THE FUN OF READING

Continuing to review books that have become foundational to my way of seeing, view of the world, weltanschauung, attitude toward life. How could I experience so directly from the source what Leo Tolstoy had to say if I didn't read? Tolstoy is a good place to start. He opened doors in my mind. A man of integrity such that reading his writing, he appears quite sane. Reading his life story, I found him a wise fool. He was not the best at making decisions for himself, though his wisdom was indisputable. Tolstoy was a wise man in the true sense of what wisdom means. Wisdom is not necessarily rational. Mind is rational. Wisdom is beyond mind, includes heart. Poetry is a mix of mind and heart, like prose writing, fiction. The mix of mind and heart, reason and emotion, weaves art forms, clarifies the difference between craft and art. Tolstoy inspires me to want to be fluent in the Russian language so I can read his beautiful stories as he wrote them. They are beautiful in translation, so beautiful it doesn't matter it's translation. Without translation, I could not read Tolstoy. Had I never found Tolstoy, my life would have been diminished. It's not anything I can put a finger on. It has to do with understanding. Like Ralph Stanley sings from the soul of the Blue Ridge Mountains, Leovochka Tolstoy wrote from the soul of Russia. 

I'm having a Russian film festival these months, seeing some of the finest films of my life, like Tarkovsky's the Sacrifice, and I've only begun. Years of reading Tolstoy, Russian names are familiar. I learned how to pronounce them in my head long ago. The names are familiar, not a problem. People I know who read most often won't read Russian writers, they can't pronounce the names. Same with Chinese and Japanese. I trained myself to get over the obscurity of foreign names. Sometimes after a movie, I'll read the names in the credits, like Japanese, and pronounce them in my mind, familiarizing with the names from another language. The same applies to Russian films, French, Italian, Turkish, Bosnian, Romanian. When somebody tells me they can't read a book full of Russian names, I think, Why not? They're phonetic. Learn them at the beginning of the book and they're easy by the end of the book. Some of the names are a bit awkward to the English reading eye, names that make some Polish names easy by comparison. 

I watch films suspending disbelief, reminding self this is only a peephole into how the people live, interact. It's a scripted drama telling a story in a given culture. It's the culture I'm curious about. I see landscape and architecture. I feel like I get a sense of Russian life acted by Russians portraying Russians, attitudes and beliefs. Saw two films on the battle of Stalingrad. First one was a 3 hour documentary told from the German side, using German film footage, filmed among the German soldiers. The Russians were the ones shooting back. Next, a Russian dramatic version of the battle from the Russian side, the Germans the ones shooting back. Saw them a couple days apart. I understand why Stalingrad has the name, the worst battle ever. I'm recalling in the German documentary, an older Russian man interviewed, who had survived the battle, said, "Russia is a great, vast country. Russia has never been defeated and never will." I thought this a commendable national legacy. He knew the "never will" as well as he knew the "never has." I include watching films with reading, as I watch mostly films from all over the earth, reading subtitles. I know less people who can read subtitles than I know who read books. 

Reading books has made it possible to read subtitles, giving access to some wildly extraordinary films, like Akira Kurosawa's Ran, and Dersu Uzala, Zhang Yimou's House of the Flying Daggers and the Hero, Krzysztof Kieslowski's Blue, White and Red, three films, each titled a color in the French flag. I could not have enjoyed these films and hundreds more restricted by inability to read subtitles. I even have a few friends among the people I know who read books who refuse to read translations. They're not authentic, as the author wrote it. Though I don't know Chinese, I can read Mo Yan and Gao Xingjian, both mainland Chinese Nobel Prize winners. I can read Apollinaire's poem, Zone, Rilke's Duino Elegies, the Tao Te Ching, by allowing self to accept translation the only access I have. I can't learn the Turkish language to read Orhan Pamuk, especially when he's available in the language I'm able to read. I can't learn French to read Rimbaud, though have access to several translations into English. In translation, I even have access to Tolstoy's letters. I read to unrestrict myself, to spread my inner horizon, like in Han Yu's words from the Southern Mountains, "A new sun lights the summits / Stretching heights and breadths millions of feet."  Reading has been an educational entertainment throughout my adult life. It is incalculable how much I'd rather read Chris Hedges' book, The Empire of Illusion, than watch anything that's on television, even the races. 

