Jack the Ripper/Walter Richard Sickert?

Walter Richard Sickert: sick  sicker  stick  sticker  trick  tricker  trickster  Spring-heeled Jack  Jack the Jumper  Jumping Jack  Richard the Ripper  Jack the Ripper Jack the Jumper runs away  Jack the Ripper stays and sticks, rips open their throats  Both wear cloaks  Saucy Jacky a Ripper post card.

Patricia Cornwell wishes to nail him. Sickert the Ripper is too slippery. The rascal Raskolnikov waits for history to give him his Porfiry. 

Gavin Poole=Marvin Toone They all do that, guys on the run, Lucas said. Pick out a name that sounds sorta like their own.....I was laughing because of the Toone thing. You know, a guitar maker, picking out a name like Toone.

Golden Prey:Sandford, Putnam Penguin Random House,p.233

Sickert is multi-lingual from childhood. German was his native language. French he was speaking in Dieppe, France at five years. English by ten. Others? I don't know but suspect some knowledge but perhaps not fluent. The consequence of multi-lingual is the play on words. Sickert as a boy growing up in London where he lived from age 10, memorized much of Shakespeare and forced his siblings and friends to act in Shakespearean plays he put on as a child. All the word play and puns in Shakespeare were known and played with by young Walter. As an adult Sickert could recite long passages from speeches by Shakespeare.

Sickert's mother loved music and sang in the house when they were children. One favorite was:

I am Jack Jumper the youngest but one

I can play nick-nacks upon my own thumb

We know this from his sister Helena's autobiography as well as much about his childhood.

Jack the Ripper/Walter Richard Sickert?

Walter Richard Sickert Age 2. In one more year he will begin to undergo 3 Vivisections in the next 2 years on his genitals for a fistula. Without anesthesia. 

In June,1862 Dostoevsky left for his first journey abroad. In July of that year he was in London and it was in London that he came face to face for the first time with the industrial society which he regarded as the triumph of Baal. The thing that struck him most was the contrast between the colossal facade  of riches, luxury, and general prosperity of the few and the abject poverty of the many and their coolie-like  acquiescence in their fate. Dostoevsky wrote in the April, 1863, issue of Vremya, in which he described his impressions of his first visit abroad, the starving soul is humbled and driven to submission, seeking salvation in gin and dissipation and beginning to believe that this is the way things ought to be.Facts oppress the spirit, and if scepticism is born, it is a gloomy, accursed sort of scepticism which seeks salvation in religious fanaticism.

...every Saturday night half a million workers, men and women, with their children, spill into the streets like a flood, flocking to certain parrts of the tkown, and all through the night, till five o'clock in the morning, they are taking part in a bacchanalian revel, eating and drinking like beasts, ...All are drunk, but not cheerfully; ...All seem to be set on getting dead drunk as quickly as possible.

...Anyone who has ever visited London has probably been to the Haymarket, if only once. This is the quarter which is at night crowded with women of the street. In the Haymarket I saw mothers who had brought their young daughters, girls who were still in their teens, to be sold to men. Little girls of about twelve seize you by the hand and ask you to go with them. 

Seeing London at this time through Dostoevsky's eyes is a rare gift for us. Like Conrad he saw the consequences of industrialization.

The Best Stories of Fyodor Dostoevsky translated by David Magarshack Modern Library, 2005. pages xi-xxvi.

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In three years Walter Richard Sickert, having just turned five years old, will be brought to this London. He will be brought by his father to the hospital to undergo his third vivisection on his genitals in two years. Without anesthesia. Not known for his tenderness, concern or interest in his children Oswald Sickert will dump little Walter in the hospital, a dank, chilly, inhospitable place with no one there in the evening or all night long. Only one nurse works there, and she goes home at night. 

The message is clear. Fix him. Make him into a Real Boy. Or.........let him die? The miracle is that he didn't. 

_______________________________________________________________________________

Patricia Cornwell has researched him for two decades now and has spent millions of dollars searching for evidence that will provide Proof. While she cannot, I am convinced that Sickert was The Ripper and so is she. The debate rages on as it does with the JFK assassination. 

REVIEW: RECKLESS DAUGHTER A PORTRAIT OF JONI MITCHELL BY DAVID YAFFE

David Yaffe has written an exceptional biography of Joni Mitchell. His genius in telling her life and music lies in 

what he doesn't say!

Yaffe resists interpretation. He obviously interviewed with her and recorded what she said. And he did the same with other celebrities who knew her. Yaffe is also right on top of her music, the music of the scene around her and her position in it. He easily acknowledges her genius, her open tuning which she invented accompanied by her memorable voice. And this is where he excels in praise of her.

I spent an afternoon with her and Joy Schrieber - Joy Fibben - the manager of The Second Fret that showcased Joni before she was famous. A little dive on Sansom Street in Philadelphia, kind of dark and funky. This is where I saw her as I knew Joy and her husband. It was October of 1967 when Joni performed there when I first saw and heard her.

That afternoon she came into the area in Joy's apartment where we were talking, sat down and began to continue to write a song. Quietly, not greeting me at all, just Joy. She showed Joy some little beaded purses she had bought and Joy said, "Joni likes little purses."

I left soon after and saw her perform that evening. In performance she was mesmerizing, seductive and wonderful, promising everything. I knew she would be great immediately. A few nights later I took a lawyer friend to hear her. He was critical of her and said he thought she'll never make it. I said, "Oh yes she will." And I couldn't understand why he thought that. Perhaps it was her waif like appearance. Now I know she cultivated that until the trends changed.

