Wednesday, August 17, 2005
Philadelphia: Brotherly Love (only church I need)
Dear Will,
are you actually attempting to get me to agree to some notion that New York is better? Or that it's okay for the Times to casually comment on New York consuming the Philadelphia borders, not to mention the boarders who are increasingly broke from rent escalation due to the wealthier influx?
Or worse, that it's okay for the "journalist" to write such bullshit as, "All of which has collided with a peculiar cultural moment in which uncool is the new cool, in which blue-collar scrappiness and a surfeit of fried-meat specialties now seems endearingly kitschy."
This above quote of course needs to be examined because she's admitting that she and what she considers her New York Kind I suppose, have more money, more class. And of course the article was so wrong in many different ways about the SUDDEN art scene blooming, I mean, what a fucking joke! She obviously hasn't been aware of the oodles and oodles of artists, writers, poets, not to mention the enormous number of jazz musicians. She only mentions the Philadelphia orchestra, but that's NOTHING compared to the jazz in this town.
It reminds me of the arrival of that fucking poet from NY (what's his name?) something O'Neal or something? He ran the "big" poetry events at the Painted Bride, and he literally said "There was no poetry in Philadelphia before I arrived!" Huh? What an ass. I remember laughing with Gil Ott about that one! It's one of the few times I ever heard Gil Ott call someone an asshole.
I'm aware that the tricky part of this argument on my end is to NOT appear as if I'm bashing New York. Because I'm really not, nor do I want to bash New York. I have a lot of good friends up there and the city is great for a million reasons, it is, and I know it, I know it already okay?
But while I am NOT bashing New York, you Will ARE bashing Philadelphia.
You do realize that, don't you?
Let me ask you Will, seriously, and directly, is it really NOT okay with you that I love, FUCKING LOVE this city!? Your argument swings in the direction of, OH C'MON, HOW COULD YOU POSSIBLY!?
Well, frankly Will I truly LOVE this city! And if I loved it anymore I'd be arrested for indecent exposure!
You may slather all the reasons you want onto this discussion as to WHY I'm just not seeing The Truth, but it won't change me a bit.
I've loved more people in many different ways in this city than I have anywhere else on this planet because it speaks to me with all that language Love speaks with.
Next year will mark my half life here, meaning I will have spent half my life here.
Will, you can share all the ideas you want, disagree with me, hate me for all I care, but don't try to corner me into some bullshit idea that I've misplaced my Love for half my life. No way.
This city's in my dreams when I sleep and I don't just mean the streets I walk. There have been nights where a color pattern impossible to explain breaks loose and trees and sidewalks and everything bursts into light and converses. It's a dream where I can feel and see all the different incarnations, also meaning long before the city was a city and it was streams of water and moss and rocks and squirrels and deer and lion.
One of those dreams wound up in that chapbook Frank Sherlock and I wrote, where I'm in the dream, standing on a corner and can actually see where a field of buttercups once grew. Where a thicket of berries sheltered rabbits. It's an amazing dream, and the next morning, in the waking world, I bought chalk, and I went to those spots from the dream and I wrote on the sidewalk, "cantaloupe ghost" etc., where the world was when it was in my dream.
Just because you can't hear the Love doesn't mean the rest of us are deaf.
Listen, I'm very serious about this, DON'T SHIT ON MY LOVE! I don't care if you disagree with my opinions, but LOVE is not an opinion, ever.
I feel like we're brothers and you're trying to convince me our mother is a whore! And even if she is a whore, I Love her anyway!
CAConrad
are you actually attempting to get me to agree to some notion that New York is better? Or that it's okay for the Times to casually comment on New York consuming the Philadelphia borders, not to mention the boarders who are increasingly broke from rent escalation due to the wealthier influx?
Or worse, that it's okay for the "journalist" to write such bullshit as, "All of which has collided with a peculiar cultural moment in which uncool is the new cool, in which blue-collar scrappiness and a surfeit of fried-meat specialties now seems endearingly kitschy."
This above quote of course needs to be examined because she's admitting that she and what she considers her New York Kind I suppose, have more money, more class. And of course the article was so wrong in many different ways about the SUDDEN art scene blooming, I mean, what a fucking joke! She obviously hasn't been aware of the oodles and oodles of artists, writers, poets, not to mention the enormous number of jazz musicians. She only mentions the Philadelphia orchestra, but that's NOTHING compared to the jazz in this town.
It reminds me of the arrival of that fucking poet from NY (what's his name?) something O'Neal or something? He ran the "big" poetry events at the Painted Bride, and he literally said "There was no poetry in Philadelphia before I arrived!" Huh? What an ass. I remember laughing with Gil Ott about that one! It's one of the few times I ever heard Gil Ott call someone an asshole.
I'm aware that the tricky part of this argument on my end is to NOT appear as if I'm bashing New York. Because I'm really not, nor do I want to bash New York. I have a lot of good friends up there and the city is great for a million reasons, it is, and I know it, I know it already okay?
But while I am NOT bashing New York, you Will ARE bashing Philadelphia.
You do realize that, don't you?
Let me ask you Will, seriously, and directly, is it really NOT okay with you that I love, FUCKING LOVE this city!? Your argument swings in the direction of, OH C'MON, HOW COULD YOU POSSIBLY!?
Well, frankly Will I truly LOVE this city! And if I loved it anymore I'd be arrested for indecent exposure!
You may slather all the reasons you want onto this discussion as to WHY I'm just not seeing The Truth, but it won't change me a bit.
I've loved more people in many different ways in this city than I have anywhere else on this planet because it speaks to me with all that language Love speaks with.
Next year will mark my half life here, meaning I will have spent half my life here.
Will, you can share all the ideas you want, disagree with me, hate me for all I care, but don't try to corner me into some bullshit idea that I've misplaced my Love for half my life. No way.
This city's in my dreams when I sleep and I don't just mean the streets I walk. There have been nights where a color pattern impossible to explain breaks loose and trees and sidewalks and everything bursts into light and converses. It's a dream where I can feel and see all the different incarnations, also meaning long before the city was a city and it was streams of water and moss and rocks and squirrels and deer and lion.
One of those dreams wound up in that chapbook Frank Sherlock and I wrote, where I'm in the dream, standing on a corner and can actually see where a field of buttercups once grew. Where a thicket of berries sheltered rabbits. It's an amazing dream, and the next morning, in the waking world, I bought chalk, and I went to those spots from the dream and I wrote on the sidewalk, "cantaloupe ghost" etc., where the world was when it was in my dream.
Just because you can't hear the Love doesn't mean the rest of us are deaf.
Listen, I'm very serious about this, DON'T SHIT ON MY LOVE! I don't care if you disagree with my opinions, but LOVE is not an opinion, ever.
I feel like we're brothers and you're trying to convince me our mother is a whore! And even if she is a whore, I Love her anyway!
CAConrad
