Raw Cut | Rudi Krausmann | Travel Diary 6/9
TODAY
The pontoon plane
takes off, turns,
goes off over Jakolov Bay.
Gulls wait for
for the tide to go out.
A flock of white commas
scattered on the rocks
every which way
each one a pause.
You see nothing happens
until something begins to happen
Then, all of a sudden, the day
goes off in a different direction.
Or turns, and
comes back again
to the same rock.
(from Means of Approach by Anita Wilkins, Hard Press
Publications, 1989)
For us it was time again to move, this time to Big Sur, which we
called the Henry Miller country. Amongst the illustrious writers
which had penetrated Europe in the fifties, like Faulkner,
Steinbeck or Hemingway was also Henry Miller, the last bohemian,
who starved, loved and wrote 'Tropic of Cancer' in a cheap room in
the 'Villa Seurat' in Paris. What Hemingway did for the body,
Miller did for sex, someone had told me at the time when I was
still at school. And a well-known poet in Germany had said in an
interview: 'A down and out American in Paris writes our most
sophisticated writers under the table. He dares to say things as
no-one else had done before.'
Miller, who is inclined to exaggerate at times, did not overpraise
it when he described the landscape and the sea around Big Sur in
his book 'Big Sur and the Oranges of Hironymus Bosch'. Like the
characters in this area, also nature is over life size here. It
was disappointing though that it's present inhabitants did not
know anything about him. Whether were he had lived nor what he had
written. A waitress in a popular restaurant, frequented by
tourists, had never heard of him and the owner of the place could
only recall Orson Welles, who had once stayed a few months nearby.
Yet Miller had lived in a Log Cabin a few metres from where the
restaurant now resides. Henry Miller being practically unknown in
Big Sur for me was like a cultural nightmare. No wonder that he
doubted his talent here. 'Big Sur nearly finished me off as a
writer, there were months when I could no longer write a sentence'
he mentioned in one of his autobiographical novels. It was not
that the grandeur of nature had crushed him here temporarily,
rather the indifference of the pragmatic Americans. A celebrity in
France, in his homeland he only kept going through gifts by
friends. At least a sales assistant of the Phoenix bookshop knew
about the Henry Miller Memorial Library located in the log
cabin which a friend of Miller, Emile White, had once built by
himself. Unfortunately it was closed this day and all we could do
was to glance through the window at books and posters. One poster
was of Anaïs Nin. In homage to Henry Miller we sat in a
revolving chair on the verandah perhaps this literary enfant
terrible had sat there too, one gloomy afternoon. From there I saw
the sardonic smile of Anaïs Nin through the window. I knew
from her diaries that she liked the Henry Miller of Paris, not the
Henry Miller of Big Sur. But that is another story. We know that
Miller is still largely ignored in America because he criticised
it, in particular in his book 'The Air-conditioned Nightmare' The
European writers are allowed to criticise their country, they
receive honours for it, even by the government, in America he is
condemned or ignored, because America does not want to be
criticised by anyone, least of all by Henry Miller, the son of a
German immigrant, who had once been poor and begged on the
streets. That America does not want to be criticised by anyone
could be its strengths and its weakness. Be that as it may, we
knew we had to return our rented car the very same day in San
Francisco. The return drive on the coast road is magnificent and
at certain places technology and nature blend harmoniously. By the
time we reached San Francisco it was dusk. From our tourist guide
book, Let's go America M had picked out a cheap hotel close
to the 'Tender Loin District' in the inner city. In the street
where our hotel was supposed to be we only saw prostitutes and
pimps moving about, most of them black, hardly any pedestrians.
Yet there was no parking spot to be found and I had to double park
and wait in the car, while M inquired about the accommodation. As
soon as she had left, a middle-aged Negro with a crew cut wearing
a trench coat so large that he could have wrapped himself twice in
it, grinned at me from the pavement and then approached me.
"Change please."
I was in a generous mood and gave him a dollar.
