The individual has to repress ‘globally’, form the entire spectrum of his experience, if he wants to feel a warm sense of inner value and basic security. The sense of value and support is something that nature gives to each animal by the automatic instinctive programming and in the pulsating of the vital processes – Ernest Becker – The Denial of Death, 1973 p52
A spot of blue oil
Burnishes the burnt
Brown surface of
Fluid
That floats in the white cup
It is no longer hot
But still warm
To the sip
A few bubbles of froth
Shelter
Trying to cling and
Climb up the side
This play of heterogeneous
Surfaces disappears
As it is raised to the lips
And slips
Under the nose
The eyes effortlessly stare
Straight ahead
Instead
The bowl is tipped and
Gently returned to its matching
Saucer
A grittiness and dryness remain
In the mouth
The morning is resolved
I pull out my “101 California” building pass and flashed it at the bus driver instead of the my MUNI pass. He nods. As I go to put it away, I realize that I had shone the wrong pass. As I go to put it away, someone taps me on the shoulder, I look up and Scott , my nephew, just in from Mississippi via Poland. Want to relocate here. Thinks I'm his rich uncle. He is standing there grinning at me. “I’ve got an interview at Pine and Battery today” he announced as he takes a seat beside me. “It’s almost like you have already started work” I tell him. “You have already stated to identify with your fellow commuters.”
Most of us – by the time we leave childhood – have repressed our vision of the primary miraculousness of creation. We have closed it off, changed it, and no longer perceive the world as it is to raw experience - Ernest Becker – The Denial of Death, 1973 p50
Factoid: Nearly 50 million Americans – including almost one child in four – struggled this last year to get enough to eat
We dream of instant, global fame. We expect it to enrich us, gratify us, but are less concerned that it outlast us. Once, priorities were different – Hillary Mantel – New York Review of Books (Oct 22, 2009) p8
I had lunch with Michael at Rickenbackers - the place is filled with old Indian Motorcycles and an assortment of other antique motor bikes hanging from the ceiling. My crown came lose while I was trying to bite into a stake sandwich. We stopped by the Yerba Buena Center ticket office where I purchased seats for the Other Minds festival. At Yerba Buena we say Joann Haigood’s installation “Ghost Architecture - Robert Henry Johnson and Jose Navigorre are residing at the SRO tenements on this day. It was defiantly ghostly. I walked the lines of the walls of the old West Hotel - ghostly tenants went about their daily business, as I eerily transversed the stage below them. Sounds shifted; locations in space changed. Participatory art only becomes art as you interact with it. The impact of sitting on one of the benches along the outer wall does not have this impact. But, oh the intimidation of trodding on sacred performance space. I first said that the masking tape outlined the walls of the old demolished buildings that occupied this site twenty five years ago but they could also be interpreted as barriers against transgression.
When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him – Jonathan Swift – Thoughts on Various Subjects, Moral and Diverting
Barriers similar these mark off “keep out” space around art works displayed in museums. But they were not intended to be barriers, they were 2D apparitions demarcating the walls of prior architecture with plumb bob lines dangling from the ceiling to demark a survey point. This was a virtual archeological site more than it was an artistic artifact. They easily yielded to my corporality if not to my mental apprehension and I passed on into a different time - a real time not a created time. Later I emerged from that historical interior and could again sense the performance space. But yet I did not forget the space I had just left. It became a virtual memory.
Though the camera people become customers or tourists of reality – or Réalités, as the name of the French photo-magazine suggests, for reality is understood as plural, fascinating and up for grabs – Susan Sontag – On Photography, 1977 p110
Walter accused me of making transcriptions this morning. That I took to be a compliment although he probably had not meant it that way. He was unable to differenate a condensed and edited description of an event from the actual event - that is the ultimate compliment to an artist. It is to tell the artist that his art is invisible. The real has become art like and art has taken on the vestige of reality. The hardest thing to do is to make something simple. The simplest thing to do is to make one’s efforts look difficult. You see the beads of perspiration on a dancer and wonder what they have been doing to cause them to sweat so profusely.
We need to move about in the world with some kind of equanimity, some kind of strength and directness; we can’t keep gaping with our heart in our mouth, greedily sucking up with our eyes everything great and powerful that strikes us – Ernest Becker – The Denial of Death, 1973 p50
I am one of the “The ten least know celebrities” Can you prove me wrong? Can I prove that I am a celebrity even if unknow.
I do not want to labour the point, but let us just say that though we have never truly seen greatness, we have been several times touched partly by it – John Barlow – Eating Mammals, 2004 p185
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