WHY
SEATTLE IS UNCONDUCIVE
TO
ARTISTIC CREATIVITY
PARTS
II & III & IV
housing,
general
philistinism & parochialism, media &
an
enumeration of discrete events
LINK
TO PART I – SEATTLE THEATRE
by
Michael Roloff
==================
II
COMING
TO SEATTLE
In
Spring 1994, suddenly, I had little choice but start to translate
again to make a living: A minute stipend that, in addition to
royalties, had allowed me the luxury to live as “nothing but a
writer” since 1985 was suddenly disparu while I was living a
very rural existence in Mulege, in Baja Sur, Mexico. I hadn't even
hustled my one good screenplay
GRADUATION
BOOGY
http://artscritic.blogspot.com/2013/10/precis-of-graduation-boogie-screenplay.html
and, as friends
suggested, dropped everything to get it made - no, I was spending
months upon months on the shaggiest of shaggiest screenplays,
something about pre-historical bird DNA & a mechanical plane
merging...
Moreover,
the owner of a firm, Farrar, Straus, I had made millions for as
editor, specifically Roger Straus, screwed me out of what I thought
then was one half of my participation, hundreds of thousands of
dollars over the course of years, and I didn't realize until about a
year ago that it actually was ¾, the fellow was not only a brute,
but tricky
http://artscritic.blogspot.com/2015/04/summa-farrar-straus-roloff.html
Little
I could do about it from the West Coast – it cost $ 10 K just to
file a Federal claim! I had learned to go per se in another
matter in New York, and I could at least have won something there,
although most of the moneys fell under the statute of limitations.
Mentioning
Federales:
I
also failed to collect some federal judgments against a former
business partner – matters had become wild in the New York of the
70s & 80s
http://artscritic.blogspot.com/2013/08/wieland-schulz-keil-hunting-socieity.html
and
-
-
but for the mysterious disappearance of the stipend-
if
you delved to the root of the problem: I didn't care enough about
money, I lacked the killer instinct, I was too gullible - I lived
with my head in a cloud of hopes & wishful dreaming. I was a good
dreamer since childhood. I hated to think about money, it seemed a
waste of time, a costly way to be!
But
as I said, some matters did not go that badly.
In
addition to translating
-great
work, Adorno, Habermas, Josef Winkler-
-
which, however, interfered with the projects for whose sake I had
forsaken the pleasures of New York City -
I fell into a
line of work that resulted in something entirely unforseen
WRITE
SOME NUMB'S, BITCH!
It
was that no doubt rare instance where poverty becomes an invaluable
experience, an experience that informed me of the seedy, more than
underbelly, of Seattle & surround. With a Pulitzer Prize winner
at The Seattle Times I tried working my muck-raking (Not a
professional muckraker, when I encounter muck I can rake!) to turn my
prose into something for a family newspaper. - The
briefest of digressions: By the time I left NY City in the
mid-80s
I had seen quite enough; as a matter of fact I felt I had seen
everything, the heights and the extreme depths of the great
city, and how they connected & inter-played, in the subtlest of
ways,
but
not because I had been in publishing for 25 years, although if you
edit certain books, say Robert Kalich's THE HANDICAPPER... Yet to
find a gentleman in those quarters became like looking for the Dodo
bird: the last of them died out during my years, to be replaced by
Tasmanian devils:
I had seen things
you couldn't if you asked outright, and I didn't ask or go look, it
sort of happened because I got to know folks whose company afforded
views.
Write Some
Numb's Bitch
steps on too many
toes, and so that didn't work out with the Seattle Times, the
reporter was forced to pass. At the suggestion of a Seattle Weekly
reviewer I sent it to Mossback there, and never heard back, the
reviewer, a dubious figure, may even have back-stabbed me, he did so
a bit later (*).
The
only other time I got involved in public matters of that kind in
Seattle was during a Port Commissioner campaign nearly ten years ago.
