Mon April 7, 2025
It is more dreary weather here on Cape Cod.
in Process: “AQUIFER” | Acrylic Paint on India-sourced 100% Cotton Rag paper
This weekend began with a first inning at Fenway for the season opener of five home runs, which frankly was thrilling. It was a rare peek at the a glorious sunny day in Boston in April. We have been doing opening day for close to forty years in a row, which not only established a “forever” friendship with the same fellows, several of whom we have lost. It has contributed to my delinquency, in that year when I was arrested at Boston’s Logan airport for having two joints in the top of my suitcase along side some recording equipment, which ultimately was what led to the inspection of my bag on the top of which was two joints.
I was on my way to Long Beach, California to meet Jim Uhls and Dan Neiden in L.A. With these two collaborators I was developing an animated take on talking head/political shows in the “FIRING LINE” modality that had surged at the time focusing on political rhetoric and the hyped up sense of what is now the common tendency for an OPINION NATION.
Of course, when the state-y with her knee-high storm trooper boots and Princess Leia danishes of red hair asked for my I.D. she miscalculated the license’s official date of birth and said:
“So, you are 51?” “No,” I said, “I am 53.”
“Oh, so you want the last word, hunh? Fine.”
At which point she took my hands and handcuffed me, and perp-walked me past the others in the line, and down into the Logan’s Police station. At that point once inside the Hoosgau, she sat me down on a wooden bench adjacent to a chainlink cyclone fence. Yes, this was the interior of the police station. She uncuffed one of my hands and the other she attached to the chainlink fence. She then proceeded to try and find out if Jonathan Goldman had a criminal record on what she described as a “Ronald Reagan era computer.” When another officer entered the room after about a half hour, he inquired as to what was taking so long with this guy? She would offer up that it was because the computers so slow.
I had made my phone calls first to the Airlines to make sure I could get on another flight. At that point my 8:30 flight had left. I did get on another flight later that after noon.
The second phone call I made was to my wife, who was delivering one of our kids to school, and she was trying to downplay the fact that I told her I had just been arrested so she wouldn’t freak out. She in turn called my mother, who called my godfather who called a high priced lawyer to get me out.
But I couldn’t help but think of Arlo Guthrie’s much-played never-ending tune of Alice Restaurant, playing in my head as I sat on the “GROUP W” bench, which as a protest antiwar anthem, probably meant WAR PROTESTER’S BENCH. Next to the Father-rapers. Actually handcuffed to a cyclone fence. But it got worse. In Guthrie’s tune, he is arrested and harassed for dumping garbage on Thanksgiving Day in the Western part of the state. I was being arrested for possessing two joints, left over from our spring celebration party from opening day, the night before.
The jack-booted State-y uncuffed my other arm and put me in zip ties with my hands behind my back, and then proceeded to place me in LEG FETTERS. For two joints. Arlo echoing in my mind saying: “Now Obie-” (the name of the chief of police who will forever be in my imagination a mix between Rod Steiger in THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT and the drunk on Mayberry, RFD)but it was his reply that was echoing loudest:
“… “Sargeant, you got a lot a damn gall to
ask me if I’ve rehabilitated myself, I mean, I mean, I mean that just, I’m sittin’ here on the bench, I mean I’m sittin here on the Group W bench ’cause you want to know if I’m moral enough join the army, burn women, kids, houses and villages after bein’ a litterbug.”– from ALICE’S RESTAURANT/ THANKGIVING DAY MASSACRE”
Once with the leg-fetters on, along with the other petty criminals, I was hustled into the Boston Police van, and driven to the East Boston Jail, a place I had only been to with my wife and a friend to help her file a restraining order against her abusive husband. We lived less than a block away in East Boston in the late 1980’s.
The interior of the bowels of that jail were dim, windowless and a visual demarkation of the word “dank”. I soon knew that as the only white male I was gonna be the only one let out soon. While all together, there may have been four or five of us, and I was clearly the oldest. They would innocently fall into that oft-repeated conversation of so many film noir/prison scenes with “What are you in for?” And some of the answers were astoundingly sad and banal.
“I had broken into this place in Maverick Square through a basement window, but by the time the cops came I couldn’t figure out how to get back outside again…”
A lawyer showed up, and proved that he would be the most expensive part of the day for me. He told me about how this process would go. And then after a bit, he would escort me to stand in front of a judge, and when it was announced what I was there for, he exasperatedly announced something like “get this guy out of here, I have serious work to do…”
It encapsulated all of my thinking. I was then allowed to cross the street accompanied by the high priced lawyer, to the ATM and get the cash for the $100 fine. Within the next year marijuana would be legalized in the State of Massachusetts.
It was a brush with a kind of low-level authoritarianism, and amidst the deportations now by ICE at TUFTS and other places, in what will appear to be careless ineptitude on the part of the arresting forces, this rise in social dissembling is beyond chilling. This weekend, for the first time there were massive protests in all 50 states again the populist surge in authoritarian principles.
But the bottled-orange Village Idiot will not back down on his tariffs which will be punitive in all corners of the world, like the unintended outcome of a toxic tantrum by a delusional narcissist.
Just because tariffs are within the context of international Business, his claim to understand their use is reckless, not just to world stability, but to the very core of real allegiances, not the kind that Laura Loomer sees as traitorous, but to longstanding partners in world leadership. There are far more important issues to wrangle with than a grift to shakedown the “other” nations for pecuniary advantage. By charging an unbelievable tax on the imports, he sees it as a kind of level reckoning, when it is just a power/financial grab that will simply hit consumers as a tax.
That some of these sovereign places are ATOLLS in the SOUTH PACIFIC that are UNINHABITED, like the irony of asking if someone wants to kill for our country because you have illegally dumped garbage or were in possession of two pot cigarettes, is more than a repeated cosmic joke.
Proportionality is simply another TRUTH LOST AT SEA.
India Journal
January 31, 2020
Nagaur Fort,Rajasthan, India
We have been here more than a week, and although we are seemingly on the move, today finds us taking a breath. Having driven about five and a half miles from Jaipur, (“The Pink City” named for its gigantic walled city of terracotta enclosure painted for the arrival King Edward ll, in the late nineteenth century, it has a bustle not uncommon everywhere we have been thus far. Unlike other trips, where time has been set aside to digest the immense amount of cultural overload, India has simply washed over us to a pretty much positive feeling as was predicted by most friends and family who have traveled here saying “you will love it”.
But, in that short period of a week, Much has happened. We first arrived in Delhi, having traveled business class to Dubai, which clocking in at about 13 hours comes with a fold out flight “cubicle” so you have a bed of sorts. Not necessarily an even sleep, it was remarkable in that we were alone in our cabin. We arrived at the Marriot in that major city’s “aerocity” ( near the airport) with an overwhelming introduction to the UAE ( and Worldwide) sense of capitalism with over-the-top consumer products which have long been part of the tourist industry. For me, it is both a bit disturbing as a driving economic engine driven by chocolate, tobacco, alcohol and “fashion” and for developing worlds a harbinger of more waste, careless consumerism, depletion of resources all in the interest of providing jobs, incomes and the endless need for more.
All of that leads us to interactions with the people, who are consistently those in service to us tourists. That means the drivers, the guides, representatives of the tour company, the waitstaff, and in some instances the owners of the small hotels we populate, (Marriot, of course NOT being one of those).
Everyone has been wonderful, generous and accommodating, as one might expect. We have had two drivers: one from Delhi to Jaipur ( Ajit) and one from a small village outside of Jaipur ( Vikram). In addition to shepherding you through the organized chaos of driving in these cities and country roads, they are also your touchstones for culture in some ways when a formal guide isn’t with you.
We learned for example that most weddings happen at this propitious time of the year, that most are arranged marriages, and everyone has children although not many. I asked one of the guides, who was showing the unbelievable Taj Mahal, about his arranged marriage:
“…Are you happy?”
