If someone asked me, “What’s your problem?” I’d have to say, “Skin.” Andy Warhol
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If I could write a dictionary I’d want to make all the strong words so broadly defined that they would lose all practical meaning outside of a specific context. I’d like negatives like stupid and ugly to become more positive and words like brilliant and beautiful to become more negative so that they would meet somewhere in the middle. These words would then become simply descriptive without carrying any sense of judgment, like shiny or rectangular. I think then the language would become really free. People could say whatever they thought without worrying about hurting anybody’s feelings. People could really describe their own personal state of affairs clearly and without shame. Jokes are important. For example, I’m fascinated with how three things are funny and four are not. This is why a priest, a minister and a rabbi go into a bar and leave the pastor at home. It’s the structure that makes it funny. Some people can tell jokes and some can’t. I am also really interested in how ham is a funnier lunchmeat then turkey. A ham sandwich is special in a way that no other sandwich is. Note that Mama Cass is said to have died choking on a ham sandwich, and not some other kind. That story wouldn’t have the staying power it does if the sandwich were different. There is a certain kind of pathos to ham. Pathos is important. Ham is somehow a little abject when corned beef is not. Like ham has no business killing anybody so when it does, it’s extra notable. "Artists of every postwar generation concur that to accept without question the seemingly self-explanatory quality of everyday life in America is to be duped by entertainment, advertising and political spectacle into dwelling thoughtlessly in a world of engineered illusions." -Kenneth Baker If this is true, then the artists of all postwar generations have really been missing out on the good stuff. American culture is fundamentally about these engineered illusions. To ignore this or position yourself above or aside it is really to take yourself away from American culture. I want to be an artist that is fully implicated in the culture. I want to be duped. What happens today is the most important thing. What happened yesterday or last year or last century is really just an abstraction and should be forgotten about. It is just as unknowable as what will happen tomorrow. To try to overcome this is futile. I just go with it. For example, this text has more to do with the two or three books I am reading right now, the music I'm listening to or how people treated me today than all my past experiences put together. It’s not like they don’t matter, but they really can’t stand up to right now. “All the good ideas have already been thought about,” people say. They mean that this is a bad thing. But I love it. It is comforting. It really takes the pressure off of me. All these pre-thought ideas are useful, and they usually still have some good left in them, especially when applied in a different context. Art is not special. Therefore neither are artists. An artist is simply someone who happens to professionalize an activity that everybody else does automatically. To choose the color and texture and size and style of your couch is an artistic gesture equal to one of Pollock’s drips or Judd’s shelves. The only difference is the couch chooser is simply doing it, whereas Pollock and Judd are making a big production of it. This doesn’t mean art isn‘t important. It clearly is. Like making the right choice for couch color is important. Many people express themselves beautifully by doing nothing other than selecting clothes that they will wear that day. Is this any less valid than Duchamp selecting a snow shovel? The difference is that Duchamp gets in the canon and everybody else just looks great at parties. I’m not sure which is more important. I like work that is a little scary or dizzying. I love art or music or books that are so exciting and move so fast that they seem like they might fall apart any minute. Like when super heavy elements are made in an atom smasher – they are created with extreme force and intensity but only exist for a few nanoseconds. It’s like they are too special for this world. |
Preface
Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault.
Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope.
They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only beauty.
There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.
The moral life of man forms part of the subject-matter of the artist, but the morality of art consists in the
perfect use of an imperfect medium. No artist desires to prove anything. Even things that are true can be proved.
No artist has ethical sympathies.
An ethical sympathy in an artist is an unpardonable mannerism of style. No artist is ever morbid.
The artist can express everything.
Thought and language are to the artist instruments of an art.
Vice and virtue are to the artist materials for an art.
All art is at once surface and symbol.
Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril.
Those who read the symbol do so at their peril.
Diversity of opinion about a work of art shows that the work is new, complex, and vital.
We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it.
The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely.
All art is quite useless.
O.W.
The balcony of my apartment faces west toward the mountains, overlooking the
Las Vegas Strip; so, every evening when the sky is not overcast, a few minutes
after the sun has gone down, the mountains turn black, the sky above them
turns this radical plum/rouge, and the neon logos of the Desert Inn, The Stardust,
Circus Circus, The Riviera, The Las Vegas Hilton, and Vegas World blaze forth against
the black mountains – and every night I find myself struck by the fact that, while
The Strip always glitters with a reckless and undeniable specificity against the darkness,
the sunset, smoldering out above the mountains, every night and without exception,
looks bogus as hell.
D.H.
Come, c'mon, c'mon, come oh-oh come into my arms
Oh, let me know the wonder of all of you
Baby, I want you now, now, oh now, oh now and hold on fast
Oh, could this be the magic at last?
Could it be magic?
B.M.
I was lying on the grass on Sunday morning of last week
Indulging in my self-defeat
My mind was thugged all laced and bugged all twisted wrong and beat
uncomfortable in three feet deep
Now the fuzzy stare from not being there on a confusing morning week
Impaired my tribal lunar-speak
And of course you can't become if you only say what you would have done
So I missed a million miles of fun
I was lying on the bench slide in the park across the street
l-a-t-e-r that week
My sticky paws were in to making straws out of big fat slurpy treats
An incredible eight foot heap
Now the funny glare to pay a gleaming tare in a staring under heat
Involved an under usual feat
And I'm not only among but I invite who I want to come
So I missed a million miles of fun
L.
The wraith feels along his long jaw and says he spent the whole sober last ninety
days of his animate life working tirelessly to contrive a medium via which he and
the muted son could simply converse. To concoct something the gifted boy couldn’t
simply master and move on from to a new plateau. Something the boy would love
enough to induce him to open his mouth and come out – even if it was only to ask
for more. Games hadn’t done it, professionals hadn’t done it, impersonation of
professionals hadn’t done it. His last resort: entertainment. Make something so
bloody compelling it would reverse thrust on a young self's fall into the womb of
solipsism, adhedonia, death in life. A magically entertaining toy to dangle at the
infant still somewhere alive in the boy, to make its eyes light and toothless mouth
open unconsciously, to laugh. To bring him ‘out of himself,’ as they say. The womb
could be used both ways. A way to say I AM SO VERY, VERY SORRY and have it heard.
A life-long dream. The scholars and Foundations and disseminators never saw that
his most serious wish was: to entertain.
D.F.W.
The dwarf made a deep, roughly circular incision around Chris’s ass crack.
Then he dug in his hand yanked, and cheeks lifted up like a soft manhole cover.
Chris: kkgghymddhi . . .
Blinking wildly, the dwarf studied Chris’s op art-like, purplish-red, pasta-esque insides.
He was looking for . . . something, anything.
He didn’t know. Some clue, some sign.
D.C.
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