Inpsirations from the bathroom, living room and kitchen of 1443 Brooke Street.
These days in isolation start to blur together. There seems to be less boundary between anything, really. Memories and tasks stew together in a jambalaya of things-I-have-done and things-I-mean-to-do. Old memories pop up like they are appetizers with my breakfast: memory appetizers are a symptom of isolation.
I used to have this babysitter that could beat the NES Zelda that came in the gold cartridge, in a single night. She wore a blue sweater a lot and I remember thinking she was attractive based on her prowess in video games. In fact, I remember thinking: oh… you can BEAT this game, whereas I had always taken Zelda as a digital version of wandering around in the woods outside my house: no need to have a purpose, just find some new things in one of the 4 squares I had above, below and to the left and right; grab a tree branch, eat some dirt, throw a rock with my left or right hand.
Zelda had this very prescribed way to unfold the world: 4 directions, with a sword jabbing out of the front of Link, possibly eluding to the upcoming desires that would make girls in blue sweaters look a little different. But for the most part Link can traverse and take on narrative through a pretty simple set of devices. He can make not only make sense of the world with 4 directions in sight, but grow and become better.
And having 4 options seems like a pretty good situation. There’s a theorem in math that you only need 4 colors maximum in order to color any map and not have any edge share a color. I think Link understood this, because less than 4 options and everything starts to relate to everything else, and more than that, there’s too many categories and the world is just a breath of air broken up through a carnival bubble machine.
As far as discovery goes, 4 works out pretty well, too. When looking at generalities and specifics, it seems we start at point A, zoom in to point B, move a little over to a point C that is snuggled up to point B scale-wise, and then zoom out to point D which maybe is nowhere near point A. A little dance step between 4 points.
I was reading Negotiations by Gilles Deleuze and there is a passage where he states, “In barren times philosophy retreats to reflecting ‘on’ things.” Later he will group art and science in as equally compelling creative forces as philosophy, sharing in the fact that they should not be endeavors that reflect on things outside of themselves, but use the strengths of their internal structure to creatively ask questions; they should invent from within and not try to reflect and mimic what is being achieved in other schools of thought. In some ways this is the ABCD dance as well. Small details make up a general structure, with that general structure sharing characteristics with some other general structure, which can then help inform this second structure’s details. It’s like the lower frequency whale songs of generalities that are in schools of thought carry over into adjacent ways of thinking which we can then use to spin up the high RPM whine of specifics: tattoo machines on the skin of a poetic idea.
I like that this ABCD dance requires a plodding motion through various scales of thinking and means there is a certain discoverability in the world: the world isn’t there until we get there. Observation is required. Observation is the batteries of our environment. I’ve been reading some works of Nicolas Gisin, who kindly sent me some of his papers after I offered a drawing in exchange (pictured. It’s a parking lot in DTLA. And to be clear the religious text briefly featured in the bottom of the frame is a pamphlet that was left on my car's window titled, "How to get into Heaven", where I wrote "FUCK ______, A LOT.", where ______ is someone's name and because I'm romantic.), having to do with intuitionist mathematics. There’s a lot of nuance around intuitionist mathematics, but one of the big ideas for me is the idea that the real numbers (as defined mathematically: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real\_number]) are not actually what we witness in the real world. The real world is constructed from measurement that makes the world more and more specific as we continue to measure. There is no number with infinite long digits existing before being found. This is an important distinction as it means there is new information to be found in the world; new stories to be found and told.
And we measure the world a bit like we color it. We pick a set of tools (perhaps
4 tools work best at any one time.) and make measurements and step forward into the next map. These tools are things like love, apathy, ambition, and fear. A real smart woman recently told me that we should use tools until they stop working, and then be okay with moving on. I agree with this whole heartedly. Let go of fear, maybe hold onto love. If you color a map with the same paint brushes, over and over again, it eventually just looks like one color. Zoom in and out a bit. Try some new colors.
ABCD.
