Reading as usual is out of hand, but I suppose that's what I planned for this part of my life, so I should just grin and bare it. My Goodreads list contains 24 unfinished or unstarted books. On my kindle maybe ten or so. Usually, as I'm doing now, I let others lie while reading mainly two and dipping into two others occasionally, and promoting one when one of the top two are finished. Then, I'm supposed to go back to the others, in some kind of order, but what almost always happens is that I buy another, and upset the apple cart. This problem, of course, is not serious. Making a living, falling in or out of love, being sick; those are problems.
I just finished reading Wagstaff: Before and After Mapplethorpe, a biography by Philip Gefter, about Sam Wagstaff, an art collector. It covers territory that I lived through, and probably would have been more observant of if I hadn't been so preoccupied with getting sober. I was and still am interested in what happened to the world of art, and the business of art in the seventies and after. As a kid and up to about 30 I was interested in what was happening in the art world although not too comfortable with being on the sidelines, and somewhat self-critical because of that. If I ever get back to work on my project referred to previously under the title Hold Still, I hope to explore that murk.
As for the murk itself; a for instance; I've always wondered who exactly was, or is, Patty Smith. I suppose she is someone I would have known about if I hadn't stopped reading The Village Voice.
It's not exactly as if I lost all interest in Bohemia at some point say around 1970 or so, but more that I was just lost in my own weeds. By which I mean that I was smoking too much pot, and allowing myself to be overly entertained by projects that my other pot-head friends were involved in, like young female hippies, old wooden boats, dancing to disco music while stoned on acid, and fraternizing with exceptionally cool people. I do remember that I began to read somewhere about Punk music. [Note to self; why capitalize Punk and not disco?] But for some reason I didn't think it applied to me. I suppose that's partly because my 'urban period', which only lasted a total of about four years; two years, then a break and a couple more years, not counting San Fran; which happened in my other, sober life; was not particularly rewarding. I did, at some point, want to read Greil Marcus's Lipstick Traces, but felt unqualified due to my dearth of Punk knowledge. I had read his earlier Rock and Roll book, Mystery Train, which I liked a whole bunch.
Anyway, as of this moment, I still haven't listened to any of Patty's music, but at least I know she was involved with Mapplethorpe, who I know made a big impression on the art world, and that she has recently written a memoir, which is supposed to be good, though, again, I am not as yet prepared for it.
Right now I'm reading, The Prentice Mulford Story, Life by Land and Sea, and another book by Mulford, Thoughts are Things. I'm also reading Joseph McMoneagle's Remote Viewing Secrets, and The William Saroyan Reader. And as I've said, there are several other books I've started and put aside and will get back to, part of the ten, rather than the 24, those ones are counting on my longevity.
Mulford, I stumbled across recently while reading somewhere about New Thought, something I've been dabbling in for half a century. Turns out he was born in my hometown, and is from a family who's current generation I grew up with. Fact is, the Mulford Farm is one of the better historical points of interest available to visitors of that same hometown.
As for remote viewing, I guess that's sort of part of an info-binge that started with Ingo Swann, about whom I have already written, and who's talent, while still not universally acknowledged, has me fascinated. The mystery of it, remote viewing, I came to with the idea, planted in my head by many over many years, that this thing called non-locality is somehow tied in with consciousness, through universal consciousness, and that if one can navigate that, the world's your oyster, as Prentice Mulford might have put it. [or, perhaps, "Bob's yer uncle!"]*
*Hawkins; circa; 1979
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