CODA: The Submission by Amy Waldman: 9/11 Through a Looking Glass

I saw Amy Waldman interviewed on a news program and thought, The Submission just might be the "9/11 book" that I am ready for. Having backed into previous 9/11 novels, such as Netherlands, or taken it on headlong in the non-fiction Looming Towers, I had started thinking about what September 11, 2011, ten years after, might actually mean, amazed at how much time has seemed to pass so quickly in this decade: our children becoming teenagers and young adults, the loss of family members, life, NYC, history and the collision of change, hope, and dreams, American and otherwise. 

The Submission is, on the surface, a traditional literary work, but it is subtle and quietly subversive in its analysis of politics, journalism --  tabloid and otherwise, and daily life in contemporary New York at all economic and social strata. It addresses identity politics, more specifically, what it means/meant to be Muslim in America, post 9/11, in the context of the selection of a design for the memorial for victims of a WTC-type terror attack. In doing so, to this reader, it suggests that while there are never precisely any exact winners or losers in this conflict, it is this endless struggle and opportunity, both to identify who we are and to resist being culturally straight-jacketed by others, that seems to identify what it is to be "Americans."

After I finished reading the book, I discovered the accompanying official website which was especially resonant and provocative in offering some of the ideas and sources that inspired and informed the author's writing of this very thoughtful, troubling and satisfying work. 

-Anthony Napoli, Deep in the Heart of Brooklyn

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As the 10th anniversary of September 11, 2011 approaches, I started reading The Submission, a novel by Amy Waldman, which deals with the politics and cultural dislocations swirling around the construction of a memorial for a terrorist attack in New York City.

Since Gilbert Gottfried told his joke at the celebrity roast in October 2001, the creative impulse in us has been struggling to escape and to figure out just what contribution can be made to our understanding of what happened and what it all means, if in fact there are any answers to be had.

What I find fascinating about Ms. Waldman's beautifully written, literate work, at once funny, serious and dark, is that, since this is not truly historical fiction -- clearly, we are, even after a decade, still painfully close to the Reality of the Actual Event --  the book takes place in a sort of Alternate Universe. It is a World Trade Center, in a NYC, on a 9/11 , attacked by terrorists, and a memorial is built by a Committee to remember the event. But at the same time it is something else, it is not a roman a clef of our actual experience, and I find that slight dissonance, or rather incongruity, powerful and adding to the insightfulness of the book. While I am still reading The Submission, the experience feels as though the author, Amy Waldman, has swung for the fences with this not overly long book, and beyond hitting a home run, is achieving something like escape velocity.

I am still reading it, struggling, frankly, to read it slowly, savoring it, so I don't finish it until just before Sunday, 9/11.  Highly recommended.

Friday Morning Melody: Graham Parker - "I Dreamed Headlong Collisions/In Jetlag Panavision"

Graham Parker and the Rumour, "Discovering Japan" from Squeezing Out Sparks, Arista 1979

The Andy Monument: Union Square

Rob Pruitt’s “The Andy Monument” / March – October2, 2011
Photo by Tony Napoli - Deep in the Heart of Brooklyn

Inspired by Warhol’s art and life, Rob Pruitt (b. 1964, Washington DC) created “The Andy Monument” as a tribute to the late artist. It stands on the street corner, just as Warhol did when he signed and gave away copies of ‘Interview’ magazine. Pruitt’s sculpture adapts and transforms the familiar tradition of classical statuary.

Other posts concerning Mr. Warhol that reflect DITHOB's ongoing interest and respect for his creativity and "merz"-sensibility here, here and here ..

Down to the Wire: Passione: John Tuturro's Musical Adventure of Napoletano Song

John Tuturro's "Passione: A Musical Adventure" which explores contemporary and traditional music in Napoli, aka Naples, formerly know as Neopolis, and before that, Parthenope, plays through this evening at the Brooklyn Heights Cinema and Brooklyn Academy of Music.

While it has drawn comparisons to "Buena Vista Social Club" the film draws on the cultural complexity and ethnic diversity of this southern Italian city, one of the oldest, continually inhabited cities in the world. Billboard reports that a concert tour of performers appearing in the film is scheduled in Italy, and plans are underway for bringing the musicians and singers to the US.

