On Vacation

I apologize for my long silence; I've had a lot to say, but literally no time to say it. I'm working nearly full time and parenting the rest of the time, while trying to negotiate a mountain of unpaid bills without the resources to pay them.

But once I get my brain decompressed with a visit to extended family in Maine, I will once again be Posting like a Fiend. I promise.

Dash Snow Dies; Nobody Notices

Dash Snow, the artist who is best known for creating a hamster nest out of shredded phone books in a London hotel room, is predictably dead of a heroin overdose. Tragically, not only was Michael Jackson's funeral the same week, but global infatuation with trust fund brats who bite the thousands of hands which feed them is at the lowest ebb of the century. Timing is everything.

Speak your truth quietly and clearly

and listen to others, even the dull and ignorant; they too have their story.

It was only after speaking truth and listening for a few decades that I realized a couple of things; first, that you have to repeat yourself a lot, matching your actions to your words, before anyone believes you about certain things. And second, the reason the dull and the ignorant are dull and ignorant is that they don't listen back.

Truthful statements with which I tested these propositions: "I'm an artist." "I'm moving to Mexico." "I'm moving to New York." "I love you."

It was a full decade before my nuclear family stopped tacitly expecting me to get over this 'artist' delusion and go to medical school. I had lived in Mexico for three years, and Brooklyn for two, before people stopped sending me invitations to events in Northern California with 'RSVP' on them. And some people I just stopped loving.

One thing I've learned, from running doggedly against the wind of other people's expectations for years, is that 'individualism' is a myth. Success requires community support. Look at the 'acknowledgments' on any CD, film, flyleaf, or program; the more financially and artistically successful the creation, the longer the thank-yous. The visual arts are no exception, except that visual artists tend to be even more bashful and egoistic than the average actor. Thus we have trouble asking for help, and resist acknowledging the help we get.

Moreover, the institutions which are allegedly in place for 'supporting' visual artists, such as schools, museums, galleries, and non-profit organizations, act as parasitic forces on the vast majority of artists. The art school I attended sucked its students financially dry while sabotaging their careers. Most juried exhibitions are funded by the application fees of rejected artists; grants and residencies are often awarded for political reasons rather than artistic ones; museum collections are still heavily weighted toward the white, the male and the wealthy.

It's easy to say that all of this shouldn't matter. A Real Artist will transcend all of that. And this is, to a certain extent, true. Creative people will find ways to survive, albeit not always comfortably.

But I drove myself to the verge of exhaustion, bankruptcy and despair by believing that people believed me, and now I'm wondering if it's worth it. Because if 'art' is not assessed according to the values with which it is created, it might as well not exist.

To be continued.

Go Placidly Amid the Noise and Haste

and remember what peace there may be in silence.

Ever since I can remember, the Desiderata was on my mother's dressing table, framed. I didn't think of it as a 'poem,' so much as just 'the Desiderata.' I absorbed it wholesale while having my hair dried as a child, and when I grew up and left home, it only seemed natural to print up a copy, frame it, and hang it by my own dressing table. My last ex-boyfriend from hell once suggested that I take it down and put up some other, different inspirational words, since 'those have been there long enough.' What a nitwit. The ex-boyfriend is long gone, the words are still there.

But lately, in this time of economic struggle and career confusion, I've been thinking about the ways in which my principles have shaped my life. Have they been good ones? Should I keep them? Or should I go in search of some other principles, ones which might bring me--well, if I can't have fame and fortune, solvency would be nice.

So I am inspired to re-examine the Desiderata in light of its specific effects on my life, hitherto. Line by line. If you get bored, there's the whole wide Internet out there. Hie thee hence.


As it happens, I do go placidly amid the noise and haste, and always have. Even when rioting in San Francisco in the early 90's, I was placid. That's probably why I didn't get arrested. I carry with me a serenity that is like a rope attached to an anchor in the center of the earth. When other people are panicking around me, flailing and gibbering and generating drama, I get progressively more placid and serene, in order to balance them out.

This is probably really annoying to people who aren't emotional parasites, which is probably why I have had a lifelong habit of attracting emotional parasites. (Present company excepted; emotional parasites don't read.) In latter years I have found that allowing myself to occasionally freak out--to show weakness and confusion, to admit that I am not, in fact, the Buddha--has allowed me to grow closer to healthy people, and keep the people at bay who like to put serene people on pedestals, then knock them off those pedestals and stomp on them.

Lesson learned: stay away from folks bearing pedestals.

I do indeed remember what peace there may be in silence. If a person has a problem with silence--that companionable silence of sitting in the same room, reading or working alongside one another for hours on end--that's a Red Flag. As in, "I can't do my Pilates workout/work in the garden/have sex with you, with you sitting there reading/sleeping on the couch/sewing like that. Stop it."

Silence is all the more peaceful when one of these individuals has left the building forever.

To be continued.

At Last, Some Light in This Recession

Crocs are going under, not a moment too soon.

