups in America Abusing Power ?MUSIC: Lets ROCK at Fahey / Klein Gallery in MIAMI, MUSEUMS: National Gallery of Art, PORTRAITS: Native American Portraits from The YALE Collection of Western Americana. Plus Links to Our Eight Different Community Sites Celebrating The ARTS Across AMERICA . The Social Media Sites serve More as a look back at Previous BUREAU Editions + Features
ALSO: THE NEW FICTION PROJECT BEGINS IN AUGUST 2015 EVERY FRIDAY READ NEW EPSIODES OF SEASON THREE AUGUST 7 / 14 / 21 / 28 NEW EPISODES, NEW CHAPTERS THE SAGA CONTINUES ...
THEY CALL IT THE CITY OF ANGELS
The Original Fiction Series: " THEY CALL IT THE CITY OF ANGELS," began two years ago with Season One. An interesting experiment that originally introduced five fictional families, through dozens of characters that came to life before our readers eyes, when Editor Joshua Triliegi, improvised an entire novel on a daily basis and publicly published each chapter on-line. Season Two was an entire smash hit with readers in Los Angeles, where the novel is set and quickly spread to communities around the world through google translations and word of mouth. Season Three begins in August 2015 and the same rules will apply. The entire final season will be improvised and posted publicly on a weekly basis beginning, Friday August the 7th 2015 and continuing each friday to the stories final completion of Book One. "Improvised," in this instance, means: The writer starts and finishes each section without taking any prior notes whatsoever and publishes the completed episode on all Community Sites. Season III is The Finale'.
READ A NEW EPISODE EVERY FRIDAY IN AUGUST 2015
BEGINNING ON AUGUST 7TH / 14TH / 21ST / 28TH
"THEY CALL IT THE CITY OF ANGELS" 2015 NOVEL PROJECT
SCROLL DOWN TO READ SEASON ONE AND TWO OR TAP THE
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Norman Seeff : Mick Jagger Los Angeles, CA USA 1972 Courtesy of Fahey/Klein Miami
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BUREAU OF ARTS AND CULTURE
presents
SURF INTERVIEW: JACK ENGLISH
Joshua TRILIEGI: Your catalogue is beautiful, diverse and modern and yet, at the same time, your images have an original and purist aesthetic that harkens back to the 1970's. Discuss style in surf photography and explain how you go about 'picturing ' images.
Jack ENGLISH: I love being different and getting a different shot from the next photographer which in the surfing world is so very challenging. If your on the North Shore of Oahu and their are 20 pros out well you're going to have at least 20 photographers on the beach and 20 in the water shooting the same shot and for the most part shooting the same angle. When I do my shoots here in California I always make sure I am the only photographer or if I show up to a place like Malibu on a big swell and their might be 3 other photographers there I will try to sneak down the beach and get an angle in which they aren't getting in hopes that I picked the best location in or out of the water. Every photographer has their own style, but I always try to imagine the shot I am going for months in advance for a specific surfer or location. I rarely show up to a spot and just start shooting. I put everything together with the surfer before he goes out in the water. It's like he is my model and I communicate to him or her what type of shot or move I would like them to do. I like to be involved on what their wearing or what board their riding. I like to direct my shoots and be just as much involved if not more then the surfer. I am not like go out and surf and I will take your picture - it's not like that for me. I am a director of my own shoots.
Joshua TRILIEGI: Surf culture is now a worldwide thing, for those of us on the West Coast, who grew up with it, it was and is a way of life. For the audience, its exotic and a commodity of sorts. Explain how you view the trajectory of Surf culture in the recent decades .
Jack ENGLISH: Maybe it's not safe for me to say this based on [ the fact that] I eat, breathe and sleep surfing and surf photography, but it's kind of boring now to an extreme. Kind of like everything has been done. To me, the late 80's into the early 90's was the best. The 80's had the bright fluorescent wetsuits and the early 90's had the momentum generation: Kelly Slater, Shane Dorian, Ross Williams, Rob Machado, etc… They took surfing to it's highest level. These guy's weren't trying to dress all groovy, they just ripped at surfing. They we're untouchable. You have guy's now that pretty much suck at surfing, but they try to dress the part kind of like, hey I am not that good at surfing, but I will try to be the hipster or groovy guy that way I can still get paid to surf. Companies fall for it for whatever reasons based on their are so many dam brands nowadays and all of them want or think they need to sponsor someone.
Joshua TRILIEGI: Share your views regarding Digital versus Film and the future of photography.
Jack ENGLISH: Digital is such a f*cking copout. It's like a musician who needs all these machines to make their music for them. Take someone like an Elton John who just needs a piano and he will kill it. All these digital photographers became photographers because it was easy, cheap and mostly no cost for film and processing. I have one friend who told me he would never had shot photos if it we'rent for digital. I think in the past before digital you had the true photographers who really loved photography. The photographers that loved going to the photo lab dropping off their film and then hours later racing back to the photo lab praying they nailed the shot. The photographers that loved the smell of the photo labs or the smell of film. On the flip side I can't speak for the digi guy's and say they don't really love photographer or their not really photographers, that's not it. I mean if I was brought up after the film era I to would most likely just be shooting digital and always question what is film. But I was brought up int he film era and my heart is for film. I have passed a point where I hate digital. I hate hard drives, cords, cards, all that shit just bugs me and then have to worry if my hard drive crashes I loose everything. I can't handle that. How am I suppose to shoot so many wonderful images and then I am to rely on some hard drive not to crash, fuck that. I much rather have a folder full of tangible slides or negatives on my shelves and be done with it.
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Santa Barbara California is a very Beautiful Community. Recently, I was asked by someone in the big city, "Why did The Magazine focus on a City such as Santa Barbara ?" I found myself having to defend, rather easily, a place I have grown to Love. So many of our greatest writers and actors have also fallen in love with Santa Barbara, but it's rather difficult to describe why. There is a first class Film Festival, top of the line Wineries, A Coastal Beauty that compares to any coast, in any country around The World. And all the while, It's laid back. With lots of Surfers, Bikers, Real people, living their lives everyday. No matter how respected this magazine gets in New York City or Los Angeles or even overseas, I personally spend more time in cities such as Santa barbara, more quality time than I have ever expected. After all is said and done after the work is over, there is nothing quite like a Glass of Wine or a Swim in The Oceans at Santa Barbara County. So far, we've brought readers into The Santa Barbara Winery with Photo Essays, Audio Interviews at The Lost Horizon Bookstore and Adama Vegan Cuisine and an in depth Interview with Santa Barbara's Award winning Board Shaper Wayne Rich.
INTERVIEW GUEST ARTIST: IRBY PACE
Joshua TRILIEGI: How did the idea for the Smoke series originally come about?
Irby PACE: I had the idea of starting this project a few years before leaving graduate school in 2012, but initiating the series always seemed to get pushed back because of other priorities I had at the time such as school, teaching, etc., but it stayed in my mind and in my sketchbook. Occasionally... weekly... monthly... I would go back through my sketchbook and just absorb or contemplate new ideas or revisit old ones, even the ones that failed. After graduate school I became part of an artist run collective, 500x, which inspired me to do something new from my previous artworks.
Starting any body of work is complicated, at least for me it is, because I have a specific visual image and I have to see it come to fruition before I can continue to explore within the given work. I failed with the Pop! series more times that I can count and I continue to do so. On average I make anywhere from four to five setups for every successful one final photograph. But this challenge keeps me motivated, I feel like I’m always fighting the elements, wind, lighting, etc.
Another challenge I wanted to explore was to do everything “through the lens.” This is what keeps me on edge and it makes it all of the hard work worth it when everything just lines up perfectly. With the work I was thinking like a painter and a photographer combined. I wanted to add these clouds to these physical spaces much like a painter would manipulate a space with oils or acrylics, but the photography makes it hyper realistic because it’s actually happening. It is in these small split second moments that I really truly live as a photographer.
Joshua TRILIEGI: Experimentation and hard work are always a big part of finding an original idea in modern art, your art catalogue shows clearly that you have earned your position and yet the smoke series seems so simple. Tell our readers a bit about your ' search ' for the art image.
Irby PACE: I, and other artists, live in a time where it is seemingly harder and harder to make an original piece of “art.” Yeah I know... that’s a trite statement. Its the mantra of undergrads and artists and everyone. Well, I can’t say everyone, but how about a majority of people. But, it is surprising to me how common that statement is. Even non artistic people say that, or at least I’ve heard a few here or there say that. Maybe the old adage that “everything has been done before” really is true. Maybe it’s bullshit. Maybe we need to move on from this self imposed pity party and start trying to make some original shit happen. But how do we do this? When I hear “nothing’s original” I step up on a soapbox and let them know that every new piece of technology that is being introduced daily has the potential to be an outlet for an art making practice, tool, etc.Experimentation is what makes this process difficult. We’re conditioned to make something “right” then to continue to rinse and repeat this process. But you have to take the time to deviate from the path, to try something new, and to be willing to fail. Failing isn’t necessarily desirable, but that’s my barometer to know when I’m on to something.
To Download The Entire INTERVIEW Tap This Link : SUMMER EDITION PACE:
BUREAU ART in AMERICA : TEXAS
Tap To Visit On Line: NasherSculptureCenter.org
DALLAS Art Pick : THE NASHER SCULPTURE CENTER
The Nasher Sculpture Center is located in the heart of Dallas’ thriving downtown Arts District. This summer, the Nasher Sculpture Center will present a major exhibition of the work of British sculptor Phyllida Barlow. Barlow employs commonplace materials—wood, plaster, concrete, cardboard, and strips of colorful cloth or tape—in extraordinary, monumental, ramshackle, hand-built structures that expound a dizzying array of novel sculptural forms. Recent projects at the Tate Britain in London and the New Museum in New York have showcased the prodigious talents of the now 70-year-old Barlow, who, after a distinguished teaching career at the Slade School of Art in London, is finally enjoying the broad international recognition her work has long deserved. Her exhibition at the Nasher will feature new work inspired by, and created for, the unique spaces of its galleries. Like several of Barlow’s recent projects, these new works will challenge accepted notions of sculpture, blurring the line between constructed form (sculpture) and constructed environment (architecture), and providing a powerful counterpoint to the refined surroundings of the Nasher’s Renzo Piano-designed building. More than simply a presentation of unique objects, the distinct sculptures in Barlow’s installations create a coherent, if varied, environment, linking to one another through materials, method of fabrication, or color palette. 2001 Flora Street Dallas, Texas 75201 214 . 242 . 5100
Shigeo Gochō, Self and Others Series, 1975–77, printed 1992, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Museum © Hiroichi Gochō
MUSEUM OF FINE ART HOUSTON TEXAS
The Museum of Fine Art Houston is home to The Films of Robert Frank as well as a fabulous permanent collection of Art and Temporary Exhibitions that rival any Art Institute across the United States. Currently on View through to July 12, 2015
FOR A NEW WORLD TO COME: Experiments in Japanese Art and Photography, 1968–1979
The late 1960s and early 1970s marked a period of political and social turmoil in Japan. The country was struggling to forge a new identity on the world stage, and Japanese artists were seeking a medium that could adequately respond to these uncertain times. For a New World to Come: Experiments in Japanese Art and Photography, 1968–1979 explores in depth, for the first time, the role of photography in the formation of Contemporary art in Japan. 250 works: photographs, photo books, paintings, sculpture, and film-based installations. The unprecedented survey demonstrates how 29 Japanese artists and photographers enlisted the camera to make experimental and conceptual shifts in their artistic practices during a time of radical societal change.
Tap The Link to Visit: http://www.mfah.org
SUMMER OF 2015 EVENTS IN AUSTIN TEXAS
MONIKA SOSNOWSKA ART: The Stairs Opens MAY 10, 2015
On View at Betty and Edward Marcus Sculpture Park at Laguna Gloria
LAGUNA GLORIA 3809 WEST 35TH STREET AUSTIN, TEXAS 78703 512 458 8191
TAP TO VISIT: http://www.thecontemporaryaustin.org
The Republic of Texas Biker Rally June 11TH to June 14 2015
Travis County AUSTIN: Center & Sixth Street / The state's largest motorcycle Gathering of Bikers for rides, Parades and music. TAP TO VISIT: http://www.rotrally.com
The Austin Fourth of July Fireworks and Symphony
Auditorium Shores: The Austin Symphony hosts an annual concert of Patriotic Music
culminating in a spectacular fi rework display over Lady Bird Lake. www.roadwayevents.com
Austin Chronicle Hot Sauce Festival August 23rd 2015
Fiesta Gardens : If you wanna beat the heat this summer then you gotta eat the heat! Join
The Austin Chronicle for one of the world's largest hot sauce festivals. www.austinchronicle.com
PHOTOGRAPHER: VICTORY TISCHLER BLUE
There are Rock Star Photographers. There are Photographers who shoot Rock Stars. There are even Rock Star Photographers who shoot Rocks and Stars, Victory Tischler Blue is a combination of all three. We discovered this image and knew nothing about the photographer who apparently has been a bass player for The Runaways, made an appearance in Spinal Tap and is a serious photographer with some of the most interesting images of the American Desert Landscape that we have seen lately. Ms. Blue's desert is haunted, hallucinated and hallowed. This is Sam Shepard's desert with long lost gas stations, deserted automobiles from other decades, satellite response gear, dried out cacti and ancient artifacts that still provide the mysteries that behold the great American West. Defunct signage from an old cafe that once hosted stories such as The Petrified Forrest stand defiantly like an erect statue in Time Square. And yes, as is so often the case, there is just a hint that maybe , somewhere out there, some living being has landed, will land or is just passing by on it's way to another galaxy not so far, far away. This incredible Image was originally exhibited at The Spot Photo Works Art Gallery in Los Angeles, California U. S. A.
Spot Photo Works 6679 Sunset Boulevard Los Angeles, CA 90038 USA
The Gallery: SpotPhotoGallery.com The Artist: SacredDogs.com The Lab: SchulmanPhotoLab.com
The PAINTER: GEORGIA O'KEEFFE
Georgia O'Keeffe, as a person, was precocious, defiant, intelligent, unwavering and spirited. Throughout her education and early years as a painter, she produced an original abstractionist style that had preceded a group of New York painters of the male variety that has, to this day, remained wholly original, breathtakingly expansive and sexually charged in a way that empowers feminine energy and iconography. O'Keeffe rejected analysis of her works from start to finish, from her early years in New York, to her later years in The West, everyone seemed to get it wrong. So then, let us look again at the paintings and life of Ms. Georgia O'Keeffe and see if we can put this incredible body of work into a new and contemporary context with a fresh eye and revisionist look at this phenomenally bold American.
