I am the Ordinary

The Ordinary

I am all of the ordinary things

You put into a box, and store away

“to deal with later”

I am all of the ordinary things

that tangle

with other ordinary things, Living

in the junk drawer, waiting to be used –

Visible only when searching for the scissors, or a rubber band,

a part of the mess, a nuisance

You are the flashlight

that sees only what it wants –

all else is dark

What little light you spare

falls onto others, less ordinary,

Or just as lucky as I was

Once upon a time:

To be pulled from the dark,

only to return

to the light cast by your shadow

I take what I can get, Even

the Ordinary

Unusual Spending on Home

Often, I have found
a locus, a fly, a cockroach – dead, yet

whole on the ground
the body of the insect dry as a tomb
empty, like so many robbed graves

a Sailboat, a Motorboat, another Sailboat
each covered with tattered, weathered wings – a blue tarp
spread across its carapace

This strip of land is a place where dreams go to die,
good intentions to fix, repair, rebuild, reuse, Resurrect

      Echo through the hollowed shells
      that represent my father’s hallowed vision of
      Better

Stray dogs without a home, make shelter where they can take it
Find food in others’ discarded remains of a meal
      They howl, at something, somebody, into the wind

Cries so loud, so poignant
Unanswered

This is where dreams have died, and
Ships sailed long ago

Take in another stray – someday he might love you
the way he never could

for my sister

We are made out of
the parts of our parents, yes.

Their dreams. Their hopes. Their aspirations for themselves
unachieved.

The fights, the battles, the wounds,
scars and
Scabs
that make perfect Flesh
for the next generation

Over generations, the template of our parents’ parents
has only slightly reconfigured
with time –
a few changes, some patches,
no enhancements, Yes.

As offspring, our Bodies are tumors –
did you know how tumors contain
cells of all types, blindly expressed?

Nails. Teeth. Hair. A would-be Finger

yet, the cells only become what they intuitively know to become.

our Identity lies hidden in our family’s junk DNA
(the overlooked) ripe with secrets,
Potential. ignored,
by the conditioning of our parents' well-worn cellular mechanisms.

Don’t fear the reaper, yet.
Shelly’s Frankenstein is our true Father
Hallowed be his name
his Rising from so many dead parts
so much Death, so much life Unfelt while walking around
this fucked up world
(We didn’t have a say in from the start.)

Neither did he, but it wasn’t so bad.
Yes, he was born of a latten want,
a patch to a personal problem Herr Doktor did not quite know how to fix in himself

Still, despite rallying against the sky
he was given the chance to find Life in life
though as abbreviated his time was

(Which is where we come in.)

Do not fear.
There is more freedom, more Self
in assemblage,
no matter the quality of salvaged parts.

Despite a blueprint, a Product in production
you can always fuck with it,
make it Your own
(real or imagined)

As an artist, as a writer,

you are Born to.

hopefully blogging is on its way out

so i can get back to writing here. jumped ship really in 2004 since the surge of drops in the bucket became too much. inspired to write again upon meeting Simon Morris, Robert Fitterman, and Kenneth Goldsmith (well, virtually via Simon's excellent documentary).

uncreative writing just might be the way for me to start writing again. that, and the fact that i've committed myself to an intense writing-based art project that i have less than 3 mo. to complete.

should i get a face-lift?

revisit the idea of writing on this blog? eh....

what do you think? comments welcome.

Love in the time of...

"Most people deceive themselves with a pair of faiths:
they believe in eternal memory
(of people, things, deeds, nations)
and in redressibility
(of deeds, mistakes, sins, wrongs).
Both are false faiths.
In reality the opposite is true:
everything will be forgotten
and nothing will be redressed."

-Milan Kundera

It's around this time of year

It's around this time of year
that the dust gathers itself
and starts its not-so-silent march
back into the memories of the people that so diligently
laid those little bunnies to rest

It's around this time of year
that the shades of pink that break
through the gray of the horizon, seem so
precious, so rare
people are grateful for their trying

It's around this time of year
that the ability to keep up one's appearances -
leg hair, face care routine, hair washing, smile words and smile faces -
hits the snooze, again, and grumbles about
needing more time

This time of year is when we get it;

It is around this time of year that we waste it.

No one expects to hear a thing here

because I have been so inactive for so long. I think as the masses of voices started to take over the airwaves back in late 2004/early 2005, I felt it was a good time to retreat. And there's always the question of when it is appropriate to wear a veil of anonymity. Frankly, I stopped wanting to establish a particular voice online once I got about 4 months into it, back in early 2004. I saw how things were going to go down. Brand yourself through your posts and profile, etc. etc. or be of little consequence. I didn't want to pay the cost of that kind of labor.

Now that there are so many voices out there, with well established online identities, I think I can go back to why I liked blogging in the first place; it was a little space where I could work-out the constant thinking going on inside my head. Granted, I've calmed down with age (ugh, 4 years is a long time), so I might not post as much now as I did back then, but oh well. I am reading and writing this as a conversation with my shadow. Feel free to watch. Or not. Shadows don't have feelings.

