In Boozo Veritas #34: Before the Tortoise Dons his Raincoat

24 Monday Mar 2014

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in In Boozo Veritas, Music

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In Boozo Veritas, Nat Evans, Teege Braune

In Boozo Veritas #34 by Teege Braune

Before the Tortoise Dons his Raincoat:

Preliminary Thoughts on an as of Yet Unwritten Piece of Music

In the middle of my freshman year of college I met a shy young man named Nat Evans with whom I began a friendship after I wrote this haiku by Shiki on the white board of his dorm room door:

Midnight sound-

Leap up:

A fallen moon flower.

We had much in common, including an interest in Buddhism and aspirations of becoming writers, he of music, myself of short stories. We had been friends for about a year when one of Nat’s own pieces was performed on campus. At nineteen I was surprised that clay flower pots were among the instruments to be played. The novelty of this intrigued me at the time, but once the piece began I realized that the flower pots were not utilized in an attempt to be simply weird and different, that they had a signature sound within them, something that could never be recreated by a “traditional” percussion instrument. Experiencing that piece of music at that time in my life was exhilarating, and it was the first time I realized just how much talent my good friend had within in him.

Over the years that we’ve been friends, Nat’s cultivated this talent, written scores of music, and watched his career blossom. His work is performed internationally on a regular basis by choruses, ensembles, and solo musicians and was included in the compilation CD that accompanied the 2011 music issue of The Believer. While Nat will often write for traditional instruments, his work is also filled with elements of everyday life, especially the natural world such as tree branches and conch shells. His piece LOG, premiered in Orlando earlier this year by percussionist Matt Roberts, is played on an actual log and required Matt to procure this log himself and make a field recording of the place where the log was discovered. These were complimented by a custom made music box of Nat’s own design. An ideological student of John Cage, Nat’s work acknowledges that music is everywhere and can be made with anything. Taking this principle several steps further than simply reinterpreting a flower pot, Nat’s music is rooted in the collaborative experiences and settings of its creation and performance and requires a contemplative, highly interactive involvement from its participants, musician and audience alike.

Lest you think the composer an unfair taskmaster, taking it easy while the poor performer searches through the woods for a log, Nat’s next project, entitled The Tortoise & His Raincoat: Music for a Very Long Walk, is his most ambitious yet and requires him to make a 2600 mile, five month walk up the Pacific Crest trail, essentially the entire west coast of the United States from the U.S. / Mexican border straight up through the Cascade Mountains of northern Washington. Over the course of this strenuous hike Nat will be composing music the old fashioned way with pen and paper, but he will also be making field recordings of his surroundings, which will be sent to six composers, such as Chris Kallmyer whose highly conceptual work has included recordings of the ocean and the simultaneous eating of oysters. These composers will utilize the sounds of the wilderness as an instrument in their own pieces, which Nat will incorporate into the greater project. Understandably Nat is reluctant to attempt to predict just where the overarching project will go. Just as the sounds will arise from the days and nights outside in the desert, forest, or mountains, Nat’s own compositions will no doubt spring forth from the hours of endurance and quiet contemplation. While his journey might smack of a Beat era, Dharma Bums adventure, and indeed the poetry of Gary Snyder is an influence on Nat and his own Buddhist practice, Nat will be doing no hitch-hiking along the way. Nat’s project doesn’t share the feelings of restlessness and perpetual unease associated with Kerouac and his ilk. Rather his hike is more akin to a spiritual pilgrimage, walking a great distance simply because he feels called to do so. The pilgrim needs not understand that calling before he sets out. He needs only to acknowledge it, accept it, and be open to the language of both the world and his mind speaking to him along the way.

Nat is no stranger to walking. When living in China, he often roamed the city of Nanjing on foot in a futile search for a much-desired cup of black coffee. When we briefly lived together in Seattle we would often go out drinking in bars after the last bus had ended its route and be forced to drunkenly trudge home together with uncomfortably full bladders. Nat took me on the longest walk of my own life, a four day hike over the crest of Uncompahgre Peak of the San Juan Mountains in Colorado, but none of this will compare to the trek on which he will set out only a month from now. How does one prepare for such an endeavor? Staying healthy, getting one’s affairs in order. Of course, a certain amount of money will be required for food and basic necessities. If you would like to donate to Nat’s walk, participate in a truly awe-inspiring project, and help keep him alive for five months, you can do so through the Hatchfund website by clicking here. Those who donate will receive a copy of the finished project which will be released by experimental music label Quakebasket Records. Additionally, depending on how much you are able to give, you may receive a custom-made music box or a portrait of yourself as a tree drawn by Nat on the trail.

I’ll be checking in on Nat periodically, both excited and concerned for him as I am, not to mention perhaps a little bit jealous. I have no doubt that his stories will make the subject of future In Boozo Veritas blogs, though he probably won’t be consuming a great deal of alcohol on the trail. Stepping out into the unknown is itself a macrocosm for creation, the artist’s willingness to listen to the mystery, and then to speak to it in turn, for the mystery does not simply require our silence; it asks for a dialogue, the transcription of which is the final product. I have always enjoyed my enlightening conversations with Nat and the perfectly natural silences that punctuate these. As he begins this long conversation with himself, the wilderness, and his fellow West Coast composers, I can’t wait to hear the words that are exchanged and witness the silences that give these words their weight, the sounds that will become The Tortoise & His Raincoat: Music for a Very Long Walk.

Check out Nat’s website to learn more about him and his incredible music.

___________

Teege Braune (episode 72, episode 75, episode 77, episode 90) is a writer of literary fiction, horror, essays, and poetry. Recently he has discovered the joys of drinking responsibly. He may or may not be a werewolf.

In Boozo Veritas #33: St. Patrick’s Day

17 Monday Mar 2014

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Drinking, In Boozo Veritas, Irish Literature

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In Boozo Veritas #33 by Teege Braune

St. Patrick’s Day

If you are the kind of person who celebrates holidays by listening to podcasts, you’ve no doubt already enjoyed The Drunken Odyssey’s drinking roundtable discussion recorded especially for St. Patrick’s Day.

Somewhere among the odd off topic asides and the sounds of clinking glasses I share an obscure poem written by Irish poet, scholar, and mystic W.B. Yeats entitled simply “The Irish Car Bomb.” Don’t ask me where I dug up this relic of misguided poetic innovation. I’m sure Yeats himself would have preferred it lost to posterity. It is admittedly not the poet’s best work: for one thing its rhythm and meter lack the near perfect precision for which Yeats’ is rightfully credited. Furthermore, the poem’s references are a hodgepodge of Irish culture and mythology with nothing of any discernible importance uniting them together in this particular poem. Careful readers of Yeats’ work will find it odd that he mentions Orlando, which at the time of his death in 1939 was still only a fledgling metropolis. Stranger still is that the poem is about a drink often deemed culturally insensitive to the Irish and their history of violent conflict between imperialist England and the IRA, but most perplexing is the fact that Irish car bombs were invented in the United States forty years after Yeats died. His prophetic foreknowledge of their future popularity can only be attributed to his involvement with the Hermetic Order of Golden Dawn and communion with Secret Chiefs.

Despite its spurious origins and cultural carelessness, the Irish car bomb is a favorite among binge drinkers on St. Patrick’s Day. We can at least acknowledge that its ingredients are Irish, though ninety percent of the Guinness consumed in the United States any day of the year is actually brewed in the company’s facility in Canada and not in its historic Dublin brewery. One could argue that the car bomb is actually a perfect symbol for St. Patrick’s Day in the United States: “Irish” ingredients created in the new world thrown together and chugged at one’s own peril with zero consideration for how they actually relate to the people one is supposedly celebrating. This is the way we appropriate any culture in this country, right? Taking bits and pieces from various stories and epochs, combining them without much thought or justification, blurring the lines between honoring another ethnicity and simply bastardizing it.

