October 2008 Archives

There are three new blogs on the block. Real blogs, crafted by real people. I know they’re real people, I know them personally: The Art Official, Little Shivers, and Courtney Barr.

“One shelf was wigs, carefully positioned on Styrofoam heads. Blondes, brunettes, redheads from soft rose to flame. Every style from flower child to Dolly Parton. A wall of cosmetics: lipstick with all new, gleaming, fresh tips, standing in rows like large-caliber bullets . . . blusher, body powders, eyeliner, prefitted fingernails, polish, false eyelashes. Makeup table with a round padded stool, tiny row of frosted light bulbs surrounding another mirror, this one three-paneled.”

—Andrew Vachss, Hard Candy, 1989.

“Rows and rows of built-in drawers. She opened them smoothly, stepped aside, gesturing with her hand like a wrongly accused smuggler sneering at a cusoms agent. G-strings, silk panites, bikini briefs, garter belts, teddies, camisoles, cotton panies in a dozen colors. Panty hose still in the original wrappers. Stockings from fishnet to sheer. Push-up bras, front-opening bras, bras with holes for nipples to poke through, bras with straps that crossed over the back. Red, black, white, and a pastel rainbow.”

—Andrew Vachss, Hard Candy, 1989.

“Carpet runner on the corridor floor as thin as a stockbroker’s ethics. The walls were beige filth, the doors the color of starving roses. Numbers scrawled on their faces with black grease pencil. Murky light fell in spotty pools, most of the overhead fixtures wrecked—pre-mugging preparation.”

—Andrew Vachss, Sacrifice, 1991.

“A corroding van sat diagonally across from us, grounded on four flat tires, an indistinct figure behind the wheel. An orange BMW approached. Stopped. Man on the passenger side stepped out, went over to the van. Money showed. A hand extended out of the van, a Ziploc bag held aloft. The streetlights caught the vials of crack inside, sparkling. Street diamonds.”

—Andrew Vachss, Sacrifice, 1991.

The Baton Rouge Aesthetic: What is it? How can I describe this city’s unique je ne sais quoi? Baton, Rouge, aesthetic, unique, je ne sais quoi? There’s something going on here, and I think it’s . . . French! Sure enough, ‘le baton rouge’ or ‘red stick’ was, according to Wikipedia, the name given in 1699 by French explorers to ‘a reddish cypress pole festooned with bloody animals and fish,’ a boundary marker between Indian hunting grounds on the Mississippi River.
    A bloody red pole on a riverbank, ‘festooned’ with rotting carcasses? This is our civic source? A bloody pole?! So let us praise the most romantic of the romance languages: French. As Anais Nin noted in her famous diary, French words, when spoken, ‘fly in the air like messenger doves.’ Particularly for those who don’t actually understand it, French casts an aura, (or, ooh-la-la, it spritzes a perfume) over all actual meaning. Baton Rouge sounds good, and it looks good in print. It’s exotic and appealing, especially when Tabby Thomas gives it his Baton Rouuege twist.
    The architectural history of our town is full of twists. ‘It is pathetic,’ wrote Mark Twain, ‘that a whitewashed castle, with turrets and things . . . should ever have been built in this otherwise honorable place.’ He was referring of course to the Old Louisiana State Capitol Castle, built in a distinct style that the architect, a New Yorker, wouldn’t you know it, christened ‘Castellated Gothic.’ That translates, in 2008, as ‘Weird, But We Love It,’ and the building is now justly celebrated, a symbol of tolerance for the often unfathomable taste of others.
    The ‘New’ Louisiana State Capitol, completed in 1932, an enormous erection, is the tallest state capitol building in the United States. The view from the top is great, but otherwise this shaft of marzipan sandstone is somehow a disappointment. It’s too simple and too symmetrical, and, sadly, its distance from any skyline competition makes it look lonely. The vast, desert-like front steps, accented with Egyptian art deco motifs, lead to an interior that is all metal and marble and bullet holes. The overall effect is unnerving, and suggests to me nothing so much as the terrible weight of history.
    But that was then and this is the new millennium. If you’ve been downtown even once in the last several years, you’ve probably noticed the latest architectural trend. Between the Old and New Capitols, flashing brightly and then lurking in the shadows, like a molten fusion of the I-10 bridge, the Earl K. Long Medical Center, and the stacked concrete cubes of the East Baton Rouge Parish Courthouse, the tentacles of a frosted glass and stainless steel octopus are stealthily creeping through our downtown. Resembling a giant futuristic kitchen appliance, the Shaw Center for the Arts, the asymmetrical building with a hole in it, is the head of this shiny beast.
    Baton Rouge’s architectural vernacular, the housing style that surrounds most of us most of the time, is another creature entirely. I am referring to the simple but proud houses of neighborhood after neighborhood, generally dressed in creative and contrasting colors. The Baton Rouge aesthetic that surrounds most of us most of the time rests here. It is these houses and their lush green lawns. It is the sidewalks and streets of red brick, concrete or the grey and black tarmac. It is simple color, misted by the humidity. It rises with the glow of freshly fallen crepe myrtle blossoms.
    The Baton Rouge aesthetic? It’s in the sky, it’s the Gulf Coast light, soft and pearlescent. It’s in the air. It’s the sound of sirens and the steady surf of a highway in the distance. River traffic and occasionally even a steamboat calliope. It’s the ice-cream truck melody with a hip-hop beat, and the lonely ghost call of trains in the night.
    Baton Rouge is famous for its blues. Live music is often in the air, and rhythm & blues, soul, and rock ‘n’ roll are tucked inside the air, in the airwaves. I am referring to a radio signal, that of KBRH, AM 1260, ‘student operated vintage soul’ from Baton Rouge High School, is the greatest radio station on the planet, including the internet. Really!
    That reddish pole, festooned with bloody carcasses? It lives on, as the carmine KBRH broadcast antenna, the signal from which is joy and a treat, even as it flutters and fades away at the outskirts of town.

