Tricia Brouk (Dining Alone)

What follows here are paintings done from drawings done from YouTube videos--the theme, for the most part, being Jason Fox's AuntJackie together with all the immediacy of its soon-to-be-posted answers and variants (for example, and maybe my favorite AuntJackie in the Hood but that's not fair, because they're ALL good.)

The key painting here--If Thats Ya Man is Jason Fox himself--in the studio, with the Hood Presidents (for the video, see The Cipha Sound Effect Presents--The Aunt Jackie).

One more thing--I look at all of the videos WITHOUT sound--visitations, out of Maya Deren...as in the first part of A Study in Choreography for Camera made in 1945.

So, why Tricia Brouk at the outset? Yes, why...





A Brooklyn diner--or somewhere on Tenth Avenue, the kind with the metal exterior, thirties moderne, a brassy waitress and coffee in a white mug. "Never drink tea from a mug," her grandmother warned--that was Tel Aviv, not Lódz...but still good Old-World advice. How to apply in New York, this is the question. She bends forward, sleeveless dress, about to fix a shoe. Light from the curtained window pours in across the table, speckled linoleum, silver trim. All of one piece--that's the longing--all of one piece...

Times Square

Diminutive, in a bowler hat, black high-tops with white soles--white souls, yes, Guston's conceit, a kind of universal reversibility...where the image of a hooded figure hanging from a tree can mirror an LA garage, finding his own father...

But here, rivets and gloom, reaching into the dark, a performance, yes, and an incantation--figures around a fire, dancing into the night, greeting the stars, the moon...

Brooklyn (James D)

The Mystic Touch. "Many years ago we fell asleep by the sedative of the superman, but the mystic magic of nature wand says awake and rise again. Too long has thou slumbered, too long has time passed you by, your work on earth is delinquent and you cannot reign on high. If it's true that you've awaken, good for you,..." Marcus Garvey

Porches and hightops, pick up game on grainy asphalt, one on one. Summer's heat, a dance step, in front of some cars, also one on one, camera somewhere alongside, unseen, the neigborhood itself. Aspirations, shown in all...

Utica Avenue

The wind-up, with leg-warmers, or just a slip of the brush...the brush, yes, as if with fate, on a moment's notice, hands in close, gripping the handle... a forest of ash trees, in Western Pennsylvania... Utica, too--we'd know him anywhere, or maybe not at all...

Back seat of a Brooklyn bus, sweltering, cross town to King's Plaza--a pair of glasses for the bride, we sit together in the heat, thinking, what--the past, the future, everything to come...

Empire Boulevard

Empire Boulevard--house in the neigborhood, near the corner of Nostrand, where the young guy in the reggae shop--Ethiopian Taste--smiled broadly when I asked him if they had anything by Max Romeo, pointing way up high, on a self for classics, beautifully preserved vinyl, just where he should be--Fire ina Babylon, I think, or Open the Iron Gate. What I remember, most, was his face--also smiling--as he beamed down from on high...

Tiny emblem--red, yellow and green--Jah...

Grand Street

An Asian man in the subway, Grand Street Station--on that dog leg of the B Train, way downtown, then across on a diagonal to the Lower East Side. Chinatown, as it were--Chrystie Street--not far from East Broadway, the old Forwarts building, and Feldheim Books, at number 96--ancient volumes in a rain-leaky room, worn bindings, smell of age, water to a sink or toilet, the pipe running half way down the wall--then a gap--until a clay flange just below picks up the stream.

Today: condominiums and conceit... "That was then, this is now..."

The Blue Nile (for Richard Worthy)

That's Richard, smallish in build, taut and compact, just back from Viet Nam, plowing into a dense redwood burl with over-sized drill... "It's for my chess set," he explains, the wood flattening slightly along the top, then dark below, a burrow, hollowed out, for king, queen, bishop, knight... Heavily worked, all the gouges showing, he's finally got it ready...so now the coup de grâce--a quart of amber polyester resin, sliding slowly down the sides, this flashy polish revealing every bump. Antithetical to something--to what--that's the point, if we only knew...

A vast river flows north--but we can turn it around: the great Nile, bring water to all of Central Africa. A dream? Of course, a dream--what else do we have...

Naboozg

More hopeful--an openness, perhaps. The line of white just below his face, arms extended in anticipation. A street corner or school yard, young guys, approaching the camera in turn, moving into the foreground... A spot in the limelight, a place in the sun... From Jason Fox, his myspace page: "Named after his friend Tone Wop’s actual aunt....more about fun than guns..." Not to explain it, but there IS that "old school flow", in a time where so much has been stripped away, turned into pose...a re-connection...

The hand, at a relaxed angles, fluid wrist...

Atlantic & Nostrand

Gray sweatshirt, hidden face, a windy corner on a blasted street...Long Island Railroad, the stop bewteen Flatbush and East New York. A large, old-model car, something rangey, with bad suspension. The windows are down, exhaust filtering through the passenger compartment. It's winter, dirty snow, with miles of girder rivets looming above--a kind of cathedral, bent and rusted, burned out storefronts on either side--a no-man's land, one way into oblivion, grates and corrugated iron, pulled down to the curb, covering whatever's left...

