Screaming Apples

Nell Tabeata's Studio, Greenwich Village, 1958.

This one? 

     I painted it because of Ruby. She had a bad habit of biting into an apple and then putting it down and biting another when she was a little girl. I used to get angry, but it made Gary laugh and we couldn’t get her to stop doing it. Then Ray said she was hurting the apples, biting and leaving them like that.

     I told Ray he was a genius, which he is whether Gary believes me or not. (Sometimes I think Gary is jealous of Ray, of how well he plays his instrument.) Another story—never mind.

     Anyway I painted these apples screaming in a basket of blood. Ruby stopped eating them altogether for a while, which made me feel bad. She switched to blood oranges, which are her favorites, she says. She sometimes eats golden apples but hardly ever touches red ones anymore. It’s the oddest thing.

     People ask me if my paintings tell stories and I tell them, I don’t know. The stories change, depending on how you look at them. Like the film Rashomon, right?

     You know what I mean.

     My favorite painting? I’d have to say Madame X. Gary took me to the Metropolitan to see it when I first got to the city. It’s not my style but I just love the way she looks, like she doesn’t give a rap what you think of her. I wish I could be more like that.

     Sorry, you mean my stuff, what I like best? No idea. Ray likes the half women in half chairs and Ruby loves the red gash down the middle of a black wall. I like all of them while I’m doing them. Then I want to move on to something else.

     I think I have a buyer for the apples here. My friend Chaz is getting stuff lined up for me; I just need to get a few more done so we can have a show. It’s not easy because I have to work part-time at the art store. And you really need time to paint.

I just wish I had the days, so many days when I wake up and think I want to paint something. I get an idea and then I have to go to work… or clean someone’s apartment. I’ve been doing that too lately when Gary loses out on a gig.

     Sometimes I worry I’ll never have time, never do anything important like you’d see at the Whitney or the Modern because I have to hold the family together. Gary says not to worry about it, because if you want something bad enough you make it happen. He says that about everything.

     If you like this painting, I’ve got another one like it in black and white. Show’s going to be in another month or so. I’ll let you know to stop by.

--Nell

Basket of Apples: Original Illustration by Jackson Muenster

                                      

Face of the artist: nowhere Zen New Jersey

The Mysteries of Swimming

Blue Skies, Greenwich Village. 1958.


Sometimes I eat too much and there’s no way to walk it off in here. Blue Skies looked huge when we first got it, but now it seems like everything’s packed in tight, wall to wall. Posters, books, magazines, comics, candy—it’s the candy trips me up, especially because I have to shop for it.
 

Sky says he doesn’t care how big I get, but I tell him I care. I don’t want to weigh more than he does, ever. Or even close. But he eats like a horse, my Skylar. How do men do that and stay so thin?

When I was a kid I looked like Ruby—little sticks for arms and legs. Not that she isn’t pretty—I tell her she’s going to look like Natalie Wood when she grows up. She sticks her tongue out like Natalie does in one of her movies. I can’t remember which one.

Sophie, now, she’s even skinnier but that’s all right because she wants to be a comedienne like her mama. When Sophie first started working here I thought, Sky’s never going to be able to teach anything. That girl never shuts up.

But I started getting used to Soph and now I like her better. And Gordy helps all of us with numbers, including me. Except now that social worker came in here, looks like we’ll either have to teach ‘em real math or send ‘em to school. I don’t know anything about teaching. Don’t want to know, either.

Still, I like having the kids come in every day. When it’s just me and Sky we don’t talk much, but when the kids are here, we talk all the time. Politics, history, poetry, you name it. Sometimes I even learn things about Sky I never knew—like the age he had his first cigarette or his girlfriend’s name when he was a teenager. Freda. What kind of a name is that?

I should talk, huh? I never tell people my full  name, just Blu. Everybody loves that our store is called Blue Skies. Lotta Beats come in here weekdays, weekends it’s mostly tourists. Beats want to read, tourists want to gawk and all the kids want candy. People love the posters, and I love ‘em too. That’s the best part of this job, buying the posters.

Brando, James Dean, Natalie Wood, Sophia Loren. Which reminds me, Sophie wants me to get Lucille Ball and Gracie Allen. Told her I’d look for them.

I like it here and I like my life. Sky’s a good man and much better than my first husband. Sweet and gentle. Brings flowers home on my birthday and goes out for walks with me after work, even when it’s late, even when he’s tired. He knows I get tired of sitting around.

But sometimes I think of what I’d want if I could have anything. You know what it would be? A rooftop pool, on top of a hotel in the middle of the city. No one else in the pool but me, not even Sky, just me and the water.

Sun would beat down and I’d swim real slow, one end to the other. Turn on a dime like a baby seal and go back and forth, back and forth, with just the sound of the water when I turn. I could take my time and float on my back or kick real hard and swim like an Olympian. I’ve only been swimming a few times in my life but I dream about it all the time.

There’s something about being weightless in the water that makes you feel mysterious and powerful. In the blue-pool stillness you can hear your heart and you know you’re more alive than you are anywhere else. You feel bigger, and smaller too. Maybe both at once; that’s the mystery and that’s what I like.

I keep dreaming about this pool, but I don’t tell anyone. Maybe one day it’ll be real.

 

 

--Blu (at Blue Skies)

 

Mermaid: Andrew Stawarz

Seascape: Princess Ashley

Bedford Ave: The New G. Village

Bedford Avenue, Williamsburg. Brooklyn, 2013.

I said, let’s go to the Village but she told me it’s here. I’ve been away for a while and didn’t realize my Ruby Tabeata’s Greenwich Village was gone. 

