These United States with Thrift Store Cowboys and Adam Arcuragi and The Lupine Choral Society at the Iota

After the whole long day of the Rally to Restore Sanity and a visit to the Holocaust Museum, you would think we would have collapsed in a heap and gone home.  Nope.  Instead, we continued on as planned to the Iota Club and Cafe in Arlington to see These United States, with Thrift Store Cowboys and Adam Arcuragi and The Lupine Choral Society. 

I like to say I knew all about TUS, but that would be a big fat lie.  I'd heard their name, perhaps, a DC/Lexington, KY band that been around for a while, an indie roots rock or alt-country kind of sound (they seem to have a variety of different labels, depending on who you ask). As part of my campaign to be less of a musical moron, my plan is to see more music and pay more attention. Starting dead tired with a band that I'd spent zero time listening to may not have been the best approach, but hey, I was out, and swaying with the beat, so it's a start. 


These United States

For a Saturday night on Halloween weekend, it was a surprisingly quiet show, which I can't quite figure out.  These were pretty tight bands, with even the opening band being reasonably solid, although, at a guess, a little starry-eyed about being billed the TUS.  All three bands seemed to know each other well and bleed into each other, with folks going up on stage here and there. I think this was the last night Thrift Store Cowboys and These United States would be together after several months on tour, so there was lots of cross-pollination.  And enthusiasm: the Cowboys' bass player, bounced up and down with alarming and entertaining bounce. I'm not sure it helped him play, but what the hell, twas fine.   

Halloween got its due, particularly from These United States, who played not just "The Monster Mash," but also "Werewolves of London."  Most of the band was in "classy drag" excepting the lead singer, Jesse Elliott, who told the story of how he missed the memo and ended up in a banana suit.  Elliott was extra festive and sweaty; he sang with unabashed enthuasiam and came on down to the dance floor in his banana suit (hmm, that sounds like a euphemism, but isn't).  My friend grooved on hearing "Wooly Bully," and that did actually get the small crowd (including me) actually dancing, not just swaying, so a good hoppin' version, but the song itself leaves me cold.  What can I say, I'm a crank. 

The last song we caught before stomping back to the Metro was a long version of Dylan's "Isis," a song my friend apparently finds irritating. It has many, many verses, which allowed just about everyone to sing a verse, which I think was the point. I found that interesting from a voice perspective, and just watching everyone crowd on stage.  I'm not sure if it's the Iota accoustics, the sound board or the band(s), but I found it very difficult to decipher the words on anything, so mostly, I was running on the melody and tone and giving up on what might be being said.  As a word person, that's really frustrating, and I find I like the music clips I've been thumbing through much more since I can, in the clips, hear what is said. Had I known their music ahead of time, this wouldn't have been as much of an issue...a word to the wise for me, I suppose.  Research.    

If I were a better music person or listener, I'd tell you all about the original songs they'd played, as play them they did.  From scanning through clips, I think "Water and Wheat" from "What Lasts" was on the playlist.  But no guarantees on that. 

Definitely, I loved, loved the steel pedal guitars in TUS and TSC.  They're just fun, warping in and out of different tunings.  And one of the TSC boys even showed up with an accordian.  Yowza. 

Musically, this is a bunch of boys that play everyhing and have no fear..everyone sings, most people play both the guitar and the drums, so everyone was rotating around from seat to seat, band to band, passing another tambourine.  Clearly, they'd spent a lot of time jamming together and were having a ball because, hey, why not?  It's Halloween, after all. 

A good show for which I wish I was more awake, more knowledgeable, and that more people were out, but it's a start.

Rally to Restore Sanity & US Holocaust Memorial Museum

A thought-provoking juxtaposition of events yesterday: first, my friend Brian and I attended the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Anger, the Jon Stewart/Stephen Colbert rally on the mall, and then we went to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
 

Mobs at Metro

The faux rally turned out to be a fairly massive event. Estimates put attendance around 215,000 people (way larger, as many people have pointed out, than the Glenn Beck fest a few weeks back). The Metro was so overwhelmed by the time we reached Takoma at noonish that, after two trains came by that could not possibly accomodate two more passengers, we rode the Metro four stops in the other direction to the end of the line so we could actually get on a train.  We were not alone in this – at Glenmont, the train remained packed. We chatted for a while with a nice family from Fairfield, Iowa, who were in town not for the rally, not for the Marine Corps Marathon the next day, not for any of the other massive events, but for an aunt's 90^th birthday party. The logistics of their family gathering was significantly more complex due to Metro delays, but they were taking it in amused stride.

When we finally got downtown, the scene was impressive: a sea of people, many costumed and holding signs. A wave of nostalgia for me: from 4th of July events as a child to protests in high school and college, the mall is the geographic center of my political understanding. I once traveled in a caravan of three vans of many women and one man from Colorado to DC for the huge 1992 March for Women's Lives pro-choice rally. While I'm a much more disaffected political participant these days, I still believe that's my failing as a citizen, that the passion for organizing and demonstrating and letting your voice be heard is vital. When we let our passions wither, part of us dies as well, and our society suffers.

Sea of people

This rally, however faux, brought out many of the folks I consider my people: liberals with a sense of humor. Yes, the crowd was overwhelmingly white, and presumably reflected the demographics of the Stewart/Colbert audience. But how could you not like some of the signs like these?:



"A Cup of Calm the F#ck Down"



   

"Tea Parties are for Little Girls
and Imaginary Friends"

 

"All We are Saying is
Give Cheese Some Pants"




  

"My friends, do not be afraid of people. Luke: 12:4" and

"I couldn't think of anything. I just wanted to be on

the Internets" (wish granted!)

 



"Get off my Lawn, Hippies!"



"Even My Sign Chooses
Not to Yell"

 And people reacted to the sentiment of the rally. It was a super, super polite crowd. There was no finger-pointing or ranting, except the dynamic on stage with Sanity v. Anger, play anger. I spent a lot of time weaving through the crowds, partly because I almost immediately got separated from my friend, and partly because I was looking to get close enough to hear. I'm not sure anyone expected quite so many people, and the jumbo-trons and speakers didn't reach all of us. But milling around through signs and Halloween costumes, without fail, people said “excuse me” and “pardon me.” No one glared or elbowed me for trying to squeeze by. I didn't see any drunken rage fests. Just folks out with signs listening to some comedy and music on a sunny day in fall.

 Some people were so dedicated that they climbed on top of fences and even the port-o-johns so they could see. 

People on the rooves of Port-o-johns. 

