Category: Friends

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Bethless and Full of Pope

BC’s charming big sis, Beth, was in town for too few days, and has already flown back to the heartland. Between Beth-related activities and gardening (this is one of the months that I actually work), I haven’t had much time, but Reese is working on his homework, so I’m taking a break to click across my keyboard.

On Saturday I took BC and Beth to an amazing performance of The Voysey Inheritance, an early 20th century play by Harley Granville-Barker, adapted by David Mamet, and presented at ACT. The play explores the possibility of an ethical life within a corrupt society. Imagine that. A young man, Edward, discovers that his dad has been using his clients’ properties to raise money to quench his family’s thirst for luxury–for years, his dad confesses–continuing a tradition started by his dad’s dad, and which the young man will soon enough have to deal with as he inherits the family business and the challenge of maintaining the appearance of solvency. Everybody’s out for himself, except Edward, who wants to set the books straight and is reluctantly–in a tilt from his solid moral center–forced to continue his dad’s thievery to save the family from disgrace. Just an amazing piece of theater.

I plucked the remaining Meyer lemons from my tree on Sunday, peeled them, and plunged the tender fragrant skins into a Vodka bath, where they will soak for the next month or so in my closet, and hopefully not explode. I’ll then add some sugar syrup, wait another month or so, and hope that I’ve made enough Limoncello to get me through the winter–if it lasts through summer.

The 99th anniversary of the 1906 quake zipped by without much celebration–next year’s the biggy, I suppose. I did stay over at BC’s, if that counts.

My plum tree, the focus of my garden, has developed rot that has descended into the heart of the main trunk, and I fear that the tree will have to be replaced within the next few years. I’ve lovingly sculpted its form for close to two decades, and am not ready to chop it down just yet, so I’ve filled the hole with an expanding styrofoam insulation, which will hopefully prevent more moisture from getting in, and lightened the limbs so that there’s less stress on the crotch, but once the heartwood is gone, there’s no way to replace it. I’m looking at it outside my window, the styrofoam oozing out of it like a weird polyp. My roses are in outrageous bloom right now, though, and a quarter of my garden is pink.

The client that I worked for today looks just like Janet Reno. She’s one of several beloved clients that I see just twice a year. I love her garden, and its magical contrast of form, texture and color. Because I work there so infrequently, everything gets cut back pretty hard. I leave this tight crew-cut of a garden and return in six months to the Summer of Love flowers in your hair exploding organic inevitability. Janet gave me an $80 tip once, which was great at the time, but makes me a bit uneasy whenever I see her, like does she thinks that I expect another $80 tip? I don’t know if Emily Post mentions it, but it’s not necessary to tip the gardener.

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The Universe Within

So my sister Sue has been visiting. Sue is 50 and looks like she’s 29, with a matching disposition and complexion. Last week we went to see the exhibition, The Universe Within at the Masonic Hall. It consists of 100 or so actual bodies that have been preserved with a process called “plastination,” a kind of plastic petrification. The exhibit was a bit more visual than scientific, and offered several really stunning visuals, like a flayed man holding a hanger with his skin draped over it, an Asian-looking St. Bartholomew, and a guy sliced in half, the two halves turned to consider the other. There was also a cool exhibit of a person sliced horizontally into pieces about an inch thick, the slices spaced about an inch apart in a 15 foot case. Most of the guys were not terribly well endowed, but it was hard to tell since most of them had their entire skins pulled off. Only one particular specimen stood out, surrounded by giggling art students sketching his musculature. The bodies reminded me of the wax replicas of the various systems of the body made in the late 18th century in Tuscany, but lacking the scientific and even artistic qualities of those exquisite studies. The current models weren’t abstracted by the notion of an approximation, they were actual bodies, and maybe that’s what made it strange. All of those organs worked once. Instead of experiencing a sense of wonder at humankind’s scientific advancement, I felt like a steak by the end of the show.

Speaking of steak, Philip came over for dinner tonight. A salade niçoise, topped with a sliced rare tuna steak. I wanted to make him dinner so that he could relax, but instead he brought the dinner and cooked it, too. I look at all my friends now as if I can see their insides. I just can’t believe it all works. We’re all steaks.

I’m still in the midst of my continuing-mid-life crisis, although it looks like I’m going to be making a ton of art in the coming months, so thank you Cosmos, for the timing.

