New York trip went moderately well. I read on the bus in preparation for a big essay day. I’m up early this morning for reasons that are centered around my stress about these essay, essays fro Fem:ReConstructs. Technically I don’t need the college credit, but the stuff matters and it’s a good excuse to actually learn citations etc.
Up and down on a bus, nothing too much to speak of. I napped on the way up. I feel that I am in much better mental health today than yesterday. I was regular deadpan in New York, perhaps a better case than some kind of mania, or ego modality which I perceived was how the rest of the carachters at the art opening were operating. I met this cool dude named Anton Bashkin who self-identified as a neo-Hellenist artist, to which I blinked. I heard a lecture on animation where the lecturer was asking the audience to notice blinks in a digital short; “Blink!”, he would yell each time the character in the short would blink. The pacing of the thing was defined by his blinking. It was like a shutter release- the mind taking something in as a dose. Blink!, next concept. I aimed to suppress a jealousy from Anton’s orientation in regards to the works that he makes. “Shit, what the hell am I? I want to be a new-Hellenist, maybe I could just be that. What’s that mean? A focus on nature, animals, satyrs et al? I’m jealous, though it could be limiting, so maybe I’m not.” I thought all in an instance, in a blink. Anton was smart. He’d just curated a show and produced a postcard with th show info on it. His gallery was just up the street at 181 Orchard and closed in twenty minutes, so telling him I’d go and see it, I went on a walk. The gallery had closed ten minutes early so all I could do by the time I arrived was loook through the glass windows. The show looked good. The show looked contemporary, and by that I mean maybe one to three figures in a composition, flat design, texture, mythical narratives, in the school of Gauguin, to me.
Looking up Anton’s work, the new-Hellenist thing makes sense. He’s pulling direct from Hellenist literature, plays and poems. I have to be happy for him.
Jonathan’s show was beautiful looking. The room I’d mentioned was dynamic in a silly way, like undercurrent at the beach, the backdrop of vulnerability was palpably understood, no help from the phone checking, and for that again I was greatful for my deadpan. I sat down and wrote. There was a reading from Johnathan’s gallery book. I bought one for twenty bucks. It has all these pictures of asses, and poetry. Jonathan signed it.
Outside on the street I helped a guy find his bus. We shook hands. He was going to Tennessee.
True to plan, I got a single cake roll and a lotus pastry from a Chinatown bakery, and got on a returning bus, back to Philly. I ate my treats and read with a reader light all the way back.
