Wordly (or how to survive on nothing but coffee and cigarettes)

The ascetic demands of putting together a show must now be entertained. I’ve limited time and much to do. The doors are locked, the tunes are loud and I will not be taking visitors. Nose to the grindstone, as they might say, but in my case it’s more like fingers to the glue, plaster in the hair and clay down my pants.

“Wordly” opens January 14^th and runs till the 17^th of February at the Suffolk University Art Gallery – the indomitable James Hull directing the space.

Opening night January 20^th.

Some images may come as I find time to snap off some shots, but for now I’m back to work.

Suffolk University Art Gallery at the New School of Art and Design

James Hull, Gallery Director – www.jameshull.com

Gallery Location and Hours

75 Arlington Street, Boston, MA 02116 


Gallery is free and open to the public: 


M-F 9 AM-8 PM, Sat & Sun 12 - 5 PM


(After 7pm and on weekends enter thru main lobby at 10 Saint James Ave.)


A novel declaration of character (or what my wife has to put up with).

W - “I’m afraid to go to the dentist”

H - “That’s reasonable. Bye and bye they said twixt t’other cavities they said theys’ reckon to part limbs from a body. Dentists are mighty powerful surgeons.”

“So you’re saying when I go in I’m coming out missing a limb?”

“What I sez is what I reckon you’re afeared of miss.”

“You are really into that book on tape! Let me know when you’re on the way home so I can start dinner”

“Don’t wait up for me darling, I’m in the middle of a thing ‘bout now. I’ll let you know bye and bye.”

“Someone ate all the chocolate chips.”

“The culprit is a mysterious stranger I say. I sez t’was nothin’ a body could do in procuring justice in the matter. Bye and bye I reckon the guilty parties will face their devils ‘fore long. I say a mind might be addled over the circumstance but I do declare I ain’t concerned.  A pure soul, such as I is, will be virtuous bye and bye, and bye and bye the guilty will hang. Don’t worry yourself none”

“Right. So you ate them bye and bye?”

“Indubitably.”

Life, not life (Are those undead candidates done eating my brain?)

 The classic phrase is – “To be or not to be?”  - as opposed to, ”To Be or nothing,” or “To be or death.” Billy Shakes hit on a significant western concept with his insecure hero there. Hamlet asks himself this question, with very little irony (and enough melodrama to fuel seventy years of movie making), to remark on his character’s present state of “being,” - attempting to decide whether or not to act in this way or that.  More important (than the impotence metaphor we could all draw from this archetype) I think we should focus on the exact semantics of the phrase so oft repeated for dramatic effect.

To be or not to be? I’ll submit that this phrase might be considered as the ultimate western position on life (and by position, of course I mean perception). What we have at stake here is not a question of something (being) or nothing (not being), but a view of life (the world/universe for that matter) as a process of consistent action. Being. Always being. We’re either being being, or not being being. By assuming being, or not being are the only two states of existence (life vs. death) in Hamlet’s mind we might conclude “not being” would be a negative state. Obviously being (living) is preferable to not being (death as we would say). But our language betrays us significantly. To be or not to be? Being is a constant, so is not being a negation of being? What were you before birth? You exist now, so what happened before existing? Does your death precede your life as it will end it? Does your death negate your existence? Does your existence negate your preexistence? I don’t know, but I think I might look at the problem through mathematics.

The zero did not exist in the west until, thru trade, it reached our unrefined minds in that dimly lit era. For the Greeks, the progenitors of what we might consider math, had no use for 0 (or infinity for that matter, but that’s a separate conversation), What do you do with nothing? – Nothing. The Greek mind wanted to establish systems for dealing with stuff, things that might be chronicled and compiled and, 0 had no place. The invention of 0 happened in what today is India. 0 represented the Ostrich egg, the womb, the place from which creation springs (much like the bindu or dot, a single point from which everything expands outward).  The vast emptiness, or void, to the eastern mind represented potential. A spark. In the west the conception of 0 was difficult because faith and culture directed folks towards accumulation, improvement, advancement, gaining, gaining, gaining… etc.  Nothingness, or emptiness became the villain in the worldview. To be or not to be?