Originally published last week in Sweet Tooth #3 (downloadable at www.culturecandy.org), this is my take on the ‘Baton Rouge aesthetic.’ Assigned and edited by Alex Cook. (Thank you Alex.) I was trying to fuse Tom Robbins and Dave Barry, as if such a thing were possible. I lost the italics in cutting and pasting the text, but, on the other hand, I also caught and corrected a typo.

“‘You like that mom-and-pop food, huh?’ Rejji said, smiling at my blue-plate special of meat loaf, mashed potatoes, and chopped spinach.
    ‘I like just about anything I can pronounce,’ I told her.
    ‘Bet he tops off with vanilla ice cream,’ Cyn cracked.”

—Andrew Vachss, Only Child, 2002.

“[. . .] and then [. . .] into Gately’s personal mind, in Gately’s own brain-voice but with roaring and unwilled force, comes the term PIROUETTE, in caps, which term Gately knows for a fact he doesn’t have any idea what it means and no reason to be thinking it with roaring force, so the sensation is not only creepy but somehow violating, a sort of lexical rape. [. . .] Other terms and words Gately knows he doesn’t know from a divot in the sod now come crashing through his head with the same ghastly intrusive force, e.g. ACCIACATURA and ALEMBIC, LATRODECTUS MACTANS and NEUTRAL DENSITY POINT, CHIAROSCURO and PROPRIOCEPTION and TESTUDO and ANNULATE and BRICOLAGE and CATALEPT and GERRYMANDER and SCOPOPHILIA and LAERTES—and all of a sudden it occurs to Gately the aforethought EXTRUDING, STRIGIL and LEXICAL themselves—and LORDOSIS and IMPOST and SINISTRAL and MENISCUS and CHRONAXY and POOR YORICK and LUCULUS and CERISE MONTCLAIR and then DE SICA NEO-REAL CRANE DOLLY and CIRCUMAMBIENTFOUNDDRAMAMALEVIRATEMARRIAGE and then more lexical terms and words speeding up to chipmunkish and then HELIATED and then all the way up to a sound like a mosquito on speed, and Gately tries to clutch both his temples with one hand and scream, but nothing comes out.”