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Missing Philip

Nayland posted this morning that his former lover had died. I called Michelle in New York and confirmed that Philip Horvitz had passed away suddenly while on a plane. Philip was going to perform at the John Sims Center on the 10th and since getting his e-mail, that’s all I’ve been thinking about lately, so excited to see him perform again. He was part of a group of artists that combined dance, performance, comedy, theater and poetry into a thrilling new form of performance art that was as entertaining as it was intellectually stimulating. He was a compact ball of fire, performing as and deconstructing Sammy Davis, Jr., every bit his equal, belting out mournful screeching tunes in the group Tiny, reading excerpts from Pete Townsend’s “diary” with Absolut Manpussy—or in his bizarre mini-revival of Company. He lived downstairs, or it could have been up it was so long ago, from Christian Huygen, and often Christian and I would listen at the lightwell as Philip’s voice drifted up (or down), serenading us with his softly rendered version of the “meow-meow, meow-meow” song from the Meow Mix commercial. His creative spirit is really going to be missed.

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Banquets and Donkey Skin

Nick and Su-Chen whipped up a royal feast last night at Nick and Jeff’s loft in Oakland. I didn’t realize that there were going to be eight courses. I was pretty full after the second, but the flavors were so delightful, I yielded to dish after dish, and did my best to not explode. The courses began with a cucumber and marinated pork appetizer, then crisp asparagus in a light soy sauce, crab cakes served over an Asian version of succotash, whole shrimp, cooked quickly over a hot flame in a ginger garlic pepper sauce, salmon cooked in miso with cucumbers again and toasted sesame seeds, anise-flavored pork with bok choy, a light broth with tofu and tomatoes, and then a kind-of flan for dessert. A lot of the local Hairy Bodies alumni were present, including Big Chrissy, Dean the model and Dean the artist, and his charming BF Doug, and Ruth and her hubby, John. As soon as we realized that John had helped design the G4 titanium laptop we all squirmed our way onto his discount waiting list. I felt compelled to give him a little grief about the hinges. A full course or two was spent talking about heat sinks. The dishes stopped coming around midnight, and after a few games of pool, where Dean won every game by default, we toddled home, fat shadows of our former selves.

Today I saw Jacques Demy’s Donkey Skin, with Catherine Deneuve and Jean Marais, from 1970. The totally delightful fairy tale opens with Queen Catherine Deneuve on her deathbed, forcing King Jean Marais (Bête of Beauty and the Beast) to promise to wed only someone prettier than she to secure a male heir to the throne after she dies. Well, wouldn’t you know it, but the only girl prettier than the queen is her daughter, also played by Catherine Deneuve, so after her death, the King decides to marry her! The fairy godmother intervenes and disguises Princess Catherine in the skin of a donkey (that pooped gems), and whisks her away to another kingdom, where she eventually is found by the local Prince, after baking him a “love” cake and slipping her tiny ring into the batter, a ring so tiny that it will only fit on her slender finger. Borrowing from Cinderella, the Prince assembles all the bachelorettes in the kingdom to try on the ring, lining them up in order from Princess to “unemployed,” and eventually on down to our girl with the donkey skin. Following their wedding, King Marais shows up in a helicopter with his new bride, yes, you guessed it, the Fairy Godmother, and everything’s great.

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A Few Shows, No Drama, Carol Reed

Today Les and I took in a few gallery shows, the entire experience contained by different relations to space. The first show featured the photos of John O’Reilly, my favorite artist. John is in his mid 70’s, and his last 2 projects have focused much more acutely on the passage of time, meticulous little surreal paste-ups of black and white polaroid images of his crumbling world and studio, flecked here and there with allusions to youth and music, the visual space vibrating between personal and public past and present. He shared the gallery with an Australian artist, Timothy Horn, who created what seemed like baroque earrings and baubles, but enlarged to extreme proportions, vulgar and delicious. We then saw the photographs of Candida Höfer, large-scale photos of grand interior public spaces around the world, devoid of people but filled with amazing detail. The spaces were all quite gaudy and antique, but with slight references to the occupation of a contemporary presence and sensibility.

Happily or not, my love life seems on an even keel, and the absence of any heart-wrenching obsession or drama has me wondering about what to work on next. I’ve asked Dean to make himself busy on Friday so that I could have the day to myself to work in the studio on some ideas for my next project. I’ve never made art during such a lull in my soap opera–I’ll have to make something about that.

Philip came over last night for Chicken Coco-tore and then we zipped up the hill to join Redbackfur at BC’s for Carol Reed’s extraordinary Odd Man Out. James Mason plays an IRA leader who falls off the getaway car while speeding away from a robbery. Shot in the shoulder, and slowly dying, he wanders around town, looking for a place to hide and for someone to take him in, and thus wanders through every strata of republican or loyalist sentiment. At one point in Mason’s plight, a fey painter obsessed with capturing the darkness of the human soul takes him back to his flat to paint him. It’s a moving film, compassionate without being moralistic, with subtle performances and a brilliant script.

