a fire. it can never look wrong. it is never too big or too small. it's never lopsided, never awkward. you cannot possibly frame it incorrectly. no matter what, a fire always looks incredible.
obviously, flames exist in 3d space and my drawings are [very] 2d. the way i get the shapes is by trying to transpose the look of a fire onto a 2d space. other things too, like pieces of hair, waves of water, folds of fabric, parts of the body. but mostly, definitely the look of a fire.
flames don't enter into my daily life much. i don't even smoke. i do cook on a gas stove.
--
edit: oh, and i didn't take this picture. it's one of the first current Google Images hits for 'fire'. it's of a castle on fire in 2007 in Derby, UK.
9 songs that trigger specific memories
in chronological order
1 Lady Godiva's Operation by The Velvet Underground, on White Light/White Heat. i'm 13. i've copied my cd onto a cassette to play it on a cheap Radio Shack Walkman. i'm in the computer room at my mom's real estate office in La Cañada- at the time, Dilbeck on Foothill. i have nothing else to do so i give this song a good close listen. within whatever vocabulary i have at that time, i think something like, 'well ok then. that's some very specific documentation of some totally different sexuality that i have definitely never heard of before. i guess there are plenty of options out there. that's good to know.'
2 Gardening at Night by R.E.M., the 'different vocal mix' on the Eponymous comp. i am 14, in my room on Harmony Pl, stereo volume as loud as possible. i am sobbing about nothing specific: just being 14 and stuck in La Crescenta and wanting so much more, jesus, fuck i I Don't Know What To-
3 Fox on the Run by Sweet, i dunno, it's on the Dazed and Confused soundtrack. i am listening to it in the sun in Golden Gate Park, on a Sony Discman, on a trip to San Francisco with my father when i am 15. i have already figured out that i can be in college within months through a special program at USC. i hate this fucking trip because i love this fucking city and this trip is SOOO lame, my dad is drunk and ranting about Mexicans [that's sort of his thing, in general, to this day]. but, life is ok because i like this song, i like the sunshine, i like Golden Gate Park, and i'm counting the days 'til i'm out of my house and on my own. i'm not bold enough yet to feel cocky about the situation. looking back, i wish i had been. i could have totally felt like a badass, because i was about to make several clever moves that would totally change my life for way better.
4 I Won't Share You by The Smiths, on Strangeways, Here We Come. 2001, hot day. i'm walking down 2 Ave in Nyc with my first iPod, listening to the song. its ending: 'Life tends to come and go / That's ok as long as / You know / Life tends to come and go / As long as you know no no no no know know no no...' i'm lost in the slippage between 'no' and 'know' and it feels like i'll never need anything else, ever.
5 Vicious by Lou Reed, on Transformer. New York City, Bleecker St apartment [rent paid w/ student loan money], 2002. my lover Steven tells me he just read that Andy Warhol actually wrote the first line of the song- that to Lou Reed, Warhol said, 'Why don't you write a song called Vicious. Like, you hit me with a flower.' Steven is grinning. colors flood the room. life is as gorgeous as i can remember. i go out and buy flowers and trash them by whipping them all over everything. the habit will stick forever.
6 There Is a Light That Never Goes Out by The Smiths, on The Queen Is Dead. Los Angeles, April 2003, the Wiltern, Morrissey's You Are the Quarry tour. Jose Maldonado [lifeguard, marathon runner, and lead singer of L.A. Smiths/Morrissey tribute band the Sweet and Tender Hooligans] literally picks me up and throws me at the stage during this song. i swear to god, Morrissey catches me with one hand [by the wrist, as security grab my feet]. for anyone interested, Morrissey in 2003 is an incredibly physically strong person. he yanks me onto the stage with the one arm while keeping hold on the microphone with his other hand [i do weigh about 98lbs at the time]. for two seconds as Morrissey leans backward and pulls, i see unmistakable, deliberate effort on his face. i think 'wow, he wants to pull me up here.' i find myself upright on the stage; i more or less shit myself; i yell something private into Morrissey's ear; i get dragged off stage left by actually pretty nice security who let me right back into the audience. the event is later recounted in the British music weekly the NME.