—David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest, 1996.

“He [Pemulis] wore maroon paratrooper’s pants with green stovepipe stripes down the sides. The pants’ cuffs were tucked into fuchsia socks above ancient and radically uncool Clark’s Wallabies with dirty soles of eraserish gum. He wore an orange fake-silk turtleneck under an English-cut sportcoat in a purple-and-tan windowpane check. He wore naval shoulder-braid at the level of ensign. He wore his yachting cap, but with the bill bent up at a bumpkinish angle. He looked less insolent than just extremely poorly dressed, really.”

—David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest, 1996.

“The night’s so clear the stars shine right through people’s heads.”

—David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest, 1996.

“‘Mary had a little lamb, its fleece electrostatic / And everywhere that Mary went, the lights became erratic.’”

—David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest, 1996.

“In Scarlet town, where I was born,
There was a fair maid dwelling,
Made every youth cry ‘Well away!’
Her name was Barbara Allen.

All in the merry month of May,
When green buds they are swelling,
Young Jimmy Green on his death bed lay
For the love of Barbara Allen.”

—Barbara Allen, the first verses of a version from West Virgina, published in 1925; The Viking Book of Folk Ballads of the English-Speaking World, edited by Albert B. Friedman, 1956.

“‘Dear girl, have you brought me silver?
Dear girl, have you brought me gold?
Have you walked these long, long miles
To see me hanged upon the hangman’s pole?’

‘Dear boy, I’ve brought you silver,
Dear boy, I’ve brought you gold;
I have not walked these long, long miles
To see you hanged upon the hangman’s pole.’

She took me from the scaffold;
She untied my hands;
The tears ran down the poor girl’s cheeks:
‘I love this highway man.’”

“O, give me hold [of] your lily-white finger,

“And he has till his brother gane:

“The horse fair Annet rade upon,
He amblit like the wind;
Wi’ siller he was shod before,
Wi’ burning gowd behind.

Four and twanty siller bells
Wer a’ tyed till his mane,
And yae tift o’ the norland winde,
They tinkled ane by ane.”

—Lord Thomas and Fair Annet, a Scottish ballad, as published in 1765, The Viking Book of Folk Ballads of the English-Speaking World, edited by Albert B. Friedman, 1956.

“And tell me what is greener
Than the grass on yonder hill
And tell me what it crueller
Than a wicked woman’s will. . . .

I know a deadly poison, greener
Than the grass on yonder hill;
And a foul fiend is crueller
Than a wicked woman’s will.”

—Riddles Wisely Expounded, published in Maine in 1937, The Viking Book of Folk Ballads of the English-Speaking World, edited by Albert B. Friedman, 1956.

“For forty days and forty nights
He wade thro red blude to the knee,
And he saw neither sun nor moon,
But heard the roaring of the sea.”

—Thomas Rymer, published in Scotland in 1806, The Viking Book of Folk Ballads of the English-Speaking World, edited by Albert B. Friedman, 1956.

“Between 1500 and 1533, the great humanist Erasmus compiled his Adagia, a collection of some 4,251 classical proverbs and commonplaces with a rich scholarly commentary—a truly astonishing achievement. One of his most well-known adages was ‘Festina Lente’ or hasten slowly. Aldus adopted it for a slogan, its visual counterpart being an emblem of dolphin and anchor, which he used as a printer’s mark. Erasmus suggests a possible origin for the expression in a witty inversion of the Greek σπεύδε ταχέως, 'hasten hastily', found in Aristophanes’ The Knights. It is most famous as the official motto of the Roman emperors Augustus and Titus; Erasmus thus dubs it the ‘royal proverb’, and remarks that it advocates ‘a wise promptness together with moderation, tempered with both vigilance and gentleness, so that nothing is done rashly and then regretted, and nothing useful to the common weal omitted out of carelessness’. It represents, in short, the reining of passion by reason, Plato’s ideal of statecraft—it is the paragon of proverbs.”

—Conrad H. Roth, from the post Festina Lente at his blog Varieties of Unreligious Experience.