A self-infatuated fascist misogynist artist and his ocelot.

So it's debate night, and what a debate night it is. Bad timing must be recognized.

For weeks now in my spare time I have been studying the on-line sources on the very serious topic I'd intended to write about. But, I simply refuse to write about that critical topic which shall not be named on such a bizarre day in modern U.S.A. politics, when many if not most of the potential readers have other thoughts on their mind.

I'm not at all trying to be insensitive, and quite the opposite. Sexism in all its forms, including not least of all, abusive physically-imposed misogyny by those in positions of power, always deserves to be front and center in our consciousness, even if the subsequent 24-hour news cycle of tactical machinations is SNL material.

It's just that I'd at least want to have the chance that my ideas on another very serious topic would be read by more than a few people who were in the mood for an untrendy very serious discussion. Saving the world more generally will have to wait.

Because I have no added insights on the topic dejour, and anything else seems besides the point at the moment, perhaps now’s the time for some low key Pat the Bunny talk among friends, who may themselves soon rejoin the regularly scheduled cultural programming.

"Pat the Bunny is a "touch and feel" book for small children and babies and has been a perennial best-seller in the United States since its publication in 1940. It is not a book in the traditional sense, but more a collection of things to do, such as pat the fake fur of a rabbit on one page, feel a bit of sandpaper that stands for "daddy's scratchy face" on another, and look in a mirror on yet another." (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pat_the_Bunny)

The upside is I get to be oblique without guilt. If no one I do not already know would hear my tall critiquing tree fall in the woods, I'll just save the tree, peel back the velcro cover, and attempt to sooth my soul if not my comrades'. Our days to “[h]onestly and fearlessly critique all relevant (https://gardenvarietydemocraticsocialist.com/2016/09/04/3-suggestions-fo...) will come.

So, without further adieu, I bring to you seemingly meaningless, soothing gibberish.

***

I so love the leftist poet Federico Garcia Lorca. (https://gardenvarietydemocraticsocialist.com/2014/04/18/those-hundred-lo...) I once looked up the leftist poet Pablo Neruda’s account of Lorca’s loss:

He was not merely shot; he was assassinated. It would never have crossed anyone’s mind that they would kill him one day. He was the most loved, the most cherished, of all Spanish poets, and he was the closest to being a child, because of his marvelous happy temperament. Who could have believed there were monsters on this earth, in his own Granada, capable of such an inconceivable crime?

(http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1317400.Memoirs)

When on October 9, 89 years ago this very surreal day, in the year from which the Generation of ‘27 drew its name (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_of_%2727) Lorca confessed to a friend his profound admiration for Salvador Dalí, who am I to judge? It is ironic though, if not surreal, that the artist he held in such high esteem would within a few years be collaborating with the earthly monsters Neruda was referring to.

Everyday I appreciate Dalí’s talent even more. He seems to me unique and he possesses a serenity and a clarity of judgment about whatever he’s planning to do that is truly moving. He makes mistakes and it doesn’t matter. He’s alive. His denigrating intelligence unites with his disconcerting childishness, in such an unusual combination that it is absolutely captivating and original. What moves me most about him now is his fever of constructions (that is to say, creation), in which he tries to create out of nothing with such strenuous efforts and throws himself into the gales of creativity with so much faith and so much intensity that it seems incredible. Nothing more dramatic than this objectivity and this search for happiness for happiness’ sake. Remember that this has always been the Mediterranean canon. “I believe in the resurrection of the flesh,” says Rome. Dalí is the man who struggles with a golden ax against phantoms. “Don’t speak to me of supernatural things. How repulsive is Santa Catalina!” says Falla.

Oh straight line!

Pure lance without a knight!

How twisted my path

dreams of your light!

Say I. But Dalí doesn’t let himself be led. Besides his faith in astral geometry, he needs to be at the helm. It moves me; Dalí inspires the same pure emotion (and may God Our Father give me) as that of the baby Jesus abandoned on the doorstep of Bethlehem, with the germ of the crucifixion already latent beneath the straws of the cradle.

(http://theamericanreader.com/9-october-1927-federico-garcia-lorca-to-seb...)
The evidence strongly suggests that Lorca and Dalí were lovers, although the latter crudely denied it to his pompous grave. (https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2007/oct/28/spain.books) In any event, three years prior to Lorca writing so effusively about Dalí, Dalí had given Lorca what would come to be appreciated as an important if meaningless cubist painting.

1924 Still Life (Syphon and Bottle of Rum)

According to the presciently surreal description provided courtesy of the University of Louisville, the pears and half bottle of rum were inedible and half drunk, respectively. (http://digital.library.louisville.edu/cdm/ref/collection/vrc/id/249)

George Orwell wrote in a (sad to say homophobic but otherwise brilliant) review of Dalí’s highly unreliable 1944 autobiography that he “unquestionably possesses …a gift for drawing and an atrocious egoism.” (http://www.theorwellprize.co.uk/the-orwell-prize/orwell/essays-and-other...)

Not that convincing transnational investors to put one’s Anglicized surname on large numbers of buildings is comparable to dexterous drawing of strange and often disgusting images, but when this—what does one call it, house of horrors? little shop of horrors? proud day of capitalist democracy?—is over and our next president elect is planning a glorious but surely restrained ruling class-funded inauguration, I will think of the loving socialist world wished for by Lorca and Neruda rather than the surreal capitalist world currently on display.

Though Dalí would not claim Lorca as a lover, this was his loss.

Those hundred lovers
are asleep forever
beneath the dry earth.

Or, as another poet once sung:

Let us be lovers,
We'll marry our fortunes together.
I've got some real estate
Here in my bag.

[video:https://youtu.be/2nwRiuh1Cug]

And we wonder why, in this seemingly endless era of cynical divide-and-rule, many in the working class have lost hope and daily commit the slow suicide of self-medication or, when one or another fatuous groping egomaniac frat man comes along, are attracted to the fratricide of climate-destroying MIC-adoring nationalism.

In the beginning were at least some of the words, despite capitalist oppression. Then these words, many of them our own, became distorted and totalitarian, and we often succumbed to our own strong men until eventually capitalist triumphalism was seemingly all we had left.

If only we could consistently remember and discover what the good and truthful words are, honestly face and exorcize our own demons, and find the courage, street corners, fields, and other potentially sacred and rightfully common spaces to say them in.

Andalusia has
long, red-colored roads.
Córdoba, green olive trees
for placing a hundred crosses
to remember them.

All we can hope for is that one day the many may be ready to listen to their own forgotten or as yet undiscovered words of love again. The need for deeply democratic articulation, despite all our defeats and failures, never ends.

We as a species cannot afford to fail to articulate a viable socialism. Pointing out the abundant failures of capitalism is not enough, either as a matter of theory or practice. Winning that argument is easy compared to the task of framing and achieving a viable socialist alternative.

(https://gardenvarietydemocraticsocialist.com/2016/09/04/3-suggestions-fo...)
[Note: after completing this piece, as I was working outside on a lovely Sunday afternoon, it occurred to me that the Pat the Bunny reference could be misconstrued. There was, I can assure you, no patronism or innuendo intended. I'd take it out, but it's too late. Apologies in advance if I accidentally offend anyone.]