FLASH: Reese and I put up a new page on Fluffy and Ruffy last Friday…
Transform-a-Character!
(Reese did all the animation himself!)

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Balance

Last year the universe lifted its leg and showered me with grief, this year, this very night in fact, it presented me with a vintage Laurel lamp with a brass finish and mushroom shade. Following up the elegant and challenging The Conformist of yesterday, Philip treated me to the Tony Randal/Janet Leigh/Roddy McDowall underwater pop extravaganza Hello Down There, a film about the creative activity between narrative spaces. Actually, freed from narrative space. I won’t bore you with the details, nor with the plot, neither of which stirs any significant memories or even metaphors, I’m left with a bobbing head and the tune “Glub glub” whistling through the now vacant space that was only yesterday a frenetic cave buzzing with the complex beautiful images of Bertolucci’s achievment, now pushed aside… only shadows…

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‘at’s Amore

Only 8 more months to be fluent in Italian. It is truly such a sensual, musical, and thrilling language. Even banal words. When I say “nineteen” in Italian, “di-cia-NO-ve,” I imagine whispering it into Marcello Mastroianni’s ear right before he nibbles my t-shirt off.

Meanwhile, Spring seems to have settled in again, and I’m enjoying the scent of the blooming daphne wafting into my bedroom from the garden, and all this brightness. Tomorrow, instead of sun and scent, Emily and I are going to see The Conformist at noon, so I’m trying to breathe in as much as possible today.

My most recent attempt to break-up with BC didn’t get very far. We worked out a list of things we need to work on together and I promised not to break up with him for a while. Are all relationships such work? I remember when I went out with So-‘n-so, and concluded that he’d never find his mate because he had such a narrow idea of what he wanted and no one would be able to conform to such specificity. I sometimes think, when I’m in the breaking up mood, that I, too, have these demanding criteria for my mate and am not going to struggle anymore, and am going to hop in the car and find Mr. Perfect Pants right now! After 8 to 12 hours I realize how much we actually have grown together and that I’d rather not be alone like So-‘n-so, turn the car around, and try to make a go of it again.

So round and round we go, in a spin, loving that spin we’re in.

How do you say that in Italian?

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Spent

Wow, I never thought this would happen so quickly, but I just met with Bob, and we chatted away like old times. I had asked for him to meet me, and over coffee offered several possible solutions to our current post-breakup quandry. Basically, there’s just no way that either of us is ever going to accept the other’s perspective so I suggested that we each compromise, especially since everything’s boiled down to one final item of contention. He said that he’d think my offer over, and then we chatted on about art, travel, Reese, etc… I even hugged him goodbye. Walking home I just started crying. As you all may have observed, I’m not terribly good at dealing with loose ends, even though I seem to create a lot of them, and the past year has been pretty tangley. Actually, the past 5 years. No wait… When have things not been tangley? I don’t want Bob to not be a part of my life, and I hope that we can agree to disagree, compromise, move on, and see if it’s possible to salvage the positive aspects of our relating. I just feel emotionally spent right now.

On the bright side, Charlie Kaufman and Alexander Payne received well-deserved Academy Awards.

I took D out for his birthday last week to see the Trisha Brown Dance Company in Berkeley. I saw her l’Orfeo in Paris a few years ago, one of the artistic high points of my life, and have been eager to see her smaller-scale pieces. Her dancers are very fluid, and move through many different visual planes, often being held aloft as they walk perpendicular to the audience or across and over and on top of each other. The first piece included a set design by Robert Rauschenberg that was so arresting that I had to mentally push it off to the side so that I could focus on the dance and Laurie Anderson’s vocals. A second dance, set to music by John Cage from the late 40’s, pushed movement into the even more abstract, and at points the audience gasped in unison, everyone stunned.

I’m off to see Altman’s Images, with Susanna York–that is, starring, Susannah York, not accompanied by, unfortunately.

My diet is going okay. I’ve decided to–hold your breath everybody–limit myself to one glass of wine when I drink. If I feel like getting loopy, I have 2. I hope I’m as lucid sober as I think I am pitched slightly on the edge of intoxication. No more lampshades for a while. Remember that Simpson’s episode where Marge wages war on violent cartoons? Where she succeeds in convincing the cartoon creators to make non-violent cartoons and all the kids turn off their TV’s and step outside, rubbing their eyes and then quickly engaging each other in creative game-play and healthy outdoorsy-ness? That’s kind of how I feel right now–but I know how the episode ends, so I’m going to make the most of it and enjoy my healthy non-pickled heart.