I had befriended a candidate & then had the opportunity to delve
deeply into port matters & did a long interview with then Port's
C.E.O. Mic Dinsmore: no one wanted to publish it! Shortly after, the
state auditor found a lot of hanky-panky at the Port of Seattle, and
lots of good Commissioners got voted out of office on a wrong-headed
“throw the crooks out” campaign, that brought in two actual
crooks! I noticed how reporters, from the Seattle Times and the still
extant P.I. merely copied what the Port said, without bothering to
ask questions.
I
was getting a drift on the local media.
The
media picture has not improved during these twenty years. The
Seattle-Post-Intelligencer continues to exist as a blog
http://www.seattlepi.com/
The
Seattle Times
does
not deserve the name
“news
paper”
It is an
aggregator of stories AP stories, stories from McClatchy, the Los
Angeles and NY Times & Washington Post Bloomberg
with
a handful of local reporters & columnists that delivers an equal
weight of inserts with its newsprint pages
At
coffee houses many of its habitues at once turn to the
New
York Times Crossword Puzzle.
You
notice the lack of interest after you have left your NY Times and/or
Wall Street Journal
not
many folk even want to read the better papers for free.
As
the once alternative
SEATTLE
WEEKLY
http://www.seattleweekly.com/
was
sold to a national chain
it
became far less interesting than it had been under Brewste's
ownership with Knute Berger (Mossback) as editor
and
there appeared
and became a very
different alternative; you might say that it is the obverse of the
Seattle Times; quality control is not one of its fortes, it is
rather
predictable in some of the political positions it takes, but it not
so far off in its claim to be
“Seattle's
only newspaper”:
after
all, that unfortunately does not take much!
There
are a host of blogs.
Crosscut
is the most & often
boringly
responsiblle of the lot
lotIt
is an outgrowth from the WEEKLY that was, and its best & most
interesting columnist is Mossback/ Knute Berger.
SEATTLE
is a pretty good movie town & I don't mind some of the film
reviewers. There is pretty good coverage of the arts. It's just my
luck that theater is not thriving any more & that I am of an age
that I can't do much about that state of affairs.
III
Meanwhile
I was/ am accumulating the sights & sounds of the city,
that
eventually made for
Steeped
in Seattle,
an
odd collection of bird and weather & prose poems
here
an excerpt
http://crosscut.com/2011/07/21/crosscut-blog/20410/A-private-bower-wildness-in-Seattle/?page=2
The
first three months in Seattle I stayed with what no doubt is one of
the toughest ex-marine hippies the world has ever, a friend from
Mexico, in a spectacular loft on Elliott, opposite the P.I. Building
- as a New York loft dweller I had never encountered timber that
size. Jerry was using the space to rebuild his truck, an elephant,
with which he hoped to drive all the way to Patagonia, and to repair
rusty French automobiles - not very conducive sounds or smells to my
line of work, but the daily walk along Elliot Bay through Myrtle
Edwards Park is still with me and the Geese noshing on grain at the
rails by the grain terminals...
