ÉLAN VITAL

My dear friend Currado Malaspina is obsessed with time.

As far back as I can remember he has tossed around the inconclusive implications of temporality like a philosophical hacky sack. What is duration and how does it apply. Is it fixed to the cycles of the moon? Does it register like a metronome, like a heart, like a breath? Or do all these barbed and back-breaking slow years of toil only point us to our pointless degeneration and unavailing demise?

Or is there something urgent about our rented exhalations? Is there a good enough reason for us to persist and to make things, grow things, destroy things and love things?

Currado has been keeping notebooks all these years, compiling observations, speculating and composing existential riddles hoping to find a key. It's a personal parlor game with no apparent consequence other than the avoidance of the very real and messy task of living 'in the world.'

Now, as he enters his seventh decade, understanding time seems more pressing - even desperate.

He recently confided in me that nobody, not even his father and certainly not his mentors, effectively prepared him for old age. It seems like there's an unwritten convention among the elderly to withhold valuable information. It's as if the potential windows of comprehension have been soundproofed. The young observe the ancient but are denied their depth.

And so he's left, bereft, fumbling after some significant form of cosmic consolation.

Aloft in the metaphysical, Currado has fortunately retained the passion and the vigor to continue pursuing the corporeal. Yet these days his knavery is cast with a ponderous, theoretical skepticism that turns romance into field-work. What was once characterized as a fling is now considered an "experiment," but if you ask me it's just a case of the blind leading the blind.

TEACHING IS A CALLING

Between 1987 and 1993 my dear friend Currado Malaspina went legit.

Before then (and since) he never paid attention to the norms and mores of organized society. His fly is metaphorically unzipped, he’s a filterless fag, a freeman, an outlier, an anarchist, a perennial nonpartisan . He says what he wants without disclaimers or qualifications. If he steps on your toes with the bluntness of his tongue the problem is with you for he is without guile and too indifferent to care. He neither judges nor condemns. He is at peace with his temperament and if you accept Currado at face value you will be rewarded beyond measure. 

But if not, well ... prepare for some discord.

Between 1987 and 1993 Malaspina experimented with conventionality. For years, art schools and universities had tried to lure him out of his studio. Generous offers from as far way as California and Beijing tried to tempt the reclusive master. He finally succumbed to the improbable position of Maître de conférences “ at the École Supérieure de Conception et Idées in Rennes.

It was a rough time in Currado’s life. He had just separated from his third wife, the art historian Orestia Shestov and he felt the need to get away. Rennes, a six hour train ride from Paris seemed both close and far enough and the school had a solid reputation for academic independence and a pluralistic approach to contemporary aesthetic discourse. 

After his first semester Malaspina became a legend. He inspired both awe and envy in his many colleagues but with his students he was unambiguously adored. As a life drawing and painting teacher Currado was known for his theatrical presentations that included just enough technical, hands-on, craft-oriented specifics to justify his rambling and tendentious philosophical discourses.

Among his severest critics was Sagwau Imlauer, a little known photographer who made a small splash on the international fashion scene with his candid polaroids of Boy George. Imlauer was what we call in the States an associate dean, someone with too little power to be dangerous but just enough to be annoying. He seemed to have taken it upon himself to wage a prolonged campaign of intellectual immolation designed to demoralize his more famous colleague.

It was explained to me recently that adults become teachers because they are incapable of collaborating with peers as equals. My interlocutor went on to explain that the abiding commonality among educators is an enfeebling lack of self-esteem that can only be remedied by the rigid hierarchy of schools. Students, as a permanent underclass, allow professors to assert their unquestioned advantage. These same advantages, he went on to explain, could never be reproduced in the private sector.

I’m reminded of this grim view of pedagogy when I recall Currado’s five year impersonation of a teacher. Despite his success and the subsequent success of so many of his students, to this day biographers and critics see those five years in Rennes as a professional collapse. People still cling to the idea that Malaspina was indulging in a strange, self-medicating narcissistic ritual of bombastic intimidation and ego uplift. His detractors hit pay dirt when a few years ago the term “bully” finally entered the French pop-psychological lexicon. “Currado le bully”   ran one recent headline in the literary journal “Pournotre,” (penned by one Prof. Sagwau Imlauer).

For those who know him well the real reason Malaspina remained a professor for so long was his frenzied liaison with Axelle Polina, department chairwoman of Sociocultural Anthropology. 

Together, it seems, they engaged in an extremely in depth study of the biological and psychological characteristics of the human species through a series of controlled experiments.

So much for an inability to collaborate with peers …

WHO PUT THE 'P' IN PRECEDENT?

When my dear friend Currado Malaspina heard the president-elect attribute his predilection for urinating on Russian prostitutes to his onerous dread of microbial bacteria he found himself nodding in sympathy.

Avoiding conventional penetration with uncertain partners has been Currado's longstanding practice for many, many years. That such an esteemed public figure confessed to the same sexual protocol provided my friend a comforting sense of validation.

Malaspina's germaphobia has been something of a gift. While eliminating an entire range of possible pleasures it has forced this eccentric and resourceful French artist to indulge in fetishes and improvisations that are typically unavailable to the average casual sybarite. 

This newfound affinity with the imminent leader of the still free world has filled Currado with a strange sense of pride. He hopes that in the course of Trump's upcoming term of office many other marginalized forms of gratification will find frank and open expression within our shared culture. Men and women all stand to prosper under this refreshing, new regime of candid carnality.

 America - the greatest micturition on earth!!

THE YEAR IN REVIEW

My dear friend Currado Malaspina lives in a dream.

From his idyllic balcony in central Paris the world is a fresh inspiriting bouquet of fresh pommes frites. On the page Currado is forever virile and dubiously desired. He draws an improbable version of himself that pretends toward a strapping indestructibility and a measureless erotic ingenuity. 

I personally don't buy it for a minute.

First, let's consider his age. I know for a fact that he's older than me but even considering a lifetime of daily doses of resveratol the dude can't still be a stud.

Second, how about his arthritis. Some of those moves are straight out of Cirque de Soleil and all the yoga in the world couldn't get Currado to bend again like a rubber band.

Besides, at this stage of the game I know for a fact that when it comes to super-sex my friend Currado would almost always defer to the soup.

But I won't spoil the party. Let him pretend all he wants. The drawings are fine and it keeps him in the studio but as far as I'm concerned, I like the dog pastels the best.

EXPERIMENTS WITH TRUTH

The only one of Currado Malaspina's five adolescent children to rebel against him was his fourth wife Simone. 

My good friend Currado is an elusive target for teenage insurrection. An apostate by nature and as forgiving as a Christ, his family cherished his eccentric neutrality. Even when his kids toyed with their minor expressions of social insubordination it was hard to press against their imperturbable papa.

Except of course Simone. Batting clean-up in his pantheon of committed female companions, Simone was young enough to be Currado's niece yet old enough to know better. 

At first she was attracted to his genius. She saw in him an older man steeped in the hopelessness of unprofitable scholarship. She admired his capacity for insolence in the face of sanctimony. She loved how he greeted the calculated reverence of his faithless admirers with the canny percipience of a lama. She even adored his wily sense of satire, especially when the farce was directed toward her intimate circle of coquettish friends. 

But soon her high regard turned like an old camembert into a quiet repugnance. 

Simone had an unremarkable childhood. The second among four siblings, she was what the French call un loup sans baiser - or what we might describe as an "an unlicked cub." As is often the case with people given short shrift in the birth order she had an insatiable demand for validation. To visit Currado during the Simone years was to witness a constant chorus of c'est géniale ma chérie! and formidable ma poulette! or, (I kid you not, I actually heard this), tu es un cadeau de Dieu à la planète Terre et il n'y a pas d'égal à ta beauté et intelligence! If an hourly paean was not forthcoming, Simone would withdraw into a hushed and despairing pout.

She started reading books with titles like Les pouvoirs de la confiance en soi and Pensée positive: Comment stopper les pensées négatives et réduire le stress.

What she found was a blueprint for everything Currado was not. These books presented templates for effective, passionless living, void of irony yet full of plainspoken benchmarks for the complete avoidance of dissonance and conflict.

Everything was always laid out in clear, bold-faced bullet points. Apposite excerpts from the roster of inoffensive sages were typically scattered throughout the text hoping to lend a patina of cerebral legitimacy to the flavorless stew.

The one thing more obnoxious than a distressed teenager quoting Gandhi is a distressed middle-aged woman doing the same.

Currado and Simone didn't really grow apart. They more or less imploded under the extreme pressure of propinquitous intellectual torpor. The more intensely Currado engaged in the ambiguities of art the more 
Simone retreated into the anodyne world of self-improvement.

A serial monogamist, the ripe Malaspina is now actively auditioning applicants for wife number five.

By all accounts, it seems like he's enjoying the process.

Gâcher sa fête

As if the indignities of aging were not quite enough!

A brutal confirmation visits daily in the form of aching joints, recalcitrant bowels, failing eyes and evanescent gums.

My poor but hearty friend Currado Malaspina doggedly perseveres despite his pitiless decay.

His physical putrefaction, however, is a minor hiccup compared to his professional obsolescence.

At one time the name Currado Malaspina was synonymous with radical, avant-garde, fringe artistic insurrection. His work was seen as representative of the seemingly insatiable French appetite for garish libertine exhibitionism.

Now, much to his astonishment, he is regarded as a national embarrassment!

At the peak of his foie gras years his work would attract the grasping, greedy attention of sheiks, curators, speculators and all manner of cultural traders and hangers-on. Now he's lucky if he can peddle his pictures at the marché aux puces!

Bitterly, he points his incriminating finger at the global reach of American political culture. In his twisted rendering, France enjoyed centuries of delightful sensual consent between the sexes. In the United States by contrast, a pall of prudery stiffens the rituals of courtship into a blustering pragmatic negotiation between potential litigants. 

And so with Big Macs, superhero movies and the longer work week, Currado sees another disfiguring import messing with his chill.   

TROMPER MONSIEUR TRUMP

My good friend Currado Malaspina submitted himself to a full medical examination today and his physician, Dr. Philip Soupoualt, ignoring his hemorrhoids and his episodic onychocryptosis, pronounced him "the fittest artist in all of France." (l'artiste le plus sain dans la République).

This has come as something of a surprise and many of his detractors continue to insist that a psychiatric evaluation should be included in the assessment.

They point to his age, his work and his ardent attachment to the Catholic Church.

But Currado sees no contradictions and is offended by the insinuation.

His ego is an echo of the size of his hands.

His sagging, puckered skin is as thin as a post-it and the most innocent innuendo can trigger the vindictive instincts of a slandered pubescent. 

He's boastful to the point of parody yet remains oblivious to the mockery his hubris consistently summons among his peers.

His rivals think he's crazy but of late this aspersion has evolved into a palpable fear.

You see, Currado Malaspina has recently been shortlisted as a prospective Minister of Culture. It's rumored that if Sarkozy's UMP succeeds in the next election my good friend could find himself in the position to settle some unsettling scores, ruffle some colorful plumes and basically upend any semblance of propriety within the ranks of the Parisian intelligentsia.

But maybe that's a good thing.