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Matt Ames Latest

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And The Beat Goes On And On

I've been told by two different women this week, that lots of young men go through a Kerouac phase, but not many women do. I know a few woman that do and have. I know I did. I haven't read anything by him in years, but I definitely did my time. I used to skip high school and take the city bus downtown (Orlando), wander down the railroad tracks etc..

I hitchhiked through Europe, and parts of the U.S for a few years. Now I won't pick up a hitchhiker. I still think about those journeys though. I'm not done traveling, but I do play it safer and more comfortable.

The story goes that Jack Kerouac wrote Dharma Bums in the College Park section of Orlando. On The Road was published while he was living there. It's funny, I lived in the house across the street in the early 90's. I was way closer to my Kerouac phase then. I had no idea he used to live in the house across the street. The house that my friends and I used to call the Bob Seger house. The house that had two Trans Ams sitting out front, and seemed to have a constant Bob Seger soundtrack blaring from inside the house and from inside the Trans Ams.

The Kerouac House as it is known now is part of the Kerouac Project. It hosts, I think four writers in residence a year. They do three month stints. They are given a food stipend too. I've never heard about any freight hopping or hitchhiking writers staying there, but I don't everything.

Wednesday March 25th, jazz musician David Amram will be doing a book signing at Urban Think in Orlando. Thursday Robert Frank's film Pull My Daisy will show at Rollins College. Amran will discuss the film afterward. Friday Amran will be at Stetson in Deland. Saturday Pull My Daisy will be shown in Melrose Florida. I think it's all free.

Oh yeah. I almost forgot to mention that Kerouac co-wrote and narrates the half hour film. Allen Ginsberg, Peter Orlovsky and Gregory Corso are a few of the legendary beats that make appearances in the film.

Gene Leedy

A couple of months back, my friend Forest and I took a field trip to Winter Haven, about an hours drive from Orlando. A typical response from someone who lives in Orlando would be, Why would you go to Winter Haven?

Well, Winter Haven is quaint, but that's not why we went there. It is the former spring training site for the Red Sox, then the Indians. The Indians went to Arizona, the Red Sox are training in the Ft. Myers area. Plus it was January, still a little early for spring training.

We were invited by Nikole Helmers to stay the night. She knew that we are architectural buffs, nerds. She owns one of the Gene Leedy houses. It's directly across the street from his own residence. Forest and I were anxious to drink Scotch with one of the founders of the Sarasota School Of Architecture.

Leedy along with Paul Rudolph, Ralph Twitchell, Mark Hampton and Victor Lundy were the founders of the Sarasota School. Forest received his masters from Yale. Paul Rudolph taught there and designed the Yale Architectural School.

The Sarasota School is a mecca for mid-century modernism in Florida. A bad economy can do more for historic preservation than good intentions that lack the funding during boom times. Hopefully these gems will remain.

Nikole took us on a tour, pointing out the simplicity of the construction, the use of plywood, cement blocks and other materials that can be bought at Home Depot.

If you want to take a self guided tour, check out the Leedy site.

The Cinema Of Matt Ames

Matt is a musician, photographer, graphic designer, film maker and so on. He isn't bogged down by technique or locked into any conceptual rigor, but he is a conceptual artist, someone who seems influenced by B-movies, Godard, Dylan, John Cage, Beverly Hillbillies,punk rock, politics,literature, Henry Flynt's avant-hillbilly antics, living in Virginia, Florida or going to grad schools that don't satisfy his needs. He's also very funny.

I really love his films. He acts, narrates,writes and directs. He's involved his whole family and newcomer Mapopa.

Check his latest.

MAMMA

I think it was around the Summer of 2002 when I met Matt Ames. I was living in a house behind the old Mills and Nebraska lumber yard. I loved that place. My house, Matt's and the lumber yard were demolished in 2005 or 2006. Condos or something else that Florida doesn't need were supposed to go up. Now there's a huge field. I think it's thirteen acres of construction materials, piles of dirt and no real sign of anything to come. The truck traffic is occasional. I have to admit that kind of thing is my silver lining to a bad economy.

Anyway, when Matt moved into the duplex next door, I was friendly, but made no attempt to be his friend, at least for a couple of weeks. Then I noticed a bumper sticker on the back of his old pick up truck. It said. Philosophy Inc. Where reality is always on sale. I had to investigate. I knew that I had a possible ally.

I knocked on his door and pointed to the back bumper of his pick up truck and said, "we need to talk." I repeated what I'd just read. He smiled and laughed a little. He told me that Philosophy Inc. is his business, selling ideas.

I don't remember exactly what we talked about at first, but we covered plenty of esoteric ground. I remember standing in his front yard. A woman that I had briefly been involved with sped into my driveway. She got out of her car, and walked briskly towards my car. She glanced my way then put an envelope under my windshield wiper.

I said "hey".

