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March 19, 2008

Midtown, a Nice Place to Visit

It has been a while since I visited Midtown, but today I had a Meeting (think of that) with a Publisher and an Author to discuss the third in a series of books which I have been contracted to illustrate. The Author politely had hinted to “dress up a bit,” for she is familiar with my carefree freelance sartorial ways. I donned something more or less suitable that made me feel strange to myself, even as I felt strange emerging from Grand Central into the misty midst of Midtown Manhattan. The rain accentuated the somber verticality of the corporate buildings. The sky appeared as intermittent strips of silver duct tape. The office to which I was escorted, at the end of a hush-carpet warren, had windows to mirror images of itself: the ubiquitous plaid of granite, brick, glass and steel; the modulated palette of a fine haberdashery; the geometries of any subway grate or certain tessellated marble floors.
~
After the Meeting I found a capacious lunch counter on Madison Ave. filled with well-groomed businessmen (in suits color-coded to the skyscrapers), ties flung over their shoulders, uniformly consuming heroic sandwiches and Cokes. I choked on the menu’s Midtown prices. While waiting for my vegetarian chili, I accidentally caught the eye of a William Shatner look-alike in the mirrored wall. He paused mid-sentence (speaking an inscrutable dialect of financese) and without irony apologized for “interrupting my reverie.” “Oh not at all,” I said, just as apologetically. I explained: “It’s been ages since I’ve been in this neighborhood, and I’m taking everything in, like a tourist.” He asked what neighborhood I was generally in. Upon telling him, he said, “Can you recommend a downtown restaurant quiet enough for a meeting?” I suggested Bubby’s. I rarely go there myself, but it’s popular among the well-heeled. The eateries I once infrequently frequented are all closed now, scooped back into empty caverns of valuable raw square footage with exposed wires, the smell of damp clay and the echoey sighs of ghosts. My old haunts probably would have been too modest for Captain Kirk and his Meeting, but Bubby’s would suit.
~
Next I went to the Morgan Library. From the elegant shop I bought: (1) a large sheet of wrapping paper patterned with clipper ships (2) two bucolic post cards of cows by Johannes Goedaert (1617-68) and Thomas Gainsborough (1727-88); (3) notecard facsimiles from illustrated letters by Van Gogh to (a) Gauguin (ink sketch for “The Bedroom in Arles,” 1888) and (b) Emile Bernard (sepia sketch of “The Langlois Bridge,” March 18 [yesterday’s date], 1888); (4) a Wm. Blake card of “Europe: A Prophecy” (1794). This enigmatic little masterpiece shows God squatting literally in the sun, surrounded by the best storm-radiant clouds ever rendered, as he extends his long compass earthward.
~
At home, I pinned the sheet of clipper ships above a wainscoted alcove. It looks like a fragment of old wallpaper from a seafarers’ inn. That’s exactly what I think this rickety old building used to be, around the time J.P. Morgan built his Library.

Posted by Jane on 5:09 PM | Comments (1)

March 18, 2008

Qualities of Lives

Compared to the corporate wasps
In their buzzy business nests,
Busyness, stress, success
in Wall Street hives of
Unceasing reach for greater
Ascendancy, salaries, pleasures,
Reputations, securities, security,
Life-style wives, homes
And so on and so forth, those
Going-forth young men
Of focused distractions…

Compared to them
Are the bums in the sun
(The ones not too drunk, I mean)
Who lean on walls in meaner streets,
Who grin, dream, handle pans
And hats all day–are they--
(Despite financial and familial
Failure, premature old age, and
That street-wise, wizened demeanor
Judged tragic, a hellish waste)—
Are they actually wise for greater
Presence to themselves?