"The company's toast," said Damon Vickers, who manages an investment fund at Nine Points Capital Partners in Seattle. "They're zombie-ish. They're dead and they don't know it."

Normally, I am a fan of indestructible footgear, but you look at a pair of Crocs, and you think 'landfill.' Those are some ugly shoes. I have only ever seen one person wearing Crocs who was able to get away with it; she was a student at SVA, and I think her outfit involved some sort of fifties-style dress with cherries and an apron. The Crocs were red, and they looked properly satirical.

But you would think that any company which lives by fashion would understand that satire has a very short dateline. What on earth did they expect, that after selling 100 million pairs of hideous, non-bio-degradable shoes in seven years, that people wouldn't get sick of them? Already?

Bad Mommies

Gosh, a lot has changed since I was twelve years old.

Bridget Kevane, a professor of Latin American and Latino literature at Montana State University, drove her three kids and two of their friends — two 12-year-old girls, and three younger kids, age 8, 7 and 3 — to a mall near their home in Bozeman. She put the 12-year-olds in charge, and told them not to leave the younger kids alone. She ordered that the 3-year-old remain in her stroller. She told them to call her on their cell phone if they needed her.

And then she drove home for some rest.

About an hour later, she was summoned back to the mall by the police, who charged her with endangering the welfare of her children.

When I was twelve, the lady down the street knocked on our front door and said, "I see you have a girl about baby-sitting age. Can she come over on Thursday?"

We didn't know this family; they'd moved in a couple of months earlier. Their kids were three, four and six. The three-year old was adopted, after having been removed from an abusive home. She was recovering from some sort of accident involving Drano, and its corrosive effects on two-year-old intestinal tracts.

All I remember about my first twelve-year-old babysitting experience was that at least one of the kids climbed a tree, that paying attention to three kids at once was a challenge, and that everything was fine. I became their favorite baby-sitter, because I played. The girl down the street just talked on the phone and ignored them. "She didn't last," the kids informed me.

I got paid $1.25 an hour. By senior year in high school, I topped out at a whopping $2/hr., except for the H---ls, who paid me twenty bucks an evening, even though their toddler went to bed before I got there and never woke up. Mr. H. drank Scotch while driving me home and made passes at me, which I did not notice as such, because married men with children must leave their wives before dating seventeen-year-olds, and I was no home-wrecker.

BTW, the mall-dropping-off incident happened in Bozeman, Montana.

An outsider, or someone used to a bigger, more crowded way of living, might be shocked to know that I left children that young in the care of two twelve-year-olds. But these kids were a pack. They grew up together in a neighborhood full of children. They walk to and from their local schools together, play together, and frequently spend time at each other’s homes.

My brother got paid $10/hr for mowing lawns. When I started applying for Real Jobs at the age of sixteen, four years of babysitting wasn't considered actual work experience.

According to the majority of commenters on Judith Warner's column, leaving five kids at the mall in Bozeman is 'child abuse and abandonment.'

Sigh.

Judith Warner thinks that this incident illustrates pervasive societal hatred of educated women. I think it illustrates a backlash in parenting philosophy since the laissez-faire seventies, plus an unhealthy dose of mass-media-induced paranoia. Plus a bad case of the butt-inskis.

Toward a Sane Conservatism

No, it's not an oxymoron, although the way the right wing has been behaving lately, you'd never know it.

Contrary to the assumptions of a few of my dear readers, I do not wish a 40-year stint in the wilderness on the Republican Party. I just wish that so-called 'conservatives' would develop a greater capacity for cognitive complexity. As poor, beleaguered David Frum can attest, most of the right wing is currently undergoing a fatal Failure to Discriminate among some all-important conceptual nuances. So, a primer:

Limited government is not synonymous with corrupt, incompetent government.

Regulation that cripples industry is not the same as regulation that cripples predators.

Listening is not a weakness.

Government-funded is not the same as government-run.

Rationing can be, and is, imposed by privately-run health insurance corporations.

Corruption and waste may be implemented by the military.

America is not a particularly free country.

And last, but not least: Obama is not a progressive.


If Obama were a progressive, DADT and DOMA would be dead in the water. Single-payer healthcare would be right in the middle of the table. Indefinite detention without charge would be off of it. Marijuana would be decriminalized. Credit card interest rates would be capped at 13%. We'd have seen those photos. Dick Cheney would be in handcuffs. Gas would cost $4 a gallon. Banks would have been nationalized. Agribusiness would have lost all subsidies.

I would go on, but it hurts too much.

So, ye self-identified 'conservatives'; be grateful. Our current President is the closest thing to a true conservative we've got.

Palin's Pathology

I have never been in the business of making political predictions, but here goes: Sarah Palin will run for President. I don't think she'll get very far, but I'm sure that this is her fixed intention.

I'm certain of this because I'm equally certain that Palin is a clinical narcissist. I've known a few, up close and personally, and once you've had your dearest dreams and your greatest projects trampled to smithereens by one of them, you start to pick up on the Red Flags.