Georgia O’Keeffe Black Patio Door, 1955 Oil on canvas, 40 1/8x30 in. Amon Carter
Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas. (O’Keeffe 1283) © Copyright 2015 Amon
Carter Museum of American Art Special Thanks to Crystal Springs Fine Arts Center
THE BUREAU ICON : GEORGIA O'KEEFFE
Georgia O'Keeffe is born in Wisconsin in 1887 to Irish - Hungarian parents. By the time her years equal her fingers, she discovers art. Early study of watercolors leads to college, art school in Chicago and the Arts Student League in New York City. She recalled, later in life, "I only remember two things that I painted in those years - a large bunch of purple lilacs and some red and yellow corn." Subjects and colors she would return to throughout her life. By her twentieth year, she is awarded prizes and still seems to reject the praise, due mostly to the fact that her art education seems to reward technique over originality. Adding, in those later reflections, "… I never did like school." While in New York, she and a group of fellow students visit the progressive Art Gallery, 291, eight years later, her own drawings will land in the hands of 291's founder, Alfred Stieglitz, who will become one of her greatest friends, confidants and legally, her husband. In the interim, Georgia O'Keeffe quits painting for four years straight, then, at the University of Virginia and later while studying for a teachers credentials at Columbia College, she falls under the tutelage of Arthur Dow and is set free to pursue something new and wholly original. "I decided to start anew - to strip away what I had been taught, to accept as true, my own thinking. This was one of the best times in my life. There was no one around to look at what I was doing - no one interested - no one to say anything about it one way or another. I was alone and singularly free, working into my own, unknown - no one to satisfy, but myself." This particular statement is extremely important to the core of her character, as it displays O'Keeffe's disdain for any particular reactions to the work, either casually, by fellow artists or formally, by the art critics. As a woman who was decades ahead of her contemporaries, in terms of abstraction in both form and color as well as feminine energy personified freely and independently in an iconic manner: O'Keeffe took a beating by the critics. Some of the blame often falls on Alfred Stieglitz and his in depth photographic series of Ms. O'Keeffe in all her natural beauty as a young woman. Unfortunately, the public discovered Georgia O'Keeffe as the muse of an older male rebel on the front lines of intellectual battles which included, photography as art, the importance of european abstraction and American art as a whole, before they had gotten to discover the original paintings and watercolors of O'Keeffe as Artist. The timing was off and Ms. O'Keeffe, although celebrated on a national level in art circles, was also widely dismissed through the lens of new psychological trends that included the great Freudian fraud which attempted to minimize the feminine energy that Georgia O'Keeffe's work so boldly personified. Once again, from the beginning of time and written history, the female is minimized by rhetoric & ideology through the powers that be, when all along, Georgia O'Keeffe is actually winning the game. From the modern perspective of 2015, it is time to liberate O'Keeffe's eroticism.
O'Keeffe's journey into public notoriety had all started through a mutual friend in 1916 when Stieglitz famously receives a series of charcoal drawings by a young Miss O'Keeffe and immediately is smitten by the originality, the boldness and no doubt by the fact that the drawings are created by an American who is both young and female. He has seen nothing like it before and in a letter that is formally typed and mailed to O'Keeffe, he expresses his admiration. "What am I to say ? It is impossible for me to put into words what I saw and felt in your drawings. As a matter of fact I would not make any attempt to do so. I might give you what I received from them if you and I were to meet and talk about life. Possibly then, through such a conversation I might make you feel what your drawings gave me. I do want to tell you that they gave me great joy… If at all possible, I would like to show them." O'Keeffe would later describe the 291 gallery, "The things you saw at Stieglitz's place sent you off into the world, just like his conversations did… It was a place that helped you find your own road: It was the only place."
"The things you saw at Stieglitz's place sent you off into the world…"
Alfred Stieglitz and his artistic efforts had been on the verge of the vanguard since the early 1890s. In the beginning, through his own photography in New York City and later in Austria, Italy and Germany. His trips to Paris and his friendship with Edward Steichen had exposed him to the works of Cezanne, Matisse, Picasso and Rodin, all of whom would later be exhibited at 291 Gallery. Culturally speaking, there was a fight for the new and Stieglitz had taken the side of The Moderns, "The search for the truth is my obsession." he describes, "The camera fascinated me and photography became my life." While many people enjoyed the new found art of the photograph, there were purists, such as Baudelaire, who hated photography. Although, at the same time, a new group of painters, also in search of truth on American soil, began to create a new type of painting, which became known as the Ashcan School, painters such as Bellows, Shin, Luks and Sloan, who did not shy away from everyday people, subjects and locations of the populist working class lifestyle.
Alfred Stieglitz walked the streets of New York from 1893 to 1895 capturing photographic images of everyday life. He came from a wealthy family, married into another wealthy family & soon found incompatibility, he took refuge into photography. In 1902 Stieglitz started a magazine, opened a gallery and founded a new group of photographers with Edward Steichen called The Photo Secessionists, by it's very name and definition, it was a rebel act of separation from the norm and it began a steep and unsteady incline towards a peak of cultural defiance that would slowly lead upward to the very top. At the start, Alfred Stieglitz's fight was for photography as art and he indeed found supporters and subscribers. Eventually, he began to fight for modernism at all levels, which included much of the art from the newest and most outrageous European painters. In 1907, while on a ship headed for Europe, Stieglitz has an epiphany through a photographic image that, as he describes was, "A Step in my own Evolution."
Georgia O'Keeffe Pedernal with Red Hills 1936 oil on linen, 19 3/4 x 29 3/4 inches. Collection of the New Mexico M.O.A Bequest of Helen Miller Jones
While in Paris, Alfred Stieglitz photographs Rodin, he views Cezanne's new cubist watercolors and Picasso's paintings, including, "Madame's De Avegnons." A year later, in 1908, his exhibition of the sculptor Rodin's drawings causes a stir by their very nature and erotic simplicity, again, he is ahead of the pack and slowly loses the photographic subscribers who originally supported 291 Gallery and the magazine. In 1911, Stieglitz's Gallery is the first American gallery to exhibit the drawings of Pablo Picasso.
"Alfred Stieglitz's 291 Gallery is the first American gallery to exhibit the drawings of Pablo Picasso"
The public reaction to Picasso's new modernist and primitive approach is abhorrent and with only a single sale, Stieglitz felt obliged to purchase a work himself. His magazine, "Camera Work," was the very first to publish the writings of Gertrude Stein, who would go onto become a modernist wonder of literature and a champion of Picasso's work around the world. Then in 1913, The New York City Armory Show pierces the veil of modernism and justifies many of Alfred Stieglitz's prior decisions. Soon he realizes that the struggle for American Art is lagging behind the europeans and his next cultural battle is for the validity of an American modernist art form by American artists.
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Why all this history, you wonder ? I thought this was an article about Georgia O'Keeffe, you ask ? Yes, dear reader, it is, but to comprehend the importance of the beauty, the freedom and the defiant nature of Ms. O'Keeffe's work, you must first understand the fight that preceded her grand entry and the very importance of the simple fact that Georgia O'Keeffe was a very solid American woman with ideas and images stirring inside her imagination that would come into existence and be related directly with a man that had been searching for just such an ideal for over a decade.
"Everyone began talking about the search for… The Next Great American Thing."
When Stieglitze found Georgia O'Keeffe, he had found: "The Great American Thing." As Georgia O'Keeffe herself had described time and time again, looking back at those heady times, "Everyone began talking about the search for the next Great American Novel, the next Great American Poem, the next Great American Painting, The next Great American Thing." Well, my dear readers, I am very happy to inform you that Georgia O'Keeffe not only filled that void, she had been working on the equation, without actually defining it as such, from the time she was ten years old. Now she was twenty-nine years old, had been discovered by Stieglitz and was about to take center stage.
Georgia O’Keeffe (1887–1986) Yellow Cactus, 1929 Oil on canvas, 30x42 in. Dallas Museum of Art Texas. Courtesy Colorado Springs FAC
The world of the 1920s and it could be argued, that the world of today, is a male dominated world, where woman are subjugated to second class citizenship. Georgia O'Keeffe along Steiglitz's other contemporary painters including John Marin, Marsden Hartley and Arthur Dove helped to define a new and original abstract form in painting that had never, ever, been expressed before. Ms. O'Keeffe did not copy, she did not follow, she did not supplicate, she Invented a whole new 'Thing' and it had all been based on her inner life, her female power, her very sexual and erotic nature.
"The Interesting thing about O'Keeffe is her ability to learn from the Steiglitz gang and the opposing faction of artists commonly called the precisionists ..."
It was new, it was beautiful, it was bold, it was sensual, it was exciting, it was tempestuous, it was authentic, it was avant-garde, it was unblemished, it was purely Georgia O'Keeffe and above all: It was a New American Art Form. The Interesting thing about O'Keeffe is her ability to learn from the Stieglitz gang and the opposing faction of artists commonly called the precisionists group, which culled inspiration from factories, architecture & machinery, leading the way into modern pop such as Andy Warhol's work. O'Keeffe's work includes both a very personal inner emotional and naturally inspired oeuvre and a very precise and overall interest in architecture & modernism. She won by simply using techniques, ideas and methods that did not devote themselves to any school or group.
Pelvis IV, 1944 Georgia O’Keeffe Oil on Masonite 36 x 40 (91.4 x 101.6) Georgia O’Keeffe Museum
But not so fast, there is still so much to say, so much more to explain, this is really just the beginning and yet, due to O'Keeffe's consistency, in both style and technique, the works she will produce, from 1918, when she moves to New York, up to her big abstract art exhibition in 1923, compare, very much in power, in expression and in composition with the works she will produce for the rest of her life: Amazingly so. Georgia O'Keeffe the artist, was seldom in search of a style, if anything she had abandoned her own original approach briefly, only to return to it and then held steadfast to what has now become the O'Keeffe method, with a clearly recognizable iconic brand in todays contemporary world of art. Her move from teaching in Texas to living with Stieglitz in New York happened relatively easily and her adjustment to the big city, where she had briefly studied was seamless. Having been promised by Alfred Stieglitz that she could work for a year straight, without interruption, the original vow had turned into the pledge of an entire lifetime. Though, there were times when his photographic objectification not only was a hinderance to her personal space, it did ultimately damage her perception in the public's eye and personally, she was hurt by the mainstream reaction, especially by the critics. Two years prior to her one person abstract exhibit, Stieglitz displayed 145 new photo works, many of them were of his new muse and lover, Georgia O'Keeffe.
Pelvis Series, Red with Yellow, 1945 Georgia O’Keeffe Oil on canvas 36 1/8 x 48 1/8 (91.8 x 122.2) ) © Georgia O’Keeffe Museum
The images of O'Keeffe are comparable, in modern times, to that of, say, a celebrity power couple such as Jay-Z and Beyonce'. The sexualization of Georgia O'Keeffe had begun. Lets remember, this is by no means the 1930s with Clara Bow or the 1940s with Greta Garbo or the 1950s with Marilyn Monroe or the 1960s with Bridgette Bardot or the 1970s with Raquel Welch or the 1980s with Madonna or the 1990s with Sharon Stone or the 2000s with What's - her - name: This is 1921. On top of that, we are talking about a very serious artist, not a broadway showgirl, not a singer, not an actress, an intellectual visual artist who, in the words of Arthur Dove, one of the male painters in the Stieglitz art gallery stable, "…Is Actually Doing What All The Guys are Trying to Do." O'Keeffe's Abstract Art show is more than impressive, but due to the harsh criticisms, she gives up abstraction for the next few years and switches to representational objects. Though, her choice of subjects such as fruit and flowers is a rather subtle change. If we look closely at the psychology behind this maneuver, we can see that it was entirely calculated and was actually a bold move toward flipping the script on the subjective mind-scape that had pervaded the times via Freudian theories that were trendily in vogue. By creating representational works that still contained a fierce and even blatantly sexually charged nature, Georgia O'Keeffe was tempting critics to fall on their own swords. The critics had originally tried to intimate that she was a sensual animal, expressing her hidden desires through her paintings. Two years later, when O'Keeffe showed up with pears, apples, flowers and the like, all incredibly and beautifully rendered, with the definite possibility of being interpreted as orifice - like shapes and feminine curves that one might taste or touch, she had set a trap for the critics and still marched on into the next sixty years doing exactly as she had from the very start.
Black Hollyhock Blue Larkspur, 1930 Georgia O’Keeffe Oil on canvas 30 1/8 x 40 (76.5 x 101.6) © Georgia O’Keeffe Museum
On the one hand, O'Keeffe had won the battle, on the other hand, we still must wonder what might have been, had the critics not been so foul. It seems that in Georgia O'Keeffe's very nature, there was a sly, humorous, independent human being with a philosophical bent that took each challenge, like a boxer might take a rap on the chin, she simply shook her head and got right back in the ring. A year later, Stieglitz handed her a different type of ring and the two began a journey that would last up until his death in 1949, he was twenty-three years her senior. Many years after his death, O'Keefe described their relationship in the simplest of terms, "I was interested in what he did and he was interested in what I did: Very Interested." Decades later, Georgia O'Keeffe had also taken a much younger lover and partner, shocking those around her and creating the same type of stir that had originally started her career in the first place. Her life had come full circle. Georgia O'Keeffe's first visit to New Mexico in 1929, five years after their marriage, started a new love affair with the landscape, which included annual summer stays and eventually a permanent home that would provide an entirely new style, technique and viewpoint which harkened back to her earliest works, before the critics had tried to sexualize, demonize and project a nasty glaze over her very robust, sensually charged paintings that, to this day, will get just about anyone thinking about the beauty of love. If I find myself looking at an O'Keeffe for very long, well, there is no other way to put it, I get turned on. Anyone who says different is either sexless, afraid or most likely, simply too young or a virgin. O'Keeffe's images simply approve of passion, desire and the art of lovemaking. It is also safe to say that, were she alive today, O'Keeffe would most likely dismiss this entire analysis. The fact of the matter is, for a painter so, 'In Love with Color,' language, words and any verbal communication seemed almost rudimentary compared to the purity of visual expressions by a genius.
The BUREAU ICON : Georgia O'Keefe / Summer 2015 / Written By Joshua A. Triliegi
To Download The Entire MAGAZINE ARTICLE FOR FREE SIMPLY Tap This Link : SUMMER EDITION O'KEEFFE
GEORGIA O'KEEFE EXHIBITIONS AND RELATED LINKS
GEORGIA O’KEEFFE MUSEUM: Georgia O’Keeffe: Line, Color, Composition
May 8 – September 13, 2015 TAP THE LINK: www.okeeffemuseum.org
PHOENIX ART MUSEUM: From New York to New Mexico: Masterworks of American Modernism June 7—September 7, 2015 TAP THE LINK : phxart.org
FINE ARTS CENTER COLORADO SPRINGS: Eloquent Objects: Georgia O’Keeffe and
Still Life Art in New Mexico June 27 – Sept 13 2015 TAP THE LINK: csfineartscenter.org
SCHEINBAUM & RUSSEK LTD: Representing Photographs by Todd Webb & Myron Wood
TAP THE LINK : www.photographydealers.com
TACOMA ART MUSEUM: TAP THE LINK : www.TacomaArtMuseum.org
DALLAS MUSEUM OF ART : Georgia O'Keeffe in The Permanent Collection
TAP THE LINK : www.DMA.org
ALEX HARRIS : PHOTOGRAPHER
Alex Harris's Photographs are Quintessentially and to the Core: American. He is a Master Photographer with decades of consistently important, relevant and revelatory images. From the early Nineteen Seventies with a socially conscious black and white portfolio and a degree from Yale, Harris captured images on the front lines of culturally significant moments. In The Nineteen Eighties he founded the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University. In the Nineties, he co founded the groundbreaking photographic magazine, Double Take. He has received fellowships from The Guggenheim & Rockefeller, has published fifteen books and is a Professor for the Practice of Public Policy and Documentary Studies at Duke. His work in CUBA was very Influential to many of his contemporaries. We are very pleased to bring you the very first of several Photographic Essays Celebrating The Art, The Experience and The Conversation of One of America's Best and Brightest Living Photographers, Ladies and Gentlemen, meet Mister Alex Harris.
Joshua TRILIEGI: What initially attracted you to Photography ?
