Fiction By Paul Heidelberg
(c) Copyright Paul Heidelberg
All Rights Reserved
...like giants plunged into the years, they touch epochs that are immensely far apart, separated by the slow accretion of many, many days -- in the dimension of Time.
From the last sentence of the last volume of REMEMBRANCE OF THINGS PAST also known as IN SEARCH OF LOST TIME by Marcel Proust.
Zawoosh
Back.
Back to San Francisco, to the Time that would later be known as "The Sixties."
The San Francisco Poet often reads his poetry with fellow poet Wilfredo Manzano, the poet from the Arizona desert who had served his country as a Marine in Vietnam.
The two read their poetry regularly at the Coffee Gallery on Grant Avenue in North Beach, where one receives three free glasses of wine or beer for reading -- those "free" drinks are needed for Courage.
One night Manzano is being hassled by a heckler, who repeatedly interrupts him, shouting obscenities at him.
After the reading, the San Francisco Poet tells Manzano: "You're a great poet, Wilfredo. That guy is some North Beach rummy and coffee drinking bum who doesn't do anything meaningful with his life. Don't let him bug you."
"OK," is all Manzano says as he nervously downs one of his free glasses of beer in one gulp.
At the Coffee Gallery, there is one room with a long bar, and an adjoining, larger room with tables and chairs for chess in one section, and a stage and chairs set up for poetry readings and live musical performances in another.
After one of the San Francisco Poet's and Manzano's Wednesday night readings, the owner of the Coffee Gallery, in the process of selling the establishment, takes Manzano aside.
"I wanted you two guys to know something," he says. "In all the years I've owned this place, you guys are two of the best poets I've ever had reading here."
After hearing this, Manzano rushes jubilantly to the table where the the San Francisco Poet is sitting.
He tells the San Francisco Poet what he has just been told and then adds, "This guy has owned this place for years. He is putting us up there with people like Ginsberg, Ferlinghetti and Gregory Corso. That's good to hear, isn't it?"
"Yeah, that's good to hear," the San Francisco Poet replies.
(Interestingly, during her early San Fran days, Janis Joplin had connections to both the Coffee Gallery and the nearby San Francisco Art Institute, the best art college in America, where Manzano and the San Francisco Poet had met in a creative writing class. At the Art Institute, Janis J, an art-minded Texas native, had worked in the school cafe to earn bread -- the kind you spend, not the kind you eat -- before she became the world's first female rock star).
Zawoosh
Back to the village south of Weimar, Germany, to the house near the River Ilm, where Janis J and an illustrious group of Artists are discussing Life and Art. They are drinking the hearty red wine, Dornfelder.
Janis J is discussing Culture in the Modern World -- actually, the lack of Culture. She tells
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Ludwig von Beethoven, Johann Sebastian Bach and Richard Wagner:
"You men lived in such Times of Great Creation, of Great Art. I consider the four greatest composers ever to be you Herr Bach, Herr Mozart, you Herr Beethoven and you Herr Wagner. Brahms in my opinion, is highly overrated and usually terrible.
"But then there was Schubert, Schumann, Mahler and Dvorak. And after these Times, there was great visual art with such artists as Cezanne, Matisse, Picasso, Braque, Duchamp, and, Americans such as Kline, Motherwell, Rothko, and someone from the town in Texas where I was born, Robert Rauschenberg.
"Before the 'Plunge Into Nothingness,' I became acquainted with the work of an American representational sculptor I like quite a bit -- Duane Hanson.
"But since discovering him, I have discovered Nada. Nada, Nada, y mas Nada. I am watching my language out of respect for the language of your Times -- if Herr Mozart were present, that might change, ha ha -- so let me repeat what there was after about the year 1969 in the way of Culture:
"Nada, Nada, y mas Nada."
To Be Continued...
Photograph: "In A Village South Of Weimar"
(c) Copyright Paul Heidelberg
All Rights Reserved