*

A RUSSIAN FILM FESTIVAL AT HOME

vladimir mayakovsky museum

I catch myself griping in my mind about how things oughta be and what's wrong. It's like by now I know so much of what is wrong with the world we live in, I've come to a place the new wrongs are old wrongs, just reworded by a new generation. I ask self, When are you going to get it? There is no end to the wrongs. It's a subject I already have the equivalent of a PhD in, working on my post-doc. The news every hour on the hour, on the half hour, continues the daily serial of pseudo-events created for the news from an endless variety of agendas selling points of view. And I pay attention like there is something real about it. I feel like I have an idea of what is going on in the world, yet it's based in misinformation such that reality is fiction. Not only is there absence of a dividing line between the two, they have become one. All the more interesting. A few years ago, a friend said to me, "I don't know the difference between fiction and non-fiction." He wasn't talking about the news. He meant he didn't know which one never happened and which one did. I chose not to take the opening to explain, because it doesn't matter, and I don't believe fiction is false and don't believe non-fiction is true. I'm not the one to ask about distinctions having to do with the seeming of a line not there. It's good for categorizing in book stores and libraries. I had a professor of an Eastern European history course, who assigned a novel from the region studied. He was Hungarian, had been in Soviet prison six years. He and family fled Budapest, came to USA, and languished in a place with no intellectual culture, until he learned to live without it. He was a great professor in the classroom. He showed me that good fiction can illustrate history books by giving life to the time and place.  

mayakovsky museum

I'm in the beginnings of a Russian film festival by way of netflix that, thankfully, has a large variety of Russian films. Already, I've seen several of Tarkovsky's films, will see three of them again next week. His films are unforgettable. They live in my mind. Andrei Rublev is the most haunting film of my life. Four hours that seem like two. The Mirror, the most enigmatic. The Sacrifice, among the very most beautiful. Yes, Tarkovsky's next. Ran these titles to the top of the Q. Now I'm itching to see them. Three of my life's favorite films. I wanted to see Kozintsev's King Lear again, but it's no longer available. It's a powerful film, rag and bones Lear. Russian Lear. My favorite of the ones I've seen in the last couple weeks is Silent Souls, by Alexei Fedorchenko, the first one I saw in this festival. A powerful, quiet story of two men saying goodbye to the tail end of their fading traditional culture along the Volga River. The original Russian title translates, the Buntings. It would be hard to follow. Next, How I Ended the Summer, by Alexei Popogrebski, was equally fine a film, and strangely, by coincidence, both involved two men. First one, two men prepare the dead wife of one of them to be burned with a pyre of stacked wood on a riverbank on the Volga. Second one, two men at a weather station on an Arctic island as close to the pole as Trondheim, Norway. It's cold. A simple story turned complex real fast around one ignorant decision. I liked both of them so much, both beautifully made films, I felt like they were the door opening the way into my weeks and months of films from a new mind, a new world. I've read much Tolstoy and several biographies of him, my top favorite writer on earth, ever. He represents Russia now like William Faulkner represents America now. Not at all in one way, and a whole lot in another way.  

mayakovsky museum

I've watched foreign films since age 23, first opportunity. Other cultures have been of interest from my beginnings. Since childhood I've liked to know people of cultures different from mine. I've read writers from all around the globe, enjoy them as peep-holes into how people live in certain parts of the world. I keep the Atlas nearby. A clue to the location the story is taking place, I pause the film, and look in the Atlas. I like to see landscape in the film and locate it on the map. I learned in Rome that Fellini films, though they happened in Rome, prepared me for Rome not at all. I got it early that films don't represent their culture but symbolically. In a city, like Moscow, I look at the faces of people passing by, pay attention to their clothes, how they walk, look at the architecture, interiors, the roads, the vehicles, landscapes. It's my way of low budget world travel. In film, I see a representation of how people live in certain places and times, and see the places. I didn't realize until I saw a Norwegian film that St Petersburg is on a latitude with the Scandinavian cities. And Moscow is not far south of St Petersburg. It's cold up there. I've read of Moscow winters, but never connected with how far north Moscow is. I'd rather learn about Russia without the politics of television. I've already learned that Russia has ancient ethnic regions everywhere. It is not one big culture. I'm seeing that Russia is a gathering of a large number of cultures. The old ways are fading in Russia like they are fading everywhere on earth. And then there is Siberia, east of the Ural Mountains, the part that makes Russia the biggest country on earth, Asia. I want to find films in the Asian part of Russia as well as the European.  