Mathematics appears to deal in the currency of symmetry, but this is not true. Electricity might have positive and negative currents but gravity has no opposite. Gravity as a force is asymmetrical (a far as we know), and dark matter is what exactly? We can prove everything has mass (therefore everything is something, there is no nothing, even black holes have mass) even energy. Can we find the deep answers of our existence in mathematics? Maybe. Mathematics is the most abstract language/system we’ve developed to explain with the world around us. But as we’ve seen through history just because we can create an abstract language to give ourselves the feeling of objectivity those systems are just as susceptible to cultural bias and misunderstanding as anything rooted in tradition. To be or not to be?

No one knows. No one has the answers. Every system man can create is a fragile as the fence beneath an elephant. But we can believe in those systems and languages together and grow them. These things are only a strong as the shoulders that carry ‘em. That’s the point. This Christmas hang a shovel from a coat rack and place gifts beneath it, convince your friends to do the same. That coat rack will carry the same import as that over size bush in the middle of the room if you allow it.  We live in a transmutable world. To be or not to be, to brush or wipe, to wax on or wax off, to eat or abandon responsibility? Be or not, we’re always going somewhere.

When the Black Dog Dies (Urdu Folklore) or Talking to people with money

A cantankerous Zamindar (wealthy landowner) was known for his short temper.  His house sat atop a tall hill and from the highest room you could see forever (or until your eyes failed you). He claimed all this land. The Zamindar also had a weak heart. Therefore, in his household, the servants were under orders that they should be very careful about what they said to him and the way in which they said it. Once, when he was off in foreign lands, a servant was dispatched with the most recent news from his land.

The master asked him, “You come from my house? How is everybody?”

            “Very well, sir,” said the servant. “Only the Black Dog is dead.”

            “Poor thing, when did it die? It seemed quite well when I left.”

            “It died of indigestion. How could it help dying when it eats so much horse meat?”

            “Horse meat? Where did it get horse meat?”

            “Where else but our stables, sir.”

            “What! Did our horses die?”

            “How could they live when there were no grooms to feed them?”

            “Why, what happened to the grooms?”

            “Only what happens to people when they starve, sir, when there’s no one to pay them.”

            “What are you saying? Why were they not paid? What happened to the steward, what happened to my wife?”

            “How could they live when there’s no cook to make them food?”

            “Why what happened to the cook?”

            “How could he live, sir, when the kitchen caught fire and spread throughout the house and killed everyone?”

Nice Shorts (Dinner in a Gown)

TBA :Model for Lecture to be given in a Public Restroom (verbatim).

“I’d like us all to agree (or not, do whatever you want, I don’t care)”

Post-Modernism (PM) as defined by Merriam-Webster: of, relating to, or being an era after a modern one <postmodern times> <a postmodern metropolis>

 2 a: of, relating to, or being any of various movements in reaction to modernism that are typically characterized by a return to traditional materials and forms (as in architecture) or by ironic self-reference and absurdity (as in literature)

 b: of, relating to, or being a theory that involves a radical reappraisal of modern assumptions about culture, identity, history, or language <postmodern feminism>

Got it? Good. Post-Modernism as a phrase emerged in the late 19^th century as critics were attempting to label new styles in the arts. At that time PM was just a term. When Martin Heidegger comes along he screws up the show and attempts to define the term and extrapolate the implications of its meaning and affect on the culture (and by this point in the early 20^th century the western world was swimming in modernism, and the ideas of what a modern style of living could be.) Modernism, at its most basic, was a humanist form of thinking that proclaimed the imaginative power and scope of the human mind could improve all areas of life through focused experimentation and practice.  Therefore to be a modernist you believed in the authority of the individual creation and the rightness, or correctness of said creation. New forms of expression were championed (abstraction, jazz, surrealism, futurism, ism, ism, ism…) precisely because these forms were new, experimental and deeply wound up in expressing the "truth" of the human condition.

Refer back, if you will, to the definition of PM, specifically second entry. Now, assuming you trust my summation of modernism does this definition do any more for you? You’ve heard this term Post-Modernism thrown around yes? (and to say thrown around I mean to say stuck, like unwanted gum, willy-nilly to whatever’s near it.) With all this in mind does Post-Modernism mean something now? Are we all certain and clear on it’s function as noun/adjective/noun? No. You in the back making noise, can you tell me what it means? No? How ‘bout what it means to you? No? You got nothing? Well, neither do I. But I think, at least for the moment I might be able to come up with some kind of working definition.