This
city walker also discovered Seattle in this fashion, a city that is
pretty conducive for good long walks but for a few of its left-over
hills (many were hosed into the bay in the 19the century)... one of
my most famous walks was all the way to West Seattle
during
which I couldn't shake some crows to whom I must have said the wrong
thing: the inception of my famous
“BEHAVIOR
OF CROWS”
poem as well as a
very different idionsyncratic take on Seattle
Since
I wanted to be near a library, the U. District is where I,
impoverished, had a seemingly unending series of amazing housing
experiences
(until
I moved, for a few years to the International District until all the
great food, 25 different kinds of rice made me overweight for the
first time in my lean life)
http://www.visitseattle.org/Visitors/Discover/Neighborhoods/Chinatown-International-District.aspx
Since - but for
being at the mercy, especially in Manhattan, of the large-scale
tectonic machinations of its real estate moguls - I hadn't had bad
experiences along that line, renting, privately & in business, in
the notorious New York City housing market I certainly did not
anticipate the crooks & exploiters and renters of wrecks that are
the vultures that live off the students of the University of
Washington. Meanwhile - due to the late 90s housing boom and increase
in house prices - a lot of the wrecks have been demolished &
replaced & students that do not live on-campus must commute
longer distances. Of, say, the dozen different venues where I
resided, maybe two were not run by exploiters of the worst kind. The
best, however, where I resided five years (until the house was sold),
was owned by a dear man who abided the legalities of rental laws &
to the extent that he kept renting, say, to folks who showed up at
his place covered in shit, thus ruining the abode for the other half
dozen folks, inhabitants, which is why I have a chapbook's worth of
stories just about those landlords and ladies & some of the
amazing critters I encountered there: The real McCoy, and her naked
full-grown son, who barricaded her basement exits - until I called
the fire department - so as to be able to observe her tenants passing
in & out; Red Eric the Nietzchean beatnik of one apoplexy &
one fit of vengeance per minute; ultra-gay Max in his Vespa with his
cleaning tools tooling around who comically tried to tell his tenants
what to do by standing in their way; the hotspur Berber, a
mathematician, who if he didn't get his way at once proved that every
culture has its Mama's boy; the Marine brig guard who sought to
enforce complete quiet... I could go on for days...
but,
I made two good friends along the way:
A
survivor of the Chinese cultural revolution, from the University of
Peking, who knew how to cook & play that melancholy Chinese
violin; Santosh, an Indian mathematician.
One
of the pleasures of the city is a profusion of coffee houses of all
kinds, that now afford internet access. And a number of significant
experiences can be located there.
One
of the most significant was reading Handke's
MY YEAR IN THE
NO-MAN'S-BAY
http://handke--revista-of-reviews.blogspot.com/2010/05/my-year-in-no-mans-bay-niemandsbuch-t.html
five
times, thrice in German, twice in English, at a Hmong donut shop then
called Lola's, that itself was a true “no-man's hole”, that had
the dregs, Smerdyakov was a Persian computer programer who had never
recovered from a breakdown and brought a cherished goldfish with him;
without Handke's
great book I doubt I would have felt so warm amongst that crowd, you
notice I am a person of simple routines!
At
that time, mid to late 1990s, the LAST EXIT TO BROOKLYN was still
extant, at about 52nd and the Ave (University Avenue 14th
to be specific), and had fine jazz & coffee and a pretty hippiesh
clientele, and I felt entirely comfortable there.
There
is the Cafe Allegro
Seattle's
original coffee shop
http://seattleallegro.com/
the closest to
the feel of the Last Exit,
Zokas
http://www.zokacoffee.com/about-zoka/zoka-locations-3/
north of the
Village
is
on the fancy side
Starbuck's
flagship in University Village;
for
a long time Tullies until folks started to snoop on what I was
writing & calling in; and
many
another on the “Ave” (University Avenue, 14th)
and
I haven't even been even once into a lot of them... though I have a
pretty good idea of the various madmen & women in the area.
My
Handke studies - in 1994 not quite ten years old, I'd given a few
lectures at U C. Riverside
participated
in seminars -
once
the internet started to mature
(search
engines at first proliferated)
I
put some of the work on-line @
the
handke.scriptmania project
and
also gave a few lectures at the U.W.
Becoming
a “visiting scholar” for asking for a library card allowed me to
discern what I might have become had I not gone dead, in 1960 at
Stanford, at the prospect of becoming a member of a German
department: indeed there was a fair amount of dead wood, as I had
already noticed at the Austrian shin-dings at U.C. Riverside. More
interesting were those who had not gone dead under such
circumstances. Goethe scholars were good at it, and at least one
formidable scholar looked as though he would hold up.