mayakovsky museum

Today's film was the dark side, Cargo 200. At the end, script comes up that says the story actually happened in 1984. A good film. I liked the way scenes skipped around following different characters, some directly engaged, some only peripherally involved, who don't see what's going on with the ones doing the deeds. Big surprise when this creepy guy blasted somebody with a shotgun, advancing the story to a new level. A true crime story that was bad. It brought to mind the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, though not nearly so hard to watch, and not nearly so bad. I take it for a Russian version of teenage horror movies the guys like to take chicks to see. It had a criminal mind different from any I've ever heard of. The crazy man was seriously crazy and good at getting away with his deeds. I appreciated that it did not have Hollywood cheeziness about it. It was simply a story well told. And yesterday's film was Taxi Blues, which I'd seen soon after it was new in 1991. Good to see it again. I remembered almost nothing from it except a jazz saxophone player. It, too, another beautifully made film, and from a culture totally new to me. I am seeing that Russian culture, intellectual Russia, the culture of the writers and filmmakers is so uniquely itself in relation to European cultures, as I see them in film. It's like east of Finland and Poland is another world. I had no idea it was there. I feel like I'm getting some insight into the divide in Ukraine, Europe on one side, Russia on the other. Two different worlds. I thought I was aware of Russia to some degree. I see human beings living their lives, doing the best they know how in their circumstances. Some are comfortable circumstances and some are not. I'm refreshed from the start of the film festival to see that Russian movies do not always have to have a happy ending. 

frida kahlo and vladimir mayakovsky

*

ALPHA DONKEY IS FIRST

rain dance

I saw a little bit of the Olympics on tv yesterday visiting friends. The downhill men, the ski jump men, the snowboard women and cross country women. Enjoyed them all. Snowboard fascinates me. Not that I aim to attempt to stand up on one. It's funny to see the American corporate network's absence of humility make the event into commentary on how backward Russia is compared to USA. I can't help but think of the obvious decline of America. We're passing Russia on its way up as we're on our way down. I've seen it for so long, it doesn't bother me anymore. The arrogance coming through the television disturbed me. I remind myself it is corporate press, corporate image making, sophisticated mind-control. I look around at what it is like to be in the American working class and look at what the tv is telling us about ourselves. The confusion becomes so complex it shuts down thinking about it. I see my friends, both working, skimming the surface of poverty. Seeing television puts me into this kind of thinking. I see such a contrast in television to what I see happening around me. I don't mean corruption. I mean the working class has been in Depression the last thirty plus years. Government doesn't acknowledge it, television doesn't acknowledge it. Corporate self interest has bled the working class unto the living dead. Why do you think zombie and vampire entertainment is connecting with the American working class? The tv is overrun with commercials for images of destruction and the death of everybody, but they don't quite die, they just keep on. It's the best ever! I saw something a few days ago of some CEO from the ruling class saying the one percent work harder. My first thought: try working in a West Virginia coal mine for the rest of your life if you're so proud of hard labor. He'd rather kill himself.  

 

 vada faye

 

It brings to mind the word declared the most annoying word of 2013: Whatever. Just whatever. I keep on a-keepin on just like everybody around me. Miss one paycheck and bankruptcy looms, except the corporations have made the laws so only corporations can declare bankruptcy. What happened to corporations are people? I guess it means except when they don't want any of the plebeian responsibilities, like paying taxes. I don't even want to be writing this. I set out not to, thought mentioning the Olympics could divert my mind away from this thinking, but it took me straight into where I did not want to go. I'm ill of this thinking, but it's all I see anymore of the greater world I inhabit, what the corporate takeover of our democracy has done to the American people. This is why I remind myself every day to keep my mind out of that toilet bowl. I can't change it. I can only take care of my own interest in my own space and time. I'd like to see less mean-spirited politicians. They make it too obvious they regard we the people the enemy. I look out the window and see Donkey Jack looking at me. I took a break and went out to feed the donkeys and calf. Jack brayed. Jenny knows I keep carrot chunks in the two pockets of my outdoor shirt. She pokes at the pockets with her nose when the carrots run out. I hold my hands open to show her what I mean by "no more." She's in a friendly, though assertive mood this morning. She was pushing me a little bit. She stood in front of the gate. I pushed it gently until I was able to get through. She just stared at me like to say, I don't want to move. Vada was in the same mood yesterday. I don't know how many times I heard her say, I don't want to. Jenny put her nose into the hay I was carrying and gave it a push like she wanted to push it out of my hands for the fun of it. She wasn't menacing. It was like she just wanted to give me a hard time for not having another carrot. She wasn't rough. She followed me into the meadow, ears back tight, gaze backward at Jack and the calf, ears telling them not to crowd in. Alpha donkey is first.