And yet I’ve enjoyed my fair share of car bombs, consumed them with a clear conscience, and probably will again.

This is the nature of a melting pot: one generation shares with its neighbors and progenies the pieces of the old country that it has brought with it across the ocean. These same neighbors and progenies remember the details but forget the old country, a place, after all, they have never seen, or if they have, visited only as a guest and a stranger. Like a cross generational game of telephone, they pass the half-remembered traditions up their family trees until they are as watered down as their own bloodlines. This isn’t a lament. This is simply the nature of America; the alternative, namely nationalism, is much darker indeed.

Neither is this an argument for unbridled cultural appropriation, the inevitability of which does not justify the creation of insulting portrayals of other ethnicities, nor the trivialization of their struggles. Unfortunately, racism is still a huge problem in this country and much of the world. Despite my occasional consumption of the beverage, the Irish car bomb is undoubtedly on the insensitive side of the cultural appropriation fence. There’s a great Irish proverb that goes, “It is often a person’s mouth that broke his nose.” The ignorant tourist who orders an Irish car bomb in any random pub in Dublin deserves the fat lip that he may receive instead. Why, then, drink it in the United States? Guinness, Bailey’s, and Jameson are surprisingly delicious when all gulped down all together, but is this justification enough? What if we simply changed the name? Were I taxed with renaming the car bomb, I might call it something like Fergus’ Folly or Finnegan’s Quake, but we all know that neither of these are likely to stick.

One finds references to St. Patrick’s Day lacking in Yeats’ work. In fact, the ideologies of the poet and the patron saint of Ireland, separated from each other by a gulf of centuries, stand in stark opposition to each other. While the latter made the rediscovery of Irish mythology and folklore his life’s work, the former spent his first years in Ireland, a land that was not his home, in slavery, and then after gaining his freedom only to voluntarily sacrifice it for a monastic life, created his legacy by converting pagans to Christianity, thus Romanizing Ireland and initiating the end of the age of myth. The primary miracle associated with St. Patrick is the legend that he drove all the snakes from Ireland. While it’s true that there are no snakes on the island, paleontological evidence suggests that they were never there to begin with. The snakes St. Patrick drove from the island symbolize the pagan gods whom Christianity associates with demons. Rediscovering these gods, breathing new life into them and reestablishing their significance was Yeats’ own mission, and thus its easy to imagine why St. Patrick was a not figure for whom he had much reverence.

Despite their differences, there are aspects of St. Patrick’s Day for both Yeats and the old monk to enjoy. The shamrock, for example, while appropriated by Christianity to represent the trinity, was also a sacred symbol of springtime and regeneration to the pagan Celts who came before. On the other hand, the adoration of leprechauns, about whom Yeats collected a host of folktales, would no doubt please the poet, while their ubiquitousness might have the saint rolling in his grave, and if that didn’t do it, the fact that his holiday serves as an out in out bacchanal for many would most likely not please him in the slightest. Of course, it is unlikely that your average American reveler is thinking much about how the plastic shamrock hanging on a beaded necklace around their neck is a bridge between Christianity and paganism while they are getting smashed chugging car bombs in some “Irish” pub most likely owned by Americans.

Last year while I was in Target with my own bonny lass, Jenny no less, on an errand unrelated to the holiday, a middle-aged woman ran up to me and began talking enthusiastically about how excited she was to meet a real leprechaun on St. Patrick’s Day. Perhaps I was wearing green. Perhaps not, though I can safely say I sported a big, red beard. Nevertheless, I allowed her daughter, whose mortification was obvious, to take a picture of her mother and myself together while Jenn stood off to the side unable to control her laughter. What can I say? I am a person who aims to please. No sense, it seemed, in mentioning the fact that I am really only about twenty-five percent Irish, my lineage being mostly German. When people see my red beard, especially on St. Patrick’s Day, they often want me to be Irish, and I am usually quick to indulge them. If I meet a party-goer with more than one drink in them, I just claim to be 100% Irish. “Came to America when I was a wee lad,” I’ll tell any random drunk person. It reinforces some idea to them, not a religious principle or anything so sacred. Rather I become another component to the flimsy veneer of Irishness with which they have adorned themselves. Rubbing elbows with a real Irishman on St. Patrick’s Day becomes one more glorious detail in a night of blurry memories. If I, of all people, approve of them, then they must be doing St. Patrick’s Day right.

Personally, I love St. Patrick’s Day. I enjoy an excuse to dust off my collections of Yeats and Seamus Heaney, to play the music of Shane MacGowan and Ronnie Drew, and yes, get drunk on beer and whiskey. Perhaps my red beard is indicative of Irishness as my spiritual ancestry even if it only makes up a quarter of my blood. I’ll ignore the fact that the recessive ginger gene is a minority among the population of the emerald isle as it is everywhere else in the world. Perhaps my red beard is only an excuse to claim a cultural identity that is more romantic than my German lineage. In truth, I am really as American as everyone else pretending to be Irish on St. Patrick’s Day. Sitting in the Drunken Monkey, writing about Irish car bombs while listening to French pop music and drinking Ethiopian coffee, I feel grateful to live in a time and a place where I can enjoy various bits and pieces of cultures all over the world, but I also know that their is privilege there too, that enjoying a song, a beer, or kind of coffee will never allow me to understand what its like to be anything other than an American. St. Patrick’s Day will never mean the same in America as it does in Ireland. Nor, for that matter, will it mean the same today as it did for the down-trodden Irish immigrants of a hundred years ago. We will never distill the experience of an entire people into a single day or idea. That being said, rather than deride those who wish to adorn themselves in green hats and beads and consume green beer, I would simply encourage you to have fun in whichever way you please, but while you do so remember that respect is always an important virtue in the United States, Ireland, and across the world.

___________

Teege Braune (episode 72, episode 75, episode 77, episode 90) is a writer of literary fiction, horror, essays, and poetry. Recently he has discovered the joys of drinking responsibly. He may or may not be a werewolf.

In Boozo Veritas #31: Just a Dab Will Do Ya

03 Monday Mar 2014

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in In Boozo Veritas

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In Boozo Veritas #31 by Teege Braune

Just a Dab Will Do Ya

What would On the Road be if Jack Kerouac had never met the philandering, bisexual, petty thug madman Neal Cassady? The story of Sal Paradise, a drifting, directionless writer who wanders back and forth across the United States not getting into adventures. Let’s face it, Cassady’s, or rather Dean Moriarty’s, insane, self-destructive and often immoral or possibly amoral antics are the salt and pepper of what is otherwise a dry and unwieldy novel.

Hunter S. Thompson was a man no doubt capable of wreaking his own havoc, and yet it seems there was a level of lunacy below which he could not dive on his own. “It was never weird enough for me,” Thompson had famously said. His friend, attorney and drug addict Oscar Zeta Acosta, seemed to get him one step closer to the threshold. I can’t imagine Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas without Acosta, that is Dr. Gonzo, continually getting Thompson, that is Dr. Duke, into and out of trouble. Instead of a cocaine and LSD fueled blitzkrieg on the city of sin, we’d have what? An account of the 1970 Mint 400 motorcycle race? Possibly interesting in its own right, but unlikely to have been as monumental.

