dream corner: art show

Last night I remembered something a friend told me several months ago, about how artists she knew tended to keep to themselves and not go out much, etc., and this thought stirred up a dream where I was curating an art show with the theme 'why it's better to play indoors'.  

There was a whiteboard with words on it that I kept writing on; it had some role in the show, but I don't remember the role nor what was written on it.  

christmas reading corner

Books picked up from the used bookstore over Christmas break, in no particular order:

1. the art of the personal essay, ed. phillip lopate.
2. vintage nabokov (the vintage collection reader)
3. babbitt, sinclair lewis.
4. the golden bowl, henry james.

scrabble corner

I just finished playing a Christmas-day game, and I was told the word 'jo' is a valid scrabble word. It means sweetheart.

letter writing corner

I helped my Mom write a letter to the big O about healthcare and public assistance programs. The utility of the liberal arts!

school corner: all done

^^^ from one of the good reading rooms at Butler, on the 2nd floor.

My last final was on Friday and I'm all done w/ school now, or rather I will be after resolving a handful of tardy library fines.

I moved to New York when I was 18 and never planned to go to college, but ended up going to the best one in town, having a warm circle of friends, and living in one of the best houses around on top of that. My cup of blessings overfloweth.

It has all been a learning experience, in a sometimes overflowing way. The learning process was not anything like the inherited idea I had in mind when I arrived here; the idea of staying up late in the library and quietly reading a whole lot and taking in a lot of expected lessons. I'm reminded of the David Foster Wallace quote: The truth will set you free. But not until it has had its way with you*.

Now that Columbia and many (perhaps too many) books have had their way with me, I only hope I can find ways to put value into the world and spread the things I was able to take in during my time here.

* actually, the quote is "The truth will set you free. But not until it is finished with you.” - but i like my paraphrase better

art project corner: q's and knowledge synthesis

^^^ a quick card done this evening on the knowledge acquisition that occurs in response to different modes of questions.

*/*/*/*

I imagine a deck of several hundred business-size cards made from all the subjective experience i was able to put down in my notebooks while at columbia, all in one stack, that someone could study like a set of vocabulary cards, and thus be all prepared and wise ahead of time for their studies.

(or something like that)

more reading corner: mr rogers, the world according to.

I pulled down a copy of The World According to Mister Rogers from my bookshelf this evening. 

While I picked it up some time ago from one of the shops on upper b'way, I never got around to fully reading it. It's a wonderful book. One selected quote:

The greatest gift you ever give is your honest self.

And this one I like a lot also:

One of my wise teachers, Dr. William F. Orr, told me, "There is only one thing evil cannot stand and that is forgiveness."

cont'd: more hro exegesis

Another good excerpt from HRO Exegesis:

Carles reduces this to a succinct formula: "This blog is me." What is "blogged" or expressed online in some other way is not lived or experienced from within our subjectivity. Our subjectivity is no longer stored in our brains but in water-coole[d] server farms located close to hydr[o]electric dams all across the world. Hence the preposterous premise of the film The Matrix -- we do not choose b[e]tween the real and the Real, but between no existence and digitally encoded ecstasy of the social network.

We can now only at best wish to remove ourselves from the digitization and social mediatization of our lives. We can only dream of not broadcasting the quotidian details of our lives and such and as such over the channels fashioned for us online. When Carles writes that "maybe my future is in ‘real life’ instead of the internet," the pivotal word is maybe. [...]

blog corner: on lacan, hipsters, and forms of political economy

By rendering the hipster as Other, to be zoologically classifed and mocked, publications catering to the malcontented med[i]ocrity in our midst can symbolically declare open season on "alts", tacitly encouraging atrocities and brutality. Carles seems to be worrying: Can a Krystallnacht of vinyl record stores and American Apparel outlets be far behind?

^^^ Rob Horning in a post on this blog

If you're keen on Lacanian talk about hipsters and forms of political economy, read the blog Hipster Runoff Exegesis. It's a discourse worth a few moment's sustained attention.

advertising for my friends corner: holiday shopping tip

If you're a fan of Morrissey - and who can't get down to an occasional listen of Hairdresser on fire or Hold on to your friends - head right on over to Smash Records, conveniently located on 18th street in dc, and buy the fan club release of selections from his best years.  It's now on sale and a superbargain.

