The Blog as Art.

Marina Abramović, the world-renowned performance artist was being interviewed.   And she mentioned that few if any, interlocutors ever ask her, “What is art?” And she is always stymied that that question is omitted.  

I think that question is left out because, with her style of expression, it’s impossible to answer.  Even for a painter, a sculpture, or photographer, what they produce is too subjective for a clear, concise definition of same.

For instance, is what Abramović performed in 2010 at New York’s MoMA really art?  To wit:  Briefly, what she did was “In 2010 at MoMA, Abramović engaged in an extended performance called, The Artist Is Present. The work was inspired by her belief that stretching the length of a performance beyond expectations serves to alter our perception of time and foster a deeper engagement in the experience. Seated silently at a wooden table across from an empty chair, she waited as people took turns sitting in the chair and locking eyes with her. Over the course of nearly three months, for eight hours a day, she met the gaze of 1,000 strangers, many of whom were moved to tears.

“Nobody could imagine…that anybody would take time to sit and just engage in mutual gaze with me,” Abramović explained. In fact, the chair was always occupied, and there were continuous lines of people waiting to sit in it. ‘It was [a] complete surprise…this enormous need of humans to actually have.’” (http://www.moma.org)

In my mind, it was a masterpiece akin to Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel.  A dramatic show of emotions that would be remembered until the end of time.  A key element for art to exist at all.

Call me crazy for making such a comparison.  But I posit another question. Can a cigar blog be a work of art?  A subjective inquiry indeed? But I would say, Yes. I have to say, “Yes.”  If you want a blog that reviews cigars, there are 1000s of them.  If you yearn for blogs that provide cigar analyses and comparisons that oftimes take the fun out of trying new stuff  – hundreds. If you want news blogs. Take your pick. If you want day-by-day coverage of one of the PCA’s worst shows in its history – click on the many blog choices.

But if you’re curious about the emotional perspective of the industry from this blogger’s viewpoint and how the business is inextricably tied to so many cultural aspects of the world in which we live  – maybe consider an alternative.

I started out with blah, blah, blah blogs.  I was trying to match existing styles and subject matters.  But I wasn’t happy at all with the end result. My blogs were flat.  Boring. Uninteresting. Warmed over prose pablum was being smeared all over everyone.

So I began to write in such a way that would reflect how this world of cigars affects our emotions on a cultural level and how it embraces and flares at our emotions.  And I just went with my gut. And over time I could feel that the prose I was creating was a magnificent release of impassioned insight. I attempted to twirl the reader to the point of unbalanced dizziness.  I didn’t want to be a staid reporter, (though that’s my training) or an analytical anthropoid. I wanted to twist my cigar blog in every direction toward an emotional expression. One that is unique and shares all that is in my heart about an industry I love.  

I know this.  I feel it. I have a loyal following of readers who enjoy a challenge and ingest my essays faithfully that create – anger, angst, happiness, joy, tears, dismay, confusion, revulsion – the full spectrum of emotions.  In other words – art.

Thank you from my heart for letting me be me.

www.irvcigarbroker.wordpress.com

 

 

Impatience is my best asset.

(I would like to dedicate this article to my Dad – the most patient man I knew.)

More than a third of the way down and the cigar finally begins to burn straight. The flavor is enjoyable or I wouldn’t have waited this long.  Why wait? Because I know cigars. Sometimes you get a good one and sometimes you get a bad one. But the truth of the matter is I have the opportunity to wait.  Some guys don’t. They paid for the smoke and I didn’t. As a broker, I can be patient. But more often I’m not.  Patient.  Patience is not one of the gifts bestowed upon me by God.  This isn’t new to me. I’ve been like this for as long as I can remember.  

Now my dad, God rest his soul, he was a patient man.  How I missed that gene is the luck of the draw. I saw him lose his patience just once.  Once.  And only once.  But then, years later he had a stroke that debilitated him for almost ten years.  Know what he did with his frustrations? He ate ‘em. He had a belly full of what eventually caused him to pass out at work (it was on a Saturday.) and he ended up in a ward on the Southeast side of Chicago. 

