The Intersection of Two Trends: Provincetown, A Prophesy

. . . solemn heave the Atlantic waves between the gloomy nations;  swelling belching from its depths,  red clouds & raging fires.  Albion is sick, America feints!~ William Blake 1793  America:  A Prophesy
 How little has been understood of Blake's words:  As a visionary and mystic,  his sight was not only far reaching,  into the future,  but it probed deep down,  to the depths of man..."The American Revolution:  Epistemological as well as political"  :  These are the words of a Harvard professor,  who maintains a certain anonymity,  and truer words were never spoken.  It has been said that "the personal is the political"  but "the political is the epistemic"  is more true,  in that it is more profound and has wider scope.  


 Universal revolt:  The Orc of Blake's imagination,  and   in this first year of Barack Obama,  is it not growing clearer   that the Middle East  now fulfills part of that visionary spirit of which Blake prosphesied and of which America may indeed  oneday perish?   Prophetic vision is frightening,  precisely because it sees too much,  sees too well,  and Provincetown has been the womb for seers:    artists,  poets, mystics.   It is almost the attic of America,  in which the madwoman paces.   How much Provincetown continues to serve as a bellwether for national transitions can be seen by the recent upheavals there.  O Urizen, I weep for thy stern ambition,  but do weep in vain.  "Your Reason":  The political hegemony and one-sided epistemic privilege and power.  Is Provincetown not the place for Blake's Orc?  To be taken over by Urizen :  Blake's powers of prophesy surely cannot be dismissed as madness.    Is Provincetown really in trouble?  Has the danger been only temporarily shelved,  to emerge more formidable for its seemingly permanent departure?    The problem with seers:  We see more than we should .  Meaning leaps out at us,  as Freud's Interpretation of Dreams flew from his pen as he feverishly stabbed the pages with the searing inner illuminations,  that rushed one upon the other....Symbolism is understood in all its ramifications,  and nuances.  NARTH and the Middle East are seen as cipher and symbol,  revealing a shift and a sea-level change,  to come,  in the future.  As Nietzsche said,  the seer is  one who has arrived 15 mintues early on the historical scene. . .  
Urizen,  Tharmas,  Orc,  Los:  The quaternity of the Whole Man,  as even Jung knew keenly.  But always splitting,  always a bifurcation must occur, and a re-constellation.  But the transition is the danger.  And Nietzsche also said of the seer:  As animals of the forest become restless and nervous hours before the arrival of an approaching storm,  even so does the man with historical pre-vision grow nervous as  he sees the political clouds gather ,  unseen by others,  on the horizen.

Provincetown Losing Its Footing in a Time of Transisiton : A Sign of the Changing Times

Have come upon this link below,  and I had actually anticipated just this sort of thing,  way back in the first years of this decade.  Why?  I had  read Howe and Strauss The Fourth Turning :  An American Prophesy  and Peter Manso's PTown:  Art,  Sex, and Money on the Outer Cape.  Each book contained prophetic warnings,  which began being sounded as early as 1997,  as well as in 2003. Also read Faiman-Silva's article about a new "culture of resistance"  toward Ptown tolerance of LGBT and the general culture of new diversion from traditional values.   As I said,  this link is disturbing but not surprising:  
http://mysite.verizon.net/freebarryscott/provincetown.html
Also an important synopsis of the origin of this current state of affairs,  and the ensuing conflict:  http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_hb3491/is_3_9/ai_n28913728/pg_3/
*Also,  this expanded piece authored by me:  http://www.zimbio.com/Elvis+Mitchell/articles/G1lD9Y79WzN/Provincetown+Transition+May+Microcosm+End

Gore Vidal and Provincetown of the 1940s

Many believe that Provincetown had its hey day as a gay community in the 1970s,  but I have always been intrigued with the spirit of gay Provincetown in the 1940s,  when Gore Vidal,  Donald Windham, and Tennessee Williams were young and just entering the world of literary fame and glamor.

Williams wrote some of his best plays and short stories up in the rugged and wild Cape Cod town,  in the outer regions where the sand dunes meet the stars.  Vidal became by turns his nemesis, friend,  editor,  comrade in arms,  and a fellow gay man in a time where the closet of the subculture was their venue.