...it was easy to learn that there has always been a counter-narrative about Palin, and indeed it has become the dominant one. It is the story of a political novice with an intuitive feel for the temper of her times, a woman who saw her opportunities and coolly seized them. In every job, she surrounded herself with an insular coterie of trusted friends, took disagreements personally, discarded people who were no longer useful, and swiftly dealt vengeance on enemies, real or perceived.

The most important thing to understand about narcissists, beyond the fact that they literally Destroy Everything, is that they are perfectly capable of making monumentally stupid decisions--decisions that a retarded, violent sixteen-year-old boy in a state of hormonal overdrive would reconsider--despite their exceptionally high IQs. That is because their priorities are ordered so as to grab for the maximum ego gratification in every moment, regardless of the long- or even short-term consequences. Thus:

By all accounts, Palin was either unwilling, or simply unable, to prepare. In the run-up to the Couric interview, Palin had become preoccupied with a far more parochial concern: answering a humdrum written questionnaire from her hometown newspaper, the Frontiersman. McCain aides saw it as easy stuff, the usual boilerplate, the work of 20 minutes or so, but Palin worried intently.

Can you actually imagine this? Imagine that you are about to be interviewed on national TV while running for Vice President of the United States, that you know next to nothing about the issues you are likely to be asked about, and instead of studying your a** off, so as not to humiliate yourself, you obsess about a tiny project that one of your aides could easily do FOR you?

But anyone who has ever tried to complete a major project on a deadline with a narcissistic colleague will recognize this scenario. The more urgently you have to focus, prioritize and work as a team, the more the narcissist creates dramas out of trivialities. It reaches the point where more than half of the group's energy is deflected into placating the narcissist's fears, obsessions and demands, when all of that energy is required to get the job done.

If you manage to successfully navigate the crisis, moreover, the narcissist will be sure to take the credit for it; if catastrophe results, they will loudly blame everyone but themselves. It doesn't really matter to them either way, because their primary objective--sucking all the focus onto themselves--has been met.

Narcissists do not care about Facts; they care about getting what they want, Right Now. Ergo the Odd Lies:

I should reiterate that Palin's lies are not the usual political ones. They are stark assertions of fact that are demonstrably and provably untrue...The point is not that this is a grave sin. It isn't. Most of her lies aren't (with a few exceptions). They are just a function of someone who makes stories up all the time, who says things that may momentarily impress but that are inconsistent with past statements and with, you know, reality.

I am a gullible person. It simply doesn't occur to me that people would lie to me. I take most statements utterly at face value, even when they are at flagrant odds with what I know to be true. I will stand there and wonder, "huh. I wonder why she would say that? Maybe I'd better reconsider my entire world view," before it will dawn on me that maybe she just MADE IT UP.

So when it finally sinks in that yes, your business partner DID just tell a blatant lie about you, in front of you, to a person who has the power to make or break your career, you tend to remember the moment. You tend to spend a lot of time analyzing the events that led up to that moment, and the motives of everyone involved. You do so because if it ever happens again, you will have to kill yourself.

And when you finally conclude that your partner's motives were nothing more than to 'momentarily impress,' you are impressed, all right.

...no political principle or personal relationship is more sacred than her own ambition. To be sure, Palin is “conservative,” whatever that means, but she can be all over the lot in the articulation of her platform.

Most narcissists are incapable of listening, in any but the most superficial way. Other people's concerns don't really exist for them, except as possible levers with which to manipulate. They will appear to listen; they will earnestly tell you what you want to hear, then do exactly what they please, over and over and over again. And they will be genuinely surprised and betrayed when you get upset about it.

I read a lot of punditry by gullible people like myself--people who spend their energy worrying about Palin's political philosophy, her religious beliefs, her positions on abortion, taxes, big government and foreign policy, as though these were the most important things about her. I see people seriously speculating as to why she'd shoot her career in the foot by resigning her governorship if she really intends to run for President; I see them making prescriptions of what she ought to be doing and learning to prepare herself for the job. And I think these people are grossly overthinking it.

Because the answer is staring them in the face. Just being the Governor of Alaska is tedious and boring when, in your fantasy, you see yourself being addressed as Madame President, holding court to adoring foreign leaders, and orating in front of cheering crowds. That's it. That's all. That is the sum total of thought or motivation that has gone into Sarah Palin's decisions since she was cynically inflicted on the national scene in a moment of desperation.

It's 3 AM. Do you know what your money is doing?

I have to admit, when I saw the headline, "Madoff Takes Responsibility," I snorted. Dude, it's too late. The only way that Madoff could potentially redeem his debt to society would be to donate his brain to science, in the hope that we can isolate the Sociopathy Factor, and eliminate his kind from future generations. Lame journalism reached a new nadir as the writers solemnly decribed the millions of dollars worth of assets that are being liquidated in order to repay billions of dollars in judgment. His wife only gets to keep her $2 mil in cash, poor thing.