Her bout with polio and her long stay in the hospital is described. This I never knew. Her parents visited her only ONCE! She was expected to be paralyzed, in an iron lung for the rest of her life. But she decided she wasn't going to be and struggled to move and then walk again.

Yaffe says only this about that time. He does not interpret it. I will though. I was utterly chilled by the fact her parents simply gave her up at a terrible time in which to withdraw all emotional support. It is no wonder her relation to her parents became indifferent after that. She must have come to terms with this then, the fact that she could never expect anything from them again. Invert this: nor did she owe them anything after this. She was free. Alone but free. With only herself to depend on. 

I am thinking at this time a great deal of Walter Richard Sickert whom I am convinced was Jack the Ripper. But another time for that. 

Joni made a deal with God. If I can walk again I will pay this back to you. She recognizes the gift and the indebtedness the gift imposes. The counter-gift. And she delivers. 

Sickert made no deal. And he was not yet 5 years old. And in agonizing pain and terror.

Yaffe is aware that she was the singer songwriter of loss. She spoke to those in pain. She knew about that. But her music was the only place, it seems, that she owned it, preferring to deny all this in her life and relationships.

… Don't it always seem to go 

That you don't know what you've got 

'Till it's gone 

They paved paradise… More

The Unsung Poet of Loss

Yaffe quotes Elizabeth Bishop on loss

The art of losing isn't hard to master; so many things seem filled with the intent to be lost that their loss is no disaster

This is a poem in response to the great Catherine Breese Davis's great poem: A villanelle and her best known poem. A reply to Dylan Thomas's Do Not go Gentle and certainly resonates with Bob Dylan's 
"Nothin left to lose"

After a time, all losses are the same,

One more thing lost is one thing less to lose;

And we go stripped at last the way we came.

............................................................................

So we, who would go raging, will go tame

When what we have we can no longer use;

After a time, all losses are the same

And we go stripped at last the way we came.

Davis's life was composed of losses too terrible to list. Her life was simply horrifying and she was still able to leave us some of the greatest poetry of her time. 

Perry Meisel reviews Hejira thus:

 Hejira presents the Queen of El Lay (referring to a Rolling Stone diss) more explicitly in the guise of a poet than ever before, festooned with cape, beret, slanted pinky, and the backdrop of a resolutely abstract landscape. Well, that's the way poets are supposed to look, I guess, and Mitchell's (self-) portrait here seems to be a little too aware of that.  

He continues but let's not here. This is nasty and yet very true when one stands her lyrics beside a master. Meisel does not understand the oncoming of Simulated Reality when stating one is a poet in IMAGE amounts to CREDIBILITY. The image obscures the real.

Here is an image by Mark Tansey that says it 

Mark Tansey the Picasso of the 21st Century

Mitchell just posits herself as an image of poet and voila she is a poet to her masses of fans. As Bolano saying that mediocre is necessary to see the diamond in the pile. (Something like that.)

Meisel hasn't become aware of this yet but Mitchell has.

Yaffe details with interview quotes from the wonderful and generous Judy Collins who used her clout at Newport to feature Mitchell and Dylan and shine the light of excellence on them. For this wonderful act of generosity and good will Collins received only sniping from Mitchell as she didn't like Collins interpretation of Both Sides Now which Collins had made famous by singing it on her recent album. 

Obviously Mitchell never understood that one's reading (interpretation) of a song "is that person's reading," that there is NO ABSOLUTE READING. Of course Collins would read the song differently from Mitchell or anyone else. And Collins was hurt by her lack of appreciation for the great gift she gave Mitchell in headlining her at Newport.

And this brings us to "The Gift." As Ainslee Meares says it:

Meares travels in the far east searching for new ways to cure old illnesses.

We have all read countless accounts of these travels. Meares gives us such a clear perception we can only be grateful to have all the ideology and PR wiped away.

Giving and receiving. What problems arise from this simple process! It may be hard to give, and I am sure it often is. But it is harder to receive, of this I have no doubt at all. I have seen too many patients tense and disturbed because they could not receive without anger. Once might expect people to be pleased and thankful at being given something. But look around, and you will see how often it has the reverse effect.And it is not difficult to see why this should be so. Giving places the receiver in your debt. No wonder he is resentful. But there is more to it than that. As babies our mothers gave us their milk freely, and we were happy to receive it. When we were children, our parents gave and we received. This is a law of nature. It is set in our mind that grown-ups give and children receive. Then as adults we are given something. Unconsciously it makes us feel as children again....

Nietzsche deconstructs the GIFT in his Genealogy of Morals which parallels the far east thinking detailed by Meares.

If you haven't read Nietzsche it is past time.

Mitchell will finally acknowledge her daughter publicly. She has finally received the long awaited call from her daughter. The one she gave up right after birth to a foster mother, then permanently and legally surrendered 6 months later. Here is what Yaffe says:

Joni held the baby... And then Joni signed the surrender papers. There was a form in the baby's adoption files called "Non-Identifying Background Information." Without revealing either parent's name, there were details left for the baby: that her father had been above average height, that her mother had once had polio and grew up in Saskatchewan, and this telling line:"Mother left Canada for U. S. to pursue career as folksinger."

So cold that last line.

After the honeymoon reunion her daughter vented her anger at being given up. This is natural but Mitchell became estranged. That terrible last line. Gave me up to become a folksinger. How wounding.

Fans and others will read this biography and a portrait will emerge of Mitchell with her adoration of fans muted by age and experience. We cannot know how desperately she had to defend herself and her vulnerability in her life that is bare in her music and lyrics. It is not for any of us to judge. But I do cringe at some of this, but that is just my own personal baggage. Not hers.