Let's Go Somewhere-9/2/2014 Florence, London, Sienna

John Says:

I think one makes a Faustian pact when they receive adequate employment.  I’m a firm believer that human beings weren’t cut out for work.  Well, some of us weren’t.  Sadly I do see a lot of automatons on a daily basis who seem perfectly happy to hope on a bus, train, drive a car with their giant Dunkin’ in hand, ready to kill another eight hours for God and country.  But this isn’t a blog post about jobs.

I always wanted to travel.  But I didn’t really have the money until around 2009 when I was nearly two years deep in what many would describe as adequate employment.  I wondered if I missed the boat being unable to travel in my 20s and into my early 30s.  After all, I was becoming quite content to kill evenings and weekends sitting on the couch with drink in hand, or in a bar, pontificating about the sad madness that made up these United States.  Fortunately for me I married someone who realized that slaving away for eight hours a day was worth more than coming home and complaining about it while getting relatively drunk.  So thanks to her I’ve been able to go some places.

like here:

and here:

One place that really stuck out in my mind, not in a good way, was the city of Florence.  Firenze to most everyone else.  It wasn’t Florence’s fault that I didn’t gel with the city.  The weather was hot.  I sit here now writing this on what’s going to be a 92 degree day in SEPTEMBER.  But the four or five days that the wife and I were in Florence, man, it was hot.  94 or 95 degrees daily.  I’m not a summer person when it’s mild.  So my first inclination was to hide in the hotel or in the heavily air-conditioned Irish Bar that we found.  But had I done that I wouldn’t have been able to see this.:

or this:

That’s not the real David glaring toward Rome.  The real one is located in Florence’s Galleria dell’Accademia.  This one is a replica that stands in the Palazzo della Signoria.  But I did see the real one.  And to be honest, it’s one of the most amazing experiences that I’ve had in traveling.  I’m pretty big on art and living in NYC, if I have the dough, I can stand in front of van Gogh’s Starry Night six days a week.  I’ve managed to see some great works while traveling.  van’ s Sunflowers, Picasso’s Guernica, Velasquez’s and Caravaggio’s up the ass.  I stood in an all-black room gazing at Klimt’s The Kiss.  But none of them rivaled the majesty of standing in front of Michelangelo’s David.

In an effort to be brief there were a lot of great sites to see in Florence such as the Duomo, Campanile, and the Uffizi Gallery.  Day trips to Pisa and Sienna are worth it…if it’s not 100 degrees outside.  My trip was also marred by the vast amount of Americans in Florence.  I was there during the MTV reign of The Jersey Shore, and apparently they filmed a season of it in Florence a year or so before.  This may explain the number of Americans walking around wearing David boxer shorts over their jeans, or why at random moments chants of USA! USA! broke out on the streets.  Or why some thousands of miles from home I’d turn a corner in Florence and run into something akin to this:

Quills and Frills - 8/16/14 Ally Malinenko, Aleathia Drehmer, Kristofer Collins

Ally says:

Emma Sings in Church

We take our seats in the church,

here for the noon day free concert

that they’ve been offering for 75 years.

It makes me wish the churches back home did this sort

of thing and then I remember that if they did

I wouldn’t be free at noon on a Tuesday anyway.

My weekdays belong to someone else.

I fidget, squirming in my seat

like a child,

behind me the pipes of the organ shine.

When the musicians come in I start.

They are all so young,

long hair and nervous smiles.

You can see the energy wafting off of them.

I look around the packed church,

my husband and I are the youngest people here

but we are not young,

not like these girls

who tuck their violins under their chin

fingers quivering with so

much potential.

When the soloist comes out,

her voice otherworldly

exactly the way Handel would have wanted

I feel something shift in me,

and for a moment I wonder if I will make it home

or if my plane will fall out of the sky.

I look at the program.

Her name is Emma,

this small girl full of so much sound

that I can feel myself breathe it in.

It tastes like buttermint and time.

It tastes like all that life

still ahead of her

begging to be filled.

For a moment I remember what that felt like

and then I close my eyes

and beg it to stop.


John says:

I’ve known Kristofer Collins for twenty-four years.  To put that on an understandable level I’ve known only my parents, brother, and intimate family friends for as long.  Kris and I met outside our geometry class in 1990.  Ah, to be wee lads again.  At the time he was on the staff of our high school literary magazine (he would eventually become the editor), and I was a fat and lonely kid with literary dreams.  What makes the stuff of friendship?  I don’t know.  But Kris and I formed a bond in high school that was solidified into a lifelong chum-hood in college, and has managed (albeit with some lumps along the way) to last into our 40s, that glorious time of family sickness, prostate exams, gray hair, and sore bones.  Here’s a sample of his work from the book Make-Out Party, an experiment in poetry where the last line of a poem is suddently the first line of the next:

i

pomes popping out all over

town infested with summer

jump my bones like a feud of

flowers are mondays all over

the world the same as my monday

is the earth just jelly

between yr weepy toes

sometimes writing pomes

is strange as this strange

as yr heart's lub dub

ii

as yr heart’s lub dub
speeds yr soles purple
is the new sky my good
friend a foreigner
you don’t speak the
language of office supplies
you don’t know the artist
but his name is hanging
west of the crumbled town