“Too late to do anything about that now,” he responded.
Vikram, our current driver would tell us that most marriages for love do not last. I thought that to be a stark cultural difference. The drivers both have remarked that they support Modi, the current Indian president who has developed a strong nationalist following and is trying to isolate Muslims to the Kashmir and to establish a Hindu dominance.
You do see and hear Muslim presence constantly both with the call to prayer, and the feminine distinctive burka, and skull caps, for men which is in stark difference to the turbans of the Hindu grandfathers and Sikh’s formalize head dress.
But the Mughal (Muslim) influence is overwhelming, in architecture, and many other things resulting in the lure for exoticism which is a primary engine for this driven culture. Much of the cities that we would visit show a great deal of the cultural drive since the 1947 Independence. It is displayed in many ways but as we drive and walk around the various cities towns and villages, it is from a view of the traveler, which is an alienating viewpoint, undoubtedly. Everyone smiles, tries to be accommodating, but there are subtle and not-so-subtle ways that you remain alien. Except for the First class passengers in an airline queue who eschew all that the hoi polloi have to go through, you are like everyone else, and it is here that the indignities of time-sensitivity and forced security collide producing the real undertone of how people behave.
Over all, we sensed a great feeling of vanity even narcissism in many of the large scale masses of folks that we would subject ourselves to in fairs, and public spaces, small packed market side streets. And the aggressiveness of those with motors over those who either are on pedal bikes or motor scooters/bikes was a cultural constant that is beyond annoying. In old Delhi, for example, very narrow streets say twenty-five feet wide at the widest, are congested with the presence of small shoe-horned stalls spilling into the streets, with multiple generations hawking their wares or simply seated on the floor awaiting clients. On the street itself there are tuk-tuks; tourist pedal-rickshaws driving over potholes (actually getting off the bikes to push the overweight protected Europeans, Canadiens, Americans from tour buses aplenty); motor scooters like the Vespas, and motorbikes; Small freight haulers perhaps pulled by tractor with overburdened trailers, some of them pulled by one man and assisted by two others when they too are over whelmed by the potholes.
All of them beeping of course, to inform you that they are behind you and because they are powered, as if their forward movement is more important than yours, ( more on that later) constant. You know they are there , you hear their motors, so their beep is not the highway beep telling you they are there, or that they are intending to pass you. No, it is simply –’get out of my way…I am moving here’
We always crave for that aforementioned “real” experience, not the tourist manufactured one, but we still found ourselves in Old Delhi unavoidably captive to it, succumbing to a pre-arranged “quick trip” through the paper, publishing, fabric and vegetable markets via a pedal rickshaw. At one point, we are moving down a crowded side street, and one vendor, leaning out of his shop and looking down the street got whacked in the head by the fabric and metal frame of the rickshaw as we pedaled by, ensuring what I am convinced was “Hey you fucking idiot, watch where you are going! You fucking hit me in the head.” Was this an occupational hazard? Sticking your head out into moving traffic in an overcrowded tiny side street?
But the kind of crass carelessness of it is indicative of what I mean by the vanity and self-obsessed nature of this culture. The more I think of the ubiquity of the cell phone for example, and the incessant need for the “selfie” of individuals, of groups—everywhere—is universally apparent. It is true throughout South, Central and (now in Indonesia) everywhere.
Our one guide in Delhi, Jessica, ( our only female guide) is a very interesting person. She says she comes from an educated family, her brother, formerly in IT now works to develop a solar cooking product with a battery, and it is his work as an electrical engineer that he is re-tooling for the greater good. She was teacher, got her masters in English literature with Shakespeare as a favorite, but has been a guide for 35 years. She is 65 and despite diabetes, she, like many guides, loves her job. She says she finds her teaching has actually morphed away from young students who do not care to those like us who areinterested, and, of course that is a gratification both to her instincts as a teacher, but also as someone who is geared to passing on her cultural knowledge.
Remarkably, she has only traveled in India. For economic reasons, this is pretty commonplace among those we have spoken to. But different from the various drivers we have had ( some for whom mastering English is not so great) she IS politically astute, aware of the intricacies of complexities of the political system and aware of how power works or is corrupted in India. She is not for the PM Modi, who is to visit tomorrow ( February 24th, 2020) with the US PRESIDENT and have a love fest with what Salman Rushdie calls the “MODI TOADIES”. “I love the Hindu,” says T-Rump. Like most nonsensical shit flowing from that man’s lips, it is a cipher, tending towards a Cracker Jack Box view-of-the-world. Hinduism is a religion, Donnie, not a people; the language, of which there are many dialects, is “Hindi” but there is also Urdu, Sanscrit (being revived) and a gazillion regional languages. By why quibble of the TRUTH when toadies are rapt by your every ( ignorant) word.
Jessica provides insight both to the power of Indira Gandhi as a politician with a famous name, but also as a woman whose forceful response to Pakistan during their war with that country was so decisive. She tells of Gandhi’s assassination whom many believed was due to that conflict, and briefly mentions her son’s predeceasing her with his young death at 34 in an airplane accident of his own piloting.
Sanjay’s death was traumatic of course for Indira Gandhi, but his insistence on flying the plane himself and then performing stunt just prior to the crash despite warning of his inability to do such things successfully and the glider’s poor performance capability, raises the question of a kind of arrogance, of an heir apparent. It is oddly connected to both aforementioned selfie obsession and the nationwide narcissistic tendency. All of it pointing to the conditioning of centuries of a caste system, now widely mentioned as something which is archaic and not practiced anymore. In the case of the motorcycles dominating small market side streets, like scenes from the Wild Ones where motorcycle gangs apotheosis becomes a fixture of Americana with Harley Davidson as the icon of the modern American Rebel, it is about the influx of affordable small powered bikes that can give the average Indian teen mobility. The same is true of the ubiquity of mobile phones and the selfie that is a bonus to “intelligent” “communication”.
Prior the concept of a camera was only available to the wealthy, and was prohibitively expensive; “now everyone”, Jessica explains “can have a camera in their phones. It is in a small way empowering.” “And, the downside,” I suggest, “ is everyone considers themselves an auteur, a photographer, a filmmaker.”
As an image maker, it was gratifying to meet a young artist at Mona and Harsh’s house, who came late as we were about to leave with their son who ironically was visiting from Boston where he and his Argentinian girlfriend lived. This young artist Ishram, was working in alternative photographic media, like lithography, gum-dichromate printing and silver processes. His sense of shape and form reminding me of the geometric forms of Barnett Newman among others, were refined, stripped to their most essential blacks and halftones, and were preternaturally mature.
In a way his approach as it was briefly told to me, recalle the kind of stoicism of John Whereat, my late sculptor pal who clung to older traditional forms of figurative work and of Sean Nixon another deep childhood friend who actually studied photography and turned me onto gum dichromate, cyanotype and other “alternative processes”. My earliest works like ‘hydra’ was a gum dichromate piece depicting the 3cm creature from an image in my high school biology textbook.
Meeting Mona, her husband and her parents, was a genuine pleasure with an emphasis on genuine. It is my idea of how to travel by connecting with those in foreign places, and is rooted in my grandmother’s taking an interest in Dickie Chaio originally in the sixties and then continued through my mother’s leasing of a third floor room in her Victorian home in Philadelphia, ironically Margaret Mead’s parent’s house before my parents bought it from them. That room housed people from Baguio, The Philippines, Uganda, Surinam, Hungary, Poland, Chile, Sumatra, Germany, France. India was the first with Dr. Balu Athreya, who was a colleague of my late father as they were residents together at Children’s hospital in Philadelphia. I recently found Balu again after 50 some odd years a deeply respected Pediatric Epidemiologist, living in Delaware. ****
AGRA
I remember studying the Taj Mahal in either an architecture class, an ancient Art class or an Art History Survey course in college. I remember it being primarily about symmetry and love. As a seventh Wonder of the World you secretly suspect you will be transformed in its presence. It is a two and a half century old marvel which I didn’t remember all of the information surrounding it of course. I did remember that it was built by Shah Jahan for his wife. I had forgotten the reason for her death. Jahan had many wives, and but Mumtaz Mahal was his favorite. Along with the concept of bigamy, the idea of a favorite only reinforces the male dominated nature of this society, but our guide, a seasoned guide since 1982, it all seemed to be about love. And yet Mumtaz died in child birth after her fourteenth child. It reminded me of home and the battle with religious extremists fighting to overturn Roe v. Wade, just one of many regressive policies embraced by the current WH wanton throwback.