Icky, I say, but dedicated.

Of the events themselves, I can only report on bits of the Stewart/Colbert conversation (“all Muslims aren't terrorists, Steve. There are Muslims that you like and admire.” “Name one!” “Kareem Abdul- Jabbar!” - or something along those lines) and other scatterings gleaned in the crowds. I heard part of a Kid Rock song. I sadly missed the battling appearances between Yusuf Islam (formerly Cat Stevens) and Ozzy Osbourne.  Those of you watching at home probably saw more, but I'm glad I was there in the crowd.  

When the events wrapped up at 3pm, and I finally reconnected with my vanished friend, we proceeded to the Holocaust Museum. The mother of our Iowa friends on the Metro had talked about going, and it turned out, Brian had never been, so rather than struggle on the Metro again, off we went.

It had been at least a decade since I had been there. The Holocaust Museum is, obviously, not a place where you go for a lighthearted day, a point they make as they pack you into an elevator to start the exhibit on the 4th floor and say, “We hope you have a meaningful visit.” There is no “nice day!” for genocide. I warned Brian on the intensity level (not that he was expecting sunshine), but it's difficult to convey how affecting the museum will be.

The beginning of the exhibit talks about how Hitler was, at the start, an disgruntled corporeal in the army, a nobody that no one would have predicted to rise to such frightening power. There seemed to be little chance he would such a vile force in such short order. He got there first by way of political maneuvering, until he finally consolidated enough legal power so he could really dig into terror and violence after he was appointed Chancellor in 1933.

And what, largely, did the Nazi party feed on? Rage and racism and fear. Anyone who follows, say, the immigration debates, or the insanity of folks up in arms about, say, homosexual marriage, will recognize many of the tactics of singling out a group upon which to pour all angers and frustrations. Everything becomes a threat to Good Decent People and someone else's fault. In Germany, the Nazis blamed breadlines on the Jews and communists.

The old guard politicians of Germany at the time did not take Hitler seriously until it was too late -- something to consider in our current political climate. No, no, I'm not trying, Colbert-like, to Keep Fear Alive and suggest anyone is the next Hitler. As the Rally to Restore Sanity website points out, "the only time it’s appropriate to draw a Hitler mustache on someone is when that person is actually Hitler. Or Charlie Chaplin in certain roles."  That doesn't mean that I'm inclined to agree much with, for instance, the politics of Sarah Palin or Glenn Beck though, and I find the museum, like the rally, emphasized the importance of speaking up.

I'm not, as noted, particularly politically knowledgeable, however. I find the political process of manipulating people a creepy exercise riddled with aggravation and overlooked and/or flawed logic, and intensely frustrating. I tend to avoid political conversation as unnecessary conflict for which I am, anyway, ill-armed. I was raised in a household split between the Democratic and Republican parties. Issues were not discussed and hashed out so much as put aside. Disagreement was considered inconvenient disharmony.

What is so profoundly affecting about the Holocaust museum is that it makes a very clear connection between how that political avoidance and apathy allows for the evilly-opportunitistic like Hitler to extract a devastating toll on human lives – the absolute horror of the camps, persecution, death, despair. Hells seemingly unimaginable were instead systematized, a conveyor belt of how best to destroy a culture, demoralize and humiliate and terrorize, and kill with all possible efficiency.

I won't talk about the many, many deeply disturbing stories and photographs and facts on display. It's a hard place to walk through, and an important one.  If you haven't been, go. 

I am going to tell you about where I lost it, both the first time I visited the museum, and again, when I got to that exhibit again yesterday.

The shoes.

There is a room full of shoes worn by concentration camp victims. There is something so human, so ordinary and personal about shoes, worn leather and frayed laces.  Everyone knows the phrase, "if you want to know a man, walk a mile in his shoes."  To see so many empty shoes, knowing that their owners took them off and walked on to their deaths, rippled through me in ways I still can't quite articulate.  There are so many shoes in that room, so many individuals gassed out of existence, and those shoes are but a tiny fraction of the people killed.

It may be another artifact or phrase or photograph will bring it home for you. For me, it was the shoes.

The museum was closing by the time we were leaving, and in fact, many of the last video exhibits, including the videos of survivors, were already turned off on the last floor.

We walked back out into the slanted light of a fall day, and saw the remains of the crowds, people with signs and costumes, now heading off for the Saturday night Halloween parties or to prepare to run the Marine Corps Marathon today or just sit at home with friends and family. We are lucky here, right now, despite our bad economy and other crises, that we can come together, share laughter and commentary, music and merriment and play, that we can be reasonable and yet still, in our numbers, be heard.

So here's my summary of takeaways for the day:

Don't rage. Don't hide. Learn what you can and listen carefully. Pay attention and when you smell bullshit, say, very, very, politely, without rage but with clarity and action, that it is bullshit. Well, maybe use a more polite word.  But you know what I mean. 

Also: go do what I can't do this year in Maryland, having registered too late after my move. Go vote.

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out --

Because I was not a Socialist.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out --
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out --
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me -- and there was no one left to speak for me.
--Martin Niemöller

Thriller!

http://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2010/10/thriller-in-new-orleans-inside-the-annual-halloween-flashmob/65446/ - Article by my friend Darcy on the Thriller Flashmob.  Dancing zombies make me unreasonably happy. 

Happy Halloween!

Spleen

Brief and tardy comments on my visit to "Spleen," created by Oreen Cohen, ART CARGO (Jacqueline Levine), and Sarah Allison, formerly on display in the basement of the Moderno, a condo on U St.  The building was not yet in use, so the realtor connected the artists with the space, allowing for the creation of the large installation sculpture in the basement.  I missed the opening evening, which apparently also included incense and wine, but when I arrived, I was all alone in the basement thrumming with loud clanking music and this unweildly beast:  

The piece is constucted from metal, ceramics, balloons, automotive safety glass, and probably a lot of other odds and ends. I was particularly pleased with how gruesome sweet little balloons could become in the context of intestines.

While I didn't have opportunity to speak with the artists, the real estate connection (whose name I can't recall, alas, but was extremely pleasant) who was manning the door upstairs reported that the artists did indeed suffer for their work, and that even safety glass isn't entirely safe; some blood drops on the floor added to the mood.

Inside the glass portion, you can see there is a TV, pulsing with heartbeat-esque music (the shattered insides of a glass house, perhaps, our translucent souls crumbling - add in your own metaphor). This didn't quite work for me - at heart, I don't want to be a media maven, and TVs are too loaded to be otherwise in my mind.  

