| (no subject) |
[Jun. 19th, 2007|05:11 pm] |
go down moses - its all lifting, and there are blue eyes around to pick the leftovers off and blow them away.
blow that feeling back to me lord
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| (no subject) |
[Apr. 30th, 2007|07:36 pm] |
soon to portland. a boat.
in the fading of the constellations we are tree thick and growing |
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| a little whitman for the new year |
[Jan. 2nd, 2007|04:34 am] |
Whoever you are, I fear you are walking the walks of dreams,
I fear these supposed realities are to melt from under your feet and
hands;
Even now, your features, joys, speech, house, trade, manners,
troubles, follies, costume, crimes, dissipate away from you,
Your true Soul and Body appear before me,
They stand forth out of affairs--out of commerce, shops, law,
science, work, forms, clothes, the house, medicine, print,
buying, selling, eating, drinking, suffering, dying.
Whoever you are, now I place my hand upon you, that you be my poem;
I whisper with my lips close to your ear,
I have loved many women and men, but I love none better than you.
O I have been dilatory and dumb;
I should have made my way straight to you long ago;
I should have blabb'd nothing but you, I should have chanted nothing
but you.
I will leave all, and come and make the hymns of you;
None have understood you, but I understand you;
None have done justice to you--you have not done justice to yourself;
None but have found you imperfect--I only find no imperfection in
you;
None but would subordinate you--I only am he who will never consent
to subordinate you;
I only am he who places over you no master, owner, better, God,
beyond what waits intrinsically in yourself.
Painters have painted their swarming groups, and the centre figure of
all;
From the head of the centre figure spreading a nimbus of gold-color'd
light;
But I paint myriads of heads, but paint no head without its nimbus of
gold-color'd light;
From my hand, from the brain of every man and woman it streams,
effulgently flowing forever.
O I could sing such grandeurs and glories about you!
You have not known what you are--you have slumber'd upon yourself all
your life;
Your eye-lids have been the same as closed most of the time;
What you have done returns already in mockeries;
(Your thrift, knowledge, prayers, if they do not return in mockeries,
what is their return?)
The mockeries are not you;
Underneath them, and within them, I see you lurk;
I pursue you where none else has pursued you;
Silence, the desk, the flippant expression, the night, the accustom'd
routine, if these conceal you from others, or from yourself,
they do not conceal you from me;
The shaved face, the unsteady eye, the impure complexion, if these
balk others, they do not balk me,
The pert apparel, the deform'd attitude, drunkenness, greed,
premature death, all these I part aside.
There is no endowment in man or woman that is not tallied in you;
There is no virtue, no beauty, in man or woman, but as good is in
you;
No pluck, no endurance in others, but as good is in you;
No pleasure waiting for others, but an equal pleasure waits for you.
As for me, I give nothing to any one, except I give the like
carefully to you;
I sing the songs of the glory of none, not God, sooner than I sing
the songs of the glory of you.
Whoever you are! claim your own at any hazard!
These shows of the east and west are tame, compared to you;
These immense meadows--these interminable rivers--you are immense and
interminable as they;
These furies, elements, storms, motions of Nature, throes of apparent
dissolution--you are he or she who is master or mistress over
them,
Master or mistress in your own right over Nature, elements, pain,
passion, dissolution.
The hopples fall from your ankles--you find an unfailing sufficiency;
Old or young, male or female, rude, low, rejected by the rest,
whatever you are promulges itself;
Through birth, life, death, burial, the means are provided, nothing
is scanted;
Through angers, losses, ambition, ignorance, ennui, what you are
picks its way. |
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| (no subject) |
[Mar. 27th, 2006|05:18 pm] |
scoop
I have a show opening tomorrow at 7 East 7th St. 2nd floor , Hougton Gallery
Its going to be great
drinks
6-8 |
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| (no subject) |
[Jan. 6th, 2006|03:04 am] |
my last day here
off to new york
goodbye new orleans |
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| (no subject) |
[Nov. 12th, 2005|02:55 am] |
My bike tires rattle as i ride down the Magazine strips, and with each pop and bumble is a smooth resolution with my torn city. In each corner stands a stinking fridge taped tight like a woman strapped with a wire frame, waiting to bubble outward.
Each moment in this city feels like the last, and the one before that resounds of the previous and for the future. All things are at once the same and moving. Its an exercise bike. I have missed that stagnation that even in its boomtown momentum makes the softest noise.
