High On A Hill, It Calls To Me
“Time flows in the same way for all human beings; every human being flows through time in a different way.”― Yasunari Kawabata
Last weekend I dropped by my friend Jon Blaufarb’s house who had recently read the Atlantic Magazine article about San Francisco’s decline by Nellie Bowles called: How San Francisco Became a Failed City. Written after the recent vote to take Chesa Boudin out of the office of District Attorney, Bowles gave a specific history of why San Francisco finds itself in the place it is now, as a city whose homeless crisis is paramount, whose officials keep making horrible moves that end up as comedy on the national stage…how it is unlivable and how ultra-progressive thinking has let it down. Supposedly the ending of the article would offer hope…and in truth really did not deliver on that promise.
I grew up in San Francisco, moved back home in 2002 from Los Angeles considering running for office (that is how much I loved my city). After my mom rightfully pointed out that being a somewhat sensitive person, I would probably not enjoy the articles that would be written decrying some aspect of myself or my policies, I started The San Francisco Appreciation Society with a group of friends as my way to celebrate the city. We had some incredible events…which I was reminded about a few days ago, when it was posted on social media that this week thirteen years ago we did our END OF ANALOG TELEVISION event outside Philo T. Farnsworth’s lab (who had patented the technology) on the eve of everything going digital. We were on every news channel that night and I even was asked to give my list of favorite things in San Francisco for the local paper, the Chronicle to publish while putting it together. I loved my city.
When Barb and I had our first date over seconds at the House of Prime Rib, I went so far to say that I never wanted to leave the city; I was and always would be a San Franciscan.
I write these words in my home atop a mountain in Marin, twenty-five minutes outside the city, having left four years ago with my heart broken. Mayor Ed Lee had handed the tech companies of Silicon Valley incredible deals on business spaces (with incredible and unfair tax advantages) and in the course of just a few years the artists and crazies that had made the city great could no longer afford to be there. In her article, Bowles points this problem out, but her focus on lefty politics does not address a huge issue that will make it hard for San Francisco to Phoenix out of the position it is in: the funk is gone. What made San Francisco great was that it was different from any other city, bleeding with artistic vision and multi-colored dreams. The tech boom mutated it with a single snap of its Infinity Gauntlet, forever changing the city by ridding it of the reason it was initially attracted to it: for its history of alternative living and breathing. Yes, the liberal politics have been horrible. Yes, what the school board has done to Lowell High School is shameful. SHAMEFUL. But putting that aside, the overall environment has changed drastically.
Today in 1968 the Diggers, the Kaliflower commune and the Free Print Shop (with Richard Brautigan in the wings) gave away copies of Philip Whalen's book, The Invention of the Letter, at a poetry reading he was participating in at Glide Church (the Diggers also handed out 666). The event was part of the city’s Rolling Renaissance program created to celebrate the underground culture of the city from 1945-1968 during a moment that the city was in bad shape post-death-of-hippy-death-of-utopian-vision 1967 summer. The artists were trying to take the city back during a time when the police were cracking down on the free-living counterculture and poetry (bless em) was their weapon (Note: the city was still affordable to artists at that juncture)
So what to make of this San Francisco reality? Can the artists take the city back over? Can the city once again be home to a diverse array of humans? Can the city’s politics rise above the silly levels of discourse and decision making currently practiced? I really have my doubts. To me, celebrating the city I am from is harder to do, and only happens in sporadic moments.
I look back on the “best-of” list I gave to the chronicle thirteen years ago and much of what I loved is gone or changed. But there are those traditions that are still there, and I am so thankful for them. This past weekend was the opening of The Stern Grove Festival, celebrating 85 years of free (incredible) live music. The programming for the season is completely inspired, and the crowds that show up…from all over the Bay…carry with them the spirit that once was abound in all corners of the city. As usual, art—in this case music—unleashes a feeling of potential and inspiration unlike anything else. I am looking forward to some great classic Grove experiences there this summer and gleaning some hope from being among the crowd,
Make San Francisco Funky Again. It is worth a try!
First I have heard about a Marc Bolan documentary. I have been on a small Tyrannosaurus/T.Rex kick as of late and very much look forward to this deserved deep dive.
“The Harriet Beecher Stowe Center …celebrate(d) this year’s Stowe Prize winner, Dr. Clint Smith, for his No. 1 New York Times best selling book, ‘How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery across America.’ The Stowe Prize is awarded biennially ‘to honor the work of a contemporary writer who, like Harriet Beecher Stowe, inspires readers through their words to work for social justice and positive change.’” (and Happy 211 birthday HBS!)
“Both Fitzgerald and Keats came from humble origins, had lively and distinguished peers, and were possessed by a genius that wasn’t fully recognized until after their deaths. Romantics to the bone, Fitzgerald and Keats were equally motivated by their human muses, Zelda Sayre and Fanny Brawne, as by their longing for Beauty with a capital B: the ideal, the unattainable, that which is so imaginatively close and yet so physically far away. Wilde also said that “we are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.” In their own distinct ways, Fitzgerald and Keats were some of our finest stargazers.”
Library of Congress announces AFC Fellowship and Award Recipients 2022
It is always fascinating to see the awards the LOC gives out every year: “The American Folklife Center's competitive awards provide support for scholars working with ethnographic collection materials at the Library of Congress and for fieldworkers on folklife and related topics.”
Deep Throat Celebrates 50th Anniversary With Return To Cinema
Deep Throat was more of a crazed and interesting chapter in the history of pornography than it was a good movie. The fact that it caused the fuss that it did, with the huge, mainstream success…and that it ushered in what is now known as “The Golden Age of Porn” makes it something to seriously consider when we think of modern culture and its impact. Going to see it on the big screen? Doubtful.
Photographing Isolation and Solitude on an Island in the Aegean Sea
These images are breathtaking: “In his new series, Clément Chapillon explores the notion of geographical and mental isolation through an island space in the Aegean Sea. If the word ‘isolated’ literally means ‘shaped like an island’, we can rightly ask ourselves what form do the time, the other, beliefs and the imaginary take in this finite world bordered by the infinite.”
The Lake Isle of Innisfree
BY WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made:
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee;
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.
And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet's wings.
I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart's core.