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People Move in a Hole in the Ground

“New York, New York, it’s a fabulous town, the Bronx is up and..” all the restaurants have that offputting “choking victim” poster that scares me into suspiciously chewing my food very carefully whenever I’m in town. Apologies to all the swell New Yorkers we didn’t get to see, but this visit was for but a few days to see the new MoMA, Dia Beacon, the Christo/Jeanne Claude gates, and the Fra Carnevale show at the Met. I tend to fall victim to Stendhal’s Syndrome (Dizziness, panic, paranoia, or madness caused by viewing certain artistic or historical artifacts or by trying to see too many such artifacts in too short a time) when traveling in major cities. We did get to hang at the new MoMA with Joey, who is about as charming as they come, plus he has this totally adorable wisp of back hair creeping over his collar that provided pleasant aesthetic counterpoint to the cold modernist surfaces. We took a walk around the park and through the gates and met up with fellow SFite, Philip.  The gates are quite successful as social art, and even aesthetically, too. The curtain of fabric creates an illusion of a low orange ceiling, and walking among them feels like a very regal or pomp-filled activity. And everybody’s smiling. The color and movement of the fabric stood out brightly against the dull gray of the landscape, and then even more so a few days later against the snow. After flying over Michael Heizer’s “City” on the way into town, we were treated to seeing the orange gates from the plane as we flew in on a very sunny day.

On our last night, walking into one of my east village fave’s, Veselka’s, we were seated smack next to one of the many of Bob’s exes currently residing in the area. Of all the eastern european stuffed cabbage joints in all the towns in all the world, he walks into mine. Actually it was nice to see him without Bob–and as the newest member of the post-Bob club.

The Dia Beacon is one heck of a museum. We took the train up from Manhattan, about an hour though the snow, snaking along the river through the beautiful and surprisingly rural countryside. The galleries are the size of football fields, with theme-park installations by Richard Serra, Dan Flavin, Louise Bourgeois, Andy Warhol, Michael Heizer, etc… We did get to see the White: Whiteness and Race in Contemporary Art show at ICP, which Nayland was in, drawing from his bi-racial background and folk stories/storytelling. His work and William Kentridge’s animated films, well, and Cindy Sherman’s early self-portraits as bus-riders, bring narrative and experience together for me like the gothic novel. They were also showing Bellocq’s Storyville Prostitutes at ICP, which had a profound effect on me in college. The negative plates were found by Lee Friedlander in an antique store in the 60’s, and he printed up these amazing images of relaxed sexuality in the red-light district of early 20th century New Orleans. The Fra Carnevale show at the Met was super–with little Renaissance gems from Piero della Francesca and Fillipo Lippi. Then up to visit the Rembrandts and the Vermeers and my Italian faves.

On the first night in the city, I got a call from a Chelsea dealer who wants to show my work there. What is going on with my horoscope? He’s young, very young, 25, and cute, a fast talker, and has a super location. Plus he’s interested in installation! So I’ve been sending slides (unsuccessfully) to New York for like 100 years, and this guy stumbles across my site while probably looking for pornography. I seem to have no control over my fate. It blows around like a plastic sandwich bag in a tropical storm.

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Emily, Memory

Last night I and BC and Léonie went to hear Emily speak about her work in Oakland, at the gallery where she’s showing with 3 other artists. I was intrigued by the surreal drawings of one other artist in the show, but had to forget everything she said during her talk, as she seemed to have no insight into what her work was doing or saying. Emily, however, was great, not telling people how to read her work, but guiding them into it, and giving details about her process, which is not only interesting, but key to understanding what she’s up to. She’s one of the most inventive and imaginative artists around. Her work is fragile, ephemeral and hard to display, and the show closes tomorrow, so if you’re looking for something to do this afternoon or tomorrow, get on over to The Oakland Art Gallery, 199 Kahn’s Alley, in Oakland.

Afterwards we had dinner at Bucci’s, which I think was in Emeryville. Those cities all run together over there. BC brought up an interesting question, about memory, that has had me bothered and excited since. He asked what is the oldest memory? If we think of memory solely in biological terms, that is, experiences contained in living beings, there is a limit to our access to direct experience. Time passes, people die, memories are lost. Memories are passed into books, photos, art, etc… but somewhere out there is someone who remembers something that he or she experienced, and there’s no one else on earth with access to the experience of that time. This thought is gnawing at me the way the idea of space being infinite bugged me in third grade.