Side Note

Here's a post about posting


When I come across older posts, often, I like them better. they're written more from the outside in rather than inside out- and that's a quote I borrow from an introduction to Joost Swarte's English publication, Is That All There Is. Anyway, I hope to get back to a more clean style of writing- less panicky and more straight documentary. I also will make an effort to work in a more straight-forward approach. I am reading a collection of lectures and writings from Philip Guston. He's full of great quotes; well read and ever the oppositionist. His working method is linear. I don't know whether his paintings benefit from it, but he seems like a smart guy for it or in spite of it.

I have a good sense of mental health right now, although I tend to wax poetic for hours every day, wondering about whom I will pair up with, then going back to thinking 'it's no-one, of course!', or thinking of how I will spend my time or make money, and likewise I think, 'no how, for now'.

My mind nears rest through my work, and so in fits and starts I'll continue on. I've got more to write, but I'll continue it on another post. Here's to a bright future of clean documentation.

Embarassment

And we’re back.

 

 I published my blog address on a different social media platform, and have felt the oblique embarrassment in these days following. Since my last post I read among other things this intro to “My life and Hard Times” by James Thurber- a copy of his book I picked up at a thrift store in passing in Philadelphia on my last visit up. God, a fair amount has happened since my last post. Mostly I feel like a schmuck. I’m embarrassed by my privilege, and it seems especially fluorescent of late. James Thurber, in his into writes about the pitfalls of the disoriented autobiographer- making a quick box within which an ugly caricature is drawn. It kind of deactivated me for a bit. I felt raw. He was right, what he said, and I still don’t know really where to go from there, writing-wise. There’s something else- I forgot who it was- someone said, something about how his writing and his painting being in direct competition, so he ceased to write. This one’s a little cockeyed for me, but I can nevertheless relate. For this quip I can counter with a quote from Hemmingway, which has something to do with his writing so much and so little as only to keep himself sane. That seems to suit me. I feel inclined to write.

 I live with my parents now. I moved from Sarasota, North to Crystal River for an undetermined amount of time. I’ve expanded my stuff into a studio in a kind of second half of their house. They let me have it- this big studio space. I’m like a little otter back there, running around, sorting, picking things up, little paintings, drinking coffees and sodas and devoting unbridled attention to whichever painting I end up in front of. I made a small burn pile for some not-up-to-snuff paintings. Part of me knows that all of the paintings deserve to go in that burn pile. Nothing that I make is any good- it just looks kind-of practiced- it’s whack. For the amount that I’ve been painting, I do not feel particularly smarter, or more cultured- I’m just nerdier for it. I guess the idea is that it’s in the next painting. I’m going back to painting. In a little bit. There’s still some stuff I gotta say. I don’t think I’ll be better off for spending time at my folk’s house. It’s cool to know family and all, but it’s a little whack to revert into childhood. I hope my parents can be nice to me while I’m here- one less thing to worry about while I figure things out. I felt crazy, like nuts, last night before bed, like totally disengaged, and like a waste. This morning I slept in and felt really great upon waking. There’s a few paths, there’s a non-engaged mooch, an engaged mooch (career, etc. – yuppies), and an engaged citizen. (which citizen seems a little patriotic, but whatever). And the difference here between a mooch and a citizen, is a some – god what the fuck am I talking about? There’s something toxic in Crystal River which is funny. An effect which has to do with relative IQ, and the lowered bar which subordinates others to your opinions-as-facts. There are no shortages of locals who feel qualified to look down their noses at you and deliver a contrived, cable-television rhetoric at you. That’s some of the source of my second guessing. God, I just feel toxic I guess. At least now I have a local library card. I’m not having a good time here, regarding being a yuppie. I left Ringling College, and am transferring to PAFA in the fall. What could I do between now and then that might shake some of the yuppie off? Hike the goddamn Appalachian Trail? That was a stupid question, alright, whatever, but, right? Build a Habitat for humanity home is kind-of ringing loud and clear for me right now.

 

I think that’s all I have to say.

Yikes

Yikes on that last post. All's well, just drank a bunch one night.