7 Kiss Me with Your Mouth, one of the covers... Tintin? i'm at the Ruby/World at 7070 Hollywood Bl on a Sunday for Beat It, an 80s club. 2004. there's this skinny, fey 17 year old boy with a pompadour who's been around for a few months. he's the best dancer i've ever seen. he makes me so hot, my very presence makes him uncomfortable. the first time i ask for his name, i mishear 'Chris' as 'Grace'. i do my best to chill out around him and he can tell, so he's friendly with me even though he's kinda freaked out by how much i want him. the club has just opened and a few people are dancing to this song, me among them. i know i'm going to see Chris later that night. [fast-forward: we never end up doing anything together except kiss once. i will forever refer to him as 'the teenager who won't sleep with me'.] 'Kiss me with your mouth, your love is sweeter than wine, but wine is all i have.'
8 Sometime Samurai by Kylie Minogue, remixed by a DJ whose name i don't remember. it's last Thursday, um, 3 Dec. i am on mdma around 6pm and wander into the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts after a full day at SFMOMA. the back room is decked out like a rave, with beanbags on the floor, DJ-mix music playing, and video art projected. it also looks kinda blacklit. nobody is even in there and i'm pretty blown away by the whole thing. i crash into one of the beanbags. i watch a video: two guys run around a city- San Francisco i'm pretty sure, but maybe it was Nyc or L.A.; i just remember thinking 'home'- so these two guys run around the city, stealing markers and videoing all this with a small DVcam. they write lyrics from the song all over the city as graffiti, especially the refrain 'sometime samurai'. they steal some paint and start to spraypaint the lyrics and the refrain. then they get on what look like European motorscooters, ride a bit, and then the video ends with them at a stoplight for a long moment. i think it's so perfect. sometimes you're a samurai, and the rest of the time you're waiting for the traffic light to change, or for some other signal, or just for a change in the light.
9 Dirty Dream Number Two by Belle + Sebastian, on The Boy with the Arab Strap. 5 Dec, Oakland Airport. it's around 8:20pm and within the hour i'll be in the air, on the way to JFK. i've heard this song recently on my iPod, which is now battery-drained. i think about my lover Steven, who's having a bad time right now although i think he's getting better. he has horrible trouble with nightmares. [me, i hardly ever remember my dreams at all.] i'm walking through the terminal carrying literal 'heavy shit' [my bags], having been up for 2+ days. i hear Stuart Murdoch sing in my head 'Why is this happening to you, you're not a child / Why is this happening, you've too much on your mind'- and it's just one of those moments where all the mirrors make me start to cry cuz they are mirrors. there's no point in trying to list them all. who the fuck sits down and makes a list inside a hall of mirrors?
well Dennis, apparently. props to him for making the only 'memes' on the internet that are actually worth doing.
one day i will take a trip to Kutztown, Pennsylvania, where Keith Haring grew up with his sisters- Kay, Kristen, and Karen- and his best friend, Kermit Oswald, who was also his first sexual fascination. Kermit knew Keith from elementary school onwards, and Kermit eventually moved to New York City too, several years later than Keith. after an unsuccessful career painting mostly trees, Kermit went on to make frames, like for paintings, and he also supervised the construction of most of the gigantic, public, metal sculptures Keith designed late in his life. one of those sculptures is in front of the Moscone Center in San Francisco, and has been since the SFMOMA Keith Haring retrospective in 1998. that, incidentally, was brilliant shit. at the time, i already knew Keith Haring's work well from art books. that was my first real experience, in an art museum, where i was like 'shit wow now i'm seeing the _real thing_'. i'll never forget spotting A Pile of Crowns for Jean-Michel Basquiat- the actual, large, triangular canvas- out of the corner of my eye, for the first time. and what was that super-early, super-unusual work that i saw at the SFMOMA retrospective but have never seen anywhere else, not even in books- something like I Know Where Meat Comes From It Comes From the Store? god, that was amazing. i wish i could see that painting again.
so this gate to Kutztown: it's located somewhere in the 20s at Nyc Port Authority. the ride from here takes around 3 hours. i don't know anything about Kutztown, which is generally described as a 'borough' [whether of Reading or Philadelphia, i have no idea]. i'm pretty sure the ticket price must be under $35, but i've never tried to actually find out and i have no idea where the ticketing counter for that particular bus line even is. i don't know where, in Kutztown, the bus lets you off. once i got to the bus station, i don't know where i'd walk from there.
