Plastic Alto with Mark Weiss

A woman in line behind me at the café noticed my book with a faux naive cover that said “Gerhard Richter 100 pictures” and she asked if I was Gerhard.

I said no I am Mark although the register at the café had me down as “MARC “.

And yesterday‘s Plastic Alto blog post I said I was the douchebag who made $200 million by bundling music and licensing it to Ford among others .

Previously I said I was Oscar Grant; I may have said somewhere that I am George Floyd .

There’s a married woman running for city council  who says she’s “queer” and I said I too was a Black lesbian until the political engagement process bleached me.

And the word “literally” could mean both “figuratively” and “literally”.

My brother the engineer has almost no ear for trope .

And my eggs are getting cold.

Melanie in the times

bw or “ZOW”

Larry Ochs and his fellow musketeers of Reeds also known as ROVA saxophone Quartet are doing a show at the art center from 4 to 5 which is closing time for the center which has not had evening hours in more than two years because of budgetary pressure caused by the pandemic. Part of the purpose of the show is to honor Joseph Zirker who died recently in Menlo Park at the ripe old age of 98. When Larry and some other confederates did a concert in 2019 I posed him and I next to one of the two Zirker monotypes his family donated to the city years ago. Terry and I bought a lesser work or a smaller from Cafe Zoe in May a month or so before Joe expired. He was a friend of mine and he died.
Actually if I can add on another riff here Joe told me more than once the story of being a flute prodigy  and getting to perform on radio national radio yet one of his classmates sabotaged his instrument out of spite or jealousy. Maybe I will tell thatbstory as part of the introduction to Melanie Charles who is playing on Monday at The Mitch. Melanie Charles Haitian-American-led jazz quartet Monday at The Mitch Larry Ochs and ROVA Friday at the art center early. Yet ROVA who has a guest piano player named Sol Lewitt in McDonas are also doing a show from 630 to sundown over at Lytton  Plaza very near where I’m sitting. Or where Duffy and I are sitting. Digesting our eggs.

Somewhere in my correspondence with Melanie Charles I noted that she has an accent over the E or a stress on the first syllable: Mèlanie. 

and1:

In this ethereal painting of the city, the German artist Gerhard Richter recreates a snapshot photograph he took of Jerusalem from his hotel room in 1995, looking towards the Christian Quarter. Discernible features of the cityscape have been all but erased in the painting, partially anonymising the city, or supplying it with a sense of timelessness.

In this ethereal painting of the city, the German artist Gerhard Richter recreates a snapshot photograph he took of Jerusalem from his hotel room in 1995, looking towards the Christian Quarter. Discernible features of the cityscape have been all but erased in the painting, partially anonymising the city, or supplying it with a sense of timelessness. Only with very close inspection is it possible to make out a lamppost or car amongst the architectural structures. By these means Richter’s rendering of Jerusalem appears simultaneously as a vision of the city from centuries ago and a bird’s eye view on the contemporary metropolis.

While the image is not a work of imagination, the ambivalent and luminescent light imbuing the painting effects a dreamlike quality in the image, perhaps alluding to the mystical and mythical status of the Holy City. Unlike some modern artists who chose to focus on the desolate quality of contemporary Jerusalem, or explore the religious and national divisions in the city, Richter’s work seems to meditate on the impossibility of visually conveying the full complicated history of the place. Instead his painting functions like a medieval visual aid for spiritual pilgrimage, evoking in its viewers a personal, individual response to the site by encouraging the exploration of their own memories and imaginings of the city, brought to the fore by his own ambivalent representation.

Only with very close inspection is it possible to make out a lamppost or car amongst the architectural structures. By these means Richter’s rendering of Jerusalem appears simultaneously as a vision of the city from centuries ago and a bird’s eye view on the contemporary metropolis.

While the image is not a work of imagination, the ambivalent and luminescent light imbuing the painting effects a dreamlike quality in the image, perhaps alluding to the mystical and mythical status of the Holy City. Unlike some modern artists who chose to focus on the desolate quality of contemporary Jerusalem, or explore the religious and national divisions in the city, Richter’s work seems to meditate on the impossibility of visually conveying the full complicated history of the place. Instead his painting functions like a medieval visual aid for spiritual pilgrimage, evoking in its viewers a personal, individual response to the site by encouraging the exploration of their own memories and imaginings of the city, brought to the fore by his own ambivalent representation.

Something here this morning also reminds me of my fellow Gunn graduate Nina Khatchadorian and her portraits of herself as a Flemish woman from for centuries before.