In Which We Have Scheduled Leonard Michaels For Psychotherapy

from  Journal

by LEONARD MICHAELS

Evelyn's four year old son had a nightmare in which Evelyn appeared with a big knife stuck in her head. She has scheduled him for psychotherapy five days a week.

Billy phones, says, "Want to play?" I think about it, then say, "The traffic is heavy. It will take forever to get to your place. I can't stay long. I'd feel I'm using you. It's not right. I don't want to use you." She says, "But I want to be used." I drive to Billy's place. She opens the door naked, on her knees. We fuck. "Do you think I'm sick?" she says. I say, "No." "Good," she says. "I don't think you're sick either."

She was once making love and the bed collapsed on her cat, who was asleep underneath, and broke its back. Since then, she says, sex hasn't been the same for her. Then she dashes to the sink, grabs a knife, and looks back at me, her teeth shining, chilly as the steel, welcoming me to the wilderness.

Annette claimed Dr. Feller "worked hard" during their sessions. "I trusted him," she says. "So many therapists sleep with their patients." As if it were entirely up to him. That hurt my feelings. Later we met his girlfriend at a party. I was friendly, as usual, but Annette was furious, confused, depressed. I asked, "What's the matter?" She wouldn't answer, but then, in bed, unable to sleep, she announced, "I will confront him, tell him off." I ask, "Why?" She hisses, "I trusted him." I begin to wonder if I'm crazy. Dr. Feller took a fifth of my income. I feel a spasm of anger, but fall asleep anyway, imagining myself taking a three point shot from the sideline with no time on the clock. The ball feels good as it leaves my hands.

Margaret doesn't like oral sex because she was once forced to do it at gunpoint, in a car, in the parking lot next to the railroad tracks, outside the bar where the guy picked her up. I wish she hadn't told me. I hear freight trains. I see people coming out of the bar, laughing, drunk, going to their cars while she crouches in misery and fear, the gun at her head. How easy, if I had the gun at his head, to pull the trigger.

Schiller says, "When the soul speaks, then -- alas -- it is no longer the soul that speaks." William Blake says, 'Never seek to tell thy love/Love that never told can be." They mean the same as Miles Davis' version of "My Funny Valentine," so slowly played, excruciating, broken, tortured.

Afterward, afterward, it is more desolating than when a good movie ends or you finish a marvelous book. We should say "going," not "coming." Anyhow, the man should say, "Oh god, I'm going, I'm going."

Kittredge loves pretty women, but he is blind, can't pursue them. So I take him to a party and describe a woman in the room. He whispers, "Tell me about her neck." Eventually I introduce him to her. They leave the party together. Kittredge is always successful. Women think he listens differently from other men. In his blind hands they think pleasure is truth. Blind hands know deep particulars, what yearns in neck and knee. Women imagine themselves embracing Kittredge the way sunlight takes a tree. He says, "Talk about her hips." As I talk, his eyes slide with meanings, like eyes in a normal face except quicker, a snapping in them. Kittredge cannot see, cannot know if a woman is pretty. I say, "She has thick black hair." When they leave together I begin to sink. I envy the magnetic darkness of my friend. To envy him without desiring his condition is possible.

Sonny reads in the paper about a child who was sexually assaulted and murdered. She says quietly, as if to herself, "What are we going to do about sex?"

Leonard Michaels is the senior contributor to This Recording. He died in 2003. This is the third installment of his Journal. You can find the first two installments here and here.

"Rainy Nights" - Matthew Solberg (mp3)

"Nothing to Say" - Matthew Solberg (mp3)

"Saving Disgrace" - Matthew Solberg (mp3)

In Which We Can Go To An Island Far Away!

Babes and Fast Cars

by MOLLY LAMBERT

SPOTTED: on the Forever 21 website. A shirt in the "graphic tees" section, markedly separated from the "licensed tees." Not a particularly awesome shirt but instantly notable for a few cool convergences. 

Forever 21 shirt, artist unknown, 2009

First impression; Gee that looks familiar. But what from? So many stock images are copied from even older stock images. But no, this has to be a Roy Lichtenstein rip.

"In The Car," Roy Lichtenstein, 1963

Which it is, a Lichtenstein work named "In The Car," itself probably copied from an earlier comic book panel. But why is it mostly stripped of colors? Why did they put sunglasses on the guy? Besides the proven fact that sunglasses make you cool.

Sonic Youth "Goo" LP cover, Raymond Pettibon, 1990

Because it's a hybridization of the 1963 Lichtenstein painting and Raymond Pettibon's iconic cover for the 1990 Sonic Youth album "Goo." What you might call in modern day netgoob parlance "a mash-up." Or just a multi-level knock-off.

Maureen Hindley and David Smith, en route to the murder trial

The similarities between "In The Car" and the cover of "Goo" are coincidental, besides portraying similarly posed subjects in cars. The Pettibon drawing is based off this photograph of Maureen Hindley and David Smith, witness to the infamous mid-sixties Moors murders, wherein Maureen's sister Myra and her boyfriend Ian Brady killed five children over the course of two years more or less for kicks.

Myra Hindley and Ian Brady, the world famous murderers' mugshots

Smith was waiting in the kitchen when he suddenly heard a loud scream from the adjacent living room as Hindley shouted for him to go and "help Ian". Smith entered the room to find Brady in a murderous frenzy, repeatedly striking Evans with the flat of an axe before throttling him with a length of electrical cord. Smith was then asked to help clean up the blood and bits of bone and brain in the living room, and help carry the body to the spare room upstairs and wrap it in a polythene bag trussed up with rope. Fearing for his own life, Smith complied. In the months before this murder, Smith had refused to believe Brady's claims of carrying out several murders and disposing of the bodies on the moors, and had conveyed his skepticism to Brady.