Alex HARRIS : I was attracted to photography before I really had the words to express that attraction. My grandfather Alexander Eisemann, used his camera with great wit and precision to chronicle my mother’s life before I was born, and then the life of her young children and family – me included. I was so attracted to the stories he told with his pictures and the albums he put together, the stories of an intact family living together, full of joy and humor. In fact I was more attracted to that story than the reality of my family life, which must have been fraught with difficulty as my parents separated and divorced by the time I was six and moved to separate homes. When I graduated from high school, I can’t think of one family in my neighborhood that had remained intact or remained in their original homes. Looking back I see its not an accident that my first projects as a required me to immerse myself in some of the most intact, long-lived communities in the United States, the Hispanic villages of northern New Mexico and the Inuit villages in Alaska.
Joshua TRILIEGI: Describe how one image leads to another in creating a Series.
Alex HARRIS : I began shooting color landscapes and interiors in New Mexico in 1979 with the premise that I didn’t want the photographs to be about color so I would try to ignore color with my camera entirely, to photograph color blind. And for about six months I successfully photographed colorblind while making absolutely uninteresting color photographs! One evening at dusk I saw the way the light was hitting my neighbor George Romero’s yellow front porch, and I stopped to photograph it. The porch post visible in the picture was painted blue, white, and red. A shadow from a second post off-camera made it appear that shadows were falling in the wrong direction. I allowed myself to respond to this scene and to color. From then on I looked for color as an aspect of culture, as an essential part of the way the people express themselves with their homes. I was able to go back to the people, homes and fields I had visited over the years as a black-and-white portrait photographer and to photograph would have been the backgrounds to those portraits, now as the foreground and subject of the picture, making what I began to see is another kind of portrait, a portrait without people. I tended to work with one theme at a time:, so bedrooms and other interiors of homes, close-ups of objects and possessions, photographs of villages from a distance, landscapes with signs of human presence, landscapes as seen through automobiles. And I would move back and forth between those series.
Joshua TRILIEGI: Lets talk about this series we are currently sharing with our readers. Tell us how the dashboard images came about and describe the juxtaposing the interior with the exteriors.
Alex HARRIS : When I had the idea to photograph the landscape of northern New Mexico through the interiors of the cars of people who lived there, I’d been living in northern New Mexico on and off for almost 15 years and working in color there for about five years with a view camera. I saw myself as making the portrait of this region without including any actual people in the pictures. So I photographed extensively inside homes, whose decoration was primarily the domain of women, and the outsides of homes and in the fields, which was primarily the domain of men. In photographing these spaces, in a sense I was portraying the people who had created or shaped those spaces over the years. I wanted to represent the younger generation, and the spaces they controlled and decorated were the interiors of their cars. It seemed uninteresting simply to photograph the dashboards and interiors wherever the cars happened randomly to be parked. I had the idea that if I could balance the light inside and outside the car, I could use my camera to make a connection between the car interior and the landscape that person lived in or often drove through. I thought my pictures could represent what it felt like for people in the villages to see their own landscape and community, for the viewer of the photograph to see their world through the frames they had decorated and that they themselves often peered through. The best portraits make a connection between a person’s interior world – in a sense their life history – and the world that surrounds them. That’s what I was looking for in these pictures.
To Download The Entire INTERVIEW WITH A FABULOUS PHOTO ESSAY AND TEN QUESTION INTERVIEW WITH ALEX HARRIA Tap This Link : SUMMER EDITION
Archie Thompson and Albert Rudin American, active c. 1935 Shoes, c. 1940 watercolor, graphite, and colored pencil on paperboard overall: 32.3 x 42.4 cm (12 11/16 x 16 11/16 in.) Courtesy of National Gallery of Art Washington D.C. USA
THE NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART
In Washington D.C. deep inside The Archives of The National Gallery of Art lay objects, images and great works of art that have defined who we are as Americans. For some modern day Americans, a defining object might be the washer and dryer at the local laundromat or a half a gallon container of homogenized milk for the baby or the metropolitan bus that takes them from one end of town to another. The significance of an object is sometimes related directly to the importance of that object in relation to the Artist who creates the portrait, the drawing or the work of art, be it a drawing, a musical composition or a piece of literature. We have chosen several images from the gallery for no particular reason, other than the very fact that these everyday objects are indeed a part of our American history, which we can never forget. The Artists in America have become the heroes of this country, not because they died in it's defense, not because they were forced to actually sacrifice their lives to be remembered, but because they simply loved, adored, reflected on and represented an object, an idea, a rendition of their life in America, in Art, in Music in Words.Today, We salute The Artists of America.
Daniel Marshack American, active c. 1935 Woman's Gym Suit, 1935/1942 watercolor, graphite, and pen and ink on paperboard overall: 45.5 x 30.2 cm (17 15/16 x 11 7/8 in.) Archives of The National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. United States of America
BUREAU OF ARTS AND CULTURE MAGAZINE: CINEMA
Academy Award Winning Actor Robert DeNiro as Jake "The Bronx Bull" LaMotta in RAGING BULL / United Artists
ON THE SET: RAGING BULL
By Joshua TRILIEGI
A man in a hooded, leopard skin robe walks down a long hallway while a group of men push aside those standing in his path. We hear a crowd of thousands cheer the man on, "Jake Jake Jake …" they begin to chant. He is wearing boxing gloves, this is a championship fight, the crowd is dressed in their finest, the men are wearing suits and hats, the women are wearing jewelry, the place is filled with cigar and cigarette smoke, sailors, businessmen, middle aged characters scream the man's name over and over, the women smile as he passes by, his trainers walk in front of and behind the man as he walks down the pathway toward the ring, the volume of the crowd amplifies as the man gets closer and closer to the large roped off square canvas at the center of the arena. The man in the leopard skin robe enters through the ropes, a nondescript fellow with a microphone introduces the man in the robe, the crowd goes wild with frenzy, people are shouting, clapping, everyone is yelling something and then, suddenly, a quiet gent behind a camera yells, "cut" and the place goes silent, the action ceases, everyone settles and a pensive discussion between the crew behind the camera ensues. A few changes are discussed, several people make notations and we do it all over again. I am barely a teenager. It is a first time experience and I am collaborating with the finest in the business. My father and I are working together on the film set of a classic piece of cinema with the Actor Robert DeNiro and Director Martin Scorsese. This is On the Set Raging Bull, thirty-five years later & this is all true.
Academy Award Winning Actor Robert DeNiro as Jake "The Bronx Bull" LaMotta in RAGING BULL / United Artists
I get home from school and, once again, my parents are having a debate and it is about me. This has happened a few times, once, when my brother wanted to take me to an important surf contest on a week day and another time, when we got stuck at the border of Mexico and America late one Sunday night and didn't get home until early Monday morning. Today's negotiation is all about what is more important ? For me to attend school or for me to participate in making a film? The prior debates were also surrounding weather a day in real life would mean more to my education than a day at school. My dad had always felt that real life events had a gravity that would inform much more than the controlled environs of a formal education. In the past, his debating skills would convince mom that this was true and after some heated discussion, he wins her over. Now, we have to figure out how a thirteen year old kid with shoulder length hair is going to fit into a film that takes place in the late 1940s and early Fifties. First, he offers to cut it and I say no. Then, my hair is tied into a pony tail and stuffed up into a woolen cap that my old man had worn since he was a barber down on Prospect Avenue in Milwaukee. Back then, my mother had found herself single, with three kids, she was italian, she was beautiful, she was liberated and although the barber had barely begun his own life as a bachelor and hadn't entered college, when my mom walked in to get my older brother's hair cut, he fell for her and at six months old, he and I become pals. Through the years, we seldom had to deal with any of the father & son bullshit that can ruin a great relationship, we were often, simply friends or roommates or just happened to be living together. We both had to answer to the same lady, for him, it was the love of his life, for me, it was my mom, who made me clean my room, do chores, wash my own clothes and do my homework before running out for the day and get back by nightfall.
Academy Award Winner Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci play The La Motta Brothers in RAGING BULL / United Artists
We have been through some tough times together as a family and come out unscathed. But things are about to get really rough. In about six months, mom is going to move back to Milwaukee for a stretch, my brother and I will stay in California and my sister will go with mom. We did fifteen years without a separation, but my mom is coming into her own and my dad is freaking out. We get up at five in the morning and drive downtown to the Olympic Auditorium, where my old man is moonlighting nights as a security guard. The Olympic was the place, back in the day, where boxing matches happened every weekend. The great American boxing tradition was much bigger and wider spread than most people realize today. A few kids from just about any working class neighborhood, would start fighting in the ring, very early on, certainly kids my age did. There was the Golden Gloves, usually sponsored by a local newspaper and there was the Diamond Belt, often played live on local radio stations. My grandfather fought for these competitions in the late 1920s & early Thirties. He and his friends even started a boxing club, the Battling Bombers. They'd get up in the morning, run along the lakefront, work out at the gym and then go to work all day. He was a great fighter, he naturally had the correct build, could take a punch, had a mean right hook, but one thing he didn't have, was the reach. And if you can't reach your opponent, nothing much matters. In any event, my dad was very aware of my grandfather's history as well as the talent that lay in director Martin Scorsese. My parents had seen Scorsese's early films, but when, "Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore," was released, both my parents had noticed that my precocious behavior compared that of Alice's son.The big screen rapport between the boy and Alice had undertones of my own relationship with mom.
Actress Cathy Moriarty plays Jake LaMotta's Wife, Vicki in RAGING BULL / Image Courtesy of United Artists
We get to the set and already thousands of people are filling the auditorium. I am dressed in jeans and suspenders, a cap and tennis shoes. He is wearing a suit and tie. Because my dad is actually an employee, we have all access. The scene we are shooting today is a famous 'single take' that Martin Scorsese will later make into one of his trademark style techniques. A favorite example of which would be the incredible scene in, 'GoodFellas' when Henry and Karen walk into a nightclub through the kitchen, to avoid the lines out front. They stroll through the door, down a hallway, into the kitchen, where Henry greets the chef, past a couple, who Henry chastises for always meeting here and on into the club, where a table is placed directly in front of the entertainer, who then sends Henry and his date a bottle of champagne. It is an amazing and exhilarating piece of cinema. The scene we are about to shoot uses similar elements. The first time we shoot the scene, the camera is behind Jake and he walks from dressing room to hallway to entryway of the arena and down the long path to the ring, where he makes a sharp left, past the judges and a right into the ring. My father and I are seated just above left of camera, the crew is situated below us, to our right. In between takes, and I can only assume that because my dad worked at the auditorium, or because it was meant to teach me something, or because he thought I would 'be discovered,' he began to call over production techies and assistants, asking questions about this or that adjustment. All these years later, having worked on films, directed and produced, I still can't believe what guts my dad had for the way he participated in the actual filming of the day. I mean, we were just extras, actually, we weren't even that, we were bum rushing the entire experience and here he is actually, 'participating' in the filmmaking process.
Actors Frank Adonis, Joseph Bono and Frank Vincent in RAGING BULL / Image Courtesy of United Artists
The first, 'adjustment,' we notice, is when Martin Scorsese moves an extra on the right hand side of the scene from visibility. The man is dressed to the nines, in suit and hat. This is a crowd scene with thousands of people. At any one time, the camera is taking in from twelve to twelve hundred people. This is Mr Scorsese as a master oil painter, creating a giant fresco, placing each individual exactly where he wants them, every now and then, within the single take, an individual character may express an action that will end up on the screen for maybe a second or two. An older, portly man in the hallway, reaches out to Jake outside his dressing room, a middle aged man in a mustache, turns to his left while Jake passes by, clapping, a young woman cheers Jake on as he turns to the left towards the ring. When my father calls over one of the crew members and inquires about the particular change of position, the man simply looks at my dad, then looks at me, then gets on the talkie and finds out. A few minutes later, he comes over to inform us that the well dressed man is in an outfit that resembles one of the main characters and could be confusing to the overall film. This is the first of several inquiries that alerts the crew that either one of Marty's close pals is in the audience or a renegade security guard with kid in tow is taking notes. For now, we are still flying under the radar. We do the scene again, this time, the camera is in front of Jake, the sound of the arena is deafening. This is the moment, in the story & script, where Jake LaMotta finally gets the title fight he deserves. After several editing techniques of a wide variety, mostly, extremely fast and short clips, his shot at the title is pronounced, with this extended, single take and in the final film, it works out beautifully.
Joe Pesci and Nicholas Colasanto, The Neighborhood Don in in RAGING BULL / Image Courtesy of United Artists
We break for lunch. The entire auditorium is practically full with thousands of extras and somehow, my dad is able to situate me right next to Robert DeNiro. To this day, I still don't know how he did that, but I have a few ideas why. All these years later, looking back on that very important day in my life, I can see clearly that he wanted me to have the opportunities that existed here in Hollywood. As it turns out, he was a natural born bum rusher, who, on several occasions had done this type of thing before. One example, that stands out, is the time he got backstage at a concert and handed Waylon Jennings a tape with a bunch of songs he had written with his cousin. I should also say here that my old man was definitely a gambler, but he also had talent, he wrote poetry, painted, he knew music very well, was a master craftsman, he had charisma and the gift of gab, he was handsome and had a great heart, but to me, back then, he was simply the guy I had lived with, that my mom had loved, since I was six months old. That said, here I am, eating lunch with a silent Robert DeNiro, who is donned in hood and robe, no one else dared to sit at that table. While I am chowing down with Bobby, my old man is chatting up the crew, he's, no doubt, getting that high that can easily be had when on the set of a great film, probably doesn't even realize it. I look up and he is now talking to the real life Jake LaMotta, getting his autograph, introducing me to people, we are no longer, under the radar. After lunch, a crew member stops by and explains that because I am not an adult, and there are no tutors on the set, the law requires that half day rules apply to actors under eighteen and so, we will not be able to stay for the full day. My old man tries for a second or two to appease and convince, then realizes, ultimately, that we have already succeeded, it has been a great day at the roulette wheel of life. We walk back to our car and drive home. Ten years later, I buy my first film camera, write my first screenplay & produce my first short film. The screenplay is a finalist for the Sundance Film Festival's writers workshop and the short film wins nominations elsewhere.
Academy Award © Winning Actor Robert DeNiro as Jake "The Bronx Bull" LaMotta in RAGING BULL / United Artists
Raging Bull, as a film, is ahead of it's time. The critics, who had, just a few years earlier, lauded Sylvestor Stallone's, 'Rocky' as a winning, feel good boxing film, did not know what to do with a film as brutally honest and unapologetic as Martin Scorsese's Raging Bull. The film was actually, a project that Robert DeNiro had been working on, for quite some time. After the success of The Deerhunter and Godfather II, he was able to put projects together which suited his goals and challenged the audience. For the first time in film history, an actor had gained a record amount of pounds, to play a character in a 'later in life' sequence, setting the bar several notches higher for techniques utilizing one's physique. Even the best film critics are not quite ready for the honesty of Martin Scorsese. America wanted another feel good film about boxing, and what it got, was a stark, reality based film that exposed the brutality, realism and masochism that surrounded Jake LaMotta's life. Not to mention the art house aspect of filming the entire project, with the exception of a few color home movies, in classic black and white. A bold, artistic decision that has, since then, garnered "Raging Bull" the reverence and deep respect of film lovers and cinema creators around the world. All one needs to do is study the film stills and camera work of Michael Chapman to realize why this film is a work of Art on almost every level. Even the sound design is especially mesmerizing, specifically how each crucial punch, in every single fight scene, is given a special mix of audio effect. It is a mesmerizing work of art and a testament to great cinema, without a doubt. At that years Academy Awards © Ceremony, Robert DeNiro walks up the isle, people are cheering, they reach out to him, applaud his performance and he gladly accepts the Oscar Award for Best Actor. Although my dad is unable to read this, I would like to thank him, Marty, Bobby and the Academy: We Made IT.
