“Where do you get your ideas from?” This is a question every creative person hears at one time or another. Of course, if you are a writer, your immediate reply is; “Grammar, please. Don’t you mean, ‘from where do you get your ideas?’”  If your interrogator is still with you, you might answer, “everywhere,” “thin air,” “the gods,” or “my itchy brain.”

All these answers are the same.

My one novel in print, “The Elvis Tooth,” came about in this way:

I was working in a 1920’s era hardware store in downtown Black Mountain, North Carolina. Upstairs were the stockrooms, but this area had obviously had a previous life, one that was, as they say, “cloaked in mystery.” There were small rooms with inter-connecting doors; there were two bathrooms – with bathtubs. Most mysterious of all, there was a large room that had obviously been a dance hall. The sides were raised enough to hold a row of two-tops, a tiny bandstand sat at the far end, small windowless rooms were at the near end, and you entered through a door with a peephole in it at the back of a closet!

The current owners thought the room had been a social club of some sort, like the Elks or Woodmen of the World. Maybe. But why hide it in a closet? The building was built during prohibition. Black Mountain has always been a tourist town, catering particularly to summer folk. The railway station, where 5 or more trains a day disgorged happy vacationers, is only 2 blocks away.  Could this have been a speakeasy, serving liquor, dancing, and who-knows-what-else in this straitlaced little bible town? You see where my mind was going.

As I carried stock up and down the staircase, I imagined travelling salesmen, furtive Christian couples, and small-town hookers treading the same stairs. I imagined certain city fathers patronizing the illicit establishment. And I began imagining two characters in particular; a bar-girl named Dixie and a travelling private eye who would have snappy conversations as they climbed the stairs. In that storyline, he is shot at the bottom of the stairs. Why? I began to look forward to stocking.

Around the corner, on Cherry Street (the commercial center of town), is Pellom’s Time Shop, one of the
oldest stores in town. John Pellom, owner and chronologist, had a very cavalier attitude toward time. The store was a mess, clocks and watches piled everywhere. I talked to people who said their middle-aged mother had dropped a clock off to be repaired and died of old age before retrieving it. Since clock repair obviously wasn’t Pellom’s forté, what did go on in Pellom’s Time Shop?

The third burr under my creative saddle was Elvis. The King had had a tooth pulled in Black Mountain in 1977, during a three day gig in Asheville. This was the trip in which He shot both a television and his personal physician in a motel on Tunnel Road. Fun times. He chose Black Mountain because it was remote and less likely to draw a crowd (it drew a small one). Rumors of What Happened to the Tooth were rampant, but by then, His people were certainly aware of the value of Elvisania and took it with them.

With these three fragments constantly tickling my mind, the story grew, connected, roiled, until I finally gave in and wrote a book – just to relieve the itch. Purging, I think it’s called.  I added several scenes I had gathered through oral history interviews and, Presto! (meaning in this case, about a year)– the world of Elvis’s Tooth came to be.

The Walmart funded Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art is a just right museum located in the suburban wilds of Walmartania (international HQ) in Bentonville, Arkansas; a company town with miles of cookie-cutter mini-mansion neighborhoods. An inside tour of any randomly chosen five of these houses would make a GREAT photo exhibit at, say, Crystal Bridges. I’d go; wouldn’t you?

The exterior of the museum is an ambitiously modernist design that tries too hard to say “internationally important over here.” It ends up being clunky, over-built, and – despite claims of “fitting the landscape” – an awkward intrusion in the lovely Arkansas hills where it’s plopped. There is a small Frank Lloyd Wright house reset on the property that shows what a true architectural artist can do for $20k in 1950s dollars. The pretentious $1.2b museum building loses big in comparison. Subtly subversive to put the Wright house there, though.

   

Inside, however, it has a nice flow, good light, and a really lovely and broad collection of American art, spanning the country’s history. The day I visited there was a mix of made-for-museum paintings, watercolors, tempera (!), sculpture, private works, and pieces commissioned for Crystal Bridges. The 21st century section had a surprising number of pieces by African-American artists, including some interesting political work. Surprising and interesting because, you know, the Waltons.

  “Our Town” Kerry James Marshall

Women artists were also well represented. Whoever curates this collection (currently, Margaret Conrads) has it going on, art-wise. That, plus the Walton billions, makes the collection a tasty madeleine in the super family-size bag of Ozark ranch Doritos. To stretch a metaphor.

