(no subject)
So where are we now?
"If you took away 60% of the buildings in Yokohama, you would have Memphis."
"We didn't have Elvis in Japan. This is nothing like Japan."
(So technically I've been watching "Mystery Train", which seems to have exactly the same insomniac Nighthawks at the Diner vibe all other Jim Jarmusch movies have. I realize many people consider him pretentious, but I'm perfectly satisfied with just that vibe and the lazy, laid-back wisps of stories it's attached to, so consider me fulfilled.)
I'm still in my Orange County apartment and my other-part-of-orange-county office, but with a different roommate and a different job. Cops were a bust, and I had to get over into something else before my stress pulled me under and got me making the mistake that would get me fired. Even so the last few months I learned like crazy, and despite the nerves and vertigo it caused, I think it was worth it. Give me another time and place where I'm a year more experienced and I could do this job and do it awesomely. In the meantime, I have something I know I can do instead of just know I'd be hardcore if I can do it. And my boss is already impressed like crazy by what I'm coming up with, so we have some hope.
The awesome roommate's moving out so he can afford a little sound studio, but we'll hang out. Last time we really went somewhere we saw Sebadoh, which was a wonderful slacker-rock timewarp in a little bar for not too much--best quotation of the night: "What, we're tight? [and they kind of were, amusingly] Man, when we were doing this, tight was just not a thing. We listened to, like, Royal Trux, and Pussy Galore. Tight was just not something we worried about."
I've blown some cash on a membership to MoCa, which despite New Yorkers' opinions is my favorite American contemporary art museum because of how ambitious it is about the art of curating--their shockingly comprehensive minimalism exhibit got me into dozens of artists and minimal music, their sound-art exhibit opened my mind about the 60s a lot and got me into Soft Machine, and they went the extra mile to present Basquiat for the uninitiated and give you a dizzying collection of his obsessions; this isn't even to mention the great Rauschenberg show, or their rotating contemporary installations, or even just the good taste to host the second half of Masters of American Comics. As a result this weekend involved jetting up to L.A. not once but twice, once with S to see the most of Le Tigre-DJ'ed opening of their 1965-1980 feminist art exhibition entitled WACK!, which has some really funny and some really devastating stuff ("Step right up! le Baise de une artiste! 5 centimes!" , the feminist history moonbounce, Crocheted Environment, this amazing video entitled "Art must be beautiful, an artist must be beautiful" with the artist maniacally brushing her hair for 10 minutes) and was also one hell of a party. With that following up a profoundly good haircut at Rudy's and an excellent tuna sandwich slathered in hot sauce, washed down with Cuban-style espresso and followed up by a guava empanada at Cafe Tropical, the day was made.
Of course with the shiny new membership I couldn't refuse the very last day of another exhibition the next day, "Skin and Bones"--which explores the way architecture and fashion are using more and more of each other's design techniques, along with some really interesting crossover stuff like what J. Meejin Yoon is doing with her Moebius Dress and this prototype for a "protective" dress with erectile spines that jut out when someone walks too close. Maybe Disney Hall is a giant dress.
Okay, I notice my life has been seeming like a catalogue lately when I've tried to write it down (Quick, the rest!: Man In the High Castle/Dreams From Bunker Hill/that Barbara Kruger coffee mug saying Don't be a jerk/lots of persian Ash/Los Angeles Plays Itself/finally seeing Totally Radd!! live/some adventures with S/Galactica/Heroes/loads of Netflix/my working NES/Pan's Labyrinth/the Santa Ana art district First Saturdays/my current music thanks to someone else's lj entry/putting photos I took 2 years ago up on my wall as art objects/film art music books exercise cooking nostalgigames writing eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee) I think what it is is that so much of my life right now is concerned with production in one medium and consumption in the rest of them. My relationships are still weirdly scattered (across the country, a big knot of them in los angeles, and a few people unrelated to each other down here) and so while I have a lot going for me, I'm pretty rootless. It's not quite the ludicrously picaresque way I felt during my time off in los angeles halfway through college (for one thing, there's not the sense of being ethically adrift, and this job is a lot more of an anchor) or even in Florida (i'm not careening around in a drinking/rebounding/exploring/staying-up-till-6-ing frenzy, and I don't know the entire restaurant service industry in this town), but there are pieces of both in this.
So before I head off to start running around tracking city government on my late City Hall night, I guess what I'm saying is that there's only so much cataloguing worth doing here. I think all my journal media suffer when they document only one kind of thing, because I have more than one kind of thought. I had this weird experience with my paper journal at the art exhibits when I realized there was no reason I shouldn't use a piece of it to take some notes, because for the longest of times I've felt stuck in a particular genre with it. Doing so at "Skin and Bones" with a terrible nub of a pencil I got from the front desk was profoundly liberating and brought me back to a book I haven't touched in months. I think I've been stuck here too, which is why I haven't written. Artistic consumption: conclusion about artistic consumption. Cursory job mention. Even more cursory people mention. Meme, when running out of that. But while of course this is a performative genre (it's online; people are going to see it, even just this friends list), I think perhaps the performance has gotten into a rut, which is why I don't do it that much. In a friends-locked post I may mention some theories why, but until then, I think I've finally looked the issue right in the face.
I realize not too many are hanging on my every meta-about-my-own-posts, but I think the result will be more interesting posts from here on out.