Neither am I particularly a fan of the legions of articles and comments that blame Madoff's victims for being victims. These people, some of them, are having a hard enough time without being excoriated for projected character flaws by others who, at bottom, are just afraid it might happen to them.

But then, I have to wonder--what did these people think their money was up to?

Back when I was an eager, idealistic adolescent, I realized that as a member of a First World nation, the biggest effect my existence has on this planet, for good or ill, is what I do with my money. I can recycle, compost, agitate against plastic bags and for 'green' energy every waking moment of my life; I can work in a 'healing' profession, I can be kind to strangers, children and homeless people. But when global economic conditions are such that a $25 micro-loan can make the difference between starvation and prosperity for an entire Third World family, I have to accept that my point of maximum global leverage is financial, even if I'm at the extreme low end of the income curve in my social circle.

That means that when I get an IRA rollover when I leave my civil service job, or a windfall from a relative, I need to be careful what I do with it. Not only because I ought to be planning for 'retirement' (as if--I'll be painting, blogging and giving meddling health advice until I drop), but because all of my vaunted values are mocked if my money is off pillaging rain forests and propping up brutal regimes while I sleep.

Like many people, I am not consumingly fascinated with the ins and outs of finance, trading or big business. I'm perfectly happy to park my money with a dependable expert and check on it every now and then. But it seems only common sense to park it with some people who are going to do a rainforest and brutal-regime filtering process before they use it. That is why, for the last ten years, my miniscule IRA has been invested with Sentinel Investments, formerly Citizen's Funds, a sustainable investment firm that looks at the real-world consequences of its actions, not just the bottom line.

(N.B.: Sentinel Investments is not paying me a dime for writing this post; in fact, they don't even know I'm writing it.)

I haven't suffered financially more than anyone else for doing this. The paper value of my IRA dropped by about half when the stock market did, but during the years when the market was doing well, it did better. The fact is, not only is myopic greed a lousy principle on which to run a society, it's not even a good investment strategy. You might make a buttload of money smuggling guns to thugs, but you still run the risk that a rival thug might torpedo both your profit margin and your boat captain.

So in the end, I have to assign at least some responsibility to Madoff's bilkees. Not for not understanding investment banking; for trying to get a lot of money without ever thinking about what money is for. Money is not a moral force, in and of itself; it is merely a tool for doing things. And it behooves those of us who have it to take responsibility for what those things are.

Black Art

Received in the mail today, in an imposingly funereal envelope:

GET YOUR EXCLUSIVE BLACK CARD NOW.

For those who demand only the best of what life has to offer, the exclusive Visa Black Card is for you. The Black Card is not just another piece of plastic. Made with carbon, it is the ultimate buying tool.

The Black Card is not for everyone. In fact, it is limited to only 1% of U.S. residents to ensure the highest caliber of personal service is provided to every cardmember.

• Limited Membership

• 24 Hour Concierge Service

• Exclusive Rewards Program

• Luxury Gifts

• Patent Pending Carbon Card

•Annual Fee $495

Say, wouldn't it be fun to actually get one of these, use it to go on a whirlwind tour of the major continents, and then declare bankruptcy? I could easily write up an Artist Statement about the insidious destructiveness of capitalism, the cultural meme of excess, and the arrogant disconnectedness of the First World. I could ironically call attention to global warming by contributing directly to the problem, flying around the planet on a carbon card.

I would, of course, extensively document my travels and the ensuing bankruptcy (using cutting-edge photographic, video and computer equipment, which I will also charge to my Black Card account), and then someone like Larry Gagosian, Mary Boone or Jeffrey Deitch will have plenty of performance artifacts to sell to the kinds of people who would get this card for real. If they do their job well enough I'll even be able to resuscitate my credit rating, so that I can do it again and again, finally achieving a successful art career.

How to Sell Your Art In Manhattan for Free

Rumor has it that certain Chelsea galleries are renting out space by the hour, in a sort of Recession Special that is allegedly going to help artists make ends meet in these desperate times. They must suppose that there are still a few thousand artists in the city who have not figured out that the only people who come look at, and occasionally buy, your art when you are not represented by a Big Important Dealer are your friends, and you can invite your friends to your studio for free.

But what if your studio happens to be in a Scary Neighborhood, as so many studios are, and your friends with disposable incomes refuse to visit you there? It so happens that there are other options than renting out six feet of blank wall in a failing gallery on a weekend when all the collectors are in the Hamptons. So here is some practical advice, from an artist who has Actually Been There.

On the sidewalk at West Broadway between Prince and Spring, Saturdays and Sundays year-round, that is. You might also try Fifth Avenue near the Met, or Union Square, but I don't personally know the scene, so don't blame me if you get roughed up by the regulars.

1) Stake your space before 8:30 AM.
You will need a folding table or a display rack to do this. Set it up on a section of sidewalk between the foot-traffic zone and the curb. Do not set up directly in front of the doors of any retail establishment; they will call the police and have you removed if you do. Do not leave any objects of value, such as art, on the rack or table while you are off napping in the car or sitting in the café.

