modernity

my dream house.
pure and absolute loveliness.

meditation

mysticism

a thousand new ideas

i attended a lecture tonight by an artist named ou ning. he started his lecture by saying that everyday, he wakes with a thousand ideas. as i sat through the lecture, i certainly started to believe him. he is one of the most creative (or just hardworking) people i've met.

i have this major fear that i will lose my creativity. not just for a short spell, but for forever. my mother always told me i was always her most creative child, but sometimes i think i might wake up and it will have left me forever. maybe this is a common fear amongst people working in creative fields. but, i want to wake up each morning with a thousand ideas. and follow through with at least one of them. maybe that is the key. the follow through.

9 things i am thinking about:

1. china 2. detroit 3. city maps 4. the wire 5. urban politics 6. the neighborhood corner 7. 19th century french apartment buildings 8. working port cities 9. bay area activits/artists

we found this.

i kept it.

the cardinal hits the window

a project by lee lozano that i stumbled upon for a class has really gotten my attention. i was able to read lozano's journals, which were transcribed by ben kinmont (an artist/curator/rare book seller who has won my esteem), and am now hoping to re-examine and possibly re-instate her dialogue project. ben agrees this is something that i should look into. it is simple and elegant and i think a way of connecting to people on a very personal and yet social level. over the next few months, i will invite people to have dialogue with me at my house. below are a few exerts from lozano's project. she exchanged dialogue with some really amazing people of that time in new york and i'm hoping to do the same in san francisco presently.

DIALOGUE PIECE

(Started April 21, 69) OR VERBALL. CALL (OR WRITE/SPEAK TO) PEOPLE FOR THE SPECIFIC PURPOSE OF INVITING THEM TO YR LOFT FOR A DIALOGUE. IN PROCESS FOR THE REST OF “LIFE”. [printed in the note-book’s margin] NOTE: DEFINITION OF “DIALOGUE” REMAINS OPEN. VERBALL GIVES SOME INDICATION.


May 23- Call Larry Weiner (as I promised at Cooper opening). Make date for visit Mon, May 26, 4 P.M.
May 24- Kaltenbach comes at last for our first “official” dialogue. We trade a lot of our art ideas & discuss doing a piece together when he returns from Cal. (He leaves on June 3 for teaching job).
May 24, 69 When I call Claire Copley to apologize for abrupt departure last night from La Monte’s I invite her & we make date for Wed, May 28, after 7 P.M.
25 Call Yvonne around 2 P.M., no answer. Again later (to be cor-rect) at 6:15. No answer.
25 Call David Diau, he’ll call very soon for a visit.
25 Call Alan Saret, he will come tonight at 9:00. Later: it was very sluggish dialogue but I learn more than can be expressed ver-bally from Alan (a lot abt his no-scene), and about this time & place in history. Also realize I have no floor-pad for stoned guests stretching.
26 Larry Weiner & I have a “fast-paced” dialogue. He seems to behave as though to let the other person talk is to let the other person win. The “element” missing from this dialogue which happened to be present in all the previous dialogues was love.
28 Claire Copley mostly talks during dialogue, is interested in learning, she said.
30 Dan Graham & I have important dialogue in that definite changes were immediately effected because of it.
June 2, 69 Call Poons, leave name & no. w/ A.S.
Call Brice, make date for June 3 (Tue), 8:30. Will Brice Marden bring his old lady I wonder?
3 No Brice doesn’t come with Helen & we discuss “the Revolu-tion”, Brice talking almost entirely abt shitty business practices in the art world, & shitty treatment of artists by each other.
4 Larry Stafford who is in bldg to visit Ray Siemanowski knocks on my door & we have spontaneous dialogue, much abt gallery & dealer pitfalls.
5 & 6 Alan Saret returns both these nights & we continue dialogue. More later re this.
6 Vogels visit, we have long “dialogue.”
7 Serra comes over a little high on beer & no food. Just into a dialogue with him ( we’ve been smoking Saret’s hash) when he gets an attack (too stoned), falls off chair to floor with a crash, has “convulsions” & passes out. later he feels sick, lies down on bed until Saret comes over.
9 Call more people for dialogue. From now on I won’t enter these calls in Piece but only dialogues per se, & calls when they are relevant.
10 Meet with Dick Anderson. We walk to 8th st. bkstores & return to his loft for rest of “dialogue”. He talks continuously.
June 16, 69 Gary Bower comes for dialogue at 3:00 P.M. & leaves at 9:00 P.M. It was engaging almost the whole time.
17 Gary Stevens talks abt his job at mental hosp. & other interest-ing subjects but I sense something (resistance, tension)? which keeps him at a distance. Perhaps he was just uncom-fortable?
18 Send following postcard to Walter De Maria: “The reason I called you twice to which you have not been gracious enough to reply was to invite you for a dialogue. Love, Lozano”. [Walter replies by letter before he leaves town for summer. July.]
23 Felix Roth comes for a “dialogue”, laying on me all the prob-lems of the middle class including operations.
24 Jake (neighbor, 2 loft bldgs east of mine) unexpectedly drops in thru fire escape door which I open in hot weather. We have dialogue including stock market info & drug info.
30 I receive a visit from Romy McDonald & her friend Margo who were given my name in England by Tim Head. Pass info.
July 9, 69 Jason Crum comes & is interesting but we do not have dia-logue.