I have found that when traveling in another country finding out what is “real” versus what is speculation or hearsay or maybe just pop culture spew, is a hard wade through the limited time we have to decipher it. You are listening often to a limited perspective, one that may not be quite truthful or simply known firsthand. It is all subjective.
And for this trip in particular as a kind of reflection of turning sixty-one (how did I get here? And, wait a minute — weren’t the eighties just yesterday???!) I am finally viewing everyone else’s take on a place may be very different from my own. Moments ago in Nagaur at a Cattle Market, (nagaur bulls are a special breed, e.g.) Nicole made plain this very notion when she said: ‘Everyone mentioned how colorful India was…I don’t necessarily see it…’ I said as we were driving passed women in very bright red Sari’s ‘well, there are the Sari’s… the pink architecture…’ She responded…’ yeah, but what about the Caribbean or South East Asia?‘ I reminded her that Vikram, our driver had suggested that Holee, a festival to celebrate Lord Rama’s wife throwing of color at him, is a color festival not really celebrated by the locals anymore, it is more for tourists. My point is that it is all relative exposure and experience. I am not saying we are jaded, but we have seen a lot, so expectations when offered through someone else’s experience can be misleading if you do not take into account their experience. SO when hearing things like their views, we need a filter of some kind to weed through the relative degrees of viewpoint. This will be a take-away from this trip.
In any event the delicate detail, the symmetry, the controversy, and the Taj as an act of devotional love is beyond remarkable. And we saw it from many angles. Our hotel bedroom, about five miles from the Taj could be easily seen from our window, and when we arrived its hue began to be really lovely like an “eat-a-Peach” album cover in the mist. Same was true of the next morning, foggy though it was. We would head to
Mahtab Bagh across the Yamuna River a “moonlight garden”, which Persian designers would suggest was one of four rivers which marked North, South, East and West all representative of the Mughal concept of Paradise in the form of a garden.
Jahan was jailed by his son for the last eight years of his life in the nearby Mahal Fort, where inside of carved marble fenestration he could see the beloved mausoleum of his wife. His son would rule for another 40 years or so. Jahan had plans to make a “black marble” mausoleum for himself connected by a bridge our guide told us as a romantic way to suggest that his spirit and that of his late wife could meet halfway further cementing the love story in history.
All in all, the long cherished idea of seeing the real Taj Mahal was truly wonderful. Our 1990’s experience with the impeached president’s former commissioning to build a 40×25’ bow and 300’ ribbon that opened when a laser beam hit it for his bastardized and disastrous casino of the same name in Atlantic City, can now be forgotten as an aberrant Americanization of this truly shimmering paean to a 17th Century Love.
We left Agra with fond memories of that destination heading for Jaipur, a place that again had been described as wonderful. It is one of those crazy cities, dominated by male driving, beeping, noise, begging, and opportunity. The beeping is incessant. Two short beeps meaning ‘I am here’, and being right handed driving one long beep meaning I am passing you on the right. But the rest is a kind of a randomized chaos, where tuk-tuks, motobikes, bicycles, small cars and lorries over laden with huge bags draping over the sides and even perhaps leaning a bit precariously to one side or the other as if it might topple.
And none of this describes the aggressive motorcycles who come the wrong way down the street, in the intersections in a constant flow. It reminded me of the kind of organic flow of the internal protoplasm of an organism; nothing quite hitting anything else, almost symbiotic, always ( knock on wood) just missing. All of it paralleling the fighting kites (the flying tensile structures not the birds although they are there as well). The recipe for driving is according to the drivers: Good Brakes, Good Horn and Good Karma.
Jaipur and Derwa Mandawa and day trips to a Block printing workshop.
The Best and Exotic Marigold Hotel a wonderful film directed by John Madden seems like an otherworldly love story based in Jaipur of what turns out to be really something you can actually experience. We had been told about Derwa Mandawa, a Brahmin family’s former compound which he turned into an hotel. Inevitably you meet people in these environments like the charming characters in the film. And we did. A couple from Portland, Mary Ruth and Michael, who had a company which sold organic mattresses. They overheard us talking saying the word ‘Gado-gado’ which we had remarked was an Indonesian dish we were looking forward to when we returned to Bali. Gado-gado was the name of a restaurant in Portland and it peaked their interest. We explained what it was and conversation started. We were eating dinner next to them in the dining room of what had been owner Durga’s house, where the Maharaja at the time of his great grandfather had given the family property. Now he was running it as a hotel, hidden down a narrow driveway off a noisy, dirty main street.
Durga is a gentleman in the truest sense of the word; he is the boss, that his dutiful staff attend to always with a smile. His tell tale turban is a sign of his Hindu faith, and his horn rimmed glasses, tweed jacket and accommodating demeanor is the epitome of gentleness. Sasha, Steve Isaac and Nicole called while we were there on my birthday, and I remarked to them that he had a kind of radiance about him, a word use which I will never live down or hear the end of…But he made an impression on both of us, and it set the tone for the place.
That morning, also ‘Republic Day’ (the day in 1947 that they got independence from the U.K.) Durga and a few of the staff delivered a birthday cake from my mother and father in-law first thing along with a song and a gamelan of cowbells sung to Happy Birthday. The cake was incredible. And apparently my mother in-law is known for this far-flung gift giving. Being a diabetic, hadn’t somehow registered in her thinking but the thought and transcontinental effort was much appreciated.
We would head out to Bagru about 28 km outside of Jaipur for a two-day workshop on the ancient craft of block printing. As a precursor, back at home we had made paper and I had ordered some linoleum for making some prints. ( I even brought somewith me in case I could do it again. But in Bagru a place known for its block printing, we learned from the owner, again a very nice fellow who patiently told us about the mud resist process, the process of using indigo baths, and how to actually make it, and most importantly about the organic approach to producing color from natural materials and how to make them color fast using limestone, mud and mordants like Alum. We then made a few samples, Nicole starting and me filming her doing the tests. I then did some tests as well.
There are of course many parts to this process, there is the very thin muslin that is woven, that will be the “fabric part”. There is the carving of repeatable block of wood with appropriate handles for making an imprint; there is the chemistry of color, and the knowledge of which color behaves which way, in other words that a natural substrate although looks yellow upon application may actually be an alizarin crimson red; then there is the mud itself used to make the fabric resist color and the kind of photographic mindset of thinking in negative terms in creating “whites”; then there is the multiple application of color in layers and the subsequent indigo dip; and in between there is the drying, either on the cobblestone driveway or suspended on elaborate structures for longer runs of fabric. Finally there is a washing ( and drying ). So in a word it is complicated leaving only much practice to learn. HOWEVER, Nicole created a pattern her mud resist piece that was just GREAT with everyone saying it looked professional.
Never one to be linearly directed, I did a freehand version of an OKAPI, from the computer painting I had completed a few weeks prior, producing a strikingly different application of mud resist.
We went to a restaurant that evening called Niros and had excellent tandoori chicken. I do like the food so far, even the simple daal lunch with naan, we had each day at the workshop, but I eat far less.
We would also eat at an Afghani restaurant “Peshwari” in a very fancy hotel, filled with Indian weddings ( it is the season) having a leg of lamb that was excellent.
