tomorrow new flowers will blossom

2012-02-01T22:01:00.001-08:00

2012-01-31T07:05:00.001-08:00

separate your heart from your mind

stop eating

stop sleeping

stop feeling anything but anger

confront the truth

separate your heart from your mind

reality is not reality

stop eating

stop feeling

stop feeling
human

stop feeling

stop thinking about god

separate your heart from your mind

remember borges

remember anaïs nin

remember baudelaire

remember rimbaud

stop feeling

separate your heart from your mind

blessed be the day

stops this

2012-01-23T23:01:00.000-08:00

2012-01-13T21:15:00.001-08:00

WE CAN DO WHAT WE WANT BECAUSE THERES ALWAYS PLENTY OF SUNSHINE AND EXERCISE

2012-01-09T16:56:00.001-08:00

im in love with your brother can i come over

2011-12-30T21:17:00.000-08:00

gizmos

potion

2011-12-29T22:48:00.000-08:00

2011-12-18T12:55:00.001-08:00

2011-12-14T21:56:00.000-08:00

capturing light in squares
square boxes

2011-12-14T21:50:00.000-08:00

capsule

of a skull\\

mention something better next time, say, say something like theres a reason for all of this, more than just to serve you

2011-12-01T13:53:00.000-08:00

hello. are you a little ghost? is it right, or wrong, the air that comes through your window. do you feel tired? yes. i dont know. yes.

i what you.

ill follow through. what is the problem? open your window.

there but its too cold.

2011-11-30T19:19:00.001-08:00

a simple "hello" would be nice

2011-11-29T17:35:00.001-08:00

somewhere along the way i lost sight of all i love about life

2011-11-20T01:31:00.000-08:00

my god i miss new york

2011-11-16T00:55:00.000-08:00

2011-11-15T01:44:00.001-08:00

noyes no means yes means no means yes means no means yes oh god

2011-10-11T10:56:00.000-07:00

andrew wyeth

2011-10-11T10:21:00.000-07:00

Nobuyoshi Araki

2011-10-04T00:13:00.000-07:00

sweet love love

2011-09-28T16:38:00.000-07:00

Parshvanath temple  contains an inscription of 954 AD of builder Pahil, mentioning donation  of gardens and requesting future generations to safeguard the temple.  It mentions Chandella Dhanga as the reigning king.[1]

A well known early magic square is found in this temple.[2]

Most-perfect magic square from the Parshvanath Jain temple in Khajuraho

7	12	1	14
2	13	8	11
16	3	10	5
9	6	15	4

transcription of
the indian numerals

This is referred to as the Chautisa Yantra, since each sub-square sums to 34.

theres a lack of

2011-09-28T13:58:00.000-07:00

well now, roller rinks and lipstick smmmmmearrrrrrrrrrrrs

2011-09-23T00:23:00.000-07:00

he brought down the water from the sky

he was the most important god

knowing and renouncing severally and singly the actions against living beings, in the regions above, below, and on the surface, everywhere and in all ways-a wise man neither gives pain to these bodies, nor orders others to do so. Nay, we abhor those who give pain to these bodies. Knowing this, a wise man should not cause this or any other pain to any creatures.

Thus i say.

save me from this abhorrence

2011-09-22T23:39:00.000-07:00

i dont know why you treated me like i was a piece of shit for so long.maybe you are a fucking idiot. maybe i just hate myself. either way, i dont care. you can treat me like that if you want to but its always going to be you who goes to hell, you who are the fucking idiot, you who feels like shit at the end of the day, me who just remembers that i have to take care of myself, but even if i dont, its not like its me whos the bad one.

2011-09-17T17:08:00.000-07:00

maybe i should get a mob, cause one is bien sur their mob.

what the fuck do i care about shoes. i mean really.

2011-09-14T00:06:00.000-07:00

2011-09-07T23:01:00.001-07:00


rodin, jardin des supplices. im used to it by now.

sounds as words

2011-09-07T14:51:00.000-07:00

i woke up and looked at the clock and it said that it was 3:40 am. it was 30 minutes fast, but it was still the time on the clock. i got up and went pee in the toilet and i realized that the grain in the wood looked really normal, and that everything was close-up and big and real. i got excited and happy and then i got scared. but i realized that i didnt care. for real i didnt care. didnt care. i didnt fret on whether or not it would stay or go. it didnt matter. but why didnt it matter? surrender? wow. if it is surrender then is surrender a form of letting go? i would hate to admit that its hopelessness. perhaps its just the opposite in disguise. could i be hopeful?

i need to go throw up now.

"not like im being paid to be alive": respecting titles and words of those i respect

2011-08-04T10:56:00.000-07:00

in a hurry to figure something out about how i can at least pretend to pull my shit together/ ive realized that the main issue in my life is a pure fear that prohibits "things" from moving forward: its a type of paralysis that doesnt allow my mind to articulate to my body whats happening, only refusing permissions to move forward in this life, a non-acknowledgment, not letting alone, to not accept existing in these current surroundings.

i grew up in the Northwest, surrounded for the most part by a bunch of super-comfortable idealists who do everything by doing nothing in their refusal to act according first and foremost to the rules. we do everything, almost secretly, on our own terms. theres a certain amount of working against the system inherent in simply slowing the fuck down. i suppose this means that when i feel rushed i feel resentment. and here i feel rushed, which just fucking makes me want to stick my middle finger up someones asshole. i think i need to go home. i need to pet my fucking dog. i need to see my brother and let him comfort me with his acceptance. i need to feel my sisters casual acceptance of life and her naïve embrace of simple pleasures like driving up and down hills and parallel parking. and dancing. i need to hear my mothers refusal to accept anything in life except her childrens refusal to love her like she wants them to, to replace the love lost when her father died and the acceptance her mother refused her FOR HER ENTIRE LIFE.

my bf is an idiot:new post

2011-07-26T20:55:00.001-07:00

2011-05-04T11:57:00.000-07:00

merci d'avoir utilisé universal farm, like l'amour fou

my dearest dove

2011-04-01T19:20:00.000-07:00

when i spoke to my mother on the phone one night or two nights ago, she told me not to eat my hair. she tried to frighten me with a story about how a woman once died because she always had her hair in her mouth and ended up swallowing too much of it and when they cut open her body they found so much hair in her belly.

if you loved me you wouldnt say hateful things.

if you loved me you would want to be with me always.