Perhaps these relationships have their spiritual origins in Dante whose trip through hell was goaded by Virgil, the two of them buddying up as they descended. As the labor of crafting a story, whether imagined or “true,” requires much careful consideration, even when the intention is to appear sudden and spontaneous, writers tend to be more left-brained and guided by reason than they often wish to admit. The armor of our cultivated personas has a chink. When we aren’t the weirdest person in the room, we are drawn to he or she who is like flies to carrion. Bromance, platonic muse, call it what you will, we are fascinated by these people for their propensity towards trouble, the way they create legends and tall-tales around them. They tolerate us writers lurking alongside them for our ability to immortalize them, to build monuments to them in writ, recreate them larger than life.

I have had several such friends: in college my roommate Gabe dragged me into the home of a drunk man claiming to be a grand dragon of the klan so he could see how the man decorated his house. (Turns out with statues of angels and book shelves full of Hegel, Kierkergaard, and other philosophical texts.) The last time I saw Gabe was almost seven years ago in a bar in Chicago where I planned to have a few beers, but ended up taking so many shots of Jim Beam on his dime that I missed my bus back to Louisville.

More recently, I found such a character in my friend and former colleague Dave Dabney.

When I hired Dave to work at Redlight Redlight with me, I had no idea that the clean-cut young man fresh out college was completely insane, but his encyclopedic knowledge of Simpson’s references and bizarre, barroom whit intrigued me.

“What did the donkey order at the Mexican restaurant?” Dave, or Dabs as we often called him, asked me one night while we were tending bar.

“I don’t know,” I said.

“Fa-hee-haws!” he shouted bulging his eyes and baring his prominent choppers resembling and channeling his spirit animal, the jackass.

I always liked to go out drinking with Dave even though he usually overdid it. Sometimes he picked up the entire tab while other times he stuck me with the bill and simply forgot to pay at all. Often he would tell strangers to go fuck themselves for complimenting his unmistakable handlebar mustache. I’m not sure if he was actually angry in these moments. I was usually able to talk our way out of any actual fights. Sometimes his good-natured, shit-eating-grin would do the trick for us. He never explained why he did this, but always apologized profusely the next day whenever I asked him about it.

When I left Redlight Redlight for a misguided stint in sales and soon after returned to the bar, Dave became my manager and was the best boss I’ve ever had. Together we made a playlist of jazz, blues, Spanish guitar, surf rock, and even a waltz or tango thrown in here and there to keep things interesting. This music transported us to 1920s Paris or perhaps somewhere that only existed in our dreams, and it honed our talents, our drive to serve beer to a thirsty public. As a bartending duo, we were unstoppable, slinging brews, melting hearts, and entertaining each other when no one else was amused by our buffoonery.

I wrote about a couple of my drinking adventures with Dave in the essays Ain’t Misbehavin’ and Hunahpu Day Goes Gonzo, and was hoping for many more tales of debauchery when my good friend announced that he was leaving Orlando. I couldn’t have been more bummed out to see him go, especially when he forcibly ejected a customer from the bar for announcing that he hated Phil Collins while Dave was playing “Sussudio” during one of his final shifts at Redlight Redlight.

The last time I saw Dave we grabbed lunch at Winter Park Fish Co. Over Red Stripes and mahi sandwiches he told me of his plans to buy a boat in Maryland, sail it back down to Florida. and then take it out to the Caribbean for an unknown duration of time. Of course, I was exceedingly jealous thinking of the adventures he’d no doubt get himself into. All the fun and inspiration for stories that I’d miss out on. I gave him a butterfly knife as a going away present. He took to it immediately flipping it open and closed with one hand like he was an old pro until I began to question the responsibility of my gift.

As I watched Dave drive off into history, obscurity, or maybe just to Sarasota, I remembered the words of the good Dr. Thompson, his own description of his friend Acosta: “There he goes. One of God’s own prototypes. A high-powered mutant of some kind never even considered for mass production. Too weird to live and too rare to die.” The same could certainly be said for Dave. A mutant, sure, but my mutant, and man, do I miss the hell out of him.

___________

Teege Braune (episode 72, episode 75, episode 77) is a writer of literary fiction, horror, essays, and poetry. Recently he has discovered the joys of drinking responsibly. He may or may not be a werewolf.

In Boozo Veritas #30: In Tobacco Veritas

24 Monday Feb 2014

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In Boozo Veritas, Jack Kerouac, Smoking, Teege Braune

In Boozo Veritas #30 by Teege Braune

In Tobacco Veritas

Like many children, my elementary school public education was peppered with fear-based demonizations of multifarious social evils. The DARE program taught us that there are only slight differences between marijuana, cocaine, and heroin, and while the legal status of alcohol and tobacco made these vices more complicated, we were nevertheless made to understand that indulging in either would most likely lead to death or a wasted life. I grew up believing that these temptations made the adult world a very frightening place indeed, and swore that I would never partake in any of these life shattering behaviors.

For many years I found it easy to stick to my guns on this issue. Growing up in midwestern suburbs, not many people were offering my pre-adolescent self controlled substances. My parents drank an occasional can of beer or glass of wine and explained reasonably that alcohol in moderation was okay for adults. The only people I knew who smoked were my grandparents, and they did not make it appear particularly glamorous. Through most of my childhood I thought of smoking as something only old people did.

The fact that the same girl who won the DARE essay contest only a year earlier became the first of our peers to become a pot head was a class joke in middle school. If for a moment in my preteens my parents’ divorce or simply the awkwardness of puberty had me desiring to become a juvenile delinquent, my strict disciplinarian of a mother squelched it before I got started. Furthermore, most of my friends were like-minded innocents whose social activities largely revolved around church youth groups, and the friends I had who did start smoking pot also began huffing. The obvious damage this was doing to their young brains was a better deterrent against drugs than DARE had ever been and the source of many disturbing memories to this day.

Eventually, I found my way around to all three vices: alcohol, tobacco, and drugs. Interestingly, smoking was the first to pose a real temptation. I smoked my first cigarette at the age of thirteen and found the experience utterly unappealing. Years went by before I ever considered smoking again. Then in high school I began to idolize the cinematic icons of other eras and while looking at pictures of Gary, Cooper, James Dean, and Paul Newman, it occurred to me that if done correctly, smoking could be very very cool.

I knew I would never be as handsome as these men, but I thought that perhaps by emulating their personal style, I could obtain something of their je ne sais quoi.

The real clincher came when my dad bought me a copy of Jack Kerouac’s San Francisco Blues and shortly after I read On the Road. I wanted Jack Kerouac to be my friend and my mentor. I had actual dreams in which I would meet him in some chance encounter, and he would be so impressed with me and my writing, he’d ask me if I wanted to go on a road trip with him. In my poems and journal entries I replaced all the commas with dashes and began to model my whole persona around him. I started combing my hair back instead of letting it hang down over my forehead and bought a jacket that looked similar to the one he’s wearing in this famous photograph. I knew that without cigarettes I was missing an important detail and understood that at some point I too would start smoking.

I continued to hold it off for awhile. I knew my mom wouldn’t tolerate it. I didn’t have any older siblings to buy cigarettes for me, and continued to be involved in youth groups though my belief in Christianity was quickly waning. I smoked my second cigarette the night I graduated from high school, and though it was as unpleasant as the first, I continued to smoke throughout that summer until the dizzy buzz of nicotine overshadowed the hacking cough that came with inhaling huge billows of smoke. I bought my first pack of cigarettes at the campus convenience store my first weekend of college. It only cost two dollars and fifty cents. It took me three or four days to finish that pack, but as soon as it was gone, I bought another one. I was already hooked.

