Mad (Modernist) Men - Part Two

 Previously On TEAR IT DOWN...

Last week, we left you with an illustrious crew of Modernist poets in etherItaly minding their own Modernist business...

There was torrid romance ("Hey, hey! Henry Miller and Anaïs Nin...this is not a mature content blog...put that away!"), there were Irish fishwives (Jimmy Joyce won't leave home without at least three), there was machismo (For only one man can make us thoroughly comprehend the importance of being Ernest Hemingway), there was unrequited passion (D.H, we will always love you, even if no one else will), there was goodhearted medical advice dispensed (William Carlos Williams: the original House, M.D) and there were CATS EVERYWHERE. And yes, T.S Eliot was giving them rather impractical names. 

Then...a scream cut through the fragrant gloaming air...all were perturbed...but just who was it that made the high-pitched squeal...and why???

Liz: It's Joyce - he's walked around the side of the creepy villa and sighted the flag on the house!
Cailey: The group runs in the direction of his less-than-dulcet-tones - he's swearing up a fiery storm in Irish Gaelic.
Liz: They're momentarily distracted by the mellifluous tirade. Hemingway glares at him: "James, you haven't been back to Ireland in over twenty years. Give it a rest. You're not Irish anymore, are you?" 
Cailey: The motley Modernists stare at the flag, with expressions ranging from disgusted to reverent to indifferent.
Liz: "Anyone care to learn a wee Irish jig?!" Joyce offers, trying to get their mind off the ugliness in their midst.
Cailey: Wanting to get away from the madness of Pound and the cat obsession of Eliot, Williams agrees. He and Joyce head off into the house to work on their moves.
Liz: "Goddamn book burners!" Lawrence exclaims, glaring up at the flag, "Dimwitted censors!"
Cailey: "Tell me about it!" Miller and Nin declare in unison, no strangers to censorship (and obscenity trials) themselves. 
Liz: The three gaze at each other intensely, their literary passion for the flesh pulling them towards each other like magnets. 
Cailey: They decide to continue what will obviously be a, um, heated discussion about freedom of expression and the healing power of sensual touch elsewhere. An etherBed with sufficient room for etherBedroom Gymnastics.
Liz: And then there were three.
Cailey: Hemingway, Pound and Eliot face the flag. Eliot - torn in his convictions - cannot decide what to do. Rather than deal with the dire situation at hand, he decides that it is prime time to try herding some cats.



Liz: He has lined his suit with catnip expressly for the purpose...
Cailey: "Come my poetic pussums!" he cries, "I have some fine potted grouse awaiting you by the herb garden. We shall discuss your natures and your names."
Liz: Amazingly, the cats follow. 
Cailey: Hemingway watches them depart, unwillingly. He loves his ferocious felines. But he knows they will return to him in due time. Hemingway attracts pussies like fires attract moths. For now, he is glad to spare the itty bitty kitty committee from what he knows must follow. Anything to save his pussies from being put-out.
Liz: First, though, knowing that Ezra Pound's politics are so vastly different from his own, he tries for diplomacy: "Ezra, will you help me tear this down?" he asks very politely.
Cailey: "Tear it down?!" Pound shrieks. "This symbol of beauty and order? Are you mad?!"
Liz: Hemingway sighs, knowing this is a lost cause. As Pound continues to gesticulate and mutter to himself, the words "dear Mussolini" barely audible...
Cailey: Hemingway TEARS IT DOWN! Gracefully and decisively! Without a second thought. Well, maybe he was thinking about his Italian whores the whole time. But still - he acted heroically.
Liz: Pound gasps in horror and lunges at Hemingway, trying desperately to retrieve the flag and restore it to what he (mistakenly) believes is its rightful place.
Cailey: But Hemingway has faced far worse than insane, pedantic poetic geniuses. 
Liz: He quickly wrestles Ezra to the ground and, in a few swift movements, has straightjacketed him WITH THE HEINOUS FLAG. 
Cailey: If that's not poetic justice, I don't know what is!
Liz: As Ezra hops about, vainly attempting to free himself, the rest of the group regathers to watch in wonder and dismay. 
Cailey: The cyprus trees sway in the breeze. And Hemingway's pussy posse returns, having tired of Eliot reading to them in ancient Greek.
Liz: Wow...Modernists. A special collection of touched souls.
Cailey: I know. This turned into a particularly wacky Altman film. Or a Caryl Churchill dreamscape, but without the feminist bent. 
Cailey: I wonder what they would all say if they were alive today. I mean, really. Getting serious for a second. What would happen if Hemingway had a blog? If Lawrence was besties with Larry Flynt. If Pound wrote his Cantos in tweets. It just wouldn't be the same...we wouldn't take them seriously. Their words, their thoughts that changed the world...they would be just devoid of gravitas in our day and age. It's like we don't make gravitas anymore. Sold out. Done. Gone.
Liz: They had more troubling events to wrap their heads around. The world changed so fast...
Cailey: ...And ours isn't changing fast? Our world moves faster than theirs ever moved - and our fragments make theirs look like giant boulders. If their interbellum world was a chess board (Invention of mass warfare + Lost Generation + Treaty of Versailles + Great Depression + Rise of Fascism), then we're playing Vulcan Chess these days...

