SERIOUSNESS

Really going now. One or two canvases a day, which feels like my old-time rate, but isn't, because I'm working just as much, but putting more time into each canvas than I used to. I've got about 30 new pieces in the last couple of weeks.

The Siege

I try now and then to get someone to stretch canvases for me, but I seem to always do it myself anyway. As much joint pain as that stapler causes me, I just really enjoy the process of putting the canvases together from scratch. Stacking them up, all sleek and black and ready to put to use. When I've got a stack of blank canvases ready, it effects my work - I seem to loosen up, there's plenty more canvases, I seem to say to myself. I don't need to make this "a good one." We'll see how long my shoulder lasts, and when I have to get some help with the stapling.

Some Day All This Will Be Yours

I'm working on the video angles to take this blog onto youtube - with weekly shows where I yak about something while painting. I would expect that it's mostly about painting, but one never knows. Some camera issues to deal with - like how do you get the painter's face and the work on the same screen at the same time? OK - just wanted to get a word in. Next, I get an image.

"WE SERVE ONLY BLUE FOOD"

Back to Work: It's been a couple of years since PAINTING. Now I'm PAINTING once more, and it's always such a mirror. Fer instance, it makes it obvious that I spend way too much time on the computer. Don't know why, it's just that since I've taken the brush up again—by necessity, I didn't have many paintings left to sell—it's more noticeable what a useless time suck it is. Worse than useless, filling head with all kinds of so-called knowledge. But it's not knowledge, it's data, and it's mostly useless, and it takes up much needed space in our heads. I think the singularity will be, not the moment when computers get as smart as humans, but the moment when there is more data than the universe can hold, and it all folds up into an origami elephant on my dad's desk. As far as painting goes: More theater pieces, more pieces out of the world of Subject to Verification, local scenery, the new house... tho it's a bit less interesting to me as a painter than other houses, even though it's more comfortable. More modern.

It will be like winter at Tahoe up here.

showdown

I mean, show down. At a local food place. Nice to have the children home, but already wondering what their next adventure will be.

Possible scheme: getting a temp studio in Vienna (Wien) and paint, then do a show later. Then it occurs to me: do I really want to paint? Better question: what should I be working on now? Orders as if from above, but directions come from within, that is, the gut. How it feels.

I feel like continuing work on Subject to Verification movie.... so ... that's what I'll do...

goodbye Pittsfield

It's been great as always. Looking forward to getting back West, tho.

Did a reading, a signing, sold some paintings. Feedback from the reading, and those who have read some or all of the book: priceless. It's a bit of a trick to not be attached to good words, praise, but, at the same time, use your skillful means as a producer of some work - you need to know how it works out in the world. and it's gratifying when you hear that it does. But nah, not attached to that. At all.

The last piece of eggplant, dinner with DeGroot.

Woke up before dawn this morning. Feels like something is up.
Squirrel in tree last night said hi but seemed preoccupied, maybe worried.
Send my book to my siblings a couple of days ago. When you're talking memoir, that's scary.
Watched The Last Wave last night. It's a fave, but still the story track eludes me.

Hedwig

I was telling friends in Ibiza about Hedwig and the Angry Inch, a day or so later, back at the Port Authority in NYC, waiting for a bus to Pittsfield, this young lady was standing in front of me

great movie.

old pictures

Walking the fantastic old tourist district in Vienna, I saw a gallery with this in the window. Nothing like straightforward advertising. What is it about old photos that so entrances us?