Backstory: I took a day trip down to Miami with the fine arts students, hoping to further rub elbows with the intern program coordinators at the Rubell Family Collection. The bus left campus at 8:30am. I'd stayed up the night before working on paintings, then also, skateboarding around (I ordered a skateboard from online, and have been blissing out, like finding a long lost friend) until late. SO I got on the bus and ate a doughnut, as provided, then napped, and we stopped at a rest stop, where I peed, then ate another doughnut, then napped, and then we were in Miami, where we got off the bus and promptly ate lunch, provided to us by a corporate deli. I had a chicken salad, much as I usually go vegetarian, I've been on a high protein thing, which, eh. I'm closer to veg again now. Went into the De la Cruz collection, where I saw a few Peter Doig paintings. One of them excited me. Also a sculpture by Thomas Houseago. The fine arts students promptly went up to the third floor to see Torres's (or 'Felix's') pieces: a pile of candy, and a pile of papers with printed sentences on them, yikes. Felix is a museum legend, and I'm down, (look up his work if you don't know it- Alex Felix Gonzales Torres), but the campy attitude which my knuckle-dragging compatriots ate it up was bothersome, and I (perhaps as an oppositionist first and foremost) could not line up to take the candy, or a printed paper, as granted permission by the artist. It so happens that the candy represents the body of a deteriorating human (plagued with HIV). It's a statement piece about how we all participate in the undoing of these unfortunate individuals, which is so so literal, right? SO here's a bunch of fine artists in the museum space, having eaten doughnuts, and driven down on a private coach, and lunched, and cookied (provided by the museum), and topically involved with Felix's work, and they trounce up and take the candy! I know they're not hungry. Whatever, I couldn't. Here I've talked more about the whack piece than the Doig's, because the Doig painting (with a ferris wheel) speaks for itself- it's queer and plain, and subtle and honest. It is whole in itself, and interesting. So I left that gallery/museum with a bad aftertaste of pot-shot post-modernism, and a good memory of a Doig.

Then we went to the Rubell, where I'd been just two weeks prior. Things went well- I spoke with a Lauren, and the internship prospects seemed bleak but not impossible. The paintings were mostly the same since the last time I'd been. We moved along to the PAMM.

The PAMM is the Perez Art Museum of Miami. I'd also been there two weeks prior, but this time there was a lecture by Sarah Oppenheimer, a Yale graduate who installed these architectural sculptures that were tied into the PAMM building itself, and moved- they're hard to describe. I ask her eventually whether or not there was anything to be 'seen', actually, (as the conversation had that far been regarding tons of theory). I wanted to know if the photo-documentation, or video, would suffice in conveying what the piece was, or to what degree would it communicate its eventness. (like in painting, or graffiti, it kind-of is all about the 'fick'. So I wanted to know, and I said this part too, "if there was anything to be seen). She replied, and I was slightly embarrassed to look her in the eye- she was honest and direct in her answer. She looked me in the eyes and didn't break contact- like she was imprinting, or programming into my brain a great insight. I don't know if I got it all to be honest. She made the case more cunningly that I feel capable of expressing, that in fact the sculptures, in their construction of two planes of glass, and the air space in between, revolving about an axis, suspended by their steel frame, acted as windows, or viewfinders, and in their abstraction (that is, in their making-planar-of-what-beyond-is-real) they are in fact perpetually generating images.

I sat in bewilderment, thinking of what a brilliant idea, and how eloquently she expressed it all, it was, she did, and I realized that she did not answer my question, and the guy next to me wanted a shot at asking her something (which he turned out to be oratorically challenged), and I passed the mic.

I left the museum and it was time for pizza. The Fine Arts students ordered a slough of expensive (presumably- it looked very designed) pizza. I ate two slices, as we had an overabundance and were encouraged to put it away. We got on the bus and went back to Sarasota, wherefrom I went straight to the bar and drank to forget, and drank with new friends- thespians it would happen, who made for entertaining company, and refreshing quips. I went to bed after closing the bar down and had a rough night, vomiting (thank sweet God, to get some of that food back out from overeating). Then in the morning, more roughness, more vomiting, and again. Fuck fine arts.

I read Jung's Man and His Symbols recently, as well as Ringworld and Babbit.

Boring Fuck

Life is boring. 

Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck. 

abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz boring boring i vomited bile before coming down to the labs. I’ve been dreaming all day. Resting and letting the poison of booze stew in me I feel crazy..I can’t escape my thoughts. I get pictures  in my head, and I want to draw them, but there’s so many. I need things to slow down. Booze is the worst. Oh my God have mercy on me. I want to have relief. Mercy, mercy. Sleep brings me no comfort, nor food joy. Let the sun burn my flesh, and with it my desires- boil out of me. I’m dying. d

3-30-17

Yesterday’s dream (again) was about rolling black and grey earth- soil. 

This morning’s dream was centered around Ringing College. What a strange place. Carl Johnson’s facsimile said something along the lines of ‘how fortunate we are that in the morning, the bright red door is not red at all- it’s pink.’  And Patrick Lindhart’s facsimile expressed joy in my half drank opened beer. My mother and I went to New York, with some classmates maybe, to some industrial yuppie-ilex, which I’d seen on my timeline on snapchat and thought ‘those kids are lame, and those shirts, etc.’. the Yuppie-plex was brimming with designer junk. Screen printed Japonisme shirts abound. My mom, I told her to watch her things, because she’d left them out on some table of accessories and they blended in. She went over and sought to pick up her wallet, while another woman, a trope of the fingerey shopper, picked up her purse and began to open it up. My mother intercepted the purse, breaking a social rule by taking it from the woman’s hands. There was a cute heroine figure, who came through. She had a roommate that was lesbian, and she herself was one to hold her cards close. I knew I could get her. I played the game some. Meanwhile, there was a real game going on too. My heroine figure was in fact a cheerleader/ competitor. The  game was a ring-hip game like that of the ancient Aztecs, though in the dream there appeared no players or action. The world toggled between completely submerged and a still like in a De Ciricho painting. I stayed on a red-clay roof, doing some asinine job of some kind. There was a teacher figure dictating my instructions. I had to clean gutters it seemed. Also present were an army of students, ready to become players in the game-to-be. The heroine had outlines on her face that came off and transcended her, like a Picasso cubist composition.  She seemed to mean everything. 