What is most surprising to me right now is the emptiness of my sleeping space, the lack of bodies. Whiskey is everywhere, and with each new drink comes the sounds of the old. I can almost feel myself bent over and spitting up small fragments of spinning drunk. But it never reaches that point. Its on the fulcrum, constantly standing at the architect's abyss. I feel that any leaning over to see the future will end in sewage.
I postulate. I postulate. I postulate nothing, but I keep thinking about Kierkegaard's indirect remark about being conscious - we are because we can question that we are. If there were no question, there could not exist the thing itself being questioned. Borges is boring me constantly.
And in all of this the desire to kiss something is becoming stronger. Deep, deep down. I find myself daydreaming about lips - just a small parting from today, or tomorrow, or winter, or summer or wherever you are - you.
What i learned from my visit from spain is all is the same, except one's eyes one is wearing.
drunk. |
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| from Baton Rouge to Baltimore to New York City |
[Oct. 4th, 2005|07:06 pm] |
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I just arrived in Baltimore - i have a small bed in a large gallery space on the east side, and am going to be going to New York this weekend via the chinatown bus. |
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| (no subject) |
[Sep. 26th, 2005|09:29 pm] |
They had, for awhile, grown used to him. But after
they lit the kitchen lamp and in the dark
it began to burn, restlessly, the stranger
was altogether strange. They washed his neck,
and since they knew nothing about his life
they lied till they produced another one,
as they kept washing. One of the had a cough,
and while she coughed she left the vinegar sponge,
dripping, upon his face. The other stood
and rested for a minute. A few drops fell
from the stiff scrub-brush, as his horrible
contorted hand was trying to make the whole
room aware that he no longer thirsted.
And he did let them know. With a short cough,
as if embarrassed, they both began to work
more hurriedly now, so that across
the mute, patterned wallpaper their thick
shadows reeled and staggered as if bound
in a net; till they had finished washing him.
The night, in the uncurtained window-frame,
was pitiless. And one without a name
lay clean and naked there, and gave commands.
(Rilke- "washing the corpse")
---------
Baton Rouge, how sad i am inside you.
You don't even fuck me the same way New Orleans did. |
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| the first day of subtle relief |
[Sep. 12th, 2005|04:01 pm] |
interesting (and at the same time not so interesting) to me that the one thing that took my mind off of New Orleans for more than an hour, was a serious mix of philosophy and womanliness.
Today i decided to make my way to Topeka's public library with the hope of finding a book of dialogues between Habermas and Derrida about philosophy in the terrorist age. I walked through the building, eyed some poorly rendered copies of a diebenkorn and a rothko, and then made my way to the stacks. I found the book, and also picked up camus' the rebel for a rereading. As i searched for a place to sit, my eyes ran across a woman in her late 20's lounging barefoot, with her thick leather boots on her side. In between her hands was a copy of Dostoevski's Notes from the Underground, and at her side was a small collection of essays on kafka. So, like any man, bored and suddenly, moderately infatuated, i sat down reasonably close, but not too close and began to attempt to read.
There is no way to truly focus on philosophy while the air of a beautiful woman is near you. So after a few minutes of failed reading, I took out a notebook and began a sketch, of course of her. By doing this, i had already accepted the fact that no words would be passed between us, i had suddenly become a voyeur. Representation is power or humility, depending upon the weight of the stroke.
So i spent a good long time, huddled, drawing this girl, and in that hour, i could hear in my head everything she was reading, the voice of the sick man wandering in her head, his proclamation, his revolt. Suddenly all of the content of that book came back to me, and i guess that was my reward for focusing, for opening my eyes and taking something in, and for lusting without direct connection.
anyway, i got up after, met eyes with her for the first time, and went to the check out counter, and then left. I always love those encounters that are a mix of subjective fabulation and actual concrete experience. I was there, she was there, our minds were both reviewing the same information - this is known. Everything else is a romanticism, which tends to be a beautiful break from constant observation and anxiety. |
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| a blurb on Katrina |
[Sep. 7th, 2005|12:45 am] |
guys i gotta tell ya, i have been watching the news too much and i am quite sick of the blaming of President Bush for Katrina's wrath
Just to give you my liberal credentials (so you don't dismiss me as some young pseudo-hip republican), I voted for Kerry, i got arrested at the RNC protest in New York (spent 36 hours in dirty pier cell), in many ways i am anti the right wing cabinet occupying the white house right now, and the war in iraq has me more and more frustrated every day.
But this blaming of the right wing really needs to stop. It is hiding the true reasons that people in new orleans are dying.