As a last parting gift I played a song for Durga Taj Mahal’s “Fishing Blues” on my guitarlele which was fun. Then, not to be outdone, he sang along with a classic Hindi song and I recorded him doing that.
I will say that the rooms in Jaipur at Derwa Mandawa and now in Nagaur are very large and elegant. Nagaur is known for its fort, and for its breed of bull which we saw today at a “cattle fair”, an auction of many large animals like white horses and others for siring, some with pointed ears sold for weddings, and bulls for use in fields and one assumes for siring as well. We are staying inside the fort, in the center of the town, a 36 acre site with a 1.8km wall around it. It is a major destination site complete with fountains, and huge pools, elaborate bedrooms and interconnected courtyards, stairwells, look-out points. The Maharaja who owned it had 16 wives. We have one of the two largest, the next door one was once occupied by Sir Mick (jagger) himself. AThe surrounding gardens and restored frescoes are stunningly reconditioned and renovated by the Courtauld Institute and The Getty. At dramatic sunsets, we walked the wall waving to little kids on the houses across the street from the wall. Seeing the kites flying again reminds me of Jaipur where you would see kites in trees everywhere.
Nagaur / Jodhpur
Not to sound like a travelogue, but the hotels we stay in are called “heritage” hotels, meaning that they are former nobleman (BRAHMIN) houses converted into multi room boutique hotels. So far that is what we have been staying in different cities . Derwa Mandewa was our first one of those kind of places and it st the tone of expectation. It also helps to explain the social strata system long employed by the ruling class here. Maharajas would be like a city’s all powerful boss mayor. His (and it is still a male dominated society) largess would include an inner circle of trusted nobleman. Those nobleman would be granted property and often would build immense homes from the proceeds of taxes from other lower caste members giving allegiance to that Nobleman. There is also different beliefs systems, often by region, like the Jain today representing a middle class merchant caste often proudly generations old. As a huge crossroads in the spice trade, for example, they still to this day have in many cities businesses, a few of which we would travel to and purchase from, like fabric traders, spice traders, thread dealers etc.
Our driver, Vikram, is 31, strikingly handsome albeit a little lanky, with a square jaw, a great moustache and Ray ban aviator glasses. He drives a new Toyota Extended SUV, which he meticulously cleans everyday and cares for as it is owned by the company who commissions him, Sita. ( named after the Lord Rama’s wife whom he rescues from Lanka (she is kidnapped and kept in the mythology on Sri Lanka). ( if you like animation, SITA SINGS THE BLUES is a great film and is a telling of this ancient story. He has a 2 1/2 daughter and he and his wife communicate via cellphone and Face time as we will often have lunch together on the road. He explains things that our site-specific guides do not; things like language meanings, activities along the road, transportation issues, and he is familiar with each of the cities via connections to “friends” and family members for referalls regarding places to see and potentially purchase things. (dhurrie rugs, fabric wholesalers, music shops etc.)
We leave Jaipur with him and travel to Nagaur, a place known for it huge ancient fort called Ahhichatragarh. It is tucked away in the middle of this small city lined by narrow streets again with tuk-tuks and motorcycles all beeping to announce that they are behind you, coming at you (from all angles regardless of the proper distinction of traffic lanes). This “haveli” or heritage hotel called Nanvas is completely remarkable started construction from the 4th century, and really was in hey day in the 14thCentury. It has been undergoing serious renovation with help by The Getty Foundation and The Courtauld Museum ( London) and other granting agencies. The rooms were most like the Oberoi we went to in Bali with attention to every detail, and accompanying costumed attendants surreptitiously appearing seemingly out of nowhere to offer help. This fort and the attempts to renovate were more than brave, they were beautifully accommodated.
February 12, 2020
Haridwar. Uttarakhand
We have traveled a lot, each time with drivers: it is the only way to travel here as the traffic, general unpredictability of others is simple mindboggling. First out of Delhi, with Ajit, then with Vikram, with Nanda to Haridwar Each had his own ability with English, and would have the pre-requisite discussions based on personal pride relating to immediate family, politics regarding their take on Modi, Bhagat Singh vs. Gandhi, traffic, cars and, in some cases there are questions about US, and why things are the way they are. Most of the travel happens through a combination of highways and small towns, with the small towns being overcrowded traffic nightmares, often described to us by those who have preceded us.
We have seen so much. I am finding it arduous to digest and more so to regurgitate events and places in my own mind and to be able to parse those collected experiences. When we traveled around the world in 2002, somehow it was easier but that was eighteen years ago, and I am slowing down and finding my memory short circuiting.
Ranakpur
Between Jaipur and Jodhpur at Ranakpur Temple I was truly amazed by the sophisticated intricacy of the carving of all surfaces, columns, domed ceilings, sculptures, figures, relics, doorways, tunnels. But most impressive was the fact of its origin: a dream told from one person to another and then over the course of fifty years realized by 3,000 carvers. The fact that this, like so many incredible feats that men create from nothing where planning, design, cooperation, muscle, mathematics, spiritual inspiration and leadership combine over the course of half a century is of course spell binding when you are in its presence. It exudes power and the energy put into it seems to be a constancy of radiation.
The Mandala-like patterns imbedded into the interior of the domes are evidence of that as you stand there looking up, marveling. But more than that the head-phoned description as you look up, read by the sonorous omniscient voice with an Indian/British accent, tells that this was an exact replica of one man’s dream told to another. It is difficult enough to remember your dreams, forget about trying to retell them; and, of course next to impossible to understand how in the mythical time of the 15th century, such a telling could be so dutifully recorded, not to mention built.
Again, it made my skeptic beacon start to flash, or at the very least question with My Favorite Martian antennae. Sure, I can give over to the telling of tale tales from the ancients, I have long loved all Greek Myths. But while the Greco-Roman sculpture and Romanticist painting depicts millennia of Greek Gods doing this and that, I have a context in which to put them: they are myths, regardless of the belief systems of my atheistic modern time. The fantastical can be invented surely, and as long as there are great story tellers we can expect fantasy to be part of culture.
But while we have been gone, Fantasy, myth, fabrication have crossed a boundary which decried by the media has transgressed to a despicably un American lawless place, which seeing from afar really both disgusts me in a new way, and saddens me deeply. We have morphed US politics effecting the world in such a divisive way that being remote from home has made plain to me a new kind of bleak reality. The “president” has again snaked his way out of his sloppy and crude inabilities by actively, corruptly and disruptively esc hewing indictment from his impeachment yoke while soon thereafter the Democrats have completely bungled their Iowa caucus. It leaves a sense of instability which only serves to dissemble further our hopes of change, and more importantly a secure future.
Since writing that, Bernie Sanders has made a show of it in the Nevada caucus proving my point that the change we will have could be politically profound. But it is the instability the wide swings of decimating environmental policy, general neglect towards average Americans towards a new nationalism, (echoing the Indian PM’s moves to foster the furthering of an us vs. them culture driven by fear of the other)and generally seeing government as an opportunistic vanity fair masquerading as a Temp agency.
I have tried, as Nicole has constantly urged to “be here now” in the Richard Alpert (BABA Ram Dass) way, but as a citizen of the world I can see the impacts that this fool and his minions wreak. It just eats at me. Yes like change, I know the constants of the world, like depravity, economic greed, hostility, war, and gross ignorance. But when the Stupids take over, it remains the job of the vigilant to fight against those things.
Before we left I re-watched Attenborough’s Gandhi, and Passage to India David Lean’s epic.