She said. "Fuck you Pat Greene!" She got back into her car and sped away.

Matt looked at me and laughed a little and dryly said "She seemed upset, but she was cute."

Matt and I have been friends since that day. I would stop by his house when he got home from work. I worked out of my house at the time. Matt would decompress by watching King Of The Hill. There might be some Derrida or Foucault sitting next to the TV for later or a Soylent Green DVD. His old girlfriend used to refer to Matt's endeavors as genius studies.

Like me and most of my friends, he had all kinds of kooky things around his apartment. One was a small objects tester. It was still in the package. The idea was if you can fit something through the small hole of the Small Objects Tester, it was too small for a child to play with. I think it was made by Ronco or some shady company like that.

I guess I started to call Matt's apartment the Matt Ames Museum Of Modern Art (MAMMA). In the past few years, I've put on art shows at my house. I now call my house (with Matt's permission and encouragement) MAMMA. The location can change at any time. Matt's going to Virginia Tech. He's getting his doctorate in Educational Technology.

Everything Is Unremarkable

When the train reached West Palm Beach, I got off and bought a ticket for the Tri-Rail to Pompano Beach. My father was going to pick me up in Pompano Beach.My father and his friend Jerry were waiting in the Pompano Tri-Rail parking lot, in his black Honda Accord. Jerry was driving.

We rode about three miles back to my father’s place. My father was going to loan me his car while I was in South Florida. He has cataracts, and can’t drive until he is operated on, which is supposed to happen soon. Jerry and his girlfriend Sherry are taking care of my father.

When I see my father I think of an aging Falstaff. He is around six foot two, probably at least two hundred and fifty pounds with a wild full head of silver hair. His dialogue, completely unedited, his life has been extremely colorful and now his anecdotes are delivered matter of factly. They can shock the uninitiated.

When I was fourteen in the seventies, he was arrested for the biggest mortgage fraud ever on the east of the Mississippi. He was charged with one hundred and fifty four counts of mail fraud, and accused of only two counts. He spent fifteen months at a minimum security prison on the panhandle of Florida. When he got out, he said he was going straight. A few months later he was smuggling pot. He continued for another decade. He finally quit when a colleague named Eddie was murdered execution style in Colombia. My brother and I used to call him Uncle Eddie.

My father likes to tell the story of the chief of a tribe in Colombia that he bought tons of pot from. The chief was wearing a loincloth, a Los Angeles Dodgers cap and several gold chains. The chief lived in a thatched hut, drove a pickup truck that was fully equipped with every possible accessory of that time.

Now my father goes to church. He had always made fun of religion. He read the Bible in prison. He used his knowledge of the Bible as artillery against the pious. He would correct anyone that seemed to be interested in saving him. He was a con man who could convince others of just about anything. The game was more interesting than the conviction.

Sherry made us some black beans and rice and salad. My father told me that he was thankful for their help. He then told me that Jerry is a nice guy, but needs constant affirmations.

“I don’t have time for that shit. I like the guy, but I’m not going to tell him every five minutes.”

Then he looked me in the eye and laughed as he said. “You and I are dick heads. We know we’re dick heads. We don’t need that.”

I hugged him when I left. I wanted to get to Churchill’s. I was about forty five minutes from there. I hugged Sherry and Jerry. I looked at my dad. He’s using a walker. He needs a knee operation, but he has pulmonary problems, that make the operation dangerous. He had just given me the details of his medical condition, finishing with- “All I can do is pray.”

About six months earlier, I visited my father. About four in the morning one night he woke me in a panic. He thought he was having a heart attack. I took him to the emergency room. It turned out that he’d torn a muscle in his chest.
When he came back from being checked, he laughed and said, “Do you know what the doctor said about my condition? Everything is unremarkable.”

Based On A True Story

The year 1926 is engraved on an emblem on the facade of the train station; the building is large and mission style. It has become more exotic over the years following the razing of other structures of that vernacular in the vicinity. Now it looks more like it should be in Latin America. It’s less than two miles from my house, but it feels much further. It’s one of my favorite buildings in Orlando. I was headed to another place that feels like Latin America. Miami.

On the train I was reading David Foster Wallace’s short story, Girl With Curious Hair. I had two seats to myself. I had a few pages left, when a woman, who may have been in her sixties sat next to me. She asked if she could sit next to me. I said yes. I didn’t really want her to sit next to me. I was happy with the extra empty seat. Then she started to tell me about the noisy person next to her. I ignored her and continued to read. She left a few minutes later.

That night in Miami I was at Churchill’s in Little Haiti. It was the first night of the International Noise Conference. I was supposed to play the next night in my new band Dos Geniuses. I saw Jeff from the Miami band Curious Hair. I told him about me reading Wallace’s short story on the train. I asked him if that title was the inspiration for his band name. He said yes, but he had never read it.