2) Do not expect any foot traffic before 11 AM.
Tourists and other people with disposable income sleep late on weekends, rather like you used to do, when you had a day job and a dealer.

3) Shiny, shiny, shiny.
Artworks that catch the eye of tourists and fashionistas need to be bold, colorful, and executed in a recognizable (read: retro) style. Picasso knock-off prints do very well, as do photographs of NYC landmarks. Small paintings of dogs and flowers are also great sellers, as long as you put in enough consecutive weekends to build up a following.

4) Simplicity of display is essential.
Remember, you are competing with the chaos of a Manhattan retail district sidewalk, and all that that implies. Don't try anything subtle or fussy. Use a simple black backdrop and a vertical display format; sandwich boards are the most stable. Bring folding chairs, suitable attire for the weather, a friend and a sense of humor. Make sure that everything is firmly anchored, especially on windy days; find or bring a few large rocks to chain your table to.

5) Be consistent and professional.
Don't share a display rack with an artist whose style is utterly unlike yours. Don't show art from every phase of your creative development. Don't show anything on unstretched canvas, unless you're just there to drink beer on the sidewalk with the other losers.

6) Package yourself.
Have business cards with your website and your etsy.com store available. Keep works on paper in plastic sleeves. If you can beg, borrow or steal a credit card machine, do so; people spend twice as much with half the consideration if they can charge it. Come to think, you may be able to use PayPal from your cell phone; do the research.

7) Cover your behind.
Go to the irs.gov website and register for an EIN. It should come in the mail within a couple of weeks; keep it to show to the cops if they pester you with talk of business licenses. Be nice to the other artists on the street, even the Chinese guys selling kitschy framed photos mass-produced in China, and stay out of political and territorial wars as much as possible. Remember: the fiercest battles are always waged over the smallest stakes. A few square feet of sidewalk is not worth a night in jail.

8) Do not expect to be discovered. Especially, do not expect to sell your work for anything like Art World prices.
Works on paper move for between ten and forty dollars; paintings for between fifty and a hundred and thirty. Feel free to price them higher, but be aware that you will be sitting there for a long, long, long, long time.

9) Tell your friends.
You may think you're going to display your brilliance for a world of ignorant strangers and bring them to their knees, but round about three o'clock you're going to be very glad to see a familiar face, even if it's only your brother-in-law the IT guy. Hey, don't IT guys make pretty good money? Do his walls need something on them?

10) Appreciate your day job, if you've got one.
Isn't it great to be getting a paycheck for sitting behind a retail counter in a temperature-controlled environment, or for washing dishes, or scrubbing toilets, or painting houses, or laying tile? Isn't being an artist kind of overrated?

Revenge of the Bourgeoisie

Q: "Do you paint portraits or landscapes?"

A: Only when I'm fundraising.


Face it: most people have no interest at all in contemporary art. I cannot count the number of times I have been asked this question when introduced as an 'artist.' It used to mean misery for all of us, as I embarked upon a condensed, tortuous and unappreciated précis of twentieth century art history, until I finally learned to answer with, "I paint with oil on linen. They're big. Here's my website if you're interested."

Moreover, as a painter who attempts to expand the boundaries of self with work that does not belong to a recognizable genre, I endure a significant amount of contempt and dismissal within the contemporary art world itself. Spokespersons from Big-Ass Art Institutions would never admit it, but there is a not-so-subtle bias against painters when it comes to awarding grants, residencies, solo exhibitions and places in the Whitney Biennial; the unspoken but loudly implied subtext is, "God, another painting. That's so boring, so bourgeois, so Been Done Already, so over."

Of course, painting still gets shown; the problem is that it is often shown as a conceptual conceit, as an interestingly retroactive quirk, amongst the sea of progressively quirky Conceptual Installations. The bigger problem is that such painting is often really bad painting, shown for political and financial reasons, not for any integral qualities of form or execution. The plain fact is that the vast majority of contemporary art impresarios have no earthly idea what a good painting looks like, and couldn't care less.

But now that the market is crashing, galleries are closing left and right, and funding for non-profit institutions is drying up, these institutions are perfectly happy to try to re-capitalize on the backs of the lowly portrait painter:

Don't get me wrong, I love Smack Mellon as much as the next guy, but isn't it a little ironic for an organization that cleaves toward site specific installations, and has little interest in contemporary painting, to rely on painters for fundraising? Please, tell me I'm wrong.

I used to assume, naïvely, that the contemporary art world was a hierarchy like any other--a climbable meritocracy. You'd start out as a student, learning technique and getting to know your peers; you'd exhibit in group shows, apply for grants and residencies, and as your work got stronger you'd win some of them. Art dealers and curators, always on the lookout for new talent, would discover your work in registries, open studios and group shows. They'd remember it from panels. Eventually, if you did good work and paid your dues, you'd build yourself a modest career--not necessarily Fame, but regular shows, a dealer, an income.

Ha.