Depicted in both were great characters laced with Innocence and intelligence. At their core in conflict, these defining characters like Gandhi and Dr. Aziz are coupled with the fortitude of Resolve, a deliberate Persistence as well as deepened, transcendent tragedy. India wins independence through Gandhi’s sheer will, rhetorical and legal skill. At the core is of course a concrete non-violence, unlike (we are later to learn on the trip) a different approach by that of Bhagat Singh, an ardent revolutionary and nationalist who believed that change was critical by any means necessary. He and Gandhi were seemingly polar opposites on how to achieve independence. Or at least that is the takeaway I can describe. Both were of course assassinated, leading to a long line of hostility, separations and other assassinations much of which continues even today under Modi, as nationalism is on the rise.
With Passage a young Cloistered British woman seems to emerge from her shell, fascinated by the Indian continent as a young Hindu man, her guide, becomes smitten with her despite the strong separations of caste, class and nationality not to mention the imprint of the British Raj. They travel to historic caves, where she briefly disappears ultimately to be found tragically beaten up and possibly raped.
Gandhi’s peaceful approach is world known and lauded and since his assassination his lionization has been held up as both a symbol of India’s true modern identity through self-
determination, but also as an inspiration today when much of the world is separated by belief and by the inequities of poverty and the financial trappings of overdevelopment and the wealth that comes from that. His philosophy, like our own MLK’s is one of healing, of bridge building and repair, or parity with the natural world, of taking walls between down not constructing new ones.
The issue of rape and racism ( as it unfolds in Passage) has a deep symbolic and immediate impact but curiously serves as a touchstone in my viewing of Passageas I did not realize that it would be a premonition of sorts when we arrive in Haridwar.
We have driven a lot here mostly through farm land with huge swaths of beautiful green: of mustard, eucalyptus, poplar stands, wheat and sugar cane. And in the field there are both men and women, although I think it is mostly women. Imagining them in these verdant fields in the heat of April, May and June is practically unconscionable (no matter which sex). It is odd seeing women in sarees in the fields as dungarees or field clothing one might think would be more appropriate, but it is what they have and it probably is cooler than any other form of clothing.
The men are often the drivers of the inexpensive but ubiquitous motorbikes and definitely of the huge John Deere and other kinds of tractors that are so overburdened with their carry as to be almost cartoonish. The motorbikes with four or five inexplicably balanced, including the baby sandwiched in their somewhere. All of the road movement is a careful almost biological balance, like a murmuration (that hypnotic conflagration of starlings flying leaderlessly changing course in the air in such an inspirational way, rendering kinetic sculpture of any kind a poor attempt at depicting artful movement.
When we get to the long awaited “residency” called Azimuth Ashram in Haridwar we are pretty shocked by the bleak offerings. We meet Corrine Enkvist, an arts writer and former gallerist from Croatia, whom we will grow very fond of and ultimately share quarters with.
Corrine Enkvist and Nicole in Azimuth Ashram living Room
Both Corrine and Nicole are stunned by the conditions of where we are to stay. The bathroom connected to our room is dirty, the room is tiny, as is the single studio.
Tarun in Haridwar, just before we depart for Rishikesh
The fellow running it, Tarun is of very gentle demeanor, and largely well-meaning. He lives in this two story building with an open roof like many of the surrounding dwellings in one room with his 75 year old mother and his brother.
The atmosphere of the place permeated a kind of joylessness. And while peeling paint and dingy walls, sparse fluorescent light and old and modest furnishings are ubiquitous in many places, it all appeared kind of destitute.
In comparison, we visited the parents and sister of a friend from Woods Hole who live in modest houses one in Chandigarh, and one in Delhi. Both parents and sister were from an educated class, had been successful in their careers, and subsequently and tastefully decorated their homes with artwork that they had collected either from other family members who were artists and that they were passionate to share with others. At Mona and Harsh’s we were at the end of our visit when their Boston-based son and his Argentine wife arrived with their friend who was an artist. Harsh eagerly introduced Ishwar as “the young artist” to me the “elder artist” and of course we hit it off for the brief time that we were together. Harsh had described a purchase of a painting behind us, by a prominent Indian artist called Picasso’s Goat a well painted piece riffing on Picasso’s goat.
It was clear that art and Artists were not only valued they were openly supported. Now to be fair, Harsh was in finance, and worked for Unilever for a long while, and was well-to-do. He like his father-inlaw, Pramod who is our friend Hanu’s father was Brahmin, was educated, and certainly worldly. Mona, Hanu’s sister and Harsh’s wife had been an elementary school teacher prior to raising her kids. So these were intelligent people, who would travel outside of India, and appreciate art.
Conversely, Tarun had little or nothing on the walls which only added to a abstemious dreariness. In our room, upstairs, there were small framed pictures like the type we would see at road side shops of Ganesha, of Rama and Sita, and of Shiva. In the adjacent room which we would use for morning meditation and yoga, he did have a previous artists work on the wall framed: little caricatures of Tarun in the various poses of Yoga that we were to daily practice.
To my mind the expectations for an artistic residency as it was presented to us via an online aggregator site of several of them, was that this really an ascetic but fulfilling experience to be had.
I want to believe that I wasn’t expecting India’s version of the MacDowell or Skowhegan in summer, but perhaps I was. In talking with Corrine a great deal afterwards we determined that we were not insane, that in fact we had been misled by the online presentation of Azimuth. Both she and I felt that it was the best in terms of articulately presenting what we thought was a legitimate artist residency. My expectations were that we would be welcomed into a community, like the experience we had in Ein Hod, Israel, where we rented an artist’s house and could use his studio when he was stateside.
The Israeli house in Ein Hod was an extraordinary time, productive with new ideas, opportunities and inspirations to be creative. We met and interacted with the people of the artists village, ate with them, laughed with them, shopped with them, learned about the community’s roots in DADA, visited and connected with its own little museum, even developed a relationship that led to further interactions in NYC with its director and her husband who ran two of Haifa’s major museums. Ein Hod met the promise of opportunity and inspiration. So we knew it could be done.
And then there is the very idea of what constitutes a “residency”. My expectations had more to do with a direct integration of whatever we were to produce within a larger community.
Ultimately this was not to be.
Tarun is a devout vegetarian, Hindu and yoga aficionado. Apparently he likes to draw and the interaction with artists, and from his internet posts he champions local artisanry and craft, like the recent posted about stone carving.
After running a British tech company he sold his share returning home to Haridwar. So it seemed on the surface that his intent was altruistic a midlife refocus, that it was with good intention to develop intellectual dialogues about art, and give artists the opportunity both to interact with the larger community and to create new work. All under the aegis of having a brief taste of the “spiritual” side of an historically significant religious area.
The spiritual side of that was–to us– the LEAST important side of it what we were looking for. I had been researching animals for my large ink painting series on creatures on the verge of extinction, for example, and found the Gangetic Dolphin. The habitat for this unusual fresh water mammal species, although in the Ganges, was not close to us, but I still felt that I would paint it. We had visited a paper manufacturer Salim in Jaipur, purchased a bunch of paper with the full intent of using it for a large painting and some fabric seconds that Nicole had obtained from the workshop in Bagru.
We had it shipped to Haridwar along with a sheet of linocut that I wanted carve and to develop at the azimuth ashram, but that was not to happen. At Bagru, I did a freehand version of the mud resist process of a Okapi, also from that series. So I was thinking and producing in that vein, in India. But the only space that I could actually do that in would have been on the roof, which was beyond filthy, painting would happen on the roof itself, and there was the warning about monkeys coming into our room with the proviso that we had to keep our room locked to prevent them from coming in and fucking with our stuff. There was a postage stamp of a “studio” also next door, really nothing more than a closet but much smaller than could accomodate several large pieces of paper.
It became clearer the longer each minute passed that it was not just that Azimuth was spartan, and the brain child of an ascetic who wanted to populate his surrounding with artists and writers whom he might find some kind of inspiration and they from a spiritual pursuit as a worthy part of his offerings. Hinduism was excepting of all, he would say. Haridwar, literally ‘the gateway to the Gods’ is, like neighboring Rishikesh, considered the holiest of places partially due to the towns’ proximity to what they call the MamaGanga or the Ganges, one of the great Rivers of the world.
