Things have been a little crazy, in fits and starts, thanks to new dog and swollen red eyes in old dog.
New dog solved her problem of not being able to separate from old dog by destroying a wire kennel. Old dog is doing better with meds, and out running two miles as I speak.
I got drenched yesterday on my way to work, with an umbrella. The pic does not convey the size and strength of the pillar of water coming off the roof of the library 50+ feet up. Storms are headed in, but right now Teenage Kicks is on The Current and zucchini chocolate cake is demanding my attention while I cruise through Helsini White by James Thompson.
A lite noir is welcome after finishing Patti Smith's book about her relationship with Robert Mapplethorpe, Just Kids. I've been putting that off because it looked fluffy, but it was actually quite engrossing and had a lot of heft in terms of talking about artistic process and how different people work and what support they need and don't need.
The anecdotes about various New York art and music scenesters and the era are not hoary but unique to Patti's birdseye view of the nexus between visual arts, poetry, and music in the 70s and early 80s.
I learned a lot about other sides of Mapplethorpe I did not get from the big moment his work had in the early 90s, and actually gained more appreciation of his contributions and the thought he put into every aspect of his work including framing. I took away a somewhat reductionist view of his work from the rw flap in Cincinatti andthe in-depth criticism of Kobena Mercer and others. Now I want to go back and view his body of work with this memoir and that body of criticism both in mind...
Next I have to dig into Fire In the Belly, the David Wojnarowicz bio by Cynthia Carr. I started it but it's too heavy to carry to and from work, and library books came available and had to be read. The Smith memoir is a good wedge into the world Wojnarowicz lived in and his work. I'm still working around a storyline set on the fringes of that whole scene, trying to soak up more of the fire and despair of the era to cut through today's filmy layer of... not sure what, but it obscures my vision of the past a little too much right now to really get the piece in full fighting trim.
An interesting take on what has changed in the world of rwc censorship pushes: from The Economist, of all places. NYT with similar sentiments. Oh the times (and Times) they change, tho notsomuch.
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