Kill for Peace, by Martha Thomases – Brilliant Disguise

July 17, 2010 Martha Thomases 7 Comments

This was a tough week to be an old Jewish man (or an old man who might be Jewish, but isn’t, like this guy).

Harvey Pekar, the Walt Whitman of Cleveland, died too soon at 70.  You can read a round-up of remembrances  at lots of places, including here, or just use the Google.  I was lucky enough to meet him a few times, and he was a gracious, articulate guy.

There has been less written about the loss of Tuli Kupferberg, one of the founding members of The Fugs. He was also a well-known poet, and, for nearly 50 years, a fixture on the East Village scene (long before the East Village was overrun by Yuppies and Euro-trash).  He wrote several amazing and funny books (this one is my personal favorite).

One of my favorite things about living in New York is the way celebrity mixes with everyday life.  I’m sure we have our share of guarded movie stars and paranoid, drugged-out rock stars, but they can have their ivory towers.  They bore us.  It’s so much fun to see, for example, Michael Imperioli taking his son home from school on the subway, or Whoopi Goldberg at the same restaurant where you’re having dinner.  It can be a kick to find out that you knew people well enough to be invited to parties where the guest list might include Kurt Vonnegut or Dana Buchman, names you might  only have seen previously on book jackets or clothing labels.

Tuli was one of those people whom I knew only slightly, but saw around ever since I moved to New York in 1977 (when dinosaurs still roamed the earth).  He would be at the annual holiday party at the War Resisters League.  He’d be at anti-war demonstrations, large and small.  And, at random, you might find him on the street, selling his stuff.

It’s extremely popular these days to dismiss the 1960s as a time of naive idealism and pointless hedonism.  The conversations on television tend to include only those on the right, the center and the center-left.  You don’t see people from the anti-war movement.  You don’t even see real socialists.

The 1960s counter-culture just wasn’t profitable enough to continue to interest corporate media.  Sure, people wanted money (and stuff) in the 1960s, but the counter-culture didn’t value the isolation and exclusivity that comes with money and stuff today.   The slogan was “Power to the People,” not “I Got Mine.”

And the rock stars who were the grooviest were the ones who walked the talk.  People who had multi-album deals with Warner Bros. Records sold their work on the streets.

City streets are great places for the fusion of art and politics.  Crowds encourage conversation, and interest in other points of view.  I’ll be missing the ones we lost this week.

Martha Thomases, Media Goddess, can’t wait to hear Mike Gold’s stories on this subject, because his are better than hers.