HERB RITTS : THE PHOTOGRAPHER
25 YEARS:NOW A CLASSIC
ON VIEW NOW THROUGH TO NOVEMBER 8, 2015
The Herb Ritts catalogue is now over twenty-five years young. A recent Exhibit at The Boston Museum of Fine Arts gives us a chance to reassess the work of a fundamentally commercial photographer who wanted dearly to shatter the worlds perceptions of Art, Commerciality and Fashion. He had access to the worlds best models, personalities and locations and through it all, had the simplicity and potency to create iconic imagery that harkened back to the earliest days of photography. In looking at The HERB RITTS catalogue, we can see the influence of another great American photographer, Walker Evans, whose work was first celebrated 50 years before Herb Ritts would go onto create some of his most exemplary images that actually defined the times he lived in. Although Walker Evans subjects included the downtrodden and the disparaged, due to the very struggles that occurred economically in the 1930s, Ritts takes that clean, straight ahead style and points his camera at celebrities and clothing in the way that Evans might document a wrench or a trowel. The excesses of The 1980s allowed Ritts, budgets and portfolio commissions, that to this day, seem extreme. And yet, he filtered it down into something very basic, taking a creative note from the architect Mies Van Der Rohe's ever famous quote: "Less IS More."
Considering other influences, we must also mention photographers such as Edward Steichen and Alfred Stieglitz who had both fought a tedious battle to affirm that photography, in the hands of an artist, could indeed be an 'art' and that the by product of this new instrument called a camera, was indeed an Art-form which could rival and compare to great paintings created by great painters and therefore photographs could, should and would be considered: a great art.
The very fact that Herb Ritts' work is now residing within the walls of an institute such as The Boston Museum of Fine Art is a testament to those early battles.It is often said that an object becomes valuable and collectible at its 25 year mark. Many of the images in this exhibition were valuable the day they were taken, but we can also see, with that mellowing, like a good whiskey in the barrel, that yes indeed, The Herb RITTS Portfolio is gathering a value that is now vintage value and all the while his works are earthy, sleek, deceivingly simple & purely classic.
Madonna, Tokyo Herb Ritts (American, 1952–2002) 1987 Photograph, gelatin silver print
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Gift of Herb Ritts © Herb Ritts Foundation
Photograph © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Mick Jagger, London, 1987 by Photographer Herb RITTS at The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
1.Naomi Campbell, Face in Hand, Hollywood, 1990 2. Backflip, Paradise Cove, 1987 3. Sylvester Stallone and Brigitte Nielsen, Long Island, 1987 Images Related to this Bureau Article : Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Gift of Herb Ritts © Herb Ritts Foundation Photograph © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
image: Guest Artist Irby Pace Courtesy of Gallerie Urbane
SO MANY ROADS: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF THE GRATEFUL DEAD
By Joshua TRILIEGI
David Browne has written a grand opus of a book on, of all things, the greatest rock & roll accident that has ever occurred: The Grateful Dead. No other band in Rock & Roll history can be compared to 'The Dead,' as they have been commonly known by fans and professionals alike. From the early days in Palo Alto California to the later days across the entire world, Mr. Browne has fashioned an exhaustively researched book into an easily readable tome of sorts. The writer for Rolling Stone magazine has taken an original and interesting approach and given us a portrait of the band through a very straight forward concept that fits well with his style, his experience and his day job, writing about music in digestible amounts. Mr. Browne breaks down the careers and characters that make up the Dead, from start to finish, by simply creating complete and utter portraits of various days in the life of The Grateful Dead. Days in which Mr Browne felt that a significant window into the soul of the band could be glimpsed. It is a smart concept considering that Mr. Browne was not an insider. He did not tour with the band, so he was well aware that this book would not compare, nor did he wish to compete with the previous books which have preceded this fine piece of history. Through his research methods, which seem to be exemplary, without all the show off style that can sometimes leave a bitter taste in the reader, and his experience at Rolling Stone magazine, Browne takes us into the forming of the band, their many transformations and delivers portraits of each member with the greatest care and delicacy available. Its a complex story, told with an exacting style.
By the fifth page of The Prologue, the reader is hooked. I personally cannot think of a more easy reading style, chocked with so many actual facts, insights and observations in a very long, long time. Sometimes his acuity is just as strange and off the cuff as the formulas and elements that make up The Grateful Dead's original and one of a kind style of music. For instance, Jerry Garcia's early concerns and fears regarding the Cuban missile crisis in America is a real eye opener, which on first impression seems slightly heavy handed, but upon consideration of Garcia's age and experience, entirely fitting. Browne interviewed surviving members, had access to The Grateful Dead Archive in Santa Cruz as well as a multitude of interviews directly from his office job at Rolling Stone magazine. But he didn't stop there, apparently there has been more literature in connection with the Grateful Dead than one would ever imagine. From sources as diverse as Tom Wolf'e, Electric Kool - Aid Acid Test, written in 1968 to the source that broke Watergate, The Washington Post. Everyone has seemingly spent some time ruminating on the indescribable elements that make up the iconic sound that originated such classic pillars of Rock & Roll History like, Truckin', Casey Jones & Uncle John's Band. Mr. Browne has received attention previously for writing about, brace yourself: The 'Importance' of John Tesch. Lets not hold that against him, maybe, like The Grateful Dead, he was intoxicated or simply mixing and matching inspiration and improvisation. Either way, this author has delved deep down into the facts, the myths and the fiction surrounding Garcia and his band of bad boy compadre's and has surfaced with a nice read that newcomers as well as hardcore fans will surely dig. Mr. Brown has also written about: Sonic Youth, Jeff Buckley and James Taylor. As a writer who occasionally hitchhiked to and from preschool in Northern California, with my mom, and on more than one occasion received rides home from members of The Dead: I wholeheartedly approve of this
book. Now available on Da Capo Press. Worth every dollar spent on the 482 pages it offers readers.
ANDY WARHOL IS IN ARIZONA !
How a genuinely curious and simply child-like Individual took over the entire Art World… Is Probably how I would begin a story describing Andy's entire career and trajectory into and then out of the stratosphere of Culture. He used genuine experiences, friendships, new technologies, interest's and even phobia's to reflect on and represent what he saw, but most of all, he used and honored: the experiment. Willing to fail but determined to succeed and sometimes achieving both concurrently. A personal failure could easily become a professional championship win in Warhol's World. A professional failure could lead to personal triumphs. Andy used the world and the world's inhabitants returned the favor. The Story of Andy Warhol can never be told in a single sitting, nor should it be. All good artist's should simply be viewed one image at a time. That is the nature of art and artists, stories and writers, photographs and photographers, musicians and music: One word, One Note, One Image at a time is as ample a device as any to experience what need be.
ALL ART IMAGES: Courtesy of The PHOENIX ART MUSEUM and The Andy Warhol Museum,
Pittsburgh; Founding Collection, Contribution The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc.
Phoenix Art Museum 1625 N. Central Avenue Phoenix, AZ 85004
Pittsburgh; Founding Collection, Contribution The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc.
Phoenix Art Museum 1625 N. Central Avenue Phoenix, AZ 85004
TAP TO VISIT MUSEUM EXHIBIT / ANDY WARHOL PORTRAITS at : phxart.org
What is Sacred ? What is Holy ? What is Original ? What is American ? They tell me that Football, McDonalds & The Automobile are American. Although, the only thing that seems to me that is holy, sacred, original and also American is: The Native American. The original ecologists, with a deep understanding of the natural sciences, including astronomy, keeping time, recording natural and spiritual occurrences in regards to evolution. They are the storytellers and record keepers in tune with nature, animals and the planet earth. We are Americans and we are now out of balance. We are struggling with our identity, as a country, as a people and beyond that, as human beings. How will we make peace with one another ? How will we solve the riddles of our history ? In 1492, "Columbus sailed the ocean blue…" 500+ years later, we are left in the dark, regarding race relations, regarding peaceful understanding of our diverse lifestyles, regarding the history of Slavery, regarding how we all speak different languages, regarding our different religions and the fact that all our official political representatives have boiled down each and every argument into a request and or a bequest of financial gain or loss. We are in denial, ecologically, ideologically and in general. Native Americans lost much of this great land and what it meant to them, they sacrificed and they survived. Will we as modern day Americans also experience a similar take over of this Beautiful Country by handing it over to Big Business ? What will be left in the aftermath ? Take a look around, I have a sneaking suspicion that it's happening now or maybe it already did.
ROBERT FRANK: VISUAL POET
Photographers around the world revere Robert Frank's contributions to the image pool. Museums of the National and International variety create anthologies, catalogues and booklets attempting to put into perspective the precise importance of Mr. Frank's work. Art galleries and private dealers invest tens, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars in reproducing and reselling the Robert Frank catalogue to new collectors at higher and higher prices each year. Robert Frank's photographs have become iconic, the images are American to the core and yet, he was an outsider, a beatnik, an immigrant, a visual poet. It is almost impossible to define why and what and how the impetus, the formula, the motivation surfaces within an individual artist, but within the example of Mister Robert Frank, it is safe to say that this honest man, with a most basic and unadorned tool in hand, was indeed on a quest for that rare and delectable entity known quite simply, plainly & rather straightforwardly as: The TRUTH.
All Photos © Robert Frank / Courtesy of The Stanford University and The Cantor Arts Center
Mr Robert Frank is Represented by The PACE / MacGILL Gallery In New York City N.Y. USA
Robert Frank travelled the United States in search of America and Americans: he found both. Seeking the truth, leads to knowledge, with knowledge comes responsibility, with responsibility comes wisdom and somewhere within the wisdom, sits some version of truth. What if the truth you find has something in it that is just the slightest bit askew ? What if your parents fled a dictator for a place that was safe and secure and then you were to gamble all that away for a place that spoke of a much larger idea and when you went out to find that idea, it didn't actually exist ? Like many immigrants, like my ancestors and many of your ancestors, we as a people came to discover America and quickly, we realized that America didn't really exist in the way we thought it did. Within that realization also comes a comprehension that although America is not everything we were told, it is now ours and as Americans, we can collectively & individually make a contribution, and in that offering, in that very active step forward into our lives, we make America what it is: You and me. Frank turned his eye on America and took its picture. He did not flinch, he did not turn away, he did not judge, he did not separate, he did not categorize, he did not modify, he did nothing but document, and in that study and within his vignettes, his so-called snap shots, something quite real surfaced, it expounded well beyond the veneer and eventually he found what many of us can only hope to fathom: Mister Robert Frank had simply discovered America & made it his own. He was not the first to, 'discover,' America. Columbus had discovered America in 1492. Washington and his boys followed suit and decided they liked the place more than they did their own homes. Who could blame them ? This place is awesome. The big difference with Robert Frank's discovery is that he did not conquer, nor did he enslave, he just simply captured the image and after all: image is everything. When America actually viewed it's own portrait shortly after World War II and in the decade to follow, it was somewhat shocked at the signs of poverty, the segregation, the somewhat disheveled look. The melting pot of life had seen it's own reflection and turned away, blaming the mirror. The Portrait of America and Americans by Mr. Robert Frank has gone onto have a lasting effect on the populist, the politics, the entire cultural landscape, which in the mid fifties was about to undergo a major shift in values. These images of America immediately influenced an entire generation of writers, artists and activists that had both preceded and coincided with this very new and emerging America. A recent exhibition presented by The Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University unveiled many works from Mr. Frank's famous AMERICANS Series that had never been publicly displayed.
All Photos © Robert Frank / Courtesy of The Stanford University and The Cantor Arts Center
Mr Robert Frank is Represented by The PACE / MacGILL Gallery In New York City N.Y. USA
At seventeen years of age, Frank learns to develop and print photographs with a neighbor who also introduces him to modern art, the apprenticeship lasted a year. At about this same time, fascism and the rise of Hitler's influence in Germany, where his family emigrated from, his father is German, his mother Swiss, effected the young man's perspectives. Frank, who was of Jewish descent, surely knew, growing up in Sweden, that he was different. His parents were both culturally astute, his father could quote Goethe in two languages, his mother created drawings. When a cousin of Frank's came to visit, her parents, who had stayed behind were eventually victims of the holocaust. The memories of Frank's parents recoiling from the sound of Hitler's hatred remained with him forever. In 1942, Robert Frank studied at Wolgensinger studio in Zurich, where he became influenced by the New Photography and an ethic that, in his teacher's own words, "Photography is the representation of reality - its mission is to convey essence, form and atmosphere." Frank learns to light, print and organize his works as well as contact sheet his 2 1/4 negatives. Two years later, he lands a job developing works for the largest photo studio in Switzerland, by day, he prints their work, by night, he prints his own. By 1946 Frank produces an impressive portfolio entitled, simply 40 Fotos. With the end of World War II, he travels to Paris, Milan and Brussels and by 1947, with a rebellious streak of independence and stories of American culture engrained in his psyche by literature and world events, Mr. Frank boards a ship to America. He recalls sitting between a wild, gangster-hatted American who eats with his hands and a Bishop with rosary and red sash: a scene straight out of a movie. Frank briefly worked for Harper's and a year later, he travelled to Peru and Bolivia. By 1949, he was back in Europe traveling to Spain, France, Italy and later that year is published in Camera magazine, with a prophetic declaration, "We believe Robert Frank can teach us how to see …"
All Photos © Robert Frank / Courtesy of The Stanford University and The Cantor Arts Center
Mr Robert Frank is Represented by The PACE / MacGILL Gallery In New York City N.Y. USA
Robert Frank travelled between Europe and America several times in the early nineteen fifties. He married, had a child, applied for and received a Guggenheim grant & drove across the United States documenting a very real America. He had already captured iconic images in England, Scotland, Peru and Spain, including top hatted Londoners, coal miners in Whales, workers in LaPaz, bullfighters in Barcelona. He was now in search of the American image, outside of the big cities, rural America. It is fitting that the author of, "On The Road," Jack Kerouac and Robert Frank would eventually collaborate on a film. Kerouac also wrote the preface to Frank's seminal mid fifties survey work that was eventually published in 1958, entitled simply, "The Americans." Mr. Franks entry into America in 1947 and his many travels coincided exactly with author Kerouac's own pursuit and invention of a New Prose language in America. It was the perfect alignment. Frank's search for the truth in images, his abhorrence of commercial situations, where he quickly realized that, "There was no spirit there … the only thing that mattered was to make money," was in total unison with the emerging beatnik movement. Which eventually led to the cultural revolution and a new generation of values that included women's rights, civil rights and alternative lifestyles. Frank was also very much in line with the new school of painting that had taken hold by the likes of New York action painter Jackson Pollock, who had graced the cover of time in 1947, the year Frank first arrived in America. He states, regarding the new found style, after a conscious exodus from his New York commercial assignments, "I was very free with the camera. I didn't think of what would be the correct thing to do. I did what I felt like doing. I was like an action painter… I was making a kind of diary."