Posted by Jane on 2:18 PM | Comments (0)

March 13, 2008

On Making “The Spouter-Inn: The Patchwork Quilt”

There was neither impulse nor plan to construct this interior. It happened of its own free will and assembled itself without any effort on my part. Melville himself suggested most of the components and insisted on the composition.
~
The container, a thick-sided cube of approximately 11" per side, appeared on the street one day amid a mound of trash, one of its sides staved in like a boat stoved by a whale, perfect for a room at the Spouter-Inn. I took the box home, removed the staved-in side, glued the hinged door shut so the front became the back. To disrupt the static square, I added an angled wall at the left. Then I painted the outside a neutral color, and the inside a weathered gray, but left the surrounding edge unpainted to preserve its imperfections.
~
I always begin by creating a crucial detail and composing a scene around it. For the exterior of the Spouter-Inn, it was Peter Coffin’s creaking sign. In this case, it was the clam-cold fireplace. I deconstructed an ancient handmade dollhouse bed, the color of scrimshaw-ivory. Its carved sides support a scrap-wood mantle. The headboard became the fireboard, which I laminated with a man striking a whale, as Melville describes. (That scene and another, framed above the bed, came from an old banknote auction catalog.)
~
Next, the bed, which is described as large enough to sleep four harpooneers. To scale, a bed that size would never fit in the room, but I complied symbolically, with four pillows. The counterpane, a gift from some miniaturist artisan at least 15 years ago, had been until now too well-crafted for my work, but here it is just the thing for turning flukes. At the head of the bed stands Queequeg’s harpoon, made from a bit of cannibalized (naturally) “Pirates of the Caribbean” merchandise.
~
The seaman’s trunk in the middle of the room is the washstand table. The pitcher is half full of water (clarified Elmer’s glue). There’s the landlord’s candle, and Queequeg’s poncho. That strange garment reminds Ishmael of a doormat before he tries it on (in front of a “bit of glass stuck against the wall”). It fascinates and repulses him just as Queequeg will, imminently. On the floor are the cannibal seaman’s bag (a sachet with pinhead grommets) and a rolled-up hammock (aptly, a gourmet net for steaming seafood). A “parcel of outlandish bone fish hooks” rests on the “rude shelf” over the fireplace.
~
Ishmael says, “besides the bedstead and centre table, [I] could see no other furniture belonging to the place”; however, some pages later a chair appears—perhaps a glitch in continuity, but a necessary prop for Queequeg to throw his coat on. I added the chair belatedly (as perhaps Herman did). It is not glued in and can be moved around. (Moving an element changes the energy of a space.)
~
A few components do not appear in the novel: a teensy portrait of Melville framed in a refrigerator magnet; a teensy volume of Moby-Dick; a teensy Sarasota univalve I found in 1960. The wallpaper above the door comes from a glossy ad in the New Yorker. The wallpaper on the right is standard dollhouse issue, but spotted and besotted with Starbucks (of course) coffee.
~
At first I was going to insert a window in the right-hand wall. Ishmael, alarmed by Queequeg “staving about with little else but his hat and boots on,” refers to “the house opposite” which “commanded a plain view into the room.” But in the end, I decided to imply the peering-in vantage, stage front. The window after all is Melville’s remarkable visual descriptiveness, which allows readers to become voyeurs to the bottom of the see.

Posted by Jane on 5:16 PM | Comments (0)

March 8, 2008

Arms and a Man

Early, this fuzzy wet Saturday,
I walk snugly in the city,
Peer into vacant alleys
Where multiple slick tree limbs
Dance easily in the wind
Like Indian goddesses.
Underground, a poster
Imparts a golden Tara,
Like some tarantula diva,
Circling arachnid arms and a boon
In each multiplicative hand.
Outside again, countless
Cold fingers play fugues
On my skin. Umbrellas
Unfold like black bellows
Into whirling circles. Suddenly
A stranger juggling packages and bags
Emerges from the musical drizzle, asks
“Where’s Broadway?” I point east.
Off he scurries in the hard patter,
Far too many parcels for a mere two arms,
Making the ritual rounds of groceries,
Laundry, repeated sundry necessities
In a tyranny of endless errands.

Posted by Jane on 4:14 PM | Comments (0)