NOBLE WARRIOR

I was very impressed to learn that former Secretary of State Colin Powell came out over the weekend and endorsed Barak Obama in his run for President. I have always been impressed by that man. I heard the tapes of his moment on Meet The Press on Sunday where he made his endorsement, and boy was I impressed again. His take down of the subversive Republican Party strategy of calling out Obama as secretly being a Muslim was amazing. He stood up for Obama, who happens to be a Christian, and then went onto to say (and I paraphrase here),

'And what's wrong with anyone being a Muslim anyway?' 'What, a kid who is a Muslim American can't be allowed to dream of one day being President of the United States just 'cause they're a Muslim?' 

Powell took to task this point and other pointed and divisive strategies of his own party and slammed them for taking down American values by trying to paint America as a monolithic country of conservative white values. He said so many things that I have said; but who cares if I feel this way....I am just some liberal New York Jew. But to hear this from Powell was so damn meaningful. Powell is the man.

I have always been impressed by Powell. I admit I have let him slide for his bullshitting the UN about the weapons of mass destruction before the war in Iraq, mostly because I felt he was put up to it and also because he left the Administration afterwards in self imposed exile.

But I am glad that he is back and I am glad to hear his views.

DK

MINOR CELEBRITY

....One nice thing about being an artist is that you can be world famous and have your work in museums and the most important collections in the world, and your next door neighbor still has no fucking clue what you do for a living. Which is a good thing when you are taking the trash out in your underwear and you happen to run into them. 

One bad thing about being an artist is that you can be totally anonymous, even when you are out in the middle of the Art World because the Art World is actually a large and rambling place with many hallways and Cul-de-Sacs that have nothing to do with each other. Last night I went out to an opening. I wanted to see some paintings by a guy I knew. I went to the opening, but I really didn't know a sole and the the longer I spent there not talking to anyone, the more self-conscious  I felt that I was a weirdo actually looking at the art work on the walls.

Tonight was totally more like it. I remembered that this guy I know was opening a new gallery and I ran out of the house to see his first show, as this might actually be the last time I get to see someone act ambitiously and over-reach at least until after the Great Depression.

Anyway, the gallery is on a block with lots of other galleries who also happen to be having openings, and I couldn't even make it into any of the galleries without running into familiar faces and warm conversations. I felt like a minor celebrity as I waved hello to critics and gallery owners and I hardly had a chance to look at the art work. This is the way it is supposed to be. I've lived in this town for all my life and have been hanging around parties and openings in this neighborhood for almost twenty years. I think it is good when I can loose myself in these kind of social gatherings and feel like I have a lot of friends. God knows it can be fleeting.

UNTITLED (Self-Help)

OUTSIDE LOOKING IN

My wife has this cousin. He wanted to write a novel. He didn't really care all that much about being a writer, he just wanted to write a novel. So everyday he would make himself write between 500-1000 words and before he knew it, he had written this whole book. It was this cold-war-era-spy-thriller, and it wasn't to bad.  I told him it was at least as good as half the shit out there. I asked him if he planned on trying to get an agent or if there was somebody he was going to approach to get it published. He said that he was really happy that me and a few other people had read it, and that he had accomplished everything that he had set out to do. Now he wanted to get back to his wife and his family and back to his job at the bank; there were a bunch of things that he had let slide over the year or so that it took to write the book.  He told me that apparently my own life as an artist had had a profound effect on him as he had watched me and my career as an artist. He was inspired by this and this is what got him interested in writing his novel in the first place. He was happy that I read it and thrilled that I liked it and now he was totally ready to move on. Well, I was very satisfied and moved to hear that I had such an effect on him and his life. My only problem is that I am still looking for something so satisfying and constructive to take away from my own fucking existence.

PHILADELPHIA STORY

My Friends. Many of you may have noticed that I have not made a new entry onto my blog in quite some time. I had, in fact, suspended all blogging activities over the past few days in an effort to turn all of my attention to the current global financial crisis that has affected so many of us.

And now that the ship seems to have been righted, and the Dow has only lost like a hundred points today, I feel confident that I can return to my duties here. 

In truth, I was in Philadelphia. With renewed confidence in the economy we decided t to go away. My kid had a long weekend off from school, and we decided to take a little overnight-day-trip. There were so many interesting  things to do there, and with renewed confidence in the shaky economy, we decided to roll the dice and have a little get-away. One of the first things that we did was to go to the Liberty Bell. We had to wait on a line to get in and the anticipation was ripe. My son asked those historically relevant burning questions like, "Why do we have to wait on line to see a stupid bell!" and "What's the big deal about a broken bell?!" and Can we go now....Where's the hotel... 