Postmodernism: The ideology of rejecting ideology. A movement (supposedly) that allows all forms of expression and creativity equal ground without being trapped by linear thought or a rigid dogma, symbols are freely interchangeable, meaning does/doesn’t/might exist, and everything (words, ideas, objects, etc…) are potentially redefined and transformed on the whim of the creator. (Addendum: the creator may neither say something or say nothing. (S)He holds no responsibility to the creation.)

Alright, so is PM a bullshit term used to describe the state of art today? No. PM exist and it’s happening. Post-Modernism as an idea is much more interesting than it seems. Imagine a church with no ceremony – or only ceremony, at the same time or never! Imagine a writer who looks like he does fancy things with punctuation on Thursday and on Tuesday looks like he forgot to pay attention in High School English! This is the actual effect of PM on the environment and it’s great. Everything is on the table, there are no rules and we’re in charge.

PM, in practice in the arts, is a direct fuck you to the “heroes” of the modern era all those big painters with big canvases and their even bigger egos.  They embarrassed themselves for the rest of us so we wouldn’t have to. Those folks got into specifics and rigidity - We’re into fluidity and the mirage; the look of the real is better than the real.

In the arts the need to label and categorize forms of expression is an ever-present evil (look at music and the way critics place bands into invented genres). PM by definition rejects this concept. Many complain about a lack of cohesion in the arts, or a movement per se, but why does that matter? Why must we dress everything up in loose language that never actually enlightens those who are engaged? At the end of the day these terms exist to serve themselves (we got something to talk about something because we got these words and we gotta use ‘em).

Post-Modernism is anarchy, and by (the improved) definition it abhors authority, and this party is only getting bigger – the island is overrun and Piggy’s been dead a long while.  I’m coming to the show but first I gotta find my conch shell.

Assimilating the heterogeneous phallocracy – lemme’ hear your war cry!

Amy Sillman wrote a piece, “AbEx and Disco Balls; In defense of Abstract Expressionism 2,” for the Summer 2011 issue of Art Forum (caveat: the editors at Art Forum may have chopped this thing to hell, but in any case she was solicited for her unique/individual thoughts because of her position within the art world so I can’t imagine too much was bastardized from her original manuscript). Art Forum is a magazine that typically solicits artists, curators, collectors, critics, directors, actors and a general assortment of scencesters to contribute articles for print. In this summer’s collection the topic was the legacy of Abstract Expressionism. Most contributions are the typical art world polish and rub that we’ve come to expect, but Sillman’s piece caught my eye. Amy Sillman is a painter (sic.), great painter (this writer’s humble opinion), her work sits in the awkward zone between expressing a forthright joy for painting and all the manual duty that that entails as well as making a sarcastic comment about art, art history, and the art world in general. Experiencing the work amounts to either, complete submission to the paintings for their faith in color and form and her snarky little asides to the world in which they hang, or oh cool, I like blue too.  

“AbEx and Disco Balls” is not a good piece of writing but it does begin to suggest a few interesting ideas. The main argument she proposes is that the underlying ideology of AbEx (expression, the primal scream, man only within himself,  “…working from their innermost intuitive feelings…”) was vulgar and it took two generations, Susan Sontag with her Notes on Camp, and something she calls the “new-style dandy” who loves camp and therefore vulgarity to finally adopt AbEx. But this dandy, adopting and therefore adapting AbEx, was/is uniquely positioned to take and leave whatever parts of the historical movement he/she wants. In Sillman’s view the main things taken away from AbEx are the material qualities, where those qualities speak to the formal concerns of an artist, specifically the young artist looking for a way in which to begin a painting practice without being bogged down by the romance and dogma of AbEx. This is all quite obvious and uninteresting – what is interesting is Sillman’s marriage of this procedure with “LGBTQQ (lesbian, gay, bi, transgender, queer and questioning)” artists. Her argument almost falls flat on its face. Most of the article consists of clunky statements with MFA grade type lingo punched in, to which I can only assume is some sort self-consciousness (i.e.  “Foucauldian materialist-discursive practice, connected to the “bodies, functions, physiological processes, sensations and pleasures…,” “…the gender vicissitudes of AbEx..,” “AbEx was ripe for double detournement.”), leading the reader to assume she feels her position is only legitimate/defensible by implementing and randomly distributing references to theory. The problem isn’t that she using the vocab incorrectly, she’ not, but that Sillman feels the need to throw these referents out there at all.