"Thank you, Sir" he replied and whispered coming closer to the
car.
"For one dollar I can buy myself two hamburgers." He moved off but
suddenly turned around again, ran back and put his head through
the car window.
"Do you want a girl, any colour, black, brown, white, yellow, any
size, tall, tiny, fat, slim, only fifty bucks an hour?"
As I shook my head he got angry and said:
Okay man, I arrange it for you for forty bucks, which colour do
you want?"
When I shook my head again, he shouted:
"Fuck off," and banged the car with his hands and shoes. I had no
other option than to drive on.
M had found an old-fashioned hotel, outdated but not run down,
which offered a room with cooking facilities for 150 dollars a
week. From the window one could see a fragment of the sky, the
rest being blocked by skyscrapers and down below the flickering
lights of seedy nightclubs, of which one of them was called Blue Lamp.
The first day in San Francisco we could not escape certain tourist
attractions like the old-fashioned tramway taking you to
Fisherman's Wharf where across the bay Alcatraz, the
ex-penitentiary was clearly visible. On the dock a 18-th century
cargo ship had been renovated and was open for visitors It gave,
amongst others things, a good insight into the social conditions
of the 'glorious past'. The captain had a luxurious living room
with an attached kitchen and bath, where his wife could entertain
her guests in a splendid fashion, while the crew slept under the
most primitive conditions in bunks under the mast. They earned 3
Pound Sterling a month.
When we walked on the quay amongst souvenirs shops and cafes, a
young man on roller skaters held out his hand and said: "Have you
got some small change please?"
"What for?"
"A taco, it costs only 69 cents."
"Why don't you get a job?"
"There aren't any jobs."
"Have you tried?"
"I sure have."
Although I did not believe him, I dropped a nickel in his hand.
From Fisherman's Wharf we took a bus to the City Lights Bookshop.
In front of the shop, where there is a bus stop, stood a fantastic
looking crowd of the most different races, totally disinterested
in literature, at least the one the bookshop was promoting. I
glanced up at a street sign saying Kerouac Street.
"Who would have thought that San Francisco would have a Kerouac
Street?" I said to M.
"Why not, he was the King of the Beat Generation."
"And he drank himself to death because he could not handle the
American way of life."
"So it goes."
The City Light's Bookshop was stocked with local and international
contemporary literature and its walls and windows were decorated
with posters of the heroes of the Beat generation, like
Ferlinghetti, Ginsburg, Corso, Kerouac, Burroughs, and others.
Ferlinghetti is still in control of the shop, has an office on the
top floor but is hardly there. He has become the grey eminence of
a colourful, literary movement, whose protagonists were on the
road to destroy themselves. But only the author of On the
Road succeeded in time, the others linger on or cash in on its
fame. As we left the bookshop we saw as notice pinned on the cash
register.
Our new and fabulous City Light's Publication
Poet LA LOCA is giving a reading at Cody's tonight at 8 pm
sharp
Wine and cheese
As we walked in the streets of San Francisco with the intention
to take the BART (bay area rapid transport) later to Berkeley we
became aware that it was at dusk when the city becomes alive. From
the expensive hotels tourists in evening clothes come out and take
taxis to wherever they want to go. In Tender Loins, the
red light district, just around the corner of our hotel, tall
black prostitutes in black leather gear smiled rather
provocatively at prospective customers. They seemed proud and not
at all ashamed of their profession. It is more for their clients,
bored and tired looking office workers, one could feel sorry for.
But the real tragic figures in San Francisco are the numerous
beggars who can be seen everywhere in the inner city. Some of them
sit on the pavement, hunched over and whisper, without looking up
into their own shadows. "Change please." Others stare at you
directly and point one arm at you as you pass. "Got some small
change?" And there are many, demented or destroyed by drugs who
just walk around, flapping their arms like bird wings, too far
gone to think of begging. They are the ones who had been released
recently from psychiatric clinics by a government decree. The
public purse could not afford it any longer to look after them, so
it said in the newspapers.
