This year has been tremendously satisfying creatively, but disappointing in most other of life’s departments. Well, it is time to put that all behind me and shove ahead, to end this cycle of dashed hopes, unrealistic expectations, and intense longing, to slap a smile on my face and let the song in my heart behold your adorable faces.
I read in the New York Times that Jason Rhoades died, some time last year and I must have missed the obituary. Jason was this really interesting creator of messy sprawling installations who went to the Art Institute when I did–I remember giving him a show when I ran the student gallery there. Unlike me, he had a really big career and died at 41. Reading of his death was like a kick in the pants–at least I’m alive and can still create and there’s the possibility that some day someone will buy it and more than 200 people might see it. My quest now is to find the right gallery to place it, in New York or Europe and good luck Little Bunny Coco. Do you know of any successful gallerists out there who have hairy chubby mates and watch blurry old movies? Those are the ones I need to go after…
I’m starting an ambitious new project, based on the theme of the “web.” I’ve been photographing spider webs, but will develop an installation that includes them and images of light passing through dewy body hair–science fiction, sexual fantasy, both? I’m intrigued by the idea of light falling on these delicate things, the magical wispiness of body hair that’s attached to these massive heavy forms, and the various traps and sensual signifiers that both represent, reducing the photographic image to just light and what happens to it as it bounces off and is enmeshed by each. I’ve also settled into an embrace of a kind of non-linear narrative, tossing disparate images and sounds together, bound really by the theme of my desire, to create an immersion into my sensual life–but framed and all pretty.
I’ve let go of the husband search for now. Omigod, the last guy I went out with sent naked pictures of himself to just about everyone I know, or have ever encountered, or heard of, casting his net so widely that I’m embarrassed by the seriousness with which I greeted his seemingly sincere appeals for my affection. I guess it’s normal to do this nowadays, expose yourself completely to the world in the hopes that someone will nibble. I’m done with the nibblers and for now, I’m through with love. I’ll never fall again. Said adieu to love, Don’t ever call again. For I must have you or no one, And so I’m through with love. Well, through for now. Today, that is.
Nancy Sinatra’s album How Does That Grab You makes me so happy. I don’t know what’s happening to me. I’m also listening to the Carpenters and totally loving them. Before Toddy Haynes’ film, they represented a kind of escapist alternate late-60’s/early 70’s universe–they and the Brady Bunch–that I felt no connection to or interest in. Now I hear Karen Carpenter’s velvety voice and the Carpenter’s simple but sophisticated arrangements and I am whisked away into their smooth comforting universe.
Something in the wind has learned my name
And it’s tellin me that things are not the same.
In the leaves on the trees and the touch of the breeze
There’s a pleasin’ sense of happiness for me.
There is only one wish on my mind:
When this day is through I hope that I will find
That tomorrow will be just the same for you and me.
All I need will be mine if you are here…