There were some surprises; a Hopper and an Andrew Wyeth I hadn’t seen before, a late George Segal (in color!), some charming Calder mobiles, and some really funny paintings, including this one:

   “A Tight Fix” it’s called. In real life, it’s clear that the protagonist’s friend is aiming at something out of frame – not the bear. Another, bigger bear? A really trophy deer? We don’t know. Also, this little bear doesn’t seem that in to attacking the guy. Maybe it’s the other way round? All-in-all, less than heroic. But funny. There are several laugh-out-loud pieces, some intentional, some not.

Though we walked the museum backwards (present to past), I was relieved to finally find something to be critical of. The framing of the early paintings was weird. All the frames are the same color of bright, new-wedding-ring gold: no patina, no age, no depth. They are, they say, the original frames. Except: many – maybe most – are out of proportion to the art they’re framing! Yes, exclamation point. Some frames are, in total yardage, twice the size of the poor little painting they encompass. Crystal Bridges gives frame tours and a frame page on their website, so they’re aware and proud of the frames. But the nouveau riche GOLD! does disservice to the art and the collection.

 There’s worse than this, although I kinda liked the old fashioned stacked display. For a more erudite analysis of the place, check out this Art in America review.

One can’t responsibly talk about the billiony-billionaire Walton kids without mentioning how they gip the American people out of millions by instructing their under-paid Walmart employees in how to get food stamps to survive their minimum wage jobs. So, the largesse of this nice, free museum is balanced by the greed of its main benefactor, Alice Walton, whose genius was to be born the child of Sam Walton.

Could they afford to pay living wages? Of course. Should you boycott Crystal Bridges because of the tainted money? Hard to call. You don’t pay to get in. You don’t have to ever shop at Walmart to get in. You can ask awkward questions of the friendly staff. You can elect people who will tax these folks accordingly. Since the advent of public museums (only the last 200 years or so) this has been the contract: “I’ll let you occasionally see the fabulous stuff that I can see daily; you let me keep on keeping on. And maybe, someday, you’ll be rich like me!” Doesn’t it always get back to the American Dream? Which, like the lottery, is just enough of the slightest possibility to keep we masses crossing our fingers and giving the wealthy a pass.

Enjoy the art.

A common cri de coeur heard from the lower upper class to the upper lower class is that Those Wealthier Than Us couldn’t possibly have any real problems. This is the over-riding American belief that money solves everything. Now, it is a fact that money does solve lots of problems. I’m sure we’re all listing those problems now: food, shelter, cel phone, personal transportation device. But there are some problems money can’t fix. Love comes to mind; disease, existential dread, wanton children, crazy relatives. The acid test for most of us reading this is: the many people lower than you on the Forbes Two Billion Richest MenPeople think you are rich and therefore have no excuse to have problems. They are as right as you. Right?

So what follows is, I know, very much a first world problem. And, really, not even a problem; just a conscious change. Okay, forget that first paragraph.

I gave up my studio in the throbbing center of little Black Mountain, North Carolina, because I was starting a long-distance research project for my next series of books. I was surprised at how sad that made me. After long decades of studio-ing out of my home, the leap to an art-room of its own was like walking through a door. Literally. And figuratively.

First, there was more room than I’d ever had, which I rapidly filled up with tables, easels, a couch, a sink, flat files, carpets, pencils, paints, and pallets. I covered the walls with art I love, mine and others.  I could spread out, pile up, sort through, and re-read to my hearts content (arts content?). I could also wander around town, visit friends, have a tea or a lunch, and waste as much time as I needed, but a different kind of time-wasting than what I did at home. For example, I’d half-jokingly tell people I was avoiding work, which then made me realize that was just what I was doing. That sort of public accountability drew me back.

I met clients there and other artists. Most important, I created my two best works, “Fetch” and “Owl Girl.” Did that have anything to do with the studio? Maybe. Like Death, a studio serves to focus the mind wonderfully.

This studio experience taught me a lesson that I might have learned fifty years ago if I had been paying attention in art school; seriousness is measured in action, not intention. But I’m okay with it taking this long to learn. One thing I did learn back then was the Futility of Regret. “La la la,” sings the Bohemian grasshopper, as the minions of Aunt R R Martin warn that Winter is coming.