Sillman kinda succeeds and only does so once you’ve read the article twice. She takes too much time leading up to her actual point and all the information beforehand almost seems irrelevant.  In between the jargon droppings Sillman slips in some autobiographic gems, that belie her use of the upper crust lingo in the first place, (i.e. “ we knew what we liked…something to be looked at, cut up, and used as material, like punk music or underground movies or other sloppy, enthusiastic things made by a lineage of do-it-yourselfers and refuseniks with a youthful combination of awareness and naïveté.”) These, from what I assume, are mostly direct anecdotes from the artist herself and ring truer than the other statements in the piece. The topper that seals the deal, her finishing move, comes at the bitter end of the article. Sillman was giving a lecture at a university, a self-described content-driven program, and to fuck with the institution she decided to focus her talk on the more formal elements of her work;

…the people who loved my formalist rap were the guys who had gone the furthest in their own personal lives to make specific changes to their own forms. We were both committed to an idea of the inseparability of form and content, and we were working with their interactions, their malleability; if you could change one side, you could change the other.

The guys she refers to are some bearded guys who she later discovered were transgendered men. This event is the crux of her entire piece and she mentions it at the end like some kind of real world proof to back up the theory she quotes. The problem here is that Sillman is making a fairly large claim about homosexuality and procedures of making and her best proof, her most defensible position comes from her real life, but she buries that behind the claims of others and their dense language. There are moments where Sillman tips her hand when describing her own work, “performing a critique of a critique,” or “even the risk of actual delight – no undoing but redoing, if from and oblique angle.” In these moments we see her true feelings and can’t help but feel disappointed – and the disappointment is two fold. (1) The idea that the construction of the self, someone running against the status quo must mettle themselves to the world and then that personal history informs a certain formal predilection when art making happens (which is a fantastic way of beginning to look at a persons work in terms of their life and tribulations, this idea adds a very real context for the decisions and outcomes of an individuals practice – but it never gets investigated by Sillman, she just makes the proposition) and (2) Sillman’s own practice, as she would say, thrives on the “tactile and material. To touch it is to know it,” and I feel more of that hokey forthrightness is all the more convincing (yet she refuses to be direct, giving little snippets but consistently falling back on canonical white men’s words (which is the whole problem to begin with!)).

It is very uncool to stand behind/up for something by yourself, and if not uncool then down right career suicide (in any field), because how can you defend yourself with only yourself? This would be the problem that leads Sillman to try and defend her case with proofs and theories outside of her own position. But, in truth, her case is made when she speaks from her position and her experience, how could one refute that? More importantly why is that not enough? Even more importantly why is that not enough for her? (The work is the evidence.)

Amy Sillman is a damn good artist, and she has great ideas but when she feels beholding to some status quo her ideas are sequestered to the same rote art writing that’s (mostly) too easy to ignore and eventually reduced to fluff. 

Chain Letter - you got it (we're just not there yet)

Man in a grey shirt & boots (MG): “Consider him at work and excited by his project. His first practical step is retrospective.  He has to turn back to an already existing set made up of tools and materials to consider and reconsider what it contains and, finally, and above all, to engage in a sort of dialogue with it, and before choosing between them to index the possible answers which the whole can offer to his problem. He integrates all the heterogeneous objects of which his treasury is composed to discover what each could ‘signify’ and so contribute to the definition of a set which has yet to materialize.”

Man in a v-neck & tennis shoes (MV): What’s up with this?

(MG): Claude Levi-Strauss “The Savage Mind,” 1962.

(MV): My pants don’t say that. The benefits of non-fiction, eh?

(MG): Fuck the Chain Letter. Who cares about a thousand nameless artists?

(MV): Eat the sculpture like a loose turd – down your throat. These kids are crazy dear.

(MG): They’re simpletons. Everyone eats shit. Some pretend it’s cake.

(MV): It’s all about the texture. Chris told me it was a fuck show in there.

(MG): I don’t know what it’s all about anymore. Artists were walking out of the gallery with their work at the end of the opening. It was a show of weakness and internet culture. Totally decadent. I don’t consider myself a purist by any means, but jesus man, I think the gallerist was ready to pull his dreads out. Fuck!

(MV): Anonymity breeds a self-conscious confidence for those who feel unable to speak directly in person. It feels like liberty but in actuality, the immature personality engaged in this sophomoric grandstanding, only reassures the self as a victim, separate and beholden to the system in which they perform their insecure theater. The manifesto is scrawled on the bathroom wall and facebook! – The internet in real life – pissing on the sidewalk and laughing at bums. I live here; wanna visit? No one cares and no one’s looking; do what you will. Leaving messages in chalk and the morning dew will wash it all away - but hell, at least the stains make for a colorful gutter.

