I get on a plane and fly to Philadelphia. I arrive in the evening. Shops are closing and I ask some yuppies closing a clothing brand store if they know where the Apple Hostel is- just down the street. I check in and they have these covers on the bedsheets called ‘The Bedbug Solution’. I’d slept in a bedbug hotel in Sarasota not too long ago- cheap room, my third time staying there.
I came to Philadelphia to see the show in the PAFA museum. It’s an annual show of student work, juniors and seniors, and MFA students too. The school guts the museum and hangs student paintings, and they’re all for sale. On opening night this year, over $300,000 of student paintings were sold. As a tentative fall student, I felt strongly that I should see it.
The desk man at the hostel complimented my style, both before and after I got a substantial hair cut, and new glasses (old glasses hinge broke). I felt a little silly in front of him since he told me that, to the point where I may avoid returning to this hostel. I realize this is irrational.
In my rucksack were too many books, and too many clothes. I read through Lessing’s Lacoön, and Doctorow’s Walkaways and gave the Lessing book to a desk-guy at the hostel who studied German history, and the Doctorow to a store called The Book Trader in exchange for credit.
I brought my skateboard, and between that and the stuffed backpack I felt like a schlepper. I bought a smaller book called Contradictionary, and a Chomsky book called Who Rules the World. I read Contradictionary. Chomsky is, well, I’ve read him and it’s really a lot to take in- not complaining, just I haven’t finished it yet. Shouldn’t have bought that book.
I went to the Museum, and contacted a friend too, a PAFA alum. I saw the majority of the work alone, and was throughout very pleased that I made the trip up. Large scale paintings done well. I wrote each name of the artists in the show in pencil in my notebook, too look up later. My friend Darryl met up with me at the museum and we took a lap around so he could speak personally about some of the paintings. He was working at the museum as a docent basically, though his title is different. He’s interested in going to grad school at the New York Academy, while continuing to live and work in Philly.
I think I stayed in Philly for four days. I took long skateboard rides, though not as heroic as on my former trip up in the spring. I went to the Jewish Museum and learned a bit of history of Jews in America, which wasn’t the spot of Jewish history I was most hungry for, but it was interesting nonetheless.
Some walks at night, some beers. I didn’t contact Philly residents that I knew, or my to-be roommate. I became involved with a restricted diet, and the walks were a part of that feeling my body experience. On some evening, an art walk was in order in Old Town Philly, and I chatted it up with a couple of girls who’d set up in front of the Apple Hostel. One was Madi, and I can't recall her roommates name, but she had a dislike for me. Madi and I talked about painting for a while, and the girls invited me to their apartment across town to meet some friends. The friends didn’t show up, but Madi and her two roommates and I enjoyed some good conversation.
It was time to go. I booked a room on airBNB in Brooklyn, and set out to catch a bus to NYC. I entered a Chinatown (Philly) park where there was a great big lantern festival going on. I sat at a bench and re-organized my things. I went from a backpack to a backpack and a tote bag, books in one and clothes in the other. I was not yet ready to commit to throwing anything away, but need be, the tote bag was all ready for the bin. Just outside of the park was a bus, heading to New York thirty minutes hence. I paid $8 and rode up, arriving in Chinatown (NYC) in the late afternoon. I set out to find the New Museum, but became confused, and made my way to my favorite restaurant, where I got an order of red bean smoothie and straw mushrooms, sitting in my regular spot in the front by the register on the north side of the interior. I’d made a mistake in booking the Brooklyn room, and I had no place to stay on this night. I made arrangements to stay up on 161st street. I think I went to the theater on West 4th street, dropping off my tote bag of clothes (a shirt from a punk band, and a pair of slacks that I got from a thrift store for 20 cents while on a motorcycle trip to Sarasota after being stung by a bee up on my underwear line in my shorts). I saw this movie called Band Aid, featuring Fred Armisen. The film was written and starred by this brilliant woman. Jewish woman. I became very involved with the movie. Her, Zoe Lister-Jones, writing illuminated minutiae built into relationships, and gender dynamics, and Jewish culture and history. Fred Armisen was a hoot, playing his cast-type. I felt like a new person leaving the theater. I did not expect such profundity from such an unassuming plot. When I got out of the theater, I skated uptown with traffic. I found some nice smooth roads. It’s incredible that in Manhattan you get these little pockets of traffic, and sometimes there are empty longitudes that allow for a twenty block stretch to be traversed with almost zero cars. It was great to be riding again. I probably made it up to 14th before cutting west to ride on that smooth jogging trail that goes for miles up Manhattan. I was warmed up, and set to ride to my hostel for the night, which I did- about one-hundred and eighty blocks north along that trail as the sun set.