It’s ironic that by the time I was a full blown nicotine addict my obsession with Jack Kerouac had already begun to abate. It didn’t matter at that point. Most of my friends smoked and joining them was the best way to distance myself from the goody-two-shoes church boy I had been in high school. Many of my peers had been smoking at least occasionally for two or three years at that point, but no one needed to know that I had only smoked my second cigarette a few months before.

Three years ago, almost to the day, after numerous failed attempts, I finally kicked the habit. For the first time I was quitting because I truly wanted to be free of the addiction, not because I thought I should. Smoking had ceased be enjoyable. Lighting up was merely a compulsion, one I began to hate especially when I couldn’t catch my breath even after the most minimal exertion. That being said, at the peak of my withdrawal, I felt deeply sad like I was losing a fundamental part of my identity, like I was saying goodbye to a dear friend.

I’ll cave once in a while, usually after a few drinks, and bum a smoke from a friend. One or two puffs is all I can handle and the next day I feel congested and hung over. Typically, if I feel the need to smoke at all, I prefer toasted cavendish from my briarwood pipe and even that is rare. Usually I find the odor of a smoky bar or a passing stranger’s cigarette intolerable as though I had never been a smoker at all, but every now and then it catches me off guard, and the scent of tobacco brings a wave of nostalgia over me. I’ll remember the mystically enticing way cigarettes smelled when I first developed a taste for them, when each one helped to identify a little more with my hero.

___________

In Boozo Veritas #29: Writers in the Festival Mode

17 Monday Feb 2014

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Drinking, In Boozo Veritas

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In Boozo Veritas, Key West, Susan Lilley, The Gloria Sirens

In Boozo Veritas #29

Writers in the Festival Mode

I am honored to welcome the brilliant and amazing poet Susan Lilley as guest blogger for this week’s In Boozo Veritas. While I’m braving the ice and snow up north in Indiana, she is down south in Key West no doubt having a remarkably different experience.

—Teege Braune

Special dispatch from Key West, Florida February, 2014

Writers know better than to make a no-alcohol resolution on New Year’s Day. After all, the doldrums of January signal the beginning of literary festival season! Actually, it’s always lit fest season, but the period of January through March seems to have more than its share of workshops, residencies, seminars, and confabs of all kinds. As one who just survived a glorious week at the Palm Beach Poetry Festival, I can say with certainty that, if you imbibe at all regularly, there is absolutely no way to make it through these things without drinking.

A quick look at my Facebook feed in winter reveals glasses raised from the Key West Writing Seminars to MFA residencies in New England to Poetry Week in San Miguel de Allende in Mexico. But what is the drink of choice for writers when away from home, wallowing in the in the blessed company of their own kind 24-7?

My research has taken me from Hemingway’s mojitos at Captain Tony’s Saloon (the original Sloppy Joe’s) in Key West to martinis at the Blue Bar in the Algonquin Hotel in NYC, home of the famous round table where Dorothy Parker and Robert Benchley once planned articles for a new magazine called The New Yorker. I have conducted scientific observations involving beer and Jagermeister at a bucolic artists colony in Vermont and endured the crappy bargain wine of late-night vagaries in10-day intensive MFA residences. Here is what I have learned:

The very most popular cocktail among writers in far-flung places is the FREE cocktail. Billy Collins says that “forthcoming” is a writer’s favorite word, but I would submit that no expression is more welcome to a writer than “open bar.” Alas, more often than not, writers are forced to curate their own swilling experiences. These circumstances thus divide us into a few major categories of preference.c

Wine. Ahh, my personal favorite. Yes, it’s rather obvious, allusions to Bacchus unavoidable, but a majority of writers really do overwhelmingly prefer “a beaker full of the warm south” (thank you Mr. Keats) to all other drinks.

Some writers bring their sommelier chops to festivals along with their verbal ones, and wow their friends and fans with their exquisite taste in the world of oenophilia. Most of us are not so organized, and must seek out local bargains to share in bleak dorm rooms, on residence porches, hotel balconies, even conference hallways. Self-made group retreats in equipped vacation mansions and more upscale festivals make it easier for a writer to tap into the never-ending river of wine. But we are good at making do, under almost any circumstances. I often claim that if a good chilled chardonnay stood available and we had no corkscrew, I could open the bottle with my vagina if need be. (Thank God I have never been tested on that one.)

Beer. Among younger writers, beer is a safe, democratic, and affordable choice. Beer has its own connoisseur contingent. After a long day of workshops or sweating over manuscripts, 20 and 30-somethings are drawn to a craft beer hall like hung-over hipsters to Starbucks. Beer-loving writers have their own continuum, from the IPA elitists to the purist lovers of a correctly drawn Guinness (the “blonde in the black dress”) to the PBR proles in the parking lot having their own party on the super-cheap. They’re all adorable. Beer comes in all languages and there is a golden nectar for everyone. Viva la cerveza!

Spirits. Quickly making strides on conference and festival drinking menus is good old distilled spirits. Vodka seems ahead of the pack, what with the restorative properties of a good Bloody Mary and the ascendency of the martini in recent years. Famed writer and traveler Bob Shacochis is known to bring his own favorite brand to writers’ gatherings, and he packs his own cut crystal glass to ensure a perfect vodka sipping experience even in the shabbiest motel. Veteran literary drinker Michael Smith of Berkeley, CA claims that vodka straight up with a twist is fine until the moment of “awkward writer overload” is reached. Then it’s time to reach for the scotch. Writer Lisa Lanser-Rose swears by the Millionaire’s Coffee served at O.C. White’s in St. Augustine, Florida; the five shots of whiskey put her into “a companionable spirit” while the caffeine allows her to stay chatty. Poet and frequenter of festivals Suzannah Gilman reports a new trend in shots of tequila before readings, surely to enliven the imagination in the listener. Fiction goddess Kelly Luce observes that since she moved to Texas, she’s noticed a whole lot of bourbon going on. Spirits are just bubbling up everywhere on the writing circuit. Which brings me to the phenomenon of …

Commemoration cocktails. Whether you are toasting the beloved memory of Frank McCourt with Jameson’s in the Hamptons or prayerfully imbibing a Graham Greene inspired concoction called “The Whiskey Priest” in Key West, drinking is even more fun when it has a hallowed purpose. I, for one, will try almost any cocktail known to be loved by a writer I revere. Just ask Jocelyn Bartkevicius about our evening with absinthe at the Eden Bar in Winter Park. Hey, if it was good enough for Oscar Wilde, right?

Most of us can relate to my pal and Massachusetts poet Ruth Foley as she confides that whenever she is with her writer friends in creative captivity for a week or so, she drinks more and sleeps less than any other time in the year. Well, as my Granny used to say, you can sleep when you’re dead. These are precious times of comraderie, productivity, and serious sipping.

I haven’t even mentioned AWP, the biggest writers conference in the known universe, which looms ahead in March. Part family reunion and part literary Coachella, this 5-day megafest has been known to put even moderate drinkers on the liver-transplant list. And if, like me, you are not attending AWP this year, you might feel the need to hoist a few that week anyway, in solidarity.

This week in Key West, January’s writing seminars are but a liquor-scented memory in local watering holes. But I find there is nothing more perfect than a lovely gin Negroni served with some delicious poetry to conjure the festival spirit. Tomorrow, my solitary quest for this town’s perfect Papa Doble (rum, lime, grapefruit, and a few drops of cherry juice) goes on. I still have a couple of days.

___________

Susan Lilley at the Algonquin.

Susan Lilley (episodes 36, 82, 85) is the author of the poetry chapbooks Night Windows and Satellite Beach and blogs gloriously as one of the Gloria Sirens.