The tools Frank selects become even simpler when he begins using a point and shoot 35mm Leica, suggested by his boss and mentor at Harper's Bazaar, Alexey Brodovitch, rather than his 2 1/4 inch box camera. It is very possible that Robert Frank was one of the few modern photographers to be fully conscious of his intuition, utilizing a philosophy of following one's heart as opposed to one's mind. The 35mm camera made this very particular and personal transition that much easier. Frank was also very aware of the myths that had surrounded photography since World War II, with the adventurous roving journalist tradition of photographers such as Robert Capa, who later co-founded Magnum Photo Agency, the first agency to be run by and for photographers. There were times in Frank's early career when lack of sales and rejection from the large magazine publications only fueled his motivation. He strived to break free of the style, story concept and basic mainstream presentation of imagery that pervaded the publishing industry: the beginning, middle & end formulas that LIFE magazine so heartily represented. Frank began to present his layouts and book design works without many words or narration and juxtaposing images such as Christ on the cross with a Ballon at a parade, titled : Men of Wood & Men of Air. Though, even more effective and minimalist are images presented with no text at all and no image juxtaposed, simply an image on one page and a blank page next to it. In this way, Robert Frank elevated the conversation by allowing the viewer to do some thinking, to read the symbols, to project themselves into the image and decide for themselves what was going on. By doing so, he also added a much needed element that had been missing from the photography of the nineteen fifties, Mr. Frank brought back a sense of curiosity to photography and in doing so, he created a new visual poetry with various meanings to each viewer.
All Photos © Robert Frank / Courtesy of The Stanford University and The Cantor Arts Center
Mr Robert Frank is Represented by The PACE / MacGILL Gallery In New York City N.Y. USA
No Less than ten minutes into the documentary entitled, "Leaving Home, Coming Home: A Portrait of Robert Frank," Mr. Frank rejects the films process, unveiling a glimpse into his very true character as a kind of idiosyncratic jazz purist. Up to this point in the film, the filmmaker's have decided to do a, 'connect the dots' biographical take, asking Mr. Frank to discuss and recall all the known biographical facts that have been so well explored before in books and catalogues, such as the very detailed essays by Sarah Greenough of The National Gallery of Art in Washington D. C. where much of Frank's photographic work resides for future study. These biographical essays can also be found in the very extensive book entitled, "ROBERT FRANK Moving Out" on Scalo Press. In the middle of a question and answer session, Mr. Frank is asked to repeat an earlier observation, because the film crew had actually run out of film. He responds with a fiery exchange: "Well, look, forget it. Look, I'm not an actor, you know. I can't go through this shit, you know. I mean… theres no spontaneity in this, it's completely against my nature what's happening here. So, if the crew can't get it together with the film, let's go out to Coney Island, lets play a Beckett play there and lets look at the landscape with my photographs and see that this man is looking for something he did fifty years ago." In the next shot of the film, Mr Frank is seen on the street in Coney Island asking a cop on a horse, "Sir, do you know where this is ? I took this picture almost fifty years ago," The cop answers, "No, I don't know." Mr Frank turns to the camera in response, "Let's find a real old guy, he would know." Suddenly we get some authenticity and a peek into what it Is that Robert Frank does so well: He connects with real people. Eventually, a young african american man points out the location, "It was right there," he points across the way, "So then, you knew it as a kid ?" Frank asks and the young man answers, "Yeah." There is a very heart felt parting glance, Franks says, "Thanks a lot." Then, suddenly, the young man reaches out his hand and Mr. Frank grabs the young man's wrist, their eyes meet and they relate. It's a small, yet beautiful moment where two strangers have connected. We get the sense that
Mr Robert Frank is Represented by The PACE / MacGILL Gallery In New York City N.Y. USA
Mr. Frank's pictures, his early and entire catalogue were also indeed created with this special human need, for a man, alone with his art and his ideas, to connect with his people, with his immediate surroundings and with the world at large. At another point in the documentary, Mr Frank is riding a bus, looking out the window, recalling an earlier series of works taken from the windows of moving buses. He looks out the window quietly reminiscing in a solitary manner. As an admirer of Mr. Frank and his work, to watch him with no camera in his hands, was literally, for me, quite painful. When a human being you love turns ninety years of age, as Mr. Frank currently has, it is high time to celebrate his life, his work, his experiences. It is also time to ensure that this human being has everything he needs, that he knows how very well loved, well respected and well deserving he is of life's gifts. When both of my Grandfather's had turned ninety, I dropped everything I was doing and focused on them, we made documentary films together, we created images, we conducted interviews, we ate together, we discussed their lives, we set the story straight. Now, both of those men no longer walk the earth, they have moved on to another world. As I look at Robert Frank's world of images, as I look at Robert Frank's life, as I look at Robert Frank's experience at my own 'middle age', I get invigorated, I get inspired, I get turned on to life again and a new phase of creating begins. The power of the Individual is awe inspiring. Very few singular Artists, Writers or Filmmakers have set the bar to a new standard in the way in which Mr. Robert Frank has done. He is stubbornly passionate, defiantly individualistic, decidedly authentic, unabashedly truthful, culturally curious and it is very safe to say that Mr. Robert Frank did not sell out. He influenced and continues to influence The Arts, Advertising, Musicians, Writers, Filmmakers and of course photography, every single decade since his first appearing on theses shores. He is a living legend and most likely, he would shun that appraisal. Which is neither here nor there, the fact is, he did his job, the images remain, end of story.
All Photos © Robert Frank / Courtesy of The Stanford University and The Cantor Arts Center
Mr Robert Frank is Represented by The PACE / MacGILL Gallery In New York City N.Y. USA
ROBERT FRANK
VISUAL POET : In His Words
ON PHOTOGRAPHS: "I like images and so to make images became kind of natural."
ON PARIS: "I never really had a concept for something. It was really the intuition before I really saw it. So, Paris was very good for me.
ON LONDON: "It was wonderful, because, they didn't pay any attention to you. Which, today, they would tell you to fuck off or turn away, you know."
ON NEW YORK CITY: "New York is a very good city, wherever you look around, it has a character. and you know, It isn't a pretty life, it isn't a sweet life, it's, it's the real life, that I looked for, and that I got.
ON AMERICA: "In America I wanted to do it differently. There was no more romanticism really, a look at a country that I didn't really know, I had only been here a couple of years. The Americans was the first time I made a trip across the country… I really felt something very strong from the people. I looked at poor people, how they tried to survive, what a lonely time it can be in America, what at a tough country it is."
ON EARLY INFLUENCES: "You grow up in a place and the culture of that place or your parents or your situation, it influences you. There was a war going on, Switzerland was a place that was closed off from everywhere, you couldn't get out and you were afraid that the nazi's would invade … so of course, it had an influence on a jew."
ON RACE RELATIONS: "Also, I saw for the first time the way blacks were treated, it was surprising to me, but it didn't make me hate America, it made me understand how people can be. You know, you learn a lot traveling and you learn a lot when you are a photographer and thats what probably what makes the difference, if you have some brain and some feeling for people, you are going to be a good photographer."
ON PERCEPTION OF HIS IMAGES: "The reaction surprised me, because people thought it was an anti-American story, so then, it took ten years till that changed, but I do like America, so I became an American and thats what I know best."
ON CREATING PICTURES : "The Pictures have to talk, not me, and so be it."
All Photos © Robert Frank / Courtesy of The Stanford University and The Cantor Arts Center
Mr Robert Frank is Represented by The PACE / MacGILL Gallery In New York City N.Y. USA
Mr Robert Frank's Images are Archived in The National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. USA
THE BUREAU CUISINE : PALM
The Palm Restaurants have been around since the early Nineteen Twenties, first in New York City and then the world. There are very few American establishments that can boast existing for three generations, being owned and operated by the Original Family and retaining a reputation with new trends in cuisine. Palm in Beverly Hills, their newest flagship, does all this and more.
We recently visited with Chef Pedro Inoscencio over dinner to discuss the Palm in Beverly Hills. The new space is an incredible improvement from the former location in West Hollywood. The Palm regulars will feel they have some spacious new breathing room, while newcomers will simply enjoy the vibe. Comfortable booths, high ceilings, private dining sections, a quiet table in the back, or front and center and a bar that has you easily chatting over the best cocktails money can buy. Many of the famous trademark celebrity artworks and drawings have been tastefully transferred to keep the original flavor intact as well as the tried and true recipes and yet, Chef Pedro Inoscencio, who has worked at Palm for twelve years, climbing the ladder, one rung at a time, is always looking for new ways to entice his budding clientele. Beverly Hills has always been about retaining a tried and true customer with new and consistently healthier recipes. Executive Chef Inoscencio knows very well, from experience, how to do so. "Food is really an Art," he explains over a glass of Fourteen Hands Merlot and a hearty salad made of baby kale, pine nuts, currants and romano cheese tossed in oil, dijon & lemon, "I found out early on, how much I actually enjoyed creating food and so, after working in the kitchen on a summer job, I went back to school and got a degree in the culinary arts." His first job out of school was with the Ritz Carlton, working with the best in the business inspired the young up and comer to continue honing his craft, that was over fifteen years ago and now he is at the top of his game. It's inspiring & a pleasure to discuss cuisine with the best in the biz.
CHEF: PEDRO INOSCENCIO
One of the newest aspects of Palm Beverly Hills is a returning original tradition of the freshest meat and steaks available by having an in-house butcher and closely watched aging process. Chef Inoscencio describes the advantages of this capability, while I simply marvel at and enjoy both the New York Steak and the local selections. "Everything is done in-house, drying and selecting here makes the end result much more tender. All of our meats are hand selected by the president of our company." One of the advantages of working in the culinary industry from entry level to Executive Chef, Inoscencio relates, is a deep comprehension of the entire business, "I appreciate everyone's job, because Iv'e done it, I know what it takes, I know how hard it is and I understand." It is this mix of humble know how and skilled expertise that makes Inoscencio someone special to Los Angeles. An example of Pedro's modest attitude would be the time he was offered Head Chef position and declined. "I simply wanted to learn every aspect of the management side, so I could be successful at the executive position, so, I turned it down." Luckily, Palm's management was patient enough until Inoscencio felt he had mastered his craft and some five years later, he was offered the job again, this time, he was ready. Pedro comes from a large family, he was born in Mexico and travelled to America at twelve years of age. The very fact that his position as Executive Chef has coincided with this new location makes this particular progression that much sweeter. We have to hand it to both the Palm's management for allowing and nurturing an entry level employee to work their way up to the top as well as Chef Pedro for waiting until he felt his time had come. Watching him walk from the kitchen to our table with the gravitas of a seasoned pro, one immediately observes, first hand what over fifteen years in this industry provides: Inoscencio simply belongs here."This new location in Beverly Hills has been a goal and dream come true to the owners of this company for a long time and to be offered this position at this location is an honor and I feel pretty proud of it." As he heads back into the kitchen, I walk into the bar, thinking to myself, "Someone very cool has just made it."
" I appreciate everyone's job, because Iv'e done it, I know what it takes, I know how hard it is and I understand. "
- Pedro INOSCENCIO
Executive Chef
PALM Beverly Hills
PALM RESTAURANT IN BEVERLY HILLS
267 N CANON DRIVE BEVERLY HILLS CA 90210 PHONE : 310 550 8811 FAX : 310 278 5334 THEPALM.COM
North Carolina Museum of Art
James Prosek, American Bison, 2014, oil, acrylic, and mixed media on panel, 45 x 56 in., Courtesy of the artist and Schwartz Wajahat, New York, © 2014 James Pros 2110 Blue Ridge Road, Raleigh, NC 27607 www.ncartmuseum.org
Image: Martin Scorsese in London England 1996 Photographer: Raymond Depardon / Magnum Photo
ON THE SET: RAGING BULL By Joshua TRILIEGI for BUREAU of ARTS and CULTURE Magazine / 2015 SUMMER Edition
TAP LINKS BELOW TO VIEW RAGING BULL FILM CLIPS RELATED TO THIS ARTICLE
BUREAU OF ARTS AND CULTURE: Scorsese Collects
THE FILM and ART PICK NEW YORK: May 30 – October 25, 2015
In celebration of New York City director Martin Scorsese’s enduring commitment to the preservation of international film culture, MoMA presents 34 works from the Scorsese Poster Collection. The installation is centered around a rare, billboard-size poster for the 1951 film Tales of Hoffmann, and features other large-format pieces representing the work of directors such as Michael Powell (The Red Shoes, 1948), Max Ophuls (The Earrings of Madame de..., 1953) and Jacques Tourneur (I Walked with a Zombie, 1943), and key designers, such as Italy’s Anselmo Ballester and Britain's Peter Strausfeld. In addition to European art house and American genre films, Raoul Walsh’s silent classic The Regeneration (1915) and Howard Hawks’s Scarface (1932) (represented by a rare lobby card) are included. The Film Poster Art Exhibition will be accompanied by the Film Series, Scorsese Screens in August 2015.
MOMA: The Museum of Modern Art 11 West 53rd Street, New York, NY 10019 Tap To Visit On Line : http://www.moma.org
THE BUREAU PHOTOGRAPHIC ESSAY: YELLOW
PHOTOGRAPHIC ESSAY : YELLOW ALL IMAGES COPYRIGHT © TRILIEGI STUDIO 2015 LOS ANGELES CA USA
Image by Guest Artist : Irby Pace Courtesy of Gallerie Urbane
THEY CALL IT THE CITY OF ANGELS
The Original Fiction Series: " THEY CALL IT THE CITY OF ANGELS," began two years ago with Season One. An interesting experiment that originally introduced five fictional families, through dozens of characters that came to life before our readers eyes, when Editor Joshua Triliegi, improvised an entire novel on a daily basis and publicly published each chapter on-line. Season Two was an entire smash hit with readers in Los Angeles, where the novel is set and quickly spread to communities around the world through google translations and word of mouth. Season Three begins in August 2015 and the same rules will apply. The entire final season will be improvised and posted publicly on a weekly basis beginning, Friday August the 7th 2015 and continuing each friday to the stories final completion of Book One. "Improvised," in this instance, means: The writer starts and finishes each section without taking any prior notes whatsoever and publishes the completed episode on all Community Sites. Season III is The Finale'.
READ A NEW EPISODE EVERY FRIDAY IN AUGUST 2015
BEGINNING ON AUGUST 7TH / 14TH / 21ST / 28TH
INTERVIEW : JON SWIHART
THE PORTRAIT PAINTER
Joshua TRILIEGI : Lets discuss, Commissions. You were recently commissioned by Brad PITT to create a portrait in relation to his wife's new film project on the American war hero Louie ZAMPERINI. Discuss how this came about, how you approach the assignment and how much time you may spend on a daily basis for each overall portrait.
Jon SWIHART : The whole experience surrounding Louie Zamperini really felt like kismet, because before I was commissioned by Brad Pitt to paint Louie, I had been approached a few months earlier to paint his portrait for an organization. At that time, I read Unbroken and was enthralled and clearly envisioned how I would portray Louie dressed in his old WW2 bomber jacket and officer's cap, his body deteriorating but his spirit still resilient and unbroken. So,it was hugely disappointing when that first commission fell through. Then out of the blue, fate gave me a second chance when Pitt saw my recently completed portrait of the artist Don Bachardy, which gave him the idea of having a portrait of Zamperini painted as a talismanic gift for Angelina Jolie. Laura Hillenbrand had written the book, “Unbroken”, telling the amazing story of Louie’s life through WWII. After spearheading efforts to bring this epic story to life on the big screen, Angelina Jolie was also directing the picture. While doing her research, Jolie became very close to Louie, admiring him and taking strength and inspiration from his indomitable spirit. I went to Zamperini’s home to do the photo shoot and had the opportunity to visit with him for a bit. It was obvious that behind the 96 year old façade was the same determined and precocious young man from the book. Even in his frail condition, he exuded a zest for life that was inspiring in itself. Louie was known to those close to him, for an expression in his eyes, so with the family’s help, I was able to capture this expression for the painting. Now, inspired by the book, but even more so by the man himself, I set out to do the painting. I was extremely honored and excited, but also, a little intimidated by the task at hand.
I was confident about getting a likeness, but unsure about striking a balance between the reality of his frailness and the dignity of the man and his history. For instance, in reality the bomber jacket was much larger on Louie’s shrunken frame, so I had a friend come over and pose in a similar leather jacket so I could accurately compromise between reality and the painting. The portrait took 6 weeks, working about 8 hours per day. When the painting was completed, I brought it to Louie’s home so he could see it in person and I could get his feedback. I thought I was confident about the final result until I got a big thumbs-up from Louie and felt this huge wave of relief flow over me. His family was also very happy with the portrait, which meant a lot to me. Formalities over, I spent the next hour listening to Louie tell stories and had the opportunity to ask him questions. I had been wondering about the ethereal music he heard late in his time on the raft while marooned at sea and wondered if it would be recreated in the movie. Louie said he did remember the tune for some time afterwards and had been whistling it in the prisoner camp when another prisoner who was a musician asked where he heard that wonderful piece of music. Over time, he forgot the melody and, unfortunately it hadn’t been written down. I made one more visit to bring Louie a framed photo of the painting for his 97th birthday. He was in good spirits, making plans for a birthday dinner and happy to have more visitors. Unfortunately, this would be the last time I saw him. This commission was the most meaningful of my career. I have painted many ‘famous’ people, including ex-presidents, movie stars and astronauts, but I felt that in honoring Louie, in my small way, I was also honoring all of the thousands of men and women in uniform with untold stories of courage, determination and character.
TO DOWNLOAD THE ENTIRE JON SWIHART INTERVIEW WITH PORTRAIT IMAGES AND TEN QUESTION SIMPLY TAP THE LINK
THE BUREAU LITERARY SITE
Literature has a Power and a Scope All It's Own. We originally founded the publication and the magazine to become part of the great history of writers, editors and publishers of the world. Interviews with writers Luis VALDEZ of ZooT Suit and La Bamba Fame and The Great Fiction Writer T. C. BOYLE have been instrumental in grounding that original goal. The BUREAU of Arts and Culture Literary Site gathered readers quickly through Google Member Readers and followers/subscribers. We wrote about writers as diverse as Rod Serling, Paddy Chayefsky, Ernest Lehman and offered resources for Writers, Publishers and Booksellers around The World from London to Paris and beyond. Our Coverage of The Los Angeles Book Fair brought us in touch with Art Book makers and small press publishers around the world. We interviewed authors and artist from Germany, Portland, The U.K., and plenty of East Coast booksellers. Now we also create the BUREAU Literary Edition which is e-mailed directly to 100s of Bookstores in the USA and abroad. Contact us with your next Literary Event or Book Reading or have your Publisher or PR firm Request The Bureau Interview.
LITERARY SITE http://TheyCallItTheCityofANGELS.blogspot.com
JAMIE WYETH : AMERICAN PAINTER
There are very few American Artists, who are self taught, third generation and bent on creating works that are studied, intuitive and strikingly original, Jamie Wyeth, Son of Andrew Wyeth, Grandson to N.C. Wyeth is one of the rare few. In a show that originated at The Boston Museum of Fine Arts and has since then travelled to The San Antonio Museum of Art and will next be in Bennington Arkansas at Crystal Bridges, Mr. Jamie Wyeth exhibits a survey of works, from the earliest drawings to recent projects with a stunning series of paintings and drawings that display a life's work of the highest magnitude. The Wyeth Legacy is one of America's greatest contribution to the arts and through Jamie Wyeth, that legacy is alive and well. I recall my father describing the first time he had viewed a Painting by Jamie Wyeth depicting a man on a motorcycle, facing the viewer head on. He had studied the works of Andrew Wyeth and had grown up reading the literature which N.C. Wyeth had illustrated, but upon viewing the masterwork of Jamie Wyeth, he gladly handed over the reins to young Jamie, then he looked at me and smiled. Since then, I have always respected the Wyeths and their family, their lives, their art at a level which can only be described, not in words, not in metaphor, but simply as it is.
Tap The Links: https://www.mfa.org https://www.samuseum.org http://crystalbridges.org
Maria Francesca Triliegi is an Author with an upcoming book, a personal counselor to a very wide variety of people, from everyday working class folks, to some serious public figures that include both the worlds of politics and entertainment. Maria also happens to be The Editor of this Publication's Mother. So then, the other day, I called my Mom and we discussed her new book, her career and what it is like to do what it is she does by personally counseling people.
BUREAU OF ARTS AND CULTURE: BOOKS
Let’s discuss the new book that is being released later this summer. Although you have been working on a number of book projects recently, you decided to release The book of forty essays entitled, "LIFE IS GOOD: When You Do The Work". Why this book first and why now?
Maria Francesca Triliegi: I have been doing my work as an astrologer, teacher and retreat leader for over 30 years and have had a myriad of clients with so many different challenges and life changes as well as a curiosity for understanding themselves. Each time I meet with a client, I am excited to share with them their individuality and yet through it all I have noticed we human beings are so similar. There are basic tenets in life that remain certain and trustable. These are what we humans have a tendency to take advantage of and these are essentially what the essays describe. I adore words. I always have. I’ve been a reader since childhood and have kept journals through the years. The reason I decided to write and release LIFE IS GOOD now is because with the speedup of time we can easily lose track of what makes life good.
"There are basic tenets in life that remain certain and trustable. These are what we humans have a tendency to take advantage of and these are essentially what the essays describe."
No matter our circumstances, situations or challenges there is much about our lives that, if we are willing to pay attention and notice more about who we truly are, collectively and individually; as well as how much the Universe, God, Goddess or whatever we call the essence of life we have been given; we will find that it is possible to choose to live with the mantra that LIFE IS GOOD. The added tagline “When You Do the Work” is, I find, a necessary component in how to live one’s life respectively, responsibly and with a consciousness of alive integrity and passion. The beauty surrounding us in the natural world along with the compassion and kindness innate in each of us is in itself something to strive to protect and enjoy. After that there is so much one can do to pay closer attention to how to honor the gifts each one of us is given. The essays are my way of expressing my thoughts collected through the many years of being an observer of all of life. I see with eyes that care deeply about the simple pleasures that we all have access to. I want my book to be a reminder of how to observe, appreciate, enjoy and take responsibility for all that we have been given at what seems to be very little cost.
TO DOWNLOAD THE ENTIRE INTERVIEW WITH MARIA FRANCESCA TRILIEGI SIMPLY TAP THIS LINK AND RECEIVE THE ENTIRE SUMMER EDITION FREE :
The Italian Straw Hat, 1952 Oil on paper on board, 22 1/4 x 30 3/8 in.Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, CT, The Schnakenberg Fund, 1955.32 Art © The Educational Alliance, Inc./Estate of Peter Blume/Licensed by VAGA, New York
Peter Blume
Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art
600 Main Street, Hartford, CT 06103
Tap to Visit : http://www.thewadsworth.org
THE BUREAU IN SAN DIEGO
SAN DIEGO is another one of those Cities that unless you visited more than a few times, you might not realize what a great Community it actually is. As a Photographer, I find the place to have a very special sort of light that keeps me returning again and again. La Jolla, Mission Beach, The Lamplight all with something to offer tourists, locals and professionals. As a writer, visiting San Diego is a boon of simple and earthy characters, with a fine mix of working class individuals, retired professionals and a bevy of wealthy folks. The magazine has taken readers into original design interviews, the Museum of Modern Art, Photographic Essays into Old Town San Diego, Interviews with local Theater Productions, An In Depth Surf Interview with Community Surf Hero Bird of Birds Surf Shack in San Diego, Inside The La Jolla Athenaeum and a constant relationship with Dennis Wills of D.G. Wills Bookstore a legendary location visited by The best Writers in the world. It's been a wild ride San Diego. Next Up: A Photographic Essay of The Coastal Walkabout from Solana Beach to La Jolla, Articles on Eateries such as The Cottage, Mary's English Kitchen and Juice Crafters, Plus an Interview with Roman Palacios Local Opera Singer and Lounge Lizard Extraordinaire ...
BUREAU EDITORIAL DIS-organization[s]
What has happened to today's organizations ? There was a time when being 'organized' meant doing something that improved life for the group of people you were associating with. Is today's society embroiled in a power struggle that allows Members Only to be favored exponentially ? Are organizations and associations wielding their power in a manner that could be abusive ? Have you noticed that individuals and heads of particular departments, including the mouthpieces in media outlets and those in the public eye are using their platforms in a disingenuous manner ? If you have answered, 'Yes' to any of these questions, you are not alone. From Churches to Non - Profits, from Television networks to Newspaper publishers, from Markets to Corporations, from Neighborhood to Region, from States to Cities & Counties: we are now experiencing a shift in the ideology of a Group vs The Individual.
Of course there are the exceptions, sometimes within an organization, one will find a partial, fair and exemplary individual & even the occasional entire organization as a whole. Though, we should always remember that many clubs, schools, religions and membership style affiliations are exactly created for the sake of empowering that particular group and sometimes rewarding it's members for their behavior within the group. A membership radio station will reward it's listeners with occasional gifts, a membership film festival will rewards its members with discounts to events, a membership museum will allow priority access to its members and a membership religion will go as far as offering jobs, counseling, a social activity and sometimes even life after death. The membership markets offer admission and discounts to products, all sounds fair, yes ? Well, maybe. What happens when non members wish to participate in a related event ? What happens when non members wish to promote or interview or even celebrate something related to this group, be it, radio or museum or marketplace or film festival or even religious ? There is room for abuses of power here and often times exclusive privileges depend on the very rejection of outsiders, non members and 'interlopers.'
There are times when actually making an example of an individual is all part of the membership and organization game. Either on the grand scale, for instance, when someone like Edward Snowden is admonished for sharing secrets, he is made to no longer freely live in America as an American, he is forced to make choices which drive him away from his country of origin. On a smaller scale, due to the many facets of groups and group thinking that have slowly but steadily spread into industries such as entertainment and publishing, being a member, is now being offered as entry into an industry, acceptance as an artist and eventually: success. Thats a very dangerous game. I recall visiting a small community on a tropical island, where the original group of natives had been, for many, many 100s of years affiliated with a particular religion. Because I was a visiting person with business contacts in the West, many of the people I met exclaimed how they had converted to a religion which is very popular in the West. I saw how there was a connection between business opportunities for converts and it startled me. Since that time, I have become more and more aware of this dilemma and must confess that I would personally prefer failure to success due to affiliation through a group of members of some sort. There are entire Arts Publications whose only contributors are members, graduates and teachers and or students of that school of thinking. There are entire theaters that exist solely to exhibit the talents and works by graduates of a certain school where people have studied art or film or music.
So then, the financial aspects of this debate now creep into the room. If your parents can pay for your entry into a school or a University, then, talent allowing, you may have a chance. The problem with this dilemma is that, eventually, it sets up a much larger paradigm wherein a whole other group is conversely created, one in which non whites or non asians or non mexicans or non _________ [ Fill - in - the - blank ] are excluded. Thus creating a world of clubs, cliques and collectives without respect, regard or reward for non members. Unfortunately, I believe we have now arrived at this particular destination and within the very borders of each city, state and country, the infantile philosophies surrounding this way of thinking are handicapping our ability to progress as a society, a country a planet: we are in trouble people. Had I not been raised in Los Angeles or travelled throughout the world or even been respectful, curious and a learned student of International films, art and music, maybe I would not even be fully aware of this dilemma. Editing and creating a magazine that seeks to speak with the best artists, actors, filmmakers, culturally aware individuals has indeed been an education in this regard.
"Every now and then, I meet an incredible individual
who seeks only to offer the beautiful thing that
their institute is actually there to offer…"
As was mentioned, every now and then, I meet an incredible individual who seeks only to offer the beautiful thing that their institute is actually there to offer. An example of that would be every image you see in this edition of the magazine from a gallery or museum. Though, unfortunately, more often than not, we receive a cold reception or worse a manipulated, contrived and down right embarrassingly false set of circumstances that include denial of full access, a series of bureaucratic levels which hinder the goal or simply being lied to or delayed or ignored, resulting in a particular due date having since than expired, thus creating the inability to sponsor, participate or include a contribution of some sort. Sometimes, non members are offered some form of limited access, which is than manipulated to show the 'non-member,' how great life could be, if only they joined the club of conformists, believers, non-believers, etc… Playing the game to get what you want. These social traps are set on a daily basis. More often than not, walking away is the best bet, though, as a publication, with a goal oriented schedule to promote, affiliate and sponsor social events that surround art, music, film, science, culture and eventually receive advertising dollars to provide a service to the institutes, organizations and companies or non profits, my concerns sometime lead me down the path to investigative journalism: where I am often aghast at the quote un-quote 'members' of some of these organizations. Sometimes this includes a local market or a non profit or an art gallery or even a member of my own government. How far will all of this member versus non member go before it blows up in our faces ? Or is that the point ? Look around at your world. Look around at your organizations. Look around at your own religion, your own so - called group. If you like what you see. Cool. But, if you notice that your superiority is based on the fact that you are a so-called 'member' of a group, that is either based on belief, income, non-belief or lack of income, race, color, age, sex, education, admission fee, a particular lifestyle or some other in-crowd superficial aspect, it may be that you are not superior at all. Quite possibly the exact opposite may be true.
Norman Seeff : The Ramones New York, 1977 © Norman Seeff Courtesy of Fahey/Klein Gallery, Miami
LET'S ROCK
Now Through JUNE 13, 2015
Rock & Roll Music has always been affiliated with the medium and Art of Photography. Performances only last a few minutes, hours or the duration of the current tour. Musicians found early on that the power of the image from last years tour could sell tickets and albums to next years tour and the fusion or marriage between the camera and the music was complete. Let's Rock, the current exhibit at Fahey / Klein's new Gallery in Miami, Florida takes us through the History of Modern Rock and Roll with photographs by the best in the biz. Including: Jim Marshall’s iconic shot of Johnny Cash flipping the bird, Barry Feinstein’s image of fans peering into the window of Bob Dylan’s limo, Frank Stefanko’s Bruce Springsteen at the beginning of his career and Harry Benson’s playful photograph of a Beatles’ pillow fight.
Led Zeppelin (In Front of Plane) New York, 1973 © Bob Gruen, Courtesy of Fahey/Klein Gallery, Miami
Lets Rock, is an important photographic exhibit because it balances the grit with the glamour, the guts with the glory and the guys with the gals in all that bare truth that Rock and Roll Music was originally meant to express. Lets not forget that this was a music in touch with it's anger, in touch with it's passion, in touch with it's feelings, it's roots, it's working class upbringing. Surely Mick Jagger is the face of the Stones, but without a working class pal such as Keith Richards, The Rolling Stones might just have been another Hermans Hermits. As Rock & Roll becomes more and more appropriated by millionaires, museums and extremely wealthy non profit entities, it may be a good time to remind them all, that Rock & Roll, belongs to The People. We saw these same trends with William Shakespeare, who originally wrote for the people and Classical greats such as Ludwig Van Beethoven.We The People Own Rock & Roll, we own Rap, we own Country, we own The Blues, we own Jazz. This is All Peoples Music, much of it originated in America, so then, we own America. Take pride in great music America, you made it happen. It's Yours : Lets Rock.
Norman Seeff Keith Richards Los Angeles 1972 Courtesy Fahey / Klein Gallery Miami
Gered Mankowitz : Jimi Hendrix (Classic), 1966 © Gered Mankowitz, Courtesy of Fahey/Klein Gallery, Miami
FAHEY / KLEIN GALLERY in MIAMI 4025 Northeast 2nd Avenue Second Floor Miami Florida 33137 U.S.A
On 2nd Avenue, between 40th and 41st St. In the Miami Design District. Across 2nd Ave from the newly established Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami. Fahey/Klein Gallery Miami is on the Second Floor of the Chrome Hearts building. Gallery Hours: Tuesday-Saturday, 11am – 7pm.
The BUREAU of Arts and Culture Seattle Community Site will be featuring neighboring Cities such as Tacoma and Portland's Museums, Galleries, Music Events and Special Cultural happenings as well as ALL The Subjects that The Magazine brings you regularly: ART . FILM . MUSIC . DESIGN . CULTURE . ARCHITECTURE . ECOLOGY . INTERVIEWS + More …Coming Soon : Exclusive Interviews with local Artists, Musicians and Museums Including Rock Hushka Chief Curator at The Tacoma Art Museum. In Depth Articles on Seattle & Washington's Cultural Touch points including: Jimi HENDRIX, ECOLOGICAL Concerns, The PORTS of Washington, Native American Issues and Historically significant Moments in it's History.
BUREAU FASHION: The DANDY LIONS
Dandy Lion: (Re) Articulating Black Masculine IdentityNow Through July 12, 2015
All too often in America and across the world, we are exposed to a negative image regarding people of color. Within the mainstream media and often times in films and publications, we are given cliched versions of life on every level. Stories and images are pushed in our faces with a determination to send a larger message to the populist about the populists.Anyone who is pretty hip can see through this device and yet, after a while, we have to simply oppose this tool by simply showing the world a whole other side of the coin. These images from the Exhibit, Dandy Lions:(Re)Articulating Black Masculine Identity, are on View at The Chicago Museum of Contemporary Photography.
Dandy Lion: (Re)Articulating Black Masculine Identity features work from emerging and renowned photographers and filmmakers from the US, Europe and Africa, including Hanif Abur-Rahim, Jody Ake, Laylah Amatullah Barrayn, Rose Callahan, Kia Chenelle, Bouba Dola, Adama Delphine Fawundu, Russell K. Frederick, Cassi Amanda Gibson, Allison Janae Hamilton, Akintola Hanif, Harness Hamese/Loux the Vintage Guru, L. Kasimu Harris, Jamala Johns, Caroline Kaminju, Charl Landvreugd, Jati Lindsay, Devin Mays, Terence Nance, Arteh Odjidja, Numa Perrier, Alexis Peskine, Radcliffe Roye, Sara Shamsavari, Nyugen Smith, Daniele Tamagni, Richard Terborg and Rog Walker. This exhibition is guest curated by US-based independent curator Shantrelle P. Lewis.
The Museum of Contemporary Photography Columbia College in Chicago 600 South Michigan Avenue Chicago, IL 60605 USA Tap to Visit the Exhibition online Now : http://www.mocp.org
Charles Ray: The American Sculptor
Charles Ray is one of the very few artists alive today to combine both humor and pathos in a way that is equally foreboding as well as strangely understated. Unlike Jeff Koons, who is considered one of Ray's contemporaries, Mr. Ray comes off as just a bit more modest, not just in scale and subject, but in the actual, 'Selling' of the idea. Mostly due to the size, surface and finishing styles of the actual sculptures. Mr. Koons, whose work is magnificent in the same way as, say, a Salvador Dali, is what we might call a 'Hard Sell'. Koons' candy coated surfaces are reminiscent of a famous 1950's Car Commercial by Earl Scheib who promised to paint any car for $39.95, of course the prices went up as time went on and so too for these Sculptors. Ray is represented by Matthew Mark$ and Koons by Larry Gago$ian. This retrospect entitled Charles Ray: Sculpture 1997-2014, had us thinking he passed away last year. But, like The Art World, the title is deceiving & this is simply a survey of those years. Charles Ray lives in Los Angeles and as Dr. Frankenstein exclaimed, "IT'S ALIVE!"
ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO
Charles Ray: Sculpture 1997 - 2014
Images Related to this Bureau Article : Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Gift of Herb Ritts
© Herb Ritts Foundation Photograph © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
NEW FICTION: KAZUO ALONE
A Short Story by Linda Toch / Little Tokyo Story Contest Winner 2015
Kazuo embraced Mondays like no other and that was because of its silence. Mondays were sweet, a sweep of semi-peace in the streets of Los Angeles. The typical street-crawlers were in school and the typical tourists at their nine to five jobs, and so Kazuo chose Monday to roam, map, conquer his neighborhoods unperturbed. Mondays were a convenience only when eighty five of your years had passed and your company along with it. It was nice timing for those who desired solace. The old man had fit this criteria to a tee. People talked about him, of course; no one who walks alone can keep his name out of others’ mouths. They say he had a wife once. They say his marriage was a spectacle, a whirr of harmonies—he, a striking man, she, an incandescent beauty—he, solemn-faced, she, the embodiment of joy. She was his joy. Small talk still lingers about their wedding to date, a legend left for the gossip mill to disperse. 100 brown doves. That was how many they released that day.
Rumor had it, the birds swirled around the couple, drawing a ribbon with their synchronized bodies before soaring up and beyond sight. They called this God’s miracle, God’s blessing on a beautiful union. A year later, when the wife’s cheeks ran out of ruby colors to make room for pallor, they called it God’s apology instead. His solemn face turned sorrow. He hadn’t remarried since. Years past and people trickled in and out of his life, and Kazuo never put forth the efforts to make them stay. He, ever the true Buddhist, held no attachments. Religion had nothing to do with this, of course; he simply couldn’t be bothered with anyone else to begin with. Yet in spite of this, there was something that drew him back to Little Tokyo time after time. Kazuo knew his streets well, but he was mindless when he walked. He lived in his head, in a world far detached from realities, from earth—perhaps that was the sole reason why he enjoyed his solo strolls. When he returned, unaware of the lefts and rights he chose, he found himself wound up on First or Alameda. Always. He’d spot the museum’s large puzzle cube, listen to the paper lanterns crinkle above his head, feel the gust of wind as children breezed by him with an excitement so distantly familiar to him… it was the way wide streets became smaller and then wider again, and the way the tiny shops were cramped so closely. He’d be a dead man before he admitted it, but Little Tokyo had wormed its way into his heart.
The streets were by no means empty on Mondays, but Kazuo didn’t need to bump and squirm his way through crowds among crowds. It was mostly college students flocking to the modernized corners, anyway. The sushi joints. Yogurtland. Anything with bright letters and an appearance that promised a good time. Kazuo rested in a quieter area, a little sector of a street filled with mom and pop shops. He sat in front of a bakery store of the Japanese Village Plaza, listening to a performer improvise a song for a family next to him. The singer’s voice, mellow and pleasant, was a charmer. It was as if people paid for the happy ambience his keyboard brought instead of the performance itself. The tip jar was filled to the brim. High school ditchers passed by him, the corners of their mouth dribbled with ice cream. The infectious bliss that came from the musician seemed to make them younger and younger. Such a gift, to be able to have your keyboard turn the elderly to adults, the adults to teens, the teens to children…and the teens laughed joyously, ecstatically, their heads thrown back the way a seven year old’s would.
Kazuo’s heart stung a little. He remembered how it was, to be young and enamored. No one else existed but the person by your side; nothing else was tangible except the hands brushing against your own. “And you, sir!” the performer called, suddenly, index finger pointed straight at Kazuo. “What is your name?” “Ah, I…no, I didn’t tip you,” Kazuo responded sheepishly, waving his hands to the artist. “No money.” Smiling, his inquirer replied, “I’m here to talk, not much else. How are you?” His words reverberated from the microphone and bounced around in Kazuo’s ears. I’m here to talk…when was the last conversation Kazuo had? It was with his insurers, wasn’t it? Or his doctor? The nurses? “I…I’m fine, thank you.” It felt like all of Little Tokyo stared at him, their eyes digging into his skin. Even the pigeons that scattered among the Plaza seemed to look into the old man. Seemed to look into how he sat, crookedly. How his back hunched and his teeth yellowed even more in bare sunlight. How his forehead wrinkled and sagged his face downward into a perpetual frown. He finally felt like his age in his skin, and he’d never been more aware of eighty five years than that day. “Ah, before I launch into a song, do you want me to dedicate it to someone?” the performer continued. Again with the questions. “A loved one, maybe?” he pressed. Kazuo merely shook his head. “No, no one. There’s no one.” “You were in love, weren’t you? I can tell by the way you look down.” The performer pressed a few keys, his fingers cascading over them with a feathery lightness. The sounds floated melodiously into the air, drawing in more and more of a crowd.
Kazuo shuffled his feet in embarrassment. “Let me ask an easier question, then. How did you meet?” The grin the musician gave coaxed an answer out of the reluctant Kazuo. He stuttered, yelling it half-heartedly, just loud enough for the other man to hear. “We met by the Aoyama tree!” Too loud, Kazuo thought, cringing. I was too loud. Too much noise… The performer’s eyes glinted, and his smile widened. He continued pressing down more keys, more and more, a stream of gorgeous sounds making way to Kazuo’s ears. But he sang nothing into the microphone. Kazuo was startled by the silence, but sat still to enjoy the music regardless. A minute had passed before the man proceeded with more questions. “The Aoyama tree…what a beautiful place to meet a beautiful woman, no?” Kazuo nodded. “It was,” he agreed softly. “It was.” His mind drifted back to a time when his heart was filled with inexplicable emotions, a mesh of pain and thrill, hope and fervor and ultimately: heat. There was the sting of leaving his family behind. He could not touch his mother’s face anymore, or help his father walk in old age. But on another hand, he had made his way into LA. The city of the greats. The giants. The powerful, the dreamers. The city to get lost in, to get found, to be anonymous, to make a name—LA. It was an achievement all on its own, making it there. And then there was her. He remembered meeting her perfectly: the clumsiness that ensued, the awkward exchange of greetings that followed. He stumbled, and she tripped, and he fell, and she toppled over. And he said hello. And she gifted him a smile. “I’ve seen you a couple times, sir,” the performer continued. “You come here often. I want to give thanks for showing love to our little world.”
Kazuo remembered the shops, the nooks and crannies found in them, and the entanglement of histories and modern culture. The celebrations, the festivals. The morning prayers. Kazuo remembered all of it. And he remembered her traversing by his side the entire time, exploring the ‘little world’ that only seemed to get bigger the more they stayed in it. And he remembered the happiness. Where was the crying child in Little Tokyo? The frowning human? They didn’t seem to exist. The streets were flooded with happiness, a happiness like no other. And it was still flooded today. But the idea of joy was so faint in his heart, as time wrung out the euphoria in all his memories, that Kazuo only now began to feel again. There was bitterness locked inside of him, a bitterness that never left him since her passing. And so he exhaled this bitterness with the timing of the music. In and out. Just like the morning meditations she used to accompany him to, around the temple near their precious love-tree. He breathed in the piano notes and breathed out the heaviness in his heart. “The Aoyama tree,” the performer started, “is a sign of resilience. It’s a sign of forever. Of going on. It’s an old, old survivor in the city…much like you, I’d imagine.” Again, the performer smiled. “And much like your love. The tree is entwined with your past, my friend, and that’s a beautiful honor.” Kazuo lifted himself up slowly and walked toward the performer. His hands shook. He leaned forward and put a five dollar bill in the tip jar. It was all the money he had. “Thank you. Thank you. I feel light again,” Kazuo whispered. The performer shoved the microphone out of the way, and whispered back, “Your joy is long overdue…you needed to visit your roots again. Back to where it all started. No thanks are needed for that, my friend.” But with a twinkle in his eye, he added, “I thought you had no money, Kazuo.” It was Kazuo’s turn to smile. He made his way to Aoyama Tree, this time, his mind clear of directions. Somehow, his feet remembered the paths he had taken with her decades ago. Back to the tree’s roots, back to his roots, back to the roots of his first and only love. He felt his heart pump vigorously to keep up with his pace. A part of him wanted to touch the bark. Stroke it. Carve initials into it. He wanted to interact. To feel. But he stayed behind, admiring the piece of art nature invested into this land.
What made Little Tokyo magical was the people around it, he realized. The children, the teens, the adults, the families, the couples. The performer. Her. And him. He was a part of it, the city, the culture. He always was. It was six o’clock by the time Kazuo finished. His legs tired of the walk, he walked in a daze, a wonderment of the new Little Tokyo he was seeing. With every street was a new memory he uncovered once more. There was no more pain heaving down in his chest. He walked a little straighter, stood a little taller. He would visit the tree next Monday, he decided. And the week after that, and the week after that. And forevermore. He would visit the tree for as long as the tree stood there, and as long as he stood alive. There was no more remorse in his reminiscence. Just joy. Kazuo grinned as he thought of the performer. He relived the entire ordeal in his head as he made his way back home. And then it struck him—how did the performer know of his name in the first place? How did the performer know anything at all? And, most importantly, did any of that matter? His spirit felt rejuvenated, youthful. Twenty years old at best. And that was the greatest gift anyone had ever bestowed on him since her smile. For that alone, Kazuo didn’t need the answers to his questions. The sunset settled down and the darkness cloaked the colorful skies with black. He stepped into his house, exhausted by this Monday’s elongated walk. The loneliness always kept on his shoulders had all dissipated by then. Certainly he lived by himself, but that didn’t mean he was alone, no. Not any longer. And before he could lock the door shut, Kazuo could swear he heard the faint coo of a dove outside… a sound that made his eyes dampen. He pressed his palms against his cheeks, surprised. The tears were his own. The emotions were his own. Where was the crying child in Little Tokyo, anyway? Where could you find the frowning adult? He sunk into the comforts of his home and drifted into sleep, his ears filled with the sounds of music and doves. The man was at peace at last.
Linda Toch is a writer and a 2015 Winner of the Los Angeles CA USA Little Tokyo Story Contest.
CHICAGO EVENTS SUMMER 2015
The CHICAGO BLUES FESTIVAL : June 12 - 14, 2015 Grant Park FREE The largest free blues festival in the world and remains the largest of Chicago's Music Festivals. During three days on five stages, more than 500,000 blues fans prove that Chicago is the "Blues Capital of the World." Past performers include Bonnie Raitt, Ray Charles, B. B. King, the late Bo Diddley, Buddy Guy and the late Koko Taylor.
The SHEFFIELD Music Festival & Garden Walk : July 18 & 19, 2015 Sponsored by the Sheffield Neighborhood Association (SNA), a non-profit community organization. The "Summer's Best Festival" features self-guided tours of more than 80 Gardens, guided Architectural Tours, live entertainment by some of Chicago's and North America's finest bands, food and drink, and activities for children at the Kids' Corner. http://www.sheffieldgardenwalk.com/
The CHICAGO TRIATHLON : AUGUST 30, 2015 : The new bike course will allow Elite participants the ability to start first, providing unobstructed space along previously congested Lake Shore Drive.The swim is held in Monroe Harbor, with the start line at Balbo Dr. and Lake Shore Drive. International swimmers first head south, swimming parallel to the sea wall.The run course begins at the grass reserve just south of Randolph. http://www.chicagotriathlon.com/
THERE ARE FIVE ALTERNATE COVERS FOR THE SUMMER 2015 EDITION HERE ARE THE FREE DOWNLOAD LINKS TO EACH MAGAZINE EDITION :
THE GEORGIA O'KEEFFE:https://www.dropbox.com/s/9vmexjpu97uzwzg/2015%20SUMMER%20EDITION.pdf?dl=0
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THE BUREAU SUMMER EDITION 2015 EDITED by JOSHUA TRILIEGI
WE CELEBRATE ART MUSIC FILM FASHION SURFING BIKING INTERVIEW ARCHITECTURE FICTION DESIGN PHOTOGRAPHY CUISINE BOOKS CULTURE
When You Download The FREE Edition it will open on your computer or device, It is an Electronic Interactive Version of BUREAU of Arts and Culture Magazine. We suggest you view the pdf in the [Two Page with Cover] and [Full Screen Mode] Options which are Provided at the Top of your Menu Bar under the VIEW section. Simply choose Two Page Layout & Full Screen to enjoy. This format allows for The Magazine to be read as a Paper Edition. Displaying images and Text in Center-folds. When reading on a computer, utilize the Arrows on your keyboard to turn the pages. Be Sure To Download A High Resolution Version at BUREAU of Arts And Culture's Official Magazine Website or any of Our Community Sites with Links Provided Below.