The hostel was plush and $86. The other hostel in New York was in Brooklyn, (where I have two murals riding) and was booked up. It usually runs half this price. Who is this ‘hostel’ designed for? Hostel in this context gives you a built-in cafe, and an entertainment room with a big tv- it’s too much. I finished this other book I was carrying called Half World, in which a biologist proposes to preserve half of the planet’s surface to nature without human interference. It was a very unsatisfying book, and far from a concise thought.
I took a train to my new residence in a spot in Brooklyn off the 4 train way down Eastern Parkway somewhere probably near the big cemetery. Nice spot. African neighbors. My host/roommate was clearly running his four-bedroom like a mini hotel/ flop house and when I said hi, he did not reply. I got the message right away. He played piano very beautifully, and had this little crested dog. He’d practice behind the closed door of his room with that little dog for hours every night, and in the early afternoons pack the dog into a little carrier and head out, presumably to some piano gig or maybe some intense piano school, or to give in-home lessons. In the basement room were two kiwi graphic designers, who’d been evicted in the middle of the night by their landlord on the pretense that he’d discovered he could be charging twice the amount for their apartment, and in the fourth room was an effeminate guy who had a standard poodle puppy, and a job doing shoe displays at a department store. I didn’t know what that guy was going to do with himself. He had a lot on his plate. I could hear him watching tv mostly.
I’d come to New York on a kind of spirit quest thing. About a year ago I’d (with some intoxication) offered to help put my friend through school to the tune of one year. We’d kept in touch and I’d tread lightly about the subject, but kept it in my mind, as my offer was a kind of timidly approached commitment to her, and to my allocating funds, and all this stuff. I sought advice from a friend who said ‘don’t’, and became involved mentally in how this might impact our friendship. I found something in the ‘Contradictionary’ book about charity, which it defines as two-faced gift which serves only to reinforce pre-existing power constructs, while indebting the receiver socially and fiscally. A burden, something like that. That clarified it for me, and I knew beforehand that Madeline was uncomfortable about a possible arrangement. So my long walks and skateboard rides, and reading and movie choices, at least on this trip had a direct relationship to Madeline and this tentative decision. I thought maybe I’d go to the school that she was to attend and write a check. I’d called my CPA in advance to understand tax implications.
I let Madeline know I was in town, and in no hurry. I went to the Brooklyn Public Library two days in a row, going to the third floor and going through a stack of books on American Impressionism, and American Western Paintings. I saw that many of these paintings were housed in Museums in Boston. I got the idea to go to Boston. Madeline contacted me while I was in the BPL and we agreed to meet up at the Metropolitan Museum, where I gave her the Contradictionary book as a gift. It was wonderful seeing her. I actually feel very comfortable around her. It’s a great friendship, complimented by her interesting painting and art. We saw the Thomas Hart Benton New School mural, now installed at the Met. We paused in front of a Rockwell painting. We ogled in a room full of Tiepolo roughs. After the museum, I rode the subway with her back to her house in Queens, and invited in, we went through some box wine talking about artists and painting and art, and schools, and plans. It was very sweet, and I said goodbye just before the sun went down and drunkenly tried to ride back to my neighborhood on my skateboard, to which there was no issue save my sense of direction. I ended up taking a train back after miles of guesswork and arrived home after midnight.
