Dick Turner

review of
Dick Turner's New Math
- tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - July 2, 2020

Read the entire review here: https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/1282928-new

I don't remember when I 1st met Dick Turner, maybe as early as 1982, maybe even earlier. I knew his sister & his brother & his mom too. It might seem like it would be easy to write a review of a work by someone that one's known that long but, for me, it isn't. It becomes not just a matter of reviewing the work, which is probably what Dick would prefer, but a matter of trying to draw in whatever general knowledge I have of Dick & his other work so as to saturate the review with depth. Making matters even 'worse' is that this bk is published by Tom DiVenti's Apathy Press Poets. I've known Tom even longer than Dick. SO, anticipating the problems, I emailed Dick about it & he replied in an informative manner. Hence, this review will include his interspersed commentary. To quote that exchange in order to explain why I wrote "It becomes not just a matter of reviewing the work, which is probably what Dick would prefer," I start w/ an excerpt in wch I mention Dick's main website home & my intended linking to it:

" https://dickturner3.wixsite.com/dick-turner-artist

[tENT]: "I just looked thru the website, it's perfect for my purposes. I'm glad it has 2 movies based on stories in The New Math. They'll be great to link to. In fact, that website'll make reviewing the book much easier because I can explain you as multi-talented & explain that it's the combination of these talents that creates the biggest impact & then I can provide examples with the links.

[Dick]: "I regret to some degree that I am perceived that way by the people who know me. I try hard in my work to make individual objects, each with it's own identity. I think it's normal to see connections between what a person does but I feel that it takes away from the impact of individual works. But perhaps it's inevitable.

"My mind is compartmentalized I believe and that is why I work in different mediums.

"That is, when I draw, I draw, when I compose, I compose. I work within the medium at hand.

[..] "the works are each based upon their own set of principles, or so I believe." (June 20, 2020 email from Dick to tENT)

Nonetheless, I'm writing this review about Dick more as a whole creative person then by compartmentalizing the work b/c that's the way I read it. I don't think any reader perceives a work w/o previous experience informing their reading of it. In other words, if the reader had read fables as a child any resemblance of Dick's stories to those fables will resonate & influence the reading.

To quote more at length from said email:

"Here's the truth: the book is in a sense my autobiography in cryptic terms. Thus the references to my father, my mother, music, painting, fairy tales, a family vacation, the mother of my son (in the Italy poems), the alienation of living in Roland Park, etc, etc. The book is both autobiographical in terms of events and thought processes.

"If it helps at all the Prelude, the story Visitors and the Postlude are a sort of framework upon which the rest of the book is composed.

"That is, those three stories are about how I deal with ideas. Ideas are at the center of all my thinking. So is the concept of distance. The first story "Prelude" deals with how ideas show up somewhat randomly, the second "Visitors", the selection process, the third "Postlude" the distance one feels from them - after a work has been completed or from one's own experience when looking back.

"For me the book is a whole, not a collection of random stories. My goal in putting them together was to have a certain [rhythm] between the stories, rising and falling action, create an overall form like in music." (June 20, 2020 email from Dick to tENT — slightly corrected by Dick on July 1, 2020)

NOW, to backtrack to more of my own personal reminiscences. In the early days of my friendship w/ Dick I knew mostly of his compositional talents. He & his brother worked on movies together, Dick both composing the soundtracks & acting in them, Henry writing & filming them. The ones that he & Henry did together are probably these:

1995 "Gun to My Head/Gun to Your Head"
1991 "Wilber Whateley's Sex Drive"
1989 "Edgar Allen Poe's PYM"
1985 "Trashmonster"
1984 "Strangers"
1984 "Danse Macabre"

- https://dickturner3.wixsite.com/dick-turner-artist/bio-cv

I remember seeing the middle 3 (i.e.: "Strangers" thru "Edgar Allen Poe's PYM"). Henry moved to Los Angeles in May, 1995, & Dick moved to Paris in January, 1996, thusly ending their team. I moved away in 1994, 1st to Berlin, then to Canada, then to Buffalo, finally 'shipwrecked' in Pittsburgh. While we were all in BalTimOre together a new film by the Turner Brothers was always an event to look forward to. There weren't that many independent movie-makers in the city so a new release was always exciting (for those few of us who cared).

In 1990, Dick participated in a Krononautic Organism event called VEX by contributing a piece called "Eloquent Voices" for car horns. I made a super-8 film of things happening that day & night & used an excerpt from Dick's piece, wch I participated in, as the soundtrack: https://youtu.be/fGDsj1ZJnMU .

A few yrs before Dick left for Paris, in 1992, he invented The Smile Machine, a mood impovement aid of sorts. I was the 1st customer! I bought one at the "Smile Machine Cerebration" at the 14 Karat Kabaret. Dick's website about the device is here:

https://dickturner3.wixsite.com/dick-turner-artist/smile-machine

My website about it is here:

http://idioideo.pleintekst.nl/SM1992.Machine.html

Dick came to visit me in Pittsburgh in July, 2007, & we performed on the same bill at Garfield Artworks on July 7, 2007. Also on the bill was The Bureau of Nonstandards. This got us to thinking of doing a tour together — something I set about trying to arrange in French Canada, an area where I'd once had some small renown. Alas, my renown was from too long ago & I was back to being a 'nobody'. I cdn't find anyone who was interested in booking us. We had to cancel the possibility of the tour.

In 2010, I published a 2-cassette retrospective of Dick's music in a limited edition of 26 (#027 here: http://idioideo.pleintekst.nl/WdmUCatalog.html ). You can see some images of that publication on my above-linked-to Smile Machine page.

In 2018, Dick came to Pittsburgh to participate in the UNDERAPPRECIATED MOVIEMAKERS FESTIVAL that I organized . He screened his 2 main movies that he'd made in Paris post working w/ his brother: "La Grosse Commission" (Shit Happens) & "Nature morte avec des oranges". He has a webpage promoting these movies here: https://dickturner3.wixsite.com/dick-turner-artist/films . Despite an almost complete lack of interest in the festival by the general public this was a wonderful fertile time. My complete movie of it is here: https://youtu.be/KwlfRxmRU3E . Dick screened his movies & talked about them & played a solo set at the closing night 'party'.

Dick's an excellent trombonist & it was a delight to be able to play some sessions with him both at my home & at outside venues. As usual I documented it all. Four of these duets can be witnessed edited together as "4 X 2": https://youtu.be/1v2B4LgivH0 .

AND NONE OF THAT EVEN GETS INTO DICK AS A PERSON.

In general, I find Dick to be an exceptionally scholarly, thoughtful, well-spoken & polite person to the extent that I'm grateful for his mere existence & for the good fortune I have in being his friend. Long may he prosper! It's so rare for me to be able to reference just about anything & to receive a reaction other than a blank stare from the person I'm addressing, Dick has actually read ancient Greek philosophy or listened to 19th century classical music or.. it might not seem like much but Dick's being "self-taught", as he says in the quote below, means that he has a curious mind — a quality I find almost completely lacking in the society of SHEEPLE that I think Dick & I both find ourselves moving in an oppostie direction to on an almost daily basis.

"My concept of myself, for whatever it's worth, is the following: I am someone who likes getting and expressing ideas. I guess I'd call it synthetic thought, finding/creating connections between things. It is the only thing I can do as far as I can tell, my attempts at practical life having been not too overwhelmingly successful. I prefer music as a medium, it's the only medium I can't live without but I enjoy painting, drawing, writing, film, etc if I get an idea. I think I am some form of a "late classical composer", I call myself a "neo-primitive" [..] because I am self-taught and like the classical forms as a basis of my work." (June 20, 2020 email from Dick to tENT)

But, what about the bk?! It's interspersed w/ Dick's drawings. Most of them show human body parts intermingled w/ each other in one grotesquely dysfunctional blob. The body parts might still imply functionality but they're displaced. Hence 4 fingers might form an "X" w/o the rest of the hand & a mouth w/ teeth & an exceptionally long tongue might protrude. Further up the blob, there's another mouth. At least 4 eyes populate the blob, the whole of wch appears to be floating, levitating. An intestinal looking protuberance protrudes from the top next to a penis that has an open eye where the scrotum might ordinarily be. You can see this drawing herein inadequately described on the cover of the bk. There's a feel to these drawings, for me they're like introspective symbols of distress, exceptional deviant mutant spawn, something a psychoanalyst might use — wch doesn't mean that Dick sees them or intends them that way! It's typical for Dick to be philosophical & I can see the drawings as illustrations of a convoluted philosophical process. Take this simple beginning to his 2nd story, "A Failed Epic":