2011-02-24T11:22:00.001-08:00

the first one who does loses

2011-02-15T20:28:00.000-08:00

oh andre, dear andre. beautiful andre.

what were you thinking, beautiful andre. and then you took me in the swimming pool.

i went off the diving board, to the bottom, 13 feet down. and then i didnt come up.

dont ask me to do things with you. youre being unfair. youre being rude youre being rudely unfair to me to me to me. if you leave me be it means that you cant tell me what to eat, you cant tellll me where to go, you cant tell me what to pray, you cant tell me what to wear, and you cant tell me you cant tell me you cant tell me you cant tell me

so let me be dear andre

andre let me be

let andre be me

make happen uncomfortableness with dreams and wooden bellies and wooden backs

and no, without, sleep, of course

2011-02-10T10:14:00.000-08:00

how do we know what is true?

how can we look inside ourselves and know what is truth and what is lies?
there is no one or the other, only grey. blank. lost in space. but then there is the sun, and the moon. AND KINGS AND QUEENS.

and all of my superstitions turned to religion. and the worship of water. incessant worship. the ritual baptisms. the navires. stultifera navis.

stultifera navisstultifera navisstultifera navisstultifera navisstultifera navisstultifera navisstultifera

je te met de l'eau dans les yeaux!

2011-02-07T17:22:00.000-08:00

all beings desire happiness and dislike misery

jai envie davoir une petite morte

all beings desire happiness and dislike misery

2011-02-03T20:55:00.000-08:00

he brought down the water from the sky

he was the most important god

Thus i say.

save me from this abhorrence

shaped for survival

2011-01-30T14:09:00.000-08:00

she has a child's head. a white girl. a slender body, grown, with breasts. a white man's muscular right arm, with a cross tattooed to his wrist. he wears rings on this hand, and holds an exotic pink flower. she's got a thin black woman's left leg, and a giant penis. she hides her left hand behind her back, and always stares downward. her eggs float in space, following her around, always hanging about to her right side. her third eye matches the flower she holds in her right male hand.

2011-01-30T14:04:00.000-08:00

my god i've no patience

slef-procalimed mad woman

2011-01-28T12:52:00.000-08:00

Yayoi Kusama brings me a bit back to life, incapable of feeling animosity towards anything, only absurdity.

ok, so i might still hate food, and anything nourishing, including money.

still trying to convince my therapist that i maybe dont want to remain a child my whole life (more specifically a little girl, without breasts, without hips, with hatred towards them in fact)

2011-01-26T10:24:00.000-08:00

making once, twice, things to obsess about. j calls them the howling fantods, after the late David Foster Wallace. I dont think its funny. i think its terrifying. they are the most incomprehensibly horrible, frightful place of panic I've ever visited. and if i have to ever go back there i might never return is what i fear, and thats it all laid out. all strewn across the room. There's nothing solid here/there, and no way to know exactly what youre feeling and no way to feel the realness of the world, and no way to produce anything without doubt, including and especially love. very much like being tied up, bound, feet and hands to a chair, blindfolded, gagged, and thrown into a deep, dark, swift current. not cold, just swallowed-up whole.

without real breath. without real life. like a ghost.

not feeling balanced today not at all not at all

2011-01-25T09:20:00.000-08:00

thinking about the opaque layer that covers the outside of cathedrals. and then the scaffolding that masks the great monuments facade while they gently remove the grime. but once theyve entirely finished its time to begin again.

Then Judas, who betrayed him, seeing that he was condemned, repenting himself, brought back the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and ancients, saying: "I have sinned in betraying innocent blood." But they said: "What is that to us? Look thou to it." And casting down the pieces of silver in the temple, he departed, and went and hanged himself with a halter. But the chief priests, having taken the pieces of silver, said: "It is not lawful to put them into the corbona, because it is the price of blood." And after they had consulted together, they bought with them the potter's field, to be a burying place for strangers. For this the field was called Haceldama, that is, the field of blood, even to this day.

hart island, white hole

what to do what to do what to do

2011-01-21T11:18:00.000-08:00

chilling out with

Zoe

listening to music and staring at each other from over the table. Sometimes I think I'm in love with Zoe. I like the way she licks my face, but I hate her taste in music.

2011-01-17T20:22:00.000-08:00

i want to stay up all night, and i want to get drunk, and i want to wait for you, and I want to stick my fingers in your mouth, and I dont want to wait for you anymore, and i want you to be nice to me, and i want to please you, and i want to tell you that i want you to be nice to me, and i wish youd never done that to me, and i want to stay up all night and i want to smear my lipstick all over your face with my lips, and i want to throw up. in your shoes.

i thought that was you, that noise, i thought that that that that that noise was you and then i realized that that it was only just this-

heres some white chalk for your body

listen to it on your own in secret and never tell anyone about it

2011-01-15T10:19:00.001-08:00

what was that you said?? fucking who? with what? we are what? waiting for what?

