Friday, August 18, 2006

"Lets go crazy pants.."

A draw walk was taken by me late last night, finding many art materials in the NYC trash as usual, and creating and leaving art as I went. At one point I was trailing a couple, and drawing a moving street scene, walking slowly, and some guy behind me says "Lets go, crazy pants." because I guess even at 11pm people are still in a rush, and white checked pants are just too much for upper west siders. It made me laugh thou. People are in such a hurry to get into their casket....



I made my way to the Hudson river, sat and meditated for a bit, happy to be near a moving body of water, and having space to decompress from all the stress that has been my life for the past 4 weeks. I wanted to go to India to have a deeper spiritual experience, but NYC is really teaching me a lot...

On the way home I found some National Geographics from the 70s, and worked on collages till 3am. I used to love to make collages as a kid, but as an "adult" in the art world I noticed collages were becoming trendy a couple of years ago. I usually try to avoid trends, but I'm ready to shed some self created art world dogma. Ultimately it matters not who's doing what when. As long as a connection to spirit can shine through, all art actions are worthy, trend or not. I am spending the summer living in the same apartment building that was the center of the NY Dada scene (Duchamp lived here), and the collages at the MoMA exhibit planted a seed that wants to grow here. I'm doing a lot of strange art this summer. Fun work, some bad some good. I'll eventually post some when I'm ready. Just exploring shapes and colors and moods and thoughts and philosophies and questions and attempts at explanations.

I like to imagine all flys as time travel machines from the future (I'm developing a screen play based on that idea). Any time one lands on me I pretend it is someone, some fly on the wall, here to observe the moment. If I could travel back in time thru fly host technology I'd love to go to early Egypt and chill on some camel dung and take in that culture for a bit.

Tuesday, August 15, 2006

Sphereism

The cover of today's NY Times science section has two interesting articles that relate to the "sphereism" manifesto I wrote last year for my show @ the Adobe backroom gallery in SF. The first article speaks of a Russian mathematician who solved some 100 year old postulation that any 3-D shape, with out holes, can be reduced to a sphere. Google "Poincare conjecture". So this guy (Grigory Perelman) solves this incredibly difficult math problem (It takes three books of 1000 pages each to explain his formulation), and then disappears into the Russian forest to pick "mushrooms". I love these spirits that manifest themselves truly and help along mankinds progress through science to life's greatest awe. People are so easily unimpressed these days. There is sensual saturation for sale here in America. All needs can be addressed. Temporary pacification hunger pangs like trickster spirit alive and well, a wolf in corporate clothing. Desire Desire Desire NYC's air. Most just inhale here. We're inhaling the whole world up the American nose...imported cars, "illegal" immigrants...we're a vacuum of consumption. Even my pure art world is stained these days. BUT... Grisha can come along and solve this problem, and it really restores my faith in what I'm doing with my "what I can bring" this lifetime. There are ways to show it to different mental "types" out there. I always felt art could do that for everyone, but I get it that not all people are wired the same way, and although there is a certain audience there for a specific art form it really takes a natural disaster ("act of god") to get everyone on the same page.

Lets talk about punishment for a second.

lets talk about the attitude that is dominating politics, on all sides, these days. The chest expansions, the howling, the throwing of vines and coconuts. We are in the zoo folks. We've been thrown in the cage. Even that sweet sensitive boy in Tibet can't escape. But we all escape eventually, and some come back to do it all again, like a ride at Six Flags. You know you're gonna go thru some exhilarating times of joy and panic. Its over quick but feels like it lasted a life time.

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!............................

or if you are Buddhist:

OMMANIPADMIHUMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.....................

Got some incense today, and re-arranged this former dark room I'm sleeping in last night, so not it feels more like a home than a crisis center. My grandma's stroke has been downgraded like the UK airline bomb scare. Her care levels are "Elevated", and no longer "Extreme". Like I said earlier, She is a trooper and a fighter. She's fallen through a glass roof and landed on a couch, been hit by a motorcycle while crossing the street, carried my grandfathers supplies all over the world, just to name a few. Still exhausted, and trying to have an early night tonight (finish this, cut my hair, and hope she has sweet dreams about butterflies and potato soup).

OK, [or here's one I came up with: "Boook" (ed translation: "Be Triple O .k.")]
I digress. So, Grisha, Sphereism (gotta dig up that manifesto and post it), and today's NY Times. There's also the matter of the 2 images (one of the universe being born -postulated by a computer program-, and the other of the neurons of a mouse brain) placed side by side. They look like one of those glass globes they would sell at Starmagic down on Broadway and 8th street back in the 80s. Later they could be found at malls, and most recently I spotted one at a dive bar in NJ last week while celebrating a dear friend's birthday. There's probably one in the Exploratorium in SF, or at some vintage interior novelty store. ...anyway, its an ever changing trapped lightning family swarming around the inside of a glass sphere, emanating from what looks like a burnt marshmallow on a stick. Which reminds me of the "spherism" conceptual illustration advancement I achieved in a Tibetan linguistic's octagon hut in the Jungles of Haiku, Maui last winter. It dealt with Guru Rinpoche Padmasambhava. And for the record, I adhere to Buddhism as much as I do to Quantum Physics

Back to the mouse brain... same basic structure as the universe expanding...in motion...emanating from a central source

Ahhhhhhhhhh. It makes me feel at peace. The unity in diversity.... all (holefree) shapes can be reduced to spheres, and the active central spark that all these spheres need to manifest. So, I read a great book on the Kaballah a few years back called "God is a Verb" by a Rabbi Michael Cooper(berg,man?) [strange then it wasn't titled "G_D is a verb"], which was really informative. Kabbalists conceived, if I remember correctly, the universe being unified at one point, and then shattering into countless divine sparks (a human-being being a vessel for one). The respective noble path being that of bringing the free sparks together to free more sparks. So these vibrating energy sources, which are not fixed, and are relative to each other and the energy around it make up our micro and macro world, and to spin it back to the Buddha, the vibration is an illusion, so, then why am I writing this blog, and who are you reading it?

time to cut my hair.....

(I know, I know, what hair???)

Listening to: Deepstate 2/"Everybody Get Down", INXS/"calling all nations", Terranova "Bombing Bastards", Cecil Luter/"Electronic", Herbert/"Its only", Billie Holliday/"Strange Fruit", Unkle/track 11 on NeverNeverLand, Primal Scream/"higher than the sun (dub symphony in 2 parts)

Monday, August 14, 2006

Cabin Fever

Its going on 4 weeks. My tan is fading, my beard
emerging. Spidering memories bundles of information
U-ing my mind.