Someone needs to start talking about Blanco's and Nagin's failure and lack of preparation. LETS DISCUSS THE STATE LEVEL PROBLEMS. We need to talk about Mary Landrieu's inability to be collected and reasonable about her assessment of the damage while on National Television. Her and Blanco looked as if they were going to break down the whole time, and they both wasted time sharing personal stories on the news; which is a nice way to allow themselves to be human, but fuck, i want my governor to be kicking ass to get people out of there, on the phone all day to get supplies there, etc. And when it came to busing people out she did a fine job, but was not quick enough to let the federal government step in. Nagin was slow to respond, and when he did, he allowed his city to be hurt even more by not saying "fuck the bureaucracy of this state" and going straight to Bush, the way Gulliani did.
Also, why is the news not describing more about the city's situation in terms of hurricanes. We all knew that if a 4 or 5 hit us dead on, we would have nothing to go back to, the city would be completely underwater and those that did not or could not leave would most probably die. WE ALL KNEW THIS. It was the risk of living in our city. It was constantly in the humid smell of the air - it was part of the whimsical nature of our drunkness, our jazz music, our culture.
Our state fucked up, people were left dying there because our state fucked up, not because Bush neglected us.
The levees for example- they protect from the water coming in, but if the water does come in the levees hinder us by not allowing it to recede. That is exactly the situation on the federal/state level. All our rules attempt to keep the federal government out of the day to day state affairs, but do not allowing it to override them in the case of a coastal emergency. What slowed down the rescue was a mix of contraflow evacuation (that continued well into monday), state bureaucracy, and poor preparation on the City's part. Why isn't the superdome restocked with preparations at the beginning of every hurricane season for something like this? Why not the convention center too?
It takes time to get supplies and troops across the country. and so much of it was moving by boat.
And fuck, They keep saying that Bush has made this a race issue (and somewhere in my mind i cannot help but this he is a racist, but that is beside the point), but this is a CLASS issue (unfortunately, in New Orleans, CLASS and RACE are quite close together - though the middle class is rising steadily). Bush has not made this a race issue, the media has. Pictures of white families taking things from stores juxtaposed with pictures of blacks have different captions. Whites are "surviving" and "finding food" and blacks are "looting." Even the compositions of the photos are slanted - the photos of blacks tend to be more frontal and abrasive, more in your face, while those of whites tend to be more tragic and contemplative, with the subject in the middleground, as opposed to the foreground.
On top of that, those of you that are from New Orleans know that there is a class/race issue. Our city stinks of the remnants of slavery - prime example - the public schools (except for Franklin) are 80 to 90% Black and the private schools are 80% white. a little bit of a disconnect? yes? maybe the news should talk more about the economic situation there. the majority of the vote is poor black and the minority is wealthy white. we know this. this needs to be talked about. and through this disaster it will be. But the country needs to know this.
And someone needs to fucking shoot Sean Penn and his cronies, i no longer am going to be able to listen to obnoxiously wealthy celebrities voice their concern at every chance for publicity during a disaster or politically charged moment. Your opinions should not mean more to anyone than any other persons in this country. and just because you have a notable face, and many people FEEL like they know you does not give you the right to abuse your celebrity. This is not free advertising time, my city is underwater, my friends might be dead, and i no longer have a home, fuck you and your disconnected, illinformed, snobbish opinions that don't have even retain the slightest trickle of true conviction. Go back to your mansion in your gated community in Beverly Hills and drink yourself to death.
Back to New Orleans : And also, does everyone realize what this hurricane is going to do to New Orleans reformation? The poor do not have the time of the money to wait around for 6 months and rebuild for years. The rich do. Our city is going to become a huge opportunity for wealthy investors to buy up huge amounts of poor land around downtown and recreate it anew. When the city is up and running again it is going to be a wealthy city. The public schools are going to reviewed and changed. The corruption in the education system there will probably be fixed. Its going to be a recreation land for the wealthy, you might not even be able to live in the city if you don't make over 15,000$ a year. Our city is not going to be the same ever again. DO YOU UNDERSTAND THAT! Katrina wiped out any hope of returning to the city you once loved. It is going to be rich again like it was 100 years ago.
Who knows, maybe it will be good, maybe jazz will return to New Orleans, but sadly i don't think it will ever again be the city i grew up in, the city i love, the city i was hoping to grow old in.
allie |
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| (no subject) |
[Sep. 5th, 2005|12:59 am] |
I wish i could write about katrina, but i haven't the heart yet.