I
had become a member of the Seattle Psychoanalytic Institute &
Society on a memorable day when David Spain who sponsored me and I
attended a horrendous Freud lecture by one Mikkel Borch-Jacobson
whose utter pettiness I memorialize
@
http://seattle-vistas.blogspot.com/2010/09/open-letter-to-president-of-univerisity.html
&
I read all their
syllabi & course material, thus refreshing & in many cases
enhancing what I had learned in Los Angeles & spent many an hour
at Health Science Library & for a time attended quite a few
events but then only became close to the head of the Jungian crew,
the
only
one I encountered with whom I might have continued that kind of
analytic work, money permitting; and I wrote quite a few things that
you can find
@
https://draft.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1028192471601452787#allposts
and
participated in the International's online discussion forum.
IV-ENUMERATION
"uncomfortable,"
snooping, snitching,
a
city of small complaints
men
as the proverbial old women, busy bodies, other-directed, anal,
dirt-obsessed
middle-class
beings,
breeders,
crossword puzzlers.
“UPTIGHT”
“not
interested.”
It
was while living at 16th & about 52nd,, that is near
the Ave & with easy access to the Libraries & frequenting
LAST EXIT TO BROOKLYN, that I had the first of a series of incidents
– that now spans a 20 year period - and that constitute the raison
d'etre, that triggered the impulse for the entirety of this
resume, this approach to the past 20 years in Seattle & it is my
guess that these individually minor incidents, as they accumulate,
must have an adverse effect that interferes, that cumulatively would
oppress the young over the years
&
which
thought made me then try to write up why I came to regard Seattle as
FUNDAMENTALlY
UNCONDUCIVE
to
artistic endeavor – more so than the rest of the country?
Sufficiently
unconducive.
(1)
Opposite
the rather fine rooming house – where I befriended that visiting
Chinese People's Republic scholar who at dinner time played the
melancholy Chinese violin
and
who had survived a stint picking tomatoes during the Cultural
Revolution – stood a fairly splendid building with some Ionic
columns where, periodically, I noticed someone, a woman, peek out
from behind the doily-type curtains; an eternal watchdog I realized
and filed it away.
(2)
When
I lived on top of the rise overlooking the five by five block
cemetery at 35th Str. & NE & 55th Ave.
I used to walk home through some alleys, especially during fruit
picking time. One morning as I set out to walk to the library, about
two miles off, via the University prairie, I heard a news account of
a robber in Everett or Bellingham on the loose & dressed all in
black, as was I, black Davis jeans, the original Alaskan gold rush
kind, and a black NATO jacket.
As
I walked back through one of the alleys late in the afternoon, - it
must have been fall for me to be wearing the NATO - I noticed one of
these doily curtains falling back into place. About 50 yards further
up what if a car doesn't come inching out of the doily's driveway and
starts to crawl behind me at my walker's pace. It follows me through
a variety of alleys all the way to the alley behind the house that I
live in. I thought of approaching the pursuit car, but then thought
the better of it: what if whoever woman has a gun?
(3)
One
fine morning as I took a short cut through the mowed autumnal
prairie, that runs from the Horticultural Center
http://depts.washington.edu/uwbg/visit/cuh.php
along
Lake Washington
(Wahkiakum
Lane, the main path that runs through the Union Bay Natural Area --
please note that Wahkiakum is a gravel trail best suited for mountain
and touring bikes. This route connects to the University of
Washington's E-4 parking lot. You may reach the Burke-Gilman trail by
following the pedestrian overpass that crosses Montlake Boulevard
next to Hec Ed Pavilion.)
to
a canal that is the estuary of Ravenna Creek, I noticed a middle aged
woman who was taking the regular path
(there
are signs saying to keep to the paths!)
and
the way she looked I made a bet with myself that she would call the
cops. And that is one bet I won. Walking home after nightfall if a
University cop wouldn't pop out from behind a bush! Apparently the
woman had claimed that I was living in the prairie. After clearing up
the matter & my explaining why I took the short-cut the cop and I
had a nice chat about the animal in the creek, beavers, etc. I did
spend the occasional night in a bower in the prairie however.
