5/14/13

Look. At a millionaire.



On the train home from work today, I was reading in the New Yorker about Anarchists. Modern-day ones. Like old hippies but different. I felt sort of suburban.

So, big news you guys. And long-delayed. There're two rad books that my friends put out and I think you should get.

Poet Warrior and Real Girl Kayla just put out her zine, Snakebite, featuring drawings by Crystal. It's definitely required. I'm biased; I'm a big fan of Kayla's work already, but I'm also specifically impressed with these. You should write her and get a copy now.

And also, Jeffery Self's second book, Straight People: A Spotter's Guide to the Fascinating World of the Heterosexual just came out. Technically it's his first book, I think? Because his other book 50 Shades of Gay came out more recently. I know that he has been working on this new book for a minute, and while I haven't had the opportunity to read it yet (my copy's still shipping), I am really into miss Jeffery as the Californian Authoress, slyly deconstructing so-called SoCal American culture or whatever, like Joan Didion. I think it's rad that he's put these books out. I've always admired Jeffery's writing. He's a really great writer, like in his solo show People I Slept With (Who Never Called Me Back). I'm 'xcited by that.

Recently I was riding the subway around Happy Hour, and this drunk guy was yelling at people. He yelled at some guy in the car and said "Look. At a millionaire." I thought that was cool. Because in New York, in 2013, you never know. I didn't know. I mean, I knew, but I wasn't sure. Because you never know, right?

Went to the opening of the new Tracy Emin show, I Followed You To The Sun. I went on my way to see my analyst, because I had an hour to kill in between work and my analysis appointment. So in a way it was perfect timing.


Lonely Chair Drawing V

Awesome. I've totally been there. I don't love Tracey Emin's work. I think it is kind of loveless actually? Am I allowed to say that? There's something, again, suburban about me but I feel like the young British artists are rich, right? Not like they were all super rich before they got famous (though) but like now they're all super rich and successful right? Not to generalize. And not to be like being rich is bad or something. I feel like there are a lot of things I love about Tracey Emin's work. Maybe I love where it intersects with time and place and context or whatever. I love her choices, most of the time. I just think that I would not love the work in the sense of wanting to be it/in it/having made it. It seems like a bummer, right?


That's How You Make Me Feel


a Feeling of Past

Anyway I'm super glad I went. It prompted a lot for me for analysis, for sure.


She Kept Crying

She kept crying. If only. Later on this weekend I went to the Carolee Schneemann show at PPOW Gallery. It was pretty amazeballs, of course. The new installation was maybe a little crusty, dreamy. There's some older work as well, it's just like-- being near a Volcano? Or like some ancient Greek oracle or something. At the opening I said to my friend that Schneemann is like Elvis. I feel like she is. Like, in some circles, for some people, you cannot fuck with her. I'm in that circle, I think. We went upstairs to see the Laurel Nakadate show Strangers and Relations which I liked a lot. It was a cool concept, and I thought the photos were really gorgeous. Creepy and gorgeous. The horse one is a favorite, I bet it's kind of the hit of the show.

The superbig fun of the weekend was the Comme des Garçons sale. I spent a lot of money, I went almost every day including early and I still regret not buying more. I wonder if they will do it again in a few years. My goal was to get these yellow plaid CdG CdG pants from a few years back and get the multi-waisted Ganryu CdG jeans and a bag and a coat, but I tried the pants and they were kind of disgusting on me, and they didn't have the Ganryu jeans in my size. But still I made out like a bandit. I am very happy.

I went to see Jillian Pena's show at BAX over the weekend and liked it very much. I've admired Jillian from afar for a while, and hearing her talk about her process over the last year was really incredible. I saw earlier iterations of this piece, and was blown away each time. The newest version was paired with a new video, and I don't know. There's something very funny and brave and sort of but not exactly sweet about the way her work seems to function. I cannot imagine being one of her dancers. It seems superhuman. I was very impressed by all involved.

I had a meeting with the other artists in residence about the year, our shows, moving on to next year. It was wistful and sweet the weather this weekend was really nice (on Sunday) but I was so sick! I felt like I had the flu, almost. An insane cough which is only now getting better. I did take yesterday off of work.

I went to Erin and Becca's house over the weekend to play apples to apples and drink champagne and eat these really insane cookies they made. I ate too many cookies. It was bliss. I lost both rounds of the game. The first round by only one point (maybe two) and the second round by many points. I couldn't focus because I was too busy eating cookies and washing them down with champagne.

And then last night I saw this reading organized by Emily of Emily Books with Sarah Schulman and Barbara Browning at Housing Works. It was as Emily said, a reminder of why it's so great to live in New York. It was free and open to the public and featured really awesome writers reading their work and talking about it, with relation to the question What is the Queer Novel? Barbara Browning's reading was really cool, and included a description of this scene from Chantal Akerman's documentary about Pina Bausch Un Jour Pina a Demandé:


The Man I love - Pina BAUSCH by birdy66

Gorgeous, no? Sarah Schulman read from her latest book Empathy, which I liked very much. There's a kind of productivity to thought, even what one might think of as anxiety, which she's able to demonstrate. I admire this tremendously. I don't think it's just a matter of force of intellect, it seems to involve a kind of patience, specially-skilled eyes or ears, something. In the conversation, Schulman spoke of writing which includes it's discovery, it's revelation of itself. She said: "If you already know what you want to say, there's no point in writing it." And my heart sang. I felt like I was given permission, or something. That this was not a function of unskilled or disorganized thinking; that this was in fact what good writers like Sarah Schulman did. I felt vindicated, in a way. She wasn't saying not to edit, she was just saying that the reason for writing would be, must be in the writing itself. That felt really right to me.

Hers and Ms Browning's I'm Trying to Reach You are also two more books to pick up. Wow. So many rad books. I was telling someone today that I was listening to records, and I realized how old-fashioned that makes me sound. But I do, actually listen to records and I do read actual books and not just to be fussy, because that's what's around.

At one point in the reading I think a recipe had come up for crescent rolls and 3 musketeers bars? Is that right? Can that be real?

Over the weekend, we met these two foreign guys at the bar who were real nice and social and really wanted to get to know us. I had a strange feeling, like something weird or bad was going to happen. They followed us and struck up conversation. I blamed it on the fact that my friend was showing off his impressive physique in a spring/summer ensemble but I quickly apologized for perpetuating rape culture. He looked good as is his right nay obligation. The foreign guys had no reason, no occasion, I thought, to bug us. Thinking we were cute tripped me OUT. So they followed us and sat with us and mentioned something about listening to TLC and how I'm probably too young to remember the 1990s. I told the guys how old I am, and though they're only a pair of years younger than I am they reacted really strongly. They were surprised, i guess, about how "good" I looked for my age. That made me tremendously uncomfortable, because I know it means that they were then looking for the thing that would give away my age, right? Like, being only 18 months older, I'd have some weird wrinkle that only shows up when I laugh, or something. I wonder at what angle, making what expression will they think I finally look old.

I ran into this friend of mine who, the last time I saw him, had gotten some bad news. And this time when I saw him, he told me that after he saw me last time, he got more bad news. Last time, his lover broke up with him, and this time it's that right after his lover broke up with him, his room mate asked him to find a new place to live. This guy can't catch a break! I told him maybe it was because of the eclipses. But he always seems like he's in a good mood. He's always very nice to me.

No comments: