Great Exudations

I thought I might try something new in my eighth month as a would-be blogger. It is a “point to the passer” (see Dean Smith) moment as I acknowledge my high school English teacher Mrs. Belfiore. I give her hindsight credit for whatever modest progress I have made in letters since those days (I was much better in math and science back then). I say “in hindsight” because I absolutely hated reading in those days. Maybe it was a form of selective ADD. More likely it was just laziness and procrastination. Any book thicker than your thumb was a no-go, and even then… Anyway, she assigned us to keep a longitudinal journal for the semester. It was to be in traditional style to document your everyday thoughts and musings. It was a terrific idea! Only I blew it off, at least until the very end of term when I was up late “cramming” entries — using different pens and trying subtly different handwriting variations in order to mimic faithfulness to the original task (come to think of it, I think I did it with the same Jeff L. of S’Battle fame). She, of course, could spot the fakery in it but managed a choice few words of encouragement. As I recall, she liked the journal’s title “Generalities” and a few of the more spirited entries. Funny enough, I actually started my own journal writing in college just a few years later (I still have them!) and have done so off-and-on for decades. So her little trick worked after all! And I suspect that the writing ultimately got me to the reading for the discovery of new ideas and sources of inspiration (I’m still a slow reader who underlines a lot). These new, intermittent blog posts called “Trivialities” will therefore be made in her honor. It’s a similar open canvas approach that she endorsed, but the plan — for these austere times — is to delve into all things less than serious. Sub-serious! Because who really has time for all that, anyway…??

Without getting too much into the weeds (read as “over my head”) with the art historical aspects of Richter, what strikes me about him is the incredible range of styles in which he has worked. By comparison, better known artists like Pollock, Rothko, Lichtenstein, and Warhol (who all had their own early periods) can play as a “one-note samba.”

My friend Jeff L. and I used to play this game for hours-on-end in our high school years at my house. We also had access to the Intellivision football, basketball, baseball and golf versions, but this one was by far our favorite. We talked about this recently and I asked him why it was so. He stated rather simply, but definitively, that is was because we were so evenly matched (the advantage gained from playing the other games with my siblings didn’t hold up with Sea Battle). This struck me at once as both true and also utterly telling about our human nature. Deep down, we like to both watch, and to be engaged in, a fair and close contest. It is the essence of good competition and sportsmanship. And I think it is why many people, myself included, react in a strongly negative way to anabolic steroid abuse (Barry Bonds and Mark McGwire) and cheating scandals (New England Patriots) and “flopping” in soccer (or Duke basketball!). Ill-gotten gains are tallied as losses internally, where it really counts. A certain amount of gamesmanship is tolerated or even enjoyed (Seve Ballesteros). In other cases, it skirts the boundary and depends on your perspective (The Jordan Rules, John McEnroe). But I think all of us are susceptible to crossing that line if given the right/wrong game, the right stakes, the right opponent, the right mind-set and conditions. I don’t think that it defines you as a person, but it’s good to recognize the signs when a game or sport is bringing out the worst in you and, rather than yoking us together in friendly rivalry, is actually causing angst and ill-will. That never happened with Sea Battle between Jeff and me. It was the perfect level of competition, replete with frequent laughter, light-hearted intensity, gentle taunts and short-hand expressions (he would usually ring me and say only this: “S’Battle?!”). Fantastic fun! And I would hazard a guess that our lifetime match-up summary would be in the 52-48% range. There we no fights or heated arguments. No haggling over rules to gain advantage. No tears, other than joyful ones. No money changed hands (golf is hard enough on your ego without adding a financial pressure… something lost on many dude-bros lamely trying to relive their high school glory years or posturing as high-rollers). I think the ideal competition is engaged at about the level of non-league bowling… or backyard badminton (maybe pickleball, which I haven’t tried yet but sounds promising)… or silly-season golf (more on that later). But the gold standard, for me, will always be Sea Battle!

This “Ha ha” phrase came up to me recently in “Exploits & Opinions of Dr. Faustroll, Pataphysician” by Alfred Jarry (1911). It’s at once a serious treatment of the terribly unserious and an unserious treatment of the terminally serious. I can’t not recommend it slightly enough.

Chapter 10: Concerning The Dogfaced Baboon Bosse-de-Nage, Who Knew No Human Words But “Ha Ha”

“Bosse-de-Nage was a dogfaced baboon less cyno- than hydrocephalous, and, as a result of this blemish, less intelligent than his fellows. The red and blue callosity which they sport on their buttocks was, in his case, displaced by Faustroll, by means of some strange medication, and grafted on to his cheeks, azurine on one, scarlet on the other, so that his flat face was tricolor…

‘Ha ha,’ he said in French; and he added nothing more. ”

(Then it gets really weird…)

And it got me thinking. Absurdity, in all its various forms, has been part of the human experience for a long, long time. Maybe since the very beginning. How absurd, even if allegorical, are so many of the stories in the Old Testament. Lot’s wife, for example, in the Book of Genesis. She disobeys the angel’s order and turns to look back on Sodom, when *poof* she’s a pillar of salt. How absurd! I mean, why not pepper? Or paprika?? Ha ha! And what of the Greek myths. Sisyphus is punished by Hades for his repeated insolence by having to cyclically roll a boulder up a hill, only to watch it roll back down (to Sodom?), for all eternity. Albert Camus himself would surely agree that this is absurdity of the highest degree. Plato’s cave? Of PLAY-DOH made. Rabelais? A witty knave. What of the Bard? Quite the card. La Mancha’s man? Pure dead pan. Voltaire’s “Candide”? Pangloss, indeed. Just ask Gogol. He “Nose.” Jarry’s “Roi” ? Pataphysical joy. Or Roussel’s “Locus”? Duchamp’s dark focus. Dada? Yes, Dada. Ever Dada. And yet never Dada. From Tristan Tzara? You may borrow. But S. Dali? To a “T” (as the band plays on — though well out of tune, from various rooms, and to vastly different moons). And what of Artaud? Well, ask Ionesco. But it’s Heller’s purview, that Catch-22. And as for Becket? Oh, God, yeah! But Stoppard? No stopping him now! Ha-ha!! Unless he’s gone Trout Fishing in America… or in “Brazil”… With Robert Altman? And the Repo Man! It’s a Diner-style M*A*S*H-up that only that dunce-head Reilly could push past the valve. It has a Python’s grip. With a John Oliver twist. Kaufmanesque. With a hint of Guest. And a Fear and Loathing of musical “Pollution.” Because it’s a mad, mad, mad, Mad Magazine, that Onion is. Lost in the cosmos. But with a Strangelove for Being There. At least that’s what they were saying down at the Office (Space), pre-pandemic. And over at Alice’s Restaurant. And you may ask yourself, “Who’s left to Lampoon when the powers-that-be are doing such a fine job of torching themselves?!”

Alas, what would DEVO do??

It’s clear and getting clearer, this world’s weird and getting weirder!

So let’s just go with it.

And laugh-laugh at ourselves (with the Beau Brummels!).

What choice do we have?