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WHATNOT

                                             March 7, 2009

  A figure that appears now
  and then throughout the
  story of my teenage life on
  Long Island: a friend of
  one of my brothers who we           VILLON
  shall call "Whatnot".

    He was something of a
    multi-artist, with         He did a stint in Vietnam...
    interests in music,        office-work, as I understand it,
    painting, film, radio,     where he'd finish his work in a
    poetry and so on.          couple of hours, and spend the
                               rest of his day working on poetry.

                                                            TOADKEEPER
       Much could be said about his
       general approach toward life.          The Toadkeeper once
                                              wrote an essay using
       He was someone with a much             Whatnot as a starting
       less defeatist attitude than           off point, marveling at
       the Brenner Brothers, and              the amount of money he
       always did what he could to            spent on all his
       Get Things Done, working on            different projects, and
       a lot of different fronts.             concluding that "all art
                                              is art", and "words are
       You could argue that he wasn't         cheap", and resolving to
       any more successful... but             focus on words.
       then there's something to be
       said for just doing your work,
       whether or not you manage to
       make a living at it.               A quip from Whatnot:
                                          "The only thing I have
          Very little of the works        against Ed Sanders is
          of the young Villion            he got the grant and I
          survive in anything like        didn't."
          a finished form -- the
          exceptions exist solely             Not something you'd put on
          because Whatnot was                 your resume, but then, a
          involved:                           lot of us don't get as far
                                              as applying for the grant.
            o   He used Villion's
                band as a subject
                in a film-making
                class.

             o  He put together a
                recorded radio show
                that alternated
                Villion's readings           VILLION
                with solo performances
                of guitar and vocals.



            I only recently got to
            see one of his video
            experiments from the
            mid-1970s where the
            Inwood Angel sits down
            at a kitchen table,          INWOOD_ANGEL
            rolls a joint, starts
            smoking and begins
            lipsynching to Whatnot's
            reading of "Fra Lippo
            Lippi".

            This remarkably Dumb
            Idea works because
            the Inwood Angel was
            acutely conscious of          (And he still is:
            how dumb it is. He            "It's a piece of crap!")
            did not at all think
            it was amusing to be
            involved in this
            project, and he let
            it show...


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