Score I: The MuseLetter
To give someone a reason to return to my website after September of 2004, whether they bought my newly published book or not on a first visit, I starting writing something I call a MuseLetter. Now completing its 20th year (i.e. Score I), it's an amalgam of essays, poems, reviews, events, esoterica, illustrations (mostly my own creation), quotes (I come across that I may or may not agree with but are riveting), and/or words (most of which I'd not seen before or knew their meanings). Collectively, I write of that which I find interesting or informative and think others might as well. I don't do social media. In lieu of that...these "letters."
My "Muse," situated in a fox hole at a metaphorical "front" in a battle—mostly with absurdity and irony— is one of my imagination. Put to canvass by professional artist Jeff Weekley; a former ad agency colleague. The creation of which we discussed in great detail. Right down to how many tattooed stripes she should have on her left arm. And should they be facing up or down? It's the sort of tenacity I bring to my projects and writing. I've taken to tweaking that Muse logo often, in accordance with iconography associated with that month (see above).
I've lost count of how many of these I've uploaded over the years. Though there have been monthly hiatuses here and there, I would estimate the MuseLetter count now easily exceeds 200.
What follows are some excerpts and snippets—call them a "20-for-20," though not offered as a "Best Of"— that jumped out at me as I went back in review of these past twenty years. Some unabashedly tooting the horn of personal performances and moments, that I found particularly satisfying.
With even in a quick scan through, in which photos and illustrations abound, they provide some sense of the expanse of topics and subjects covered, lo these many years.
A Luncheon Meeting with Gerald Ford
With the passing last month of our 38th President, at age 93, I could not help but recall the day (August 7, 1997) when I got to meet him at a luncheon sponsored by Time magazine. 84 years of age at the time, he looked terrific as our photo op below will attest.
He gave a brief talk that day. But in the Q & A that followed, the first question, surprisingly, was not about Watergate as one might have presumed. As I wrote a couple of days later in my journal: First question was about the findings of the Warren Commission. He is the last surviving member of that commission. Naturally, he still upholds all of its findings. Fine. What would you like him to say? But one was looking for the anecdotal insight, that was never flushed out.
"Oswald’s mother was really something. Jack Ruby was really something. A real eccentric," he said.
In what way Mr. President? I wanted to shout out.
In short, he seemed like a nice guy if “…rather unremarkable; rather closed…” as I further noted in my journal.
Gerald Ford…rest in peace.
October 2004 Excerpt
On September 18th, Domenica Press, our start-up publishing company, held a book launching party for our first publication Shots from a Passing Car: Poetry for other people…not just other poets.
This was Ron Vazzano’s first collection of poetry. The event was held at the Verve Art Gallery on LaBrea Boulevard in Los Angeles, and was attended by 85 poetry lovers, friends and well-wishers. Ron was at the podium for almost 35 minutes talking about the genesis of his company and first book, and read several selections from his collection.
The subtitle of the book, is a reflection of his belief, and of many “other people” (particularly Americans), that poetry tends to be an elitist art; a niche form of writing that often goes beyond the comprehension of the masses. And perhaps worse yet, that in this visual hyper-kinetic culture we live in, it lacks any entertainment value. Horrors! But perhaps surprisingly, this wasn’t always the case.
Once upon a time, poetry was not only opium for the masses, but some poets were akin to being the rock stars of their day. One such poet, Edna St. Vincent Millay. Perhaps no poet is more “famous” for a single quatrain than she:
My candle burns at both ends;
It will not last the night;
But ah my foes, and oh, my friends?
It gives a lovely light!
Few people’s lives could be summed up as aptly in one quatrain as hers. She led a highly spirited and sexually active life that indeed did burn the candle at both ends. She also dispels another commonly held perception of poets: that they are a rather geeky and unattractive lot. She was hot; desired and seduced by both sexes. Outrageous stuff for 1912! For a more recent “pop” reference point, think perhaps Madonna?
Writer’s Block or… Six Authors in Search of a Character
Having finally gotten around to reading what is considered the classic novel of the immigrant experience in early 20th century America, Call It Sleep by Henry Roth, I found it to be fabulous and worthy of its reputation. But upon finishing this robust book with its effusive prose, I could not help recall hearing, that this is the same Roth who had such a notorious case of Writer’s Block.
