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Archive for February, 2012

To all who are offended by rampant generalizations: stop reading this now.

Over the years, particularly in the recent, a profound distinction has come to my attention. It sounds ridiculous, like finally noticing the sky and running around to announce that you’ve determined its color, but this is more of a change in philosophy. After a lifetime of categorically lumping humans into one universal sort of entity, my mind has been changed. Now I see.

I refer not to dangly parts and the tubes they seek to infiltrate: I refer to an irrevocable separation on an ontological level.

Men and women, boys and girls, pimps and ho’s. While the differences are conducive to the perpetuation of our existence as a species, I’ve come to believe that we should be in separate genuses. Geni? (‘Penis’ does not multiply to ‘peni’, and since I will reference them in the following, let’s stick to genuses for now.)

Biology is clever—that one fucking final chromosome. So many times I have wished away my second x (my second ex, too, but that’s a whole other essay) in exchange for a seemingly self-sufficient y. As a 7 year-old, playing in the mud and beating up that bitch Olivia who got the role of Alice while I had to play the Cheshire cat. Or breaking the news to my Montessori class that Santa, the Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy are all a ruse orchestrated by silly parents who reward their children with unwarranted treats. Even in middle school, wearing big brother’s dark baggy clothes to mask rolls of fat and convince the world that I didn’t mind them replicating The Exorcist stairs atop my jeans whenever I sat down. To be fair, I am thankful that I inherited just two sex chromosomes from my parents, both x’s or not, because I’ve seen what happens when shit goes wrong.

I’ve tried to be a boy. Now, as a woman, I try to be a man—society’s construction of one, that is. Ambitious, driven and independent, capable of certain forms of intimacy without any marginal attachment. The first part may be true, but who the fuck am I kidding?

We’re built this way for a reason. Yet I see so many fellow females forgoing, sometimes silencing rather violently, their very essence. Cognitive theory accounts for anorexia as a woman’s urge to shed her curves in order to appear more masculine and therefore more “successful.” This upsets me. I’d like to be successful and hang on to my junk in the trunk (The Exorcist stairs are gone but by no means do I have the angular lines of a dude.) Most may frown upon the abuse of feminine charms but I find it to be, in addition to a whole lot of fun, quite effective. I’ve averted many a ticket, gotten many a free drink, and secured many a favor simply by batting my eyes.

Is that degrading? My answer is a resounding and emphatic NO. It’s pretty fucking awesome. Physical appearance is a naturally given attribute that can be cultivated or neglected, much like intellect, talent, or any other field of capability that a human’s genes account for. I believe the reaction range applies to all facets of a person, not just the metaphysical—you don’t have to look like Megan Fox to do it either. God knows I don’t. Rather, the coy ways of a woman lie in body language and self-assuredness.

As for men. Ah, men! They have coy ways of their own. I personally find the primal and brutish to be irresistible, especially when the beast can maintain a challenging conversation. Call me misandrous but I find them primitive in their basic desires: food, sex, and sleep. While this would sound on the surface like a deep insult, most men I know both condone and propagate this notion. It’s painfully endearing. Sure women need these too, but we are noticeably more complex. The thing is, our penis-wielding counterparts do not ruminate. They don’t revise a flirty text message 74 times with 12 different friends, debating whether or not to add a smiley face at the end. They just send it. I can’t say I don’t partake. I did it just last night.

When it comes to interactions between the two, sometimes a result of such a meticulously constructed message, more dissonance arises. Women. Get. Attached. So quickly too! It could be a need for validation and affection. Again, I may to some sound like a raging sexist, but this is based on observation both autobiographical and otherwise. I’m on Team Human. I’m just trying to understand how he hell we work. Whatever the case, men are slower to warm up and slower to care. And yet! The tables tend to turn. I can think of very few relationships that ended and found the woman begging for the man back months later. It’s always the guy. Because once that wall finally comes down, it’s very hard to erect it again (pun fully intended.)