Here's to remembering those magical summers,  when brilliant and innovative minds were joining forces up in the gay mecca.

Moment of Nostalgia : Remembering Clinton Era PTown

Remembering the PTown of the Clinton Era  There was something about that time;  the Clinton Era,  the prosperity,  the sense of  a new generation of high-brow gays up in Provincetown.  Wally White's Lie Down With Dogs came out in 1995,  and it caught the mood of that  time,  its very zeitgeist,   with remarkable unconscious precision.  For a brief moment,  White was the chronicler of the age. 

(Gay film producer/actor Wally White; 

with Randy Becker in Provincetown, as the lead in Lie Down With Dogs, Miramax Films, 1995)

                How different this dawning era will be:  two Bush Administrations ,  the Iraq war,  and a dissolving economy separate this time from that Wally White moment like a vast impeccable ocean;  a barrier which cannot be breached.  We can never go back.  I recall being up in Provincetown on a hot summer night in 2001,  and Bowie's All the Young Dudes was playing in the little bar,  at the A-House.  The door was open,  it was hot,  August,  and the bar was filled with smoke (no smoking ban yet;  that would come 2 years later);  and it is odd,  but that song made me feel that Wally White was being serenaded,  and bid adieu.  I was correct;  an era was closing.   
We do not know what changes Obama will bring,  along with the forces which are in the saddle now,  and ride our nation.  But we can know for certain that it will be different.  In any case,  I remember with fondness Wally White.  My husband had never seen two men go at it the way they did,  Wally and Randy Becker :  Macho,  very butch,  but full of sensitivity.  He told me he experienced  White almost as a revelation from a distant land.  How often these life-transforming moments will come in the form of a look,  a gesture,  of someone in a film.  My husband has now been dead almost three years.  My hat's off to him,  and to Wally White. . .

POETICAL PRAISE OF PROVINCETOWN : Beautiful Expressions by Patterson

Available at Amazon.com:
Provincetown Poems,
a collection of poems by Edward C Patterson which
pay tribute, in beautiful lyric expression, to the landscape, people, and gay nightlife of Provincetown on
Cape Cod, MA. These are contained in Mr. Patterson's book : "The Closet Clandestine: A Queer Comes Out" , available @Amazon.com
(http://www.amazon.com/dp/1438227639/)

DAVID KAPLAN ON TENNY IN PTOWN : A Must Read

For all who love Tennessee Williams and Provincetown,  David Kaplan's text is one of the best,  taking the reader back to the 1940s atmosphere of the PTown of Williams' muse.  Williams spent four summer seasons in the '40s up in Ptown,  and the book takes us through the complex landscape of Williams experience in  Provincetown:   heartache and alienation,   drinking,  poverty,  homosexual exploration,  fame and folly.  Expertly crafted and well-researched,  Kaplan's text fuses Provinetown summers and the writing career of America's greatest 20th century playwright.   Kaplan is cofounder and curator  of the Provincetown Tennessee Williams festival.  The book,  "Tennessee Williams in Provincetown"  can be ordered on Amazon.com.

P-TOWN AND OBAMA : GREAT EXPECTATIONS - Says Weens to our President-Elect: "Put out, B***h!"

As a considerable amount of support for Barack Obama during election season came from the Gay Community, it will be interesting to see if their expectations - the reasonable ones, at least - will be met.

I was highly amused to see gay contributor Mickey Weens' essay in the "Edge", post election victory. Asserting that it is fine with him that all politicians are liars and whores, so long as they deliver for him.  Weens, in that delightful PTown lingo,  says he had been Obama's "number one bitch" during the primary and general elections,  and that he has worn that badge "with pride". His message now for the President-Elect? "Put out, Bitch!" (What else? LOL) 

Andrew Sullivan,  the supreme spokesman in the US for gay rights,  and author of numerous  essays and books concerning these rights -  his most famous being,  "Virtually Normal":  An Argument about Homosexuality"  -  has concerns that positions in Obama's transition team are being filled by "Clinton hacks",  and that progress in terms of lifing bans on gays in the military and on gay marriage may become stalled.  In any case,  I do find that PTown lingo of Weens' to be highly amusing, and some much-needed comic relief.