Cal, I was going by your tongue-in-cheek Spanglish. I'm pleased to know you once had such good command of the language and that you should be able to recover it fairly easily. Do carry on!
- Murray
Murray,
"Maggie" went to Catholic School, so it really bothers her how I butcher languages, make up words, or define new meanings.
Even though I have a MFA in Creative Writing, I am still a hack who can't spell or type.
So my spin on my free expression is that as a person of color it is oppressive for a non person of color to correct my grammar, pronunciation, or other forms of butchering communications.
I deem it is part of my culture to have my own way/form of expression and that in fact it is my duty to innovate language and create slang as a minority.
I then bring up Jazz, Hip-Hop, the blues...
Then I tell her, "Don't oppress me."
Boy am I annoying. LOL.
Interesting to note how much American culture is adopted and co-opted from the fringe. In slave culture the blues were outlawed; Hip-Hop was born in the Bronx; and Jazz well is Jazz.
BTW when I got my MFA in Creative Writing no one understood my writing. I got mucho rejections...
But two events made me put my writing on the side: one was I sent a story to the Hudson Review. I was deeply annoyed because a lot of time had eclipsed/lapsed and not even a rejection letter. I was pretty angry and was ready to write a nasty letter when finally I got a response.
Paula Deitz the Editor of the Hudson Review like my story, wanted to publish it, and passed it onto the review board.
So getting published in The Hudson Review can change your life. Publishers and agents will track you down, so basically you can become an insider within a "Gated" industry.
So rapture happened and I see that I likely am going to have a life altering event, but then the review board rejected my story in the end. This is "Gate-Keeping" at its best. In the end work from the fringe gets filtered out.
Another writing opportunity was with the Breadloaf Writers' Conference in Vermont. I submitted a story and got notified I was put on the "shortlist," meaning if someone who got accepted cancelled I would be able to attend.
Being able to attend Breadloaf would mean two weeks of being courted and groomed by editors, publishers and agents where you would be meeting, socializing, and eating with all the power brokers.
Understand that at Breadloaf you have to be invited to attend and only about 235 people get invited every year.
So you have to understand that I have entertained these elite "gated" universes.
I have a 4 year degree from an art school and in the 70's and 80's I was a painter. I went of O.K. Harris, a gallery on West Broadway, a few doors down from Leo Castellie, and Mary Boone's Gallery.
Ivan Karp was an art dealer who set up O.K. Harris, and formally he worked for Leo Castellie. Mr. Karp said he liked my slides, and to come back when I had more.
My response lacked enthusiam, and Mr Karp picked up on it. I took it as a polite rejection.
"When I say I like your work, I mean it. Tell me you'll come back and show me more work," he said.
So when I did, I took his criticism wrong.
"You have too many ideas," he said and then expressed that I needed to unify my work, which I took as making my work a commodity so it could be sold.
I was in my early 20's, but I made a decision to remain true to myself and not be a whore. That is why I knew I needed to get a day-job and take care of myself.
In the end the payoff is my secure retirement, my health, and my ability to have a bad attitude.
Fug the gate keepers.
John Goodman was asked when the Roseann scan-DELL came about if he is disappointed that he never got an M-E Award. I found his response to be profound. He said I have been nominated 7 times for an Emmy and never got one, and if has not happened by now it likely never will.
Much respect for John Goodman because he did not comment or respond to the Roseann Controversy also. He did not need any outside recognition for his work.
I accept that I will remain under the radar. For me that is where true art lays, on the fringe where people without vision can't see it.
Like John Goodman I'm not bitter. All I can say it is what it is.
For the ultimate story about gate-keeping read about Janet Gunthry, the first woman to race in the Indy 500. It is crushing how she was kept out and discriminated against.
As far as being a bono-fied "Drama-Queen" for over a decade I also was a performance artist.
Know that Calzone, Augie, Calvin-August all are a persona. In real life I am a loner who perhaps is happiest alone. It seems being widely known somehow is incidental. I stand out in a crowd, and for some reason I seem to draw out the crazies.
"Takes one to know one," I say. LOL.
Cal