Like in some cities in South America, where the mansions of the
rich stand side by side with the corrugated iron huts of the poor,
in the streets of San Francisco the rich and poor, sane and
insane, feeble and clever pass each other mostly indifferently.
One can only hope that San Francisco does not become like New York
where, as I read somewhere, one can live only insensitively, that
is by not taking any notice of what is going on around you. That
would be a bleak future indeed.
Arriving in Berkeley at the poetry reading was some kind of relief
from the social pressures experienced in the streets of San
Francisco. Even here, when we crossed a park, a youth was pissing
openly at a statue. The atmosphere at Cody's was genteel and the
audience consisted of the white middle class with a touch of
bohemian. La Loca was introduced casually by a bearded man, who
perhaps was once a poet himself and had turned academic, in the
process losing faith of the power of the word. La Loca, vivacious
and natural, read her poems with charm. She had turned the bitter
lessons she had learned from life in her poetry into a
sophisticated American sense of humour. Even where she lacked
depth, she got away with it due to her attractive personality. And
in her ironies she had become a true disciple of Lawrence
Ferlinghetti. Ferlinghetti, where was he? I saw him whether at
City Lights Bookshop or at the reading. If he had disappeared, he
had taken with him the cloak of the grey eminence of American
literature. Of the poets of the Beat Generation it was only
Kerouac who had lived and died for its ideas and ideals including
its vices. After having written 'On the Road' the author himself
was not able to hitch a ride on one of America's highways. An
irony of fate? No, America had never been kind to its poets. It
intends to let them starve. Goethe's exclamation 'Amerika, du hast
es besser' (America, you have it easier) was hardly meant for its
artists.
One morning I went to the Australian consulate at Union Square. At
the entrance a woman was sitting on a blanket with two small
children. The children were playing with toy guns while the mother
was holding up a placard. "We are hungry." Occasionally some of
the passers by dropped a nickel or a dime. But when these modern
San Franciscans gave away some alms, it looked like the reflex of
the hand muscle. Only by going through a security check up can one
enter the Australian Consulate. In the waiting room the
photographic image of a bird of paradise hits your eye. Underneath
is written:
AUSTRALIA means BUSINESS
My business was to pay the Australian government 47 US dollars
for a reentry visa -- being a resident with an Austrian passport.
In order to extract money form you, the bureaucracy was working
well. While waiting I browsed through some old Australian
newspapers which reflected anything but a paradise. After I had
received the visa I decided to visit the Museum of Modern
Art situated on a huge square amongst rather uninspiring
government buildings. As I crossed the square, I saw a monument
representing a man on a horse. It was Bolivar, the hero of South
America, who had liberated his country from oppression. As I
looked up at the general a black derelict, who had been lying at
the pedestal of the monument, lifted himself up and pissed on the
statue most probably oblivious of what he was doing. In another
corner of the square, in a narrow gap between two buildings, an
avant-garde artist had made an open air installation. It showed
rubber pipes pointing into the sky, perhaps into the void. The
people on the square took as little notice of the derelict as they
did have of the artwork. America seemed indeed a country of
unlimited possibilities. When I finally entered the museum, it
felt like being placed into a tomb. It was cool and silent and the
visitors whispered to each other, if they wanted to express an
opinion. The museum exhibited at the time figurative paintings
from the Bay area, photographs from Mexico and a mixed exhibition
of modern masters like Miro, Matisse, Beckman, Ernst plus some
contemporary Americans like Rothko and Stella. I found the
figurative work too derivative, the selection of modern masters
not impressive, the abstract paintings of Rothko and Stella too
pale an interpretation and only the photographs of Mexico
inspiring and a new insight into the reality of another country.
These remote and isolated images of Mexico made one wonder, and
introduced again mystery to life. When I walked again in the open
air I felt that museums in the States were superfluous, they could
not compete with the complexity and intensity of life in the
streets. Museums belonged to Europe, as Europe itself had somehow become a museum, or is in the process of it. In America art to me
was not liberating, it was suffocating.
