lay-z-boy

there are still three hours left in the day to achieve something, but i doubt much will happen...
On the good side, my procrastination and coffee drinking left me in the path of the delightful andrea eckersley and the ever charming [except when particularly surly] dell stewart.

I have been reading, in a sporadic fashion, Simone de Beauvoir's and memoirs of a dutiful daughter George Perec's Life; a user's manual. There's nothing like books by clever french people to make you feel inadequate; simone de beauvoir is always studying and achieving, it is a similar feeling i get when reading A. S. Byatt's books; full of people that read poetry understanding all the classical allusions and get an intense visceral pleasure from it, rather than a sense of their own dull-wittedness.

I feel somewhat the same about art; i really should be having more interesting ideas, and with the ideas that i have there should be a more rigorous interrogation and research process, i never feel like i know anything. When i think about grant proposals, i have no idea of anything that i could put forward for them. I wonder how those other people got so clever.

rainbow

*boring alert*
today i went to the land of obcure perspex colours: i found lavendar, terracotta, dark chocolate brown, pink, purple and sea blue. other acrylic merchants have scoffed at my chances of finding such stupid colours, but i knew better...

that's all. go about your business now.

commercials

I went to the opening of the melbourne stencil art festival today.

They charged $10 entry {with free drink}{but the drink was a sponsored fizzy vodka thing}

$10 to look at stencil art when i walk past it for free all the time. Generally i only pay to look at art by very famous and often also dead artists. If Emma was really my friend she would have texted me when she was stung, rather than letting me wander into the same trap...

the art itself was distinguished by its general mediocrity and by the odd practice of stencilling on canvas or board. The big names* of Melbourne stencil art were conspicuously absent.

*i say big but i think maybe 48pt type rather than two foot high illuminated letters

heavy matching

today I saw a man in a grey pinstripe suit and grey pinstripe socks; same shade of grey, same half-inch chalkstripe. very impressive.

but odd.

top of the world

awareness arrived particularly late today, and once I dragged myself out into the world it was filled with scottish drizzle and the skyscrapers were living up to their names, disappearing into the clouds; like this but the other way round.

first loser.

I went bowling yesterday. I came second.

I got a text from Ronan that read;
would i be right in thinking you detest bowling? we are going 2 night. 8pm $7.

It's not that I hate bowling;
I think that the last time I went bowling was in 1989 at the Albury bowling lanes. It was for Danny Ford's 15th birthday.

Danny was a boy with no friends, so was I. Danny really wanted to be my friend but I, perhaps somewhat ungraciously; given my friendlessness, did not want to be his. In high-school there is the taint of social death that outcasts have, some group together for support, for others that just seems like a way to compound their misery; i saw Danny as the bag of rocks that would pull me down into the depths of irretrievable pariah-status.

I would see him riding his bike down the long straight road that led out from town towards my place and my heart would fill with dread at the uncomfortable hours to follow, Danny eager to be friends, me aloof and awkward. Sometimes I would visit him and we would play on his commodore 64 or play pool in the shed and I would curse myself for my cowardice and soft-heartedness; I didn't want to be cruel [this may come as a surprise to some of you] and so cruelly dragged this painful friendship on.

Eventually after one particularly awkward and painful afternoon when I had taken to virtually ignoring Danny in the hope that he would go away, Ronan went up to him and said, "Simon really doesn't like you, you know..." and then told him about how I would talk about him when he rang and my excuses for not visiting him.

Danny rode home crying and never visited again.

I felt guilty and relieved that I didn't have to say those things, and guilty that I let it get to the point where they needed to be said.

crime of fashion

i tried on a white leather jacket yesterday.

and quite liked it

perhaps enough to buy.

oh dear.

the biggest loser

After having literally gorged itself on junk during my attempt at the art land speed record [3 shows in 2months], my studio has been reduced again to bare bones, the underlying structures of desk and work bench [and floor] are finally visible once more. i can't wait to make more mess. So dell ; good time to visit and talk dastardly plans..

now I'm feeling zombified...

I was reading about modavigil, the drug that allows you to stay awake and alert for up to 48hrs.. I thought "that sounds like just what i need,... or perhaps not..." maybe it's not necessary for every exhibition I have to involve me staying up all night before the show. I wonder whether the results would be better or worse without that intense pressure and suffering. Some of the best things i have made have been done when there was no time for mistakes, but then some of it has been pretty crap.

of course there are days when the hours until sleep stretch out wide, empty and boring and i can't wait to lie down and close my eyes. endless awareness seems like a curse.

titan buff

titan buff invite
Originally uploaded by little nemo in slumberland.

go to this