Sweet on the Pill (The Devil has our Lunch)

Aristotle stated that one is not truly human until one laughs - laughter being the expression of a soul. He supposed an infant to be soulless up to that point. Usually a newborn laughs within the first couple months of life - I’m told I didn’t laugh until I was three-years old. 

It's not what's written in the diary that's humiliating; it's the spelling errors.

I was with Allen the other day and we took in a show. He's a poet of sorts, an interesting guy, who likes to get around. He says things and when I challenge him he gets very romantic about objects. Going on and on with very big words he declared the inherent animism of material speaks to the hand of the artist - consuming him as he consumes it. I asked him to prove it. We went downtown to see a nice show of butter sculptures. Allen asked to whom these objects might belong and the door bunny said the fat man. I asked her why he's the fat man and she told me he can't stop licking his fingers. Allen's got a keen sense.

From the Green Coast and Paris Underground

It's expensive to drink, eat, and sleep in Paris if you choose to pay. We'd been in town only four hours before we committed our first crime. Paris can be done on the cheap if you got quick hands and fast legs. The trick is when you run away, and someone's yelling, just call back "Merci!" Wear a few layers so as you cut up, down and thru the streets, avoiding the waiters and bakers you just stiffed, you can shed one shirt for the other - ball it up and hide it in you hand. Bold colors work best - and hats. Hats to put on after you jump from your beautiful terrace seat. Everyone told me that the french are rude - I didn't experience any of that, I thought that they were a friendly and generous people. I recommend making the trip if you can. Everything and everyone is beautiful - but you can skip the Louvre - it's overrated.

Soft edges, or I don't live today (maybe tomorrow)

Terry Jones is stuck in my butt. Like right up in there, and he hurts. I find him and then I gotta pick him out and that hurts even worse. He’s always showing up at the worst times too. My doctor has no advice other than to suggest that I not go anywhere near a cable news camera or I risk a serious infection of asshole. I guess I should clarify; Terry Jones, as in The Terry Jones (the psychopathic pastor from Florida) is not in my butt. I’ve just named the dirty little wads of TP that get caught up there after him (sorta’ like little prayers I can crush down the drain with my heel). Even if you’re dumb enough to agree with his “anit-islamic” sentiment – the limp prick still burned a book! When did that become a good idea? Yet, Terry Jones is effective – and what I mean to say is that Terry Jones inspired me a great deal. I’ve had a vision. A vision of America, the United States, the greatest country God could imagine, (whatever flavor of crazy you prefer), as my butt - America as a giant butt. You see, there’s the left and the right, both fairly benign when taken alone, but where the two shall meet things get a little dirty; this cleavage of darkness, crevasse of reason, black hole, has destroyed all sanity and intelligent discourse. Most of us reside somewhere on the rolling expanse of either hemisphere bordering this great valley, but as science has proven a positive cannot exist without its negative. Where these two regions of ideology are supple and full of interesting ideas, a mighty fault line divides the pair where they meet, and typically nothing you’d really want to hold onto comes out of there. The big problem is that certain individuals live there in the valley and spew idiocy like napalm–we all get burned. You already know about Terry, but Palin has a ranch, Jon Kyl just moved in along with Limbaugh, Reagan is buried there, Bush kept a summer home, and I’ve heard rumors that Obama is looking for a time share.  Suffice it to say it’s been very difficult getting clean – these phonies hang in there, and hypocrisy is sticky. I’m leaving for Europe in the morning and I’ll admit it – I don’t know if I should defect or wax.

