A Pure Vision of Something
We were fifteen minutes away from the ball dropping and I could not keep my eyes open. I think it was the total boredom of it all. I can stay awake if I really want to but I just wasn't into it.
Ah yes, times are so very, very different.
It seems just like yesterday that for one particular New Years Eve I was in Pittsburgh, at an old gothic bank that had been converted into a gay disco. With my head full of acid, I stood on the balcony and watched hundreds of pink and white balloons drop from the cathedral ceiling and cascade over the dance floor. I must say it was pretty cool. When I was young and oh so stupid, the greatest thing about New Years was that it happened very early in the evening. Midnight is nothing to someone who understands that the sunrise is the end of night signal. I really did live like a vampire.
Now, I can't even stay awake for it all.
Anyway, back to bullshit and no more fun and games. It is back to reading 'How to keep your job' lists and '10 things to do if you are let go' or 'How to Make the Most of Unemployment'. Or hey, how about a free Resume Critique?
Boy, if there ever were a time for all of us to be 'tripping' I would think that now is just about as good as any. I also happen to think that now is a great time to be a raging alcoholic but that is just the deep denial in me wanting to spend that days wasted rather than be hyperaware. Obama can't fix EVERYTHING now can he?
Over the years, instead of me working towards something more employable with my life, like becoming a plumber, I was messing around with computers. Not in that, 'I write databases and I'm going to be rich as shit' way, but more of a 'I make pretty pictures and resign myself to a life of low income' way.
I've been screwing around with computers since 1987. I've had a computer in the house since 1992 and I have had one particular email address since 1993. I've had my own website since 1999, although the Wayback Machine only has me back to 2001. I was on the internet before it was the internet and sent files over phone lines before people had modems. I taught myself MS-DOS (!) so I could use a computer. There was no Windows or MAC there was just DOS.
I have computer graphic illustrations and 3d animations that are stored on 230 MB Bernoulli disks, at least 100, 250 MB Zip disks and another 100, 680 MB tape backups. Long gone are the computers that I owned that could read that media. The amount of computer equipment that I have contributed to landfills is about equal to that of a small, 10-15 person business.
There are stacks and binders full of 35m negatives,
stacks and binders full of Holga negatives and binders filled with slides all shelved in the photo room.
The majority of which, have never been printed because I do not have an enlarger and cannot afford to have it sent out. There are paper boxes filled with prints,
printed work, published work, portfolios, and boxes and tins filled with Polaroid prints.
I have accordion files filled with writing, Xerox art, thermal art, gallery submissions, show cards and press coverage.
There is one closet totally devoted to frames, glass, and matte boards. It goes on and on in a fucking endless loop of work. At this point to live an uncluttered life is impossible.
I'm always bitching that shooting digital photos are just shooting the hell out of something. Shooting to shoot and if everyone is shooting then who is actually participating in any one event that is being shot. The whole snake/tail thing in living, blinding digital color.
But I'm no better. I keep adding to my shit. But if I keep adding to my body of work and the computer work that I created 15 years ago is inaccessible to me, yet I keep it with me, and then just create more work, to be stored and archived...well, I'm a little confused as to what it is that I am doing. I am an Artist. I don't know how to be anything else. But if I stop contributing to my catalog, am I still an artist? Am I only an artist if I am working on art?
I think in order for me to not get bogged down with the stuff that is the stuff of creation, it would be a great idea if after I'm done with whatever I'm working on, I hand it off for someone else to deal with. Then I could keep moving forward, instead of living backwards.
Tolling around in my negatives and moving though computer files drains me. It drains me of the very thing that I need to have in me that keeps me awake. Curiosity.
Clearly I'm in some kind of funk. It seems to be an odd combination of cynical optimism and angry fear. But me being in a funk isn't the 'I'm a New York Trust fund jackass on a screwy arts endowment yet I'm creatively depressed' thing.
Hardly.
I am creatively depressed due to my sifting through 6 years of digital photography that I shot for the Voice. I'm building a new portfolio/business site for myself and I've been pulling work for the photo gallery sections. We are talking years of work whittled down to a presentable 8-10 image slide show.
After a while, it gets weird.
After a while, I get weirder.
After a while it all starts to feel like nothing more than a middle-age scramble for meaning.
I get to the point where I can't do it anymore. I can't think about it and I can't even remember the point of the whole exercise.
I could go on and on, and clearly I have but if we were just chatting, I'd probably still be talking and you would most certainly be looking for a way to get away from me. My point, and I think I have one in there, is that it's a sucky time to be an artist. It's a sucky time to be anything other than rich as a fucking emperor and just like everyone else, I haven't a clue as to what to do.
And yes Martha, I took my pill. |
