John Giorno (1936–2019)

This was just a blast. Giorno is ridiculous, but also -- what a life! Last year MoMA had a small exhibit of Giorno's Dial-a-Poem project, and several months back Patti Smith mentioned Dial-a-Poem in one of her mesmerizing stories from the stage. My son and I also had a lengthy discussion of Andy Warhol's Sleep (for those who have not seen it, it is 5 hours of John Giorno sleeping.) All this is to say he has been on my mind. I was not aware this book existed until last year, but as soon as I show more learned of its existence, in the midst of all the Giorno references in my life, I put it on the short TBR. What a good choice.

For anyone interested in the mid-20th NYC art world this is a must-read. Giorno waxes nostalgic on the "golden age of promiscuity" and he banged most anyone who was anyone. He knew everyone and had sexual encounters and/or lengthy relationships with Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg, Allen Ginsburg, Jack Keroac, William Burroughs, Jasper Johns and others (some without the widely known brand names of those mentioned here, but many of who were very important to art history.) In truth this is not my favorite artistic epoch. Burroughs had some real antisocial personality disorder hallmarks and Ginsburg was a pedophile, and I, for aesthetic reasons rather than their unappealing personal choices, find their work to be unadulterated shit. True story, I once stepped on a Rauschenberg installation at MoMA and set off all the alarms because I thought it was just a pile of shipping packaging someone had not disposed of yet. Concept alone is not art, the concept needs to be well executed. Warhol and Jasper Johns made things pretty to look at, (whether it is art is in the eye of the beholder), and effectively shattered the barriers between iconography and art (or maybe popular movements and fine art.) I am not sure we were not better off with the barrier, but I also cop to being super comfortable considering myself as a member of the cultural elite. (I can't say if anyone else considers me to be in that club, but it is one I am happy to pay my dues to.) All that said, it is hard to argue that these people were not interesting, and they unquestionably moved art forward with good and bad results. Reading this it appears they were all hatched in some Area 51 facility and it is clear they all brought unique visions to the world. This is as good a chronicle as I have ever read of an artistically fecund time, one that changed the larger society, and it is entertaining as hell. Ridiculous? Yes, frequently, but compelling and well-written.

I don't usually include trigger warnings, but if you think you will be traumatized by reading descriptions of the specific sensations of penetrating the assholes or the unique taste of the cum of Rauschenberg, Burroughs, et al, take a pass. Ditto if drug use bugs you. There is a lot of both. Also if you don't want to read about ushering Burroughs through the Bardo, you don't want to read this -- there is a lot of Eastern Mysticism lite running through the second half of the book that might be problematic for Buddhists and Atheists. Otherwise, have at it! show less

Individuals who are "cooked" are those deeply involved in a physiological process — Claude Lévi-Strauss , The Raw and the Cooked

Poetry and the Smoke Detector

Advanced technologies multiply human sensations. The smoke detector is a thinking device; it re-produces the "hatred of bad taste" in the same sense that the "slipper" is a "monument to the hatred of bending down" (Adorno, Minima Moralia). While some nights still pass us by insensate, the smoke detector interjects to remind us that show more John Giorno's work is a sacrifice in the traditional sense, "an unknown quantity of material [dinner] has been burnt in order to produce it." (Roberto Calasso, Ruin of Kasch) Fantastic dinners are always lurking in the background of Great Demon Kings, like the proverbial "woman behind every man's success." These are quite literally smoky affairs: "Usually, we [had great dinners where] I broiled the steak, and the fat would catch fire, filling the apartment with smoke. The steak would be charred outside and bloody raw inside, the french fries still frozen in the centers, and the peas overcooked. Cooking made such a mess. But it was such a joy, I was happy to do it. We had a good time." Such occasions straddle the border between what (probably) "tastes bad" and what the smoke detector is loudly calling "bad taste."

Adorno and Calasso both comment on the sedulous role of the burnt offering in the Sacrifice — the insubstantial (deathless) portion ascends to the heavens while the practitioner arrogates the physical portion to himself — forcing the Gods to enter into an exchange which, in the future, will be used to dominate them. We can draw an analogy to John Giorno, who is becoming what Lévi-Strauss would called a "cooked" being, i.e. deeply involved in the physiological process that is domestic housework. When Giorno cooks a (burnt) dinner for Andy Warhol or William Burroughs, one might say he's "burning up his talent" in the insubstantial progression of time. Such insubstantial accumulations are what Eileen Myles calls, "making a mountain of sleep." (a 'Working Life'). (A feminist-marxist critique has its entrée here in these well-worn ruts, but I'm saving it for another time). Perhaps it's remarkable that, as beneficiary of such circumstances, Warhol was able to make a Mountain of "Sleep" (1964) .

In fact, it's probably worth going a little further beyond wordplay (above) to investigate some important divergences between Giorno and Warhol. In this work, Giorno reports that Warhol once told him, "I'm going to stop painting. I want my paintings to sell for $25,000." (I had initially thought this was a reference to the phrase from Gertrude Stein, "Paintings are either worth $300 or $300,000," but I appear to have been mistaken.) This quote is perhaps off-base, since Warhol never really stopped painting, though it cuts through to his compulsion, at base, to ceaselessly accumulate Capital. John Giorno, as "Superstar" in Sleep (1964), did remarkably well for himself (on the scale of Warhol "Superstars" who mostly died in their early 20's), yet, while we're letting artists describe each other, Warhol's amusing story about the young talents who were burning up around him probably still applies: "A guy came over and said that he had the biggest cock in L.A., so I offered to sign it and [she] got so excited she leaned over to look at the cock and her hair caught fire in the flames of a candle—it was like instant punishment." (Pat Hackett, Autobiography of Warhol). (This story is so pithy I feel compelled to re-use it, recalling a famous phrase about the re-use of quotation: "One must be reduced to rack and ruin in order to be able to bear having the same ass shit twice" (de Sade, 120 Days of Sodom).) At a certain level, the moral of Warhol's story is correct: we are always being punished for our instincts — sometimes spectacularly.

It's remarkable how much Warhol's "productivity" contrasts with Giorno's "bad taste" in technology, which is always moving against the grain. Warhol's opus is characterized by use of the photograph, screen printing, and judicious use of film — riding a wave of zeitgeist — always after a "fungible" quality. Giorno, at the same time, is producing work that's totally insubstantial. His "syncopated poems" in which two vocal recordings are played simultaneously, are illegible on the page — as if by design. "Happenings" from the 1960's were recorded on tape decks (not the right technology) and are now totally lost. Recordings of his work, e.g. his appearance on Poetry in Motion (1982) become, paradoxically, erasures: written copies weren't kept for poems recorded on film. Even this book, Great Demon Kings, is almost unreadable due to aberrant use of technology — It contains so many digital photographs that the file can't be loaded to my e-reader. (This is a forgotten riddle from the Oedipal Sphinx: What book contains 300 pictures when it's closed but 0 when you open it — Answer: This one.) In this way, our author eludes quotation except in short phrases such as his routine euphemism for intercourse: "Making it." Though, in the sense that Giorno's disruptive use of technology is like a smoke detector sounding off during a poetry reading, he's doing the same thing that fire does to the burnt offering, i.e. "Unmaking it." show less

Not one for me. Moving this book on to Goodwill.