previous | 9 August 2006 | next
It's been a really hot, dreary few weeks, and I don't have much to report, though periodically I've been adding stuff to my del.ici.ous page [link in the sidebar.] I'll Just add my scribblings from my notebook:
Miscellaneous titles:
  • the war on errorism
  • Wonderbeam
  • lesser sex toys
  • infinte domestic
  • fault tolerance
  • control; freak
  • idées fixes
  • an archeology of emotional furniture
  • recent unsupported assertions
  • the missing dimension
Random things pulled from NYer:

"The appetite for culture, the social prestige of the artist, of the intellectual, of the writer, has grown enormously." - Abel Prieto, Cuba's Culture Minister. [I wish the same could be said of DC.]

"A need to devour, punish, humiliate or surrender seems to be a primal part of human nature, and it's certaily a big part of sex." - Charlotte Rampling.

Miscellaneous things I've written:
  • The shadow girlfriend, vague, yet persistently in the way of lucid awakeness.
  • As soon as Calder introduces a single element into his work, a second element must be added as a counterbalance. Nothing can exist without relation.
  • The recent models I've been making do not have concave features - dips or bowls - I suspect it is impossible to generate that class of features by reducing a volume from a sequence of profiles - A blind spot in the capability of the software I'm using.
And:

I've just finished reading Nick Hornby's The Polysyllabic Spree - a collection of columns he wrote for Believer magazine; rather than reviewing books, he reviews his performance as a reader. Intellectual comfort food. And it ends in a good place: a long except of a letter by Anton Chekhov describing what it takes to be a civilized person. How did I know I needed to read his book before I read it? Survival instinct? Lucky guess? Regardless, much needed right now [thanks again Colby.]

Moving right along, I'm starting Lawrence Weschler's new book, Everything That Rises, also a collection of columns that he wrote for McSweeney's [the folks that bring you Believer.] I'm looking forward to seeing how he accounts for the convergences that he sees in the collections of images presented.

By the way:

I recommend the reDefined exibition at the Corcoran - not because I'm in it, but because:

  • they've pulled out some gems that are in the collection that I never knew about - for example, there's a beautiful Guston drawing on the first floor
  • the grafitti room is righteous, my only complaint is that it could/should fill a whole museum - I hope Jonathan Binstock revisits the idea down the road
  • there are a number of contemporaries in the show: Maggie Michael, Brandon Morse, and Linn Meyers
  • unlike the Biennial, they've devoted the majority of the museum to this show, which lends it more weight and authority [IMHO.]
Finally:

Darrow Montgomery has been shooting a cast of eccentics for COMET, here is one of my faves: