The Art of Handling Losses with Nonchalance:
On Cookie Mueller’s Walking Through Clear Water in a Pool Painted Black: Collected Stories (Semiotext(e), 2022)
Cookie Mueller’s Walking Through Clear Water in a Pool Painted Black: Collected Stories, contains all her published work as well as a few pieces that appear here for the time. I remember buying a battered copy of Walking Through Clear Water in a Pool Painted Black, originally published by Semiotext(e) 1990, probably at the Strand bookstore in NYC in the early 90s. Soon I was searching for all her work. At the time, a teenage kid from New Jersey, I was spending nights in NYC at the Maya Deren theatre at Anthology Film Archives, absorbing experimental films, including those of Harry Smith, Kenneth Anger, and John Waters (I first saw Mueller in Pink Flamingos). I remember going out to the Limelight in NYC and various other clubs, dancing all night and drinking, and wandering the New York city streets at dawn on my way home to Jersey. At the time I was getting an education in the alternative “spiritual” knowledge not taught in the Catholic schools I attended, which opened up new worlds, and allowed me to escape the confines of the suburban neighborhood where I grew up. I was reading Rimbaud’s poetry, Burroughs’ novels, Genet, Kerouac, as well as underground comics like the Freak Brothers or Robert Crumb’s Zap; I was going out almost every other night, riding in a friend’s small beat up Honda with new wave and punk music playing on the car radio; we talked and laughed, on our way to the beach, or to a live concert, or a night club in New York. I was twenty years old.
Cookie Mueller’s work was a revelation to me. I remember the Tomkins Square Riots, the Aid’s scare, Koch’s flamboyant and often witty pontifications, the Crack epidemic, the Wall Street crash. I remember a gay friend’s suicide, violence in the streets, pickups in bars, talking all night on the phone; I remember waking up in a friend’s apartment many times with a splitting headache after a night out; all the sex, all the failed relationships. And then there was Mueller’s stories. She’d been there, done that. There were tales of go-go dancing in sleazy New York City clubs or safer ones in Jersey, helping a friend revive from a heroin overdose, escaping with friends after the house they were staying in burned to the ground; but Mueller seemed never fazed at what life threw in her path and her writing always contained a spark of humor that suggested everything would be ok. You had to experience the good with the bad, the black magic with the white. No use forcing the issue. Let it go. Tomorrow’s a new day. Her writing was a like a stiff drink, or a good joke to lift your spirits when you’re down. Her pieces on everything from natural skin remedies to adventures in Naples and at the Berlin Film Festival, her forays in the art world, her risk filled life in NYC in the 70s; above all, her writing was generous. She was a wild card, the life of the party, an artist, mother, savior. In her writings, a reader is plunged into a world where anything can happen.
And often does. However random or amazing. Like her meeting John Waters, when he was a young filmmaker making waves in Baltimore in the late 60s. Her appearance in Multiple Maniacs, Pink Flamingos, and Female Trouble would make her a well-known actress in underground film. She jumps into the this opportunity with gusto and a wonderful creative energy; she describes the process of making a film in this way:
Cookie Mueller’s work was a revelation to me. I remember the Tomkins Square Riots, the Aid’s scare, Koch’s flamboyant and often witty pontifications, the Crack epidemic, the Wall Street crash. I remember a gay friend’s suicide, violence in the streets, pickups in bars, talking all night on the phone; I remember waking up in a friend’s apartment many times with a splitting headache after a night out; all the sex, all the failed relationships. And then there was Mueller’s stories. She’d been there, done that. There were tales of go-go dancing in sleazy New York City clubs or safer ones in Jersey, helping a friend revive from a heroin overdose, escaping with friends after the house they were staying in burned to the ground; but Mueller seemed never fazed at what life threw in her path and her writing always contained a spark of humor that suggested everything would be ok. You had to experience the good with the bad, the black magic with the white. No use forcing the issue. Let it go. Tomorrow’s a new day. Her writing was a like a stiff drink, or a good joke to lift your spirits when you’re down. Her pieces on everything from natural skin remedies to adventures in Naples and at the Berlin Film Festival, her forays in the art world, her risk filled life in NYC in the 70s; above all, her writing was generous. She was a wild card, the life of the party, an artist, mother, savior. In her writings, a reader is plunged into a world where anything can happen.