Thinking about the same thing tonight...

...as in June. This time the lyrics were from a They Might Be Giants song, Lucky Ball and Chain that I've been listening to for 18 (yikes!) years now. The line is this:


Sure as you can steer a train/
You can change your fate


Sad to say I never gave that much thought to the train in the lyric, and the verb "to steer." But actually I think I missed the meaning in that line because I was fixated on my own mis-interpretation of the last word, "fate" --- I always thought it was "faith," and after singing it aloud, my voice would trail off as I contemplated the notion of changing one's faith; everything prior to "faith" was lost.

I've always appreciated the decisiveness of TMBG's quirky lyrics (they may be strange, but they know what they are and proclaim it without a hint of question in their delivery), and so this "faith" fate mix-up always bothered me. I feel better now, knowing trains cannot be steered without derailing disaster, so sit back and enjoy the ride. Good advice on a rainy weather day wherein all I want to do is just sit and breathe.

the party

best movie ever (right now)

the party

same as it ever was

the artworld is just like the "real" world in that as funding sources change with the dynamics of the economy, there are two distinct fields of production emerging -- a "nonprofit" and a "corporate' sphere.

To be an artist operating in the first sphere, you probably are doing site-specific and/or community outreach based work and rely heavily on grant-based funding to pay for the creation of the work and/or maintain your economic life as an artist. The second option for art production is much more commonly known --- it's the stuff that is covered by art magazines, art blogs, and other non-art specific periodicals...it's what sets artists like Warhol and Hirst into fame and motion ---- the idea is simple: innovate to create an artwork that looks enough like an Art product and/or can be marketed as such and then rely on the same business skills as an entreprenuer/any-old-corporate-employee (the biggest skill sets being PR, advertisement/product placement, networking, strategic R&D). Both methods meet the same end; the artist produces *something* that enters the cultural sphere.

However, what I am more interested in is the strict differences in the skill set each artist "type" (non-profit vs. commercial artist) necessitates for success. Let's face it...some artists doing public projects (for example) will always be paying out of their pocket (or rationalizing to themselves the modicum stipend offered in exchange for their artistic labor/material costs) to produce their works, unless they hone their fundraising/grant-writing skills. Others will be more adept at reading the demand (or if really skilled, creating the "demand for") of the marketplace and make work that fits that demand nicely enough to make sales out of the gate and is an art product that is highly marketable, or, is essentially commercially "aware" art...in other words, the art product has a successful "dot-one-point-oh" debut based on its inherent ability to capitalize on such "natural" facets of human nature as the want to be special (read: "i got the first one in the highly exclusive limited edition").
...
True, that at some point, both types of artists can reach a level of notoriety at which neither skill set is necessary to employ (i.e. the true definition of a "brand") in order to maintain one's position within the art market. However, I just simply want to recognize a simple fact (again, and again): Art is Business and Non-profits are just as much a Business in our contemporary times, regardlesss of the spin.






goodnight.

often reduced to just paying attention

to lyrics you never noticed before, originally drowned by the movie-style thematic banging about percussion in the background:


Neil Young - There's A World Lyrics


There's a world you're living in
No one else has your part
All God's children in the wind
Take it in and blow hard.

Look around it, have you found it
Walking down the avenue?
See what it brings,
could be good things
In the air for you.

We are leaving. We are gone.
Come with us to all alone.
Never worry. Never moan.
We will leave you all alone.

In the mountains, in the cities,
You can see the dream.
Look around you. Has it found you?
Is it what it seems?

There's a world you're living in
No one else has your part
All God's children in the wind
Take it in and blow hard.




---"There is a need for surprise endings;"

gender

[MAN]age+MENT

Discussing categories of Art earlier

and then reading this line:

"the human soul resists taxonomy"

how appropriate. my point exactly. there is no line; stop looking, and you will finally see the line for yourself.

In case the last one didn't fool you...

it was all a farce...well, except for the driving stick shift.


anyway. new news is good news:

my first nyc show

but, the good (?value judgment?) thing is that

i've accomplished already so many of my life-long goals, in just one short year (the former, 2006).

and in no particular order:

1 - Travel to the pyramids
2 - Donate all of my Baby Sitter Club Books to my high school (oh it was such a difficult parting!)
3 - Learn how to drive stick shift - sweet...
4 - Finally buy (and use a back-up hard drive (now all my pre-K-fed Britney is safe and my computer is ready for the post-baby birth re-birth!)
5 - Watch Dirty Dancing (i know, i know) for the first time
6 - Organize all of my photographs, yes, even the baby pictures :)
7 - Learn French (...kissing, that is) with my eyes closed
8 - Teach my grandmother how to knit

Bring it ON two thousand and sev-en!

lay-dee like

wow, my goodness. who wrote that last post? heavens to betsey! ME oh MY!





(again, "so this is the new year/and i don't feel any different")

word

drunk knitting is not as easy as one might think it would be, esp. with very gnarley yarn ...

not so summer reading

The Will to Technology

tradition

Wing of a Roller, 1512
Albrecht Durer
watercolor and gouache on vellum