I’m on the redeye to Saint Petersburg. Florida. San Francisco to Saint Petersburg. It’s the equivalent of Springfield to Paris–a nonstop oddity for $175 round trip that I couldn’t pass up, perhaps only slightly more costly than shipping myself FedEx to my sisters on Tampa Bay. Everyone’s asleep. Leaving San Francisco was spectacular. The promised showers never materialized and the rain from last night cleared the sky. The city looked like a giant sparkling Lite-Brite with Tinkertoy bridges.
A Great Play, a Sister, and Off to Florida
Thursday night I saw a delightful play at Intersection; Soul of a Whore by Denis Johnson. He’s been a playwright-in-residence there for several years. Watching his development is like witnessing Sam Shepard at the Magic Theater years before. You get the feeling of being in the presence of a major talent and grateful that you’re able to see these little productions with only 50 other people in such an intimate setting. When the Eureka Theater produced Angels in America, there was a similar buzz. Denis has a tremendous grasp of american vernacular speech and creates poetry of dialogue and manner. This particular play takes place in a small town in Texas, following several men who have just been released from prison, including a humpy bald evangelist with a goatee and a hairy back, a woman they meet at the bus station, and a demon who alternately possesses the woman and several other characters before blowing everyone up.
I’m at Big Chris’ now, enjoying a moment of serenity before hopping on the plane to Tampa, to visit my sisters and work on that tan line. Last night an old friend’s sister was in town from Miami, and Bob and I took her and some of her buddies out to the mystery Chinese restaurant for a 20 course ($35) meal. The best kept restaurant secret in town. They now have someone working there who speaks english–kinda. Following our last course, she came to our table and asked with a smile, “Enough?” When we got home, our guest told me and Bob that one of our sweet dinner guests had the biggest endowment that she’d ever seen or played with and that in bed he’s a tiger and very verbal, imploring her to tell him how much she wants it, “Oh you like that big %$&@#,” etc, etc… She said that she was so surprised because, prior to bedding him, and after frequent visual examinations of his package, she and her sister concluded that his endowment was considerably smaller. She couldn’t figure out “where he puts it.”
Okay, off to bob around in the Gulf.
My Lunch With Arnie
I just stumbled up my hill, after a lunch with Arnie at Luna, or whatever they’re calling it now. We still call it the Castro Gardens. Arnie is about 70 now, still very active and as curmudgeony as when I met him. The thing I love about my lunches with Arnie is that he still treats me like a twinkie. I was 18 when I met him, and he still thinks of me as being that age. His lover and mine died around the same time, and we’re the last of our original group. I sometimes don’t even have cash in my wallet as I pull it out saying, “Let me get it this time,” and he throws a fit–“No, no… you’re an artist.” Fine with me, let him get the bill. He’s off to Israel where he’s endowing a fund for a Lesbian and Gay Studies scholarship at Hebrew University. He used to be a pilot for United. I think he flew me out here when I moved from Birmingham in ’84. Anyway, he’s having a private jet built for him that’ll be ready next year. I told him if he flew me to Paris I’d treat him to a chocolat at Francine’s. Arnie came to the Marjorie Wood Gallery opening Saturday night, thinking that Big Chris was married to Marjorie, and that the event was at their house. I told him Chris was my friend and that Marjorie Wood was a fictitious character based on the Barbara Bel Geddes role in Vertigo. He couldn’t comprehend it. “I am Midge,” I told him. “How are you going to make money?” he kept asking. “There’s no real space?” “What about Yoko Ono?” On leaving, he gulped down a viagra with the last of our wine, and hopped away with his hands in his pocket, meeting his 30-something playmate for an afternoon romp. He has two boyfriends, both of whom have lovers that don’t know about Arnie. The Other Woman Arnie, my buddy and neighbor.
Beta Exhibition
I’m toying with the idea of creating an online sound installation. I’m not experienced at embedding sound files in html documents, so if anyone wishes to check out my first draft, without the actual sounds that I’m going to use, follow this link. Any input would be appreciated. And yes, I’ve changed the gender of the title–a conceptual decision that I may toss out.
