HOLD BACK THE DAWN at the U.S. Open

HOLD BACK THE DAWN at the U.S. Open, the Labor Day tennis forays on Arthur Asche stadium, a shift in power,  change in the winds in the torrid zone of coach and father figure UncleToni and his nephew Rafael (Rafi), from the Island of Majorca, outside Spain..

                                   II

Their hereditary metamorphosis digs deep into the Mount Everest of biological relationships gone sour, their modus operandi dynamics being winning, racquets held high, flavored words tumbling from their lips, trophies held high… 14 grand slams… discipline and character, per dictum scrubs..

(shades of Tony Viola and his Parkville’s six cflay courts 7 decades ago on Ocean Parkway, off akin the grand slam of Washington Cemetery, off Bay Parkway, Brooklyn N.Y.)

The Hingis mother, daughter Martina in tour thru adolescence into brash triumphs , putting their marital march together,through the testing grand slams earlier..

Conquering all the Billie Jean Kings Chris Everts…only Steffi Graf to emerge unscarred by the professional handling ofd the prodigy byh the elder statesman mentor coach father figure calling the shots, throwing the die.

                                        III

“Uncle Tony role as coach has run its rout. “Rafe must go his own way. He’s no longer “Aunt Polly’s Tom Sawyer….

Martha Hingis’s mother, dictating the cumulative: overhead killing smash. Budge Patty going his own way into being his or her own person, free of the Julius Caesar libido bond , Brutuscutting out, liberating his psyche, vanquishing his father figure, freeing himself.

                                          IV

Didn’t Budge Patty go his own way, submerging his creeping metamorphosis , identifying with Don Budge until that moment when  he  got his grip, to become himself, abandoning the auraof Budge’s text,  becoming a champion under his own testing metamorphosis.   

                                        V                                 

“Answer and a lovelier gentleman

Framed in the prodigality of Nature

Young valiant wise and no doubt right

This spacious world cannot afford again ill.”

Richard III, Act I, scene 2,

September 6, 2015… 24 hours before Labor Day. The City that never sleeps.

“In the fifties,” she said “we went to Coney Island with our radios

“In the fifties,” she said “we went to Coney Island with our radios, and listened to the opera…

                                        II

“We interrupt this program to bring you the tragic news. The Jackie Robinson of “The Phantom of the Opera” 21 year oldKyle Jean- Baptiste of Fort Greene, died last night, falling off his fire escape in Brooklyn.

“ He was the first Afro American to make the revolutionarysinging role of Jean Val Jean, his own….”          

“ Lights dimmed on Broadway. The audience’s tearful applause.

Madame La Farge put aside her knitting, the “Parle vousFrancais revolutionaries ,carrying their banners around barricades, marching to the battle cries, the baritone deep tonesof Jean Val Jean, blazing the trail for voices like Battle’s…(Katherine Battle) to break the color line. …..”

                                      III

Not unlike the grandson of share croppers, Jackie Robinson had extraordinary extra sensory perception. His hand and eye coordination were so lightning fierce, his UCLA coaches vied for his God given heroics in football, baseball, track and field, basketball. 

His intrinsic “not to be ignored,” in ping pong and tennis served him well, also..

                                         IV                            

Answering the phone at basketballer Don Barksdale’s music store in the City of Angels, South Western Avenue…

“Jackie Robinson here!”

                                      V

Two hundred plus auditions whittled down to twenty six. Could Andrew Lloyd Webber, no less the author Victor Hugo, anticipate such a tragedy.

Words cannot diminish Kyle Jean’s dream. 

His loss diminishes all of us.

August 31, 2015  The City that never sleeps.

                                      

                                    

Raul Fleischmann

Raul Fleischmann, the moneyed quality human behind The New Yorker Magazine may not have gambled the family fortune(Fleischmann’s yeast)  but he never wavered in his gamble to finance a think tank literary magazine (“The talk of the town”)In the Big Apple.  

                                       II

Where else could one get a handle on talk of the town, critiques on literary undertakings: (the 1907 McDowell Colony, NewHampshire) movies, books, music….(Aaron Copeland’s“Appalachian Spring”)  Brooklyn’s  old Boys High School, off Fulton Street.

“What’s easier to buy? dreams or nightmares?  

Intrigue like Dore Schry’s’”Red Badge of Courage”, the plotting of the Civil War battle gets its 20 century how down at the Culver City studio on West Washington…Metro Goldwyn Mayer..

Of dream making…The Wizard of Oz, Judy Garland’s ‘Over therainbow’ (Yip Harburg)                       

                                    III

Hold onto your seats! The most decorated soldier(WW2) AudieMurphy cast as the non battle scarred innocent, facing enemy for the first time… a mirror of his own survival.

Confronting  survival of the fittest, facing the mirror of himself, which harkens into today’s cyber space, social media acclaims, and the tip taping of the electronic message on this keyboard. 

                                   IV

In the face of the huddled intrigue, the producer and director John Huston, fought out the shoot’s clambake: scene by scene, citing the New Yorker’s own circulation manager, Arthur M. Davis, port city of Piraeus, Greece, outside Athens and the Acropolis, the magazine lying on the Captain’s table, the ship sailing toward Cypress…..(Sutton  Place, Arthur two blocks down from Grand Aunt Carrie’s Goldfarb  flagship flower center at 57th and Third Avenue in the Big Apple.

                                         V

In the meantime, Lillian Ross flew out to the coast for a first hand appraisal of the “lights cameras action” battleground.

To  calibrate a climate of empathy, sympathy, social significance, laughter at absurdity…. the ideals that are  perpetuated in public schools and higher education, inspiringthe descendants of immigrants. “to go for it”.

To metamorphose into well rounded quality human beings… the joy of being alive and well..

                                  VI

Depicting the deceits of spite jealousy fear, talking out of bothcorners of your mouth, triggering ambiguity: a defeating logarithm, where the intrigue outweighs the grandiose scenario. (“Streetcar named Desire”)

The Bard’s “Measure for Measure” may be an apparition of the “Red Badge” intrigue, but Lew Ayres “All Quiet on the Western Front” the vision atrophying as the creative dream is pollutedthrough the nightmare of once kindred souls compromising and selling out..

                                 VII

In as many installments, Lillian Ross demonstrated how the “Red Badge”  without the Pablo Picasso touch, succumbed to the clash of temperaments and ego, the ideal being compromised by so few, that the dissing  destroyed the gravity of AudieMurphy’s emancipation…knowing himself.

                               VIII

But in the best of all possible worlds, the very vision demands a shattering of compromise and mediocrity .

Enlightenment goes hand in hand with determinism, doesn’t it?

                                  VII

Goethe’s Faust at Weimar? The Bard at the Stratford on Avon?Dante with Beatrice in Rome’s Seven Steps?  (Lord Byron and Shelly  sneezing up a poetic storm, at the Steps)

A round of applause and honors for Fleischmann yeast and its inspirational magnate Raul Fleischmann.(Fleischmann, New York, Camps Ta-ri-go , Cascade) or its unambiguous

assault on the cheap and tawdry, in the whirl of creative juicesand imagination.

May his ”cool as butter” the New Yorker’s yeast continue its commentary and flow forever.

August 26, 2015 The City that never sleeps.