While there is no hard fast definition—in fact some don’t even think it is something that exists—essentially for our purposes here, Writer’s Block consists of four components:
• a writer of tremendous talent...
• who has been acknowledged and rewarded by literary experts and the general reading public alike, yet...
• has not published anything over an extended period of time....
• for no apparent or stated reason
This in turn leads me—off the top of my head—to quickly number five other equally riveting cases of WRITER’S BLOCK.
Eek! E-Books Have Reached The Tipping Point
In Malcolm Gladwell’s best selling book The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference (pub. 2000), he defined “tipping point” as essentially, “the level at which the momentum for change becomes unstoppable.” It appears that the e-book (or is it eBook? or EBook? spellings seem to abound) has now reached such a point.
I suspect that somewhere along that continuum, books will have gone the way of the telephone booth. So let me now spend a quiet moment in praise of the world of books that we have known…touched… smelled. In no particular order, but with equalized regret, I will miss…
Picture a Palindrome #7
visual creation by Ron Vazzano
Marilyn: Fifty Summers Gone
Excepted from August 2012
On August 5, 1962, Marilyn Monroe was found dead in the bedroom of her Brentwood home, due to an apparent overdose of barbiturates. Whether they were taken with intent or accidentally, was said to be uncertain. But certainly on that morning as I awakened from the couch of a Staten Island bungalow to the first words of the day, “Marilyn Monroe is dead,” no one was calling it murder.
If Marilyn were alive today she would be eighty-six; an image impossible to fathom. And one might wonder what she would have made of all the MM wannabes that have passed through our midst these last five decades in movies, music and the pop culture in general.
She was a talented actress having honed her craft at the legendary Lee Strasburg Studio over the years. A favorite performance of mine, was her role in the “Seven Year Itch.” An excerpt from a MuseLetter written several years ago on the 50th anniversary of that film, is reprised here as it originally appeared (albeit not in high resolution).
Primo: A Taste Of Italy In America
This upscale bimonthly magazine of Italian-American culture and heritage, serves to showcase the many contributions Italy has made to America in art, music, literature and science, while also profiling famous Italian-Americans present and past, current events. And the best of travel, food and wine. www.primomagazine.com
I was flattered when they did an eight-page piece on me (with 20 accompanying photos) in their August-September 2006 issue. As highlighted in an on-line preview as follows:
Word-of-the-Month Club
As taken from The Superior Person’s Second Book of Weird & Wondrous Words by Peter Bowler, who notes... “This one is reported in the amazing dictionary of verbal exotica compiled by Mrs. Josefa Heifetz Byrne (the daughter of Jascha Heifetz, incidentally)."
GYNOTIKOLOBOMASSOPHILE n. Someone who likes to nibble on a woman’s earlobe.
One for the Personals? Gynotikolobomassophile wishes to meet a woman with large ears.
2015-2024 Excerpts
Je Suis MAD
In the aftermath of the terrorist bloodbath in Paris at the offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, reportedly three million people took to the streets in solidarity, many holding up signs proclaiming “Je suis Charlie.”
When CBS’s Sunday Morning program asked the Editor-in-chief of MAD magazine, John Ficcara, for a commentary on this tragedy, he noted something so obvious that we’ve always taken for granted. Yet in the lunacy of a terrorist world, it is newly appreciated and even profound in its assumption. He said in part:
“…we were merciless on the Catholic Church for covering up the child abuse scandal. And after 9/11, we went after Jerry Falwell hard for blaming the 9/11 attacks on gay feminists, abortionists and the ACLU.
We knew at the end of the day, no matter how much we lampooned Falwell or the Catholic Church, we shared a common set of rules of engagement.
The worst that could happen to us was that we got a stern letter from their lawyers—we live for those. Not once did we ever fear for our safety.”
Poets in Passing
Frost, refusing to die
just faded away.
No doubt from a life made softer
by swinging on birches
and observing mother cows
and listening in the woods to falling snow.
He indeed did go gently.
Unlike Dylan Thomas,
who drank himself under the hooves
of the White Horse Tavern.
Hart Crane lost heart
and went overboard
into the Gulf of Mexico.
Anne Sexton had the looks
of a 1940's movie star
till the cliched garage and running car.
Plath, though pretty, was pity personified.
Self-defiled,
she put herself to sleep nearby the children,
after leaving them cookies and milk of course.