In Boozo Veritas #27: Some Velvet Morning

03 Monday Feb 2014

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in In Boozo Veritas, Music

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In Boozo Veritas, Lee Hazlewood, Nancy Sinatra, Some Velvet Morning, Teege Braune

In Boozo Veritas #27 by Teege Braune

Some Velvet Morning

In the months after I first heard “Some Velvet Morning” I listened to the Lee Hazlewood and Nancy Sinatra duet easily hundreds of times. Unquestionably psychedelic in nature while existing firmly outside of the genre of rock ‘n roll, the song is simultaneously timeless and an artifact from one of the odder corners of sixties culture.

Everything about it, the epic quality of the string arrangement, the odd tempo changes, the haunting juxtaposition of Lee and Nancy’s voices, came together to create a sense of longing and wonder in me. Not least intriguing are the song’s enigmatic lyrics, which as it turns out have been a source of frustration for critics, biographers, and music lovers for decades. Like other great poems, the lyrics created dueling emotions in me, the desire to solve an elusive puzzle and be caught up in a mystery impenetrable through simple analysis. Nearly a decade after first discovering “Some Velvet Morning” I am still troubled by the beautiful and puzzling lyrics, but I had once in a moment of cognitive impairment a truly transcendent moment, in which the meaning seemed all too clear to me. Alas, in the light of the sober morn my fleeting understanding was gone.

Hazlewood is seldom recognized as the incredible lyricist that he was. In fact, he is often mocked for lines like, “You keep lyin’ when you oughta be truthin,’” but I would argue that even “These Boots Are Made For Walking,” Hazlewood’s poppiest number, dishes out some hilariously witty turns of phrase and demonstrates a sinister undertone belied by its upbeat melody. On the other end of the spectrum, “Summerwine” is a cowboy reimagining of Keats’ “Le Belle Dame Sans Merci” and fully exemplifies Hazlewood’s literary chops. None of his songs, however, are as rich and complex as “Some Velvet Morning.” Right from the start, its opening line, “Some velvet morning when I’m straight,” takes us down a rabbit hole of confusion and sensuality. What is a velvet morning anyway? It sounds like something sumptuously decadent and erotic. Does the word “straight” refer to sobriety? In light of the songs surreal, druggy atmosphere, this sounds like a distinct possibility. On the other hand, in conjunction with the next line, “I’m gonna open up your gate,” almost unquestionably a reference to sexual intercourse, “straight” could be a reference to the phallus, in which case we only have more questions than answers. What is the source of the narrator’s current erectile dysfunction? Is it drugs or something more grandiose? Could he be awaiting some cosmic alignment to bring forth this so called velvet morning and penetrate the song’s equally elusive hypothetical audience. By the end of the third verse, “And maybe tell you ‘bout Phaedra / And how she gave me life / And how she made it in,” I don’t think any sane person could possibly know what is going on.

While Phaedra’s a character with an easily researchable role in mythology, a potential entry point to the song’s meaning, her marriage to Theseus and attempted seduction of Hippolytus bare little resemblance to Nancy’s role of Phaedra in the song and her references to “dragonflies and daffodils.” The music video does nothing at all to shed light on these mysteries and merely jump back and forth from Hazlewood riding a horse on the beach to Sinatra rolling around flirtatiously in a field of wild flowers.

I have no idea how to put the pieces of this puzzle together and yet for a single moment in 2006, the doors of perception were opened unto me and me alone. While drinking prodigiously with friends one night I found myself more and more unhinged by “Some Velvet Morning” and played it continuously intwined with a mix of old school hip hop and shoegaze. I kept waiting for someone to complain, but my friends were all too drunk to take much notice, so after I felt a reasonable amount of time had elapsed, I played “Some Velvet Morning” again. Finally realizing that I was approaching the dawn of a new awakening, I played the song several times in a row, shushing the chorus of protests that finally arose. Midway through the umpteenth performance, I paused the song and, unprompted, spewed forth a veritable dissertation elucidating every vague nuance, every subtle meaning, each and every obscure reference. As I wrapped up my brilliant analysis I looked to the glazed eyes of my friends who gazed back at me in wonder, each of them slightly swaying in their inebriation.

Unfortunately, as this was the year before smartphones were made available to a technologically hungry marketplace, no one had recorded this moment of spontaneous analytic brilliance. Neither could my drunken friends remember just what had been my thesis the next day, though they all admitted that my monologue had been brilliant, mind-bending, and truly inspired. Alas, no Plato arose to writ eternal my Socratic blitzkrieg of interpretive prowess. My concise, moving, and probably earth-shattering exegesis of “Some Velvet Morning” was lost to civilization. At least for now.

Since that moment, I’ve watched my obsession for “Some Velvet Morning” wane. Having obtained and lost that which I had so energetically sought forced me to step back from the song and admit defeat. I began to listen to it less and less. Though I’ve never ceased to enjoy it, it became a familiarity, more comforting than thought-provoking. My past enthusiasm is sometimes aroused when I meet a fellow Hazlewood enthusiasts like my coworker Jimmy. The two of us together had an exciting moment when one of our regular’s at Redlight Redlight heard “Some Velvet Morning” at the bar and told us how nice it was to see young people who still appreciated his father-in-law’s music. Perhaps one day I’ll rediscover what drew me to “Some Velvet Morning” and perhaps I’ll even get stinking drunk, listen to the song multiple times in a row, and rediscover that A-Ha! moment I once had years ago. Or perhaps it is gone for good. Maybe one can only truly understand psychedelia when one’s brain is bent and twisted by some chemical or other. Maybe it is not for the sober among us to understand “Some Velvet Morning,” but we can always drink or indulge in even more illicit substances as we attempt to gain a foothold. If in the end, we uncover truth’s too terrible for the human mind, we can’t blame the song, for Phaedra warns us of the dangers as she sings, “Learn from us very much / Look at us but do no touch.”

___________

In Boozo Veritas #26: An Open Letter To Misogynist Bloggers

27 Monday Jan 2014

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in In Boozo Veritas

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In Boozo Veritas, Misogyny, Teege Braune

In Boozo Veritas #26 by Teege Braune

An Open Letter To Misogynist Bloggers

Thanks to the internet everybody now has the opportunity to share their opinion about everything. Most of the time I use this technology to talk about drinking and literature. These are subjects I enjoy and perhaps, once in awhile, I can write something about them that someone else will enjoy too. This is ultimately my goal: to be entertaining and maybe sometimes even a little thought-provoking. I try really hard to keep my blog pretty positive, even if I don’t always feel this way in real life, because there is already enough hatred on the internet, and I don’t want to contribute to that culture, but you forced me to break my own rule because you are just so goddamn stupid I can’t take it anymore.

Do you really have such a problem with short haircuts on women that you feel the need to write blog after stupid blog about it? Is this really such a goddamn travesty with you that every time I login to Facebook I have to see another ridiculous article entitled “All Girls With Short Hair Are Damaged” or something equally as offensive? For the record, my friends are not sharing your idiotic blogs because they agree with you. Mostly they add a tagline like, “Is this for real?” because they are equally as dumbfounded as I am by your hateful rhetoric. I don’t know why I continue to read your poor excuse for writing. Sometimes I wonder if I actually look for things that make me angry. Okay, I guess I have my own issues too, but I have to say this: if your goal was simply to be inflammatory, then you’ve succeeded. You’ve aroused my ire, and now I’m coming for you.