2011-01-13T13:14:00.000-08:00

FUCK ME

will

make

you

cry

and

nothing

or perhaps nothing less

more, i want to say more more more. but i cant. or else. _____ me when you _____ me and i will _____ you when i _____ you. and ___________________________________________________________.

you know that Lotus makes little bubble noises and i like to look at your belly under your shirt when you aren't noticing that I'm staring at you. i shove my hands in your mouth and wiggle my fingers around when you dont know im doing it and i _________________________________________ when you tell me to. you know that Lotus makes little bubble noises in his bowl and it sounds like drip drip drip on the window sill, like there's a leak. but there's not its just his fish mouth opening and closing gently inhaling or exhaling or both. um, feathers. in your asshole. vas te faire encule, ma puce.

sshhhhhhhhh

2011-01-08T19:13:00.000-08:00

sorting it all out for real this time.

that means that I take back everythingieversaidordidtoyou. DO YOU UNDERSTAND WHAT THIS MEANS!?

2011-01-04T20:10:00.000-08:00

never mind anything thats happened. never mind that you keep dropping things on the floor. little bits of slobber, little bandages, little gauze fragments, little little littleness.

scattered. and you know, after all that wine, and all those taxis, and all those nights on the bank of the seine or whatever little river, and all those pregnant scares, and all those boules, that pétanque, that bloody game, and all those sunburns and sheets all wrapped around my legs. all that sugar. all that camus.

after

all

that

fucking

shit

AFTER ALL THAT

this is all i ever want(ed):

and ...........................................................................................

......................................................................................

.................................................................................

............................................................................

now...

im stuck doing magic tricks

2011-01-02T17:10:00.001-08:00

sorry i peeled your scab off, i thought it was food.

thats it, thats all.

thank you very much

barthes mythologies the stripteasestripteasestripteasestriptease

2010-12-27T13:37:00.000-08:00

Striptease - at least Parisian striptease - is based on a contradiction: Woman is desexualized at the very moment when she is stripped naked. We may therefore say that we are dealing in a sense with a spectacle based on fear, or rather on the pretence of fear, as if eroticism here went no further than a sort of delicious terror, whose ritual signs have only to be announced to evoke at once the idea of sex and its conjuration.

2010-12-25T16:53:00.000-08:00

he made me he has always made me very uncomfortable when he cries and so i try to look away or pretend when he weeps that ive no idea he's got feelings. that sentamentalism makes me puke. my mother, on the other hand, knocks on the bathroom door after fifteen minutes to make sure i've not drowned in the tub. i think they all believe im still willing to kick the bucket which i dont mind because perhaps itll come in handy some day when im feeling like i need the attention.
im still afraid of visiting the foggy places. you frighten scare, cause me peur. tu me fais peur. tu me fais peur tu me fais peur tu me fais peur. you all. as artaud. as camus. as _________. there is one who im leaving out because im so afraid of him right now. and you want to know who he is.

and you say you want a conversation

......................................................................................................................................................................................................

you want a conversation. NO. you send me a telegraph like you used to in those other older olden redheaded stepchild days.

nobody

a

a
a
a
anybody

2010-12-22T22:55:00.000-08:00

well, he did say that im the lucky one. he said that at least i wouldnt have to take them for the rest of my life, unlike he, who has been popping the things for years and will continue continue continue to do so until he dies. he saw me look down at my lap when he told me that soon ill be able to tolerate them. at least i think thats what he said. and then he told me that wasnt the right word, whatever the word was that he used.

2010-12-22T22:52:00.001-08:00

yes, that would be lovely. but how do you suppose you'd go about that? practically impossible. infinitely preposterous.

2010-12-22T22:49:00.000-08:00

wouldnt it just be lovely if those little pills just didnt exist anymore and i didnt have to even think about taking the fucking things ever ever ever ever again?

2010-12-18T13:31:00.001-08:00

Maxime

2010-12-18T10:54:00.000-08:00

im going to code my words in fear. because i wont never ever be able to freely dit ce que je veux dire... il y a des... garçons... vous savez... je suis pas vraiment... libre.

i admit that i am truly impulsive. especially when im drunk. i get romantic ideas that are SO BRIGHT. they are so bright. they are blinding. and then i end up hurting myself and other people around me and then i try to run and hide in my sleep but then i wake up and i see that there is no hope and im just going to keep pulling out my hairs one by one. and their hairs. and then everyone will be bald, which isnt such a big deal except that i wont like the fact that itll all be my fault. je NE supporte pas les menteurs!!!!! i told the little boy that once, the little boy who used to kick holes in the doors and throw rocks at my head when we'd take walks in the forest. poule ou cock? he would say. i'd say poule or id respond cock. and id almost always be correct, i was so good at that game. and when i told him over and over again that i saw whales out the window he would stare at me wide eyed and call me a liar. then i would say to him, whenever he told me lies, which was often, that je ne supporte pas les menteurs. i was lying. i love liars.

2010-12-14T21:44:00.001-08:00

2010-12-13T10:50:00.000-08:00

what life would be like without pain without meditation on the body in the mind where its coming from. detachment used to be hell, and now its just all just too just all too simply just a way of life. i never thought id get so used to not feeling.
its so odd realizing im feeling something, pain, and then noticing that im sorta not really feeling it because my brain wont let me somehow. im always thinking, i could jump in front of that train and it wouldnt be so strange, because fear is what keeps us from doing so many things, but if your mind is detached from your body, or something, then you know that youre capable of most things without actually having to feel them. its all just chemicals and things. consciousness must be separate from the soul.
when i was a child i was told i had a soul and that i had to keep good care of it.

2010-12-12T22:32:00.001-08:00

somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully ,suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility:whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens;only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands

ee cummings

2010-12-12T15:13:00.000-08:00

sitting here in my underwear, dog growling at me, wondering staring at this picture of hitler and wondering what it means to have an inner light. im going to leave. im going to get out of here and do something goddammit.