The streets where Gregory Corso walked and Jack Kerouac sat on stoops while he was people-watching are now full of Katie Holmes, Emma Stone, and Julia Robertsville.

Not your Beat Gen story anymore. But where did they go? Artists don’t die, they just move on. Look around you, my friend says, and I have to admit I see them. Young guys with long hair, kids with their jeans torn in all the right places. But these are trust fund babies, aren’t they?

Yes, she says, and no. She is my friend from college who lives uptown, Lenox and 133^rd Street, to be exact. New York pushed most of its artists out years ago, but the ones who can stay on rent control are still hanging on. And even if they can’t afford to live here, they can be(at) here.

So here we are. Bedford Avenue is teeming the way Bleecker must have in 1958, crowds surging every which way, and stores-vendors-eats are everywhere. Storefronts aren’t as spiffed up as they are in the Village now and the buildings look as though real people actually live in them.

I start to smile.

We look for a bookstore, weaving away from Bedford to a side street and turning right on North 4^th. We go all the way around to Bedford again and then see it—Spoonbill & Sugartown. 

It’s L-shaped, a one-room shop like a living room with books laid out on tables and up on shelves. A man is showing his young daughter some children’s books and she stands, staring at him in awe. The young adult and tween fiction is in the back, and that’s where I go.

It’s a small selection, but a good one. Lois Lowry, Karen Hesse, more interesting authors than the usual fare. I turn around to look behind me and then I see something else that makes me feel at home, or at least, in Ruby’s home.

A black cat is sleeping on the table. Underneath her are several books but nobody would disturb her to find out what they are. This is her place, and we all know it. I smile again. Solange. Because Solange is Ruby’s cat, I know Ruby would have come to this store if it was open in 1958. And everything else in here, and everyone else, tells me she would have stayed.

The cat gives me the courage to ask the clerk behind the counter about The Beat on Ruby’s Street, which I’m holding onto for dear life. She reminds me a little of Cyn at the leotard store in my book, quiet but intense; which is just how I’d want her to be. The clerk tells me she'll give it to someone to look at and they'll get back to me. 

A week later, they do, saying they’ll take a few books and see how they sell. If they don’t, I will have to come pick them up; if they do, I'll need to bring over some more.

I don’t know what will happen, but it’s really good to know that Ruby and her friends will be in this really cool bookstore. There are just four books there (and hopefully the cat won’t sit on them, though I guess it’d be okay if she sat on one and you could still see the others.)

If you’re there, or even if you’re not there, maybe you can go there and if you want, pick up a copy? I’d also look around because they have a lot of great books there. 

And if you do end up with The Beat… well. Let me know what you think?

Zen Tango - Bedford Avenue: Helen Alfvegren

Pharmacy: Paul Lowry

Subway station: Rob Boudon

Overthrow Wall Street: Timothy Krause (WarmSleepy)

For a Laugh

Perry Street, Greenwich Village, 1958.

My friend set up this picture, just for a laugh. I tell my kids, whatever you do as an artist won’t work unless it’s fun. 

Ray gets it but Ruby goes back and forth. When she starts a poem she’s high and happy, letting the air out of a balloon and watching it blow all around. Then she starts polishing, sitting down with that notebook and wiggling the words around. Little frown line puckers up between her eyebrows and you can’t talk to her. She’s like her mom that way, they get obsessed and then they’re gone.

You’re one to talk, she says. You sit down with Les and Bo to play and you play for hours. But I love it, I tell her. I can close my eyes and not worry about the sound because I know it’s going to come out. When Ray sits in with us it’s even better—and because he’s my son, maybe? I feel like I almost know what’s coming out of that saxophone before he plays.

When you live here in the Village you get only one kind of story. I wish I could take Ruby on the road so she could see what Kerouac saw, only she’d see her own road, maybe better. We play in a lot of dives—me and the other guys, Les hooked me up with them a few years ago. We get a few supper clubs, now and again a place where people dig the jazz. Sometimes we get a party, which is good for the money even though all they want is the same old songs.

Couple of the guys

We’ve been lucky the last few times, having a car instead of busing it. My favorite bar is in Boston—it’s an Irish bar close to the river. They give you eggs on Sunday morning, made fresh by the owner’s wife, Marie. Blond curly ringlets and blood-red nails, I keep thinking she must have looked like Nell when she was younger. 

Nell isn’t as blond but the ringlets are there. She likes wrapping them around my fingers after a hair-wash. Those curls, AAAAGH. Get me every time.

Ruby says your hands have to be big when you’re a bass player. I don’t know if I’d say that but yeah, I have big hands. Big fingers can help, but you can do anything if you practice. Then again, you won’t practice if you’re not having fun. The music is in you already, right? You just have to relax and let it out. Let yourself fly with it. Like juggling.

Ruby wants me to tell you about that too. But it won’t be fun if I just sit and explain it to you. You want to learn about juggling, come and find me in the subway sometime or over at the park. I’d start by at least throwing a ball between two hands. Try and throw it high enough so it’s at the same level as your eyes. Try and stop tracking the ball with your eyes – you want to catch it without doing that.

Once you start doing that you’ll probably notice one hand is better than the other at catching it. That’s what they call your dominant hand. Your other hand is the “second”—at least that’s what I call it. But you can call it anything you want, even name it.

Okay, that’s lesson one, guys. Just keep doing it—as long as you’re having fun.

--Gary Tabeata, aka Gary Daddy-o

Fifties man in bar: Shallowend’s rendering of photo by Walter Watzpatzkowski

Three men in bar  by Scanned photo from a collection of loose pictures of Dorothea Grace Boehner.

Posted by Paul W

3 balls: Andy Chase (Usonian)