While living in Austin, one of my favorite activities was to scour the Chronicle (free weekly), pick a day with a number of art shows or gallery openings (usually Thursdays and Saturdays), and hit the town. My motivation, as I've explained before, was largely corporeal: to consume the greatest variety, the highest quality, and the largest number of free food and drink items. The art was a pleasant byproduct, at best. Dessert for the eyes, with the stomach already full.
So when I come across an art show in Boston, my mind is in the same place. Sure, I'll look at some paintings... while I'm eating my dinner. But whereas the warm weather and art-hubbed design of Austin are conducive to gallery crawls, Boston's art scene is more spread out. And in the winter, the idea of hitting multiple galleries is much less appealing. But I'll still give it a shot. Especially if I'm hungry.
Two Thursdays ago, I made it a point to head to Maverick Square in East Boston for a show at the Atlantic Works Gallery. What a unique neighborhood - located on the harbor, with streets named after English soccer clubs (I like to think that, but I'm guessing they're really named after the regions and cities that existed long before the clubs), and a smattering of old churches and warehouses amidst very new apartment buildings. It's changed quite a bit in the few years since I'd last been there, and by all accounts, so much more in the last two decades. Now I can go and hang out at Eddie C's - where the "house wine" is a jug of Carlo Rossi and the customers change the taps in the basement when they mysteriously run out of whatever cheap beer is on tap - before going to an excellent white-walled, cafe-sized Pakistani place with the best naan ever. Or to a huge moonlit warehouse on the water, with Atlantic Works housed on the third floor.
Up the stairs, in the door, and straight to the food... ugh, I was expecting more. Mixed nuts, crackers and a couple of cheeses, something like a pate, and a can of High Life for me. I'm still gonna need dinner when I leave here.
Despite multiple visits to the cheese table, Atlantic Works was not the satiating experience I had hoped for. But - in an unexpected and slightly ironic twist - the art quite made up for it. The exhibition, called "All Works Guaranteed Stolen," carried out this subtitle/mission statement: "celebrating the natural right of artists to 'steal' the intellectual 'property' they need to create their art." I saw a version of the iconic tri-color Obama poster, "Yes we can" replaced by "Maybe, we could've." Shepard Fairey was also the target of other biting artistic juxtapositions, as were Warhol and Time Warner, the latter claiming to own the "Happy Birthday" song, much to the chagrin of all the copyright-infringing birthday celebrators on YouTube. I even saw a mobile hanging from the ceiling, a word generator for artistic conversations like, "I appreciate the way the red splatter across the landscape represents mankind's eternal need for forgiveness." Funny stuff.
But my favorite was a take on Edvard Munch's classic The Scream (some times called The Cry) with the mask from Wes Craven's Scream films superimposed over Munch's anguished subject. I chuckled at that one. And even better, it allows me to segue into what I had meant to do in the last post, in which I attempted to describe the opera of alternately stifling and promising conditions embedded in a simple commute into the city. In The Revolution of Everyday Life, Vaneigem does an excellent job of portraying the more nightmarish aspects of the daily roller coaster ride, but he spends many pages doing so. Before my last post got so long, I had meant to excerpt some of his words to help define those nightmarish aspects. This post is now also quite long, but I'm gonna go ahead with the excerpts anyway:
"The endless minuet of humiliation and its response gives human relationships an obscene hobbling rhythm. In the ebb and flow of the crowds sucked in and crushed together by the coming and going of suburban trains, coughed out into streets, offices and factories, there is nothing but timid retreats, brutal attacks, smirking faces, and scratches delivered for no apparent reason. Soured by unwanted encounters, wine turns to vinegar in the mouth. Don't talk to me about innocent and good-natured crowds. Look how they bristle up, threatened on every side, clumsy and embarrassed in enemy territory, far, very far, from themselves. Lacking knives, they learn to use their elbows and their eyes as weapons[...]
"Remarks, gestures, glances tangle and collide, miss their aim, ricochet like bullets fired at random, killing even more surely by the continuous nervous tension they produce. All we can do is enclose ourselves in embarrassing parentheses; like these fingers (I am writing this on a cafe terrace) which slide the tip across the table and the fingers of the waiter which pick it up, while the faces of the two men involved, as if anxious to conceal the infamy which they have consented to, assume an expression of utter indifference[...]