The best example of this is the ex. That one girl the new man you’re interested in mentions subtly (or not so subtly in some cases. I heard about this one whore before I even met the boy.) He won’t usually give away her name—no, no! She’s sacred! She’s sent from the heavens, and doesn’t defecate, or urinate, or vomit profusely when she’s drunk. Her farts smell like potpourri and she’s just like, “such a good person. Really. So nice.”

I for one believe that anyone who can be summed up with ‘nice’ is a waste of oxygen. But anyway.

It’s really quite moving: She’s the one who hurt him, poor thing, and broke him, and that’s the reason why he doesn’t like to commit. That’s the reason he’s a complete dick. That’s the reason he doesn’t trust women. Ok… really now? Let’s grow up, boys. If my worldview was fucked every time I’ve been hurt by someone, it would have died of neurosyphylis by now. I return to the notion that men are simple creatures. They feign indifference instead of attempting resilience, which we as females have mastered to impeccable heights. Bad breakups for us are followed by a pathetic period of wallowing, excessive weight gain, a selection of songs that make us hysterical, and then we’re good to go. Next in line, please! Men on the other hand carry that bitch around for the rest of their lives. That proverbial figure in the background that usually has the IQ and personality of the mismatched socks that currently cocoon my cold feet.

Damn this is getting long. I guess what I’m trying to say is that humans actually can’t be lumped into one genre of creature. Neither is congruency necessary for equality; dualists never preferred one kind of stuff to another. So women, be women. Cry and get fat. Gossip and scheme. Spend hours at your mirror. Make fun of his ugly shoes when he doesn’t call you back, because we can do all that and still get shit done. And boys, be boys. You’re hard to reach and understand, and we love you for it.

hello to sir who’s in the line

directly adjacent to mine!

underneath the station’s sign

that indicates ‘train 29,’

you’re fully clothed with hair so fine,

in rumpled shirt of pale pink wine.

how stiff your posture does align

as though a fleshy human tine,

how bland your face is in design

like chunks of cardboard intertwined.

and yet i have such thoughts; benign,

for some reason i’m so inclined,

to drop those khaki pants of thine

and make you my repugnant shrine!

it’s boredom and interest combined,

with that your shape so ill-defined.

so yes good sir you must consign

your dignity and thus resign:

to aid me in moral decline.

i will not ask you to recline

or lay onto your back, supine

stay this way with erected spine

and in this sketch you are enshrined.

seen in grand central station, september 2011

 

A4 sketchbook illustration

 

 

to my right someone is chewing gum and smacking their lips. it’s rhythmic and very loud. i can hear their teeth sinking into the rubbery treat, denting it and evacuating the spittle that saturates it with an earsplitting squelch.

squelch squelch squelch. pause. squelch squelch… squelch.

and speech: will you take me on a trip when i grow old? i answer, i don’t know. my birthday is in one month. who’s to say i won’t be old, too.

blissful quiet, then a hearty squelch. i try very hard to maintain my composure and ignore the wet metronome. maybe if i focus on the time signature it won’t sound so revolting. onetwothree onetwo onetwothree onetwo. just nearly a waltz! i remember a tool song and decide to listen to their album, the really special one. i had put it away since that summer but now i think i can hear it again.

i’m biting my lips rather hard and realize it only when the metallic taste licks at my tongue.

i went somewhere: to somebody’s pristine house. atrocities took place as the box boy poured himself a bowl of chocolate cereal in the exquisite kitchen next door. i walked in while he was there and had a bite. it could have been before or maybe after, but the impromptu breakfast most likely took place in perfect parallel. i didn’t see box boy after that.

there were two women looking through the glass. an older one, in her 70s, with an impressive figure. i turned to a friend who wasn’t there to comment on her breasts and express hopes that mine would have the same buoyancy at her age. her dress was long sleeved and fitted with a thick sash around the waist. the younger woman was vague. perhaps she had blonde hair, bland beige-yellow that hung limply over thin shoulders. neither spoke. they looked down to write things or turned to each other exchanging nods of agreement and furtive smiles. mother and daughter, mentor and student.