Martha

 

In the front of my mind at the beginning above, I wanted to tell y'all about the blog's purpose that keeps me going day after day since May 1, 2009, closing in on 5 years. I set out to make myself write something every day that might be worth reading. It is an exercise with intent to improve my writing. The only agenda is to write every day. The blog is a subjective account of one individual's experience in one place in one time. In this case, I am the individual, Air Bellows is the place and today is the time. In my own way of seeing reality, subjective experience is closer to "reality" than objective experience. Consciousness is subjective. Therefore, I write in first person personal experience, mental, physical and emotional. The blog was conceived in conversation with my friend Lizabeth. I was telling her about some old-timers I know and she said, "Have you thought about writing a blog?" I said, "What's a blog?" She explained briefly and gave me the web address for BlogSpot. I looked it up and it stayed in the front of my mind overnight and into the next day. I thought I'd give it a go. I'd been wanting to do some writing in a journal, but journaling attempts in the past would end after second or third day. I don't write to myself very well, tend to make notes. I thought if I put it online, made it an open journal, I'd have maybe somebody on the other end reading, someone to write to. One, two or three readers would do, just somebody to write to. Years ago, I knew a man who had been a well known writer in the writing time of his life. I was just starting out, freshman year in college. I mentioned, "I write for myself." He assured me nobody writes for himself. The act of writing automatically means it is for somebody to read. Not many years ago talking with someone I knew at lunch, he said he wrote for himself. I brought this up that the act of writing implies a reader. I was the subject of a brief lecture on naïvete. Whatever.

 

caterpillar

 

So far, I've written 1,466 entries. If I'd set out to do that many, it would not have got past fifty. I'd have been worn out by the thought of  writing that many. Each day I make myself write. Most of the time I have a blank mind, nothing to say. So I start wherever I feel like starting and let it evolve of its own. Before long I have a theme begun and then follow it to see where it goes. Almost never do I start with a theme in mind. I like this free flowing way of writing. I think of it as "organic," using organic the way poet Denise Levertov defined it, letting the writing grow from inside itself. By the way, her collected poems has recently been published. Like today, I set out with a mind toward telling you about the process of writing these entries and their purpose. The purpose is to write. What happens from there is whatever happens. Keeping it decent is about my only rule of thumb. I give myself the freedom not to write any given day if I don't feel like it. Probably average something like 25 a month. It's all about feel. As I feel what I write about, I allow the feeling of not wanting to or not finding time in the day for writing. I believe my favorite part of the process is writing when I have a blank mind with nothing I want to explore. I'll write a sentence, then another, then another and find it starts flowing, subject revealed, next sentence, next and next. Even better than that, I like it when every sentence takes a long time to write. I push it and push. I make myself go. It wears me out so much that when it's finished I post it and go to bed, exhausted. On the way to sleep, I regret posting it, thinking it the worst thing I've written, shouldn't even have let anybody see it. Get up in the morning, look at it to see what a horrible mess I ruined whatever credibility the blog might have had with. An email or two saying it's one of the best. I read it over and am shocked at what I'd written. It really was one of the best. I laugh at myself again. It's a friendly laughing at self. The point is that it doesn't matter if they're good or bad. I like to make them the best I can, but want the freedom to allow the whole range of possibilities. It seems like willingness to allow the worst with the best frees inner blockage. Freedom from holding myself to an artificial standard really does allow creative expression. Writing these daily entries has freed up the storyteller within.  