2010-12-11T15:02:00.000-08:00

2010-12-10T14:57:00.000-08:00

too many times ive cut my hands in the past week mostly from clovis and his temper, throwing me across the room, backing me into corners. hes like thin clear glass. kingdom of clovis. louis XV.

2010-12-09T20:36:00.000-08:00

today i made enemies, lots and lots of enemies

2010-12-08T17:41:00.000-08:00

***

thinking tonight about all the things i wish would go away out of my head. putting things outside myself. and all the things its like to be a girl and i feel like this frog except for that little yellow part. i ve got to go into the city. thinking about getting drunk. and other things too.

2010-12-07T17:53:00.000-08:00

listening to Miles Davis and Gil Evans, who were my favorites from so long ago when i used to just hang out at the library listening to their vinyl collection, sitting there in that little booth with those headphones on, and then that day prof bailey cried in class after listening to Wagner with us. new angel:

2010-12-06T19:27:00.000-08:00

this one makes me feel like h'ow i used ot feel when really what i used to do was wander around in the forest and i colledcted sheells and hung them in the treees down from strings and they were offerings. i used to sit on logs and hear the water and smell it. that was hten . . . . . ........ ... .yes i went to evergreen and.

2010-12-05T22:14:00.000-08:00

ltos of inspiraition tonight speaking with zachary at the bar about things having to do with popul r culture and ignoring my wrk wiich i still need to be doing bu t well see tomorrow just how smart i am when i show that i can do things in a crucnh eh eh eh eh? well see. oh well bloody see. thinking a lot abot japanese things since im working on an artist of jaapanese persuasion. dreamt about earth quake and big trucks falling from the sky and working to proitect myself and others and lose contact with my sister last night.