It was just a matter of time—
a small matter at that. In fact,
suicide for a poet might be said to be
death by natural causes.
Whereas Hemingway, of manly prose
blew out his brains of brawn
in a simple declarative sentence.
Bern Burns, But?
Bernie Sanders' anger for millionaires and billionaires, “duh top one pahcent,” is legendary and as current as this morning. And if you’ve ever wondered what annual income qualifies for that designation, according to Forbes (as of 2018), you’d need to earn “$480,930 or more annually. The Bern’s average household income according to his tax returns over these past three years, is about $900k. And he does own three houses. Thus he has dropped the mention of mere millionaires from his rhetoric. But it’s the billionaire devil who continues to set him aflame.
"… there is no justice when the 15 wealthiest people in this country in the last two years, saw their wealth increase by $170 billion. That is more wealth acquired in a two year period than is owned by the bottom 130 million Americans."
I wonder if he was like this even as a kid? Did he ever lighten up? Play games? I wonder if he refused to play Monopoly, as it was a game that rewarded cutthroat Capitalism? Can you imagine The Bern playing Monopoly?
Gig
January 26, 2016: Artists Without Walls showcase at the Cell Theater in Chelsea.
#MeT(att)oo
I don’t get it. But then again, I don’t get a lot of things. But then again, there’s never been a sociological phenomenon in personal style, comparable to what I will call, cheekily, the #MeTattoo movement.
As rampant tattooing has now gone on for at least twenty years, it can hardly be called a fad or craze, which by definitions are short-lived. Though there are indications that it may have finally peaked, and is beginning to show some signs of a downward turn. At least to most trend-trackers who’ve weighed in on the matter, with the one exception coming from the BBC News site. Someone there predicted with precision, that the peak won’t come until 2025.
In the 60’s—as in “my day”— it was about hair. All accompanied by tie-dye shirts, bell-bottoms, peace medallions, beads, and other such Age of Aquarius paraphernalia. And the landscape was filled with hippies; real and wannabees. But when the cops started wearing their hair at a length that now crept over their collars, you knew it was time to get a haircut and drop those clothes off at Goodwill. And it is within this context, that I ponder tattooing. Though given the nature of its permanence, I realize it’s a whole different animal.
Haiku
Snug Harbor, Staten Island; photo by Ron Vazzano
The 24th of this month will mark the 50th anniversary of the Godfather movie. The American Film Institute ranks it 2nd among the 100 Greatest Films ever made. Just behind Citizen Kane, the darling of the effete aficionados of cinema history and legend. Which often intertwine. But I suppose... Orson Welles that ends well. Rosebud.
I’ve done 50th year movie anniversary retrospectives in these letters before. They include, The Seven Year Itch (2005), Breakfast at Tiffany’s (2012), The Graduate (2017), 2001: A Space Odyssey (2019), and now for a classic far beyond any of these, The Godfather (2022). But before the movie, there was...
Upon its publication, the assumption was that Mario Puzo had to be “connected.” How else could he seemingly know so much about the underworld? Go into such detail? These seemed like real people. Especially, to the real mob people.
The correct answer is research. Lots and lots of it. Beginning with pouring over a rambling 1,180 page manuscript of Joe Valachi’s testimony at the McClellan hearings in 1963. In which the workings of the so called five major New York City organized crime families, and Valachi’s own thirty-year criminal career were revealed.
Unsurprisingly, like most immigrants and their offspring, they too bought into the American dream. Which boiled down to building a solid foundation for one's family, providing a good home, and working towards the growth and education of their children. Achieving that goal by becoming successful entrepreneurs and businessmen.
Francis Ford Coppola was aware of a new novel entitled The Godfather. But had not read it, until being sent a copy by an old friend now at Paramount, who wanted him to consider directing a movie version of it. He was hardly impressed.
“I only got about fifty pages into it...I thought it was a popular, sensational novel, pretty cheap stuff. I got to that part about the singer supposedly modeled on Frank Sinatra and the girl Sonny Corleone liked so much because her vagina was enormous. I said, ‘My God what is this? The Carpetbaggers? So I stopped reading and said,‘Forget it.’”
But he needed a job... And when he started to take note on how people were responding to the book, he decided to give it another try. This time he found something in it. Something big. “A classic succession concerning a great king with three sons. Not about organized gangsters but a family chronicle. A metaphor for capitalism in America.”