 

old-time string band

the crooked road ramblers

 

*

 



JUST SAYING

 

lucio fontana

Looking at facebook this morning not long after waking, I found a video of a news broadcast in Russia from probably Moscow. It pointed out straight-forwardly as could be presented in a brief time that the Whitehouse and CIA were the aggressors in 9/11, not 19 Arabs with cell phones and box cutters. In about 15 minutes, the Russian news presentation made a case using the most convincing evidence available. The tv production spelled out that it was indeed an "inside job." None of it is new to me. It's new seeing it used in an international propaganda war. First thought: Obama recently disrespected Putin in public internationally. Putin's op-ed in the NY Times was no more than a statement that he fails to see the humor in being disrespected. Putin is a KGB martial artist. Martial arts is about avoidance, KGB martial arts is kill you in three seconds. Martial arts is a mental discipline as well as physical. Obama is a basketball player. Watching the video, I saw in my mind's eye Obama dribbling a basketball trying to get around Putin and Putin kills him. Vladimir Putin is one of the men on earth I would not challenge to a duel of any sort, physical or mental. I see Putin with superior physical and mental control and the soul of a bear. To hit him would be the same as hitting a tree. Except he'd deck you and the tree would just stand there. Whoever you are, Putin could take you out faster than Anderson Silva. Vladimir Putin is for me the image of a Bad Mutha.

 

lucio fontana

 

 

I remember my thought when I saw in the news Obama disrespect Putin like he did. I thought: do not challenge that man. You're a basketball player. He's a killer. W Bush disrespected Putin calling him Pootie-poot. That was Bush, with Cheney and Rummy for backup, saying fuck you, like at a fraternity beer party. Putin knew it. It was Bush Whitehouse/CIA behind 9/11, and Putin knows it. He knows Obama knows it too. Obama's silence on the matter and saying Bush "wasn't such a bad president," makes him complicit, same as the one driving the car in a drive-by.  I'm seeing Putin bring this lump under the rug out in the open. This Russian broadcast went all the way around the world. In a fighting match, I'd score Putin a direct hit, one that would send Obama staggering to catch his balance. Putin solved the Syria problem by convincing al-Assad to comply with turning over chemical agents they bought from USA to the UN. End of story. Then Obama starts publicly taking credit for it and making it into a conflict he won. It must have bent Putin over laughing, might have even spilled his vodka. I'm getting the impression nobody is counseling Obama that Putin has a whole lot more power than the American president. His house is not divided, or anyway not divided like Obama's. Putin has the power to clean Obama's clock, and he'd better start paying attention. To say we have The Bomb, they have it too. Our side pushes the button; while the missiles are in the air the other side pushes the button. End of History.

 

lucio fontana

 

 

That's calling for sensible thinking, which American government does not do. If it ever did, I don't know, but it has not demonstrated sensible thinking in my lifetime. Like in the last weeks Sen John McCain of Arizona is being heard to make a little bit of sense, leading me to believe dementia has taken away his mind, going so far off message. In his right mind, he was a parrot of Reaganism. Now he's saying, "It's not rational." Rational? When did rational become a concern to a republican? His mind is gone. It was bad before Johnson, bad before Nixon, bad before Reagan, then the Reagan Revolution took the American people on the present downhill run to the bottom. To quote Chris Hedges, "Brace yourself. The American Empire is over and the descent is going to be horrifying." I used to hope the Obama presidency might be the beginning of a turnaround from Reaganism, but it's not. Obama, I have seen, is a booster rocket for the downward run to police state. The flush occurred when the republicans stole the 2000 election out in the open, publicly, and said to we who don't like it: fuck you if you don't like it. Police state is here. Police state is now. Get it. Barak Obama gets it. He's using his power as president to assist the republican systematic lockstep dismantling of democracy in front of everybody's face on the evening news, followed by several commercials. Obviously, the American people want police state.

 

lucio fontana

 

 

Police state means white power in a time when democracy favors minorities. Shut down democracy, white man retains control. Obama cares nothing for the black people in America, same as he cares nothing for the white people. He just happens to be very good at passing tests and has a natural charisma that took him far. I'm wondering if he might not be an example of the Peter Principle: advanced to the level of his incompetence and there he stays. On the one hand, I see the republicans acting out racism on him. On the other hand, I see him challenging Putin publicly with disrespect as not an intelligent move. Of course, it's a strategy. He wouldn't do anything if it didn't have strategy behind it. He doesn't appear to have much respect for the Russian Bear is what I'm getting at. I'm curious to see the ripples that arise from this pebble thrown in the water. I would not want to be in the same room with Putin's energy. Nor would I want to be in the same room with Obama's energy. These are high energy egomaniacs whose souls are filling roles I don't want to be anywhere near. If Obama's staff has a video game idea of a Battle of the Titans, this American citizen would recommend not going there. Obama is way too vulnerable and gives me the impression he has not yet noticed. An American basketball player is no contest for a Russian KGB trained killer.

