1953 Panhead HD restored by William Altice Case 2nd owner. These stripes took a whole day he said proudly. The first picture is in 1970 shortly before sawing off his own cast and breaking out of a hospital in Spain.
In this blog, I like to ramble on about cycles of fashion, cycles of attraction, and pay attention to Foucault’s notions fo pockets of history. I am starting with the Classic conflict between Rockers and Mods and then circumambulating over to yoga and yogic cycles. All this to footnote Lennart Anderson’s Twee almost NeoClassical painting of an Idyll.
My father, Billy above, is a Rocker. I aspire, however, hicklike, to Modishness. I wear suits-- perhaps some day Brioni? And, in my creeping self-deprecation I would adore a knockoff Chinese Rolex. Perhaps, I am at heart a handmade Hipster. So…
And, however, in the meantime the jewels of my collection: A bespoke wool and silk blazer by Jake--a Project Runway alum who runs a handmade tailor establishment in San Francisco called the Artful Gentleman. My ancient single ownership amber leather Bally messenger bag. Two pairs of Orange Boss boots, and a $1500 100% cashmere overcoat by John Varvatos purchased for a $150 at Century 21 in Manhattan. Anyone who knows me well, however, will tell you. “Russell Altice Case is a dirty hippie, overcompensating” Coke babies don’t grow up square.
I am not my father and yet I am. He is effortlessly cool, perhaps autistic. I am emotional and capable of loud projected outburst and sudden sullen sulks. He seems with his very narrow emotional range and vocabulary to be blessed with shallow ambition. He seeks only to make his monthly sheet. He taught me to appreciate Classic Rock and very loudly, and NPR very quietly while working. It is the only way, he said. I have, I think classical ambitions.. violent historical appetites.
He also taught me to blend asiago and fettucine with squash and I have tried in vain to balance this appetite with restraint.
Restraint in all things. Coupled with a sensual wild Ambition. The double helix twisted against the post. The contraposto. This is Classical.
Dad has both a classic car collection and runs a classic car restoration business as a sole proprietor. He is for sure one broke n***er, but he has managed to accumulate a few very fine things: A 1985 XJ12 Jaguar, a 1985 Porsche 911, a 1985 Nissan 300Z, (1985 is his year) a 1990 Mercedes Benz 300, and finally a 1953 Harley Davidson Panhead. A Classic. The motorcycle I grew up on. The cycle that I fell asleep on most Saturday afternoons with my father’s hand held on my neck keeping me from sliding and thumping to the road. The draw and pull towards infinity like a barbiturate and like jet lag. That lovely sodden drag into the oblivion of couch cushions.
On the several instances that dragged in real time for 5 to 6 hours that I have visited the Harley Davidson Museum in Milwaukee, Wisconsin with my father and his 5 year old son, my brother Paul.
Here at the museum, there is a sincere effort to build a cohesive set. These are all the bikes and the best bikes HD has produced. It is not a total set, but includes, though not comprehensively, the best of them. That is, this museum has presented (not arbitrarily but sincerely) the best bikes they own. And so my Dad and I look feverishly for the bike closest to his restored classic. Please forgive me. There is nothing feverish about my father and myself. We are as slow and methodical as a methadone clinic. He finds the closest comparison in the 1952 police cruiser. It is not entirely unsatisfying.
Classic 1952 Harley Davidson Police Cruiser
The paradox of the Classic is that, especially with the machine, it aspires to be nothing less than the vehicle of the future. That is.. to possess a classic car collection is to hold onto objet d’art. Yet this is an object that sought only modernity. It is to be attracted in one’s own past an object that sought to be of the future. It is a contradiction of aspiration. A Jetson eternity devoid of gravity. It aspires to hover, Hermes like, with gilded chrome wings on its ankles and to be a machine that rides without tremolo onto a Tiepolo pink cloud.. a kind of longing for the future that immediately dates itself. To hold nostalgically to these ancient and obsolete forms is to be NeoClassical.
Classic Rock
Driving in Alberta in my classic VW. (What appears in your mind is yours) I am an avid consumer of SiriusXM radio. There is no Classic Rock station however, as the age group is too broad. That is, what Classic Rock is to a man of 70 is extremely distinct from the set of Classic rock selections of a man of 40. Understanding the necessary specialization for Classic Rock my friend, Sirius XM CEO Scott Greenstein innovated the Classic Vinyl, Deep Tracks, the Classic Tom Petty, the Classic Billy Joel.
I drop his name here out of vengeance. My brother, David and I met with Scott in NY in his uptown Manhattan office and sold a reality show style pilot on yoga to him. We spent months and months on it and it played on Doctor radio 110 once. Once.
In turn he leveraged a tee time with Coach David Shaw at Stanford out of me. I used Coach Shaw’s wife. Scott used me. It was like a Bill Wither’s hit. It was classic.