When it came to the last evening in San Francisco, we did not know
what to do with it. We walked in the streets casually glancing at
people, cars, restaurants, illuminated entrances, hotels etc. As
we passed the Goethe-Institut, we noticed that it showed
the film 'Christiana', with Greta Garbo playing the sensuous and
adventurous Queen of Sweden. We sat in for a while, but got bored.
It was a strange choice for this cultural institution to promote
German art in the USA. Further down Union Square a group of
Negroes were playing jazz leaning against the huge windows of a
department store. We stopped and thought it was excellent music to
listen to for a dime. As we moved on, we saw a restaurant
specialising in Super Hamburgers. We went in to have our
dinner there. In this place everything was oversized, the tables,
the chairs, the cups, the plates and the cutlery, not to mention
the food. No wonder the staff looked a bit diminished. The
interior was brightly lit and painted in psychedelic colours and
the music was electronic. Only the hamburgers tasted average, and
the prices were double. After that we dropped into several bars
only for drinks. In one of them most people were watching
television. McEnroe was playing in the Australian Open Tournament.
He shot the tennis ball into the audience and was generally
clowning or abusing the referee. The drinkers were enjoying it.
For us these were the first images we received from Down Under
since we had left. It seemed that these modern gladiators, as my
friend the poet in Salzburg calls them, were having a ball on the
hard tennis courts of Melbourne and cashing considerable amounts
of money in at the same time. For them it was no longer a question
of life and death, nevertheless, they were the only millionaires I
know of who had to sweat for their income.
As we had booked a plane for San Diego next morning we returned to
our hotel just before midnight. Behind the reception desk stood an
elderly man with grey long hair staring despairingly into space.
As he handed over the key one could feel that he was totally
absentminded. I was sure I had seen his face somewhere. "Have we
met before?" I inquired.
"Not that I can remember," he replied in a deep, sonorous
voice.
"I am sure." I said.
"Maybe you have seen me on stage?"
"Which stage?"
"The Magic Theatre. I am an actor, specialising in Beckett. My
last role I had in Endgame. My name is Tom Luce. I am
earning a bit of breadmoney as a nightporter in this hotel, where
I also live. In a few months I am going to New York to play First Love, a Beckett story adapted for the stage. It will
be a one man show. You see, San Francisco has no more theatre
scene, it has gone to the dogs, it is artistically dead.
"Why is that?" I asked.
"We are living in a cultural depression." He took out a small
bottle of Whisky from his inside pocket and had a sip. "San
Francisco has become totally commercial, it is no longer a city of
the arts. The Magic Theatre had to close down. What marvellous
productions we used to have there. Do you want a sip?" I shook my
head and said: "It looks as if the endgame is now in the
streets?"
"Ha, that could be. Beckett is a visionary writer, for sure, and
he has other formidable talents. But there is no more audience for
him in the United States, except in New York. And nobody knows how
long New York is going to last."
This last night in San Francisco had made us both restless and
although we were tired we were unable to fall asleep. M started to
read a detective story and I opened my 'literary companion' on
this journey, 'lyrical and critical essays' by Albert Camus. Even
for this passionate writer and master of the word I lacked the
concentration and I decided to get up and stare out of the
window.
Down below the neon light of the nightclub Blue Lamp was
still flickering and the place was still open at four o'clock in
the morning. I noticed a lonely figure pacing up and down in front
of the club on the pavement and recognised him as the same black
man in an oversized trenchcoat who had approached me when we first
arrived in San Francisco. He had offered to get women of any
colour, black, white, brown or yellow for 50 dollars an hour and
abused me because I had declined. At this time of the morning he
was no longer bareheaded but wore some colourful Irish sporting
cap. Whenever a car passed, he lifted it, a vague attempt to
attract customers for 'his girls' in the Blue Lamp. Perhaps he only paced up and down because he no longer could
sleep?
Next | Back | T.O.C. |