Yes, it might have been a different sort of business. One that might require a murder from time to time—but only if necessary—and run by an Old World patriarch. And who wouldn't like to have a "godfather" to right all the wrongs in life? You bet. I know I certainly would. I can imagine...
Time Travel
Rome: where a thousand lire
would nail down a bed for the night;
you might have been there too.
Perhaps our coins crisscrossed in the toss
at Trevi Fountain the next day.
An American in London
I knew how to snooker;
the pub blokes would bet their bitters on me.
I’d bang some balls while scoffing down bangers
then be on my way.
Ah, Amsterdam and the sweet refrain
“Hashish? Hashish? Hashish?”
No, but an aspirin would do.
Hookers like mannequins in dress shop windows
break their stillness to beckon.
Not tonight dear. I have a headache.
I never really knew when and where
the planes would touch down.
The first on Mohawk with a parish priest;
a retreat to a place where monks baked bread
and tended to their beads at vespers.
He never laid a hand on me
despite any presumptions.
The winds of the gods
in the aftermath of Catholicism
transported me to Greece—
where disappointed to have missed
the Colossus of Rhodes
by about a millennium—
I’d have told him about
Our Lady who art in Harbor.
The vertigo overcome
in the spiraling steps
up through her gown
to the 7-spiked crown.
Who won’t always have Paris?
Flâner dans les rues
as if in a dream.
But now Phoenix is rising below
in a heat up out of hell
to which I shuttle
with laptop open to business-speak.
Words scurry across the screen
like mice who forgot
where the cheese is hidden.
The Fat Cats awaiting
to make me eat them whole
as I'm anchored to their conference table.
— Ron Vazzano
This Month's Quote/Last Year's Pumpkin
2005-2014 Excerpts
An Encounter With Sir Shadow
While attending a 20th anniversary fund raising event hosted by the Working Theater in New York, honoring Harry Belafonte, I happened upon a gentleman who goes by the name of Sir Shadow. He sat at a nearby table, apparently doodling throughout the evening’s proceedings. Although… doodling? That’s like saying I saw Itshak Perlman fiddling.
Never lifting his meandering felt pen from paper in the course of the minute or so it takes him to finish, he offered... “I call my writing and art work FLOWETRY; which is the art of positive thinking in action.”
The cost of which? “Whatever is in your heart,” he said. My heart said priceless, but I opened up my wallet instead, and gave him something that seemed at least somewhat worthy of his short time yet long talents. And as he slipped it into his pocket, unmindful of the denomination, he continued drawing and philosophizing.
Note: I never agreed to fly Pinter and his wife (Antonia Fraser) here. Just Pinter. While feeling some financial oats at that particular time, I was not that well off. Had he taken me up on the offer as he perceived it, it would have been cause for a Pinter pause.
The Man Who Married a Hologram
Marrying a hologram? It doesn’t feel right. I can’t see it. But then again, having been through a couple of marriages, I’m not exactly an expert on the institution. And 40 people did show up at this “Beyond dimensions” wedding.
Actually, a marriage or a relationship with a non-human entity is not so unusual these days. And director Spike Jonze was prescient about the concept of a love between man and a technically sophisticated operating system, as early as the early 2000’s. Though his film “Her,” wasn’t actualized and released until a decade later in 2013.
At least a 35-year-old man named Akihiko Kondo, can see his hologram wife Miko, whom he married after a ten year “love affair.” She’s shown to be “an animated 16-year-old with saucer eyes and lengthy aquamarine pigtails.
Though, they are the couple next door when compared to some of the more bizarre marriages taking place. Especially in Asian countries, for some unknown reason.
Here’s some of what will pop up if you Google “Man marries”...
… a pillow (he named after an anime character Fate Testaroosa)
… a car (“My Mother the Car” doesn’t seem so insane a premise now)
… a robot (a no-brainer)
… himself (there’s also herself marriages)
… a doll (so passé)
… a goat (reminiscent of the Albee Broadway play, “The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia?”)
… a pineapple (how sweet!)
Postscript: "Akihiko Kondo who married Miko, was called the "first digital widower"in some newspapers when in March 2020, Gatebox, responsible for that hologram, shut it down;"
A Pause to Ponder Pinter’s Passing
When Harold Pinter died this past Christmas eve at age 78, the obituaries of course, all focused on his unique style of playwriting. But my reflection upon hearing of his passing, had to do with something of a more personal nature, experienced as a member of the advisory board at the T. Schreiber Studio in New York.