 

lucio fontana

 

 

*

 

 

PUSSY RIOT SENTENCE

     pussy riot

The verdict in the Pussy Riot kangaroo court is a sentence of two years for hooliganism and expression of hate for religion. That's what they were charged with, not permitted a proper defense, and that's what they were sentenced on, what they were charged with. I can't help but think it is a mind game played on them by Putin who may have set the nature of the punishment first day of their arrest. The judge following orders from headquarters. Whatever the case, the so-called trial was a mockery of law, which the State is free to do at will. It's like a Kafka novel and a Solzhenitsyn novel spun together as one. That's in Russia. I have no right in USA to be telling Russian State what decisions to make. I don't aim to. It's their business. But as a story, a story told by a Russian contemporary writer, the verdict is not the end of the story. It's the beginning of the next chapter. The plot thickens. The kangaroo trial and the martial sentence were done publicly, so I have a right to comment on it publicly; albeit with not anything like the international publicity they made for themselves.


It is no different here. Kangaroo trials abound here. No one can point a finger from this side of either ocean. 911 was an inside job and American Muslims suffer under the blame for it by the ones that pushed the button to set the plan in motion. The Pussy Riot girls pushed Putin's buttons in a time when he is evidently feeling threatened. It's not like they were in Amsterdam or SanFrancisco. They also pushed the buttons of the Russian Orthodox church, itself threatened by a falling away of the young. The way I see what they did from my own perspective, sitting with a laptop pushing buttons, they were children playing with firecrackers. I would never think of doing what they did without considering the consequences first. Maybe they did. If I chose to go ahead and commit the act, it would be aware of the risk. They got the shaft. If they didn't know that was the risk, they were too ignorant to be taken seriously anyway. These three women will be committed political activists the rest of their lives. They will be cheered at rallies, at rock concerts. Their names will ring all over Russia among the young. The more harshly they're treated, the more famous around the world they will be. Censoring the internet is what the State has to do. In effect, shutting out the outside world.


What's the problem with that? In USA we are so self-centered that the biggest majority of Americans isn't even interested that Russia is a country, couldn't find it on a globe. As a rule, Americans are not interested in anything beyond our borders except as tourism. Evidently Russians are not interested in the world outside Russia either. Why would Putin give a shit about what Madonna thinks of the Russian legal system? Or Bjork? Or The Edge? From his way of seeing, these freaks with freakish names are what's wrong with the world. To post-Soviet Russians, like in America, mostly rural peasantry, they're so poor the religion is all they have. Wiggle your ass in the face of what half the Russian population believes to be God's altar, and you've pist off very seriously an awful lot of the people around you, wherever you are in the country. The Pussy Riot girls did not get it how adamant religionists can be. On a news clip I heard someone from over there say the girls simply chose the wrong location to exhibit their protest. At the same time, what better indication that your protest really worked than a 2 year sentence? That's better than the front page of the Sunday paper for publicity.


I think I recall seeing something about a new single by the punk rock band Pussy Riot. It's another rant about Putin, or maybe the one that got them locked up. They're pushing it. I couldn't be so light-hearted going up against the Russian bear. The girls are so out of their league, they may end up wishing they'd taken up knitting in front of a television instead of political activism. Whatever the case, the story is not over and may not be over for quite awhile. A provocative action provokes. A 2 year sentence is what the Pussy Riot girls provoked for themselves. It doesn't seem right to people of the world outside Russia, but evidently it seems right to the people of Russia. Who knows? The press cannot be counted on to tell anything remotely close to actuality, theirs and ours. I know Russia is censoring internet activity that has to do with Pussy Riot. So what. They want control of the news inside Russia. US corporate government has control of the news inside USA. It's nothing we can make something of about freedom. It's just post-Soviet Russia acting like America. They do it their way, we do it our way. They have the Gulag, we have the biggest prison system in the world.

*

PUSSY RIOT ON TRIAL

     pussy riot goes to church

I can't get those girls of Pussy Riot off my mind. When I see the young protesting in easy-target ways against militarist governments, I recall the protests of the Sixties, which were not treated nicely by law enforcement. The three women seem shocked that they were arrested. In the courtroom they seem like they can't get it out of their minds it's a joke. Arrest anywhere isn't funny. In Russia I imagine it's as unfunny as it is here. It's looking like Putin is wiping the smiles off their faces. The shame of it was that the girls were funny and cleverly outrageous. They are the people government is out of touch with, the non-rich and the non-celebrity. They were performing spontaneous street theater in Moscow. That's all they were doing. They were too naive to know what they were up against. It tells me that the girls are braver than they look. In the Sixties and Seventies European activist women had a serious demeanor about them like they majored in German Philosophy. The girls of Pussy Riot are of the new generation of punk protest. I wonder if they know how outrageous punk style is to the complacent majority. I've an idea that's the point. This trial is where they find out.