I just finished reading Orwell’s “1984” or maybe rereading. I seem to have read it in college (certainly not high school), but don’t remember the frank and adult sexual relationship between Winston and Julia. So maybe it was a bowdlerized edition in high school. There were rags of familiarity in this reading, but those may be due to the ubiquity of memes from 1984, some of which have gone beyond meme to cliche (“Big Brother”, “thoughtcrime”, “newspeak”). The long discourse from Emanuel Goldstein’s forbidden history book – the philosophical egg in the middle of the story– made my literary hairs stand on end.

So, it’s commonplace to say how prescient the book is, but, my god, how prescient the book is!  The forever war, ‘truth is lies”, the willing ignorance of the proles: hello.

Reading it was easy going; there’s an old fashioned flow to it since it is from, you know, 1949. But the stomach-roiling comparison to These Days reminded me of rewatching “Idiocracy” by the great Mike Judge (creator of the modern Mayberry series, “King of the Hill”). It was funny when first viewed but is way too close to home to be humorous now.  I remember when the kid at the video store pressed it into my hands and whispered, “and it’s true!”  He was right. Both the novel and the movie offer vicious pictures of society followed to logical, yet hopefully absurd conclusions. “1984” is crushingly depressing; “Idiocracy” is hilariously depressing.

Of course, I am not unaware of the possibility that I have become that crotchety old man I mocked in my youth, flailing against modern times that have passed me by. “It was long ago and it was far away, and it was so much better than it is today” as Meatloaf sang on the seminal “Bat Out of Hell“ album. But, as I’m sure my dad and his dad and his dad said, “yeah, but this time it’s real different.”

Sometimes the feeling that the world is at a crossroads, and at least two of those roads are screamingly obvious bad choices, is true. Most Americans are in a moral panic right now, not just me, not just my g-g-generation. 1984‘s road is the totalitarian lockstep we see being embraced all around the world. Idiocracy‘s path reeks of a particularly American circus of consumerism, arrogant ignorance, and naivety. As usual, Art shines a light into our darkest corners, leaving us with the choice – let’s say, the responsibility – of cleaning those corners out.

Having recently spent two weeks in Japan, I am now an expert (American-style).

To exercise my expertise, I present to you:

A Gloss on 10 Things Everyone Thinks They Know about Japan.

1 It’s horribly expensive.

It was, back in the 80’s or 90’s, but today one yen equals less than a penny. Just move the decimal 2 slots forward and a 1000¥ item is less than $10! There are, of course, expensive things and places. You don’t need them. Avoid Ginza (the same boring “high end” stores you find in Every City); use AirBnB (always cheaper for what you get and closer to the Real Wherever); buy a JR pass (trains are everywhere, on time, and comfy). Oh, yeah – shop for air tickets; I went round-trip for $450. Really.

2 Japanese hate foreigners. 

Not that I saw.  On the tourist level, everyone was super polite, cheerful and helpful. In a store that didn’t have the chocolate I was looking for, the lady walked me down the block to the store that had it. Don’t see that in Brooklyn. Japanese people smile and laugh a lot. Sure, that might be hiding a seething paranoia, but better hidden than always out front like in, say, the USA.

A Christian friend of mine who was a missionary in Japan (!), says the Japanese don’t like Christians. As a presumptive Christian, again, not my experience. Japan resisted Christian proselytizing for centuries, but there are lots of them around now.  For a weird take on the Japanese/Christian thing, check out Martin Scorsese’s “Silence”. Scorsese’s Catholicism battles with his, dare I say, humanity to make the Japanese villains’ philosophical arguments more sound than those of the Jesuit protagonists.

3 It’s terribly over-crowded.

There are 37 million people in Tokyo, but they’re not all in the same place at the same time. The city is spread out. And more importantly, public transit is superb. And most important, Japanese people have decided the most important personality trait on a crowded island is to get along.  Situations that would devolve into screaming confrontation in most US metropolii are non-starters in Japan. I walked through Tokyo station at rush hour and it was like an anthill on fire. Except. People wove through the crowd without angst or drama. No “excuse me,” or  “sorry” required.

 

4 There are monkeys who swim in the snow.

True. Up North on Hokkaido. There are monkeys scattered all over the Japanese islands; cute, dirty, nasty, thieving, horrid monkeys.

 

5 They make the best cars.

Yep. I love me some Ford, but for reliability and common sense, it’s Honda, Toyota, Nissan.  In actual Japan, most cars, vans, and trucks are smaller than a Civic or a Camry.  In Tokyo –and maybe other big cities – there are more bicycles than cars; big three speed street cruisers that all ages and genders ride.