When I first arrived, I saw him in this bed, with a mattress that was so thin it was heartbreaking.  He was just one of the many other sick people in this, this dimly lit medical holding tank.  I went into emotional shock.  It wasn’t three minutes before I had the doctor next to me and we were nose to nose. And I demanded that he move my dad into the emergency room and to do it now. (I can be very convincing when it’s necessary.)  

All the while this was going on, I could see my dad’s eyes glassed over, his body shaking and stiffening up and down like he was receiving intermittent electrical shocks.  Which he was, in a way, because that’s what was happening inside his brain. To see your dad as helpless as a rat caught in a trap isn’t easy. 

The doctor looked at me incredulously as if to say, “Who the fuck do you think you are?” My teary eyes locked onto his.  I didn’t have to say another word. Nurses were called and he was gently placed onto a gurney and was immediately rushed to ICU.  I couldn’t figure out why this wasn’t done in the first place.  Never did.  

As I shook and trembled with tears rolling down my cheeks, I made sure he was treated the way all of those in the ward should have been.  But I was the only one there making a fuss. All the others were alone. Seemingly abandoned. This happened almost forty years ago. To me?  Yesterday.  

Eventually, he was brought by ambulance to another hospital that was not all that far away from the first and there they continued to care for him, but the damage had been done.  His brain would never be the same because of the decisions of the doctors at the first hospital, and the EMT’s who thought this one would be the closest.  Ironically the hospital is named after a saint.  Which one?  I’ll say this much, the saint is known for his “devotion to the poor and the sick.”  So much for that namesake. 

What does this have to do with my patience and the crooked burning cigar I was smoking?  Simple. We expect things to go wrong. It’s part of life. And that’s what this is all about.  We have certain expectations that make living a crapshoot of random connections.  

Now, I’m not comparing the care of my father to the cigar that took so long to right itself.  But, what I am comparing is that if you don’t say anything about something you don’t like, you’re playing the fool. Yes, my impatience is my best asset. And yes, it has gotten me in more tangles than I care to talk about. But I’ve honed it to such a sharp, glistening emotional edge, that I know when I have to use it.

With my father?  My duty. 

With a cigar?   Of course.

Thank you, Dad.  You let me be me – vivet anima mea et ego non paenitet.

Broker Breaking Bonzer.

As most of the regular readers of my posts know, I’m certainly not a devotee of long road trips.  But I just got back from a four-day excursion, and to my delight – it was one that will go into the positive column.  Working backward, when I returned I was not anxious, angry, out of sorts, or burnt to a broker’s crisp. I was calm. I was, quite frankly – sane.  

What changed?  Plus, this was not just me.  No. No. On this trip, I would be riding with the high-ranking gentleman from one of the brands I represent.  So for all you mathematicians out there, it adds up to a very stressful equation.

Prior to the trip, I was a tight ball of nerves, noxious anxiety, and showing a whole lot of stress.  In short, I would have rather been in a pool of famished sharks with a cut on my arm. My mind was conjuring up the worst possible scenarios.   

Would I have a solid schedule to satisfy my passenger?  Would all the appointments I made be rewarding – read . . .  SALES! And what better way to judge a broker than that? Or would I get ferschimbled with directions to the shops because my GPS has been acting up and thereby come off looking embarrassed because I don’t know where the shops are by memory by now?  Would I get all these thoughts about how I am perceived by the managers or owners so that they ooze good vibes to my passenger’s thinking about whatever he’s running through his mind about how the broker should be perceived? I mean, I was catastrophizing!   Hammer Time.

I won’t detail the visit, but I must say all the above became moot.  The time I wasted. All those precious hours – not to mention the stress on my gut all because of made-up fears.  I was forecasting the future. I can’t do that, but my imagination sure can. And often my creative mind will take over my logical thought process and produce some doozy scenarios.

