International News on American Radio, or, Living in Tony Hoagland's "America"

Running errands around town the other day, I realized how voyeuristic my interest in all the North African / Middle Eastern unrest is.  I had been listening to more news than usual, just wanting to keep up on the latest from Egypt and now Libya.  The Libyan situation was so tense at the moment that Minnesota Public Radio had given its broadcast over to the BBC, which was reporting exclusively on Libya for that full hour.  As I listened, I realized that I was enjoying the coverage, much as I might enjoy a documentary.  I recalled that very morning, when I had said to my daughter "the world is really interesting right now," and we had discussed a number of news stories that had captivated our attention. 

Then, even while I was listening and reflecting on my own distance from the events, I realized that I was tracking another thought at the same time:

I'd been all over town that day, and had noticed for the first time that a strange number of spas have opened here, recently--I can count half a dozen new spas in this small city of about 50,000.  Why is a spa a good business when the economy's in the tank?  I like a spa.  I like massages.  Aromatherapy.  Is there a need for a well-developed economy of relaxation when everything sort of feels like it's on the brink of collapse?  Or maybe it's more simple--a competitive strategy among financiers: if one spa opens, and you're a savvy investor, then you should open another spa.  Perhaps your spa will be better, and will steal the market that the first spa has worked hard to create.  Could that be a real strategy?  Could there be a name for it in a business text? 

As I went from working out to the post office to the grocery store to picking up the kids from school, with revolution in Libya in the back of my mind like the plot of a good movie I'd recently watched, while spas appear like visions of oasis on every business corner, I realized that my thought patterns closely resembled Tony Hoagland's poem, "America."

"When each day you watch rivers of bright merchandise run past you
And you are floating in your pleasure boat upon this river

Even while others are drowning underneath you
And you see their faces twisting in the surface of the waters

And yet it seems to be your own hand
Which turns the volume higher."

It's neither here nor there.  It doesn't change things either in my head or in the world.  But maybe it's something to realize that art is capable of leaving a record of its time--even if that record is one of collosal short-sightedness.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Layli Long Soldier's "38"

I'm reading Whereas, by Layli Long Soldier, and in the poem "38," linked here , I learned some history about the Dakota 38 and the "Sioux Uprising" of 1862, also known as "The Dakota War of 1862" (as an aside, this is the same historical event involved in the controversy at the Walker Art Center over the sculpture, "Scaffold." Long Soldier's poem was published by Graywolf, out of Minneapolis. It wouldn't surprise me if the poem was part of what catalyzed the Walker's awareness of the issue, but... that's just me speculating). I learned many things in the poem: I learned about the 38 men who were executed. I learned about Lincoln's presidency and the historical record of his presidency. I learned about the commemorative horseback ride each winter, preserving the memory of the events and of the 38 who were executed. And I learned of Andrew Myrick, who was killed in that conflict. When asked about the condition of the s...
Read more

Beautiful Doom: Heizer's "City" and Scott's "Blade Runner"

Image
There’s a striking similarity between Douglas Trumbull and Ridley Scott’s pyramidal design for the “Tyrell Corporation” headquarters in Blade Runner (1982) and the photos I’ve seen of Michael Heizer’s monumental plaza, Complex City , which has been under construction in Garden Valley, Nevada since 1972.  I’ve not seen any evidence that Trumbull & Scott would’ve been influenced by Heizer. I think the resemblance is probably nothing more than some shared archaeological interests. Still, I love the fact of the resemblance, because it really opens up a web of thinking about art and architecture’s relationship to the future. Both works explicitly and implicitly imagine futures, and both works have monumental properties:  they commemorate the present for a viewer in distant time. I want to start by outlining the web of connections, here: Both City  and Tyrell Corporation are obviously pyramid st ructures, and the structures really are similar—it’s as if Heizer’...
Read more

10th Anniversary Poets & Artists

Image
Ten years ago, the inimitable publishing force of nature known to the world as Didi Menendez expanded her empire from MiPOesias  and MiPOradio  to include a new magazine known as Oranges & Sardines . That's right. After the Frank O'Hara poem, "Why I Am Not a Painter." You know the one:  ---- for instance, Mike Goldberg  is starting a painting. I drop in. ... "You have SARDINES in it." "Yes, it needed something there." ... But me? One day I am thinking of  a color: orange. I write a line about orange ...  There should be  so much more not of orange, of words, of how terrible orange is, and life. Days go by. ... My poem is finished and I haven't mentioned orange yet. It's twelve poems, I call it ORANGES. ---- Yeah okay it's better if you read the whole thing .  But Didi wanted to put painters and poets together in a magazine and when she wants to do something she does it. I had been w...
Read more