A Life of Radiant Desperation

Men of boys or some reference; Ishmael, or Salinger’s rebel if you prefer (at what age did you read it ‘cause it matters). We are these things. I’m some kind of ignorant infant in a swarm of older boys holding to me to rules of a game I didn’t know I was playing. There’s time on the clock and I have no choice but to run the ball down the field. So sad. I would like to speak to people as they deserve it, but that’s a foul.  I would like to live, or imagine myself to live, without contradicting myself but it’s an obvious prerequisite to get on the field. I can see men on the tv! Men in holes bringing out black gold - sensitive stoicism. I think I can score some points here. We must succumb to the rules of our game. One rule: complete and impenetrable devotion to the ironic duplicity of the game – replacing religious tyranny with democratic ultra violence. Benefit the youth by sacrificing their bodies, and the elders will reflect (and audience is entertained).  The teams’ been on the field a long time and I can hear some string music; just one musician, very small and far away in the distance – this tune is for all the whiners. You never grow up and if you think you did you failed.  Read this – players quit everyday, but not mine. I’m sorry for apologizing for your loss, because I don’t get it, it’s not my loss. I’m sorry for mine when it comes, and you won’t get it. We never will. I’m just getting into the second quarter, and coach hasn’t made his speech yet and I got nothing to go on, so I think the best thing to do is hustle. We play through, and our game gets better or it doesn’t. The field gets bigger and the players faster, but I’m getting help - I’m playing in the ref’s blind spot. 

Wash your privates twice behind the ears

I hear alot of things. Stories and rumors. The big problem is that it's all good. Every story, no matter how poorly communicated, is worth something. Granted the better the storyteller the greater the impact/meaning/effect of the story - we get this. I find that my taste inhibits me, more often than not, from taking in a good story. I'm too concerned with the effect of the communicator; his/her presence and theater. Homer could tell you a shit parable and you'll listen, Jerry down the street could express the great American epic and you won't hear him. Jerry is a crap storyteller. But Jerry's story might be pretty good. I have to feel for Jerry. It's not his fault that he can't speak for himself, but it's just that I want to hear something with some character, give it to me good. Jerry has things to say, but he's so dumb it doesn't work. That's what frightens me. We'll gather for our storytellers. If you tell it, people will listen. Right now thirteen year-old white boys have captured our attention. I'm so scared - and my cave isn't dark enough to block out this sound. 

Things to meet in a Room

Jerry wore a cowboy hat. Beneath that a patrolman's cap, tuxedo jacket, brown paisley belt, checkered slacks and a black pair of hushpuppies. Susie wore ribbons. A pink tee shirt with "Male Gaze" in black block lettering printed across the chest, cut off jeans and two mismatched flip-flops. They had left their sunglasses at home. Every piece of fashion carried meaning, signs for others to read, and for Jerry and Susie the pieces added up significantly. Problem - fashion's capital is trend, and the TV broke so they got nothing to go on. Blair wears no hair. White cotton ties over yellow dress shirts, balloon pants and well-kept boots. Susie goes home with Blair, not because Blair has any greater quality than Jerry, but because Jerry wore black shoes and a brown belt without irony. Susie doesn't need the TV to tell her to trust her instinct - she got out as fast as she could.  Jerry has since fixed the TV and Susie and Blair moved in together - they got the last cold water flat in the city.

The Angel of Fair Play pleads the 5th.

A boy fell from a tree. It was an easy way up, and even easier way down. He didn’t have to work at it. The boy didn’t want to cry till help came. Dad was an inventor and the boy had a patented face. Dad thought it was a good move - a unique item, especially in his culture. Problem was the product broke and no one pays for busted goods. Dad didn’t know all this of course; he was on a sales trip, chasing clients and investors. Dad had an excellent pitch; he talked about obedience and adaptability. Most people, when sitting down with him, wanted a piece.  The boy thought about getting up but it didn’t make sense for his legs so he looked back up at the tree and watching it sway violently he got scared. Dad got home and saw the boy on the ground. He had no choice so he went inside and made some calls. Dad never came out the back of the house again. The earth ate the boy, it took awhile, but it happened. Dad lost some clients but he said "a good inventor never succumbs to failure." Many years later in a horrible storm the boy’s tree fell through the dad’s house destroying the property. The storm hit pretty bad and in the morning all the cops and fireman were there helping people out of the wreckage and looking for survivors.  They all said it was the worst storm in years, like some kind of vengeance drove it. Dad watched the news from his motel-room; he was selling 3 new inventions 4 towns over.

