1. DFW They say he killed himself because he was sick and had stopped taking his meds. All those thoughts and observations, he could not stop them: footnotes within footnotes within footnotes. More frightening still, he could follow the thoughts of his characters endlessly down every nook and cranny of their imagined minds. He could not not follow.
2. I saw a bear the color of forest shadows in summer.
3. Gravity waves Fear not; nothing is ever lost. The sadness of loss sinks to the bottom of the murkiest, muddiest pond, mud deeper than oceans, and disperses to the farthest corners of the universe. But even the blackest of black holes return something to space. The faintest something of something which after eons upon eons makes all that nothing and loss reappear as new worlds and galaxies, hardened and strangely wonderful for the journey.
4. Even black holes give off something.
5. The Painter’s Anger at the Imperfection of His Tools M.R. came to my studio many years ago. I had liked his stuff and wrote about him early. He’s very smart, smooth and with just a whisper of a very posh accent. He said some good, helpful things. He really only got worked up by two things though. Golf and brushes. He thought golf was a god-awful waste of resources and an environmental scourge. He also thought it was maddening that painters were hamstrung by the very tools of their trade: How ludicrous to have to make your mark with something as imperfect and imprecise as a brush.
6. I made a painting called OH, The Mediocrity of the Poet. It was terrible.
7. From the time I was 10 until 15, I suffered from occasion bouts of intestinal occlusion. These bouts began with intense stomach cramps that flared up every 5-8 minutes. After 8 hours of that, I would begin to vomit then retch every 5-8 minutes for 8 hours. Lastly, I would suffer diarrhea for the same intervals until there was nothing left of me. It would take days to regain my strength after that. I was in just such a recuperative mode on 7/4/76. Our neighbors had a boat, and we’d been invited to celebrate the Bicentennial on it and watch the tall ships cruise the Hudson River. My brother, sister and father went. My mom stayed home and watched it on tv with me. We were very sad to miss it. This year’s 4th was so much sadder.
8. For E.A. You started me on the hypnagogic path. Your images remain etched in the back of my mind. You died a half mile from my home. You were there the whole time, and I never knew it.
9. RP I saw some guy at the New Museum give a talk on you. I don’t remember most of what he went on about, but I do recall the reverent tone with which he discussed your work and utterances. I always liked your spontaneous seeming profanity, the genius of your Tourette-like rages. Yours, Ladyboi Pantshitter
10. I stood out in the cold wind for 90 minutes to see YK’s infinity room at DZ hoping this was it. I was still a half an hour out when I realized it probably wasn’t a re-creation of the room I’d sprawled out in as a 1st grader. We’d taken a field trip to the Brooklyn Museum, but this wasn’t the Brooklyn Museum I’d visited weekly with my mom. The one filled with mysterious old paintings, smooth rumped sculptures, totem poles and the most fabulous scale model of a Mayan ziggurat. This was new art. My teacher said “Modern.” We laid on the floor in a closed box installed in the middle of a gallery. It was dark inside, a jangle of kids, mirrors and pillows. Sounds like YK, but before her time. Believe it or not.
11. SL-- For you and all artists who spell poorly on purpose to flaunt their rich boy dyslexia and oh-so-not-give-a-fuck attitude, too lazy or fabulous to bother really, and isn’t that cool. Haha.
12. I want to die by bear.
13. The Darkening It comes down smoothly like a wash across a field of light. The light is inflected, obscured but not diminished. It still shines as brightly as before behind the wash of time. The sun still shines at night.
14. There is no greater testimony to the intellectual bankruptcy of artists than the title “Untitled.” Is there any convention more useless, so unaware of its own irony?
15. Bane Breaks Batman’s Back It was the end of something and the beginning of steroids.
16. PR Did we follow the wrong dreams: To be white at last? To be “geniuses”? To be famous? To live forever as famous American artists lauded in the NY Times for our humble roots and for transcending them to thrive among the goyim? Yippee!
17. PR Redux Is this the final novel you dreamed of? Our people supporting a fascist because he supports “our” fascist?
18. Everyone need to stop shitting on Robin and own that it’s ourselves we are ridiculing, wanting to be superheroes but coming off more like boys in tights, butt boys to the alpha hero. Sniggering at our own myriad, endless inadequacies which never fade even as we age and morph into decrepit old men still pulling on the spandex and hoping this time, we’re the Batman.
19. I am so tired of pictures of paintings of pictures.
20. I remember having a crush on JF. He had blonde curly hair, was good at sports and kind. He worked at a gas station during high school and beyond. Died young.
21. B&D AIDs and drugs. They were always together but we never thought anything about it. Barry was a rich kid, wrecked his Porsche in high school, wore aviator shades all the time. Dean was skinny little kid. So fast. A little bug-eyed orphan, adopted along with his sister. Don’t know what happened to her. Both Barry and Dean died young. AIDs and drugs.
22. That night at the quarry Stepping off into the dark Plunging into the cold, cold deep Surrendering warm and dry and terra firma Expecting nothing but the drop Doing it only because you asked
23. My mother spoke on the kitchen phone with an extra-long cord I’d wrap myself around waiting for her to get off. I resented her talking to Arlene or Shirley or Fay or Diane or whomever FOREVER. I still hate it when people talk on the phone around me. PAY ATTENTION TO ME.
24. We judge sentience by proximity. The closer a creature is to us, the more it feels and has worth. Bullshit. All life is life. A blade of grass, your beloved parrot. Who the fuck are you to judge?
25. Candies in France One afternoon we arrived in a French village a little after their lunch time. Everything was closed except for a confiserie. We had bonbons for lunch that day. I make many, many decisions most days. As a boss, a teacher, husband, father. Many are wrong. Some are really wrong. The wrong ones I’ve made as a father haunt me the most, linger, gut me. This was not one of them.
26. Most artists should not write about their work because they suck at it. They are not writers and all too often, like most of us, victims of received ideas. Yech.
27. AB died today. He was two years older than I. He had a full artistic life, and it’s over now. Odd, I feel like mine is just beginning. I always feel like I’m just beginning.
28. It only recently occurred to me that not all children beat and punished their stuffed animals.
29. How do you let someone know how much you love him? How you clamber up the rock faces and spill down the slopes for him? You paint w purple and manifest the wormhole to understand him. To understand what it is not to fit in but to subtend an adjacent arc somewhere, right here, slicing through my heart.
30. JS said “Art is consciousness embedded in material.” I don’t know if he thought of that, but big props in any case just for saying it.
31. Beth and I, we raised our kids. Raised our own fucking kids. Farm to table. We made men. Good men.
32. I was always eager to be taught. To be told something. Our art teachers were loath to tell you shit. One d-bag pantshitter had the nerve to tell me that my desire to learn how to fucking paint was a “desire for mastery,” like it was bad thing. These old farts were saddled and addled with ill-founded notions that creativity was this let-down-your-hair-formless-blob-of-shit.
33. Every time I close my eyes, it’s a dark paradise. --Lana Del Rey