Downtown Brownwood, they say, is being “revitalized.” It’s not just they that say it, urban revitalization has become a common phenomenon in middle America today, especially in the middle of Texas. It’s not a marketing ploy or tactic, it is something that is actually happening. I’ve written much about it… modern man’s longing for Mayberry.
The word “revitalization” comes from the words RE (again) and VITA (life.) “Re-life” or “life again.” In the religious world, they use the word “revival,” which means the same thing.
In that spirit, I am re-editing and re-publishing this important article I wrote earlier this year (that most of you never saw.) I think you might need to hear it. Revitalization comes from longing in the human heart. In this case, as I’ve said, a return to a simpler time in a happy, walkable community of friends and neighbors who care about one another and take care of each other. In that spirit, we might want to look into our blind spots.
Some of you have followed my ramblings and exploits as we helped open the downtown restaurant (Lucille + Mabel,) and my job behind the bar. Last night, as I worked, I smelled the sizzling of steaks and the heavenly scent of baked bread and I heard the laughs of customers and friends. The restaurant was filled to capacity, and it was a fun night. But let’s time travel a bit.
So here we go – from April of this year…
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I was watching a movie with Danielle last night.
Earlier in the afternoon Danielle and I walked the block over to what used to be the Brownwood National Bank building. The weather was warm and nice and there were people in Coursey Park sitting under the large steel umbrella in the shade. The bank building on the corner of Baker and Center is a five-story turn-of-the-century edifice that looks exactly like a bank building from that period should, and now it houses offices upstairs and a lot of mysteries I won’t get into in this vignette but that I might write about later.
Suffice it to say that the stories of the building involve the FBI, Jack Ruby, a stripper named Candy Barr (and a stripper pole that’s said to still be there – somewhere.) But those things have nothing to do with this story other than to say that time leaves tendrils and fingerprints and we can see them or feel them if we pay attention.
They are putting in a very nice steakhouse restaurant and bakery downstairs in the old bank building. It is fun to imagine that we are downstairs in a restaurant that isn’t, but soon will be, and that upstairs is a stripper pole with some wispy connection to a murdered president.
We pushed into the door on Baker Street that will one day be the bakery, and we met with Christian Nance who, with his wife, is the proprietor of the future restaurant.
Inside, on the wall, is a painting of Lucille and Mabel. Lucille and Mabel are the namesakes of the restaurant. The rest of the restaurant is artwork too. Craftwork. The place is named after the mother of Christian and the mother of his wife, and the two maternal figures look out over the place approvingly. A lot of careful work has gone into the restaurant and now, in someone else’s past (or my own) I can almost smell steaks sizzling on their plates and a heavenly scent of bread coming from the bakery. But in this case, time is linear and those things haven’t happened yet. Instead, there is the scent of paint and caulking and the sound of a workman cutting ducting with shears. When you are aware of time, it is hard sometimes to know what comes first. So, we’ll skip ahead…
Paris When it Sizzles was the name of the film. Starring William Holden and Audrey Hepburn.
I don’t watch movies primarily for the plot or the story, not usually. I watch them for the other things in the movie. The background shots, B-roll and location footage, the sets. I look for the things the moviemakers couldn’t lie about, or wouldn’t know to. I don’t think my children ever made it through watching a movie with me where I didn’t hit pause and point out something in the background, or something someone said, or maybe a billboard the characters have passed.
Anyway… Paris When it Sizzles. Lots of fun dialogue in this one if you keep up and pay attention. One of the running jokes is “Serendipity,” a word that William Holden defines for Audrey Hepburn and that she likes very much and often uses afterward. I don’t like the word so much because it implies coincidence, something I do not believe exists (not in the way most people understand it.) While watching the movie, I hit pause to show Danielle a painting in the background hanging on the wall of William Holden’s apartment. It – the artwork – was a black-and-white example of modern art. The movie is set in Paris in a very nice apartment. I paused the movie and said to Danielle, “I like that poster. It’s from, uhh, Man of La Mancha… no… that’s wrong. It’s a bullfighting Picador on horseback lancing the bull.” Many of you know of my affinity for bullfighting and the artwork surrounding it, but this was just an offhand moment watching a film. I pressed play and we kept watching the movie.
Later, Danielle had gone to bed. I was online searching pictures of the famous bullfighter Manolete. We once owned a bull named Manolete (named, ironically, after the bullfighter. The bull that killed Manolete was named Islero.) I wanted to see if I could find a good photograph of Manolete (the bullfighter) to use as inspiration for a new art piece for the apartment. Then I found a YouTube video on the death of Manolete and watched that. Then I was surfing bullfighting posters because I’d love a poster from Manolete’s last bullfight. Searching through the images I spotted the painting that I’d seen earlier on the wall in William Holden’s Paris apartment. It turns out (serendipity) that it was part of a series of simple black and white bullfighting paintings by Picasso.