The Value of a Good Cry

I spoke to my Uncle last night. He's dead – three years gone, so I had to buy the first two rounds and the third was free. I came in to his house, a small bar at the last stop on the train, and he was on the wall.  Black and white, a few dirty finger prints all mounted behind glass in a faux gilded frame – he never blinked. I kissed the picture and spoke with the survivors, most of them knew me from before but I didn’t remember them. Something harder might have been more appropriate but I drank the ale –it wasn’t the cheapest option on the menu. I played his music, old crooners, rock ‘n roll from the 70’s, and a gnarled voiced carnie. I don’t think he regrets his death - he only left behind people that love him, but he doesn’t know that, he doesn’t know anything any more. Death or drink made me feel romantic about all of this – not sure which. Romantic about all the invisible men in the sky – they’re unhelpful most of the time except for Hermes. When the sun goes down Hermes is left to his own devices, bound only by his will. He carried a message for me and in the most timely of manners I got my response. I can’t tell you what I heard but soon I’m going back to that place to drink beneath my Uncle’s simple altar. I made my prayers last night and small sacrifices will be due in the future but for now it’s all paid up.

A smart trap

Eyeliner is difficult to remove. At the train station Sunday night a woman approached me - she looked mid-twenties and attractive - my eyes were black. She said she was a writer/producer and very interested in westerns. "Did you see the new Coen Brother's film" - "Ah, did you see the original?" - "Oh, did you read the book?" "I said, "Jeff Bridge's eye-patch was excellent, very believable; a ruff piece of leather." She thought about that and smartly asked where did the shoot happen. I told her it was the convent up the street, talk to Father Jim he's got the details. "Cool," she goes "Som- " And I left her on the platform, the train was here, I was tired with a grey face and black eyes and I needed to wash. The eyeliner didn't come off in one, it took a few attempts and I'm not sure I had the right tools around. It's fun making movies and changing your face for people, it seems honest because the lie is so loud.

The Law of Physics

Pondering Wile E. this evening - his impotence omnipresent - I read everything he spoke. I enjoy the kismet, depressing as it is. I despise the Pharaoh, as do the unfortunate folk beneath his heal, but are their tools of expression no greater than the intelligence of a ragged pack? This frailty seems consistent - stretching back towards the petal kid corduroy first responder, tripped and establishing a formal means of protest - but I can't help feeling suicidal elation because Chuck Jones stabbed the heart of the matter, gave us our icon and allowed his ideas to get lost on the viewership. I admire that kind of freedom. Imagine we're marching on the hill, picket in hand, pushing fast and angry - we got a point, we're gonna' get 'em to listen this time - "Beep, beep" – comes the response to our call. Cynicism is like your favorite electric blanket, warm on the coldest days - burning you alive when you get too comfortable; I'd like to get thru this winter in other ways, but it's freezing out there. It's hard to laugh when what's funny is your powerlessness. But there might be something possible, one procedure to implement that softens the problem, massages those nasty, penetrating late night thoughts burning a hole in your being - GRAVITY DOES NOT EXIST - or at least it doesn’t ‘til you look down.

Where the buffalo roam-

Cate Giordano - Making noise for the herd, the queen mother keeps her children calm and the hunters at bay, forget about Scotty - Ms. Giordano transmutes the the human shell - dons a sister skin of the righteous lamb and avenges her brood. Film at eleven.

Motel Darling

Notebook recipes - fresh and whole. I think this place is made from lumber and foam, it floats like a building shouldn't. Someday we'll live in houses on the water - tides will carry. Welcome to the Motel Darling.

The Room with a View

The view smoking - dinner. When I asked the butcher what to eat tonite, he says "all these souls fill up on bread, no mayo - I can't get my hands clean. Smell this." He's got 3 beautiful daughters and loyal customers.

Miles to go

Mr. Wellman the waves break upon your shiny nose. First of the headdresses, more to come. The move created a bit of a bump in momentum - but here's a taste.  "The Last Object to Tour America" - I'm excited about this project - the objects are rendered to dust, post- document. Maybe billboards for trains?

Check out the Fancy!

Look in on this artist Fionn Mccabe - he cuts deep. Also spend some time over at Oh! Nancy - "The Hideout" show just came down at GARFO in Salt Lake but will be coming to Boston at The Fourth Wall Project this spring.

Nota Prop - from Oh Nancy at GARFO

18 light bulbs, 24 lighters. Dismantled doorways, a few burns and shocks. Piece for Oh Nancy at GARFO in Salt Lake City.

To Whom it may Concern;

The move has been made - as I shuffled from one harbor to another and the snow became shallow, it's warmer here; there's less space and we're closer together. This new organism is enchanting - everyone is anonymous and no one cares. I'm excited. Close your eyes when you look up.

All love,

Arthur

Not really a game, but more so a way of living.