(they might even do phone orders, tbd)

dream corner: food beauty pageant

I dreamed I was in a contest which required the participants to dress up like French food.  There were lots of soups and cassoulets; the costumes were indescribable but felt very accurate.  I don't recall what I was dressed up as, maybe steak frites?

see it now corner: mike daisey's the last cargo cult

I saw master storyteller Mike Daisey last night w/ Leonard and his wife, doing a show anyone with an interest in money, America, and art should run and go see. I believe this is probably everybody.

A memorable sentence: money is corrosive to human relationships. 

A memorable notion: i am an artist and a businessman.

haiku corner: trip back from campus tonight

it's another chilly night.  before i curl up w/ some late night academic reading, a brief haiku from the trip back from campus:

oh subway rider

your breath exhale not winsome 

i stand reluctant

Okay, so maybe it's no wc williams (*) -- responses / haiku trades are welcome.

on the creating of taste: melville

The artist needs to create the taste by which they are enjoyed.
-- Herman Melville, in a margin note (via my notes from this talk)

I've been enjoying this notion from Melville ever since I heard it at a talk a few nights back. It touches on the idea of new work creating a new awareness within the recipient. The idea of consciousness is in there too: an ever-growing loop that is added to with every new work taken in. Of course, this is the same for personal experience of all kinds; every experience we have, with people, art works, or work in general, shapes our taste and thus our perceptions of the world.

The idea of force is present in Melville's quote as well. The artist needs to 'create' the taste within the folks who receive their work. This use of create seems to imply a subtle amount of force, however small and well-intentioned, on the part of the artist. I don't know how I feel about that entirely, but it's something rolling around my mind lately.

I suspect it comes down to a similarity with how we become aware of things through friends: sometimes they nudge us to see the world differently, in ways we'd perhaps not sign up for right away.

The artist needs to create the taste by which they, and in turn the world, is (are?) enjoyed and felt. Who else will? Others, surely, with perhaps ill motive.

first, lock up all the artists

^^^ the photo from this article over at the times gives me shivers.

(ie because of art makers / protestors being arrested, etc)

good essay to read on an extremely cold night in New York, like tonight, while under 4 layers of blankets and a grey flannel throw, monogrammed w/ EDB

"Goodbye to all That", from the collection of Joan Didion essays Slouching Towards Bethlehem.

aesthetics 'n politics corner

from a piece by Nicholas Dames that i've been enjoying from the most recent n+1: realpolitik is the finding of voice by those who, up till now, did not have one.

^^^ i misremembered the part of the piece i was pondering, it was about 'real politics' and aesthetics, not 'realpolitik'.  

i'll go ahead and type it in here, missing context so you'll just have to go buy the print edition if you're curious:

[...] Put another way: aesthetics is the term for how politics - real politics - happens.  Not the concrete micropolitics of adjusting attitudes, budgeting expectations, or incremental change, but the diffuse macropolitics of shifting our perception of the possible.  The artwork is not, then, simply an allegory of the social profile of its consumer. It is what in The Future of the Image, Rancière calls a set of "operations": "relations between a whole and parts; between a visibility and a power of signification and affect associated with it; between expectations and what happens to meet them." Put more simply, the artwork not only is (a signifier of social status) but, more fundamentally, does (something, anything, to the ways in which the social itself can be seen).

on i/o corner: money, books, and apples

3 quick doodles for melzie:

money in, money out: 

this is to say if you spend a lot of time making it, you spend a lot of time, well, spending it too (by default, that is)

books in, books out: 

take in lots of words, you put out lots of words.  

now whether this is in the form of novels, poems, or just bookish talking, that is up to the participant. 

apples in, apples out: 

this is just an observation about the fiber content of apples.  

(i'll say no more)

it's probably important to have a well-balanced diet, a mix of all 3 of these things.

paper corner: pillow book note makin'

^^^ around 7pm tonight, to review while on-the-go

poetry corner

If there is something to recall / there was nothing to regret
           -- Russian poet Vera Pavlova (*)

^^^ I don't entirely agree with this observation, but it's a comforting general thought.