Out the window, on the way

To see my grandmother, who must

Now be fed like a child again,

Possessed by blank stares and staccato

Bursts of words,

I see purple flowers by the road,

Blooming weeds or lavender,

I don�t know (Joel would).

In my mind, they are

Lavender, blooming as life�s

Delicate insult to death, as if

To say "Maybe I only get

A month, but fuck you,

I�m going to bloom, baby, bloom."

Later, I think, there must be some essence of him left,

Some corner on which Joel hangs,

Just out of reach. My God,

It wasn't so long ago that he walked

These streets, the man of multiple

Bags, Sir Longscarf, Father Graybeard,

Squinting, or with that deep look,

Stopping, eyes open penetrating as soft

Knives, seeing, seeing.

He did not lack for sight.

I get out and try to find him, imagine him

Back, even as I know how absurd this

Would seem to him (I hear "ah, Nate, I�m dead"

In my mind, Joel�s voice, there, now).

Is he there, in the State Street porn shop?

No, probably not. He once told me

The problem with pornography is that

It is sex drained from all the messiness

Of reality�smelless, wordless, plucked

And shaved and surgically removed and

Enlarged. Makes you expect unreality

Of the real. Then, in a poem from the seventies,

Joel writes about rushing to a porn store

In frantic searching. Maybe this silly

Infantile desire to stumble across a sign of

The departed is not so far removed from Joel's

Sense. What, even, do I want to find?

A hat? A scarf strung across the sidewalk?

A magic carpet, a time machine? But even this last

Moment, this last breath, is gone.

The old man on the corner, the angle

Of his back�

It�s Him!

Who�s the old dude in the café window?

Him!

He has risen!

A man goes by:

"Everybody�s yakin about how wonderful it is."

Definitely Him!

Jewsus of Madison has Risen!

A guy honks a couple of notes on a harmonica

That becomes a song.

Him!

And yet I�m trapped in my own puerility

(Tits ahoy, State Street awash in breasts,

A forest, an ocean, a mountain range

Of summertime titties restrained by bare threads!

Think of the nipples�one for every square

Inch of skin�a baby�s dream. This

Baby�s dream. Joel would understand,

Even as he makes retching sounds and leans

Over as if to vomit, spitting up like

A baby).

I go into stores, but Joel is not there�

Or is he, underneath the smell of

Synthetic fabric, what�s that? Sweat?

The street, dust and metal? Someone

Has tried on this shirt on the rack.

It�s Him! He has entered this store, leaving only

The smell behind. "JOEL GERSMANN HAS TRIED ON

THIS SHIRT," I scream

In my imagination. In reality, I leave the store,

Mindful of my place,

And his.

Land�s End. Coffee Houses. Stylized Bus Stops.

And bullshit, bullshit, bullshit.

What is this, Oslo? Cleaned and polished and ready

For business. In a corner, a woman corkscrewed

Into a wheelchair tolls a bell for the

Salvation Army. Now there�s something Joel

Could get behind, something where the twistedness

Isn�t hidden.

I give a dollar, and poof! It�s gone.

And then, people collapse on me and

The faces become familiar and frightening.

I realize a time machine would be an unrelenting

Horror of teeth and tongue and flesh hardened to

Marble. A bust in the making, a bust.

Busted.

To Bring Back the Dead

(combine in mason jar)

--1 Drop of saliva stolen from the lips of 2 black lesbians, large, kissing at dawn.

--hair of cat.

--That light! That dusky light, grey glow seen in spring in moments between this world and some other!

--Yellow hearts, pink clovers, and blue diamonds.

--let sit for 5,000 years.

I go back to his grave�is this

Really where it ends?

I let the salsa play on the radio�

Loud, windows open. Joel would like it, I think.

Though isn't this just some sort of strange

Sentimentality? Why do I want to rip open

The coffin and see his face again, though I've

Seen the embalmed before, drained

With an undertakers idea of still life. Ghastly.

Memory is better, where I can still hear

His voice, feel his rough stubble cheek,

Once again, once again, Once more

Into the breech. Once more, bebida,

Vivida, bebida, vivida. Aquí, aquí, mira.

Mira, mira, Oye, Oye,

Pensar, pensar, pensar,

Like the call of the crow circling in the sky.

Why do we make flat lines into circles like eyes? To begin.

To begin again. Once more.

From the top.

--Nate Beyer (7/2/05)

Posted by Peter S. Scholtes at July 12, 2005 2:09 PM

De Stijl

Filed under: Imported

Posted by Peter S. Scholtes at July 12, 2005 11:13 AM

Joel Gersmann changed my life. Now he's dead.

Filed under: Imported

He would make a great Broom Street play. The wild-haired maniac with a Jersey accent who seemed to believe the world would be a better place for having to put up with him, and was probably right. Joel Gersmann was a life worth talking about even if you've never heard of him, or his amazing theater, and I've invited friends and family to contribute good stories to this blog (more to come). Here's an email I got last week from Mark Thomas in Madison:

Pete - My relationship with Joel - other than seeing his plays - was to answer the phone when he called for Annie. Usually she wasn't home. I'd ask if he wanted to leave a message, and he'd say "Tell her to call Joel". This happened hundreds of times, I probably never said fifty word to him face to face.

The last time I remeber seeing Joel in the co-op, he turned to Annie with a lear and said "If you were younger I'd fuck you right here!" Annie replied "No honey, if you were younger".

Joel was the kind of person that makes it so much fun to live around here. Thanks for writing, Pete.

