Perhaps it's impolite...

I was at a party last PM with the most charming people, my dears. One of the first people I met was a lovely recently-retired librarian who unwisely asked me what I was writing. I launched into the elevator pitch about this book, referrring to it as "a history of iconoclasm in essays." If 'twere possible to see these things physically, I believe that at that very moment I would have been startled to note a huge, red, stainless steel question mark pop out of her head. But she was obviously well brought up and polite and listened to me blather for a few. Then, finding she had something to say, she replied, "There's a new museum up near Worcester you may be interested in, then."

I was in heat.... "Really? Tell me about it."

"Yes. It's devoted to Russian icons."

The giant question mark popped from her head to mine. I waited for her to say that there was some sacred rubble around the place, but- nothing. That was it. She drited to the south.

It wasn't until I told D about the conversation that I got it. Icons. Iconoclasm. Get it? Sigh.

Perhaps I shouldn't laugh, but- is this what is in store in the future for my poor little book? It's up to me to give it shield and sabre. It's up to me to fine-tune the pitch. Perhaps, "It's a series of stories about statue smashing." Suggestions?

In the meantime, I have uncovered the man who (it appears to me) may be the ultimate villian in the Notre Dame massacre. You may have heard of him. His name is Jacques Louis David. He painted "The Death of Marat" and other brilliant pictures. It was he, I find, who said, "these worthy predecessors of Capet which, until this instant, have escaped the law given to you by royalty, should suffer in their Gothic effigies terrible trial and revolution for posterity. Citizens, think- the statues, mutilated by national justice, could today for the first time serve Liberty.” This is amy own translation so it may be ragged and a hair off perfect...

On the Heads of the Kings of Judah

I went to Paris for a week in September, and, of course, one of the first places I headed to was the Cluny where the Kings of Judah are gorgeously displayed in Salon 8, up the stairs, down the hall, down more steps at the end to the perfectly lit, skylighted room where they hold court. Heads on one side, bodies on the other. Go figure... In their own day, before the vandalism of the original Terrorists, they stood atop their various bodies, painted and glowing in the sun, lining the cathedral in genuine splendor, according to all accounts. But here they are muted, highlighted au natural, and available for their close-ups, Mr. DeMille. It was, clearly, dizzying. One of my best pilgrimages ever in the City of Light.

Later, I tried to visit the museum of Notre Dame, and pounded the pavement for hours searching for its new home. It had moved to the Left Bank from its original home across the street from the Cathedral, but when I arrived, it was the day of the Pope's first coming, and the joint was shuttered and drawn. The cops roamed the streets in packs. Barricades sprouted like toadstools all over the parade route. I left the next day with a pack of unanswered question in my luggage...

Oddly, Sculptural Assassination slipped to the back burner again until recently when I picked up the tatters of my curiosity and resumed the hunt, though the trail had cooled. And here, dear friends, is where I hit pay dirt. I found the name of the guy who found the heads. I found the dates. And, mon dieu! I found a book of three essays about those very heads, their history and recovery. I begged the local reference gal for a copy (the nearest being at Brown University, just up the road apiece from here). I offered her my first born (dramatic, but empty, as I myself am without child) for the opportunity to peruse it. And then I found a copy on the web for a mere $1.95! It has to be a mistake, as the other copies began in the low double digits. But I ordered it. In the meantime, the reference goddess came through.

Of course it's in French- but there are only 40 pages of text. The pictures are in English. So I settled in with my tea (OK- wine), the book, and my translation programs all cranked up to wrestle that info into my own mother tongue. Thank god for the internet. Merci, mon dieu, por la internet.... I'm currently immersed in page 7....

When it came in, the librarian at the checkout desk asked me about the noses as we scanned the photos... "I know they always destroy the noses- and not just because they stick out, but I can't remember why. Do you know?"

Shit. I do remember reading about that somewhere, but it's in that swamp inside my head, waving its arms frantically to be rescued from the quicksand and shared with the public-at-large, but I'll be damned if I can... Where's my lasso???

On Wound Licking and other passions

OK. So I've had time to lick my wounds and think things over. I haven't touched any research since my last post and even had a rough time writing a couple of articles for the usual gig. I've been on the outs with my talent and curiosity and verbal skills.

This is where binge drinking and heavy drugs have helped other creative types in the past, but I loathe vomiting and am not a member of the street drug community, so I'm pretty much stuck with overeating and whining. Both of which are unattractive, but only one of which leads to permanent after effects... And to fill up the empty hours I've been shooting a couple of photo essays for my own amusement.

But I digress...

Suddenly last night...

I had had, perhaps, more champagne and Guiness than I was used to at a local hot spot and stopped at the island's true heart- the public library- on the way home. There were two interlibrary loans just in that I'd even forgotten I'd ordered. Both on the French revolution. Both with references to the heads of the Kings of Judah. A stirring commenced in my loins...

This AM, after intense consideration, I have decided to enthusiastically begin the French Revolution chapter again. Here's why.

I want to learn the stories of these iconoclasms because they're the rage of history. The passion of the people who are touched by history. The cynicism of their leaders writ large. They are, not to put to fine a point on it, concrete (or bronze or marble) evidence of human fire.

The key word here is "learn". I'm kicking literary butt and taking names. Dates. And telephone numbers. Tell me the truth! Why did you bump off the herms? The Buddhas? King George III? Saddam Hussein in Paradise Square?

