Garbo's Murder

Garbo’s murder

Towards the end when his once nimble fingers now splayed in awkward pointings and his ravaged body, frail and quiet sought refuge in wine and percocet, Garbo muttered something about a murder on a Greek Island back in the seventies. I thought he referred to something he heard or read about and let it pass, The old man often muttered semi coherent withered garbling that I regarded as the random engram of a mind straying back and forth in time and fantasy.

A few days later in a more lucid state we were engaged in a game of chess and I mentioned his reference to a murder on a Greek Island years ago.

“What did I say?”

“ Just something about a murder and a Greek man with pointed ears and the name of an island I couldn’t understand.”

“ Ah, Spetsae, I lived there for quite a time when I was young. I shared a room with a famous bouzouki player from Athens who played at the Taberna Skoppina . We drank Ouzo and danced every night. Me and Christo (the barber) & Nikos. There were no cars and we rode to the Taberna in a cart/ taxi pulled by a mule. My greatest summer!”

“And was there a murder?”

“No, no… the murder was years later when I went back with Cassandra.”

“Was it some Greek matter of honor between families.”

Here Garbo paused and wiped his nose while he raised his spectacles.

“The only other two people who know this are dead. “

My turn to pause and gesture inquisitively.

“ The dead guy, Cassandra and me. I killed a guy.”

In Terms of Quality

In Terms of Preference

In his 70’s Garbo wrote the beginning of an essay that he never completed. He had been working on the Museum Suite.

“Until today I never gave a second thought to the way all museums are set up chronologically. The Quatrocento never invades the rooms set aside for Expressionism. One never sees a Rembrandt self-portrait and next to Picasso’s.

Quality and importance should be qualified by comparison, and should be judged by the same standard. It now seems to me, that we are directed by the dictates of Museum floor plan paradigm to keep our observable standard of excellence determined by the context from which it came. They are saying ‘that was then … this is now… don’t confuse this century with the last…. They have nothing to do with each other.’

Here I agree with James Whistler who stated

‘A work of Art has no connection with the environment in which it is produced and has no meaning apart from its beauty.’

I believe this is the basic cause in the irrefutable permissiveness in what today is accepted as fine art. Please don’t quibble on the grounds that Duchamp’s Nude descending was once besmirched and is now considered masterful. Or Warhol’s soup cans were once laughed at and now bring record prices. Or that Hirst’s stuffed shark is worth 12 million.

I propose these modern/contemporary works be put in a museum setting next to Botticelli’s Primavera, El Greco’s Assumption (either one) and the second coffin of Tutankhamun.

Why have you settled for less? Why have you gone for the mediocrity of Saatchi’s profiteering? “

Look at them next to each other.”

Here Garbo left off… I think he knew that as long as there was money involved, the Philistines would win.

The Romantic

Double self portrait with Rousseau

The Romantic

He was always a ‘ romantic’. Early on he read an essay by Einstein who said that the impetus behind all human endeavor was either fear or longing and Garbo certainly connected to the longing part.

He wrote while on an extended stay at the American Academy in Rome:

"I have found myself in love again… at my age (a Steppenwolf, I suspect has lay hidden in a chrysalis of my own making). She is so utterly beautiful to behold …I am smitten.

‘An hundred years should go to praise

Thine eyes and on thy forehead gaze' …yes I am in love.

She willingly submits to my most suspicious scrutiny and ignores all my approval , for she has yet to give me even the smallest hint of noticing my arousal, my covet-ness, or my coy gestures aimed at gaining entrance to the secrets of her grandeur.

I willingly yield and pray for her to rejoin, but her very nature is to demure and lay silent beneath her exquisite façade, her patina of unreachable beauty.

Would that I slave for an eternity, I fear I should never approach the awesome beauty of my love

And her name is painting."

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Years later he read to me some passages from his ‘notes’ and after reading the above, removed his glasses and turned toward me speaking rather sheepishly:

“I forget which ancient Greek said, ‘Though the power is lacking… the lust is nevertheless praiseworthy.”

Celestina

Celestina 1986-92

My real name is Celeste but Garbo started calling me Celestina the first time we had coffe. Actually we met a few years earlier but he didn’t remember. But I remembered him. He was the artist in the studio of the woman who let us use her canyon for our sweat lodge. I’m Black Foot (Montana, Nitsitapi Tribe)

We had our feast in his studio after the ‘sweat’. He was always cordial but did not eat with us. Archie told me he was a sober alcoholic. Archie Fire was our chief. Archie had been sober for nine years. He and Garbo used to drink coffee in the afternoon before the sweat and talk about their days as crazy drunks. I knew all about drunks. My ex- husband showed me all I needed to know about alcoholism.

But then in ’86 I was working in “women’s studies” at UCSB and our office happened to be next door to the Art Dept. Garbo was teaching a summer semester and our eyes met a few times as he passed the window to my office. I remembered him and thought I saw some kind of recognition in his eyes. But he never stopped. There was just that flicker…

Finally I asked Janet, a friend of mine, who worked in the Art Dept Office to ask him if he thought he knew the woman in the office next door. She added: she thinks she knows you. He turned and walked over to my door and peeked in.

Do you think you know me?

Yeah, aren’t you Janos from Laura’s studio?

Did I meet you there?

Not really but I knew who you were.

Do you have time for coffee?

We took it so slow I thought nothing was ever going to happen. We talked and had dinner. He met my kids. We walked and had coffee, and talked some more. He asked me and my kids to a beach bar-b-q. He had all his shit together for the fire and buns and all of it. A blanket and kids drinks too. He let Sam my 6-year-old boy cook the burgers. And even though Sam was way to slow and everything was over cooked, Garbo never corrected or meddled in Sam’s effort. I think that was the moment I lost resistance and mentally gave in. That night when we said goodnight Garbo held my head in his gentile hands and kissed me on the forehead.

Still it was a year before we held hands in the worst movie we ever saw. It didn’t matter. We held hands and stroked each other’s arms. Just thinking about it makes the hair on my arms stand up. And the next time he came for dinner, he came for good.