And often does. However random or amazing. Like her meeting John Waters, when he was a young filmmaker making waves in Baltimore in the late 60s. Her appearance in Multiple Maniacs, Pink Flamingos, and Female Trouble would make her a well-known actress in underground film. She jumps into the this opportunity with gusto and a wonderful creative energy; she describes the process of making a film in this way:
|
Making this film, we went to bed every night really excited for the next day’s shoot. Perhaps there are other actors who can tell you that making films is really boring. This film wasn’t. On big-budget sets, actors go into their private trailers, waiting for their camera time. Not on this set. We were all in the same room between takes, busy changing costumes, remembering lines, bitching about bit actors stealing scenes, layering makeup, getting reading to emote. There were no private trailers around.
|
It was about community, friendships; forget the ego. I could relate to passages like these when I myself, years later, made short experimental films. I shot my first few films with a small point and shoot Canon camera. I used myself as an “actor” when needed, or friends. I often wondered why is it that with the widespread availability of video cameras filmmakers still yield to the temptations of Hollywood and forsake the personal adventure of the small intimate film? Economics. Cookie: “On small films you get to know the whole cast and crew in a day, and all of these people are much more inventive because of the limited budget; they create effects that wouldn’t have been born if there was more money. Necessity is the mother of invention; this is true.” I’ve found this to be absolutely true.
After starring in several of John Waters’ films, and others by different directors, and also in plays by Gary Indiana, she embarked on a writing life, writing her memoir or a column where she gave all kinds of advice or on art for Details magazine. Here’s Dr. Mueller’s advice for someone who stopping using drugs and feels that life is now boring: “Well, if it’s any consolation, I know exactly what you mean. What I do is this; I make sure I’m never lonely. Plan your day with lots of activities. Start going to the movies often. Get a hobby. I have an idea! Start painting and see if you can become a millionaire, one never knows. The money you would be spending on drugs you can spend on canvases and paints.” This is great advice, no? I often imagine Cookie Mueller as a great Goddess, or Mother-protector surrounded by the orphaned or the lost, giving them comfort; her writing is about the importance of community; she’s often in the company of her friends as they experiment with drugs, or travel, or listen to music together; and her experience and wisdom are scattered throughout these pages; and its delivered with a knowing wink, and a smile.
The alternative culture has its alternative spirituality and often has to fight against a materialist culture, where the pursuit of filthy lucre is a top priority: in San Francisco, Mueller and her friends are “the blessed ones in states of grace…we practiced astrology, yoga, levitation, transcendental meditation, astral travel, telekinesis, cabalism, prayer. We called on the spirits…but finally low-level energy swept through the Haight, destroying plans for the coming age. Some people gave up and became computer programmers and realtors.” There are moments in this collection where Mueller’s protagonist achieves a sort of visionary experience. In “The Simplest Thing” Molly, while drifting on a lake on a mattress, dreams of a kind of primal state; Mueller writes: “Maybe it was something she remembered instead of a dream. Maybe she was experiencing a flashback to the time she was in a fetal state inside the big womb. It all made sense, the women all around, the whispers.” These are the moments when identity dissolves and one loses oneself in the cosmic egg: the subject/object duality also seems to disappear:
After starring in several of John Waters’ films, and others by different directors, and also in plays by Gary Indiana, she embarked on a writing life, writing her memoir or a column where she gave all kinds of advice or on art for Details magazine. Here’s Dr. Mueller’s advice for someone who stopping using drugs and feels that life is now boring: “Well, if it’s any consolation, I know exactly what you mean. What I do is this; I make sure I’m never lonely. Plan your day with lots of activities. Start going to the movies often. Get a hobby. I have an idea! Start painting and see if you can become a millionaire, one never knows. The money you would be spending on drugs you can spend on canvases and paints.” This is great advice, no? I often imagine Cookie Mueller as a great Goddess, or Mother-protector surrounded by the orphaned or the lost, giving them comfort; her writing is about the importance of community; she’s often in the company of her friends as they experiment with drugs, or travel, or listen to music together; and her experience and wisdom are scattered throughout these pages; and its delivered with a knowing wink, and a smile.
The alternative culture has its alternative spirituality and often has to fight against a materialist culture, where the pursuit of filthy lucre is a top priority: in San Francisco, Mueller and her friends are “the blessed ones in states of grace…we practiced astrology, yoga, levitation, transcendental meditation, astral travel, telekinesis, cabalism, prayer. We called on the spirits…but finally low-level energy swept through the Haight, destroying plans for the coming age. Some people gave up and became computer programmers and realtors.” There are moments in this collection where Mueller’s protagonist achieves a sort of visionary experience. In “The Simplest Thing” Molly, while drifting on a lake on a mattress, dreams of a kind of primal state; Mueller writes: “Maybe it was something she remembered instead of a dream. Maybe she was experiencing a flashback to the time she was in a fetal state inside the big womb. It all made sense, the women all around, the whispers.” These are the moments when identity dissolves and one loses oneself in the cosmic egg: the subject/object duality also seems to disappear:
|
She looked at that tree and remembered that delineations didn’t matter, didn’t exist. Molly was right in there with the tree, she and the tree were just a bunch of swirling atoms, a jumbled chowder. Her skin appeared to bag her up, like all human skin appears to do, but that was just the way it looked. She suddenly remembered that she couldn’t separate herself from everything around her…She felt suddenly a fool. Everything was so simple it was hardly thinkable…she didn’t hate anything because she didn’t see any reason to take everything so seriously, things were okay after all. The sun would go up and down, she’d walk in it, days would go by, she’d eat and sleep in them. She was okay. Everything seemed a bit more friendly once she knew it as her everywhere she looked.