and lots and lots of other things happened and always do

2010-12-05T17:19:00.000-08:00

i look like this right now
iiiiiiiii

exist i exist i existed before now somewhere somhow

yes teh wrld outside me

Erin Stout Visual Culture Paint By Numbers: Beyond Kitsch On Herrschners craft website the interested buyer can purchase an array of Paint By Number kits at an average price of about $16.99, the most expensive being a reproduction of Michelangelo's Last Supper, here titled, The Lords Supper, costing $69.99. "Paint By Number is the all time, tried and true classic painting craft," quotes the website.1 Herrschners offers a considerable selection of "landscape and wildlife designs," donning congenial titles like Lakeside Cabin, Victorian Garden, A Perfect Summer Day, Pony and Mother, Springtime Kittens, and my personal favorite, Frederick the Literate, which features a lazy, grey and black striped domestic cat snoozing on a cluttered bookshelf. The compositions' naïve, bucolic content nearly parodies itself, precipitating the phenomenon's demotion to the realm of kitsch, rather than fine art, or even fine craft. The twenty-first century Paint By Number kits, though slightly more sophisticated in detail and color choice than their freshly post-war counterparts, retain their signature look: "no blending required," Herrschners affirms.2 The flat, unmixed sectioned pictures are colorfully saturated in pastel pinks, blues and greens, and they are almost entirely devoid of people or urban landscapes. It has thus been hard for scholars to ignore the aesthetically and intellectually tawdry aspects of this once exceptionally popular hobby. The very concept of the Paint By Number kits hearkens to childhood coloring books with which we were taught to carefully and painstakingly "color between the lines." Thus, nothing more than the adult version of a torn-out page worthy only of a sentimental mounting on the refrigerator door--fascinating in vis-à-vis the hobbyist notion of "play," but laughable when considered as artistic expression. However, to do the preposterous and consider Paint By Number as a quasi-artistic expressive manifestation, we place it in the trajectory of a massive creative movement during which throngs of Americans identified with the artistically superior movement of their generation, namely Abstract Expressionist painters such as Jackson Pollock. This is not to say that in performing the monotonous task of applying paint to numbered spaces, remaining within bounds, Americans believed that they were executing a masterpiece, or were even capable of doing so. The hobby did, however, psychologically associate them with an artistic and cultural post-war metamorphosis during which the nation reveled in its new-found status as a morally superior world power and cultural authority in pursuit of a manifest destiny with a burgeoning leisure class who supported the culture industry. "We couldn't afford 'real' art," says one commenter on the Smithsonian's website devoted to the historical significance of the hobby, "so for us it was a bit of a luxury to have 'real' oil paintings around the house."3 Although the phenomenon was, and still remains, widely regarded and dismissed as nothing more than kitsch, it is crucial to realize that within even the kitschiest of kitsch lies a multi-faceted discourse. For many Americans amidst the mid-century economic boom, Paint By Number was an facile hobby. For others, it represented a mindless and repetitive plague, symbolic of the anti-intellectual foundation of America's swelling culture industry. The concept of kitsch arises alongside the Marxist notion of the culture industry. Kitsch is the detritus of mass produced goods--it is the leftovers, the refuse that symbolizes a failed or fatigued capitalist venture--left to either slowly deteriorate in a landfill or to amalgamate sentimental value as a nostalgic token on a loved one's shelf. Paint By Number, though, persists as a casual hobby for certain individuals, whether aware or not of the phenomenon's delegation to the world of bad taste, and it continues on as a mass-produced article of the culture industry. It is, however, nowhere near as popular as it was just after the end of World War II when the post-war explosion in jobs gave rise to a new leisure class. In 1951, Paint By Number began its rise to its status as hot commodity.4 Clement Greenberg, in his famous essay, Avant Garde and Kitsch, asserts that "Kitsch is the product of the industrial revolution which urbanized the masses of western Europe and America and established what us caked the universal literacy."5 Greenberg argues that the rise in jobs during the industrial revolution, along with the resulting mass literacy, resulted in the necessity for, and invention of, kitsch. He continues: "[…] the new urban masses set up a pressure on society to provide them with a kind of culture fit for their own consumption. To fill the demand of the new market a new commodity was devised: ersatz culture, kitsch, destined for those who, insensible to the values of the genuine culture, are hungry nevertheless for the diversion that only culture of some sort can provide."6 Greenberg asserts that the new literate majority, now the deciding power in the modern economy (an economy which allowed for, and depended upon, leisure) craved collective entertainment that would replace their erstwhile folk culture. The critic's aforementioned contentions have been an authority on our art historical perspectives of kitsch, and have thus significantly prohibited scholars from evaluating kitschy phenomena from a more positive perspective. It is worth, therefore, considering the Paint By Number fad from the viewpoint of Greenberg's influential criticism: "Kitsch, using for raw material the debased and academicized simulacra of genuine culture, welcomes and cultivates this insensibility. It is the source of its profits. Kitsch is mechanical and operates by formulas. Kitsch is vicarious experience and faked sensations. Kitsch changes according to style, but remains always the same. Kitsch is the epitome of all that is spurious in the life of our times. Kitsch pretends to demand nothing of its its customers except their money--not even their time."7 For Greenberg, kitsch is nothing more than assembly-line garbage manufactured for the culturally daft. It is an anti-intellectual system developed specifically for profit and has no place in the cultural hierarchy; it is junk. Greenberg's assumptions about kitsch miss the point; kitsch palpably operates within the discourse of high culture, and would not exist without the market's desire to tap into exalted decorum. High culture, or what Greenberg considers the avant-garde for the purposes of his essay, determines that which becomes kitsch through a top to bottom hegemonic system--high culture translated to low. Kitsch is, in a sense, a watered-down visual translation of the language of the power brokers; it is the manifestation of a worker's alienation from what Greenberg calls "genuine culture." In her postmodernist essay, The Dark Side of Modernity's Moon, Celeste Olaquiaga reveals Greenberg's pretensions which muddle his logic as to the inherent philistine properties of kitsch: "What makes Greenberg indignant is that thanks to industrialization, capitalism and consumer culture, art is in the hands of those he indistinctly refers to as poor, peasants and plebeians. Literacy, therefore, has done nothing better than to make accessible to 'the insensible and indifferent masses' an aesthetic experience that only the moneyed classes (or, in Greenberg's conception, 'the masters') can understand and enjoy properly[…]"8 Olaquiaga recognizes the high-to-low translation of elitist art production to attainable kitsch. For Greenberg, the true distinction between kitsch and art is class, and not necessarily content. The presence of kitsch demonstrates a strong desire not to follow, but to emulate cultural authority. Kitsch mimics high culture and attempts to demonstrate a degree of intellectualism and inclusion into propriety. In this sense, kitsch is a cultural paradox (the translation of high culture into low is, in a sense, a reflection of authoritarian taste), thus it so constantly grappled with and misunderstood. In the recent years that followed the Second World War, America seemed to picture itself as a worldwide cultural authority. In his book, Postwar America, 1945-1971, Howard Zinn addresses the euphoric zeal and sense of pride that overwhelmed the nation after the defeat of Japan: "[…] the United States was overcome with the grandeur of its mission," he writes, "World War II was a perfect example of that one-dimensional moral judgement so characteristic of human history: all evil on one side, all virtue on the other."9 This moral judgement came from the notion of of traditional American values as compared to those of the rest of the world. Zinn mentions "the idea of Manifest Destiny--the rightness of America's growing power over other countries," as one of these main traditional values that penetrated the American psyche before, during, and after the war, as well as "the inviolability of capitalism, the profit system, and corporate power and privilege."10 To say it otherwise, the American culture industry's successes relied on a political distinction between Us (puritanical, democratic capitalists) and Them (atheist, fascist communists); the production and consumption of goods reflected the fulfillment of manifest destiny. The rise of the new leisure class, a result of a booming industry after the war, and in counter distinction to the losers of the war, was the material evidence of American cultural superiority. "Leisure was classless," Karal Ann Marling writes, [it was] a textbook example of democracy in action."11 In 1949, a year before the release of Paint By Number kits, Life magazine posed the question to millions of Americans, "Is [Jackson Pollock] the greatest living artist in the United States?" The popularity of Life magazine need not be reiterated. In that its audience spans a wide demographic, the publication provides a perfect gauge for the American culture industry. The magazine was not only in the business of selling itself, attempting to persuade its audience that Life epitomized an authority on culture, but also advertised for any name that appears in their print. Thus if Jackson Pollock, or any other artist, were the subject of a vast national opinion pole of sorts, then art, although financially unattainable for the vast majority of Life's readers, mattered on a national scale. The Smithsonian's website demonstrates that the phenomenon was in fact first conceived to posses a direct association with the world of high art: "Dan Robbins proposed that Palmer's first paint-by-number kit be an abstract painting rendered in the cubist style pioneered by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque." They go on, however to state that,"It later proved that adult consumers attracted to the by-the-numbers concept disdained abstract compositions, preferring the narrative realism of Fishermen, Mt. Matterhorn, Latin Figures, and The Bullfighter."12 The reason for this disdain is clear; despite the desire to partake in a high-culture "hobby," the depth of the new leisure class' education on the subject of the arts came from mass produced mediums like Life magazine and television and film. Though programed to accept that an engagement with the arts defined a portion of the new authoritative American identity, the greater part of the population did not posses the culture capital needed to understand the abstract concepts which were the foundation of cubism. It is also true that the greater part of Americans struggled to understand Pollock's drips and the thick, emotional brushstrokes of Abstract Expressionism in general. In his article, Life Magazine and Abstract Expressionists, 1948-51: A Histiographic Study of a Late Bohemian Enterprise, Bradford Collins explores Life's "Round Table on Modern Art," held in 1948, during which the publication organized a panel to discuss the issue in question: "Is modern art, considered as a whole, a good or bad development? That is to say, is it something that responsible people can support, or may they neglect it as a minor and impermanent phase of culture? (p.56)" 13 One notes the panel's circumspect emphasis on morality with the mention of "good" and "bad" as opposing forces, as well as the carefully chosen phrasing of "responsible people." The new America, the America with a fresh leisure class that suddenly had enough time on their hands to not only engage in discussions of culture, but possessed sufficient disposable income to support certain intellectual ventures, was not yet comfortable with the ideals of abstract art. This is exactly the discussion at which Greenberg would cringe--the puritanical layman at work decoding an elitist discourse and in so doing turning it into something attainable for the "new urban masses." It is interesting to note a few of the committee's first and second recommendations as to how the layman might approach modern (abstract) art: "1. The layman should guard against his own natural inclination to condemn a picture just because he is unable to identify its subject matter in his ordinary experience. 2. He should, however, be equally on guard against the assumption that a painting that is recognizable…is no good…(268)".14 Discussions like this became possible in post-war America because of the new leisure class and their support of the culture industry: if the new leisure class preferred realism in their art, it was because that was what they previously had intellectual access to--a fact that Dan Robbins had not taken in consideration with his proposal for a cubist Paint By Number series. If America was to maintain its new authority and fulfill the traditional value of cultural and economic Manifest Destiny, what the new petit-bourgeois believed and desired mattered.