http://crosscut.com/2011/07/21/crosscut-blog/20410/A-private-bower-wildness-in-Seattle/?page=2
(4)
After
exploring all aspectS of the “Adventures in Telemarketing” aspect
of WRITE SOME NUMB'S BITCH
I
found 20 hours per week sensible employ at the Puget Sound Blood
Center
http://www.psbc.org/programs/centers.htm
to
supplement my income. It was automated telephone work, and fairly
well paid, and did not take too much out of me. The major event there
was the overwhelming response to 9/11 when the entire area wanted to
donate blood, that unfortunately was not needed – but I was
impressed that in the event of a disaster the “people” could be
counted on. The Blood Center lived for many years from that addition
to their rolls. I was pretty stellar at telephone work by that time,
but a few year later I was fired... just in good time... guess for
what? Someone I had been pitching to come back in and donate another
pint had heard that I was still chewing on some food, and SO had
called in to complain.
(5)
Before
switching to 24 Hourfitness
https://www.24hourfitness.com/member_home.html
I
used to go to an outfit that used to be called Pro-Robics but now is
http://www.theseattlegym.com/
of
the forever leaking roof
that
is within walking distance but lacks a steam room, a jacuzzi &
swimming pool, not to mention far better and more varied equipment.
Pro-Robics, in Laurelhurst, a pricey part of Seattle, is, as I
noticed over the years, rife with men who are really the proverbial
old woman, they take phone photos of the least detritus in Pro-Robics
teensy sauna, complain if you entere it wet as a dog from whatever
rainstorm to dry out a bit prior to you actual work-out –
unsanitary! Very Seattle uptight in other words!
Which leads me to
the ultra=anality I have noticed in these quarters, and if there is
anything to avert the mess of creativity it is anality, dirt
obsession as I encountered it e.g.
@:
(6)
The
old Elliot Bay Bookshop
http://www.elliottbaybook.com/
when
I was living in the International District and finally had no further
use for 25 years worth of dictionaries since they were all on-line or
I could download them.
Of
course some of these fairly priceless items had acquired some smudges
during their 25 years of Manhattan use & I will never forget the
“Nase ruempfen”
-
the wonderful German for what a nose does in disgust - with which the
clerk greeted my offering.
I
didn't feel like hauling a hundred pounds back up King Street to my
digs and dumped the load in a trash bin & then complained in
detail in exchange for profuse apologies. Book-buyers, even if for
second hand valuables, are the most anal.
The
QFC
https://www.qfc.com/
@
University
Village
http://www.uvillage.com/
has
the absolute mascot for Seattle's dirt-obsession:
I
call him General Giap for his fanatical day-long cleaning,
a
typically gruff Vietnamese working class emigrant.
I
guess if you are Kroeger
(the
company that owns QFC)
https://www.kroger.com/
you
couldn't be happier than having a fanatic of the General's kind
working for you.
Like a crow for
the slightest crumb, armed with vacuum cleaner, hoses... his eye
beaks seizes. I've been watching him for nigh on 15 years, ageless,
dour, fanatical.
I
migh mention the profusion of “leaf blowers” with their noise
machines. Even after a rainstorm that has swept every leaf the into
drains, there they are blowing noise.
(7)
One
of quite a few overseers at Zoka's
which
I frequented for its open teas objected to my spreading out too much,
computer, readouts, books, no matter that I spent a pretty penny.
(8)
@
Tullies
@
their Five Corner's shop
there
are folks who try to snoop at what you are writing on your computer
screen & busybodies who complain if you are eating food other
than available in that store.
(9)
The above are
typical examples,
I
could go on enumerating for many more pages, but
I must add the
following: Since I gave away my automobile more than ten years ago
but am even more of a walker, at all times of the year & also
during that six month stretch of inclement weather, I dress
accordingly. In U.S Army rain-pants (the best!) and a rain-resistant
jacket with a rain-resisten hood & thus bulk out & have the
appearance of many a homeless G.I., of which there are many in
Seattle, but who inspire nearly as much fear as the hoodlums in hoods
do.
Folks
in Seattle, except perhaps in the Capitol Hill neighborhood,
are
easily made uncomfortable by anything slightly different.
