It beats me but I do not know.

A freshly washed shirt dries in less than an hour on the last of Brooklyn’s breezy spring nights. I open the window to pull its coolness into my arms, determined to sleep with the smell of night air on my skin. In facing these outstretched and sinister hours, no shred of comfort is too extravagant. 

Notes on Hesse article in ArtForum.

I actually bought an artforum, a magazine i love to hate, except that they print good articles. In the most recent issue was a 1973 interview between Lucy Lippard, Nancy Holt, and Robert Smithson about Eva Hesse’s work while Lippard was writing a monograph on her. I have such a hunger for conversation about Hesse recently, i didn’t know much about her until a few months ago when i read Encountering Eva Hesse, but since then i’ve been kind of obsessed. There’s a lot there with her. There’s a lot going on now that she should be here to work out, a lot of things after minimalism that i would have liked to see her grapple with.  The article. I think whenever someone is talking about another artist they end up saying more about themselves, and are only peripherally addressing the actual work, a condition for living in the body we’re given. Smithson said a lot about himself, responding to what he saw as bondage fantasies in her work. I can see where he’s coming from, but no way do even the corporeal rope-wrapped balloons have to do with S/M. I see containment, i see issues of breaking out of prescribed boundaries, but the Freudian interpretation feels grossly off, and a little shallow.Most interesting to me was how they all agreed that Eva Hesse hated the landscape, didn’t enjoy even being outdoors, and noticably less so in a rural or semi-rural environment. That is striking to me, who relates to her work strongly and who viscerally needs the land, needs the idea of it, the fact of it. Part of what i identify with her is wrapped up in biological/organic forms, to find that she brought all of that out of herself in an enclosed urban space is fucking remarkable. It’s enough to think about for days.  

On that note, a small experiment: beginning on Saturday, i will try as much as possible to eliminate my cultural consumption. I’d love to do two weeks but will be satisfied if i make one or one and a half. This means no books, no museum visiting, no internet surfing (i’ll still check my email but that’s it), no newspapers, magazines, movies, or (gulp) music. At work the music’s on constantly so i can’t help that, or the trillions of ads me and my fellow new yorkers are subjected to on the daily. But otherwise i’m going to try to really delve into myself, into the meaty underneath-ness, really sit down and think and breathe. I’ve seen so much in the past few months, so much art, read so many amazing things, and i feel i’m carrying around these half-digested thoughts that are getting in the way of newer ones. Hopefully i’ll have the courage to get them out.

God i love this dog.

A little man has a need.  

Some call it a desperation, some an obsession.

One thing is certain. It is very, very real.

After seeing Joanna Newsom perform the entirety of Ys with the Brooklyn Philharmonic.

Really. What have i done to deserve to be alive here, now, to witness moments like this? 

Knock loud (i’m home).

I just discovered this track from the 2001 Neko Case Canadian Amp EP, which is actually a cover of the original by Sook-Yin Lee, who starred in Shortbus. None of this is really as important as the song, which i can’t stop playing over and over. It is somehow the perfect complement to the fact that i am cradling a ball of raw bread dough in my left hand, waiting for it to set to the contours of my palm, hoping it will solve the problem of creating a sculpture out of raw dough in the round without using a mold. As it rises and hardens, i’m thinking about my mom, who just had her knee replaced and is bearing remarkable amounts of pain, but is still silly with me on the phone. Her optimism stretches out like a road. About Eva Hesse, whose work, whose life calmly explains that happiness isn’t as important as i thought it was. 

There is the work, this soft weight in my hand. 

hawk sighting! in greenpoint!

A friend and i were just walking home from lunch when we noticed a gust of feathers in the air, and a small crowd of people staring at the street. We followed their eyes to a hawk halfway through her pigeon lunch. She seemed completely unfazed by people walking by and cars passing. What a strange day; we wake up to 60 degrees, then this crahzazy wind blowing, and now a hawk lives in greenpoint.