Artistic Director, Terry Schreiber, had already been in contact with Pinter for permission to revive two of his plays—The Birthday Party and The Homecoming—in celebration of the Studio’s upcoming 35th anniversary. And in brainstorming as to how best promote this event, I had an idea. Why not have Harold Pinter at the theater on opening night?
Terry then sent him a letter of invitation. What we got back, was a warm and gracious reply, that was decidedly absent any of the famed Pinter pauses. I was even singled out by name for special thanks. That correspondence presented as we received it.
MuseLetter \’myüz-‘le-tər noun
1: a personal message, inspired by a muse of one's own creation, addressed to a person or organization, in the course of which, the sender becomes absorbed in thought; especially turning something over in the mind meditatively and often inconclusively.
2: a letter from a poet, or one who envisions oneself as such, in which he or she “muses” on that which is perceived to be news, or newsworthy, usually in some ironic or absurd way.
The date is February 22, 2022. When you write it, 2/22/22, it’s a palindrome, meaning it reads the same forward and backward. It also falls on a Tuesday, which is now referred to as Twosday.
It’s the most exceptional date in over a decade, according to palindrome enthusiast Aziz Inan. He’s a professor of electrical engineering at the University of Portland in Oregon, and he has been studying palindrome dates for over 14 years.
The last time there was a ubiquitous six-digit palindrome date was November 11, 2011, Inan noted. It’s written 11/11/11.
That a professor actually “studies” palindromic dates? The piece goes on to note that...
In Sacramento, California, 222 couples will participate in a wedding at the State Capitol. The ceremony starts at 2 p.m. PT and will conclude at precisely 2:22 p.m PT.
A sort of OCD on steroids.
My notice of numerical patterns goes beyond just date recognition. And when they occur, I might be given to reaching for my cell phone or pen to capture it.
Living in a high-rise of twenty floors with two elevators, I’d often have to wait in the lobby for a while, looking above the doors to get a sense of when the next elevator would be arriving. Within the seven years I'd lived there, I’d never seen this till one day not long before I moved out of the building. And it especially caught my eye what with that highly anticipated, alliterative, year up ahead. And it also representing the standard for good vision. Click!
When I reported this in the context of some MuseLetter piece I was doing at the time, I heard from many people recounting their own experiences with improbable numerical alignments in their lives. Nothing was too trivial to mention either.
In a situation years before, while driving my car, I noticed that I was approaching an odd (literally and figuratively) alignment on my odometer. One I’d never seen before or will ever again. I pulled over to not only capture it, but as it was suggestive to me of a line from a classic Robert Frost poem, I later added it to the photo.
This next, falls into the proverbial “What are the odds !?" As I recorded it in my journal in part...
2/2/2
In this, a palindromic year...on this Groundhog Day... on a day with
deuces wild... I came back from the mailbox with a check written out
to me, for $2.22!
“Dear Cardmember:
Enclosed is a refund check for a credit balance on your account.”
I still have it.
Which brings me to the arrival of August, the 8th month of the year.
My birthday is on the 20th. My father’s (he passed away almost 50 years ago), is on the 24th. So in this year of 2024, both of these dates are numerically intertwined. As if carved in stone, this is why I
identify the date in this manner at the top of this month's MuseLetter. A sequence in chronology that can only occur once for all time. Though in effect for 31 days.
Again, I don’t see any absolute meaning in numbers as do those in the three categories I’ve outlined. But rather a sense of something that you can’t quite put into words. It jumping out at me, as if to ask rhetorically, "how about that."
I will now think about him in a way that I never quite do, even on those special days that come and go each year. Father’s Day, his birthday, the anniversary of his death. And it seems to tie back as well to the time that has passed; the distance travelled.
But of course, in going beyond the numbers, your “mileage” will vary. And I'm all eyes if you would like to share. I think it fascinating and fun stuff. Obviously.
"
"
The akrasia of New York Yankee great Mickey Mantle, can best
be summed up in his own words, in which he once said, that if he knew he was going to live so long, he would have taken better care of himself.
graphic design by Ron Vazzano
—Ron Vazzano