One of the great parts about knowing Kris for so long is that I’ve got to sit back and watch the guy develop as a man and as an artist.  What had once been dreams to him back when we were skipping classes to drink coffee, wander Pittsburgh, practice our Beatles impressions, and think we were the only people ever to discover Jack Kerouac, have now become realities.  Kristofer Collins is a true indie/small press renaissance man.  He is the owner of DesolationRow Records in Pittsburgh.  Kris is the author of six books of poetry: King Everything (Six Gallery Press 2006), The Book of Names (Low Ghost Press, 2008), The Liturgy of Streets (Six Gallery Press, 2009), Last Call (Speed and Briscoe), Make-Out Party (Coleridge Street 2013) and Pennsylvania Welcomes You (Coleridge Street 2013), which can be found in bookstores in Pittsburgh as well as HERE. He is also the publisher/editor of Low GhostPress and its smaller offshoot Coleridge Street which has published yourstruly, as well as The Trolleyman by Bob Pajich and The River Underneath the City by Scott Silsbe

Aleathia says:

Here is a poem from last November's poetry a day challenge:

Redacted Ideograms

We are born
into these slips of flesh—
a self-containing casket
taking a possible century
to decompose.

All the while
remora taking from us
silently leaving us
unawares .

The one life we have
eclipsed by daily minutiae
and bills to pay.

We miss the bigger picture.
We miss it all.

Aleathia Drehmer 2013

Art Bomb-8/15/2014 MoMA Etiquette, Graffitti

john says,

While there is a lot to be written about art, I’d like to take a little bit of time to write about art museum etiquette.  Art museum etiquette in America is practically dead from my point of view.  It used to be that one went into an art museum and experienced the same quiet reverence that was given to lesser places like religious establishments.  This is no longer the case.  Now walking into an art museum is like walking into controlled chaos or a street fair.

Cell Phones and Tablets: Cell Phones and Tablets should be banished from art museums.  I never remember being allowed to take pictures of the art.  But because of the prevalence of these digital infestations museums have given up and slackened their rules.  They’ve allowed for “non-flash” photos to be taken.  Instead of being able to stand in front of Vincent’s van Gogh’s Starry Night or Picasso’s Three Musicians in quiet contemplation, I am now surrounded by dozens of people posing for selfies in front of a work of art.  And don’t even get me started on these kinds of assholes….

SILENCE:  When in the hell did the art museum become a mall?  Cell phone chatter.  Tourists shouting.  Know-it-alls loudly expounded on the history and meaning of each piece of art.  You aren’t a docent Mr. Art Genius, so shut the fuck up.  Kids crying!  I try and try to understand people with children.  But if you’ve taken the time and spent the money to see a Modigliani, why in the hell would you take a screaming and wailing three year-old with you?  You’re just ruining your own experience and the experience of those around you.  Go to the zoo instead.

Bored Kids and Pushy Parents:  Don’t bring older children/teens into an art museum if they don’t want to see art.  There’s nothing worse than walking around an art museum and having to hurdle bored tweens pressed against the wall playing on their cell phones, or dodging a standing teen updating their Facebook status about how much this sucks.  And you pushy parents: maybe it should be enough that you got your kid to acquiesce to the art museum.  But stop interrogating the poor bastard.  Excited mother: And Joeys what painting is this?  Joey (bored tone): Christina’s World.  Mom: And who painted it?  Joey: Andrew Wyeth.  Mom: And what year did he paint it?  Joey:  I don’t know.  Mom:  Joey, I thought we went over this at home.  Joey (shrugging, walking away).  It’s Saturday……leave the kid be.  Let him discover art on his own instead of instantly making him hate it (and you) with this Spanish Inquisition.

Well…I’ve gone on for too long.  Overall, going to an art museum can be an enriching and enlightening experience.  Let’s just get back to a modicum of respect while we’re walking around with the masters.  Right now in NYC at the MoMA there is a fantastic exhibit on the prints of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec that is a must see….provided you can get Randy Newman’s Short People out of your head while you’re walking around it.

Ally says:

“The greatest crimes in the world are not committed by people breaking the rules but by people following the rules. It's people who follow orders that drop bombs and massacre villages.” 
― Banksy, Wall and Piece

I’ve always been a fan of street art. Both living in NYC and traveling in Europe I’ve gotten to see my fair share of it:

Sunset Park Brooklyn 40's 

Sunset Park, Brooklyn 40's

South Slope, Brooklyn 18th 

South Slope Brooklyn 15th St.

Park Slope, Brooklyn 9th St.

London

East London

East London

Vienna, Austria

Vienna, Austria

Vienna, Austira

When they tore down 5 pointz in Queens, it was a huge loss. We went from this:

To this:

Not really what I would call an improvement.

Probably the most famous of all street artists is Banksy. If you don't know his name, you might recognize his work:

 Seems they think they've found out who Banksy actually is but we'll see if that even sticks.

In the meantime, since his work gets taken down and painted over as quickly as it gets put up, you can always watch Exit Through the Gift Shop. - a great "documentary" about a a French shopkeeper's attempt to befriend the legendary artist.

And remember - not all art hangs on the walls in a museum. And not everything in that museum is really art. I've never really understood why advertising screaming at me from every corner is commerce and accepted, and yet a little piece of art that might make me smile while I'm waiting for the bus, is demonized and illegal.