The truth is a lot darker. The real forces which determine the shape of the Art World hierarchy are simple: "I'm More Special Than You" and "Who's Got the Money." It is constructed of creative cul-de-sacs, mediocre minds, territorial spite and disingenuous protestations of 'fairness and equality.' This is why painting is despised, but never absent.

Because people like paintings. Ordinary, dull people go to look at them in galleries, and hang them in their homes. They get inordinately excited about the idea of having their portrait painted. They like beauty, and think that they have some idea of what it is.

This is well-nigh unendurable for people whose entire reason for being is to be Different and Superior. These people must seek out and produce the arcane, the cryptic and the self-righteous; they must speak and write in polysyllabic gibberish; they must, above all, look with contempt upon the bourgeoisie. At the same time, they must convince a handful of staggeringly wealthy people that they share this superiority of being and perception, in order that they may fund their lifestyles.

It wouldn't do for these patrons to spend billions on objects that a construction worker or a soccer mom might look upon freely, appreciate and enjoy; thus, the piles of inaesthetic goop, fortified by hermetic rhetoric and a total absence of standards. For if once you admit to the existence of Quality, what's to prevent hordes of outsiders from achieving it, and thus devaluing your investment in the Few?

So now that the sustaining patrons are much less wealthy, look for painting to come back into style. Or at least, look for affordable art auctions containing art that you, the Common Person, might actually like.

Cash and Platitudes

So I'm now on Twitter. I resisted for almost as long as I resisted getting a cell phone, but the Iranian Twitter Revolution and my wellness networking group convinced me. The wellness networking gals said, "It helps your business; you can tweet at your clients when you're having a special, or have a free booking," and that made some kind of sense. Before that it just seemed like extreme narcissism.

About ten minutes after I signed up for my account, I had four followers. Then seven, then fifteen. I was thrilled. Finally, the lurkers were coming out of hiding! People actually DO read my blog! And now I get to find out who they are!

Then I started taking a closer look at profiles. Turns out about half of them were people doing ''affiliate Internet marketing," which is basically social-networking spam, and the others were spewing bulk platitudes "in order to raise the consciousness of the world." Although my loathing for purveyors of platitudes is well known, I signed up to follow a few of them anyway. Sometimes a timely platitude is all right, provided it's coming from a neutral source in a timely manner.

Because like so many others at the moment, we are having serious financial Issues. We have a new baby, a $10,000 deductible, and have been living off credit since January. Both of us are working part-time jobs at the New York Minimum Wage, for lack of anything else. Both of us wake up in the middle of the night and are unable to get back to sleep for worrying, despite new-baby exhaustion.

So the platitude that rather caught my eye was from Jim Kitzmiller: 'Suffering is wanting what you can't have or resisting what you must have. Love what is.'

That, at that moment, helped.

What helped a little less was wasting time on affiliate marketing websites that promised 'Cash for free! Just an hour a day set-up time, and you can make thousands!'

These things are always tempting to look into, even if you Know Better. And maybe they do sort of work, sometimes, for some people.

But I must accept that I'm not one of those people. Because every time I contemplate doing something like that, I come smack up against my True Nature, which is that I cannot, cannot, cannot put energy into creating a system that generates cash without creating value.

Affiliate marketing is about using people, in the most direct and cynical way. You get a Twitter account, 'follow' several thousand people, get them to 'follow' you back, and Tweet about sites which pay you for advertising them. Yuck. If I'm going to 'follow' anybody, it's because I actually like them, and actually want to pay attention to their lives. I can't do that for thousands of people.

So now is the time to econclude with some sort of platitude, about Value, and Alignment, and What Really Matters. But I can't really think of one, and anyway they're coming at me in tweets at about two or three an hour.

WTF? department

From a recent 'Art&Education' press release:

One intuition motivating this series of talks has been the feeling that there is something deeply problematic about an approach that narrows the possibilities of engaging with art down to the procedures of decoding and encoding its inscription onto the symbolic order. That is: the idea that the primary task of art, as a strategical operation, was to provide conceptual legitimations (to satisfy or lay down the law, among other things) by constructing references that situate the work within an established economy of meaning. No matter how critical this approach may initially have intended to be, it has effectively proven to be coextensive with—and an involuntary ideological support of—an attitude towards art production that is indeed merely strategical and solely about plotting ways of inscribing a practice into the symbolic order, be it through the suicidal heroic mode of bringing the game of art to its logical conclusion by explicating its rules (old-school modernist conceptual) or through the somewhat more versatile mode of implicating a work within its given economies of referentiality as rarified secrets.

Translation: Maybe artists shouldn't be so freakin' obscure. Because I don't think anyone is paying attention anymore.

Abortion: The Non-Debate

In the immortal words of some pathetic character in a Muriel Spark novel, 'It is with great trepidation that I take up my pen,' to make a few observations on the unending, unresolvable question of you-know-what. Ordinarily I don't get involved. My private opinion on abortion is that it sucks, and that banning it is not the way to end it. Your mileage may vary; I certainly will not try to alter anyone else's opinion.

