Comfort Foods

This is something I'm sure everyone can understand. Where food itself is concerned, we all have things we eat to ground ourselves, make ourselves happy, return to our roots. In art as in life, we all have "comfort foods" that we return to over and over again to receive nourishment from. These works are not necessarily best for edgy moods; they are for times when we just want to enjoy ourselves in an unmediated way. I will divulge my favorite comfort foods without calling them guilty pleasures: rather, they are pleasures with so much grounding in my past that they are part of my very marrow. These are things I couldn't get away from if I tried, for better or for worse:

Where music is concerned, it would have to be the early recordings of Eric Clapton, the stuff he recorded with Cream, Blind Faith, Derek and the Dominos, John Mayall, and his solo stuff up to Slowhand. The reason for this predilection is very simple: between the ages of 12 and 16, I spent several hours every day learning Clapton licks. If you spend years diligently imitating an artist, its impossible for their work not to become a part of your firmament. The thing I remember most about those years is how hard it was to really do finger vibrato the right way. I talk about this briefly in Chimes, because the memories are so vivid; spending four hours playing the same phrases over and over again, trying to learn the secret of getting that sting that Clapton is a master of. It's absolute murder. By the time I was sixteen, I had it. Once you have it, you never lose it. So, I'm proud to say that I can still sting with vibrato in the Clapton manner, and that those four years of hard work paid off. Now, listening to the great early Clapton stuff is like listening to a part of myself. Clapton is neither espoused nor embraced by indie music snobs, but I still find early Clapton more compelling than I find Yo La Tengo, Guided By Voices, the Flaming Lips, Sonic Youth, and the rest of the indie icons. Indie snobs don't like Smashing Pumpkins either, so that's two strikes against them right there. Forget all the VH1 bullshit, when Clapton was young he was G-d. 'Nuff said.

Despite the fact that his work is not generally embraced by experimentalists, I can always come back to Charles Bukowski. I've taken heat from people who don't understand how I could like Buk and not Allen Ginsberg. Well, I'm sure (PC scruples aside) that a lot of it is because Buk writes extensively about women, as I do, and in a way that Ginsberg (obviously) didn't. Plus, talking about Buk brings me to questions of voice. Poetry is not that different than music; either you like someone's voice or you don't. I like Buk's voice. Does Buk require you to leave your theory at the door? Certainly. But that's what makes him comfort food. It's nice to read poems that don't carry theoretical baggage, that are unweighted by intellectual heaviness. Buk has his own kind of heaviness, and it's nothing less than a blue collar philosophy of life. The world is full of idiots, and we have to go through it alone; that's the lesson, and it's more or less the truth, and worth hearing. Buk makes me think of Tom Waits, and that's the kind of voice he has: scratchy, earthy, full of rasp, piss and vinegar. There's no accounting taste, but Buk is one of the poets I started with, when I was just a wee lad, before I had an intellect. Truth be told, I used to love Ginsberg just as much; but (I'm not sure exactly why) Ginsberg faded, Buk is still hanging around. And I wouldn't have it any other way, accusations of misogyny aside.

As an awkward teenager, the films of Woody Allen made me believe that someone felt as conflicted and neurotic as I did. Woody, along with Philip Roth, was the New Jew: cerebral, psychologically twisted, Oedipally damaged but libidinous nonetheless. When I watch all those old Woody films, it's hard not to admire a guy who resists Nietzsche's theories of Eternal Recurrence "because that means I'll have to sit through the Ice Capades again." Right in the middle of my infatuation with the Wood-man's movies was when the Soon-Yi scandal broke. You can say what you want about it (and it was certainly distasteful), but the two are still a couple, seventeen years later. Woody's been with Soon-Yi longer than he stayed with Louise Lasser, Diane Keaton, and Mia Farrow combined. Fans like me have to forget that he stopped making decent movies years ago, and concentrate on the dozen or so masterpieces he's bequeathed to the world. Are his movies great art? One doesn't normally associate Hollywood comedies with great art; however, I have no problem imagining that Woody's films will be around for as long as, say, Kubrick's, or Huston's, or Spike Lee's. Woody would probably be happier being compared to Fellini, but (frankly) it's been a while since I've seen any Fellini, so I'll have to suspend judgment.

If anyone wants a good scare (quite as good as Carrie), go to Netflix and watch Jesus Camp. I had no idea that out of 320 million Americans, 80 million are Evangelical Christians. One in four. I'd say that there are probably 1 million Americans seriously involved in art. So there are 80 times more Evangelicals in America than there are artists. The center of much of the film's action is Rev. Ted Haggard, who appears an hour into it. Haggard was later charged with picking up and having anal sex with a male prostitute. Now that's leadership.

Another sloppy win for the Phils. Seven more to go.