Yes, I’m taking this personally but not for the reasons you think. It’s true my fiancé has short hair. I love her, am desperately attracted to her, and would feel the same whether she had short hair, long hair, or no hair at all. My opinion of her hair, or any other woman’s hair for that matter, is a moot point because women are not sexual objects on display for my approval. Their physical appearances and stylistic choices have nothing to do with me or you or our personal preferences. If you can’t find a woman who fits into your narrow, unrealistic prejudice of what women should look like, tough shit. Be lonely. It is nothing less than you deserve. Any woman would be better off without your stupid ass weighing her down. Your ludicrous reasons for long hair don’t even make any sense: its a symbol of youth and fertility? What the hell is that even supposed to mean? Based on what anthropological evidence do you make this claim? I think the reason that short hair bothers you is much simpler. I think short hair is often a reflection of a woman’s confidence and this is a quality that you are terrified of women possessing. This isn’t to say that women with long hair can’t be just as secure, but my guess is that you would rail against any other fashion choice that represented a woman’s independence. Short hair is an easy, obvious target, so you make it your scapegoat when what you are really saying is this: “I am scared shitless of any woman who doesn’t fit my limited and hateful misunderstanding of femininity.” Sorry, man, this is going to be a really frightening world for you.

So I’m not taking your blog personally because my fiancé has short hair. I’m taking it personally because it is an insult to people I love and for whom I have undying respect. I am taking it personally because you contribute to a culture that constantly attempts to dehumanize these amazing women, a culture that turns a blind eye to sexual assault, that apologizes for rapists, and blames victims for the violence acted upon them. I take it personally because I identify with these intelligent women more than I will ever identify with a hateful, ignorant misogynist like yourself, and I hold you personally responsible for the fact that after all the social progress we’ve made even in the last twenty years, we still live in a world that often treats women like nothing more than objects of men’s sexual fantasies.

My fiancé’s short hair is beside the point. That being said, heed this well, shit head: woe be it to the misogynist dirtbag who tells the love of my life she would be hotter if she had long hair. I would love to see the goddamn shit show that would take place if you had the audacity to do that, but we both know you never will. You’re a coward. You don’t even have the courage to write your blog under your real name. You use some fake moniker and hide behind the anonymity of the internet. Do you think you are some champion of maleness, finally saying what other men are thinking, redeeming manhood by calling out women? You are nothing but a sad agent of hate, squawking into the sea of voices that is the internet. I wish I could tell you that your opinion means less than nothing, but unfortunately this isn’t true. You are destructive, a bane to culture, an enemy on the road to progress, and we shall never be free until you are stamped out of existence.

___________

In Boozo Veritas # 24: There’s a Space for Us

13 Monday Jan 2014

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in In Boozo Veritas

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In Boozo Veritas, Matt Roberts, Percussion Music, Teege Braune, The Space

In Boozo Veritas #24 by Teege Braune

There’s a Space for Us

Located above Anthony’s Pizza on Colonial Drive, The Space is an aptly named community arts center that has recently filled a local niche as venue to some of the most experimental, underground, and exciting events to take place in Orlando in the last six months. Fostering an atmosphere of openness and creativity that never shirks on quality, The Space has illustrated just how much talent exists in Orlando waiting for a place and the opportunity to present itself to the city. Housed in what was once a small apartment at the top of a stairwell that reads, “Welcome. You are here. It is now,” as you ascend, it has never failed to amaze me each of the several times I’ve found myself compelled to venture through its perpetually redecorated central hallway.

The first time I came to The Space was back in October for the At My Chamber Door Halloween costume party and instillation art show. If it wasn’t for my fiancé Jenn, who always seems to know what’s going on around town, I would probably do nothing but hang out in bars all the time as I did before I met her. Fortunately, she had the foresight to bring us to The Space dressed in our Halloween costumes, knowing not what to expect. As we entered, we found The Space’s central hall covered floor to ceiling in repurposed mirrors perpetually windexed by a couple of diligent and eerily blank-faced young women. As a collaborative instillation, At My Chamber Door encouraged visitors to wander from nook to cranny where they could be barraged with a disturbingly convincing miniature snuff film or a drum solo that functioned as an exorcism. It was a refreshing and sufficiently frightening experience for myself who grew up in Indiana where the DIY haunted houses of my youth didn’t have to compete with Universal’s Halloween Horror Nights. At My Chamber Door proved that you don’t need a major film studio’s budget to create some truly frightening scares. That being said, I’ve never been to another haunted house that turned into a dance party once all the guests had arrived.

As no city can have too many reading series, I was excited to attend Orlando’s newest, Literocalypse, when it premiered at The Space last November. Curated by Kristen Arnett and Cathleen Bota, Literocalypse creates an always-encouraging environment, featuring readers of diverse backgrounds and varying writing experience, while simultaneously transcending the stigma of the open mic. Some of the writers presented by Literocalypse have extensive publishing credits, but many are sharing their work publicly for the first time, and while the readings can at times feel unpolished, this isn’t a problem because they never lack craft or imagination. Perhaps without even meaning to, this balance seems to foster an atmosphere of vulnerability devoid of irony and cynicism, truly a refreshing experience. To top it off, Kristen and Cathleen regularly bake a cake for their readings, which take place on the first Thursday of every month, and sometimes even make their guests friendship bracelets.

Last night I made my way to The Space for a performance of new percussion music by Matt Roberts. An Orlando native visiting us from his new home in Alaska, Roberts played pieces composed by himself, Frederic Rzewski, David Lang, and Nat Evans and along with the drums, utilized instruments compromised of pots and pans, various sized tiles, and other found objects. Composer Nat Evans has been one of my closest friends for almost fifteen years, and while geography keeps us apart (he lives in Seattle), I cannot tell you how much it meant to me to be present at the premiere of his piece LOG, which like all of Evans work was as surprising as it was both subtle and moving. Performed with a field recording, music box and large log, the piece was executed flawlessly by Roberts who will hopefully return to us here where its sunny and warm after he finishes his graduate studies up where its always freezing.

Whether its visual art, literature, or music, The Space provides a venue for work that is cerebral, personal, intellectual, and honest. The fact that within The Space there is no line between these distinctions is a riveting foray into nearly uncharted territory where the confessional poem meets the minimalist sound experiment. Orlando couldn’t ask for a more relevant place for artists to rewrite the rules of culture and force us to wonder if these same rules ever really existed in the first place, a beacon where an exciting, young arts community can continually, fluidly redefine itself. Can’t find a chair? Then sit of the floor because you don’t want to be left out of whatever unnamable movement is going on here, but please bring a few bucks, a bottle of wine, or a six-pack of beer because like all community led venues, The Space is also community funded, and it will be up to us to ensure that this Orlando gem continues to shine ever brighter.

___________

In Boozo Veritas #23: Widening Gyres

06 Monday Jan 2014

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in In Boozo Veritas

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Charles Bukowski, In Boozo Veritas, New Years Eve, Teege Braune, The Second Coming, William Butler Yeats

In Boozo Veritas #23 by Teege Braune

Widening Gyres

“If something bad happens you drink in an attempt to forget; if something good happens you drink in order to celebrate; and if nothing happens you drink to make something happen.”
– Charles Bukowski

Awaken to a New Dawn

Who among us has never woken on January first to the rising sun of a new year only to bury their throbbing head under the pillow? Here we are at the start of a fresh beginning, new possibilities, another shot at becoming the people we’ve always dreamed, and we kick the whole thing off with a hangover. Let’s face it: the torment is our just deserts, for New Year’s Eve is one night to simultaneously celebrate the glories of the past year while flushing its sorrows into the oblivion of a black-out drunk. Who among us hasn’t taken a cue from the those agonizing moments of New Years morn and vowed never to drink again only to find ourselves slipping back into old habits before the blossoms of springtime have brought forth their opiatic charms? Why deny ourselves the indulgence of our favorite vice only to be disappointed when it creeps its way back into our lives? Avoid the vicious cycle of disappointment and regret as New Year’s resolutions become New Year’s dissolutions and follow my advice: don’t drink less, just drink better. As the sage of boozy wisdom Charles Bukowski has taught us, we each have our own reasons for hitting the sauce. 2014 could be the year we return from the front, victors with our spoils, or we may watch our kingdoms crumble into the ocean like the tide washing away the sandcastles of childhood’s fancy.