For Minneapolis people to imagine the figure Gersmann was in Madison, picture a combination of Al Milgrom and Steve McClellan, and have him write voraciously literate book reviews while DJ-ing obscure classical, Arabic music, or whatever else obsesses him on community radio. Gersmann was a rare combination of big and small. He was kind and mean, he loved high and low. He learned ancient Greek to read and adapt The Odyssey for one stage comedy (Ulysses, Won't You Please Come Home), and based another play entirely on excerpts from Cosmopolitan magazine.

These links only begin to tell the story: Joel's death makes the New York Times, Dean Robbins's cover tribute in Isthmus, with links to other good stories, "Joel Gersmann. A name often followed by the phrase 'that fucker'", Various Madisonians remember Gersmann on this Isthmus blog, a Cap Times news item, Joel Gersmann dies at 62, A State Journal tribute, Not exactly famous last words: one of Joel's last, typically cantakerous voicemails, An appreciation: Gersmann's vision needed his courage, Dyskeptic's obituary, and a thread at the Isthmus message board. Ditto these older articles: Off-off-off-off-off Broadway (cached article from Madison Magazine), Joel on the Overture Center, and Another Rob Matsushita memory of Joel. I wish I could have attended Joel's funeral just to hear people talk about him.

Joel Gersmann directed me in a play when I was in middle school, Clara Reeve (1982), which he adapted from an obscure novel set in Victorian times. He was very sweet to me, which amazed many who knew him. (He could be a storming asshole.) Joel couldn't believe that I transposed the play's theme song ("I Dreamt That I Dwealt In Marble Halls") by ear on piano--he could read music easily, but couldn't play by ear. His enthusiasm for other people's talent could be boyish, and he drew out (or provoked) the best from them.

Gersmann's '70s Broom Street taught me that a foot could be a phone, that five actors could play 20 characters, that art meant absolutely anything goes. He seemed to write dialogue as rock and roll, and I remember him timing his shows with a stopwatch to make sure the verbal-musical trains ran on time. (We did one rehearsal of Clara Reeve as fast as humanly possible, which was kind of surreal.)

The Gersmann plays I remember most seized on taboos, slapped them around some with tasteless satire, then somehow extracted uncommon insight and humanity from the story. The one that lost Broom Street its National Endowment for the Arts grant, The Chicken and the Chickenhawk (1990), was actually a plausible and sensitive rehearsal of the relationship between a Dilbert-like man in the closet and a male adolescent hooker. Elsewhere, Gersmann lampooned Vietnam in Action Comics (1978); jogging in Running (1979); horror in The House of Mystery (1980); Appleton in Houdini! (1981), a glorious musical that deserves to be revived; Christ and Westerns in The Jesus Gang (1984); the Doors mythology in Light My Fire (1984), way better than that Oliver Stone movie; "PC" academia in The Case of the Nazi Professor (1994); Trotskyists and fascists in Nazi Boy: The Story of the First Skinhead (1996). He played pioneering gay activist "Radical Harry" Hay this year, and I'm sorry I missed that.

Joel also made way for great work from others: Marty Mulhern's Favorite Son (1980); Danielle Dresden's Signalized (1982); Star Olderman's Boxcar Bertha: Sister of the Road (1982); Tracy Will's Packer Glory (1984), another big hit; Paul Wells's Vampire Stewardesses from Hell (1990); Rick Vorndran's I Am Star Trek (1995) and Please, Please, Please Love Me (1996) and Michelangelo, Renaissance P.I. (1997), and many more I'm forgetting. The early plays were my introduction to avant garde, before I got into punk rock. If Joel's definition of great art was that "you walk out changed," that's how I felt after those performances.

Broom Street has never staged the same play twice. The company has never staged plays that had previously run elsewhere. Admission is cheap (it was $6 for years, though that might have gone up). The actors work for free. The only concession to audience comfort (and Joel fought this, as I remember) is the presence of cushions on the otherwise backless and austere wooden bleachers. (I suggest theater goers arrive in groups, then lean against your friends' knees behind you.) Broom Street is designed to provide, in other words, an intense but temporary experience.

I always left the plays energized. I'd love to hear all the coversations continuing out to the bar afterward. (Which play was it, again, where the actors kept going after all but one audience member had walked out, and then, when that last guy left, followed him out onto the sidewalk, performing the play behind him? Somebody help me out here.)

I hope the theater keeps going without Joel. It's bigger than his personality, which is saying something.

More memories:

Joel is not there (email and poem by Nate Beyer)

Things I have to thank Joel for (at Tracy G's blog)

Costumes are for losers (Rick Vorndran remembers Joel)

Posted by Peter S. Scholtes at July 7, 2005 2:19 AM

Joel Gersmann photo

Filed under: Stories

Posted by Peter S. Scholtes at July 5, 2005 12:57 PM

Joel Gersmann full

Filed under: Imported

Posted by Peter S. Scholtes at July 5, 2005 12:56 PM

Joel Gersmann

Filed under: Imported

Posted by Peter S. Scholtes at July 5, 2005 10:56 AM

Buy your gas at Citgo

Filed under: Imported

So get your gas at Citgo. And help fuel a democratic revolution in Venezuela.

<TT>Another reason to support Venezuelan oil:  Chavez is using trade leverage on oil to help reduce consumption of non-renewable resources.  Read below...
</TT>

Posted by Peter S. Scholtes at July 5, 2005 10:48 AM

« June 2005 | Main | August 2005 »