As a thoroughly assimilated American/New Yorker whose ancestors hail from Napoli and Bari, it is fascinating to explore the contemporary iterations of the traditional roots of this music that was so familiar to me growing up in an Italian-American household in Brooklyn. Yet, when we visited  a couple of years ago, at the time my oldest daughter developed genuine fluency after spending a year at the University of Urbino, Napoli (which is my surname) seemed such a foreign country to me.  Rome seemed more familiar, more comfortable, reflecting dreams and aspirations. It occurred to me that Rome reflects the more polished, urbane and high culture aspects of New York, and Napoli, the more struggling, and striving, aspects of  New York, a collision of high and low cultures,  emananting from a complex, diverse mix of individuals of all walks of life, ethnicities, races and cultures. Rome is, of course, unique like no other city, but with aspects of Manhattan's Fifth Ave, Madison and Park Avenues. Napoli is, of course, likewise a uniquely historical city, but with aspects of Canal Street, the Lower East Side, Williamsburgh and Bed Stuy. Wonderful, too, that Mr. Tuturro, whose roots are in Sicily and Puglia (Bari), created this film that opens another door to the truth and the romance of Napoletan culture.

Catch it if you can.


Passione (directed by  John Turturro)-"Tammuriata nera" - Peppe Barra, Max Casella, M'BarkaBen Taleb.

Wednesday Morning Ramones: "I Wanna Live"

I Wanna Live

I've been thinking it over

And I know just what to do
I've been thinking it over
And I know I just can't trust myself

I'm a Gypsy prince
Covered with diamonds and jewels
But then my lover exposes me
I know I'm just a damn fool

[CHORUS]

I give what I've got to give
I give what I need to live
I give what I've got to give
It's important if I wanna live

I wanna live
I want to live my life
I wanna live
I want to live my life

As I load my pistol
Of fine German steel
I never thought I'd be so down and out
Having my last meal
But I know I can do it
It just took a few years
As I execute my killer
The morning is near
 (Dee Dee Ramone, Daniel Rey)

Going Fast: "Ostalgia" at the New Museum

"Ostalgia," the exhibition at the New Museum closing on September  25, takes its title from the German word ostalgie, a term that emerged in the 1990s to describe a sense of longing and nostalgia for the era before the collapse of the Communist Bloc. Twenty years ago—after the fall of the Berlin Wall—a process of dissolution led to the breakup of the Soviet Union and many other countries that had been united under Communist governments. From the Baltic republics to the Balkans, from Central Europe to Central Asia, entire regions and nations were reconfigured, their constitutions rewritten, their borders redrawn. “Ostalgia” looks at the art produced in and about some of these countries, many of which did not formally exist two decades ago. Mixing private confessions and collective traumas, the exhibition traces a psychological landscape in which individuals and entire societies must negotiate new relationships to history, geography, and ideology.


"Ostalgia” brings together the work of more than fifty artists from twenty countries across Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Republics. Many of the works offer a series of reportages on aspects of life and art under Communism and in the new post-Soviet countries. "The exhibition pays particular attention to the unique place that artists came to occupy in Socialist countries, acting simultaneously as outcasts, visionaries, and witnesses.

"Unlike a conventional geographical survey, the exhibition includes works produced by Western European artists who have grappled with the reality and the myth of the East. Some of the preoccupations that unite the artists in “Ostalgia” are a romantic belief in the power of art as a transformative, almost curative agent; an obsession with language; the conception of a new aesthetic of the body; a fascination with the ruins of history as represented by monuments and architectural vestiges; and an understanding of artwork as a form of sentimental documentary that mediates between cultural pressures and individual anxieties."
 
DITHOB: The show alternates between a very useful pedagogy, outlining the rise and fall of Soviet socialist soceity and culture, to Phil Collins' film that views the impact of the fall of the Soviet Union on educated East German  women who had functional roles in the apparatus of the State and who then had to re-orient themselves in the new capitalist society. Art, sculpture, ephemera, that help to explore the cultural transitions in Eastern Europe.
 
THrough September 25. More here

Flatbush Aftermath: Trees Fall

Lots of trees down in the Fiske Terrace - Midwood Park sections of Flatbush. On East 18th two trees fell, one on a car. (Word on the street was that the car was a rental, fortunately, no one was hurt (there was a baby seat in the back), and the rental company told them the car would probably be safer with them.) Another tree blocking East 17th street; a resident in a nearby home said no one heard the fall.

photos by Tony Napoli - Deep in the Heart of Brooklyn

Notes from Coastal Flooding Zone C

We got back and had a lovely lunch on a wonderful Friday summer afternoon at Kenn's Broome Street Bar, that venerable institution in SoHo celebrating its 39th anniversary this October. Bloody Marys, salads, expresso and sorbet, Sambuca, alternately playing "Heroes" on the juke box, thinking  about "Ostalgia" at the New Museum and gazing into My Better Half''s dreamy  blue eyes, while a row of party-ful  young women celebrated Friday afternoon at the bar. I love Broome Street Bar. Difficult to believe that a hurricane was working its way toward us like an uncapped blender on steroids.

