THE ART IS TO WANDER: Tribute to Buddy Holly, Jacques Vaché, and Edith Sitwell

Monday, September 6, 2021

“I have often wished I had time to cultivate modesty… But I am too busy thinking about myself.” I don’t have a lot of knowledge about the world that’s out there, but I do know myself, and at the end of the day, that is all I could offer you.  Now, whatever that is good or not, is totally up to you. I can only offer what I know, which is not much. I feel like I 'm 250 years old, and man does my eyes feel heavy.  All I know is that I’m a man of excellent taste, and “good taste is the worst vice ever invented. ” To stand out in the world is like asking someone to cut your throat.  It’s not a nice world out there.  In fact, it’s a jungle.  And I wish I can inform you that I’m Tarzan, but I’m more like George of the Jungle.

I feel the time is marching on, and I’m afraid that I will remain in the dustbin of history, which means ignored entirely, and my writing is lost somewhere in the Central Los Angeles Library.  I wake up with the greatest dread, knowing that I’m facing at least 12 or 13 hours of failure. “You know the horrible life of the alarm clock – it’s a monster that has always appalled me because of the number of things its eyes project, and the way that good fellow stares at me when I enter a room.” I feel time mocks me, and I know when my birthday just passed, people were thinking “there he goes…”

Not long ago I purchased a six albums (on vinyl) box set of Buddy Holly’s music.  America has produced many talented people, but none is more critical than Buddy Holly.  He was a figure that was entirely a modernist, specifically with his take on music making as well as appearance. The heavy dark rim glasses, with the beautiful suits and sweaters that he wore, it had a profound effect on me, because I had trouble seeing without my glasses.  His imperfections became a symbol of perfectionism.  He turned the negative into the positive, why that boy was a magician as well as a superb musician.  His death, to this day, is precisely what I can’t take in.  I cannot possibly understand why he went in that dinky airplane in a storm to get somewhere early so he can do his laundry before the next show.  Dandyism is a lifestyle, but it can also lead one to an early death.   Yet, there can't possibly be a God, to let go such a brilliant talent.  He tested against the elements and lost.  I obviously don't have his genius, but I do have the ability to lose, in a primary and significant way.

“Hot water is my native element.  I was in it as a baby, and I have never seemed to get out of it ever since.” I’m not worthy of living in a world that makes such great demands on my ability to create chaos that is my poetry.  “Poetry is the deification of reality, ” and I feel like I’m standing against a wind machine, that is blowing me towards another direction, that I care not to go. “ART does not exist - So it is useless to talk about it - but! people go on being artists - because it's like that and no way else - Well - so what? ”

I never got over the death of Buddy Holly and especially Jacques Vaché.   Two poets who I feel didn’t finish their work.  At this point and time, I have outlived both, for many years.  Holly was quoted in saying that “Death is very often referred to as a good career move.” Perhaps he’s right, but I feel I was left by the side of the road, and I don’t have a compass to tell me what direction I should go to.  The art is to wander. “I’m not trying to stump anybody… it’s the beauty of the language that I’m interested in.” - Buddy Holly.