"I don't know how it is in your life but in mine everything risks getting complicated. For example, when someone asks me how I am I feel I have two choices, either say I am fine or give a more detailed account of things in my life. Knowing the second is seldom successful I keep it simple meaning no one gets bored but nothing really gets said." - p 3

Indeed, I know the dilemma well! I often tell people in conversation that something I'm trying to address is "complicated", knowing full well that their attn span is only a few seconds long & that there's no chance I can explain what I'd like to in the allotted time — esp given that they're not in the least bit interested anyway.

Dick's stories consistently remind me of fables, they have a simplicity of presentation & tend toward philosophically evocative conclusions. But they're twisted, not necessarily dramatically, just enough to show that we're no longer in the day of Aesop. Take this excerpt from "The Ant":

"I was sittting on a bench when I heard the sound of stomping feet and clapping hands but unaccompanied by any recognizable rhythm. I turned my head and I saw a man coming down the footpath that leads from the garden gate. He was indeed stomping and clapping in some unrecognizable pattern and I wondered if he wasn't a musician; perhaps a performer of some rhythmically vigorous contemporary music; I thought I recognized a passage from the stochastically composed "Nomos Alpha" of Iannis Xenakis. When he was passing in front of me I excused myself and asked him if he wasn't a musician?

"From how quickly he responded I knew he welcomed my question; he clearly wanted to talk to someone; I was there so it was me. He was very direct.

"He told me he was killing bugs; any bug, harmless or harmful, it made no difference to him." - pp 22-23

The story's not shocking, there's more of a wry humor to it. These are the observations of a quiet, thoughtful person; the exaggerations bring out subtleties, sometimes these exaggerations present Dick's somewhat pessimistic view of society. Here're excerpts from "To The Peoples Committee":

"I, Dick Turner (legal name Henry Dickinson Turner, Jr., Prisoner Number 1959122), composer and artist, freely and under no coercion do make the following statement.

"I am guilty of grave social irresponsibility both in my work as in my private life and thought.
I regret this and shall work to improve myself.

"Believing erroneously in the so-called Cult of the Individual I have pursued a solitary course in my work refusing participation in the important movements of my time flagrantly dismissing them as corporate controlled reflections of consumer culture and the ideology of the state.
I regret this and shall work to improve myself." - p 29

Now, does that seem like a statement made "under no coercion"?! Of course not! Even if most other people barely notice, Dick & I both live in societies where individualism is discouraged, where Free Thinking is almost completely taboo. This is presented as being for the general good but it's really mainly for the good of the manipulators. The SHEEPLE don't care b/c they have no individuality to hold dear. It's one thing to have a mind of yr own to begin w/, it's quite another to pretend that yr prefabricated one is anything else. In Dick's fantasy, he's attempting to pull a Galileo. Unfortunately for his survival, he's too much of a Giordano Bruno for it to work:

"Internal Note:

PETITION REJECTED

EXECUTION TO FOLLOW" - p 32

I'm happy to say that Dick is far from being such a victim, poor Bruno WAS. Thank goodness that every thinking person I know has been spared persecution beyond being somewhat 'doomed' to alienation. Dick gets philosophical again:

"One of the marvels of the human mind is its faculty of interpretation; its ability to find connections between information and events which may at first seem completely separate." - p 34

This philosophizing leads into the story:

"Twenty-five years ago there was a painting exposition of a single work in the basement of an abandoned building in Baltimore.

"The work, by an unknown artist, was purchased by a collector who wished to remain anonymous at the suggestion of someone whose identity has yet to be established.

"The exposition was unattended and the painting was hung with its face to the wall.

"A colloquium is being held to discuss the technique used by the artist and the subject matter of the canvas." - p 35

The punchline brings the lofty down to the earthy:

Read the entire review here: https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/1282928-new… (plus d'informations)