While waiting on line, I had my  own thoughts. I was thinking about my son's questions about "what's the big deal about a broken bell..." I started to think about the guy who made the bell and how lucky he must have felt when he found out that his defective piece of shit product had turned into a national treasure. I was thinking about him sitting there, shaking in his boots waiting to be sued by the Constitutional Congress for his piece of shit bell, only to be showered with praise when someone figured out that the broken bell was a good thing. A symbol of FREEDOM.

I started to laugh at the inside joke of all of this and how America always seems to have been a country of positive thinkers who where able to turn lemons into lemonade. Americans always want to see the cup as half full. And then, that is when  I started to worry. I started to worry that  the stock market jitters were over. And that the  price of gas was going down, to give all Americans a certain strident step that we've been missing. I started to think that maybe things are going to start getting a little bit better and that people were going to start adopting that stupid "If-it-works-don't-fix-it" attitude that Americans are so good at adopting.

I hate to say it but I started to think that I hope things get a little bit more fucked up around here for just a couple more weeks, or we are going to end up electing McSame over here.

DK

Why art is great.

I went with my wife to this dance recital tonight. We had both had terrible days, neither of us wanted to go. This was a fund raiser for this professional dance company. The Doug Varone company, and it was in a theater on Broadway.

My wife's Pilate's  teacher is one of the dancers and she really wanted to support her.

Anyway, we got a baby sitter and went out for dinner and the whole time all we can both do is get ourselves more and more depressed about how much money I just lost in the stock market this week. How the wheels are coming off right from under us. We ate in Hell's Kitchen in the cheapest place possible, and my wife still offered to not eat if it would help us to make our next mortgage payment. I started to go on a rant about Darwinist Economics and how that the people we'd bought stock in would all survive and get stronger. It was wishful thinking I know.

Anyway, we go to this dance which we'd already bought tickets for, and we sit in this old, beautiful theater and the lights go down and the music starts and the dancers start to dance, and my whole mood started to get so much better. I really felt great and I wanted jump up and start dancing too. My mind was drifting away and I started to feel so overwhelmed with happiness, I started to think that all of the men and women on stage there all looked so tremendously happy too.  I started to think to myself..."How come I never became a dancer?" How come I never pursued a career like that. I looked at all these gorgeous girls and thought that they'd be my co-workers. I would get to know everyone. And the guys, they all seemed like nice guys. Sort of different from me physically. Kind of like stretched out versions of me, but with hair on their heads and not all over the back and shoulders. Then I began to realize that no one wanted to see me dance. And maybe that is why no one ever encouraged me to dance either. It was as if some sort of Darwinian experiment had taken place on me without me even noticing. No one had encouraged me to dance so I eventually faded into the T-ball league and then onto smoking pot in High School. 

I started to wonder how I had gotten to this place in my head, all the way from the economy, and I started to remember what it was that I love about art. Somehow all of that panic about money that I had had just a few moments ago had quickly dissipated into thoughts of me jumping around on a stage dressed in little more than tights.

ON BEING A MID CAREER ARTIST

ON BEING A MID CAREER ARTIST. I ran into this old friend of mine the other day. We used to be like best friends but over the years we had pretty much stopped talking to each other all together. But there we were some twenty years later, two old kooks standing on the curb talking about the recent real estate boom, the price of a gallon of gas, and where we were going to move when we finally had had enough of the old neighborhood. The two of us completely oblivious to the young good-looking hipsters who were passing us by on the sidewalk, no doubt wondering how these old farts had the time of day to just be standing there and talking so long. They couldn't possibly know that we were sitting on the last affordable studios in the neighborhood and that they were at this minute packed to the rafters with fully ripened works of art. Anyway, my friend was telling me that he had finally come to terms with himself, that he was not going to be a big star in this game. But he was completely at ease with this knowledge and that now, finally, after all these years he felt free and liberated and excited about going to his studio; and that everyday seemed fresh and fun once again. He said he was happy and content and I suddenly remembered why it was that I stopped talking to this guy so many years ago, because he was a lying sack of shit and because he always managed to arrive everywhere in life at least two or three steps ahead of me.