We Thank: Da Capo Press, Cantor Arts Center, Stanford University, Pace/MacGill Gallery, National Gallery of Art, Georgia O'Keefe Museum of Art, Fine Arts Center Colorado Springs, Duke University, Andy Warhol Museum, Phoenix Art Museum, Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Art Institute of Chicago, Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Crystal Bridges, United Artists, Spot Photo Works, Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas Museum of Art, Museum of Fine Art Huston Texas, Gallerie Urbane, Mary Boone Gallery, Pace Gallery, Asian Art Museum, Magnum Photo, Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art, Fahey/Klein, Tobey C. Moss, Sandra Gehring, George Billis, Martin - Gropius - Bau Berlin, San Jose Museum of Art, First Run Features, Downtown Records, Koplin Del Rio, Robert Berman, Indie Printing, American Film Institute, SFMOMA, Palm Beverly Hills, KM Fine Arts, LA Art Show, Photo LA, Jewish Contemporary Museum, Cultural Affairs, Yale Collection of Rare Books & Manuscript and Richard Levy.
Contributing Photographers: Norman Seef, Herb Ritts, Jack English, Alex Harris, Gered Mankowitz, Bohnchang Koo, Natsumi Hayashi, Raymond Depardon, T. Enami, Dennis Stock, Dina Litovsky, Guillermo Cervera, Moises Saman, Cathleen Naundorf, Terry Richardson, Phil Stern, Dennis Morris, Henry Diltz, Steve Schapiro, Yousuf Karsh, Ellen Von Unwerth, William Claxton, Robin Holland, Andrew Moore, James Gabbard, Mary Ellen Mark, John Robert Rowlands, Brian Duffy, Robert Frank, Jon Lewis, Sven Hans, David Levinthal, Joshua White, Brian Forrest, Lorna Stovall, Elliott Erwitt, Rene Burri, Susan Wright, David Leventhal, Peter Van Agtmael & The Bureau Editor Joshua Triliegi.
Contributing Guest Artists: Irby Pace, Jon Swihart, F. Scott Hess, Ho Ryon Lee, Andy Moses, Kahn & Selesnick, Jules Engel, Patrick Lee, David Palumbo, Tom Gregg, Tony Fitzpatrick, Gary Lang, Fabrizio Casetta, DJ Hall, David FeBland, Eric Zener, Seeroon Yeretzian, Dawn Jackson, Charles Dickson, Ernesto DeLaLoza, Diana Wong, Gustavo Godoy, John Weston, Kris Kuksi, Bomonster, Hiroshi Ariyama, Linda Stark, Kota Ezawa, Russell Nachman, Katsushika Hokusai and Xuan Chen
Contributing Writers: Robin Holland, Jamar Mar(s) Tucker, Linda Toch, Maria (Mom) Triliegi
INTERVIEW: BUREAU OF ARTS AND CULTURE MAGAZINE EDITOR: JOSHUA TRILIEGI
Writer Joshua Triliegi discusses his most recent Fiction Project, "They Call It The City of ANGELS," creating beliEvable characters and the challenges therein. Season One & Season Two are available on line at most of the 10 various BUREAU of Arts and Culture Websites & translatable around the world.
Discuss the process of writing your recent fiction project, " They Call It The City of Angels ."
Joshua Triliegi: I had lived through the riots of 1992, actually had a home not far from the epicenter and experienced the event first hand, I noticed how the riot was being perceived by those outside our community, people began to call me from around the world, my friends in Paris, my relatives in the mid west, childhood pals, school mates, etc... Each person had a different take on why and what was happening, I still have those recordings, this was back in the day of home message recorders with cassettes. So, after 20 years, I began to re listen to the voices and felt like something was missing in the dialogue.
" I noticed how the riot was being perceived by those outside our community ..."
Some of my friends and fellow theater contemporaries such as Anna Deveare Smith and Roger Guenvere Smith had been making bold statements in relation to the riots with their own works and I realized that there was a version of original origin inside of me. I felt the need to represent the community in detail, but with the event in the background. Because, I can tell you from first hand experience that when these events happen, people are still people, and they deal with these types of historical emergencies differently based on their own culture, their own codes, their own needs and everyday happenstances.
You originally published each chapter on a daily basis, explain how and why ?
Joshua Triliegi: I had been editing The BUREAU of Arts and Culture Magazine for a few years, we printed thousands of magazines that were widely distributed throughout Los Angeles and San Francisco and had created an on-line readership.The part of me that had dabbled in fiction through the years with screenplays and short stories had been ignored for those few years. On the one hand, it was simply a challenge to create a novel without notes, improvising on a daily basis, on the other hand, it gave the project a freedom and an urgency that had some connection with the philosophy of Jack Kerouac and his Spontaneous Prose theories. One thing it did, was forced me, as a creator, to make the decisions quickly and it also, at the time, created a daily on line readership, at least with our core readers, that to this day has strengthened our community sites and followers on line. Season One was a series of introductions to each character. Season Two, which happened the following year, was a completely different experience all together.
Describe Season Two of They Call It The City of Angels and those challenges.
Joshua Triliegi: Well first of all, the opening line of Season One is, " Los Angeles is a funny place to live, but those laughing were usually from out of town, " That opener immediately set up an insiders viewpoint that expresses a certain struggle and angst as well as an outsider — looking — in — perception that may be skewed. In introducing characters throughout season one, I was simply creating a cast of characters that I knew somehow would be important to set the tone surrounding the riots of 1992 in Los Angeles. With Season Two, and an entire year of gestation, which was extremely helpful, even if it was entirely on a subconscious level, I had a very real responsibility to be true to my characters and each persons culture. I had chosen an extremely diverse group of people, but had not actually mentioned their nationality, or color in Season One. By the time season Two rolled around, I found it impossible not to mention their differences and went several steps further to actually define those differences and describe how each character was effected by the perception of the events in their life. This is a novel that happens to take place before, during and after the riot. The characters themselves all have lives that are so complete and full and challenged, as real life actually is, that the riot as a backdrop is entirely secondary to the story. I was surprised at how much backstory there actually was. I also think my background in theater, gave me a sense of character development that really kicked my characters lives into extreme detail and gave them a fully realized life.
How do you go about creating a character ?
Joshua Triliegi: Well, there is usually a combination of very real respect and curiosity involved. Sometimes, I may have seen that person somewhere in the world and something about them attracted my attention in some way. In the case of They Call It The City of Angels, I knew the people of Los Angeles had all been hurt badly by the riots of 1992, because I am one of those people and it hurt. One minute we were relating between cultures, colors, incomes, the next we were pitted up against one another because some people in power had gotten away with a clear injustice. So with season two, I personally had to delve deeper into each persons life and present a fully realized set of circumstances that would pay off the reader, in terms of entertainment and at the same time be true to the code of each character. Once they were fully realized, the characters themselves would do things that surprised me and that is when something really interesting began to happen.
Could you tell us a bit more about the characters and give us some examples of how they would surprise you as a writer ?
Joshua Triliegi: Well, Jordan, who is an African American bus driver and happens to be a Muslim, began to find himself in extremely humorous situations where he is somehow judged by events and circumstances beyond his control. I thought that was interesting because the average person most likely perceives the people of that particular faith as very serious. Jordan has a girlfriend who is not Muslim and when he is confronted by temptation, he is equally as human as any of my readers and so, he gets himself into situations that complicate his experience and a certain amount of folly ensues. Fred, who is an asian shop owner and a Buddhist, has overcome a series of tragedies, yet has somehow retained his dignity with a stoicism that is practically heroic. At one point, in the middle of a living nightmare, he simply goes golfing, alone and gets a hole in one. Junior, who is a Mexican American young man recently released from prison really drives the story as much of his backstory connects us to Fred and his tragedies as well as legal decisions such as the one that caused the city to erupt as it does in the riot.
You talk a lot about Responsibility to Character, what do you mean and how do you conduct research ?
Joshua Triliegi: Well, if I make a decision that a character is a Muslim or Asian or Mexican or what have you, if I want the respect of my readers and of those who may actually be Muslim, Asian or Mexican, it behooves me to learn something about that character. As a middle aged man who lives in Los Angeles and has done an extensive amount of travel throughout my life, there is a certain amount of familiarity with certain people. But for instance, with Fred, I watched films on the history of the Korean War and had already respected the Korean Community here in Los Angeles for standing up for themselves the way they did. I witnessed full on attacks and gun fights between some of the toughest gangsters in LA and I think even they gained respect for this community in that regard. Fred is simply one of those shop owners, he is a very humble and unassuming man, in season two, he finds himself entering a whole new life and for me as a writer, that is very gratifying and to be totally honest, writing for Fred was the most bitter sweet experience ever. Here is a man who has lost a daughter, a wife, a business partner and he is about to lose all he has, his shop. Regarding Junior and Jordan, I grew up with these guys, I have met them again and again, on buses, in neighborhoods at school. Jordan has a resilience and a casual humor that has been passed down from generations, a survival skill that includes an ironic outlook at life. He also has that accidental Buster Keaton sort of ability to walk through traffic and come out unscathed. Junior on the other hand is a real heavy, like any number of classic characters in familiar cinema history confronted with the challenges of poverty and tragedy. He is the character that paid the biggest price and in return, we feel that experience. There is a certain amount of mystery and even a pent up sexuality and sometimes a violence that erupts due to his circumstances. In season two, within a single episode, Junior takes his father, who is a busboy at a cafe and repositions him as the Don or boss of their original ranch in Mexico.
There seems to be a lot of religion in They Call it the City of Angels, how did that occur and do you attend church or prescribe to any particular faith ?
I never intended for there to be so much religion in this book. But, if you know Los Angeles like I do, you will realize how important faith is to a good many people and particularly to the characters I chose to represent. With Jordan being Muslim, it allowed me to delve into the challenges a person might have pertaining to that particular faith. Fred's life is so full of tragedy that even a devout buddhist would have trouble accepting and letting go of the events that occur in his life. Junior found god in prison as many people do, upon his release back into the real world, he is forced to make decisions which challenge that belief system and sometimes go against his faith, at the same time, he finds himself physically closer to real life events and objects of religious historical significance than the average believer which brings us into a heightened reality and raises questions in a new way. As for my own belief system, I dabble in a series of exercises and rituals that spring from a wide variety of faiths and practices.
You discussed Jordan, Fred and Junior. Tell us about Cliff and Charles and Chuck.
Joshua Triliegi: I don't really believe in secondary characters, but in writing fiction, certain characters simply emerge more pronounced than others. As this project was a daily serial for the magazine, I did try my best to keep a balance, giving each character a fully realized set of circumstances and history. That said, some characters were related to another through family, incident or history and later, I felt compelled to know more about them and see how they would emerge.
Charles is one of those legendary rock and roll guys who was on tour with music royalty and simply disappeared. He's the missing father we all hear about and wonder what would happen if he were to suddenly return into our lives ? His son Mickey, his wife Maggie, his daughter Cally have all gone on with their lives, when Jordan, accidentally runs him over while driving his bus, Charles returns home and a new chapter in their lives begins again.
Chuck is a cop who just happened to marry Juniors sister and they have several daughters. When Junior returns from prison, he and Chuck clash simply because of their careers and history. I felt it was important to include authority in this story and once I decided to represent a police officer, I wanted him to be as fully realized and interesting as any other character, though, clearly Junior drives much of this section of the novel and Chuck is simply another person that complicates Juniors arrival. I should also explain that the arrival of Junior from years in prison is really the beginning of events that lead up to the basic thrust of the story and somehow almost everyone in the novel has a backstory that connects in some way.
Cliff is absolutely one of my all time favorites. He is a mentally challenged boy whose father happens to be the judge on the case that develops into the unjust legal decision and eventually the actual 1992 riots. I have always felt that challenged individuals deserve much more than the marginalized lifestyles that we as a contemporary society provide. Many ancient societies have relegated what we dismiss as something very special. Cliff is challenged, but also happens to be a very intuitively gifted human being whose drawings portend actual future events. Even though his parents are extremely pragmatic, they are forced to consider his gifts.
Cliff is a young upper middle class white boy who is entirely obsessed with the late great comedian Richard Pryor and at very inopportune times, Cliff will perform entire Richard Pryor comedic routines, including much of the original risqué language. Cliff is an innocent who pushes the societal mores to the edge. I have found through fiction the ability to discuss, develop and delve into ideas that no other medium provided me. And as you may know, I am a painter, film maker, photographer, sculptor, designer, who also edits a magazine reviewing art, film and culture.
As a man, do you find it challenging to write female characters ?
Joshua Triliegi: To some extent, yes. That said, I have spent a good many years with women and have had very close relationships with the female gender, both personally and professionally, so on average, I would say that I am not a total buffoon. In They Call It City of Angels, Jordan's girlfriend Wanda and his mom both appeared and bloomed as fully realized characters that I really enjoyed writing for. Cliffs mother Dora is also a very strong female character that I am very proud to have created. Season two presented a special challenge with dialogue between characters that was new territory for me. I have written screenplays in the past, sometimes with collaborators, once with my brother and more recently with my nephew and in Angels, I found it, for the first time, very easy to imagine the conversations and action in a way that was totally new to my process. I would most likely credit that to my own relationships and possibly to the several recent years of interviewing and writing for the magazine in general.
When will we see another season of They Call It The City of Angels ?
We have set a tradition of it being the Summer Fiction Project at the Magazine and since August is a relatively slow month for advertising and cultural events, we will most likely see a Season Three in the summer of 2015. As you may know, I do not take any written notes at all prior to the day that I actually write the chapter, so the characters simply develop on a subconscious level and then during the one month or two week process, I pretty much do nothing at all, but ponder their existence, day to day. This can sometimes be nerve racking as I do plot things out in my head and sometimes even make extreme mental notes, though even then some ideas simply don't make it on the page. During Season Two, I omitted a section of a chapter and later revealed another chapter into a different sequence of events, but besides that it has been a rather straight ahead chapter a day experience that simply pushed me to invent, develop and complete the work of fiction that might have otherwise never existed or possibly taken much more time. I am curious to see how my next project will develop.
What is your next project ?
Joshua Triliegi; I am working on a couple of things of historic importance. Though I can't say much about them. One is an actual event that I have been given permission to portray by the actual estate and I don't know yet if it will be an ' Inspired by ... ' type of Novel or if it will be creative Non Fiction. The other is a fiction piece I have been developing for sometime now.
" I have been writing consciously since I was fourteen, stories, journals, poetry, lyrics, screenplays, but as far as fiction goes, They Call It The City of Angels is probably my first successful project with a major readership and I am very thankful that it happened. Better late than never. "
After that I have a sort of family opus that is probably the most researched project I have ever undergone. I have been writing consciously since I was fourteen, stories, journals, poetry, lyrics, screenplays, but as far as fiction goes, They Call It The City of Angels is probably my first successful project with a major readership and I am very thankful that it happened. Better late than never.
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