I got out with Billy, Martin and Micah early sunday morning, we were bound for lafeyette but when we awoke, martin had turned us toward mississippi and we were on our way to Arkansas. After the hurrican hit and moved on , i used up some of my frequent flyer miles (that i did not know that i had accumulated) and jetted to Kansas. My family is in Topeka, my siblings are terrified, and its a small slow city that makes for slow living. A few days after i arrived i caught a ride with one of friends from school (who lives in lawrence and is my cousin by law) to minneapolis, minn. We've been here all weekend. I go back to topeka this afternoon, and i hope to only be there for two weeks.
I need to get back to city and collect my things. I don't know if there is a way to get a job fixing up the city, but that is always a possibility too. Right now quite a few people have offered for me to stay with them for three months free of charge in the following states: idaho, kansas, california, hawaii, maryland, new york, and texas. I don't really know what to do.
i hurt watching my city and its people left to fate |
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| (no subject) |
[Aug. 25th, 2005|12:37 am] |
my body is so tired. Today, i worked on a sculpture. nothing at all came of it. I have been reading a lot more freud than usual. Right now, his direct, no nonsense, biologically based approach works for me. its tight, and to the point. I think by saturday i will need a break from him though.
i really dislike barbara kruger, and carolee schneemann. I don't like poor feminism. I don't like people defending petty feminism. I like strong women, who understand that they are women and accept all that comes with their bodies. I really like camille paglia and simone debeauviour.
After being fired from the antique business, i am yet again without a job. I can't decide whether i should look around for something, attempt to just sell artwork in the quarter, or just take the final step and go work at the rue. I'm supposed to be working on a mural, but the owner of the wall has not called me back in a few days, something tells me i may have been removed from that job before it even starts.
Something about the tone of this post feels moderately deterministic. On another note, Kierkegaard's fear and trembling has been bothering me for a good solid week now. Every day i have been thinking about the labor of Abraham. about faith. About the juxtaposition of fable and allegory - or metaphor and reality. And for some reason every time i think about that essay, i think about Kafka's "Penal Colony" and the needles mutilating that man with the words "be just" and that long spike through the head. I can't help from thinking that the spike itself is the paradox physically realized - the quick death of the mind and the long death of the body.
I miss Alex. Just seeing him for that short period of time brought me back to my road, my hopes, dreams, and depressions. Existence without the weight of these things seems pointless. And maybe Alex, out of that void, where there can still be literature that can exist without man's direct knowledge of it, there is the possibility that the fact that any kind of true satisfaction will never be found allows for a fully realized painful quietness, that like of receiving a tattoo, monotonously irritating till the point that your brain releases its chemicals and forever you sway between high and low, in both the wind and the nerve. and maybe everything is not a circle, but a wave. and maybe it is not the top and bottom of a building that are the same, but the entire building itself, stuffing and all. |
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| exciting new find |
[Aug. 18th, 2005|06:15 pm] |
Recently i came upon the artwork of Jackie Winsor. Ya'll should check it out. Its wonderful work. There is something of a Joseph Beuys in her. She ends up being connected with the "postminimalist" movement (though that is a kind of hackney description) for her reference to the fundamental cube and the entrance points of meaning through a raw formalism. The more i see of her work, the more i tend to think that her view of space is entirely empirical, though it obviously references previous art forms (mainly masculine simplicity of the 60's). What I can't seem to decide is whether or not her forms are and amalgamation of her present aesthetic and that of the avant-garde past or whether her control of materials is entirely self produced.
With artists like Eva Hesse and Damien Hirst, I always lean toward the arguement that their art is a collection of previous ideas bunched up in a tight clean "sexual dissonant" commercial package (though Hesse because of her early death may slip out of this classification). It is their role as controlled shapeshifter that allows the visibility and secrecy of their work to co-exist. But with this Jackie Winsor character, who ends up riding alongside Hesse, she seems to take a more internal step.
She has this piece called "Bound Grid" that is a flat grid of shaven wood sticks, wrapped together at all intersections with twine and then placed in a carl andre esque way against the wall. At first glance it is a masculine domination of space, with its hard angles and rigid carcass, but slowly i saw the idiosyncrasies of her formalism: The large gap of space on the left side allowing the viewer to constantly be pulled and tugged between binary units, And then there is the cutting of the branches at the ends, leaving their vulnerable circles of age and identity exposed, And finally the weight of the twine allows the viewer to feel the crossroads of the wood, a strong, fabricated, obstructed grid. It was as if she had created an entirely feminine masculinity, a slower, closer eye of sorts. I haven't been able to put my finger on what makes her work so amazing to me, but i am looking all over amazon for a collection of her writings - maybe there will be some answers there, but hopefully not too much information - Robert Smithson tends to butcher his pieces with his mouth.