Kate Moss and Pete Doherty pose as the Moors murderers

Morrissey wrote the song "Suffer Little Children" about the Manchester murders for the first Smiths album. Part of what strikes me as so interesting about all this is how iconic these original images are, and how they've remained iconic for so long. All images are now are available all the time. 

Not that one's better than the other. Certainly new technology lovers had reason to geek out this week with all the Iranian election online media. Things are newly possible that were unimaginable even a few years ago. 

Neda Soltani, after being shot in the chest

Images are really transmitted across the world instantly. The youtube video of a woman being shot to death in the chest has already become the iconic image of this event. Especially chilling is the way the girl's gaze seems to shift (or roll, depending on your interpretation) towards the camera at the moment of death. 

The footage has been shown on CNN several times and watched on the internet countlessly. As citizens we are mostly otherwise insulated from war and death, especially from its particulars. This video, in some ways resembling a snuff film, reminds us that death is often shocking, cruel, and horribly pointless. 

Molly Lambert is the managing editor of This Recording. She twitters here (follow her now!) and tumbls here (likewise!).

"These Days" - Nico (mp3)

"These Days" - Casador (mp3)

"These Days" - Denison Witmer (mp3)

"These Days" - St. Vincent (mp3)

In Which We Continue To Read Leonard Michaels' Innermosts

You can find the first installment of Leonard Michaels' Journal here. Read on...

from Journal

by LEONARD MICHAELS

I visited a monastery in the wilderness. The monks had carved every stone by hand. It took years to complete. They were content, but their work was so ugly it seemed to comment on their faith. I wandered in halls and courtyard looking for a redeeming touch. There was none. In works of self-abnegating faith is there necessary ugliness?

Writers die twice, first their bodies, then their works, but they produce book after book, like peacocks spreading their tails, a gorgeous flair of color soon shlepped through the dust.

Boris tells me, apropos of nothing, that he has been rereading certain novels and poems. It's as if he is talking to himself, yet he is curious to hear my opinion. He says the novels and poems mean different things whenever he returns to them. As he talks, he picks up a small lacquered bowl which he brought back from Japan. It is very old, very good. It has the aura of a museum object whose value has emerged over time and declared itself absolutely, but he studies it with a worried, skeptical, suspicious eye.

Spoke to her on the phone. She cried. Said she missed me. I feel like a ghoul wandering in the darkness.

Eddie said her ran into his former wife in the street in New York, and they talked. They talked as if neith of them knew how to say nice to see you, I'm expected somewhere, goodbye, goodbye. They went to a restaurant and ate and talked some more, and they went to her apartment, and they made love. Then she said, "So why did we get divorced?" Eddie smiled at me and said, "See?" as if he were an idiot of circumstances, shlepped into pain and confusion by his cock. "You know how long I was divorced before I remarried?" he asked. "Not three days," he said. I was sad for him and for her, and her, and her. The feeling widened like circles about a leaf fallen onto the surface of a pond.

I eat standing up, leaning over the sink. I wouldn't eat like this if anyone could see me.

New York. Mother's apartment. Moritz visits, tells a story. One freezing morning everybody had to go outside and and watch a man be hanged. He'd tried to escape the previous night. Beside Moritz stood a boy, the man's brother. "His nose became red. It was so red," said Moritz. "That's what I remember." Moritz's eyes enlarge and his voice becomes urgent, as if it were happening again. His excitement isn't that of a storyteller. he can recite passages from Manfred in Polish, but he isn't literary. The experience is still too real to him. His memories are very dangerous. He fears another heart attack, but he tells about the camps. It should be remembered as he tells it. Freezing morning. The boy's red nose.

Her voice is flat and coolly distant, so I imagine things aren't over between us.

Boris drove past me in his new car, speeding down Euclid Avenue, picking his nose. he didn't see me. He was watching the road, driving fast, obsessed with his nose. Each life, says Ortega, is a perspective on reality.

I talk to Annette only on the phone. Afraid we might touch.

Every wildness plays with death. Washing your hands is a ritual to protest against death, and so are all the small correct things you do every day. Aren't there people who do nothing else? They pay their bills on time and go to the doctor once a year. They have proper sentiments and beliefs. They are nice people. I wanted to do dull ordinary chores all day. I wanted to be like nice people only to forget death, only to feel how I'm still alive.

The waiter does everything quick, everything right -- no sauce on the fish, dry wine, salad dressing on the side. Then he bends over her and whispers, "Why are you angry?"
She says, "I'm not angry."
He says, "I can see that you're angry."
"I'm not angry."
"Didn't I bring you everything you asked for?"
His voice becomes bigger, self-pitying. "Fish, soup, bread, wine. Everything you asked for."
She says, "I shouldn't have to ask." The waiter walks away rolling his eyes. He doesn't understand American women. I rise, go to her table, and say, "Do you mind if I join you?"
She says, "What took you so long?"

Leonard Michaels is the senior contributor to This Recording. He died in 2003.

"Maggie and Me" - Dirty Projectors (mp3)

"Time for Bed" - Dirty Projectors (mp3)

"She Turns to Ash" - Dirty Projectors (mp3)

"We Are Striving" - Dirty Projectors (mp3)