"Malaise invades me as the crowd around me grows. The compromises I have made with stupidity, under the pressure of circumstances, rush to meet me, swimming towards me in hallucinating waves of faceless heads. Edvard Munch's famous painting, The Cry, evokes for me something I feel ten times a day. A man carried along by a crowd, which only he can see, suddenly screams out in an attempt to break the spell, to call himself back to himself, to get back inside his own skin. The tacit acknowledgments, fixed smiles, lifeless words, listlessness and humiliation sprinkled in his path suddenly surge into him, driving him out of his desires and his dreams and exploding the illusion of 'being together'[...]
"Everywhere neon signs are flashing out the dictum of Plotinus: All beings are together though each remains separate. But we only need to hold out our hands and touch one another, to raise our eyes and meet one another, and everything suddenly becomes near and far, as if by magic."
So that's the bad part, with a hint of the possibility for good at the end. As I said before, I believe in that possibility. But achieving it is not a simple matter. The simplest idea that I can ascribe to the journey toward achievement is that I think the good must be created at the same time as the the bad is rooted out. Ah... if only it were that simple.
Thursday, January 20, 2011
Thursday, January 6, 2011
Or even the turnstile line to get into the amusement park
Today I went into the city (Boston, that is) the earliest in the day I've gone in a while. Looking for part-time work, because the freelancing isn't quite cutting it yet. My commute took me on a roller coaster ride of trivial emotions, or semi-emotional trivialities, if you prefer. So I guess it was more of a Kiddie Coaster ride, in that sense. Or even a Tilt-A-Whirl, because those rides make me sick, and it's a bit nauseating how much of an effect modern alienated society can have on one.
Let's populate this ride with concrete examples. Rather than taking a bus, I walked the half hour to the T station. The brisk, fresh air and morning sun had a pleasant effect on me. On the other hand, with snow still covering the sidewalks in front of the Von Trapp estates on Adams Street, I had to cross the road several times. Walking against traffic, I feel the need to avoid eye contact with drivers on this long, wide road - a hangover from Austin - those times when I feel like I'm the only one walking, that I should be driving this road, and that I'm isolated because I'm on foot. But then a group of girls jogging in my direction... but still not fully awake, I awkwardly step aside, though it's completely unnecessary. Avoid eye contact with them too.
At Quincy Station, I arrive just in time for the train. Good. But I get on it with a group of - no other way to say it - douchebags, male and female. One guy in particular, continually mimicking the driver's announcements ("Doors will open on your left"), at every stop, every utterance at top volume level, heard throughout the train - "fawkin'" this, "those faggots" - incessant trash talk, inescapable for the rest of us, the other passengers. The type of guy who will compliment you on an unusual item of clothing, but snicker to himself with the superiority of boisterous narcissism. And he's so loud that I can't even concentrate on reading the paper. Plus some other guy sits down right next to me, in an otherwise empty row of seats. He's crowding me, and I find it completely unnecessary. O bother!
But okay. Make the Red-to-Orange transfer in fine time - but only by avoiding a guy who just wants "ten seconds" of my time for a survey or a donation to the only charity that matters - and I'm at my place of interview. Then it's the furtive glances, trying to find the right floor, the right room. Being an outsider, but trying not to look like one. Orientation is such a challenge! But I get to the right room and, although the two pages of my outdated resume (which I hadn't thought I would need) are stuck together (victims of water damage), I find myself talking naturally, quite at ease. Words come out of my mouth rapidly, but they all seem to make sense... how often does that happen to me at job interviews? A pleasant, quick one. End with a smile.
Good. I know my way out of the building now, and I'm back on the train. A couple stops later, an old lady and two middle-aged women get on the train. The old one sits between me and the door, the other two stand next to her. I hesitate - a definitive subway etiquette does not exist, and I usually find it easier to feign ignorance of my fellow passengers - but seeing that the three women are talking together, I offer my seat to one. She's quite happy, I'm happy, and any perceived tension has been defused.
Getting on the Red Line, some dufus starts walking onto the train before any one has gotten off, blocking their path. But then, a quite large man gestures for me to get on in front of him, out of politeness. Thank you, kind sir. But then... the ever-present question of eye contact looking out the windows on the long train ride back to Quincy. But then, at Quincy Center, no rush to catch a bus (I will walk back home too), so I'm whistling Dixie. But THEN, the snowy sidewalks, and the oncoming traffic....