Other great hints in New York, quickly, I saw this jazz band in Bryant Park where the drummer had his seat chained to his bass drum so it wouldn’t run away. That was a big epiphany to me, of course! I went to an O'keeffe show at the Brooklyn Museum which was brilliant. I’d gotten into O'keeffe in the Library at Ringling, having gone through her artist raisones. I felt that I didn’t need to see the paint as much as in other shows. The images seemed to me to read like pictures, I saw the paintings for themselves, without ‘tricks’. She made it happen. The show included some of her outfits, handmade and very clever. I saw these paintings in the New Museum by Lynette Yiakom-Boakye which opened my eyes to contemporary painting and portraiture in that they were all fictitious sitters. Further, the paintings hung low to the floor and gave an intimate feel to the large exhibition room, which had dark burgundy walls if I recall. Also in that museum were a series of installations and a video piece by Kaari Upson in which she ‘plays/embodies’ a hyper-concerned new home parouser, yelling ‘House-hole! House-hole House-hole! House-hole House-hole!’, pointing at electrical sockets and doorknobs, and anything else that compromises the integrity of materials such as drywall in their unaltered manufactured form. As a kid who’s moved a number of times, and ‘shopped’ for houses with my parents, her character struck a chord with me as she, crawled into otherwise neglected spaces, and addressed her feelings with great sensitivity like a child-nagg-prodigy. How embarrassing to shop for a house.
I walked Eastern Parkway, and there’s a ton of Jews at this one section. One day a Jewish younger man stops me and asks if I’m Jewish, and I say no, (though I felt equally justified in saying, well, yes, truly), and I’m stuck there, because I have this respect and hunger for the knowledge of their history, and he decides to go through a little bit of law with me, mentioning the laws for the gentiles, including that an animal is not to be eaten if it is not yet dead, and over the rim of his glasses he looks at me and clarifies, ‘Lobster, because you boil them alive, that’s no good’, and I got it- no questions. I said thanks.
Long walks. Healing. The feel of traveling. Alone with love. Control and lackthereof made intimate.
My mom called and wanted to get me a present for my birthday- a computer. I worried about the e-waste. She said that she wanted to bless me, and why wouldn’t I let her bless me, and I thought about the relativity of moral reasoning, or that some one’s one may not apply to another’s. I accepted the gift. I now have an ipad. It’s kind of nice. My reading and my painting have both gone down since, I imagine, but it’s mostly a case of different not better or worse. I hope I can sell this thing and get some money from it before the technology outdates itself. I went through the old meat packing district and saw a couple handfuls of galleries, including Hauser and Wirth, where I bought a book on Picabia and a book of collected essays from Philip Guston, which I went through most of so far. I visited a friend Elijah in his apartment, and gave him the Picabia book as a half-loan. I bought a ticket to Boston, checked out of Brooklyn, and took a bus four hours North, after swinging by the Whitney to see the Biennial show, where I saw works by Dana Schultz, Frances Stark, Ulrike Müller, Celeste Dupuy-Spencer, and a section of Sarah Hughes paintings that caught me of guard in a great way! Now THIS is one great solution to contemporary painting. That’s about the height of praise for me. So in Boston, I’m pretty immediately lost. I realize I’ve been to this train terminal before; once on my way up to Portland, Maine. I got on an in-town train and found my hostel, a nice place, after a number of wrong turns and help from some frat boys with beers and an ipad, and then a couple with beers and a smartphone, and then finally a late-evening meter-cop. I took a walk. I think I broke my fasting regimen that night, by going to this dumpling house, where I ordered one thing, and instead two things came out of the kitchen. I thought it strange, but since I don’t speak Vietnamese, I figured either they got the order wrong, or I made a mistake. Taking it in stride, I ate what was presented to me. Just thereafter, a head-guy came over and lifted the top of my serving dish off to see that I’d eaten the food, and gave me a look, then reprimanded my server. It was clear to me that I’d eaten someone else’s order at that point. The dishes were taken back into the kitchen and my correct order was brought to me. Seeing that I hadn’t eaten in days practically, I ate that too, and paid a bill that accounted for two-not-three dishes, a happy middle. I returned to that restaurant a few times thereafter, and was recognized with a smile and a wink each successive time.