...HUGE issues on MULTIPLE levels (Gulf Oil Spill + Iran + Israel + Insurgents + Terrorists + Iraq + Afghanistan + Pakistan + South American Dictators + Global Warming + AIDS + Hunger Crisis + Darfur + 24-hour news cycle + 8 year-olds with iPhones + the ADDing of the world). 
     The center cannot hold! THE CENTER CANNOT HOLD! We can't pay attention to all our current issues! We literally don't have enough brain space to hold it all in there at once! Not to mention the fact that in terms of our literature...our art...we've gone and splintered into billions of pieces. The blogosphere exists in this weird world of fragmented palimpsests. There's no cohesion. How is it possible that we could ever hope to build something new, and big, and beautiful, and meaningful out of this information overload? This mass of dated material? Every post is dead on arrival as soon as it's posted...nothing is sacred...all is irreverent...
Liz: Shhh...it's alright...it's alright...just take deep, calming breaths and do what I do. Embrace the healing power of Dadaism. No really, it works wonders. When the going get's tough, the tough get nonsensical, anti-label, and consciously out of their damn minds. 
    If you can't wrap your head around the ugliness and death in the world, then make a choice to wrap your head around nothing! Don't think about war! Think about miniature horses! Welsh rarebit for supper! Collages that use bits of text and sheet music! Rubber band balls! A stool with a bicycle wheel attached to it! A boot in a cage! Accordion music! The foxy studs of the US Men's Soccer Team...oh wait...let's pause on that thought for a hot second...long enough to look at some pics...

Liz: Ahhh...that's better. Consider my existential conundrums melted away. Thanks, Donovan. Thanks, Bocanegra. Thanks, Feilhaber. Thanks, Dadaism.