I saw that Nina Hagen made an appeal in their defense. That could make it worse. Nina Hagen has been involved in animal rights protests for some time. She had a song in the 80s, Don't Klll The Animals. Don't kill the animals, the animals are free, frE-E-E. Her video of the song was of Nina and Lina Lovitch breaking into a place where dogs were kept for lab research and setting them free in the night. Pussy Riot has a strong Nina Hagen influence in their sound and their Euro-punk attitude. They are like the next thing after Nina, herself. One aspect of punk I suspect about everybody outside punk circles doesn't get is the sense that punk has an art aesthetic pop music is lacking. It's expressed in what looks like chaos, though it's an artistic mirror image of the chaos our governments put us through. The women of Pussy Riot were protesting the complicity of church and state in keeping women down. They knew it was serious when they went into it. My guess would be that no matter how naive it seems from half way around the world, to stand up in Putin's face so blatantly like they did took some courage. They know better than I do the danger. To me, it looks considerable. If they didn't assess the danger quotient before they went into it, they certainly have by now after 5 months in prison.


I went to YouTube and looked up some of their performances. I find them immensely clever and applaud their performances. It is like Nina Hagen offspring kicking and punching the air. They use smoke devices like flares. They make a lot of noise with a clever show until they're scattered by the police. In this country the danger would be arrest and charged with conspiracy, a charge that cannot be got out of, and put away. Remember what happened to the Dixie Chicks. At a show in London they remarked that they were ashamed to be from the same state WBush was from, Texas. Bush administration shut them down. Kept their music off the air, but their concerts sold out and their cd sales were way up. In the Johnson administration, Lady Bird was having a dinner for important women when Eartha Kitt rose from her seat and made herself unwelcome by making a speech about the Vietnam war and the administration's disregard for the American people. That didn't set too well with LBJ. Eartha Kitt never appeared again on stage or film until one of the Ernest movies about Halloween a lot of years later, where she played a witch. Dylan did it right by declining his invitation to Nixon whitehouse dinner.


I googled some info on the Monday trial. It's looking bad from witnesses, people who were in the church. One old woman who sold candles inside the church was outraged beyond what her mind could handle. The women of Pussy Riot are being told to get baptized, join the church. They have drawn attention around the world to the feminist cause in Russia. Evidently, it is dire. The women doing the protesting are serious enough about it to set themselves up for arrest. Another feminist group in Moscow I found in YouTube called Femme goes about taking off their shirts and flaunting themselves topless with statements written on their skin in black ink. It tells me Russia has some feisty women. It also tells me in Russia the government resistance to feminism is more stubborn than it is here. If Putin characterizes the macho man ethic in Russia, it's a bit stronger than it is in this country. I'd guess the macho man ethic in Russia to be something about like it is in Mexico. Macho man acts like a big dog. His expression of manhood is domination of women. I know nothing about Muscovite culture, very little about punk culture, very little about women and nothing but news quips about Putin that may or may not have connection with Putin himself. He is a martial artist. I understand the Russian style of martial arts is particularly deadly. KGB. I wouldn't go up against him.


Xtreme politics. Putin knows that he can kill them, one at a time with a single touch that's placed just right. But he won't do that. He won't need to. The outcome of this trial has the potential to be very interesting. I can't fathom all the ways, but see a few. The church will decide to go with tolerance or intolerance. The latter is the tradition, but this decision is up for the world to witness with a cold eye. Putin has a decision to make for his political self-image, tolerant or intolerant. Intolerant, again, is the tradition. Russia does not mind telling the rest of the world to mind your own business. My heart is with the women on trial. I know they were having fun making absurd punk street theater with a protest edge. They're being tried for an idea of what they did, not what they did. I don't see that Sting or any American rock star appealing for their release is going to do anything but bring attention to themselves. My inclination is to pray for them in their hour of need. They're good people. They don't belong in prison. They need an award for the world's most clever protest. They were so good they were locked up. Congratulations, ladies.

     pussy riot, from the moscow times

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