Today while moving the last of my large items to my new studio, unofficially called Square K as my neighbor is a Circle K, I drove my truck under a loading dock door that I had failed to raise to the proper height, crippling a set of shelves that were riding a bit proud from my truck. What was strange about the incident is that as it happened, I looked back in the rearview mirror watching buckling metal crease and collapse like many newborn giraffes trying to run across an icy lake (I used to know this artist, Ella, and she did a great newborn giraffe impersonation. She was all elbows and knees if she wanted to be, but at other times was like an arrow shot through a vacuum), and the SOUND was of saw blades being used as percussion and something dramatic from a movie like Lawrence of Arabia; timpani drums being played atop sandblasted camels.
But the sight of it all was a little strange. There weren't enough frames in the movie being shot (the movie being "Shelves buckling on the back of a T100", and I caught myself thinking at that moment: action movies are quite realistic. In between my laughter at the scene I thought of action movies. And maybe this is because I just went through a marathon of watching all the Fast and Furious movies (there's 10 if you count right, with the best being the little-known origin story of Han, Better Luck Tomorrow) and when cars crash into buildings and fly out of helicopters being driven by tanks, or whatever absurd scenario is being concocted, everything folds and collapses in a way that makes me think they should have paid more for CGI.
Looking out of Nemo (that's the T100) at those shelves, looking like they were being rendered on used Thinkpad from the 90s, I realized I just didn't have that much experience watching things collapse so that it didn't matter if destruction is high resolution or not in a movie because I don't really know what metal collapsing in violence really looks like. Now I have a bit better idea, which I'm choosing to use as a way to look at this experience as a positive versus me just loosing a set of shelves. Much like Han's storyline in the Fast and Furious, it's better to look at the larger framework in some instances than the details. On the other hand, if we generalize too much, you end up with garbage like the The Fate of the Furious (the 8th movie in the Franchise, or 9th if you count Better Luck Tomorrow).
That crumpling/buckling metal just didn't make any sense to look at. It was foreign. And that's the thing about something that doesn't really have teeth in generalities or specifics: it's hard to place. We require both to make sense of the world; and it may just be that our ability to wander from generalities to specifics back to generalities is a very human experience, which also gives us the ability to assign value to parts of the world, because we have an actual sense to some intrinsic depth to the experience. It's a bit like discovering the world through running through sewage drains and streets, where each topology allows motion that the other doesn't. Generalities and details are like real numbers and imaginary numbers, which when used together you can make a nice unit circle with.
I read this quote the other day by Hannah Arendt, "It is the sign of sophistication to speak in generalities, according to which all cats are grey and we are all equally guilty". I think she's talking about what happens when we get stuck on one side of the divide and suddenly think of ourselves as purely an observer; never in the middle ground between details and generalities. We become tainted and malicious in this mode. Maybe a bit toxic with self satisfaction. There's a sweet spot to be found: the Han Spot (in the context of the Fast and Furious movies).
And, in general, I will remember to open loading dock bays to their full height, when I, specifically, am transporting tall objects.
It's okay if your instagram boyfriend
doesn't like long walks on the beach.
Or holding your hand.
It's the poppy fields that matter.
I’m listening to this book on tape, Boom: Mad Money, Mega Dealers, and the Rest of Contemporary Art. Is that what people still call it: book on tape? That’s naming two antiquated technologies into one description of a modern medium. How quaint.
The book is interesting in the perspective it takes on the rise of different artists. Instead of looking at the relationships between different artists and their contemporaries, the book focuses on dealers and collectors in relationship to how different artists’ careers unfold.
I guess I’ve always been a doe-eyed believer in the purity of art: an artist can create their work in an ecosystem of their choosing, insulated from any market that is created around that ecosystem. But behavior around the Art Market can really bastardize my feelings of being a deer prancing around sparkling rivers. The dominating raise of the Art Market speaks to the fact that the newest “ism” of art may be entrepreneurism, having started back in the Warhol days and now exemplified with people using 1031 exchanges and auction houses to inflate the monetary value of their collections of objects that are readily identifiable to the general public as desirable.