It’s not been easy nurturing this fire in my heart. Something’s changed. I wonder if it is because I feel sick, or because I feel no longer tied to Ringling that I find it hard to get moving on assignments. Last night, at 2am, I thought ‘it’s probably these eighteen hour days, though in the past it was more like an event than a chore- now it’s like a chore. Here’s my schedule:

M- 8a-6p Printmaking, Illustration, Figure Drawing, out at six

T- 8a-10p Digital Ill, Glass Casting, FEWS

W- 8a-12p Painting, Painting, (painting), lab monitor 

Th- ditto monday

F- ditto tuesday, studio time into late

Sa- day off, Fews

Su- Clean up, reset, studio time into late. 

This is the way I can do school this semester, and there’s hardly room for breaks. I love it when I’m manic. I feel like school has given up on me, or I on it. Both really. Yesterday I explained why I wanted to go to PAFA- it seemed to get at some new thoughts- “it just seems to make sense. I’m 26 now, and Philadelphia, I think will be a good spot to graduate from with a bachelor’s, at 28- I’ll already in a way be somewhere. The museums are good, the lineage is good,” (I didn’t say that lineage part, but it’s there) ,”New models, new teachers, different teachers, different techniques, a good big library, that kind of stuff. Also, we’ll always be friends, especially if you keep painting- the connection’s been made- we’re going to see each other again and I can’t wait! I see the groups here at Ringling, and I know what jobs we’re competing for, and I would like to work for one of these places too but, it’s like, the factions have already been made, and I don’t feel really ‘in the club’, you know?” So, in that regard too, it might be good to move away. 

Yesterday's dream

Last night’s, or rather this morning’s dream:

P. 1
I went to bed with an old friend, and I had an outbreak of herpes on my lip. (which I do now, in real life). And I wouldn’t kiss her, and in the morning my guy friend asked if everything was alright, because he’d found so;me condoms with a lot of blood in them. Me and my lover-friend went to see and I looked at my penis., which had a cut in it. I’d done a poor job love-making, too forceful- I’d brought open wounds.
____

Real life:

I was reading Jung’s Man and His Symbols yesterday and it was interesting that dreams could be an upside-down version of reality. I so happens that two nights ago upon receiving a text message from a friend, that we’d agreed to hook up. I was still feeling a little under the weather, so when it came time, I explained my history of oral herpes and adamantly expressed that there be no kissing. My mental health unravelled before her. Probably the weed that we smoked had something to do with that. There was no hooking up, and thus no transmission. That night I fell asleep right after I’d scared her out, with my clothes on and a lamp on too. I was sick and I felt it roll in heavy. It took over. I woke in the morning with a sensation that I had a cold sore, and it was not ill founded. One of those suckers had manifested on my bottom lip, classic. So I’m grateful that I scared her away instead of hooking up- I may have been in a phase of infection. 

____

Cont.

Then a potential punk house move-in.. They seemed so cool, until I got a vision realizing the difference between living there and visiting- there was an exoticism that wore off, and the charm and stickers all over and punk references began to trigger claustrophobic notions in me. We were about to form a band, they asked if I played drums. I stirred in my bed and hit my high hat (in real life), breaking me from sleep, in a sad-funny way. A melancholy funny, the bridge between waking and dreaming, blurred. It  makes me wonder if the dream is pulled from the subconscious only before waking, to justify the loss of consciousness. 

Dream 3-23-17

Falling from a dud plane, I was so enamored by the composition of falling debris- a locomotive, in parts- I fell through the air, swimming and falling. I had a wasp as a fellow. It became too late to open the shoot. I became fascinated with the edge- the moment at which it would be too late to deploy the shoot- a game of chicken. Dreamlike, I slowed as I came close to the ground, silent and there like a watercolor painting, landing even on my feet. I did die. I think this was a death, touching down. but it was a natural thing, and I remained present throughout. The wasp in a vignette, stung me all over, crawling and stinging in a circle around my wrists, and mid-thigh, and I told the story from an armchair years later, and I had a terrible redness at the ends of my two last fingers, and also from the middle of my pointer down to it’s tip. It reminded me as a viewer (outside of myself) of frostbite- utter death of the appendages. The wasp stung me and crippled me; I imagine because it was a wasp. The takeaway symbol of the morning is the hand with the shocker fingers, red from the knuckles to the tips, useless, like dipped in chocolate syrup.