Anyway, here’s a description of the installation as proposed a few years ago:
I wish to create a charged space in which the viewer may investigate his/her reactions to an overwhelming masculine presence. The space may be reminiscent of a prison environment – a common setting in gay pornography. A French slang term for orgasm, “petite mort,” is translated literally to mean “little death.” The installation suggests a multiplicity of interpretations: a record of the lives wasted in jail cells; the last exhausted breaths of men waiting to die; the heavy breathing of a rapist; or the sounds of men having orgasms.
Masculinity here is reduced to a basic component. There are no signifiers of gender other than the hint of a voice behind the breath – no clothes, no genitals, no bodies; no representations or stereotypes. I wish to investigate the images of masculinity that are embedded in our culture and unconscious life. The only image the viewer will experience is the one which is created in the mind after hearing the breathing and reading the title.
In all of my work, I try to evoke a response that is not verbal, but visceral. I believe that we all share a language of images and sounds that call forth specific meanings in each of us. It is this language that I use to solicit a response.
Woo hoo!
Stanley and Giuliano came over for dinner on Sunday night–duck legs. Stanley was fretting about his play which had just opened in New York, The Chinese Art of Placement, which I mentioned a while ago when they were over here last. Well, a review came out today in the New York Times–a really good review. I can’t imagine anyone not liking it–loving it–it’s a brilliant work. So it does happen, and to people who deserve it. Congratulations Stanley. He says he’s working on a new play about a couple in a highrise, completely surrounded by glass walls. He’s got vertigo, she’s a voyeur.
Litigation Opportunity?
The Supreme Court ruled that workers exposed to asbestos on the job can sue their employers for damages even if they don’t have cancer or ever get it.
I wonder if I can sue the Catholic Church for not being molested by Monsignor Hotpants?
Big Chris Toasts
Whew. Well, the Midge opening went very well, and everyone had fun. Too bad you missed it. I made a digital slide show of images from the website, that we projected onto Big Chris’ big screen, creating a visual cacophany well-suited to the eclectic mix of songs sung “blue.” I and my sisters played long past BC passed out in the Green Room. They even helped clean. Chris and I have decided to host events in conjunction with each exhibition, and to have artist talks, presentations, screenings, etc… at BC’s. My exhibition will be next, in the MAY-JUNE slot, and I’m thinking of screening the film that I’ve been working on, or having a bear fashion show (just fur, maybe shoes). Stay tuned.
Me and Emily Wilson and Dean Smith…
Mr. Coco, Mr. Coco
I’m drinking a Georgian wine, in honor of Comrade Stalin, from the Kakheti region, it’s awful, the flavor of socialist feet, which I’d prefer associated with a guy named Alexi instead of a wine, but it’s doing the trick, I have the nicest buzz, I just worked out, so there are also the endorphins, I saw the greatest movie this afternoon, yes I did my work, 4th workday of the rest of my life, I’m even ahead, an adaptation of Pinter’s The Homecoming from 1973, with a very young not-yet-bald Ian Holm, incredible, oops, there’s Reese, gotta go…Dinner and then fractions, finally Reese gets long division, he’s soaking in the tub now, Big Chrissy just called, the party’s on Saturday, everybody’s coming, oh no what to do, we’ve created a multi-media presentation for the party, Emily’s exhibition is called Unrequited (Blue) so Chris has cleverly prepared a play list of songs that each feature the word blue, “Blue Moon,” etc… Okay more later, I’m going off to did I get the html right? Boris’s feet I want to have a little buddy who calls me “Mr. Frodo,” …”Mr. Coco”
Enough About Me…
…What do YOU think of my new haircut?
Russian Ark
Last night I saw Sokurov’s Russian Ark, and am still reeling from it. It is a dazzling cinematic achievement. In one 90 minute take, the camera moves through something like 35 rooms in the Hermitage, in St. Petersburg. The perspective is from that of the narrator, who is guided by a French diplomat through elaborately staged scenes of Russian history. It’s like a cubist experience of time, with history intersecting space on film, and all in real time.