About five
in the morning,
we’d sneak
my parent’s car out
and
drive around
the neighborhood until six
and
then put it back.
We did that
for a good
year and a half
before I got caught.
Tuesday, 25 September 2007
Ailene
About five
in the morning,
we’d sneak
my parent’s car out
and
drive around
the neighborhood until six
and
then put it back.
We did that
for a good
year and a half
before I got caught.
Monday, 24 September 2007
Friday, 21 September 2007
me me #1: Superstar!!
A universal trait that runs through all the painter friends I have known is an interest in the 1990's period of Saturday Night Live and concensus on its funnniest sketch ever. Jon Lovitz did a scene whre he played Picasso at a sidewalk cafe, drunk on his own fame. Every outrageous act followed up by the declaration "I'm Picasso!". The Barrista comes to his table, explains how she has painted for 10 years and never sold a thing and Picasso scribbles on a napkin, throws it in her direction and declares "Now you can retire! I'm Picasso!!".
This is essentially what all my professional aspirations are aiming for.
Without much commercial effort on my part, I am simultaneously "discovered" by galleries, museums, writers, international intelligentsia, politicians, celebrities (who I am able to disdain in "In touch" and "People" magazine, imbuing myself with even more artistic credibility).
People who have never met me, nor people I would wish to be personally close with to desire pieces of autobiographical work fervently. I want this desire to grow so strong that all facets of my life gain a measure of fame, merely by being in my own presence. Crap things I did as a student are treasured because they show my inherent humility, how I'm really "one of us". Articles are written. Documentaries are produced. Streets are named.
Institutions who would not accept me as a student or an anonymous person to wish me to come and instruct them. Places who did not care for my work enough to place it in large group shows will clamor to display it proudly, proclaiming it the best of who we are as a people. They will take it to far off places, as I inspire an untraditional patriotism in Venice, Munich, Sao Paolo.
My ideas find fertile ground across higher education worldwide. Even crackpot saying are taken seriously for a time, until eventually people see the absurdity in what I say and declare undying respect for my layers of dry wit.
Once I was told a story about Jackson Pollock, Phillip Guston and his wife (whose name I don't know). It was in the early 50's and Pollock had been proclaimed by Life magazine as the greatest artst in the world and his splatter paintings had created a stir. He was rich, but his friends, the artist he had matured with, who had probably pulled him out of the gutter numerous times were terribly poor. Well, as the story went, Phillip Guston and his wife were sitting around the table, shivering in the cold and wondering how they could buy food for the holidays when the phone rang. In order to scrape some money together, they were trying to sell the christmas card that Jacson Pollock had sent out--a kind of tiny splattery thing. The wife got up to answer the phone while Phillip and Nic (the narrator) sat at the table tryng to think up a plan. The phone conversation was short and businesslike and when the wife retrned, she was in a bit of a daze. It was the gallery, she said. They wanted to buy the Xmas card after all, for $50,000.
This, too I aspire to.
Tokens of love and friendship translate into a vast underground currency, gifts of immense wealth. I do a portrait of a man without a home, give him the print, then years later, he is offered $50,000 for it from a collector. The lifelong friends who have received special tokens year after year are rich beyond measure, their children without a care for money throughout their life.
This is essentially what all my professional aspirations are aiming for.
Without much commercial effort on my part, I am simultaneously "discovered" by galleries, museums, writers, international intelligentsia, politicians, celebrities (who I am able to disdain in "In touch" and "People" magazine, imbuing myself with even more artistic credibility).
People who have never met me, nor people I would wish to be personally close with to desire pieces of autobiographical work fervently. I want this desire to grow so strong that all facets of my life gain a measure of fame, merely by being in my own presence. Crap things I did as a student are treasured because they show my inherent humility, how I'm really "one of us". Articles are written. Documentaries are produced. Streets are named.
Institutions who would not accept me as a student or an anonymous person to wish me to come and instruct them. Places who did not care for my work enough to place it in large group shows will clamor to display it proudly, proclaiming it the best of who we are as a people. They will take it to far off places, as I inspire an untraditional patriotism in Venice, Munich, Sao Paolo.
My ideas find fertile ground across higher education worldwide. Even crackpot saying are taken seriously for a time, until eventually people see the absurdity in what I say and declare undying respect for my layers of dry wit.
Once I was told a story about Jackson Pollock, Phillip Guston and his wife (whose name I don't know). It was in the early 50's and Pollock had been proclaimed by Life magazine as the greatest artst in the world and his splatter paintings had created a stir. He was rich, but his friends, the artist he had matured with, who had probably pulled him out of the gutter numerous times were terribly poor. Well, as the story went, Phillip Guston and his wife were sitting around the table, shivering in the cold and wondering how they could buy food for the holidays when the phone rang. In order to scrape some money together, they were trying to sell the christmas card that Jacson Pollock had sent out--a kind of tiny splattery thing. The wife got up to answer the phone while Phillip and Nic (the narrator) sat at the table tryng to think up a plan. The phone conversation was short and businesslike and when the wife retrned, she was in a bit of a daze. It was the gallery, she said. They wanted to buy the Xmas card after all, for $50,000.