Screw what happens after this. Inquiring minds want to know. I am no longer writing for the masses who may or may not exist outside of my family circle. I'm now writing for myself, and the fallout may not be pretty. But it will be full of my own craving and lust.

Stay tuned....

C'est finis??????

There comes a time, my friends, when I've got to ask myself why I do what I do. Why I write. Why I try. Why I spend so much time with my head in books getting all choked up in marble dust and bronze shavings from madmen and thieves. Isn't there a better way to spend my time? Why can't I be out there fighting terrorists or snorting illegal substances like normal people?

After all, nobody asked me to write this book. Nobody really cares if I ever finish it. And even if I do, no one will ever read it. So- why bother? Why not just watch movies and read books other people write and sail off to the 93 islands of Rhode Island? No one will know about or remember that, either, but at least I won't set myself up for this grinding feeling in my belly when I get rejected from someone who knows about this stuff more than I do. Where, I ask, is that whiskey bottle?

You guessed it. The latest agent blew me off... It's uncanny how similar all of their rejection letters sound. Obviously they all get them from the same printer...

Just as I was getting ready to touch the headless Kings of Judah...

There may be no more posts here...

Headless in Paris

Photograph by David Henry, © 2008, all rights reserved

As I mentioned in the last post, there was a helluva lot of statue smashing going on in the French Revolution. After all, there were a helluva lot of statues to smash, and the populace was totally riled and ready to crush the bad guys and their artifacts as they saw them. This was real "iconoclasm from the bottom", rather than the carefully planned politico-artistic statements made in Afghanistan, Greece, and Iraq. It was NYC on a large scale. And no photo-ops need apply for this killing spree. I needed, as I noted in the last post, a focus.

I had thought I'd hit paydirt when I found out about the Fontainbleu incident, but zut alors! It's been trumped by the headless "Kings of Judah" episode from Notre Dame. Seems as though (from prelim reports) the common folk thought these erstwhile rulers were actually their own Franco ancestors and guillotined them on the spot. You can see their remains (the K of J, not the revolutionaries) in the Cluny Museum today (which will be my first stop when we hit Paris in September) and, of course, that makes it all the more seductive. The picture above is by a French photog who obviously has just the right sensibilities for this kind of thing. He wasn't drawn to the story, he wrote, but the juxtaposition of the living and the headless. You can see more of his stuff at http://www.davidphenry.com/

I have a stack of "History of the French Revolution" books on the kitchen counter and have committed myself to a marathon research spree the next few days. Stay tuned as things develop....

PS- Less than an hour later, I've come across some conflicting info from the above posting. It appears that the bodies are in Notre Dame and th heads are in Cluny...

"To appease the spirit of Marat"

So after a brief hiatus to rework a one-act play, I'm back in the beloved salt mines to work on the next chapter of Sculptural Assassination.

The topic, as promised, is iconoclasm of the French Revolution. Now it was obvious to me, once I decided to include the Enlightenment uprising, that I needed a single instance of statue smashing and not an overview of many instances around the country. And with this in mind, I began digging in the journals for examples. And I may have come up with a beaut. (Though I reserve all rights to swap plans as digging progresses.)

It seems that after Marat was killed, that bastion of solid enlightenment thinking, the people were pissed and decided to raise a "Temple of Reason" in Fountainbleu, and, to inaugurate it, would stack paintings, statues, charters, etc. and torch the whole thing to "Appease the spirit of Marat". Sounds like a good round up to me. On the other hand, there could be a lot more juice where that came from. Remember, these rebels were out for marmoreal blood.

No morals here, so far. No lessons to be learned or promulgated. Just raw iconoclasm. Just as with all of the other chapters, I may find myself somewhere I never heard of before.

More as things develop...

Is this really a surprise?

So I've just put Saddam to bed, so to speak. I've been living with him and with the shadows and glare of the spotlight for way too long. The bed is littered with printouts from every journal, newspaper, etc., immaginable, along with xeroxes (now there's an archaic term) from a stack of books on the war that thankfully belong to the libraries of RI and not to me. My computer is burned out and the Explorer "favorites" file under "Saddam" is stuffed to the gills with links. I wait to hear from emails I sent to some of the participants of the event itself.

It's time to throw up and purge Baghdad from my gut for a while. If I don't, I'll probably start making grevious errors just to get it done. I've finished with the dictator, the news and the boys from Paducah for a while.

After a short break to write a play or make a movie, it will be back to the killing fields- only this time to 18th century France and the vicious revolution. Now there were people who killed statues just for the hell of it, for the anger and the passion and the revenge and the bitterness of it. No cameras for them. It was all real stuff in the age of the Enlightenment. (I think. One never knows with these things...)

What I did learn from my time in Iraq was that it's a bitch to write about current events of a political nature without having your partisanship hang out- hell, without having your partisan feelings blind you. No doubt about how I feel about the administration. No doubt how I feel about the war, and the cowed and compliant media. But when I read back my first polished draft, even I was appalled at how evident it was that I colored most of my reportage in the hues of disgust. A well-chosen adverb here. A not-so-subtle ommission of a title there.

Fortunately, one of my readers is a sober-minded critic who also happens to be of the Republican persuasion. I like this guy tremendously for keeping me from tipping over into the cauldron of slaver and bile, and doing it with civility. The other reader is my man David. His eye is honed and his ear is tuned and he is to be trusted on every count. Between these two, I feel that I can navigate the whirlpools...

But now for a breather. A drink. A snifter. A snootful...