But I loved the dripping cave of stalactites, a nice dragon-in-the-lair touch.

The piece conveyed a mood and mixed the gruesome with fanciful (balloons! I love balloons!), not a bad way to start an evening. I proceeded down the street to have a rather tasty margarita, feeling oh-so-arty. 


Posted on the the stairway to the basement, the following poem seemed apt. 

Spleen II

by Charles Baudelaire

When the low heavy sky weighs like a lid
Upon the spirit aching for the light
And all the wide horizon's line is hid
By a black day sadder than any night;

When the changed earth is but a dungeon dank
Where batlike Hope goes blindly fluttering
And, striking wall and roof and mouldered plank,
Bruises his tender head and timid wing;

When like grim prison bars stretch down the thin,
Straight, rigid pillars of the endless rain,
And the dumb throngs of infamous spiders spin
Their meshes in the caverns of the brain,

Suddenly, bells leap forth into the air,
Hurling a hideous uproar to the sky
As 'twere a band of homeless spirits who fare
Through the strange heavens, wailing stubbornly.

And hearses, without drum or instrument,
File slowly through my soul; crushed, sorrowful,
Weeps Hope, and Grief, fierce and omnipotent,
Plants his black banner on my drooping skull.

For more info on the work & artists, see the Project Website at http://projectspleen.wordpress.com/. Check out the original sketches of the work - fascinating to see the evolution of The Spleen. 

City Paper's blog review: http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/blogs/artsdesk/visual-arts/2010/10/01/good-for-the-spleen/

Sandpoint, ID Art Days - Galleries & Mobile Making

So was I arty and mistakeful on vacation, you ask? Why yes, yes I was. My sister and I managed to make two of my five days in Sandpoint, Idaho, art focused. 

Sandpoint is a small art town in northern Idaho ("the skinny part"), so twas easy to make a day of wandering around galleries. The most varied and lovely work we saw was at Art Works, a cooperative gallery run by local artists selling their wares. Jewelry, pottery, nature photography of the area, watercolors, the lovely if somewhat standard fare of a tourist retail store, but also interesting sculpture made of fired clay, wood and feathers, oil paintings of celestial lovelies, and a number of odds and ends that I was pretty sure I could make (e.g., beaded key chain fobs). 

Sandpoint has a lot of glassworkers, as they used to have a local studio run by the town, now closed sadly, so there was a particularly heavy emphasis on fused glass, jewelry, clocks, plates, etc., in many of the stores. We also poked our heads into a painting studio, which, if I could find her business card again, I would add a plug for, as it was lovely, brightly colored, festive work. I strongly recommend ending any such day by having the baked brie and a glass of wine at the Coldwater Creek Wine Bar. Yum.

Throughout our wanderings, we were busy plotting our own projects.  My sister had recently received five boxes of fabric from my mother, but wasn't feeling the quilting vibe for using some of it that way. And, of course, with my ugly mobile history, it seemed a natural extension to try making some fabric mobile prototypes a few days later. 

My sister is infinitely more organized, so she wasted no time pulling out the fabric, selecting some pieces and quickly cutting shapes, and got me rolling on my own choices.  She then ironed and I pinned shapes so that she could sew them on the treadle sewing machine.  From there, she dug out the grommet tool she'd found at a yard sale (I had tool envy, until we ran into some design flaws, which made it less groovy), and after some failed experimentation, we got her husband signed up for putting grommets in all our shapes so they were easily hung.  

And then there was the wire -- the fun part, in my opinion, particularly since I'm a metal junky.  My sister had a role of electrical fence wiring lying around, which actually worked out well (except it came with somewhat alarming warnings about remembering to wash your hands after use.  It may be coated in something awful). 

What was interesting to me is how different Susie and I approached the random design aspects of mobiles.  She found patterns online and worked to modify those for her needs.  I pulled off a hunk of wire, found a place to hang it off the chandelier, and then connected other pieces willy-nilly, hoping to find balance points with the fabric pieces and lengths of wire. Sometimes, there were failures, and pieces fell off, sections collapsed.  Susie had symmetry; I had random zigzag cheats built into my wire to help shift balances slightly without total reorganization, although in some aesthetic way, I was harboring ideas of a larger balance within the piece.

In any case, an enormous amount of fun. 

And here are the results.  Sadly, pictures don't do them justice, as they remove the movement...

Susie's prototype:

And mine, reassembled in DC - I forgot to photograph it in Sandpoint - so it's totally different than the last time I put it together.


As prototypes, there are, uh, issues, things that we would do differently, from choosing different shapes to finding less cranky grommets, to having cleaner edges and wire shapes, etc. More than that, however, it was a fabulous way to spend a gray day listening to 1980s pop music, singing and playing with wire. Successful art in my book. And perhaps the birth of an industry. You never know.

Art Sightings on North Capitol Commute

Every day, I take the drive down North Capitol to get to work. Most days, I'm in my usual distracted fog, and arrive on the hill having no memory of the trip. But today, I happened to hit traffic lights at keys times so as to see random city art and take a few pictures through my car window.

It's hard not to be a little giddy about seeing Frank in a sombero selling furniture in front of a thrift store. 

Sunday at the NGA Sculpture Garden & Hirshorn Museum & Sculpture Garden

Sometimes, when you're having a frustrating day dealing with your own art, the solution is to get in your car and go look at other people's art.  So that's what I did today. 

I'd gone to the Hirshorn Museum's Sculpture Garden on Friday evening with a friend (the museum was closed, but the garden stays open until dusk). We had originally been thinking about checking out the Nat'l Gallery of Art Sculpture Garden, as in the summer, the NGA Sculpture Garden has jazz on Friday evenings.  Alas, fall is upon us and jazz is over for the season.  I was happy to see some of my Hirshorn favorites, including the sculpture that I think of as the Gossiping Weebles (but is actually called "Last Conversation Piece" by Juan Muñoz).

But we'd only been able to look through the bars at the mice frolicking on the grounds of the NGA Sculpture Garden.  Having had that close-but-no-cigar moment, I decided NGA Sculpture Garden would be my first stop today.

A beautiful day, the NGA Sculpture Garden was in full swing, the fountain dancing. And, for once, there were people in something other than suits. It's been too long since I've seen a pink mohawk.

I cruised by one of my favorite pieces first, Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen's aptly named "Eraser." I find there's something comforting about folks making that large a sculpture honoring, well, essentially the need for fixing artistic mistakes (this blog is called Artful Mistakes - how could I not like that?).