Images out of Spiritus Mundi

Remember the Maya, the indigenous people who once populated much of Mexico and Central America, an advanced civilization with a written language, rich artistic tradition, and complex understanding of mathematical principles who for some reason decided to end their calendar on December 21, 2012?

The only possible explanation for this bizarre enigma was that the Maya were somehow privy to the fact that a spontaneous magnetic pole reversal would flip the world on its axis, creating cataclysmic disasters of Biblical proportions. Never mind that every living scholar of Mayan culture practically shouted to deaf ears that this interpretation of the mysterious calendar was a gross and insensitive misunderstanding of the Mayan concept of time. Scholarship proved less exciting than sensationalism, so no one listened to the very people best capable of easing our anxiety. December 21, 2012 came and went. We survived unscathed, no less shocked than we were when Y2K failed to destroy civilization.

Little more than a week later, we rang in a new year as uneasy as we had ever been. 2013 reared its ugly head flaunting the most notorious numerical omen of all, two digits so loathsome most buildings don’t even give them a floor. What good could come out of a year called 2013? Thank goodness for 2014, a year without mathematical anomalies threatening our very existence, a year that isn’t even divisible by five. Kick back, relax, and grab a beer as you enjoy twelve months without the prophesied threat of global destruction. For now, at least, we are safe.

“Safe?” one scoffs with mirthless laughter. Climate change, World War III, plague, or meteors could destroy the planet at any second. While unprecedented storms continue to ravage coastal cities, relations between the United Sates and Russia have grown more sour than they’ve been since the Cold War. Meanwhile, the hippies next door who have refused to vaccinate their children have turned green with purple spots and a star named Wormwood turns its sinister eye on our blue planet. Surely some revelation is at hand; sure the Second Coming is at hand! With all the threats to our lives and safety, can you afford not to to be stinking, black-out drunk for the next 365 days or more lest we come face to face with the pitiless, blank gaze of some rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouching towards Bethlehem to be born.

Welcome to Future World!

Technology is a glorious thing. Before we can even pay off our credit card bills, the next shiny new toy is on the market promising to imbue our lives with an ease and wonder once only dreamt of in science fiction. All the knowledge in the world at our fingertips; books, music, art, and movies at the push of a button; loved ones separated from us by thousands of miles can appear in our living room through FaceTime and social networking. A glorious new dawn awakens with the electric sound of buzzing machines working to do our bidding. Meanwhile Christof Koch, one of the world’s leading neuroscientists, has taken our understanding of consciousness to entirely new levels by claiming that any information-processing system with enough integrated connections will develop self awareness.

We think, therefore we are simply because our brains are sufficiently complex and have enough synapses to do so. The internet has “10^19 transistors, compared to the roughly 1000 trillion (or quadrillion) synapses in the human brain. That’s about 10,000 times more transistors than synapses,” Koch stated in a recent interview for Wired.com. The uncomfortable outcome of these enormous numbers is that the internet, that poor bastard, could very possibly have developed self awareness. One can only speculate what a conscious internet might be thinking, but I imagine it would go something like, “Will one of these assholes just shut the hell up and pour me a drink?!”

The technological possibilities of 2014 are as vast as the human imagination itself. The first flying cars have already made successful test flights. Will this be the year we are finally introduced to Google Goggles giving us access to endless amounts of information about our surroundings with little more than a twitch of the eye?

Baudrillardian concepts of simulacra and simulation and the end of history will become increasingly literal as the technological singularity principle and transhumanism championed by Ray Kurzweil, Google’s director of engineering, will one day make the body obsolete. Imagine ordering a drink one thousand years from now: a “bartender” downloads a program recreating aspects of taste and inebriation into your pleasure center. All of this is managed and operated by the giant mainframe computer in which you live your entire life, your consciousness, like the rest of civilization, having been analyzed, uploaded, and stored inside its near infinite network of databases. The clunky, useless, disease-ridden matter people used to refer to as flesh and tissue is conveniently recycled for energy at no additional cost to you. Could this be the next stage of human evolution as set into motion eons ago by our alien genetic engineers? As the Dude said, “I still jerk off manually.” What will there be to love and fear of bourbon if it doesn’t burn a little going down or coming back up for that matter?

___________

In Boozo Veritas #22: A Pig in Wolves’ Clothing

30 Monday Dec 2013

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Film, In Boozo Veritas

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In Boozo Veritas, Martin Scorcese, Teege Braune, The Wolf of Wall Street

In Boozo Veritas #22 by Teege Braune

A Pig in Wolves’ Clothing:

Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street

*SPOILERS*SPOILERS*SPOILERS*

If you are a cinephile like myself, you may have spent three hours in the middle of Christmas at a movie theater watching Martin Scorsese’s new film The Wolf of Wall Street. Based on the “real life” memoir of criminal stock trader turned motivational speaker Jordan Belfort, Wolf has already taken its place as Scorsese’s most controversial film since The Passion of the Christ. Some reviewers and bloggers hate it. Others love it for the wrong reasons. The problem is simply this: that the billionaire Belfort spends the entire three hours of the film exploiting others to fund a lifestyle of absolute depravity and self-indulgence and never receives his comeuppance. Okay, so he loses his trophy wife and spends about thirty seconds playing tennis in a white collar prison. Shortly thereafter he’s back on his game as a highly respected sales trainer, less rich perhaps and sober, but satisfied and successful all the same.

I realize that’s a lot of spoilers for the opening paragraph of a movie review. Perhaps you’ve already read Belfort’s book of the same title on which the film is based. I read part of it and found it as tedious as Scorsese’s three hour movie would have been had it been fifteen hours long. Belfort has claimed that he was inspired to write the book by his prison cellmate Tommy Chong who purportedly found his new friend’s stories of depravity hilariously entertaining. It is certainly telling that Belfort, despite the smug posturing at regret he poses in interviews, composed the book not as a story of redemption, not as a tale of a good man’s fall from grace and road to salvation, but as a fun account of his hedonistic glory days. The movie is largely criticized for focusing solely on Belfort and failing to tell the stories of the people from whom he swindled his millions, but this isn’t a problem for me because his victims were never the inspiration for his memoir in the first place. Their stories are the stuff of drama and tragedy and this is not what The Wolf of Wall Street is. This movie is black comedy sweetening its bitter spoonful of scathing social commentary, and on that level it is unparalleled.

Few readers of contemporary American fiction will fail to draw comparisons between Belfort and Bret Easton Ellis’ millionaire Wall Street playboy Patrick Bateman.

While Ellis’ indictment of greed and excess exists in a hyperbolic parallel dimension, the central difference between Belfort and Bateman is not that the former doesn’t actually murder people. Unlike Bateman who is born into his position and exorbitant wealth, Belfort grew up in a middle-class family. Had he made some different choices, had some cards fallen another way, he may have ended up like you or me. Whereas Bateman sees his social privileges as his inherited birthright, Belfort sees them as something he has earned, and though he may have willed them by any means necessary, they are all the more his due because he took them by his own volition. Whereas Bateman sees the world split into the haves and have nots simply by chance, a fate he never bothers to question, Belfort sees the economic divide as something anyone can traverse if they merely possess the grit to do so. In a telling speech, Belfort slams his critics saying, “Do you think I’m materialistic? Fuck you! Go get a job at McDonald’s.” His unlikely success doesn’t render him sympathetic to the less fortunate; on the other hand, his achievement is his license to behave in any way he chooses.