But Tarun as the night wore on was really beginning to show signs of a progressive form of parkinson’s disease. We arrived on Tuesday at about 5pm, had a very slight dinner at 7 of aloo ghobi (potatoes and peas), daal (lentils) and a spicy version of chapati( a small round grilled flatbread sometimes with a spicy sauce on the inside).
We would talk until about 9:30 when we all went off to bed. But as the conversation between Corrine, Nicole, Tarun and I moved forward, his shaking hand, or a contoured foot would extend uncontrollably mid-sentence as he would completely ignore it.
At first I thought it was deep stages of MS in a more extreme form, but on the morning of the next day, I felt I had to ask him about his condition. “this level of shaking etc. has only progressed recently,” he would offer confirming that it was a late onset of Parkinson’s disease.
I expected a certain asceticism with morning yoga as part of the routine, as he would describe the “program” the night before as we all decided what time to awake, and conduct a yoga session with breathing exercises. Both breathing and yoga for some weird reason, brought me back to the Barn El basement and early morning exercise routines with the dancer choreographer Ara Fitzgerald at the National Theatre Institute (O’Neill Center).
Nicole and Corrine were freaked out by the conditions of the place, very early on. In fact they were in shock to some extent, as the place was really decrepit, dirty and seemingly unprepared for our arrival. The shock had more to do with moving heaven and earth to CHANGE our schedule at the outset of our residency due to the low quality of living conditions.
As soon as we had arrived we met Corrine, a pretty Croatian of 52, an arts writer, a mother, and former Gallerist, who formerly had been married to a broker from Connecticut and had lived in New York and London where she had studied Arts Management, coincidentally enough, at Christies and through Columbia got her MA. I think she had done well with her gallery in Zagreb where she currently lives but had grown weary of the artists never-ending neediness.
What immediately emerged as we were briefly left alone with her in the small spare, “living/library/dining room” was made clear with the response to the question; ‘how long are you staying?’ “…well,” she said with trepidation, “I was to stay for 3 weeks but hearing that you are here for 2 maybe that is what I will do…”
This barely masked her apprehension. The place was notably bleak. The house was occupied by his brother, and his mother all of whom lived in a small room next to where Corrine’s room was on the first floor. We never were really sure about the brother. Tarun would say we had to speak slowly to him, despite the awkwardness at one point when Tarun offered the brother had a BA in English Lit, but he did not say one word to me the entire short period we were there. He would sit with his jacket and hat on, barely making eye contact even after we had been “formally” introduced the next day(even after being with him the night before).
In any case after the very sparse meal we headed off to sleep in our rooms, and I told Nicole I was committed to doing whatever she wanted to do, because it was clear she was not comfortable.
“I am not sure how long I can stay here,” she said.
I think we briefly met with Corrine in our room after Tarun had gone to bed, and we agreed to have a meeting the next morning, after which we would have a tete à tete with Tarun about terminating the residency and what that would mean.
“Let’s talk in the morning,” Nicole said to Corrine basically as a concession to me saying “we should give it a chance…” So off to bed.
I have been traveling with my CPAC device this trip, because it is now smaller, more compact, lighter and more easily transportable. But I need the accompanying 220v converter connection to 110 to also lug about, which in the scheme of things is really not so bad. But in the room, Tarun had pulled out the 220 extension cord and pluggin it in, saying something like “ just make sure the device is not something you TOUCH as it might short out.” In my head I was like— wha???? (I suppressed my gulp and luckily Nicole was in the bathroom).
One thing I did notice throughout India was the instability of the electrical grid. It was not uncommon for power to go out frequently –
maybe as often as three times in a day. Later from the perspective a of a pedaled rickshaw, you would see the ubiquitous image of a spiderweb/rat’s nest of wires overhead, and later would be told that monkey’s fling themselves from these wires constantly. It was also revealed that many were cable TV wires, and you would definitely pass under them in these narrow passageways hitting the raw cut ends revealing that they were in fact co-axial cables. I did see many wires in corners of building wrapped with electric tape, exposed wires, without junction boxes, exterior fuse box housings, all a disaster waiting to happen.
I didn’t really care except that I would be charging things and the converter would not automatically reset and I would come back from somewhere hoping that x battery would be charged and would be disappointed to find it off. Not our first rodeo in a developing country. But the idea of my CPAP shutting off would just piss me off as I would think why the fuck did I drag this thing all around the world just to have low-functioning electricity…
In talking to all who we would meet inevitably the conversation would turn to solar energy and politics and social conventions like weddings. Solar in a country of so much heat 45ºC (113ºF) should manifest government run solar farms, upgrades in the wiring of the grid etc. Yet everywhere we went different people would tell us ‘Oh yes, there is a LOT of money here’. As if to answer ‘yes but these are poor people and solar is so expensive…’ When in fact what they were really saying was the government is so corrupt good luck getting large scale project like that to happen soon. I flashback to Tanzania, who until the coronavirus was dumping huge amounts of cash into infrastructural advancement in places like Arusha. Solar (mad in China) would be soon coming. But here in overpopulated India, where Suzuki is the most common import because it is affordable, single use cars are on the rise. We met a team of auto designers for Suzuki on a trip from Japan, one of whom was French, but living and working in Turin. He said that Suzuki always has been talking about electric vehicles, but they haven’t designed one yet. Tata and Mahindra the Indian vehicle manufacturers apparently were designing electric vehicles. But integration on the large scale that would be essential to changes in the air quality (everyday described as “unhealthy” or “hazardous”)are long in coming.
When we arrived in Haridwar, our driver could not find the Ashram. We pulled over next to a bank of taxis, and asked for directions. Now either the regional dialect the driver was used to was so different from that in Haridwar that the taxi drivers did not know where or what our driver Nanda was asking or they simply did not know of such a place.
Missed red Flag #2.
Tarun would eventually have to be called, and he came to the circle where we were, and he sat in our car with us and gave directions to Nanda to a certain point. He explained as we got out of the car we could not drive up because there was major preparation to bury and replace electrical lines in the area and that all the streets were dug up. It did look like a war zone.
So we had to park and huff the bags to his house (the ashram)and to the second floor room. Welcome to your new neighborhood for two weeks: Haridwar, its dug up streets inescapably providing a new layer of dusty, dirty air and surfaces on a daily basis. Our friends back home had warned us. “There is dirt on everything.”
The immediate explanation: Apparently 110milion people are anticipated in 2021 for a spiritual festival and they need connectivity and(ahem)reliable power. (Stunned by the immensity, we were like: what about a place to sleep, eat, shit, pray?) It happens every 12-14 years or (every 3-4 years depending on whom you ask). But the idea of 110 million of your fellow souls going through a small town of 1.3 million seemed unbelievable. It still does. But that number(110mil) was repeated over and over again verified by different people. “Where will they all go?” Nicole asked, “never mind sleep, eat, poop….” A smile and a response: “they are Indian People…”
Corrine would tell us briefly about the day before when she arrived. Tarun would explain that some of the neighboring ashrams were a religiously devout practitioners of tantric sex as described in the Bhagavad Gita and that their practice was constant, noisy and inexhaustible. Ok… I thought and filed it away, but her concern only seemed to magnify in her re-telling of Tarun’s description. I am not sure that Nicole heard this.
But that night, Nicole tossed and turned. We were in separate beds,(don’t get me started about the constant division of the sexes and separate points of entry of women and men: airports, museums, hotels each with a bag check even if you just walked out, and forgot something and walked back in…the absurdist activities of a timid police state with too many rules that basically no one obeys. Ok, I get the airports endless control issues since 9/11 although(reluctantly)but in India EVERY point of entry is like the airports. Life must grind to a halt or at the very least be an inhuman herding queue.