My friend's favorite there (that we couldn't see through the bars) is "House," created by Roy Lichtenstein.  I actually remembered it as flat - but it is, in fact, 3-dimensional.  See the pics below for proof. 



3D



3D pretending to be 2D pretending to be 3D

The big news for me is that there was a new piece there that I hadn't seen before, new in 2009, and the first new piece in the NGA Garden since it opened 11 years ago.  It took me a minute to see it, both because it blends with the environment, a big ole tree, and because I am a space shot - the big ole tree is made of metal.  With my penchant for shiny things, I was enamoured with "Graft" by Roxy Paine right away. 

It's hard not to feel the re-inspired staring up through the branches of art at a blue sky on a warm afternoon. 

And so I continued on into the Hirshorn Museum -- that's the groovy round building with the fountain in the middle.  I recommend walking around the fountain, and listening carefully, as the acoustics change at some point, so that the water is just more somehow in some places. 

Of course, if you're in the Hirshorn, and you're me, with my taste for mobiles, your first stop may very well be the Calders, because, hey, it means that mobiles can actually end up in museums. That makes me happy right there.



After my visit to the Calders, I wandered the paintings.  The first one that caught my eye was Stuart Davis's "Tropes de Teens." 


After a minute of staring, I realized the reason it caught my eye was because of, well, the eyes...Note the woman's eyes on the lower left part of the painting, the red and the shape.

The painting I was working on this afternoon, the one I got fed up with and sent me out into the world, is called, variously, "Snake Eyes" (a play on the gambling term) or (when I'm feeling Biblical) "Adam's Eyes" when I'm going for an Adam-and-Eve type of thing (if a man eats an apple in the forest, and a snake isn't there to witness it, is it really a sin?).  So here's my eyes:

Not all that surprising that I tapped into that painting first.  It seems the Eyes have it today.  True, the only eyes of mine that may ever make it into a museum are likely the ones in my head.  But on a lazy Sunday afternoon suffused with art and light and nature and connection, well, that's just fine with me.

reminders

http://www.nmwa.org/ - National Museum of Women in the Arts. Free 1st Sunday of every month.


http://www.artsonfoot.org/ - Arts on Foot, Penn Quarter.  Wed Sept 8 - 11th. 

http://www.celebratefrederick.com/Events/Index.aspx?page=99 - In the Street, Frederick festival. Sept 11.  

http://www.tpff.org/ - Takoma Park Folk Festival.  Sunday, Sept 12. 

Not Gertrude

I wrote the first & third sections of "Not Gertrude" (below) around in June or so of 2009 when  I started planning the road trip I would go on that summer. The idea was to find a way to recycle sections of the GodAwful Novel (used in the 2nd section) that I wrote in grad school. I still like the contrast in the voices - one harsher, one more lyrical - but I'm not sure that the piece has enough oomph to stand alone as a short story, and I'm not sure there's a way to sustain that dynamic over a larger piece, the intersection of the Cynthia-as-narrator (but not me) and Maddy story.

The GodAwful Novel is, largely, about a woman driving across the country dealing with the death of her brother many years before. In my real life, last summer, on August 30th, 2009, while I was driving across the country, my brother Tommy passed away unexpectedly. Today, on the anniversary of his death, I'm posting this to say that he was before his death, and continues to be after it, a part of my life in ways I still don't entirely understand. Family, blood, genes bonded us in complicated ways despite radical differences between us, or so I believe.  I can tell you for certain that he liked Reese's peanut butter cups and hot dogs. 

W. S. Merwin wrote, "Your absence has gone through me / Like thread through a needle. / Everything I do is stitched with its color." 

-----------------------------------------
Chapter One: Not Gertude

Shortly after I turn 40, I decide to go on a road trip, write one or two books, and figure out what to do about Maddy. My theory is that since my two college degrees haven’t taught me what I really need to know about writing or myself, I’ll be able to ferret out what’s next if I see a lot of road and a lot of old friends. Plus, I’m sick of walking dogs. And I’d like to leave my boyfriend for a time without actually having to break up.

It’s not that I mind the dogs. Their jowly smiles as they pant in the heat lends them an extra friendly summer veneer. After two years, off and on, I’m am officially Leader of the Pack. Amid the non-speaking, I am Alpha. Amid the roaring of humanity, not so much. Writers tend to be like that.

I don’t mind Mike, the boyfriend, much either. I just seem to have not all that much to say. The pheromone haze after years of celibacy has lifted enough for me to notice…eh. It’s one of those so-this-is-it? moments. Nothing wrong that I can pinpoint. But no violins.

So there are the dogs and the books to be written with Maddy (my fictional counterpart) and my new car. Before I leave on the trip, I must name the car. Sitting in the Drifting Nomad coffee shop with Andrew, my writer friend from a cubicle job in which I lasted three months, I entertain suggestions. The first name he tosses out is Milly (the woman he’s currently interested in), followed by Debbie (his mother’s name) and Lydia (his ex’s name). I wonder about him sometimes. He is ten years younger than I am, and a better writer, both of which annoy me, particularly given that he can be weirdly obtuse.

“I’m thinking the name of a diner waitress with blue eye shadow that calls you ‘hon’ but is still willing to pour hot coffee in your lap if you’re a pain in the ass’” I tell him.

“Gertrude. Gertie.”

“Too militant. Sounds like an overbearing German nanny.”

Our conversation is interrupted by the appearance of Brad, formerly a graphic designer and currently an artist since his Chinatown mugging head injury. Andrew tried to set us up about a year ago, which I open to, and Brad, apparently not, although he politely requested my phone number so he could not use it.

Andrew is saying hi to Brad. He looks older, more gray. I suppose the same goes for me, although I quietly pray I am not already stooped over like a sexless old man. I wish I had showered this morning. I can feel the grease shine on my face.

“You remember Cynthia," Andrew says.

“No.” Brad gives me an eyeless stare. I think, although I am not sure, that he is full of crap, but it’s hard to say on these things. He did have the head injury. He meets a lot of people. We did have quite a few beers that night. And it was a while ago. But mostly it’s: Wow, I’m SO not memorable. Stylin’. Another reason to leave DC.

An hour later, as I’m walking a bulldog named Uma, I decide to name my car, a tidewater blue 2009 Honda Fit, Alice. Alice is a good waitress name a la Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore. And, according to Arlo Guthrie, You can get anything you want at Alice’s Restaurant. If I can get anything I want out of this road trip, then maybe I’ll finally get something done. It’s about time.