...Avoiding eye contact, getting in the way, trying to get out of the way, where to stand, where to sit, how to act, how to live, and on and on and on....
What's the solution? There are some people that believe that when we eliminate the hallmarks of our alienated society - consumption, spectacle, idolatry, the media behemoth, representative politics, etc., etc. - we will eliminate its symptoms and results... like social anxiety, public isolation, boredom in daily life, crushing crowds, and so on and so forth. I think that I count myself among the believers in that theory (however vaguely I just summarized it), that I am starting to work toward said elimination, and that I would like to do much more in that realm. In the meantime, when I do find myself out in this cold world (so to speak), if I can remember to borrow an idea from the Buddhists, I feel much better about everything.
Just to know that I am breathing.
Let's populate this ride with concrete examples. Rather than taking a bus, I walked the half hour to the T station. The brisk, fresh air and morning sun had a pleasant effect on me. On the other hand, with snow still covering the sidewalks in front of the Von Trapp estates on Adams Street, I had to cross the road several times. Walking against traffic, I feel the need to avoid eye contact with drivers on this long, wide road - a hangover from Austin - those times when I feel like I'm the only one walking, that I should be driving this road, and that I'm isolated because I'm on foot. But then a group of girls jogging in my direction... but still not fully awake, I awkwardly step aside, though it's completely unnecessary. Avoid eye contact with them too.
At Quincy Station, I arrive just in time for the train. Good. But I get on it with a group of - no other way to say it - douchebags, male and female. One guy in particular, continually mimicking the driver's announcements ("Doors will open on your left"), at every stop, every utterance at top volume level, heard throughout the train - "fawkin'" this, "those faggots" - incessant trash talk, inescapable for the rest of us, the other passengers. The type of guy who will compliment you on an unusual item of clothing, but snicker to himself with the superiority of boisterous narcissism. And he's so loud that I can't even concentrate on reading the paper. Plus some other guy sits down right next to me, in an otherwise empty row of seats. He's crowding me, and I find it completely unnecessary. O bother!
But okay. Make the Red-to-Orange transfer in fine time - but only by avoiding a guy who just wants "ten seconds" of my time for a survey or a donation to the only charity that matters - and I'm at my place of interview. Then it's the furtive glances, trying to find the right floor, the right room. Being an outsider, but trying not to look like one. Orientation is such a challenge! But I get to the right room and, although the two pages of my outdated resume (which I hadn't thought I would need) are stuck together (victims of water damage), I find myself talking naturally, quite at ease. Words come out of my mouth rapidly, but they all seem to make sense... how often does that happen to me at job interviews? A pleasant, quick one. End with a smile.
Good. I know my way out of the building now, and I'm back on the train. A couple stops later, an old lady and two middle-aged women get on the train. The old one sits between me and the door, the other two stand next to her. I hesitate - a definitive subway etiquette does not exist, and I usually find it easier to feign ignorance of my fellow passengers - but seeing that the three women are talking together, I offer my seat to one. She's quite happy, I'm happy, and any perceived tension has been defused.
Getting on the Red Line, some dufus starts walking onto the train before any one has gotten off, blocking their path. But then, a quite large man gestures for me to get on in front of him, out of politeness. Thank you, kind sir. But then... the ever-present question of eye contact looking out the windows on the long train ride back to Quincy. But then, at Quincy Center, no rush to catch a bus (I will walk back home too), so I'm whistling Dixie. But THEN, the snowy sidewalks, and the oncoming traffic....
...Avoiding eye contact, getting in the way, trying to get out of the way, where to stand, where to sit, how to act, how to live, and on and on and on....
What's the solution? There are some people that believe that when we eliminate the hallmarks of our alienated society - consumption, spectacle, idolatry, the media behemoth, representative politics, etc., etc. - we will eliminate its symptoms and results... like social anxiety, public isolation, boredom in daily life, crushing crowds, and so on and so forth. I think that I count myself among the believers in that theory (however vaguely I just summarized it), that I am starting to work toward said elimination, and that I would like to do much more in that realm. In the meantime, when I do find myself out in this cold world (so to speak), if I can remember to borrow an idea from the Buddhists, I feel much better about everything.
Just to know that I am breathing.
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