There was reason for her tossing as she would immediately reveal to me very early the next morning. “Jonathan, we have to leave. I cannot stay here.” She then described to me the nightmare she had which was the reason she had called out a few times in her sleep. I had heard her despite my earplugs and the “breathing” of the converter. In reality my CPAP is extremely quiet, it is just the converter that makes noise. Weird.
In her nightmare, which now I fully realize was an active premonition to leave, she said Tarun had come up behind her, and in an unwelcome way started groping her. “It wasn’t rape per se,” she admitted, ”more it was a kind of unwanted physical assault from behind. We have to leave.” “Ok.” I said.
That was two intense dreams. One in the 15th century at Nanakpur, which was translated into a huge three dimensional shrine and a personal one, a nightmare in Haridwar.
It was 8:00 a.m. as we agreed to meet. We went to yoga in the next room. Corrine would later complain as would Nicole, both seasoned yoga practitioners about his leading the session(I too have done yoga since the late seventies just not nearly as regularly as Nicole and Corrine, who are really experts.) We did breathing exercises, a little meditation, a short discussion on ayurvedic medicine, some hatha yoga poses and even some chanting of om, even a touch up on how to say om. After 45 minutes, we adjourned to have “breakfast” downstairs.
On our plates was an itsy bitsy cup of tea, 7 cashews and four raisins and some spicy chapati, maybe one piece a person. The asceticism had begun but I should have known that when in the previous meal the night before there was just enough daal in each of our cup for two soupspoonfuls. We asked for more but the woman, Anita, who worked for Tarun as a housekeeper and who earlier had taken our measurements for a plain cotton kurta (the classic long shirt worn by everyone) said there wasn’t anymore. I distinctly remember at that moment one of the online testimonials that I read by one of the other artists who had stayed there. I think it was the caricaturist. He said something like “when I got some of the daal, I was so glad because I was so hungry and it was so good….” Should have been a red flag waving. Tarun would say his mother was the interior designer for Bill Gates house in Seattle. I remembered that house was 66 thousand square feet.
Whatever.
We packed up and reconnoitered with Corrine who later acknowledged that the night before she was glad to see us and pretty much immediately would in a quiet separate moment say: GET ME OUTTA HERE!! We can laugh about it now that it is behind us. Nicole and Corrine and Tarun agreed to sit and talk. I was left out because Nicole had wisely said, ‘Jonathan doesn’t do the money side of negotiations,’ which is largely true. I took the guitarlele and went into another room and played music while they hammered out an agreement. I reappeared when it was clear that things were close to breaking down and that I might be a third impartial eye, balancing two different viewpoints. At one point I did chime in, in the interest of closure and to help the process end which the tension in the room clearly needed.
What was apparent was that Tarun’s math was a serious issue, un evenly presented to Corrine, and to which Nicole took on the task of redoing twice to explain to him that his arcane way of making Corrine’s portion more uneven than ours. Ultimately Nicole put her foot down and was clearly done with any “negotiations” and it became a take it or leave scenario. Tarun kept insisting that the government taxes he would have to pay for, suggesting that he was trying to get us to pay them, when we were giving him half his money back and he wouldn’t even have the burden of having to care for us for two weeks which we had agreed to and in that half he had plenty to pay the taxes.
I would ultimately accompany him via a shared tuk-tuk to his bank where he would be given a check book to transfer money from his checking account to cash for us. (He didn’t have a check book prior to this.) “it is more difficult to get the equivalent of twenty dollars than it is to get five hundred in India.” I didn’t quite understand but he explained it had to do with the bureaucracy of banking in India. The money was exchanged, and we made arrangements for the next hotel we were to be at the Aloha at the Ganges, to send a car and together with Corrine, we would book a two-bedroom apartment, with a beautiful view overlooking the Ganges. We stayed there for about 5 days with Corrine and had a fine time both getting to know her, reading her work, she reading ours, eating together, discussing art, shopping Rishikesh together at the market, even introducing our children to each other via Facetime. The highlight was definitely the rafting down the Ganges, at her insistence which was really fun and beautiful.
The experience would remind me of the Bus-and-truck Tour show for NTI/O’Neill when we were given a poor spirited director from Disney and a shitty script based on “What’s a Country like You Doing In a State Like This? to perform in colleges around the NorthEast back in the late seventies. My classmates would pool together our diverse talents in directing, writing, performing, stagecraft and music into a show called Fulltime Past Times. It was a bootstrap production, and a lemonade-out-of-rotten-lemons moment that made us proud that we had faced a less-than-optimal circumstance head-on with a positive outcome that we ourselves forged together.
As I sit here writing this in Bali, I know that we would still be there if things went as originally planned. I am glad we are here and not there.
The next morning at Azimuth (we were there less than 24 hours in toto), we conducted our ablutions, Nicole later telling me that the sink in the bathroom had a deep layer of dirt on it. Not that she was the ‘princepessa’ my mother would obnoxiously imply in a Facetime conversation as if to say Nicole was not up for third world conditions.
Next door to our room was the common room, about 10feet square, with kind of cheesy caricatures of Tarun in the yoga poses drawn by one of the previous artists. Afterwards,(having “earned” our food?) we went downstairs to breakfast which seemed particularly spartan: spicy chapati, some dates, some raisins, a few cashews and tea. When Tarun left, Corrine and Nicole and I confirmed that we really had to leave, so we would reconnoiter up in our room to discuss, which would overflow into the “studio”
****
On several occasions while traveling we learn of someone’s passing back at home. This time was no different. First it was Lowry Burgess,an artist and seminal figure at the Center for Advanced Visual Studies at MIT when I was there. Second, it was John Powell, an artist who was in Howard Yezerski’s cadre of artists whom my daughter Sasha knew when she managed the gallery. I never really thought that much of his work and felt he was so competitive and territorial that insecurity really seemed to define his interactions. Many times he was the one was always asked to handle Otto’s inflatables, and that was the source of his territorialism. I never thought that he really understood how much of that I had done in my own work. I hold him no ill will and was one of the first to pay my respects via the email chain after the news of his death.
But Lowry was my thesis reader, a friend, also a painter, a hyper creative mind. We had both spent time at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia as well as at Penn, where I grew up. Otto’s first job in the US too was at Penn.
Lowry was also the first artist that had an artwork in space. He was another kind of thinker, and I distinctly remember him travelling extensively to gather samples of the great rivers of the world which is why his death as a reference point affected me as I would soon be on the Ganges, with Nicole and Corrine, rafting down its beautiful turquoise-green mountain water on 4-foot rapids at about 6 knots. Lowry was instrumental behind the collaborative work by some of the core CAVS-ers at the end of the seventies when they would install Centerbeam on the National Mall with its high-powered military grade laser projecting Paul Earl’s simple line drawings through and onto Joan Brigham’s steam, above a giant water prism holding holograms while Otto Piene’s large inflatable star was flying nearby. It was a highly creative endeavor and Lowry was its spiritual
father. I always explained he was an iconoclastic poet/priest/environmental/space artist. One his most inspiring pieces was called Listening to Lighthenge and consisted of huge blocks of ice on the Charles River in Cambridge, MA, when it was completely frozen over one winter. It held a kind of magical attention on the river there for both defying gravity, logic and reason as these block were geometrically arranged with a sculpturally aligned intent; the ice would capture the light of the setting sun just so, and were completely organic in their ultimately ephemeral construction. They would, of course become a memory once the river thawed, as they do for me in memory of him.
And with Centerbeam in its documentation is Lowry, turning the large valve wheel for the water for Joan Brigham’s steam element. He cranked the wheel slowly, with a kind of impish grin, immediately reminding me of his fellow Pennsylvania Academy classmates, David Lynch, in his first film that got real recognition, eraserhead ; also an image of a figure turning a wheel, as if to control the world in all its movements. Lynch’s use of that sequence is deliberately and highly metaphoric as the non-linear story of that odd film held to its almost DADAist/expressionist tendencies.
