Ever since late July, the City of San Diego’s been doing work on a section of 6th Avenue between the intersections of Upas and Penn. Every once in a while, I drive to Downtown to work early in the morning, and I take the scenic route through Hillcrest. It has become more scenic since I have to take the detour to 4th Avenue.
September 23rd, 2008
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Sep 08
Detour on 6th Avenue in Hillcrest
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Sep 08
The Gold Lady in “Benny’s Narratives” and “My Bald Avenger”
It’s very clear in “Benny’s Narratives” that the Gold Lady emerges as the diva in the story. She has a collection of high heels and there’s some hint she’s in th A-List as she is friends Madonna. She’s Benny’s super hero who even knows Wonder Woman. She’s tough, fierce, and she kicks ass in some glamorous clothes. She’s a star.
When we first meet the Gold Lady, she has the man with the 4-Way Hips to compliment her. He has dapper style and he’s fantastically talented with moving his hips, something very Elvis-like. Even if Benny may claim some identification with him in the beginning, he begins to focus more on her as he says, “Ever since I’ve seen a picture of the Gold Lady, I think about her all the time.” In “My Bald Avenger,” he begins to do that more and more.
The Gold Lady in this next installment becomes more defined. She is the Superstar. Benny begins to identify her with various famous women, especially Alek Wek, who resembles her on a superficial level. She wears couture just like the Gold Lady.
For Benny, everything the Gold Lady is associated with is cool. This is certainly the case with the fictitious Apple pocket computer she has in her hand in “Feuille 6.” Keep in mind that the image was drawn in 2001, and that the iPhone now puts that imaginary model to shame. However, the Gold Lady would use the iPhone now. Who knows? Perhaps she knows Steve Jobs.
This is the last time we see the Gold Lady act as an action hero. It is at a point where Benny begins to accept that Dr. Marcus’s medical abuse was wrong, and he creates a gleeful scenario in which the Gold Lady exposes Dr. Marcus for the coward he is.
As for the Gold Lady being a vehicle for Benny becoming sane on his own terms, this is just the beginning.
Stay Tuned for “Feuile 6,” a post from the “My Bald Avenger,” tomorrow at 3:00am PST/7am EST.
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Sep 08
Commentary on “Benny’s Narratives”
I wrote “Benny’s Narratives” during a transitional time in my life. I was finishing my BA in English and I was trying to get into an MFA program. I was studying with a certain professor who assigned interesting readings and some of them helped influence the story, especially those about outsider art.
I have some training in visual art, having gone to FIDM a long time ago. Also, drawing was something I have always enjoyed, long before I started to write stories. As a child, I was fond of drawing images and scenes, making up my narratives as I went along. Later on, when I was in my teens, I loved the work of Andy Warhol and the other Pop artists. They took the commercial images and appropriated them for their own use.
I appropriated an image. When I was in this course called “The Design Fundamentals of Visual Presentation,” one of the assignments was to go to a department store window and copy it as a painting. I went to a Nordstrom window with a bald-headed gold mannequin. Little did I know that years later, she would become Benny’s Gold Lady.
When I was an undergrad English major, I became intrigued with William Blake. His poems were as much works of art as they were poetry. He created his images and prose, and they go together.
Adolf Wöfli was another influence. First, he was insane and so is Benny. More importantly, he drew pictures and the words and music swirled around them. He created vibrant images and found sanity through art.
“Benny’s Narratives” was different from the other things I’ve written in the past. I’ve written short stories about Japanese teenagers, some science fiction, and the style was fairly conventional. I scribbled the leaves (Feuilles or images) quickly, late at night, because it I had to. I didn’t have much time between my studies and the job I hated. After I played around with some collages, such as “Money Future,” I drew the Gold Lady and the Man with the 4-Way Hips on the quick. I then scrawled what the Benny had to say about her and the Man. Of course, all the images and the text have a sense of urgency.
Later images and text would be drawn and written more carefully, but they all have the fractured language that’s uniquely Benny’s voice. As the Gold Lady is a Pop artifact, Benny’s language has been influenced by various pop songs, such as Tom Tom Club‘s “Genius of Love” and Madonna‘s “Music” in “Benny’s Narratives.”
The events in this first installment of Resplendence are the darkest. My approach was to write with a dark sense of humor, especially since Benny describes the medical abuse by Dr. Marcus in such innocent terms. The story ends with Dr. Marcus being dismissed for his sexual misconduct, but it isn’t quite the end for Benny, even if I intended “Benny’s Narratives” to be a self-contained short story. The rest of Resplendence deals with the aftermath of what happened between Benny and Dr. Marcus, along with Benny trying to become sane on his own terms.
Coming tomorrow is the first post from “My Bald Avenger,” where Benny dreams up the ultimate revenge against Dr. Marcus. The Gold Lady is back as his avenging angel and she is more fabulous than ever, the One Supreme Being who is a Saint and much more. Stay tuned.
