Mad (Modernist) Men - Part One

So, picture the etherScene: two committed and zealous (though some might say jejune) wee thought experimenters are trying with all our might to take things a step further and put some actual, real historical perspective on these flag tearing shenanigans... and then just as we're making headway, getting down and dirty with actual thoughts on how actual men and women who lived during the era in question might have actually torn down actual Nazi flags that they encountered...Ezra Pound plonks himself down at our table in the etherCoffee shop and starts infiltrating our veryveryserious discussion...
...He's bent on making trouble. As he is wont to do. Crazy man.

We're discussing the mid-20th Century over lefty lattés, all like: "So at what point would...let's say...some of the Modernist authors, poets, or painters come into direct contact with the flag and get a chance to tear it down?", trying to make some sort of accurate outline to make our case clearer. And Pound is sitting across from us (having just returned from an etherLunch with Mussolini), poking angry holes in his pain au chocolat with a fork, rocking crazier eyes than this nut, and booming the same phrase over and over again in his Yahweh-like monotone: "Make it new. Make it new. Make it new"...

OK, Poundy. We get it. 

You're a true Modernist. You want to rip everything up by the roots and start over again. Throw out the institutions and rebuild from the ground up. Thumb your nose at The Truth and come up with your own answers to millenia-old questions. We love it - and we applaud you for being a kingmaker and pulling Williams, Eliot, Hemingway and Joyce up by their bootstraps (we'll temporarily forget about your psych ward-level obsession with fascism).  

But guess what? This is the internet age. We work in 140 characters these days (well, not on this blog; brevity is not the soul of our wit, so shut up already Polonius). We don't have time to come up with a completely new structure for this post, just because the entire concept of a "blog" offends your oh-so-Revolutionary sensibilities. This is not an age that takes kindly to violent mysticism (oh wait...we forgot about Sarah Palin...crappity crap...never mind). We do things by the book. Or by the blog, if you will.

 

(T.S Eliot on the left, Ezra Pound on the right. 

Imagine that face interrupting your A.M etherCoffee) 

So finally one of us speaks up and tells Pound to go sit at another table and let us be. We have work to do. Our writing might not change the way the world thinks, and it might not spawn a new, vibrant literary movement. But there's a place for our cheek. Room for our irreverence. Why? Because we said so. It's OUR blog. Go start your own, Poundy. These days everyone has their say, for better or for worse.

BUT FIRST --- before we get to this week's thoroughly modern T.I.D --- a primer re: our cast of characters...

From left to right: James Joyce, Ezra Pound, T.S Eliot, William Carlos Williams, Henry Miller, Anaïs Nin, D.H Lawrence, and Ernest Hemingway. But why, you ask (with good reason) are there so many cats?!


We'll get to that...

Cailey: So our select Modernists are all hanging out together in a sort of etherItaly...
Liz: Yes. Perpetual sunset on the Mediterranean in perpetual 1938. 
Cailey: Wow. That's...an interesting setting to wrap one's head around. 
Liz: I'm picturing kind of a Merchant-Ivory production style with darker undertones. 
Cailey: Perfect. And at the idyllic, but somehow chilling, sepia Mediterranean villa we have:
Liz: Ezra Pound ranting to himself, reciting his Cantos over and over again...
Cailey: Anaïs Nin and Henry Miller macking all over each other, tongues in places they should never be in polite company...
Liz: While William Carlos Williams tries to pitch in about the health risks of unprotected sex, good country doctor that he is, but of course neither are listening to his sage counsel...
Cailey: D.H. Lawrence - magically alive! - sultrily lounging in a tree and smelling a large white rose, perhaps wishing that it was something else entirely...something attached to a divine lady just like Constance Chatterley... 

Liz: James Joyce reading over an incomprehensible - and allusion-laden - conversation between two Irish fishwives that he has just composed in his little notebook...
Cailey: Ernest Hemingway looking HOT and surrounded by his bevy of polydactyl pussies...
Liz: Literally pussies!
Cailey: And T.S. Eliot - fellow cat man that he is - is trying to name them.
Liz: "I think this one looks like a Tiddliebumpkins, don't you Ernie? And that felicitous feline over there, does she not seem like a Cleecleepateetee" he asks, "Or perhaps a Fuzzle Nuzzikins?" 
Cailey: Hemingway tries to ignore him. Cuteness in any form makes him feel palpably ill.
Liz: "Oh! but look at that one!" Eliot cries, "he is contemplating his deep and inscrutable singular name! What a sight!"
Cailey: While I do actually love that poem, I don't think Hemingway is really digging it. He tries to stare Eliot down with the same rugged glare that has been known to stop large African game in its track. 
Liz: Except Eliot doesn't notice...he's too busy counting the cats' toes.
Cailey: Suddenly, though, everyone's attention is arrested by a scream!
Liz: And because Ezra wasn't wrong about everything, we're going to try something "new" today...
Cailey: And leave y'all (and the flag) hanging!

TO BE CONTINUED...