But Lowry would make many other pieces like his BOUNDLESS LUNAR APERTURE/Silent Axis which was a kind of cosmological understanding of Earth spinning on an invisible axis spun by the invisible strength of celestial and earthbound bodies: the Moon, the tides, the rivers. It was why he would later tell me he would travel to the far flung in order to collect the sacred waters of the world. He was how I learned of Bamiyan, Afghanistan, with the gigantic Buddhas carved in sandstone, later senselessly destroyed by the Taliban. These massive Buddhas were right next to the Tigris river a sample of which he would keep in his refrigerator in Cambridge later making a hologram of and sending it in the space shuttle to a place in space, in history, into the invisible vacuum on which time depends.
When my grandmother passed many years ago, we placed her ashes at her request, in the rivers of her world meaning the Mississippi, the Hudson, and in Woods Hole (although the latter not a river). The continuation of Lowry’s infinity through the Silent Axis and in the absence of the water in those places resonates with me on many levels, theoretical, philosophical, poetic and metaphoric. The collaborative Centerbeam, although I had nothing to do with was from an earlier generation of creatives, who woul establish community through collaborative creative efforts. This too would be a foundational inspiration for me. Centerbeam was called a “performative” sculpture which was exactly what I was interested in, it became what I wrote my thesis on. “Towards an Environmental Performance Sculpture” was the title with the work called Woods Hole Inflatable Performance Sculpture. Because of Lowry and Centerbeam, I learned that community could be an artform existing beyond the festival, and towards the integration of sculpture that performed.
*****
*****
In Ranakpur sitting on the marble floor, I happened to see a young man with Asian features drawing in his notebook, technical pencil in hand, beginning a cornice of the complex geometries of the roof line before him across the courtyard. I asked him what he was drawing and why, and he answered that he was a first year architecture student in Bhopal, and he was there with his sizable class.
This would turn out to be one of several encounters with art/architecture students painting or drawing in the field. We would later visit an art school in Chandigarh, where I would meet and talk about art work with a young art student, who curiously asked for my Instagram site, website etc. It is a strange currency, the social network, but it is does serve its purpose for interaction after meeting in random places like the courtyard of The Delhi Crafts Museum.
That crafts museum did have a series of wonderful collections of Mughal fabric, mud print resist fabric, incredible embroidered “regal wear”, sculpture. And as we are always focused on the Arts of the particular culture we are visiting, I always find it somewhat refreshing to engage with young students to both see what they are making but more to understand what they are thinking. In the case of the students at the Crafts Museum, they were doing plein air, mostly watercolor, architectural rendering of the surrounding buildings.
The architecture student from Bhopal and I talked about architects, like Gehry and the wonderful late Zaha Hadid. The next thing I knew the entire class was surrounding me inside this unbelievable marble structure that took 50 years to construct by 3000 skilled stone carvers.
It is hard to say enough about the Jain temple of Ranakpur. It is one of those experiences that provides a serendipitous discovery. Nestled between Jodhpur and Udaipur in a beautifully wooded and mountainous ridge it appears out of nowhere. You enter it in stocking feet, like so many religious shrines and walk around the marbled floor with mouth agape at the intricacy, originality and complexity of the designs that are all encompassing. In one dome you can see delicate dancing figures woven into the mandala-like star pattern’s tendrils. To think of this as a translation of a dream just further serves to astound.
We watched a Jain fellow cleaning or restoring what looked like the breastplate of armor slowly and meticulously on a platform several step above us. It was a sacred area that only the Jain devoted could go in. While speaking to the students you could hear the celebrants chanting ending with ceremonial ringing of a bell. The students were very responsive to questions I asked them, all curious and we talked about how essential that it was that they were drawing. I emphasized how important it was to draw every day.
Then we got into the weeds of digital design specific to Frank Gehry and how his use of modern avionic design was how his firm could create the outrageous designs that he has over the last forty years. I said how lucky they were to start their education with computer aided design as integral to an understanding of their process. Gehry rarely has straight, flat walls, especially exterior ones. But I also mentioned how they leaked, were impossible to clean and maintain, and how the flash of “starchitecture” really overwhelmed practicality, humility kind of like the deliberate impression of the original Mughal Palaces. I mentioned the grace and delicacy of the dome of the Taj Mahal, and how Brunelleschi changed Italian architecture forever with his Duomo and with his fiery competitive attitude kickstarted the Renaissance, when few could figure out how to build it. But in 1496 when Ranakpur was built they clearly knew about domes, false domes and double domes like the Taj and the Florentine Duomo. I had told the concierge on his wonderful sunset tour of the fort at Ahhichatragarh how extraordinary it was that Udaipur reminded us of Venice, and how many elements of the architecture at the Palage he was showing us had echoes of Italian Renaissance details. We spoke of Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace and how they both as biogeographers came upon what Darwin ultimately claimed as The origin of species. I think there should be a play about these two fellows.
Brunelleschi’s Duomo was completed in 1436 and Florentines claimed it the largest dome in the world, and in so doing he is often credited with the freeing of a kind of rigorous restraint of the Middle Ages and the unleashing of the Renaissance. Perhaps through the spice trade this architectural advancement moved away from the straight buttressed supports of the Gothic spreading to the Southern Asian Continent, as the Mughal dynasty in the early fifteenth century with deep pockets would perhaps absorb the concepts and develop them.
The Mughal emperor Akbal built many structures and this indo-islamic architecture flourished. It is still the case that large-scale architectural constructions could be a grand and formal way to embellish but also to exercise cultural dominance. “Grandiose architecture was the most visible of the ways that the Mughals used to assert their sense of superiority and their supremacy over what in many ways remained to them an alien land”– Mughal India: Art, Culture and Empire
In Jaipur the impressive City Palace had many small out building to allow the maharajahs an escape from the brutal heat next to an elaborate exterior and interior water system that would both heat and cool spaces. The roofs of these spaces were domed but unique to the Mughal style was an onion dome which would have a four cornered edge the ends of which curve downwards providing a place for monsoon rains to be guided away from the structure itself. Ingenious and beautiful, these roofs are truly distinctive in their red sandstone, and markedly different from the white marble of the Taj or of Ranakpur.
When it comes to the intricacies of religious belief India is a polyglot of sorts with certain areas known for specific sects. Punjab is the home to the Sikh culture. The Jain and the Hindu are both ancient cultures and religions the specifics of their belief surround different interpretations of karma, cosmology and general philosophy. Hindu has many Gods, re-incarnation and different Gods are worshipped for different reasons like knowledge, health , peace and wisdom. Whereas Jainism can be atheistic. This is a very simplistic explanation, and it does take a rigorous lifetime of exploration to truly understand it. There is, of course, also Islam and in certain cities you might hear calls to prayer at the different points during the day as well as singing/chanting from other kinds of temples at all times of day. The Muslims are everywhere as are everyone else, although the current political administration of Narendra Modi has a “nationalist” streak that wants to separate Muslim and Hindu.
The stark differences between these two co-existing belief systems was part of my childhood when one of the Wharton students Zul Devji, who lived in the house was to married to the beautiful Hindu Mantosh on Christmas in our Jewish house by a Presbyterian Minister between two Tannenbaum evergreens. It was the one-world time of 1969 and the fall of the Summer of Love. I remember the bride and grooms’ parents completely objecting to the wedding. And, like one of our drivers described to us: “Most marriages are arranged and those that done for Love do not last.” This was certainly true for Zul and Mantosh who divorced in the seventies. Here in India, it is wedding “season” and that formal occasion is an over-the-top generationally supported social contract that has thousands for a wedding that lasts days on end.
In Delhi, Nicole is completely perturbed when an engagement party with power bass booming in the courtyard continues into the night disturbing, I am sure, more than us.