2010-12-05T11:44:00.001-08:00

2010-12-04T11:24:00.001-08:00

2010-12-03T11:37:00.000-08:00

The power of la parole extends: beyond limitations.

Listening to: Nina Simone, Don't Explain, which is, the id to our ego.

AND: I PUT A FUCKING SPELL ON YOU

Erin Stout Contemporary Art: WWII to Present Paul Thek: Transcending an Expected Language "In place of a hermeneutics we need an erotics of art." -Susan Sontag The aesthetic divisions of Paul Thek's works at the Whitney Museum's current exhibit, Paul Thek: Diver, A Retrospective, reveal not only Thek's chronological evolution as an artist, but also the great divide in his conceptual developments over the course of merely a few decades during his short life. The visitor first encounters Thek's famed Meat Pieces, those glossy, wax wedges of decaying meat under plexiglass, dotted with grotesquely oversized flies and strangely penetrated by silver metal tubing, executed in the mid 1960's and engaged with the minimalist discourse of the decade. The artist's statement is clear in these repetitive and often gridded Judd-like transparent boxes into which Thek inserts flesh rather than pure concept. He questions the removed coolness and individualism of the minimalist and pop artists, bringing art back to the real-life studio by working within the discourse of the times and beyond. It is important to observe that Thek never candidly accepted the American art world, who, in turn, showed little understanding of the artist's innovative works and his idiosyncratic way of viewing the world, which was both highly individualistic and intensely collaborative. Attempting to address concerns over certain gaps in the retrospective's already broad representation of his work, (the absence of what is perhaps Thek's most famous work of all, Tomb, for which Thek sculpted a life-sized effigy of himself which was destroyed, is a shocking omission that the curators clearly regret) the museum attributes these erasures to the ephemeral materials used in many of his pieces, as well as an absence of enthusiasm in the art world to preserve his works. In his Meat Pieces Thek presents us outright with the notion of the transitory; the pieces of wax flesh are represented as if in a state of decay. Yett there exists another level of ephemerality to these objects. By setting the wedges in plastic cases, as if they are relics to be somehow eternally preserved, (there is a definite sci-fi quality to the tubes and tinted plexiglass), Thek draws acute attention to the fact that these are objects of the terra firma, transcendental only in idea, and are thus doomed to the fate of the corporeal. It would be impossible to ignore Thek's leitmotif of ephemerality, especially once we move away from his Meat Pieces and towards his later works, which are more earthy and exude a discernible old-world quality. These later works, sculptural pieces constructed from painted wooden furniture and found objects such as old shoes, photographs and taxidermic animals, draw on memory and the effects of passing time on manmade and natural articles. They recall Joseph Beuys' nostalgic artifacts, for example his Fat Chair (which came almost a decade after Thek's startlingly similar Sedan Chair in which he places a chunk of wax meat on the seat of a chair), which engaged Beuys' own highly personal mythologies. Thek's conversation with the transitory is present throughout the entirety of his oeuvre, a fact which the Whitney's retrospective makes entirely clear. By and large, scholarship on Thek connects Thek's fixation on ephemeral materials as ultimately as an existential engagement, asserting that the artist bravely and obsessively ruminated on and embraced his mortality (Thek died of AIDS at the advent of the epidemic during the early 1980's.) His work, therefore, continues to be interpreted as reflecting his psychological struggle with the illness and his apprehension of impending death. Not only does this method of interpretation speak to the very metaphoric discourse on AIDS and illness that Susan Sontag reviled in her book AIDS and Its Metaphors (she dedicated the short work to Thek in 1989), but I find that it also compromises the intense sensuality and purposefully naïve qualities of his work, aspects which reveal a deep engagement with the magical and atavistic properties of everyday objects. Over the course of his career, Thek worked with many different mediums, including painting, sculpture, and installations termed "environments," of which much of the original debris was purposely primitive and transitory. I will consider the ephemeral as a theme in his work as a manifestation of his desire to bring the sacred properties of art out of everyday spaces and objects, which is in counter distinction to the common assertion that the transitory nature of his art is due exclusively to his fixation on mortality. Thek's work especially engages in a dialectic with Susan Sontag's deliberations on the inherent properties of art, particularly her contemplation of a more formalist approach to art criticism in her book Against Interpretation, which she dedicated to Thek, and with which she advocated for a new era of criticism, what she describes as an "erotics of art."(14) As I mentioned previously, Thek began his career as a transgressive artist, questioning the cool removedness of the minimalist and pop artists of his generation. He began his flight from interpretation early on with his rejection of a purely conceptual art. His Meat Pieces referenced sensuousness, even if they didn't exude it in the same way that his environments and late paintings would. Thek was looking beyond the cerebral and towards the tactile, transcending space and time and then reeling it back in towards earth. To say it otherwise, Thek occupied himself with the magical and sanctified qualities of the transitory of the everyday. That which is ephemeral is inherently sensual because of its interaction with the physical realm--the object as it exists in the realm of mankind, subject to the elements: wind, water, fire, etc. Thek saw the preternatural in the fleeting quality of everyday objects and was enthralled by it. For Thek, the contemplation of the mysteriously destructive and cyclical nature of time's passage made life unusual and extraordinary, even divine. Sontag begins her text, Against Interpretation, by suggesting that "The earliest experience of art must have been that it was incantatory, magical: art was an instrument of ritual."