"If you took away 60% of the buildings in Yokohama, you would have Memphis."
"We didn't have Elvis in Japan. This is nothing like Japan."
(So technically I've been watching "Mystery Train", which seems to have exactly the same insomniac Nighthawks at the Diner vibe all other Jim Jarmusch movies have. I realize many people consider him pretentious, but I'm perfectly satisfied with just that vibe and the lazy, laid-back wisps of stories it's attached to, so consider me fulfilled.)
I'm still in my Orange County apartment and my other-part-of-orange-county office, but with a different roommate and a different job. Cops were a bust, and I had to get over into something else before my stress pulled me under and got me making the mistake that would get me fired. Even so the last few months I learned like crazy, and despite the nerves and vertigo it caused, I think it was worth it. Give me another time and place where I'm a year more experienced and I could do this job and do it awesomely. In the meantime, I have something I know I can do instead of just know I'd be hardcore if I can do it. And my boss is already impressed like crazy by what I'm coming up with, so we have some hope.
The awesome roommate's moving out so he can afford a little sound studio, but we'll hang out. Last time we really went somewhere we saw Sebadoh, which was a wonderful slacker-rock timewarp in a little bar for not too much--best quotation of the night: "What, we're tight? [and they kind of were, amusingly] Man, when we were doing this, tight was just not a thing. We listened to, like, Royal Trux, and Pussy Galore. Tight was just not something we worried about."
I've blown some cash on a membership to MoCa, which despite New Yorkers' opinions is my favorite American contemporary art museum because of how ambitious it is about the art of curating--their shockingly comprehensive minimalism exhibit got me into dozens of artists and minimal music, their sound-art exhibit opened my mind about the 60s a lot and got me into Soft Machine, and they went the extra mile to present Basquiat for the uninitiated and give you a dizzying collection of his obsessions; this isn't even to mention the great Rauschenberg show, or their rotating contemporary installations, or even just the good taste to host the second half of Masters of American Comics. As a result this weekend involved jetting up to L.A. not once but twice, once with S to see the most of Le Tigre-DJ'ed opening of their 1965-1980 feminist art exhibition entitled WACK!, which has some really funny and some really devastating stuff ("Step right up! le Baise de une artiste! 5 centimes!" , the feminist history moonbounce, Crocheted Environment, this amazing video entitled "Art must be beautiful, an artist must be beautiful" with the artist maniacally brushing her hair for 10 minutes) and was also one hell of a party. With that following up a profoundly good haircut at Rudy's and an excellent tuna sandwich slathered in hot sauce, washed down with Cuban-style espresso and followed up by a guava empanada at Cafe Tropical, the day was made.
Of course with the shiny new membership I couldn't refuse the very last day of another exhibition the next day, "Skin and Bones"--which explores the way architecture and fashion are using more and more of each other's design techniques, along with some really interesting crossover stuff like what J. Meejin Yoon is doing with her Moebius Dress and this prototype for a "protective" dress with erectile spines that jut out when someone walks too close. Maybe Disney Hall is a giant dress.
Okay, I notice my life has been seeming like a catalogue lately when I've tried to write it down (Quick, the rest!: Man In the High Castle/Dreams From Bunker Hill/that Barbara Kruger coffee mug saying Don't be a jerk/lots of persian Ash/Los Angeles Plays Itself/finally seeing Totally Radd!! live/some adventures with S/Galactica/Heroes/loads of Netflix/my working NES/Pan's Labyrinth/the Santa Ana art district First Saturdays/my current music thanks to someone else's lj entry/putting photos I took 2 years ago up on my wall as art objects/film art music books exercise cooking nostalgigames writing eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee) I think what it is is that so much of my life right now is concerned with production in one medium and consumption in the rest of them. My relationships are still weirdly scattered (across the country, a big knot of them in los angeles, and a few people unrelated to each other down here) and so while I have a lot going for me, I'm pretty rootless. It's not quite the ludicrously picaresque way I felt during my time off in los angeles halfway through college (for one thing, there's not the sense of being ethically adrift, and this job is a lot more of an anchor) or even in Florida (i'm not careening around in a drinking/rebounding/exploring/staying-up-till-6-ing frenzy, and I don't know the entire restaurant service industry in this town), but there are pieces of both in this.
So before I head off to start running around tracking city government on my late City Hall night, I guess what I'm saying is that there's only so much cataloguing worth doing here. I think all my journal media suffer when they document only one kind of thing, because I have more than one kind of thought. I had this weird experience with my paper journal at the art exhibits when I realized there was no reason I shouldn't use a piece of it to take some notes, because for the longest of times I've felt stuck in a particular genre with it. Doing so at "Skin and Bones" with a terrible nub of a pencil I got from the front desk was profoundly liberating and brought me back to a book I haven't touched in months. I think I've been stuck here too, which is why I haven't written. Artistic consumption: conclusion about artistic consumption. Cursory job mention. Even more cursory people mention. Meme, when running out of that. But while of course this is a performative genre (it's online; people are going to see it, even just this friends list), I think perhaps the performance has gotten into a rut, which is why I don't do it that much. In a friends-locked post I may mention some theories why, but until then, I think I've finally looked the issue right in the face.
I realize not too many are hanging on my every meta-about-my-own-posts, but I think the result will be more interesting posts from here on out.