The myriad offerings underscore the failing of the Classical music subculture. The choice for the consumer for Classical music is very narrow as the market does not support the adherents of obscure and esoteric selections. I would like to hear Classic Pablo Casals 24/7 Perhaps Classic selections of the 9th. Deep Für Elise. I would like to hear Penderecki. Please and often. But, what is Classical?
As Dennis Miller said. “I went to a big wedding recently. It went so long the band ran out of Classical music.”
When a category is too broad it loses cohesion. When it is too narrow It becomes absurd. Classic live sets of Prince doing covers of the Beatles, for example. This just means my favorite at that point. Mine. Or all I could find. The Classic performance of While my Guitar Gently Weeps at the George Harrison tribute with Tom Petty, Dhani Harrison Jeff Lynne, and the other guy. It’s the only one, and what we mean is that we will soon make a collection of my favorite covers of that song. All the ones we can find except for the ones I don’t like.
Another example, the Foxnews Sports broadcast of the NFL on Sunday now plays the Breeders’ classic hit Cannonball on their transitions to commercial. This is Classic Rock now for a particular generation, mine, and a particular subculture of the Gen-Exers who like me are evidently the only ones watching network television.
Fuck.. I know I am in my middle age, but when I was kid it wasn’t a badge of fucking honour to sell your songs to advertising firms. Thank Moby for understanding how things work.
That white whale.
On an evening in San Francisco in November of 2018 enduring satire. (rather.. nonenduring satire)
The Classic Beach Blanket Babylon has played in San Francisco since 1970. It is a broad absurdity of the season’s political travails. It is a send up. And its failing is that it is toothless. We endure a parody of a song and dance routine portrayed by the heel, an obvious and large assed Kim Kardashian, a Trump family as Von Trapp all with giant polystyrene giant hairdos. We endure the malignant racism of dancing Chassidic payot disguised as humor. And because everyone is insulted, Jews and Blacks alike, we can afford to smile. Better yet the audience is filled to brim with aging Jew hippies laughing at their naïf selves and knowing winks to their giant Viagra induced cocks. I’ve tried it. All I can tell you is that amphetemines make you work harder for longer. This was like that. As was the play.
This is why I abandoned Post-Modernism for Classicism. I was well and truly fatigued of preaching to the choir. Marxist formalism for bitter champagne socialists. Who here has seen an Adrian Piper installation? Certainly not Jared Kushner. And you won’t see Donald Trump in this audience either. So the purpose of the show is Kitsch. It is not Camp, as it is self aware. It is a contrived sentiment by definition. I believe I witnessed in the eyes of the performers, honestly fatigued as they are of the material, no sense of urgency. There is no fervor in them for the women’s movement. There above Hillary’s wagging bust was cynicism. These young passionate artistes shouted their lines more than sang them. And that is why they are here and not on American Idol. The Idol an honest championship for a dancing Narada before the oblivion. Here in San Francisco on North Beach.. only nihilism.
On Classical Hatha Yoga
Hatha—a Sanskrit term that combines the words for sun and moon come together to mean forceful. Forceful union. And there have been a great many Gurus guilty of such.
Classical Hatha yoga is neither of a class nor is it forceful—in the commercial vehicle as such. Hatha yoga is, as Arnando Iuannuci might say, as soft as a marzipan dildo.
It is however, defined by tradition and yet Foucault teaches us that this notion of tradition is ephemeral. Maddeningly elusive in perhaps the same fashion as a sensibility.
What is tradition?
Trans is Latin for across. Dare is to give. And Tradere is to hand deliver though also to betray. For to give across is also to get one over. So this person who teaches a tradition betrays us with their pretentions to history, but also gives us something across history. ‘Try this’ they say. Tradition is a gift not a commandment. Tradition is something shared as well. They share this expectation of behavior. We share this gift of practice. Given the enormous value of inherited wisdom we share our admonishments as well.
The Upanishad has its roots in gift. Free to offer, free to take, the disciple--she who learns, she who discerns sits next to her teacher. Guru means grave in disposition and has the connotation of heavy. The teacher has gravity, and the discerner leans toward her. Like the rivers and rocks and streams roll toward Krishna. Upana is to Be next to. Shat is to sit. We do Asana to learn to how to sit (and to organize our conference calls) Taking a lesson from a teacher, a guru—the one who is so weighty and grave that the students feel drawn to sit and listen close. This is not an obligation. The guru sits that is all.
Hatha means force. So this is in contradiction to Upana. The Guru in Tantra, in the 12th century, and so far and away from the beginning. The Guru now has an obligation to force the body into yoga. (For the body is both the mind and brain, and form and system, and environment) The Guru forces enlightenment on the dark of ignorance in the student. So the spiral starts. The Guru always satisfied to sit must now stand. The Guru must poke and prod the root. This is Classical Hatha Yoga.
What is this notion of the vast unknowable? What are they referring too?
These yogis and fakers and fakirs and faqueers? What do they see that we can’t?