----
Maddy is the main character of the atrocious novella I wrote in grad school. She has some family hang-ups and a tendency to drive around the country, so you can see she and I have, ahem, similar issues. The interesting thing about Maddy is not that she mirrors many aspects omy life. The interesting thing is that I wrote some plot elements into her story before the correlating events occurred in mine. So, for instance, I wrote that she runs into an old boyfriend before I started dating Mike a few months ago, Mike who was also my boyfriend in high school.

Maddy has brother issues. I’ve started the novella (now a novel) in a million different ways, but currently, it starts with a prologue, a scene from her childhood. It goes like this:

My Hello Kitty alarm clock paws showed it was three in the morning when Cory tried waking me, but at ten years old, I slept as if drugged and never woke with glee. His gentle prods were incorporated into dreams until the malty cozy odor of his breath permeated my consciousness. He leaned in to touch my shoulder, saying, “Wake up, Maddy May.” I broke down and opened my eyes to see his pale face smiled down on me. In the room lit only by the dim watery shadows sneaking around the window shades, his features fell into shades of gray, like the hero of a 1950s matinee: straight nose, high cheeks, round eyes with the outrageously long lashes that threw shadows and made strangers call him pretty as a child. With his changed voice finished with cracking and shoulders broadening by the day, girls turned to look at him in the supermarket. Even the mothers too, sometimes. His classic symmetry would have been dull if not for the dark blue of his eyes, unnervingly liquid like a bottomless lake. He reached out to push a strand of hair off my forehead, and I heard the rustling of the nylon in his jacket, the swish of his restless motion. “Time to explore,” he said. I sat up in a rush of understanding. Road trip. These night wanderings were our time, unknown to anyone except us and unspoken of between us during daylight. He handed me my wool coat as I stumbled around the darkened room pulling clothes over my pajamas. “Dress warm -- it’s cold,” he said. 

Once bundled and already beginning to overheat under my layers, he took my hand and led me through the darkened house down the stairs. At the second to the last stair, as always, I paused, and he grabbed my arms and swung me over the stair that squeaked and I remembered not to giggle at my moment of weightlessness. We slipped out into the kitchen, where light pouring though the glass of the back door. I knew then that Cory had chosen this night not just because he’d already spent the early part of the evening before curfew sneaking beers in Marty Spinks’ basement down the street, but because the world outside was transformed. No one, except us, yet knew.

Snow, wet, fat flakes, fell gently over the yard, clinging to the maple and apple trees, outlining every branch. Several inches already obscured the grass and the slate stone path. Street lights reflected wildly off whiteness. Our bad weatherman had missed this, predicting a cold sleet, but here was a world untouched by muddy drizzle.

Walking down the street, we listening to the drifting of flakes and the sound of puffed-up water collapsing under our feet. Neither of us spoke, although Cory pointed once, to a tree branch leaned over under the weight, forming a snowy cave. At Pearson Elementary School, where I would be not attending the fourth grade the next day because of the snow, we had the playground to ourselves. No one would see our tracks there until the sledders arrived after late breakfasts and hot chocolate.

We might have been the last people alive. Certainly, we were the only ones awake for miles around. We paused at the top of the stairs leading down the jungle gyms. He took my hand again, and said, “I wanted you to see this, Maddy May. You’ll always remember, won’t you?” I nodded my promise. Then, with a whispered whoop that echoed unevenly in the gray sky, he dropped my hand and said, “Race you to the bottom.” He rushed forward, one gloved hand clutched to the banister, pushing off the snow. I hurried behind, falling and sliding in his snowy footprints.
------------------
As a beginning, it’s a little schmalty, but I’m fond of the image anyway. In graduate school, I once got a long, long lecture from Professor Goran about how one should never, ever use a prologue. But really, it’s relevant. We love people in our childhood as we can’t as adults. Fearlessly, before trusts are broken. I wanted that as the premise. Maybe disillusionment and innocence lost is a little passé. But I’m OK with that.

I too have brother issues. My brother, five years older than me, is autistic. He doesn’t speak, will never speak, and has been institutionalized since he was seven and I was two. My sister recently told me, however, that when we were kids, my mother used to lock him in his room, using a roll of socks to jam the door, because otherwise, he’d wander around in the middle of the night, going from room to room.

Maybe he stood and stared at me in my crib. Maybe I knew that.

Yay! And yipes!

Yay! "Squid's Garden" sold!  According to the new owners, it will be hanging in their living room.  I won't be retiring on the proceeds of the sale, but tis better than the proverbial sharp stick in the eye.  I've now officially been paid to paint. 

In other visual news, because my computer died, and I am, at the moment, on an old version of Internet Explorer, I know that the blog looks darn ugly in 6.0.  Yipes.  It may be coming time to do an overall of my online presence. 

And for those of you keeping track, I haven't forgotten about the post on music...still settling into the new digs. And doing a little happy dance.

Yes, I'm ignoring you.

Blog has been sorely neglected in the interest of packing...I'm returning to Nuclear Free Zone Takoma Park, having signed a lease on a cute little apartment that may or may not be able to contain all the art supplies I've accumulated over the last few months.  The line between artist and packrat is very, very small as it turns out.  I'll be buff from moving all those boxes though. 

As part of the avoiding-packing project, I found some old framing that (miraculously) was just the right size for "Squid's Garden."  I only had to cut down one side. Now that it's looking so fancy (gold, no less), I might try to sell it in the estate sale on Saturday. You never know what folks might buy.

Upcoming blog (post move): Ruminating on my odd relationship with music. Random notes are as yet too incoherent even for me. 

American Visionary Art Museum

Last weekend, I went on a field trip out to Baltimore to visit the American Visionary Art Museum.  It was just the kind of day I needed, a change of scene to shake me up.  Even 45 minutes away from home can be enough sometimes.  And AVAM is a good place to go if you're feeling like a square peg.  It's a place full of the art of, well, other square pegs.  The exhibit while was was there was "Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness," topics which, like most any artist, I spend a fair amount (perhaps too much) time thinking about.  How to do what I want to do (whatever that might be - it's hard to tell some days) and still afford fancy stuff like food, shelter and cat food?

The AVAM trip restored some perspective, especially when reading the bios of many of the artists.  I've got such a cushy life. 

Here are the notes I took, just because something touched a nerve one way or another.  I've dug up some links if I could find them (no photography allowed inside the museum, alas):

"Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure.  Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing. " -- Helen Keller.  I no longer remember what this quote was attached to, but it hit me at once. 