This, too I aspire to.
Tokens of love and friendship translate into a vast underground currency, gifts of immense wealth. I do a portrait of a man without a home, give him the print, then years later, he is offered $50,000 for it from a collector. The lifelong friends who have received special tokens year after year are rich beyond measure, their children without a care for money throughout their life.
Thursday, 20 September 2007
Amsterdam
In about 10 days I am leaving for Amsterdam. For a month. Alone.
It is terribly exciting. Its kind of the follow-up to the Fulbright I did not get and the residency I have not been doing since we began to have the sweet kiddos.
ah, the kiddos. There's the rub.
I am going to be gone a month. Simon is a sweet and often easily sad boy. Oh, sure he can be mollified with tv pretty much anytime, but I'm worried/racked with guilt.
I have no doubts about Katie with the kids for a month--it will be hard and I certainly appreciate her efforts to bring this all together. In a great many ways, this would never happen without her constant support and enthusiasm. She's a rock star and a great Mom.
At least Eloise isn't talking too much and won't be able to say "are you ever coming home?" to me on the phone, like Simon did when I went away for 4 days in 2004.
I don't know how much I will be talking to Simon n the phone either. I am planning on sending a great number of postcards and emailing daily. But I'm worried about the calls. I think I'm hoping K will just keep him distracted for a month and then when I show up on Halloween, he'll be like, "oh, you're back so soon."
My coping mechanism is to do as much as I can before I leave, so that it will appear as if I have just left the room.
In addition to cleaning up things, getting the house stocked, the pantry organized and filled with the staples that the family could subsist on if the grocery store is out of the question, I am planning on a few treats.
I'm making mix cd's for Katie, Simon and Eloise (although her's is more of the cd where the extra songs that did not fit on the other cds went).
A dvd of me reading books for Eloise, and maybe a couple for Simon. Of course, this in contingent on being able to figure out how to use the IDVD on my mac as well as transferring out DV Tapes onto my computer.
A story cd (Simon will usually request a story in the car--the favorites are "Star Wars", and we are talking the whole trilogy, and various Super Hero stories, usually needing to involve every single traditional superhero he can think of as well as Super Simon (of course), the Teenage Mutant ninja turtles and yoda.) The story is titled "The Superfriends and the legion of Doom VS the Planet Eater". (Simon recently requested a story in which the Superfriend and the Legion of Doom worked together..I'm oddly proud of him for that). This is of course, contingent on figuring out how to convert a Windows Media file into a mp3 format or some such thing.
I'm also making a calendar for simon to mark off days until Halloween. I'm going to be pasting pictures of evryone I know who will be visiting to paste on the days when they are here.
That may be it. I've finished my large work that i had to before I left, so now its all about getting everything else ready.
It is terribly exciting. Its kind of the follow-up to the Fulbright I did not get and the residency I have not been doing since we began to have the sweet kiddos.
ah, the kiddos. There's the rub.
I am going to be gone a month. Simon is a sweet and often easily sad boy. Oh, sure he can be mollified with tv pretty much anytime, but I'm worried/racked with guilt.
I have no doubts about Katie with the kids for a month--it will be hard and I certainly appreciate her efforts to bring this all together. In a great many ways, this would never happen without her constant support and enthusiasm. She's a rock star and a great Mom.
At least Eloise isn't talking too much and won't be able to say "are you ever coming home?" to me on the phone, like Simon did when I went away for 4 days in 2004.
I don't know how much I will be talking to Simon n the phone either. I am planning on sending a great number of postcards and emailing daily. But I'm worried about the calls. I think I'm hoping K will just keep him distracted for a month and then when I show up on Halloween, he'll be like, "oh, you're back so soon."
My coping mechanism is to do as much as I can before I leave, so that it will appear as if I have just left the room.
In addition to cleaning up things, getting the house stocked, the pantry organized and filled with the staples that the family could subsist on if the grocery store is out of the question, I am planning on a few treats.
I'm making mix cd's for Katie, Simon and Eloise (although her's is more of the cd where the extra songs that did not fit on the other cds went).
A dvd of me reading books for Eloise, and maybe a couple for Simon. Of course, this in contingent on being able to figure out how to use the IDVD on my mac as well as transferring out DV Tapes onto my computer.
A story cd (Simon will usually request a story in the car--the favorites are "Star Wars", and we are talking the whole trilogy, and various Super Hero stories, usually needing to involve every single traditional superhero he can think of as well as Super Simon (of course), the Teenage Mutant ninja turtles and yoda.) The story is titled "The Superfriends and the legion of Doom VS the Planet Eater". (Simon recently requested a story in which the Superfriend and the Legion of Doom worked together..I'm oddly proud of him for that). This is of course, contingent on figuring out how to convert a Windows Media file into a mp3 format or some such thing.
I'm also making a calendar for simon to mark off days until Halloween. I'm going to be pasting pictures of evryone I know who will be visiting to paste on the days when they are here.
That may be it. I've finished my large work that i had to before I left, so now its all about getting everything else ready.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)