Got home, put stuff in garage, set up cafe table in dinng room, battened down various hatches and set in for the now inevitable, seasonal disaster watch. Having coffee on front porch and writing this before we stow away remaining outdoor furniture. My son moved all of his plants off of the back deck into the house so things are looking a bit like "Day of the Triffids" inside our home on Waldorf Court.  Not sure why, but I displayed the Stars and Stripes on our covered porch. Funny, after walking around on our way home, we stopped at Tribeca Bagels on Canal, and we were chatting with one of the knockoff goods hustlers who was on line to use the john. I made my by now tired remark that after a recent spate of tornadoes, blizzards, earthquakes, and now a hurricane,what's left for NYC -- volcanoes/lava and Godzilla?  He replied, you have to wonder if people are doing the right thing, living the right way, that all of this punishment is being visited on our five boroughs. Interesting how the comment always returns to "the fundamentals" -- marriage equality.

It's nearly noon and it sounds like the last Q train has already passed through. We may take a walk to get another newspaper, a bottle of wine, some ingredients for our daughter, the philosopher-artist-baker, and then its time for a mostly indoor weekend with our kids, waiting, watching, and thinking.

--Anthony Napoli, Deep in the Heart of Brooklyn

TALK TO ME: Museum of Modern Art

A remarkable future fast-forward exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art showcases the nexus of design, communications and sheer creativity in the human sphere as we interact more and more with things.

Devices, videos, TaGG readers, sculptural takes on the Interactive World, there is something giddily thrilling and yet overwhelming in seeing just how far ahead of the everyday world  these designers and systems folks really are.

New Yorkers won't want to miss the functional MTA MetroCard machine with commemorative Metrocard from the exhibit.

More here 

OK, What's Left, New York?

All kidding aside, stay safe everyone and Be Prepared!
-Deep in the Heart of Brooklyn

CODA x 3: The Washington Monument Fix up -- Continued

The Devil's Music: Ain't Nobody's Business If I Do

Angelo Parra's The Devil's Music: The Life and Music of Bessie Smith, with musical staging by Joe Brancato, playing at St. Luke's Theater, is a daunting work for a playwright to create. Treading a fine line between musical tribute/showcase and musical theater, with many of Ms. Smith's songs at the heart of it all, this is one of those works that will utterly rise or fall on the performer. As the croweded audience on Monday night showed, however, Miche Braden, is a dream come true, as she leads her trio (Jim Hankins, bass, Aaron Graves, piano, and, at the show we attended, Anthony E. Nelson, Jr., saxophone), and the audience through the life, and songs and times of the "Empress of the Blues." Telling stories, engaging and playing with the audience, and singing the blues with a passion, warmth and fire, that is sure to stir and leave you with a sense that, yes, this is Bessie Smith. A wonderful and memorable show.

St. Luke's Theater website here

CODA TO THE CODA: Ain't Tilting But Earthquake Leaves It Slightly Worse for the Wear

But it has cracks....

CODA: Whew---The Washington Monument is Not Tilting!

Washington Post reports that Washington Park police have confirmed that despite preliminary indiucations the Washington Monument is not tilting due to the earthquake centered in Mineral, Virginia, felt as far away as Brooklyn and Rhode Island.

More here

Earthquake Weather

We had returned from a few days in Atlantic City, and the contractor was finishing repair of our front steps which had fallen apart from the past rough winter. While he was here we had him check our chimney this morning as well. I was sitting on the deck with my better half, and son and daughter. Got up and was in the bathroom and felt the house shake. I thought the chimney and the roof were coming down. Folks ran into the streets here in Flatbush. "Did you feel that? Did you feel that?"

Thinking it was related to MTA construction nearby, I tried to call 311, NYC's information phone number since it wasn't an emergency, but the number was busy. Finally turned on NY1 and they were reporting it was a suspected earthquake. My daughter working in an office building in Manhattan was unaware of quake as was one of my other daughters who was out and about in Park Slope. I contacted my office (I am on vacation) and my building was evacuated.

Just before the temblor hit, Guinevere, our corgi, was hiding under a chair. Afterwards, she took refuge, head down in her crate/condo in our living room.

My colleague with family in Virginia reported that dishes and glassware fell out of their closets. Virginia nuclear power plants taken offline. JFK airport diverted flights to Connecticut.

Although it appears there was no significant damage to speak of,a quiet summer afternoon turned on its head.

US GEOLOGICAL SURVEY report here

-Tony Napoli - Deep in the Heart of Brooklyn