then there was the glass room, and the man. he was angry… so very angry, and i was passive and delirious. he injected me with something. the women watched in infuriating silence and i blocked out the terror of being at his disposal. i found myself laughing like a fool, clinging to his arm, adoring him while he paced back and forth deciding how to destroy me.

it felt like days. we began having conversations and i felt him forget from time to time, forget why i was there or why he needed to do what he did. i never learned. when i stumbled away he stood before me, and wasn’t so beautiful anymore. he seethed wordlessly for what seemed like hours, until i collapsed in a heap of body parts at his feet. the women, the observers, were gone.

i didn’t get out before i woke up. maybe i’m still with him, laughing up at his face while he loathes me.

  1. Conceptual artists are mystics rather than rationalists. They leap to conclusions that logic cannot reach.
  2. Rational judgements repeat rational judgements.
  3. Irrational judgements lead to new experience.
  4. Formal art is essentially rational.
  5. Irrational thoughts should be followed absolutely and logically.
  6. If the artist changes his mind midway through the execution of the piece he compromises the result and repeats past results.
  7. The artist’s will is secondary to the process he initiates from idea to completion. His wilfulness may only be ego.
  8. When words such as painting and sculpture are used, they connote a whole tradition and imply a consequent acceptance of this tradition, thus placing limitations on the artist who would be reluctant to make art that goes beyond the limitations.
  9. The concept and idea are different. The former implies a general direction while the latter is the component. Ideas implement the concept.
  10. Ideas can be works of art; they are in a chain of development that may eventually find some form. All ideas need not be made physical.
  11. Ideas do not necessarily proceed in logical order. They may set one off in unexpected directions, but an idea must necessarily be completed in the mind before the next one is formed.
  12. For each work of art that becomes physical there are many variations that do not.
  13. A work of art may be understood as a conductor from the artist’s mind to the viewer’s. But it may never reach the viewer, or it may never leave the artist’s mind.
  14. The words of one artist to another may induce an idea chain, if they share the same concept.
  15. Since no form is intrinsically superior to another, the artist may use any form, from an expression of words (written or spoken) to physical reality, equally.
  16. If words are used, and they proceed from ideas about art, then they are art and not literature; numbers are not mathematics.
  17. All ideas are art if they are concerned with art and fall within the conventions of art.
  18. One usually understands the art of the past by applying the convention of the present, thus misunderstanding the art of the past.
  19. The conventions of art are altered by works of art.
  20. Successful art changes our understanding of the conventions by altering our perceptions.
  21. Perception of ideas leads to new ideas.
  22. The artist cannot imagine his art, and cannot perceive it until it is complete.
  23. The artist may misperceive (understand it differently from the artist) a work of art but still be set off in his own chain of thought by that misconstrual.
  24. Perception is subjective.
  25. The artist may not necessarily understand his own art. His perception is neither better nor worse than that of others.
  26. An artist may perceive the art of others better than his own.
  27. The concept of a work of art may involve the matter of the piece or the process in which it is made.
  28. Once the idea of the piece is established in the artist’s mind and the final form is decided, the process is carried out blindly. There are many side effects that the artist cannot imagine. These may be used as ideas for new works.
  29. The process is mechanical and should not be tampered with. It should run its course.
  30. There are many elements involved in a work of art. The most important are the most obvious.
  31. If an artist uses the same form in a group of works, and changes the material, one would assume the artist’s concept involved the material.
  32. Banal ideas cannot be rescued by beautiful execution.
  33. It is difficult to bungle a good idea.
  34. When an artist learns his craft too well he makes slick art.
  35. These sentences comment on art, but are not art.

sentences on conceptual art – Sol LeWitt

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