The tiny pickups are everywhere, doing all the things pickups do. Not only do they save gas (about the same price as in the US), but they fit down the many narrow streets that more than make                                                                   up in charm what they lack in width. In the country, roads  are often one lane with occasional turnouts for passing or backing up. It’s just the thing to do; no pissing contest required. And the micro vans are sokawaii– which is the word for all those strange, cutesy, some would say treacley, characters the Japanese love. Hello, Kitty being a Tim Burton character compared to some you’ll see.

6 Mt Fuji is a thing.   

As a national symbol, it’s pretty great. It’s natural, it’s impressive as hell, it’s a live volcano, and it once was, and to many still is, a god. Shintoism, like most Native American religions, espouses the idea that every thing, creature, and person has a spirit: big, little good, or cranky.  People climb Fuji-san for luck, for sport, as a religious exercise. Imagine if the Statue of Liberty was 1000 times bigger and always in imminent danger of blowing her head off; now that’s a national symbol we could all get behind!

 

 

7 Geishas are like high priced hookers only they don’t have sex or maybe they do.   

Didn’t see any; certainly didn’t hire one. It seems like it might be a dying profession; it’s difficult to learn – apprenticeships are still a thing in Japan. I saw a lot of Japanese tourists dressed like geisha, and it definitely wasn’t as “hot geisha.”  What makes foreign travel so great is encountering traditions, words, habits that don’t translate. Geisha seem to be kinda sorta like rarified bar hostesses. If sex is involved, it would probably be by mutual agreement and non-transactional. I don’t know. Hey, why are you so obsessed with sex? Drop it.

 

 

 

8 They eat every disgusting fishy thing there is.   

Depends on how you define “disgusting.” American fish-eating is very bland: white fish, shrimp, maybe go crazy and eat an oyster. Japan, remember is an island about the size of California, with a jagged coastline. Fishy things are more prevalent than furry things. (Someone told me the Big Macs taste fishy, but I always thought that was kinda true.) And, yes, it seems the Japanese regularly eat every sea being they can get their hands on

I admit that some of the mysterious creatures I ate had weird mouth vibes, but that’s true of anything unfamiliar. If you ate the cooked ovii of reptilian descendants you might be freaked out. Except that you do, every day for breakfast. Context, my friend, context.

 

9 They are crazy for all things technological.    

Seems true, but aren’t we all? How often do YOU change your phone/computer/socks/haircut/spouse?  Actually, the Japanese seem to have achieved a balance between the newest new and the revered old. In America, we battle over “developing” old buildings, homes, battle sites. It’s “more practical” to tear it down and put up some (usually) lesser structure.  In Japan, after 100 years or so, they seem to cherish the old stuff   – even rebuild it when it falls or burns down. Same for old artifacts; swords, pottery, clothing, masks, people.

 Techno-mania is taken to the inth degree there; most mania are. But the have fun with it. “Chindogu” is the hobby of making useless inventions, like a butter grater, or a square watermelon.  My favorite obsessive is Tatsuya Tanakawho uses tiny people in conjunction with everyday objects to make witty comments about Life Today.               

 

10 Though the trains run on time, they literally smash people into overcrowded train cars.  

I’ve seen those videos, though I didn’t see it in person. Rush hour trains were crowded, but not like a New York subway or Paris Metro. And people turn into themselves, reading, playing phone video. Loud talking is frowned upon; loud music non-existent. The conductors bow upon entering and leaving a car.  Train platform workers and ground crews at the airport also bow as the transport arrives and leaves. Weird? Perfunctory? Sure, maybe, but I’ll take politeness and respect any way I can get it.

The Takeaway

I’ve always had a hunger to experience the actuality of Japan. Drawn to the Japanese minimalist aesthetic, the balance of fierceness and delicateness, the foreign-ness, I was also wary of the language barrier and the same foreign-ness I was drawn to. All that was swept away in the reality of Japan.  People were polite, smiling, generous; cities were clean, safe, and well-run. There are still pockets of ancient Japan that are preserved and revered by the natives. Most tourists in Japan are Japanese.

I came back determined to be cleaner, more polite, more generous. Obviously, I had a shallow experience on this, my first visit: but I’ll be back. I want more. If you truly want to know the World, you have to get out and see it, face to face, no mediating barrier. Do it while there’s still time.