Painting: "Straight Jacket," haunting figure, wrapped in a straight jacket.  The artist's note: "We all go through feeling absolutely trapped before we can truly break free." -- Sermet Aslan, artist and Charleston, SC restaurateur.

My favorite machine: a very fancy looking device that looks like 1950s medical equipment.  It's called the "Purr Generator"  Made by Duncan Laurie.  For a picture, see http://www.duncanlaurie.com/studio/inventions/purr-generator

From the bio of Donald Austin of Tarboro, maker of machine-looking gadgets: "Austin believes if something looks as if it should work, then one can more easily believe that it really does serve some kind of useful purpose.  Three-piece suits often provide the same illusion."  I can never resist cubicle escapee humor. 

The grand nephew of Tsar Nicholas II of Russia, Andrew Romanoff, paints on Shrinky Dink material.  I don't think there is a way to sound stuffy and elitist and overly-beret wearing artiste-y and say: "My medium is Shrinky Dink" as well.  I love it. 

In terms of liberty: one floor had several pieces by people serving life sentences in prison.  There was also a series of pictures done by a man in and out of institutions for most of his life, often of the people he saw struggling as well.  There was art done by the Ala Bashir, former personal doctor to Saddam Hussein and witness to many horrors (see http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article7078646.ece, for details on his life).  There was work done as memorials to people lost.  Honors to heros Martin Luther King, Jr. and Rosa Parks, among others.  And there was an entire country created, completed with a political systems and characters in every imagining, the intricacies revealing the complexities of busy mind.  Another artist minaturized, in stunning detail, works of art that moved him.  Sadly, I didn't write the names down of many artists, the lapse of which is painfully clear to me now. 

I thought as I started writing this that I wouldn't have much to say, that I'd lost pieces in the hustle bustle of the intervening week.  Instead I'm finding how much stuck with me, the art and its impact, the stories of the people drawn to make things not because of training but just because, that's what humans do, how we process our world, often our pains, and make it into something else, this art that stirs the rest of us, inspires us to go and make our own. What a cycle. 

In short: a fabulous museum.  Go.  Oh!  And there's PostSecret there too, of which I'm a religious reader. And...

... a magic bus.  How can you not want to see the magic bus?

physicality of art

June had 18 days over 90 degrees, which may explain my blog silence, at least in part.  It's been hot, continues to be now that we're well into July, and after hours out with the doggies, I am flat out.  Despite my griping (significant) on the weather, however, I appreciate the physicality of my day job, and groove on that aspect of art as well.  If you spend 3 hours moving very large canvases around, your arms will eventually feel like Jello.  Art is not just the theoretical, the-what-does-it-all-mean?-and-how-does-it-make-you-feel? touch feelie aspects, but also sweat and labor, hauling canvases and cans of paints and visiting hardware stores and finding lattice the right size (still looking) and inhaling weird fumes that may make me grow a third eye. There will be nailing (hopefully not of my thumbs), hoisting, more moving of collected supplies (some of it aka "crap") in the future, cooking up base coats (gesso? rabbit glue?  I need to figure that out) for big frames, chopping up bits of metal for Ugly Mobile #3, drilling, cutting, etc.  It's Twister movements trying to get something heavy affixed to the wall and tiny fine motor skills getting that dot in the eye in the right place (faces: still a complete painting mystery to me).  That physicality is, in some ways, why art looks different in person...you can see the 3 dimensions of it, the peaks and valleys of brush strokes, the way you know a painter not just by subject, but by the movement, the physicality of the way he applied paint, as personal and complicated as a fingerprint.  I love that.       

word of the day: smut

In a slightly gin-enhanced conversation by a stack of books outside a bookstore, the word "smut" came up (referencing a suggestively shaped peach in a black and white photo), and I find, days later, I'm still enjoying saying the word.  Come on, everyone say it - the people in the next cubicle over may peek over the wall just to see what you're up to.  If you say it with derision - what smut! - it has an angle of Germanic asp to it.  But if you say instead, mmmm, smut, with a bit of a husky quiver to it, you can probably make that coworker blush.  Then there was the way I said it, well, golly gee! smut! Whee!

And this is just one word, spoken one way or another, embued with various approaches to sex, society, art, judgements, etc.  The power of language, particularly the music of it, never ceases to amaze.

NYC #3 - MoMA: Willliam Kentridge, Picasso, Lee Bonecou, Marina Abramovic

I know everyone from DC says this, but still, it throws me: you have to pay for museums in NYC. Let me just say, it was so worth the $20 to get into MoMA. To avoid museum burnout (the glazed over eyes that no longer see), we only moseyed here and there, making no effort to see everything.  What I saw inspired.  If you're in NYC, go to MoMA.  Right now.

First, check out the William Kentridge exhibit. The sketches are riveting, many self portraits, and quite a few of another figure, a woman in glasses.  But the most absorbing elements of the exhibit are the short films. Some are animated sketches that grow in process to complete pictures, then evolving to other images, landscapes growing, figures marching with burdens weighing them down, disasters and wars in some movies, other more fanciful, e.g., trips to the moon. If you click on View Video in the link, you can see an example of what I mean. My favorite area was the room where eight or so different films played at once, some featuring the artist, some shapes in motion, all playing around with time and gravity (e.g., running film backwards so he appears to magically catch papers behind his back). The effect, if you turn slowly around in the room and catch bits of each film running all at once, is of being inside a busily creative mind, ideas flying in all directions.

It'd be wrong to go to MoMA and not see some Picassos.  So do that. There are the classic asymmetrical features-all-over faces of women that you would expect, along with more realist work. The range of his experimentation is stunning.  I was particularly curious about his prints, having recently learned more on the process from sorting Karen Laub-Novak's work. KLN, with her horsemen of the Apocalypse, would likely have enjoyed his progression of a print, each print adding another layer to create a more and more defined and complicated horse.

One piece that knocked me down, and was, in fact, the only photo I took while in the museum, was by Lee Bontecou.  According to the signage, she worked on it for 17 years. She has a focus on time, mechanical, and astronomy elements, so it's no surprise it appealed to me. It flew off in a many directions with wire and gold, dimly reminding me of the guitar strings in the the Ugly Mobile 1.0.