nobody feels like you.

best thing i've seen in a long time.

is there anything as still as sleeping horses?

i slept with my back door open last night,
secretly waiting for you to crawl into bed.
i heard noises all night.
it was just the wind.

once you sang me the blues.
and now, i need to hear it again.

all that's solid melts into air

usually, i am completely ok with who i am. i'm satisfied, thinking i have made mostly the right choices, dealing with the fact that i haven't made some folks too happy with my "art school" notions and my tattoos and living in a world that is unlikely to get me a well paying job. sometimes, i feel i've disappointed my family, but in a very superficial way such as cutting my hair too short and wanting to move to berlin instead of paris and fleeing for california instead of back to the east coast. and i sort of wonder, thinking maybe they are right...maybe i'm pushing myself into this life that is so different from what was originally planned for me, from who i am. but then i do what everyone who feels this way does and say its bullshit.

i am not a new yorker, no matter how hard i'm pushed in that direction. i am not seeking power and glory and money. i am completely (for the most part) carefree about where i might end up in 2 years. in fact, it excites me, knowing i can be anywhere. i spent the past seven years in chicago, where i became a much different person than when i first moved there. my life changed drastically. there were the rollercoaster highs and the low tides and the one time my heart shattered, but mostly, it was splendid. and i wouldn't change it for anything. i would not change me anymore. i think i am who i am supposed to be. for many reasons. and instead of having doubts about my future path, i worry about student loans. typical.

three weeks ago i stopped feeling comfortable. i left the one place that had immediately felt like home (a place i barely left for more than 2 weeks in 7 years) and moved to san francisco. my close friends, the tree lined streets, and the stoop i loved all vanished. i have forgotten how to be alone and i really am bad at it. being alone is not easy...your heart becomes heavy, yearning for a dog to walk, a monday night dinner, a shared laugh. there's little laughter. you are not as strong as you want people to think. habits are hard to break, even when the people you share them with are far gone. i miss the movie nights, i miss the cigarettes, i miss the streetlights. but that's necessary. i've waited a long time to be where i am and i have no intention of turning back. i have the intention of suceeding. i want to be an exhibition maker. ausstellungsmacher.

goodbye chicago. i love you.
goodbye friends. you are always in my heart.

hello san francisco. you have a lot to live up to.
hello friends. you have even more to live up to.

treehuggers and totoro lovers

as far as i am concerned, forest preservation is a top priority. but in the case of the totoro forest, it is HIGH on my list of forests that need to be saved. this forest was inspiration for my favorite film by miyazaki called my neighbor totoro. definitely go to the website to see some pieces by artists all over that are influenced by the movie, the story, the forest, etc. one day, hopefully soon, i can walk through that forest, maybe stumble upon my own totoro.

there's going to be a show here in san francisco of the works up for aucton. at the cartoon art museum that i had no idea even existed. fancy that.