(3) She goes on, "[…] all Western consciousness of and reflection upon art have remained within the confines staked out by the Greek theory of art as mimesis or representation […] it is the habit of approaching works of art in order to interpret them that sustains the fancy that there really is such a thing as the content of a work of art." (5) Art, she believes, possesses an inherent mystical quality, a feature which distinguishes it as Janused, two-directional, possessing both transcendental as well as earth-bound power. She feels that it is only due to our insistence on the content of a work of art that we neglect to see its innate mysticism, and she asserts that our current formula for interpretation (which she claims is virtually one of translation) is the result of a disruption in the power of myth with the introduction of scientific enlightenment: "Once the questions that haunts post-mythic consciousness--that of the seemliness of religious symbols--had been asked, the ancient texts were […] no longer acceptable." (5-6) For Sontag, and for this interpretation of Thek, art is the substantiative and temporal matter of religion. I use the term religion here in a broad sense, and in the same way that Mircea Eliade refers to "religious man" in his book The Sacred and the Profane. For Eliade, "religious man" typifies he who suspects two "types of being in the world" which are, of course, the sacred and the profane. Eliade explains the vastness of his interpretation of the homo religious by explaining that "sacred and profane are […] two existential situations assumed by man in the course of his history." (14) Eliade's position is that in creating a cosmos for himself, the religious man also establishes the opposing profane space, or that which lies beyond the reach of the incantatated. He enumerates, "For religious man, space is not homogenous; he experiences interruptions, breaks in it […] the religious experience of the nonhomogeneity of space is a primordial experience, homologizable to a founding of the world." (20-21) By nature, the religious man consecrates a space by seeing the sacred manifested in an object: "When the the sacred manifests itself in any hierophany," says Eliade, "there is not only a break in the homogeneity of space; there is also revelation of an absolute reality, opposed to the nonreality of the vast surrounding expanse. The manifestation of the sacred ontologically founds the world […] the hierophany reveals an absolute fixed point, a center." (21) The center/hierophany, in the instance of Thek, is his works of art, and in turn the generation of their own surrounding cosmos and establishment of an inside/outside relationship with the cosmic universe. It would be fair to say, depending on one's opinions as to the inert sacred properties of art, that all art objects can be perceived as hierophanies and thus the space surrounding them sacred and ritualized. One essential element must be taken into account: to merely declare an object's sacrality is not sufficient. The article in question must be invested with a physiological weightiness. Let us consider, for example, the sacrality of Thek's Meat Pieces in comparison with his environments or paintings. While significant to the art world in terms of their formal play on the conceptual elitism of minimalism, these sculptural pieces somehow lack in primordial mysticism. The Meat Pieces are a commentary on the transitory nature of life outside of the mystical. They exist in the realm of the profane--the world which lacks in a truly sensual connection with its environment, mired in the intellectualism of interpretive content that Sontag so vehemently argues against. Thek's environments, by contrast, engage in the artist's personal mythologies and naïve playfulness which dialogically interact with the historical occurrence of festivals and religious rites of passage. In these especially ephemeral installations and environments we see everyday objects and elements, incantatory parapehenelia, impulses that attempt to channel the viewer's primordial connection to the earth and ancient mythologies. A digital archive, called The Paul Thek Project, which is committed to the daunting task of accurately re-creating a selected number of the artist's environments, provides a list of materials and props that Thek used in his installations and have since disappeared. When viewed, they function simply as words together in a list, speak Thek's mythological language and are bound together by a symbolic thread: bell (1), boat (7), bridge (9), candle (6), canopy (3), carpet (2), chalice (3), deer (1), dwarf (2), feather painting (2), fireplace (2), fountain (30), goose (2), hare (1), lily (2), mirror (2), monkey (2), nest (2), Philosopher's Stone (3), piano (3), plate (2), pyramid (11), rope (1), sea of sand (2), shells (3), stone (1), table (3), water (5) The universal sacrality of water and fire is clear, as is the animalistic symbolism and ubiquitous presence of structures like the pyramid, bridge, table, and plate. Thek is clearly tapping into an atavistic human proclivity; in creating his environments, and by eclipsing both the conceptual and mimesis or representation, he makes them beyond interpretation. "Every cosmic fragment is transparent; its own mode o existence shows a particular structure of being, and hence the sacred," says Eliade. (138) Eliade as well addresses the inherent sacrality of nature for religious man. "Nature," he states, "is never only "natural;" it is always fraught with a religious value […] for the cosmos is a divine creation; coming from the hands of the gods, the world is impregnated with sacredness […] [the gods] manifested the different modalities of the sacred in the very structure of the world and cosmic phenomena."(116) Thek's artistic production bridges the gap between the Sontag and Eliade, making manifest the cooperation of their theories in the object or environment. There arises a direct correlation between Sontag's assertions on art as incantatory and Eliade's conclusions on the ritualized aspects of life and space. Whereas Sontag wishes to demonstrate the mythological aspects of art, and in doing so to move art criticism away from content, Thek combines these in his environments and his paintings; especially his later paintings, which make up the last of the Whitney's retrospective. These works, executed from the late seventies into the early eighties, answer Sontag's call for "an erotics of art." Thek intentionally (while naïvely) paints these very words in all capital letters across the top of a fleshy-pink canvas. Light blue scribbles, and abrupt, thick black rectangles present themselves here and there in groups, and reddish-pink serpentine brushstrokes mark the bottom of the canvas as feminine with breast-like inverted mounds. A cross to the left, more fleshy lines to the right: these organic, passionately constructed shapes and colors feel sensual, sexual, erotic. The work brings to life the color of flesh, a chest marked with lipstick, crayon, scribble, scars, life. This particular painting is undeniably an homage to Sontag's ruminations on what both art and criticism should look and sound like at the time: "The function of criticism should be to show how it is what it is, even that it is what it is, rather than to show what it means,"(14) she writes, "We must learn to see more, to hear more, to feel more."(14) The work is neither a representation of something, nor devoid of meaning. It is, in one word, sensuous.