|
The Fool Tarot has the number 0, which refers to a person ready to travel in any direction, open to every possibility. It suggests the beginning of the spiritual path. Molly’s personal ego has merged with the limitless, the infinite. The self is in harmony with nature. Once again, the mind and body must be open to all things. To be narrowminded is to close off part of the world. To perceive all things as different from each other, as well as the same, is what certain spiritual teachers maintain is a fundamental truth, although one difficult to fully understand, despite its apparent simplicity. Holy men are thought to have bright and glistening auras. But members of certain occult traditions set out to absorb all experiences, which they regard as equal. This produces an interesting metaphysical reaction: their auras appear darker, less “pure,” which is the hallmark of real experience and wisdom. Mueller sought to absorb many different experiences which led her to finally experience such visionary moments in her life.
Mueller’s work was like a roadmap through the urban jungle; her writing told you where buried treasure might be found; the risks that were necessary to experience the “real thing”; it was a reminder that if life got rough, to not let it get you down. See the humor in it. And don’t take yourself too seriously. Great advice to youth, who have a tendency to take everything way too seriously. Her artistic temperament demanded adventure despite the risks involved, in the belief that Art and total experience can revolutionize the mind. Reading her one believed again in the utopian vision of a life that can transform consciousness and lead to a new vision of the future. But you have to keep your mind wide open.
From all her various and often zany experiences, she learned an important and fundamental lesson; in 1987, two years before she passed away from AIDS-related pneumonia on November 10, 1989, she writes: “‘Things change. Life goes on,” Robert Crumb once succinctly said in a Zap comic book. “Learn to adapt,” I would add…Be calm. Tongue in cheek you must slither. The wild crazy days are over. Most of the great creative fanatics are dead, many are forgotten.” It is sobering advice since now the World is not the world anymore; it is simply a collection of images, data points, saved messages, selfies, on a computer screen or Iphone; surface effects without substance, and thus not subject to duration. The way we live now is a matter of speed and productivity; we have internalized the over worked production scheme at the basis of capitalism, and become willing subjects. We are in a rush. Going where, exactly? “Where” is perhaps debatable but I fear all the answers are a variation on “Nowhere.” Which is why we need Cookie Mueller’s writing now to give us hope, or at least to help us take everything in stride and don’t forget to laugh about it all: “There is a great art to handling losses with nonchalance.”
Mueller’s work was like a roadmap through the urban jungle; her writing told you where buried treasure might be found; the risks that were necessary to experience the “real thing”; it was a reminder that if life got rough, to not let it get you down. See the humor in it. And don’t take yourself too seriously. Great advice to youth, who have a tendency to take everything way too seriously. Her artistic temperament demanded adventure despite the risks involved, in the belief that Art and total experience can revolutionize the mind. Reading her one believed again in the utopian vision of a life that can transform consciousness and lead to a new vision of the future. But you have to keep your mind wide open.
From all her various and often zany experiences, she learned an important and fundamental lesson; in 1987, two years before she passed away from AIDS-related pneumonia on November 10, 1989, she writes: “‘Things change. Life goes on,” Robert Crumb once succinctly said in a Zap comic book. “Learn to adapt,” I would add…Be calm. Tongue in cheek you must slither. The wild crazy days are over. Most of the great creative fanatics are dead, many are forgotten.” It is sobering advice since now the World is not the world anymore; it is simply a collection of images, data points, saved messages, selfies, on a computer screen or Iphone; surface effects without substance, and thus not subject to duration. The way we live now is a matter of speed and productivity; we have internalized the over worked production scheme at the basis of capitalism, and become willing subjects. We are in a rush. Going where, exactly? “Where” is perhaps debatable but I fear all the answers are a variation on “Nowhere.” Which is why we need Cookie Mueller’s writing now to give us hope, or at least to help us take everything in stride and don’t forget to laugh about it all: “There is a great art to handling losses with nonchalance.”