I’m in to making wordless books for aesthetic reasons; pretty pictures and a narrative that reverses the ancient formula of words creating pictures in your head (which I love slightly more than breath). These books give you the image and your mind supplies the words. Cool!

But there are secret, underground, deep-state uses for wordless books that make sense when you think about them. Mainly, to help folks who have trouble reading, or reading English, or reading any other language.

Studies show that pre-literate kids’ vocabularies increase substantially when “reading” to parent/teacher/ grandparent/friend.  They know words that they can’t yet decipher on the page. This also works with ELL (English Language Learners, i.e., adults).

Similarly, people of all ages who are trying to navigate a foreign language find ways around and through their new vocabularies. This includes tenses, gender, number, all those pesky grammarish details.

And finally, people with mental disabilities can use wordless books as user-friendly tools to work towards, or back to, a more mainstream functionality. Planted in the land of non-verbal cognition, they grow words. (Though it does have a FEW words, Shaun Tan’s The Red Tree is one of my favorite examples addressing  depression in children)

No one is claiming wordless books are magic lamps to eloquence. But in addition to the unique, non-verbal pleasure they bring in our verbose, texty world, they are stalwart –if subtle– allies to words themselves.

Here‘s a few more great wordless books for children. And may I humbly suggest my own Fetch and Owl Girl for your consideration? They speak, I believe, to all ages.

Thank you.

Sure you remember her; she wrote “Nickeled and Dimed,” where she tried to live on minimum wages for a year. Who knew she was a microbiologist?

Her latest contribution to the conversation is “Natural Causes: an Epidemic of Wellness, the Certainty of Dying, and Killing Our selves to Live Longer.” Bummer? No, an objective look at our culture of Eternal Youth, how your own cells call time, and why, in the grand scheme, you (I, she) don’t matter.

She is, you recall, a compelling writer, so don’t be put off by the biology. If I can follow it, anybody can. Short histories of the Health Industry, the creation and short lifespan of the Self, and the usual scientific squabbles are fascinating stuff. But the core of her argument is that every thing – from neutrons to the Universe – has agency. This included your very own cells! And sometimes your macrophages think they might want to help the cancer cells instead of eating them. Yikes.

Reminds me of this Laurie Anderson song.

Her other rather radical position in our KonsumerKuture is to criticize the physical fitness/wellness/health food industry. She admits she’s a gym rat herself, but thinks the pressure to “reverse aging” through pills, food, and exercise is vain, classist, and – as we all pretend not to know but know – ultimately futile.

A 2009 collection of George Orwell’s (you know, 1984) critical essays from the 40’s…

Wait! Don’t e-run away just yet.

They are remarkably relevant to today’s dummy, neo-fascist climate.  Allow a brief quote: “The first thing we demand of a wall is that it shall stand up. If it stands up, it is a good wall… yet even the best wall in the world deserves to be pulled down if it surrounds a concentration camp.”

See?

Essays on Shakespeare, Dickens, Tolstoy, Henry Miller, Good Bad Books, and penny postcards drip with a discerning wit and intelligence that shows us “how to be interesting, line after line.”  Reading Orwell is like sitting down to a meal that you were sort of dreading ( maybe at your grandmother’s house) and finding it wholly satisfying. Another quote-bait: “..one of the aims of totalitarianism is not merely to make sure that people think the right thoughts, but actually to make them less conscious.” 1984 is all over this book, and was still five years in his future.

All Art is Propaganda – George Orwell

 

I’m a sucker for NYT best-sellers, especially in the non-fiction world. Not being a big fan of Da Vinci or Mona Lisa, I was sniffing around this biiiig book for a few weeks. Then I gave in, got on the library waiting list, and committed to giving it a go. If it bored me as I expected, well, life’s too short to etc.

Then I got it. Read it in a weekend. A good writer an make anything fascinating, and Isaacson (good writer)  had a great subject. Who knew?

Some take-aways:

Leonardo started more paintings than he finished (he got bored).

He dissed Michelangelo big time.

He discovered all this anatomy, astronomy, geology, everythingology stuff, but never published anything – so it all had to be rediscovered 100-400 years later!

He was commissioned to do Mona, but kept it til he died, adding little bits as he learned more abt the world.

I especially enjoyed Isaacson’s detailed dissection of paintings, revealing connections to L’s voracious fascination with the physical world.

You know you’ve been meaning to catch up on genius. Here’s a great and diverting opportunity!