2010-12-01T20:35:00.001-08:00

2010-12-01T20:34:00.000-08:00

red wine

Thek + Sontag =

2010-11-29T09:08:00.001-08:00

2010-11-25T18:34:00.000-08:00

just look at it now

2010-11-21T08:58:00.000-08:00

this is what it looks like:
waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting
waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting
waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting
waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting
waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting
waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting
waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting
waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting
etc.

this is what it sounds like:
noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise
noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise
noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise
noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise
noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise
noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise
noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise
noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise
noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise
noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise
noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise
noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise
noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise
noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise
noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise
noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise
etc.

this is what i feels like:

etc.

2010-11-21T08:40:00.001-08:00

its over before it ever got started

2010-11-18T06:41:00.000-08:00

just fuck off and let me sleep

after bourdieu, baudrillard, brecht, barthes without umbilical cord

2010-11-15T08:17:00.000-08:00

after Wilke without chewing gum

2010-11-09T12:40:00.001-08:00

makes me feel like a teenager

2010-11-06T18:52:00.001-07:00

♥ ♥ ♥

i fucking love you and you and you

2010-11-04T14:25:00.001-07:00

an excerpt from thenothinglifeofanalligator

2010-11-04T14:22:00.000-07:00

Saturday, August 25, 2007

friday?

i dunno what happened. im missing a day. this may be what happens when your life runs rampant with disease. just one quick pousse on medium speed. a windy, mushy mess getting sick and thinner by the second. i warned you. im a killer.cant sleep. my new pjs are itchy and hot. took the bottoms off, but dont want to wake up without a shirt. i used to have friends. friends whod let me fall asleep on their couch. would bring me a glass of water and set it on the nightstand just in case i got thirsty in the middle of the night. now its all unfamiliar and uncomfortable and red. pictures everywhere. felt on the floor.

the family is yours. your mothers breasts are yours.

2010-11-02T13:55:00.001-07:00

a short excerpt from the nothing life of an alligator

2010-11-02T09:39:00.001-07:00

Monday, October 1, 2007

a heated blast of air...
the hot air balloon has a device that blows hot air into a big balloon, and then it floats around in the sky. the balloon and the air work together to make the basket fly, and there are sometimes people travelling in the basket. I would put a dog in the basket if I had one of these hot air balloons. I'd put a black dog and some carnations into the basket and tell him to be careful. dont jump out of the basket, or else you'll die from falling. the small black dog would bark to indicate that he understood. i would pat his head and give him a bone. then i would untie the rope and pull the string to let a heated blast of air into the balloon. They would slowly float away--the dog, and the balloon, and the pink carnations. I'm waving now, and weeping a little bit.

satisfied child

2010-11-02T09:21:00.000-07:00

exercise in 35 masks

2010-10-25T10:48:00.000-07:00

2010-10-24T19:09:00.000-07:00

Y + M = GOD

8 after M 1, 2, and 3

2010-10-24T07:01:00.000-07:00

Vito Acconci - Open Book 1974

2010-10-22T08:10:00.000-07:00

2010-10-21T08:28:00.001-07:00

non-democratic numbered series

2010-10-21T07:50:00.001-07:00

2010-10-20T18:52:00.000-07:00

just fucking material
material just for fucking
fucking just for material
fucking material
material fucking
just fucking material

material just for fucking

fucking just for material

fucking material

material fucking

just fucking material

material just for fucking

fucking just for material

fucking material

material fucking

just fucking material

material just for fucking

fucking just for material

fucking material

material fucking

just fucking material

material just for fucking

fucking just for material

fucking material

material fucking

just fucking material

material just for fucking

fucking just for material

fucking material

material fucking

CocoRosie - Lemonade

2010-10-20T18:48:00.000-07:00

2010-10-20T18:38:00.001-07:00

2010-10-18T08:07:00.000-07:00

2010-10-11T20:32:00.000-07:00

2010-07-21T22:32:00.001-07:00

2010-07-21T22:06:00.000-07:00

2010-07-21T17:44:00.001-07:00

2010-07-21T16:20:00.001-07:00