Cailey: No! Liz! We have to discuss the implications of Modernism in our time...without art there is no civilization!
Liz: Look, that's just too serious. Life is such a downer, these days, we have to do whatever we can to lighten the collective mood. We're on a constant search for entertainment, not enlightenment. We need to find the next shiny thing...
Cailey: NO. That's giving up. That's not in the Modernist spirit! You're not part of the solution! You're just another flighty floozie! You might as well get blonde hair extensions and adopt a chihuahua!
Liz: Mmmmmm...soccer. Boy joy.
Cailey: Liz! Pay attention! 
Liz: A lunar eclipse. A potted palm. The infinitesimal brain of Rick Sanchez...Eliot had it right. "This is the way the world ends/This is the way the world ends/This is the way the world ends/Not with a bang but a whimper."
Cailey: It doesn't have to be like that! 
Liz: "Ours is essentially a tragic age, so we refuse to take it tragically. The cataclysm has happened, we are among the ruins."
Cailey: O! rly! Go on. Finish the quote. Finish it properly.
Liz: Huh?
Cailey: That Lawrence quote. You know how it ends. You've only spoken half of it. 
Liz: *grumbles* All right.  You got me. The end of the quote is..."We've got to live no matter how many skies have fallen".
Cailey: Uh-huh. Homeboy D.H agrees with me. We've got to live no matter how many skies have fallen. Not with a whimper. With fighting spirit. Like our boys had when they beat the pants off Algeria. 
Liz: But...they lost to Ghana...
Cailey: THAT'S NOT RELEVANT. THEY HAD SPIRIT. THEY FOUGHT. THEY DIDN'T GIVE UP AND NEITHER SHOULD WE.  
Liz: I guess you're right. It's not very noble of me to distract myself from The Cause. I just don't know what The Cause is anymore. I have no idea where the fight is or who the players are. I suck at Vulcan chess. 
Cailey: When one is not Vulcan, it takes teamwork to tackle Vulcan chess. When addressing the trouble of where art is headed these days, many minds are needed! Mind melds, even.  
Liz: So...The Cause is the future of...artistic movements? 
Cailey: Maybe. That just sounds so stodgy. An artistic movement. Like I should be smoking a pipe and sneering as I say it. 
Liz: But what else would we call it? 
Cailey: I don't know. All I do know is that the way forward is through cohesion...constant collage...a big mashup of all sorts of different genres, media, literature, pop culture, art of the past, art of the present...
Liz: Coming together to make art of the future?
Cailey: Yes! And I feel like this "future art" is one both new and old...
Liz: One not constrained by time, place, anxiety of influence...
Cailey: It's ALL about influence...homage...collage!
Liz: It embraces the palimpsest...
Cailey: And the past..
Liz: And the present...
Cailey: And the future...
Liz: Atemporal, if you will...
Cailey: Oh, I will. 
Liz: I'm sensing an official artistic movement name coming on: Palimpsestic...
Cailey: Atemporalism?
Liz and Cailey: PALIMP-freakin-SESTIC ATEMPORALISM!
Liz: That is one gloriously obnoxious mouthful!
Cailey: Pompous as hell. And sort of amusing...but so apt! After all, inherent in this P.A. philosophy, if you will, is no onus to "make it new."
Liz: No mandate that you ignore what came before. 
Cailey: Because it honors what came before. Embraces the mashup. The confluence of the high and the low.
Liz: Like the mashup of Beethoven's Fifth and Goldigger that I love so dearly.

Cailey: Exactly! But NOT the mashup of, say, Tolstoy and robots.
Liz: Right! To be a good palimpsestic atemporalist you can't just smash things together for the sake of smashing. 
Cailey: The goal has to be something cohesive - something meaningful.
Liz: E pluribus unum?
Cailey: Yes! From the cacophony comes order.
Liz: Not neat, tidy order, perhaps, but something coherent, illuminating.  
Cailey: An order that takes the best of all worlds and makes something new and exciting with them. 
Liz: But something that is fun...something that's frothy and pithy at the same time. High and low art living together in a very happy, mutually fulfilling relationship.
Cailey: What a delightful, delightful - and sort of attainable - ideal. 
Liz: ZOMG...do we have a Cause? Does palimpsestic atemporalism have... the barest bones of a manifesto? A manifesto!
Liz and Cailey: HOLY COW!!! 
Cailey: WHAT did we just DO?! 

And so, exhausted by our armchair philosophizing, nay, our artistic movement defining (!), we returned to our favorite etherCafé for some well-earned etherEspresso and light book club banter. Despite earlier grievances (the ether heals all wounds, as you know), Ezra and Ernest were both there, eager to begin discussion of our latest book club pick: The Twilight Saga, by StephEnie Meyer. (next week: Outlander by Diana Gabaldon!)

Pound ate Twilight and New Moon. No, you read that right. He couldn't tolerate Meyer's prose and he couldn't stand the idea that the werewolves (clearly not Nazis) were on equal footing with the individuals he equated with his dear, sweet, Fascists: the Vampires. So he ate the book, came to our meeting to tell us what he had done, then stormed out, banging the copper pots in the etherCafé with the wooden spoon he's taken to carrying around with him. 

That's our Poundy for you!

Hemingway sat politely by, sipping from his small tasse, as we talked about...well, in the interest of full disclosure, we talked about the shape of various male actors' spectacular abdominal muscles. Then we turned to his fine form (hearts fluttering deliciously as they always do when we address etherHemingway) and asked him what he thought of the book. 

He stroked the calico shorthair on his lap with tenderness and wrinkled his nose. 

"Too many dogs," Ernest intoned with a half-smile, "Not enough cats." 

And there you have it.