Nevertheless, this sense of superiority shouldn’t imply that Belfort lacks generosity. On the contrary, to those he deems worthy, he gladly lets the jewels slip through his fingers, but even his charity has a sinister edge about it, for it becomes painfully obvious that Belfort is merely buying and selling friends and loyalties, allegiances he will cash in on when he needs his colleagues to lie to the feds for him and then sells the same colleagues out when the court finally has him up against the wall and pressures him for testimony. Take Kimmie Belzer, one of Belfort’s original stockbrokers who becomes fabulously wealthy working, lying, and cheating for her equally dubious boss. We come to find out Belfort gave Belzer a gift of $1200 to get her on her feet when she first joined his then-tiny organization. The two tearfully profess their love for each other two thirds of the way through the movie. Before this moment, Belzer was nothing but an extra in another man’s story. She’s only given a name when her example legitimizes Belfort’s own ego. Afterwards she’s cast back to the sidelines and doesn’t reappear again until she, along with the rest of the office, is arrested based on evidence provided by Belfort himself, but this time she isn’t lauding the praises of her former employer; instead, she rails at her arresting officer to get his hands of her Chanel suit.

The comedic aspects of Wolf are personified nowhere better than in the character Donny Azoff portrayed brilliantly by Johan Hill.

Azoff is a fictionalization of Belfort’s one time partner and get out of jail free card Danny Porush who has unsuccessfully attempted to sue Belfort for his less than flattering characterization in the book. Though Porush’s son has written an article denouncing the film and proclaiming his dad father of the year, Hill’s Azoff is an utterly depraved and demented individual, the kind of guy who marries his first cousin, pees on subpoenas, swallows an underling’s living goldfish, and openly masturbates at an office party. With his bug eyes and overbite, he lacks Belfort’s physical attractiveness and even his preternatural ability to lie. More unhinged than the protagonist for whom he makes the perfect foil, Azoff is the character Joe Pesci would have played had this movie come out twenty years ago. In one of the most disturbingly hilarious scenes in the movie Azoff and Belfort, both of them overdosing on quaaludes, get into a slurred, stumbling fight during which Azoff nearly chokes to death on a piece of ham before Belfort, who had previously attempted to strangle him with a phone cord, saves his life. Its delightfully awkward physical comedy is more reminiscent of Tim and Eric than Raging Bull, and I, knowing nothing of the film’s backstory, was completely convinced that Azoff was going to die, if not there then at some point before the end of the movie, but Azoff doesn’t die because Porush didn’t die and is still alive making a decent living for himself in the pharmaceutical business of all places. Wolf isn’t a cautionary tale. Despite having no redeemable qualities outside of his ability to entertain an audience, Azoff like Belfort always lands on his feet, that is of course until Belfort sells him to the feds to save his own skin. In the end, Azoff is punished less for his crimes than he is for trusting in Jordan Belfort, but we never see his trial nor his time in prison. The moment Belfort no longer needs him, Azoff like everyone else in the movie, simply disappears.

If this is how Jordan Belfort handles the people he’s closest to, then how does he feel about the rest of us? His memoir is the same swindling lie he used to sell over the telephone, sold now in the form of a book and a movie. He has so little regard for his audience that as soon as he starts to get into the mechanics of stock trading he interrupts himself, reminding us that we don’t understand what he’s talking about anyway, nor are we likely care as we are came to the theater to see sex and drugs, not a lesson on the financial sector. This from a man who has failed to pay back the entirety of the reparations the court has mandated, further litigation still pending.

Scorsese, at least, isn’t hiding his protagonist’s unreliability. DiCaprio’s Belfort should be suspect from the very beginning, changing the color of his ferrari from red to white “like Don Johnson’s in Miami Vice” at his own whim. If Belfort’s tales of drugs, sex, and hedonism smack you as harder to swallow than those of Raoul Duke’s, you’d be wise to listen to that nagging doubt. After all, copious amounts of drugs and alcohol tend to impair an individual’s ability to remember, and furthermore, we are talking about a person who made billions of dollars as a professional liar. Neither Martin Scorsese nor Jordan Belfort need to tell us the stories of his victims’ heartaches because those victims are us, his audience. The economic divide between us and Belfort is represented by the gap between our seat in the theater and the movie screen through which he continually breaks the fourth wall, talking disdainfully down at us as we gaze with disgust and admiration back at him. If this pisses you off, then its because he’s indicting you in his own crimes. He knows that many, if not most of us, are going to watch him behave like an orgiastic Caligula suffering only the minimalist of consequences and some part of us, whether or not we wish to acknowledge it, is going to wish we could be just like him. At the very least, any audience member sitting in the theater on Christmas day is going to consider the cost of everything they bought and received that morning and know that it doesn’t even compare to the kind of money this man makes and spends with the wink of his eye. The moment you envy Belfort, even if it is just for a moment, you are culpable in his materialism, and love it or hate it, you have justified Scorsese’s delightfully difficult masterpiece. Of course it is going to piss you off, but the cinephiles among us will also acknowledge that within that moral conundrum lies filmmaking at its very finest.

Interestingly enough, one of the harshest, albeit most misguided, critiques of The Wolf of Wall Street comes from Christina McDowell, the daughter of Tom Prousalis who isn’t portrayed in the film but worked for Belfort in his heyday and went down with the rest of the crew when his former boss’ testimony sent them all to prison. Overnight McDowell went from being the daughter of billionaire to the daughter of a penniless convict. Unlike Porush’s kids, McDowell is more than willing to condemn her father for his involvement in Belfort’s empire, but it’s Belfort and even Scorsese himself to whom she lashes out the bulk of her ire. She sees Wolf as nothing more than the glorification of a man who’s legacy was nothing but greed. While the film’s moral complexities are completely lost on her, it’s important to remember that McDowell isn’t viewing it through the same eyes as the rest of us. At the cusp of adulthood when her father went to prison, McDowell laments the same service industry job she was forced to take to make ends meet that many of us go to everyday. While she criticizes the movie for failing to focus on Belfort’s victims, her article dwells on the sorrow of her own family alone. Even as she demonizes Belfort’s hedonism, she romanticizes her debauched youth claiming, “I drove a white Range Rover in high school, snorted half of Colombia, and got any guy I ever wanted.” She plugs her own upcoming memoir and practically dares Hollywood to make it into a movie, comparing her mother to a cross between Sharon Stone and Michelle Pfeiffer and at the same time failing to mention the dozen or so movie and television appearances she has made as a semi-successful actress with her own IMDB page. Though her article is hand tailored to garner sympathy, McDowell is completely unaware that it ultimately isolates her from the normal people to whom she’s pleading her case. Her inability to understand how The Wolf of Wall Street could be anything more than a glorification of a lifestyle she spent most of her childhood taking for granted is exactly what separates her from us. If anything, Belfort understands us better than McDowell ever will because he grew up just like us. If this makes McDowell simply delusional, it paints Belfort all the more unforgivable, but Scorsese has made a career creating antiheroes, some of them fictional, others with one foot in reality, and Belfort can now take his place alongside Travis Bickle, Jake La Motta, and Henry Hill, characters we love perhaps, but men we love to hate, a position in culture and history which few, if any, would envy.

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