Now, my mind works in such a way that I notice things. You know me. I’m about the details. I’m good at pattern recognition and such. I’m a noticer. That’ll come into play in this vignette in a bit.
(*At this point you’re saying to yourself GEEZ. HOW LONG IS THIS GOING TO BE? Answer: As long as it needs to be to make the point. It’s good. Stick with it. Quit being a baby and keep reading.)
This vignette jumps around timewise, like in a Vonnegut story, but it’s necessary. A week ago Sunday we went to see a play at the Lyric Theatre. I was seated next to a young gentleman and he, knowing that I am a writer, asked me a philosophical question.
“Which reflects reality more… fiction or non-fiction?”
Me: “Well, you used the word ‘reflect’ which is an interesting choice of words. Every reflection is less than the original. If I hold my hand up to a mirror, the reflection looks like my hand, but it is only a two-dimensional trick of light and shiny material. By definition, a reflection is always fiction. And both fiction (a made-up story) and non-fiction (someone’s idea of what happened) are not what really happened. In that way, they are both fictions.”
I went on to explain, probably more than necessary, what I meant. Which I now do for you…
When I tell the story of the play at the Lyric, or the question this gentleman asked me, or Christian Nance the restaurant owner, and the picture of the two mothers, or our walk across the park, I have to leave things out. I don’t tell you that while I was answering the question from the gentleman in the Lyric theater I noticed that someone had lost a button on stage. I don’t tell you that because it isn’t important to the story. I don’t tell you that when Danielle and I are touring the soon-to-be restaurant I notice that the artist/welder who has manufactured the bases for the tables has welded bolts in four spots on each base as an interesting accent (and they allow the tables to be leveled.) This is to say that any story – whether it is fiction or non-fiction – leaves out so much information that is not necessary to the story. The story is, by definition, less-than reality. And a fiction story can actually be “truer” than the non-fiction rendering of that story. If I have to combine several characters into one, or several conversations that took place over several weeks into one in order to more truthfully explain reality, then the story is true, whether it ‘reflects reality’ or not.
What does all of this have to do with the restaurant and the movie?
We’re talking about art, right? Revitalization, right? The picture of the two mothers hanging in the Lucille and Mabel restaurant isn’t actually the two mothers. It’s a representation of them. By definition, it is (<) Less Than. To the people who love them, the representation triggers fond memories: times together, hugs, love, food, fun, sadness, joy. All of those memories are real and palpable and are revitalized when people who loved those ladies see the pictures. Later in time, maybe a generation or two from now, the image will just be an image and a story that cannot represent anything remotely “true” about them. Memories fade and generations move on. One day, that mural will be just a picture on the wall if it is still there at all. Same with the Picasso rendering of the Picador and the bullfight.
Picasso painted his bullfight pictures in order to establish his “Spanish-ness.” It was a representation of something he felt or something he needed to communicate. But Picasso is gone and has taken his depravity with him. The picture remains, and it is now separated from the intent, memories, predilections, etc. of the artist. And while I like the art, it says a lot less about bullfighting and Spain now than, say, Hemingway’s book Death in the Afternoon.
The written word lasts. The picture lasts too but loses its story.
A story about something lives on much longer than the image of it, and while neither the story nor the image fully represents reality – fiction and non-fiction are both fiction at some level – the writer does more for (or against) civilization than does the artist. I wouldn’t want to do without either writing or art, but the writer is a pillar, and the artist is not. Not really. Any true understanding of Christ and the first century of Christianity comes from canonical letters and, in fact, images of it are forbidden in the text. This is for good reason. Not my rules, I’m just laying it out to make the point.
Cities focus on performance art and visual arts when they revitalize and almost always completely neglect the one form of art that can lastingly tell the story of the time. Do we know more about what a soldier went through in World War I from All Quiet on the Western Front or a picture of the trenches? Do we know more of Paris in the 1920s from a picture of Hemingway and friends out in front of a café, or from A Moveable Feast?
We ought to support one without neglecting the other.
When we call something “the arts” and attempt to revitalize around them, and we leave out the written word, we’re playing a very short-term game. Of course, that’s just the opinion of a time-traveler like me.
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Michael Bunker is a local columnist for BrownwoodNews.com whose columns appear periodically on the website.