No, I merely have a couple of observations, speaking as a woman who has now traversed two pregnancies. The second resulted in the most objectively wonderful baby ever conceived in all of time :-). The first miscarried.

The first time I was pregnant, I felt like a glass bubble full of magic. I tiptoed around in a state of exaltation. I made sententious speeches to long-suffering friends, about how my attitude toward abortion, gender, politics and life in general was transformed; how I could never, ever conceive of having one, even though I had been pro-choice for twenty years previously.

Then I came down with a raging fever and strep infection. I was terrified, particularly as a dear friend had recently lost a pregnancy under similar circumstances; I hastened to a doctor, got a blood test and some antibiotics, and miscarried eighteen hours later. The doctor later informed me that my hormone levels indicated that the pregnancy had probably terminated before I'd come down with the strep.

Whatever. I didn't want to talk about it, mainly because if I didn't talk about it, I was okay. It was only when someone said something like "I'm so sorry" that I had an emotional breakdown. It is worth mentioning, however, that exactly one regular reader of right-wing extremist web fodder bothered to say, "I'm so sorry." The rest either ignored the issue entirely or said actively cruel things.

But whenever I did tell people, I discovered that first trimester miscarriages are incredibly common. At least sixty percent of the women I confided in replied with, "Yes, I had one too." It almost came to seem that a miscarriage was a prerequisite for a healthy pregnancy. People just don't talk about it.

So when anti-abortion activists count every first trimester abortion as 'one murdered baby,' this is, on the most fundamental level, not true. A pregnancy in the first trimester is a potential baby, whether abortion is legal or not. Nature is not moral; it is profligate, extravagant and wasteful. It flings the seeds of life around with wild abandon, letting them blossom or rot where they fall, without a focused plan. Human intention is not the master of all.

When I got pregnant again, I didn't tell anyone for quite awhile. My attitude was, "okay, we'll see." When I had my first ultrasound and they said, "There's your baby," I said, "Really? Are you sure? Is it alive?" I got attached gradually, fearful of another betrayal.

But this one was, of course, wildly successful. Which brings me to my second observation; that bringing a baby to term is, in the most literal sense, labor. It is really really hard. I didn't expect to get so stupid; I lost nearly all creativity, mental acuity and physical power while I was pregnant. I didn't make art, I scarcely wrote, I got breathless going upstairs. By my eighth month I was unable to give a massage without almost passing out. Pregnancy was comparable to building a house with my bare hands, in terms of the drain on my mental and physical resources.

It would behoove anti-abortion activists, then, to recognize this fact if they are truly interested in ending abortion for good and all and forever. Expecting a woman to undertake this task without physical, financial or emotional support for the duration is absurd. Too many (mostly male) persons seem to believe that babies are things which just happen if you don't interfere. The reality is a bit more complicated than that.

Birth Story (repost)

'Behind every baby is an unbelievable story.' This post will be featured in Baby Week, a Discovery Health series, to air Sunday-Friday, June 14-19 at 8P e/p on Discovery Health. Episode premieres are:

Twins By Surprise Sunday, Sunday, June 14, 8P e/p
Little Parents, Big Pregnancy Monday, June 15, 8P e/p
Births Beyond Belief Tuesday, June 16, 8P e/p
Obese & Pregnant Wednesday, June 17, 8P e/p

***
As I write this, my beautiful daughter Olivia Grace is snuggled against my chest, sound asleep in her baby sling; hopefully she will remain that way long enough for me to finish this post. She was born on March 14, 2009, at 3:58 PM, weighing in at nearly 10 pounds. We are both as healthy and happy as we can be.

Warning: pregnant women and squeamish persons, this is all you need to know. Please stop reading now.

Before Olivia was born, I did everything in my power to prepare for a healthy, natural childbirth. I chose Clementine Midwifery as my care provider, did regular prenatal yoga at Park Slope Yoga Center, hired my wonderful yoga teacher Sasha as my doula, and attended childbirth classes with Jada Shapiro at Birth Day Presence. I cannot recommend all of these people highly enough. I got every bit of care and medical attention that I required, plus an enormous amount of practical information and emotional support. I am forever grateful that I ditched the insurance plan that placed me with a male OB/GYN from the Ukraine who was only in the office once a week, and who made me wait in the waiting room for two hours to tell me I was fine.

The pregnancy went mostly very well. As a bodyworker, I see a lot of pregnant women, and I know just how uncomfortable pregnancy can get; I was grateful not to have agonizing lower back pains, excessive nausea, insomnia, gestational diabetes, or hideous acne. I gained the minimum healthy amount of weight, got breathless going upstairs, and took a lot of naps. Childbirth classes were fun, and although I didn't write off the possibility of getting an epidural, I was game to try it without the drugs.

The only thing I wasn't prepared for was not to go into labor at all.