Lee Bontecou: Untitled

Finally, a performance art piece was in process at MoMA. Marina Abramovic sat on a chair in the middle of a large, cordoned off square across from another chair. Gallery patrons could wait in line to sit in silence in the chair across from her for as long as they felt like staying. When we arrived, one woman who had clearly been waiting for a while was walking out to sit in the chair. The vibe off her was almost hostile after a while, like a staring contest, trying to prove something. She was there for quite a while, as we circled the area, taking in other parts of the museum. After her, a dark-haired man sat in the chair, and his vibe was much more relaxed, sitting in companionable silence. It's hard to say how I know how I felt about the participants. Marina kept her face as expressionless as possible, and so did the participants, and yet they clearly put off differences that were easy to read. Everything was being filmed from several angles, so I'll be curious to see how she presents the expressions through the editing of that film. When I did a yoga teacher training, one exercise we did was sitting in silence and looking another person in the eyes for several minutes. It's a weirdly intimate experience, and as such, initially uncomfortable, and then too comfortable, as if you're now best friends forever with someone with whom you have only a passing acquaintanceship. It amazes me how we're wired for eye contact, body language, connection with our species, how we interpret what we're not even conscious of most of the time. As with lots of performance art, I did have the sense of this one taking itself just a wee bit too seriously – would it kill her to crack a smile, just for a moment? And what if she needs a break to go pee? How is that arranged amid all the silence? But at the same time, I found the concept, and for the most part, implementation compelling. Finding the links for this blog entry, I thumbed through some portraits taken of people that sat in the opposed chair. It did not surprise me to find that some people cried. Being present means being vulnerable. Hence, the piece's title, The Artist is Present...

For more information on Marina Abramović, click here.

New York #2 - Almost Dorothy by Neil de la Flor, Marsh Hawk Press, reading at Ceres Gallery

My friend, Neil de la Flor, had a reading of his book Almost Dorothy, winner of the Marsh Hawk Press Poetry Prize 2009 at Ceres Gallery. Three other Marsh Hawk authors, Philip Lopate, Sandy McIntosh and Eileen Tabios, also read from their works. They were certainly engaging readers and writers, but I've never giggled with them over crepes and red wine on South Beach nor collaborated with them in grad school on paintings and poems, so I'll just blather on here about Neil.

There was some concern that Neil wouldn't actually make it to his own book launch reading, as his flight out of Miami that morning was canceled.  But they rustled up another plane, and so he arrived with time enough to check-in, gather his thoughts, and show off his rather stylin' hat.

Ceres Gallery, a small but interesting space, is just what you think a NYC gallery should be, housed in an old building with huge wooden beams and white walls and track lighting. We arrived and helped those bearing cheese and fruit plates bring things up, and then we all stood around as people trickled in. Each poet had put the word out among their people, so in short order, it was a fairly lively room. For me, the biggest change from this room versus readings in graduate school was that the average age of the attendees and the poets was significantly higher. These were working poets well past college age, and heavily published. There were poetic vignettes on colonscopies and uretheral probes, not the ordinary material of sun-burnished U Miami coeds.

Neil read last, as his flight delay had put him there in the line-up, just in case. In some ways, his work is more out on the edge than the other poets reading that evening, as most of Neil's work, while often narrative, is also sharp images and playful language.

Being Neil, he started with a MadLib he had created of one of his own poems, so the audience full of word people churned up some interesting choices (an animal - lemur, a piece of furniture - credenza), and a hybrid poem was born. I've talked before about Neil's tendency to collaborate and teach, and this struck me as a fine example of that.  Having traveled with Neil on a road trip, I know that somewhere out there are old MadLibs full of goats, ham, lichees, Cracker Barrels and a host of decidedly not family-friendly words. 
After the MadLib, Neil read Introduction (the fake autobiography that starts the collection) from Almost Dorothy. Unlike much of his other work, it's very direct, talking about the narrator exploring homosexuality and his early sexual experiences with men. Wrapped into all of this is attraction, drive, lust, death (the virus), confusion, rejection, longing and how all that is and is not related to feeling close to another person. I thought it was a gutsy choice to read. At the same time that I love that piece, I would have also liked to hear some of the poems that are less narrative, with a heavier emphasis on the language and the way he flips it about so skillfully. So with that in mind (and with Neil's permission) here's a poem.

Sweetmeat

Sweetmeat is so goopy in the mouth, pulpy
and sentimental, goat-licked. All things

flaccid, I have no rigmarole left, only my sordid
lover to melt me down for fructose. Fructed out.

Your sweetmeat slick as grease goes down
a rearing hog's hocks. So I am hocked.

Sincerely. I wish every hard bent scorpion
on this earth will jab their hell-pincers in your eyes.

Eyes are myopic: two eyes. I will chew mine
in bed, I will slosh toward the dirty college

and fold the sheets in this porno of never
loving you. Because it is a chewing,

because today's cleavage is another life's
straightjacket. This shag baby dethreads life.

I keep threading the same Singer. Thread
and needle, Lucite and sphinx, I have no

fur but couldn't be hairier. Please,
don't come any closer. I am sorry my slab

is all dystrophy and no muscle -- the body
is a simple kind of bomb and language.

NYC #1 - New York Snippets

New Yorkers treat the whole city as if it's their living room - with that many people jammed up against each other, you just have to do whatever you need to do where you are. So folks change shoes mid-street next to trendy outdoor cafes and tighten up their bra straps on the subway while eating large, unwieldy sandwiches. Conversation isn't politely contained in whispered corners, and the snippets us tourists heard wandering by made us wonder what's happening upstairs where it is private (The two examples that made both Neil and I turn our heads were: "Are you the whipper or the whippee?" and, a block, later, "Well, it was rodeo season, so..."). New Yorkers embrace trends quickly. Fyi, skinny jeans are SO in, and rolling up your jeans to expose your ankles a la highwater pants, "geek chic," seems to be catching on. Only in NYC will a 25 year old wear a bow tie. But they will also wear pretty much whatever because, hey, it's their living room, so the guy that looks like he's wearing the pajamas he slept in last night, well, he probably is. The models may have on the 4 inch heels and little black dresses, but the average joe has his t-shirt and sneakers. They're both black too, of course, because everyone wears black in the City.

After stuffy, status-ridden Washington, DC, New York was a treat. Where else can you see things like this?:

New Yorker advertising:

and creatively-phrased grafitti:

Alice Walker poem, On Stripping Bark from Myself

I woke up thinking about this poem - a good day in the making if you wake up with words.
-------------------------------

On Stripping Bark from Myself
(For Jane, Who Said Trees Die From It)

because women are expected to keep silent about
their close escapes I will not keep silent
and if I am destroyed (naked tree!) someone will
please
mark the spot
where I fall and know I could not live
silent in my own lies
hearing their "how nice she is!"
whose adoration of the retouched image
I so despise.