In Boston, I had noting in particular to do, except look for these paintings- a cross section of early American works and impressionist works. I think I spent four days there. I saw the Harvard Art Museums first, which had a great German expressionist collection, and kind of like a Metropolitan Museum breadth of other works. The Scheeler painting was out in some other museum at the time, which was a disappointment I didn’t know to expect until I arrived and saw the painting in the brochure. I went then to the MFABoston, which is a giant museum, akin to the DIA in Michigan. There was a show called Matisse’s Studio, which had Matisse’s paintings hung next to the actual objects depicted. This trick was carried on also in the Museums permanent collection room where big Sergeants hung. It was very enlightening to see the vases and chairs, and pots, and all in reality, and how the artists went about portraying them. Very sobering. This trip, seeing the Matisse show reminded me of seeing the Aarken and the Louisiana Museums in Denmark, where I did not think I would come across Hirsts et al, or that time in Basel, Switzerland where I saw that Picasso’s Absinthe Drinker painting, which inspired me so greatly. Blind discovery. I had a cappuccino at the museum cafe, and went in for another round of looking at paintings. There was no shortage of old white guy portraiture, and maybe even worse, the seemingly obligatory Wiley paintings. I saw that painting Watson and the Shark, which I’ve always thought of as a clumsy painting, but I read something about it being revolutionary in its depiction of an ‘ordinary’, (non high-echelon) current event, bridging a gap, though I find it hard to believe it was the first, Goya comes to mind, and Velasquez and his handicapped children.
I left the museum having made a good dent in Boston’s big art cemeteries. The Contemporary Museum was open late that night, so I made it a big day, and made a pilgrimage there. All of the employees at the contemporary were young and cute, which I tried to handle cooly. Turns out, they’re mostly students of an affiliated art school. The museum was full of complicated installations and McContemporary monuments. I saw this film called Nonoseknows, by Mika Rottenburg, which juxtaposed a fictional and fantastical narrative with industrial production of pearls. A woman sits in an office, clocking in to smell flowers, which cause her physical distress and in turn she sneezes out plates of spaghetti and related foods. So, her job seems surreal and harmful and meaningless, Also there, in the film, connected by a string through the floor of the woman's office, on the other side of the world (flipped camera) a young girl turns a wheel, at a table where others sit, introducing pearl production-inducing irritants into living bivalves. The metaphors are drawn between consumption and destruction, dissolution and arbitrariness. Great film-piece. There were a couple of clever paintings there by some woman. A painting from the eighties I recall. There was a big retrospective of this guy’s work, I forgot his name. It asked a lot of the viewer in its pretense only. I found it hard to enjoy on a topical level, and harder to decode. It reminded me of Anslem Kiefer at times. I stood in front of this big plate of cooper with radial scratches surrounding a hole-pattern (esoteric reference to the floor-board air holes from a southern church in the Underground Railroad) in the upper right corner. “What does this mean?”, asked our docent. I was hard-pressed to answer, but I played off of another participants suggestion that the sun pattern was uplifting, countering with the fact that the scratch pattern seemed to me to lead towards to hole pattern, while stopping short, which to me spoke to a task undone, and left me feeling sad, to which she then agreed with me. God’s eye view, we were standing in front of basically a plate of cooper, very slightly modified by a conceptual artist.
Next day I went to The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.
I’d heard of this museum before, I think from looking at Sergeant paintings, as she had a lot of those. The paintings were hung in a salon style. Let’s back up. Isabella Stewart Gardner came from big money, married into big money, made her own money, and then inherited a lot of money. She collected original manuscripts and paintings, and fine furnishings also. I was there to see the paintings, which were secondary to the ‘museumness’ of the place. It was her home. Perhaps I had the wrong mindset. The paintings weren’t particularly lit. And I took them in as collection items in their housing place rather than, I don't know, conceptual statements, or particular narratives. More so the statements. I had a tea in the cafe and wrote into my notebook which I bought from a street artist in Philly for seven bucks. Ironically, it says ‘one cannot both feast and become rich’, pretty loaded for a seven dollar notebook. I drank this tea, my waiter was painfully gayish and I became unfortunately fixated on this happy couple outside in the garden, having their meal. Next to my table was a mid-thirties woman, totally bitching about her friends, to her parents chagrin and cringing. It was difficult to stay cool. Or focused. What was there to focus on? My mind began to talk to itself and a familiar ghost sat with me at the table. I got out of there, and not long after, got out of Boston. I’d frequented this place called Bukowski’s, where I got a soup left beers a couple nights. Once, I went in and after the first, I’d developed this narrative about my beautiful server, and when she asked me if I would like another drink, defeated, I said no like the world was ending, and left. I left Boston maybe the next day. I found this cheap flight, because I had a credit on my account from delta, who’d short-notice (at the gate) cancelled a flight due to weather in December, so I flew back to Sarasota, Florida for sixty bucks.
