Caught in the Carousel

Mingering Mike

Dori Hadar
Princeton Architectural Press
Paperback, 192 Pages

Say you like to eavesdrop, or peer through a crack in the blinds into your neighbor's bedroom window, or lean in the hall outside the bathroom while your three-and-a-half year old splashes and makes up songs in the tub. Say you're busted, your neighbor in some pre-contemplative state of undress is coming rapidly toward the door. You holler, “I'm sick to death of The Hills and Celebrity Fit Club and the Evening News. I can't take it anymore; the supermarket display of Easter goodies the day after Valentine's, the co-optation of prison culture as hip hop as baggy pants and odd mannerisms on the eleven- year-old white boy in our cul de sac.” You say, “Forgive me, but I was in search of an authentic moment.” You expect the neighbor to pop-off, something about the Heisenberg Principle and more three and four syllable words, some kind of analysis that leaves you feeling strangled and hopeless; but your neighbor, it turns out, is author Dori Hadar and she says, “Look what I found!” Now you're puzzled, picking through a handsome photo album of album covers, fifty of them, the tangible evidence of a lonely boy's fantasies. The boy, Hadar tells you, is a man now, and the evidence was unearthed at a yard sale. These are hand-drawn and hand-painted cardboard records, sleeves and jackets and what they reveal are the private dreams of an unknown singer-songwriter who calls himself Mingering Mike. The ironies are rich and plentiful. What could be more contrived than the superficial trappings of a non-existent career, and yet it doesn't feel so. This is called Outsider Art, but wait, you're seeing in, you're remembering. Hadar kindly permits you to make your own judgments. Is this an isotope from the 60's and 70's? A precise and unfiltered reflection of a time in our history and collective consciousness? Is Mingering Mike like some Oliver Sachs' study, a psychological aberration? He indulged his fantasies with some uncanny persistence. The superstar alter ego is not at all static, you notice. His lyrics and images changed with the changing times. Mingering Mike sings loves songs, anti-war protest songs, anti-drug songs. He is soul-brother, action hero, inadvertent griot – he stands, not for a moment, but for years, decades, on the border between innocence and deep intention. Thanks to Hadar for letting us in!

--Dan Coshnear