A week past my due date, I started trying folk remedies to bring it on. I got an acupuncture treatment from Laura at Providence Day Spa. I went for walks, and bounced interminably on my yoga ball. I ate spicy food and got a pedicure. Joe and I tried those other things that are supposed to induce labor, wink wink. The baby didn't budge.

The problem was that she was turned around--'occipital posterior presentation'--and wasn't dropping down. As time went by, she got bigger and bigger, to the point where she wasn't able to drop. My body being wise, it simply refused to push a rock against a hard place, and waited for someone to come and do something about it.

Two weeks past my due date, I was induced. I labored for 9 hours without drugs, then broke down and asked for the epidural. Pain is one thing; unending pain without purpose is quite another, and at that point I could sense that the contractions weren't accomplishing anything.

It took 45 minutes to install the epidural catheter, which wasn't fun. They kept stabbing me in the spine, asking "do you feel that?", taking it out and trying again. The last time they hit a nerve which led down my right leg, which was REALLY interesting, but after some twiddling it worked well enough. I was able to get the first sleep I'd had in more than 24 hours.

Eight hours later, after the maximum dose of pitocin had failed to bring the baby any closer to emerging, I agreed to a c-section. They shipped me to the OR, strapped me into the Jesus Christ position and extracted my baby. As soon as we were introduced she recognized my voice and Joe's voice; her eyes moved toward us and she stopped crying. I asked her if the name 'Olivia Grace' was okay with her, and she consented.

Then the epidural catheter fell out.

I know the catheter fell out because when the anaesthesiologist came in two days later to remove it, it wasn't in. I know that it fell out then because I started feeling the c-section in ways they hadn't warned me about. "Ow," I said, politely. "Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow. That's very violent."

They whisked Olivia away and started feeding me drugs, seemingly at random. "Is this better?" they asked.

"Well, maybe a little. Ow." They kept apologizing for putting little pinpricks in my shoulder, which I found ironic and amusing. The anaesthesiologist said, "we usually don't use this one, because it causes hallucinations, but it works as a last resort. Here come the sixties!"

Then the world exploded.

As those who are close to me know, it is my belief that the physical world is an illusion, a projection of the mind, and that reality is complete spiritual unity. This ceased to be a theoretical proposition and became my direct experience. "I am foam," I declared.

I expanded in all directions, becoming one with the Universal Mind, at the same time as a small part of me recalled that there were these things that thought of themselves as people, who were born and got old and got married and died, and wasn't that ridiculous. They sent each other silly coded messages on something called "the Internet" when they could communicate totally and directly at any moment. This might have been a fun game, except that along the way, a lot of suffering happens.

Suffering was a particularly pertinent issue to me, because they started stuffing my uterus back into my abdominal cavity, which was startlingly painful, given that it was only going back where it belonged. "Burrrrrrrrrrrrrnnnnnnnnn," I remarked. "Flame. I am flame. Burrrrrrrrnnnnnnnnn. Why did we invent consciousness? This is a STUPID experiment. We need to stop it RIGHT NOW."

The OB/GYN who performed the surgery told me later, "You were one of the colorful ones." I moved on to shouting Course in Miracles lessons at the top of my voice, and told Joe (who was, of course, part of my own mind, as was the midwife, the anaesthesiologist, and the rest of humanity) "You are the ONLY person I would do this for. Fuck those Christians." The six parts of my mind which were in the operating room at the time all chuckled.

All in all, if every woman who gave birth or had a c-section went through this, there would soon be no more people.

After an indeterminate period of time, my individual identity began to reconstitute itself, in a dim ugly room. One part of me coalesced into a midwife, another into my mom. The midwife appeared to understand when I confided that I loved her, that we were one, but my mom persisted in using this silly 'telephone' thing to 'call other people.' She also kept asking me if I wanted her to leave, and informing me that I'd forget she'd been there, which was just dumb, and I told her so.

Really I was quite disturbed, given that in the act of bringing a child into 'the world,' I had simultaneously gained proof that both 'the world' and 'children' didn't actually exist. Although I was unhappy that Olivia had been spirited away into the NICU because her glucose was crashing, I recognized that it was probably a good thing for me to get used to being me again before taking responsibility for her.

At 9 PM they finally got me installed in a postpartum room and brought her to me for a few minutes. They wouldn't let me keep her; they said it was 'a privilege' that I got to see her at all, which was a little rich. I put up a fight but was overpowered, and they took her away again. I was attached by an IV to a box which beeped all night, keeping me awake, and caused my feet to swell up to the size of small watermelons.

Later, of course, everything was fine. Intense, agonizing pain aside, the week of Olivia's birth was one of the happiest of my life. Midwives and doula seemed to expect me to be sad that 'things hadn't gone as planned,' but as far as I am concerned, things are ducky. If this were 1850, I'd be dead, instead of having a gorgeous, healthy 10 lb. baby and a small surgical scar; why, then, would I waste a second on natural childbirth regrets, let alone sue the hospital for gross negligence in the matter of the catheter?

Unless, of course, they decide to get ugly about the bill.