No. I am finished with living
for what my mother believes
for what my brother and father defend
for what my lover elevates
or what my sister, blushing, denies or rushes to embrace.

I find my own
small person
a standing self
against the world
an equality of wills
I have lived to understand.

Besides:

My struggle was always against
an inner darkness: I carry within myself
the only known keys
to my death - to unlock life, or close it shut
forever. A woman who loves wood grains, the color
yellow
and the sun, I am happy to fight
all outside murderers
as I see I must.

-Alice Walker

Not Fan Mail

I received this email today from a total stranger.  I think I'll let it speak for itself. 

"Dear Cynthia,

I read your prose online. In your writing you come across as much younger than you are. It seems as though you play a character who you believe is entertaining to read about. If I consider your character, I see the bittersweet experience of a boring, generic middle-class female who is suffering guilt for consensual sensual pleasure.

I could tell you how to get rid of the guilt, but that would make you more angry. I can't tell if you are married. But I do know you haven't read many literary masterpieces. It would have worn off on you. I feel bad for you. You're going nowhere fast. And I mean that in the nicest possible way.

I'm sorry if what I write offends you. Almighty God has inspired me to write you; a person I've never met. That indicates He must care about you. But lacking any form of communication beyond email, I can only say what God wants me to, and leave it that.

What I saw was a sad woman hiding behind a keyboard; a self styledfeminist trying to be strong, and failing; someone who believes truth can be learned in school. I saw a facade of control hiding chaotic emotions, desperation for change, and sarcasm to dull the pain.

There is an alternative. You can learn how to write. You can become an inspired writer; one whose profound ideas never stop flowing; one who will change the world. I have written because I see raw potential. But the rebellion against traditional gender roles has your head buried under miles of deceit.

Your life is as good as it can be, for right now. I'm not a stalker, or a weirdo. I'm just a Christian man reaching out to heal the soul of another. Language is a fantastic element, because it uses words, and the correct words combined in the correct order heal the soul.

You are selling yourself short, because of guilt. I changed my mind. I'm going to mention three methods that allow females to dispense with guilt for consensual sensual pleasure:

If a female is married, she can veil her hair, kneel before her husband, and confess her sins; including consensual sensual pleasure. Her husband will be motivated to sow his seed of forgiveness in her contrite repentant womb. All life comes through masculine forgiveness. When she conceives, she knows she is forgiven.

A woman who is impregnated regularly is purged of guilt, through labor. A female who is physically forced to have relations bears no guilt for the pleasure she experiences, because it isn't her fault. She gets all the pleasure without the guilt. Plus, past guilt is removed from her heart. But the female must protest and fight back, at least for a short time, or she won't know whether or not she was forced, and guilt could become a problem.

Here's what to do after the guilt is gone:
Become Roman Catholic. Catholic women are chaste. Chastity is the key to female happiness.
Say The Five Decade Dominican Rosary each day. Give God 1/2 hour of uninterrupted time per day. Pray for inspiration. And in five years you'll be on The New York Times Bestseller List.

Just work hard every day, and read classic literature. Don't write like a disgruntled feminist. All those ugly dikes will be dead someday, and their genetic legacy will be purged from the human gene pool. Only the
righteous survive.

Change must come from inside. Changes to one's environment, for the sakeof change itself, is only a symptom the disorder that lay inside one's self. Be at peace. My peace I give you. My peace I leave with you. Heaven and earth shall pass away, but My Word shall never pass away. What was Truth IS Truth NOW, and it always will be Truth. There is One Truth. Everything else is wrong."

Moving along

It seems I've not done well on posting in this in April, and here it is now May.  But I've been thinking deep arty thoughts, I assure you.  OK, perhaps not.  But I have been sorting through lots of paintings and prints and sketches, and have made progress with the inventory of Karen Laub-Novak's work.  Archiving is a fascinating process, finding a personality shifting over many years and moods.  The range of her work inspires me.  And her obsessions I find weirdly comforting - ah, the wings of a bird of prey or a terrible angel, the horses of knights or the apocalypse, these familiar places that slot my understanding of individual work into the larger context of its entirety. Conveniently, I'm not unnerved by locusts or grief, sinewy or skeletal figures, shadow spaces.  I am thankful that she did not focus on spiders, of which I have a complete lack of bravery and irrational dread.

In terms of my own archives, I've recently dug through some of my own work from grad school.  There are some poems that I have no memory of writing at all.  Seen from that distance, they no longer have the starry sheen of inspiration, and fall flat. There are a few exceptions...and perhaps I'll play with those more.  There is some satisfaction is being able to recognize where things fall down, in any case.  And I find a certain symmetry in realizing I do have an angel poem.  I suspect Karen would be amused. There is a story I'd forgotten about that interests me in some ways, although those reasons are possibly more psychological than artistic.  I am clearly someone who writes out her demons, fictionalizing them into something manageable.  That level of exposure is a wee bit uncomfortable.

I've been thinking about that, about the ever watching Eyes of Audience, in terms of this blog.  A number of people have remarked on how personal it is, more journal than anything else, and I find the exposure is, well, awkward.  Largely, I started this blog with the understanding that it incredibly obscure and of interest only to those who already know me, and even those that know me don't necessarily want to hear me rambling along all the time, but will probably forgive me my typos and awkwardness.  Now there are a few folks that I've never even met who have read it.  On the one hand, I understand, yo, that's the idea, and the star child in me is thrilled by that, let the applause, or attention anyway, circle round.  On the other hand, it freaks me out.  How exactly do I present here?  Neurotic or nutty, funny or damaged, smart but self-conscious, analytical but antsy, all or none of the above?  This is the thing with art, writing, voice, honesty, fiction, you always show more than you think you do, and it's filtered through someone else's equally subjective world view.  I'm more comfortable with that now than I used to me (don't like it? don't like me? don't read it, and, uh, don't care).  But to say I'm completely comfortable?  Umm, no.

On that note, it is my mild hope to pull this more up out of my particular ponderings and react more to other people's work.  I'll be going to Neil de la Flor's book launch in NYC in mid May.  I hope to catch a Good, Greasy & Baked show while I'm there, if they're playing (need to check that).  Maybe see the Marina Abramovic exhibit at MoMA Neil has been talking about. Getting out of the studio for a bit, into the life and noise of NYC seems a good plan.  So more on that to come. In the meantime, those in DC should tell me where to be going for art, music, writing, etc.  I want to be in the summertime flow of dancing in the streets.