Ashley & Shanice

Yesterday: low clouds with trailing edges, two girls dancing, in a narrow hallway. From immobility to everything, in an instant, movement of the arms first, then the shoulders, feel of the beat--except that I watch in total silence--not a sound, just the flickering image of two figures in motion, Greek priestesses in daily dress, smiles, slippers and cut-off jeans...

Emma's birthday today: she's ten years old. Jane Austin, astronomy, flowers...

"I think it's gonna work...!"

If Thats Ya Man

Jason Fox himself--sometimes Foxx, the difference doesn't seem to matter, which makes a lot of sense, just like the sound studio room where they're dancing--impromptu, in front of a jumbled control board, power books and an over-sized drink container, all this way and that... This way and that, like the world itself, the N train in Queens, approaching the 59th Street Bridge, girders slide by, rivets and rust, a jumble of people and metal, rents, rants, the hubbub of New York, unending, that's the point--a metaphor, if you will, the whole shebang...

His lyrics: "...with a old school flow..."


And here's where the painting came from: Aunt Jackie

Two Girls

Just like every girl who'd ever lived..jeans and sweatshirt tops--the one, hooded, in pink, against a glorious pile of unwashed clothes--orange, red, midnight blue, the background, curtains maybe, obscure and moody, a window, somewhere stage right, brings in the day, against a scene that might be almost anytime... Granny glasses twin tan elipses, a blur of hands, just the gestures register--an archetype, here in a Harlem bedroom--or is it or Trenton or Metuchen...

Ancient Greece...Aphrodite on Corfu, or Rachel with her water jar, making her way down a steep, rocky path, to the well, early evening, sheep gathering to drink...

Don Tomas (St. Nicholas Avenue)

Don Tomás on St. Nicholas Avenue--appearing suddenly, in New York, Washington Heights--that would be Rangel country, a little bit of Nigeria, salsa too... Dominican streetfronts--guavas and mangos, papayas in open bins--sounds of Spanish, unexpected accents, rapid and a touch grating... Wide blue umbrella over a pile of calico dresses, three mismatched postboxes in a jostled row. Yellow street sign--two children, walking side by side. Vendor in short-sleeved shirt, darkly oiled hair, he leans back a bit, forearms exposed... Young man in plaid shirt and tie. It's hot--the dense New York summer air just above--sky like a chocolate cream pie...

Memories of winter, subway cold. Cheap down jackets, frosty breath...

Little Samson

"And the woman bare a son, and called his name Samson: and the child grew, and the Lord blessed him." (Judges 12:24)

Even with the red sneakers the Lord blessed him, and the blasted neighborhood, the wind-raked asphalt, the house with half-a-roof somewhere in a field in the distance, the grim ten-twelve story project apartments off to the side... Late winter, maybe, kids in the road, taking turns, exhilaration, each time, especially the littlest one, a wood sprite, dipping into the moves, his own particular grace...

14th Street, Underground.

14th Street station, man in snappy hat, gambler's shirt--a city guy in every way. Looking right and left, he takes the floor, a compact commanding presence... Hard to say why--more a sense of potential than anything else--good or bad. Muscular frame boiled down to the condensed essentials--chest, ribs, legs--no acrobatics, just some knowing moves...

Luam & Crew

Three or four wild women on the stage at Joe's Pub. Luam and Crew. The name is an acronymn, but the tennis shoes have oodles of street cred. Black hightops--old New York, before the time-share--Mercer Street, all loading docks, heavy metal doors... Trucks backed in, jumbled bales... Paving stones in morning light, picking up the sun...

Security Room

Two men in basement room, twin surveillance monitors on top of metal files, a nondescript desk, employment paraphernalia. One of them begins the movements of a dance, smiling--the Aunt Jackie--except that they're not street kids, but gentlemen of middle years. The other watches, also smiling, increasingly inclined to join in. More and more so, until he gives himself to it, entirely, alone now in the frame...

A kind of anonymous hello to the world. Public and private at one go. Who's out there--this remains unknown. As in Benjamin's essay on the history of photography--those first few years, before the sitters had any idea...

Professor Eduardo

An older gentlemen, in the subway, with his electronic keyboard and musician marionettes. Dark olive face, elegant white hair, from somewhere in the Spanish-speaking world. He leans forward slightly, white shirt carefully ironed, two pens in the pocket, at an angle. A fixture it seems, even if peripatetic, positioned today between a pair of blasting back-lit advertising frames--on his right, the burning Q, open white letterform glowing against an orange-red field... The adamance of New York, as always, bigger, louder, getting there first. Whereas the professor (his title by choice, certainly) is almost quiet, a hold-over from the past, the world of chivalry, dignified as well--muy formal. One imagines the grandchildren, gathered round, as he plays for them a tune...

Each one of us, perhaps...

Harry K.

3 July 2007. Opening sequence in Scorsese's Mean Streets --Harvey Keitel making his way down the block--Little Italy, the neighborhood, local characters, comaraderie--a Leo Castelli look-alike, for instance, or the guy in the cheap black leather jacket with impossibly wide face, passing on the sidewalk just behind. They all have names--Vinny, Alberto, Manny even--known only to them, not to us. That's the whole point. The veil of connection--an arm around a shoulder, a smile, even, underwritten by unswerving violence...

Subway scenes on YouTube--Good Morning Astoria, the N Train, all rivets and girders, the jumble of New York, clacking over the river, a slow urban panorama, revealed in intermittent snatches, syncopated stands of iron...