This 1031 exchange process that rich people use to create value within their art collection is fucking absurd and the sort of thing I imagine that coked up guy in Diehard really loving to talk about on a first date. I feel like someone tried to explain this to me years ago at a party where there was too much glass, too much concrete and not enough things to fill the space, and I sort of nodded and felt embarrassed for myself. Why was I there?
There’s a club in Berlin called Berghain with a bouncer who is notoriously hard to get past: Sven. He had a tattoo of a ruler on one of his arms and a friend of mine joked that it was to measure how far he was going to fist you before telling you to fuck off. The thing about the mystique of Berghain, and the asshole-ness of Sven, is that it made the place keep a lot of what made it good, even after becoming a place of such hype. The music stayed good. The crowd wasn’t crawling with people just trying to say they had been there. The way to have access to it was to be kicked out a few times but always show up again; learn to speak some German; know the neighborhood; always know who was playing. Because the whole point is that you wanted to hear the music. The point is that you loved the nightlife that Berlin as a whole offered up. There was no way to shortcut this love.
And Boom has an undertone that speaks to the shortcuts that rich people take to be cool. Some of them don’t want to take the time to get fisted (symbolically) by Sven or learn the ins and outs of what makes a good painting, but instead they want to purchase something to signal this knowledge. And in the process boost their net value some.
This is an economic system made to give people something to talk about. That's it. And to be clear these are thoughts around The Market of art not The World of art. xoxo. gossip girl.
She said we would feed on broken concrete using railroad ties as straws and the tops of skyscrapers as forks. She didn’t say this with words. She announced this loudly with her collar and cheek bones being megaphones and fancy electronic displays; her mouth was robbing banks with import cars and many sidearms. There were no breaks and all the lights in the city were green. People cheered from windows as we sped along pulling up yellow dotted lines, flicked onto our backs like mud from a teenagers bike racing through some forest with a precious payload of porno magazines.
Headlamps on foreheads pressed to tempered glass and the stereo is on high; no headlights or windshield wipers, because this is love that reaches back to memories that are carved from Ovaltine and Kix. Roofs of mouths scratched with corn and packed with chocolate: wartime in a mouth with new age medical remedies. Remedies written about in day-glow and typefaces that are water parks and cotton candy.
She was probably there the first time I choked on my own spit or bit my lip while eating soft food, watching from afar, a peep hole, no, a periscope reaching up from the damp part of a tree right behind the bark. She is whispered bass lines in dreams. She was probably that strange bird I once saw behind my neighbors house who’s wings pointed to the sky as if to say “don’t shoot”, but its breast was aglow with something like a gasoline fire.
Oh, she’s a certain tree growing out of a dumpster. You can’t find anything more beautiful in stacked bricks or glass houses like ponds somehow also stacked on city streets. Nothing is better found in the gossiping whirls of alley shadows.
When we have sex the neighbors listen in with the intensity of sports fanatics and I believe that, running to the front door’s peep hole, I saw one person taking notes and a local reporter scurry away.
Shit eating grins picked clean with rebar toothpicks.
Headlamps on foreheads pressed to tempered glass and the stereo is on high; no headlights or windshield wipers, because this is love that reaches back to memories that are carved from Ovaltine and Kix. Roofs of mouths scratched with corn and packed with chocolate: wartime in a mouth with new age medical remedies. Remedies written about in day-glow and typefaces that are water parks and cotton candy.
She was probably there the first time I choked on my own spit or bit my lip while eating soft food, watching from afar, a peep hole, no, a periscope reaching up from the damp part of a tree right behind the bark. She is whispered bass lines in dreams. She was probably that strange bird I once saw behind my neighbors house who’s wings pointed to the sky as if to say “don’t shoot”, but its breast was aglow with something like a gasoline fire.
Oh, she’s a certain tree growing out of a dumpster. You can’t find anything more beautiful in stacked bricks or glass houses like ponds somehow also stacked on city streets. Nothing is better found in the gossiping whirls of alley shadows.
When we have sex the neighbors listen in with the intensity of sports fanatics and I believe that, running to the front door’s peep hole, I saw one person taking notes and a local reporter scurry away.
Shit eating grins picked clean with rebar toothpicks.