But all was for naught.  One of the most interesting, satisfying, pleasant road trips I can recall.

I really need to chill.  A guy is a guy. He’s not some mythical creature to fear or shudder at what he may be thinking.  That’s totally out of my control. Only thing I have absolute and complete control over are my thoughts.  I’m deciding to save my time. 

’Cause . . . .

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMVjToYOjbM&list=RDUMVjToYOjbM&start_radio=1

Art and Cigars Collide Once Again.

This post has everything to do with cigars.   So read on . . . 

“(Patti Smith) is an American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and poet who became an influential component of the New York City punk rock movement with her 1975 debut album Horses. Called the “punk poet laureate,” Smith fused rock and poetry in her work.” Wikipedia 

She recently spoke in Chicago and without a doubt, I knew I was listening to a legend.  She’s made a name for herself by hanging in there and displaying more than talent, but the proper attitude for success.

How many times do you see a cigar hit the market and in three years it’s gone?  Forgotten. How many can last for decades? Most are forgotten. Did Patti Smith make it to her iconic status without pain?  Hell no. If you read her memoirs, her elegant prose glistens off the page and it’s when the sparkles get into your eyes you can tell she is a winner.  If you listen to her music. She is a winner. (Get a vinyl LP of Horses.) If you understand the hardships she’s endured. She is not only a winner but a survivor.

Yet, if you saw Patti for the first time walking down the street, you might pass her by thinking this old lady has never seen a hairbrush or a pair of gym shoes.  Is she concerned about today’s style by past and/or present appearances? No. If you listen to what she says and absorb her philosophy about life, and marvel at the people she knows and has known, you would say, she is a self-made woman.  At 73, she is still performing, she is still writing, (Her newest book is, “The Year of the Monkey.”) And you can be assured that she’s still deeply involved in her passion – living her life.

Patti Smith is one of the few individuals who is truly grounded and knows the spirit of the term and lives it each and every hour.  You could see that on stage as she sat and was being interviewed by music critic, producer and Chicago-based author Jessica Harper.

Born in Chicago, she made a name for herself by doing what she wanted to do, not what societal pressure demanded.  Most can’t walk through what she’s traversed, and still have a positive attitude, clear imagination, and a creative mind that continues to this very moment as I sit in the first row of the auditorium listening with rapt attention, a smile on my face, a notepaper on my lap and marvel to her answers posed by her interlocutor’s questions.

Her past has overflowed with people in the arts, writers, musicians, photographers, and poets who have contributed to her resultant philosophy.  She cares about life, but she never lets it get her down saying “Life’s good – when it’s bad – it’s good.” She went on to say “Good is as infectious as evil.”  Adding “Move happily . . . life is rough,” applause broke out and the energy she created when she said those words chilled the fan-filled auditorium.

It’s how you look at your spot.  It would behoove small cigar manufacturers to take her words to heart and the odds of failure wouldn’t enter into the equation and be reduced a hundredfold.

Read her books, “Just Kids,” about her provocative experiences with the controversial photographer, Robert Mapplethorpe, or “M Train,” winner of the National Book Award she best describes as “a roadmap through my life.”   Or become engrossed in “The Year of the Monkey,” a transformative look at one year of her life. Her words are poetic, her thoughts are from her heart, and her prose alone is silken in continuity. She has indeed been able to step back and see where she’s been – and where she’s going.

The arc –  smaller cigar manufacturers and sales reps, continually contemplate and concentrate on is the “How much (can) you gonna sell!” pablum, rather than drawing themselves into their innermost desire of satisfying some of the customers rather than trying to appeal everyone.

Patti Smith isn’t for everyone.  The “Godmother of Punk” has consistently been introspective despite her travails.  Cigar makers need to cultivate this attitude and perhaps their brand will, at 73 years of age, still remain relevant to the old and especially to the new.