---------------
part of me can't wait to return to new york just to stand in front of some real phillip guston paintings. I heard there was one at the NOMA, so i rushed over, and indeed the mucky grey of his "grey" period was a true disappointment.
Otis Redding here i come
goodnight
allie |
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| (no subject) |
[May. 31st, 2005|08:11 pm] |
so my friends.
if i actually take a semester off in the fall, i will be forced to find a place other than my parents house to live, and i don't have a lot of money to spend. When the time comes if any off you know anyone who is willing to rent out any space in a house ( = to that of the space needed for a small bed and a lamp and a stack of books) i would be forever grateful.
On another note, I was talking to micah about the necessity of a communal space, be it a small room in a warehouse or a garage, that would could be used by a large number of people as a meeting space. Not a coffee house or bar, but instead a rented space that is stuffed with books and supplies for painting, playing music, writing etc. a creative space. I've been looking around and it looks like it could easily be done with about 20 people all paying 15 to 20 $ a month. In the old Zot'z there was a policy of "if you take a book, leave a book" and I would like to revive that. I don't know if this will truly manifest itself but if anyone has any thoughts please let me know.
on one last note, i am looking for a gallery to show some of my work in august. I am planning on going around with some paintings and sculptures and asking different places, but if anyone knows any "interesting" small galleries either uptown or in some other place in the city, drop me a line.
i also need a job |
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| (no subject) |
[May. 20th, 2005|10:50 pm] |
hello
so i'll be back in town on monday. Lets make a picnic of it maybe. are there any shows going on next week? |
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| (no subject) |
[May. 7th, 2005|12:26 am] |
 | You scored as Inwood. Inwood is located on the northern tip of Manhattan. Inwood extends from 200th St (Dyckman St) to 220th Street. It is banked on all three sides by huge wild parks.
Thanks for taking my test! -Susan
Inwood | | 83% | Harlem | | 72% | El Barrio | | 67% | Alphabet City | | 66% | China Town | | 39% | Washington Heights | | 39% | Upper West Side/ Morningside Heights | | 33% | Kips Bay | | 28% | Upper East Side | | 28% | Chelsea | | 17% | Hell’s Kitchen/ Theatre District | | 17% | Financial District/Battery Park | | 17% | Stuyvesant Town | | 17% | SoHo/ TriBeCa | | 11% | </td>
Which neighborhood in Manhattan is best for you?
created with QuizFarm.com |
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| (no subject) |
[May. 2nd, 2005|03:15 pm] |
"There are people from the north and the mid-west who actually shudder when they first come upon the giant bewhiskered live oaks; they sense something dismal and forbidding in them. But when one see them in majestic, stately rows, as on the great estates around Beaufort, SC, or at Biloxi - at Biloxi they come to apotheosis! - one must bow down before them in humble adoration for they are, if not the monarchs of the tree world, certainly the sages or the magi" - Henry Miller
oh reading that made me even more eager to bounce this city of tombs. Everywhere i look i am reminded of the south, of its energy, its romanticism, its poetics. Where making art actually meant something, and didn't lose an ounce of passion through amplified word usage. ugh. may 25 is going to be a beautiful day, i'll get off the plane and go to nick's, but myself an abita beer and drive to the mississippi - have a smoke and feel the freeing air of being home. Two years in new york are almost done and i wish all four were. At first the lights and size of the buildings command you to worship them, to be enthralled in their granduer. The large collections of people flooding the streets make you feel like you are in a neverending whirlpool; but once the illusion sours, the skyscrapers boast vanity and cowardice, the schizophrenic architecture scatters you, and you are left with no money in your pocket. louisiana, how i miss you and can only tell you through this journal, hoping that it will touch you for i am so far away.
also, jen do you want a painting? its about 3 1/2 ' x 5' - i know i told you i would give you one - also micah i have a small one for you if you would like it |
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| (no subject) |
[Apr. 15th, 2005|01:00 am] |
newnews
i'm going to come home for the summer
excited to see everyone |
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| RIP R. Creeley |
[Apr. 9th, 2005|03:14 pm] |
I know a man
As I sd to my
friend, because I am
always talking,--John, I
sd, which was not his name, the darkness sur-
rounds us, what
can we do against
it, or else, shall we &
why not buy a goddamn big car,
drive, he sd, for
christ's sake, look
out where yr going |
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fearofsleep's journal