It's
a parochial city. Some of its provincialism sits well, a lot of it
doesn't with this somewhat different bird.
SOME
GENERAL COMMENTS
In
the course of these 20 years there has been an extraordinary increase
in obesity of a kind I never saw before, anywhere, which must have
added at least 10 t0 20 pounds to the girth of the average
Seattlelite. How many more “fatheads” among the sport fans?
Some
slight improvement in unlocking gridlock at the most congested
rush-hour bottlenecks.
Whereas
the owner of the Seahawks was being chased out of town 20 year ago,
for having an affair, and the wrong kind of business, meanwhile
Seattle has become a sports town, and the sprained pinky of a Seahawk
plawer will produced headlines in the Seattle Times. The city's
identity is being merged with that of a commercial enterprise.
The
region continues to feature the grisliest of crimes, mass murders
galore. The Green River murder was finally caught around the time I
arrived in these parts. People still do not ask you to visit their
homes – a once left dweller from Tribeca – where, “let's go to
my loft” was a natural – has been asked to visit two homes in 20
years. Meanwhile, the once so gregarious, however, is all work.
-------------------
I recall Bart Sher leaving the Intiman & pronouncing Seattle too provincial; a pronouncement that the programming of the corpse’s re-incarnation as a summer festival, best as I can tell, proves true with the vengeance of parochialism - just think of all the great plays not staged in Seattle - and I am thinking just of the ones I happen to have translated or worked on and published in my various capacities - and what do we get in their stead; say, that sweet musical about a transgender mayor and other minor advocations. In that case, why not a show about how this situation brings out the trans-species nordic totem animal wolf in me last name roloff woof woof
============================
I recall Bart Sher leaving the Intiman & pronouncing Seattle too provincial; a pronouncement that the programming of the corpse’s re-incarnation as a summer festival, best as I can tell, proves true with the vengeance of parochialism - just think of all the great plays not staged in Seattle - and I am thinking just of the ones I happen to have translated or worked on and published in my various capacities - and what do we get in their stead; say, that sweet musical about a transgender mayor and other minor advocations. In that case, why not a show about how this situation brings out the trans-species nordic totem animal wolf in me last name roloff woof woof
===================
I recall Bart Sher leaving the Intiman & pronouncing Seattle too provincial; a pronouncement that the programming of the corpse’s re-incarnation as a summer festival, best as I can tell, proves true with the vengeance of parochialism - just think of all the great plays not staged in Seattle - and I am thinking just of the ones I happen to have translated or worked on and published in my various capacities - and what do we get in their stead; say, that sweet musical about a transgender mayor and other minor advocations. In that case, why not a show about how this situation brings out the trans-species nordic totem animal wolf in me last name roloff woof woof
================
I recall Bart Sher leaving the Intiman & pronouncing Seattle too provincial; a pronouncement that the programming of the corpse’s re-incarnation as a summer festival, best as I can tell, proves true with the vengeance of parochialism - just think of all the great plays not staged in Seattle - and I am thinking just of the ones I happen to have translated or worked on and published in my various capacities - and what do we get in their stead; say, that sweet musical about a transgender mayor and other minor advocations. In that case, why not a show about how this situation brings out the trans-species nordic totem animal wolf in me last name roloff woof woof
http://crosscut.com/2017/08/intiman-theatre-andrew-russell-leaves-seattle-new-york/
and see my comment I recall Bart Sher leaving the Intiman & pronouncing Seattle too provincial; a pronouncement that the programming of the corpse’s re-incarnation as a summer festival, best as I can tell, proves true with the vengeance of parochialism - just think of all the great plays not staged in Seattle - and I am thinking just of the ones I happen to have translated or worked on and published in my various capacities - and what do we get in their stead; say, that sweet musical about a transgender mayor and other minor advocations. In that case, why not a show about how this situation brings out the trans-species nordic totem animal wolf in me last name roloff woof woof
(*)
Roger Downey