all i need to know is: Kutztown, Keith, Kay, Kristen, Karen- and somehow; especially: Kermit. i will bring Keith H's journals and official bio, and maybe some of his favorite writings on art, and i will bring my sketchbook.
so far, i have tried to learn as little as possible about Kutztown. i know there is a Haring sculpture there that i have never seen [one that Kermit constructed]. apparently there's some kind of small quaint downtown area. i hear it is 'conveniently located' to Allentown [which i've never heard of really] and Reading [where Keith H was actually born].
buses leave from Nyc Port Authority every day. it's just a question of packing my backpack one day and getting on one of those buses.
in other news, i won't be posting many drawings in the coming weeks, because i'll be doing gift drawings that are going to belong only to the people that receive them. i'll stick something public up every one in awhile, though. i can never resist.
in the meantime, photographs. today at Port Authority, which is becoming one of my favorite places in the world, this confounded me.
-- edit: also, on the photo for the Kutztown bus gate, you see where it says 'Departure Times See Schedule Below'? literally, the only thing 'below' that lit sign is a door and then the floor and then i guess the dead.
The things that confuse most people have never confused me. Who I want to fuck? Myself as Robert Mapplethorpe, forever. What happens to us after we die? We flop back onto the world as one instead of many. The things that confound me are tiny and specific: numbers, flames, pieces of hair. I wouldn't really say I've chosen those confusions, but I've always found them easier than enormous things like creation. It is easier to have a clear picture of creation in your mind, I always thought, than of a fire.
Last night, though, sitting on the edge of my bed in my first track jacket [red of course], I experienced my first spiritual crisis while looking at a pretty small cross-section of delivery menus from my neighborhood. It was one of the most ecstatic things I have ever felt in my life. Now I get why people like to be confused about giant things like why we are here; how: the slip never ends? Freefall surely isn't the only freedom, but it must be in the top 3.
When I was growing up, I was never a particularly churchy person because my parents only ever took me to one [obviously not unusual], La Cañada Presbyterian. Kevin Costner and his family also went[/go?] there. The place is preppy, fake, and boring to the max. I loathed being ordered to dress up. Too many people in the congregation had had plastic surgery[*], and the entire sight was just kind of sickening and scary to me. The church was located across from the only place I ever remember seeing a cigarette machine, a chain restaurant called Conrad's in a strip mall that also held a Vons market, Baskin Robbins ice cream, and my mom's favorite drycleaner.
I remember what bugged me most about church, starting from when I was little and through high school [after which i kind of forgot that people even go to church], was the idea that the world had been created for humans. I found it arrogant, and also for some reason, a lot of people used this idea to justify the idea of eating meat to me, or even to instruct me to eat meat [including, repeatedly, i shit you not, the extremely conservative Christian math teacher i had throughout most of high school]. When I think about the idea of a human-centric world now, the idea of 'meat' just has nothing to do with it. I'm sort of fascinated by the fact that these concepts were even connected in the minds of so many people I knew.
So, last night. I was ever so slightly drugged and sitting on the edge of my bed with maybe like 4 or 5 menus in my hand [we probably have about 40 from restaurants that will deliver here], trying to think of what I wanted to eat, and I got extreme vertigo, and I fell, not over physically, but just fell, dropped out. It was like being a ghost and walking through the papers that were in my hands in front of me. It felt so amazing. I don't know how long it happened. It wasn't instantaneous, and it didn't last longer than 15 minutes, but it could have been a few minutes or a couple seconds, I don't know.
I was realizing that there were god, what?, over 500 [vegetarian] dishes that I could order and have brought to me? And suddenly I considered that if the world was created for humans to use? That is actually the humblest way to possibly think of it. If the world was not created for us, we absolutely took it anyway and we are going to use it right up. How. Fucking
um
oh
For the first time I read the introduction to The Thief's Journal in the original French. The Grove translations of Genet's books are all loveably awkward [lots of 'i buggered him' and 'we were buggering together'... i expect to see new ones sometime in my lifetime]. The translations of Sartre's introductions are also slightly off. The idea at the end of the introduction to The Thief's Journal more or less makes it through, though: basically, every person's greatest secret is that s/he is exactly the same as you. This is totally distinct from the idea that 'we are all the same', which is how a lot of people misread the introduction. What Sartre is pointing to is the bigness and darkness of the secret, and the possibility of endless twins and mirrors. S/he is the same as you, s/he is the same as Jean Genet, and you are the same as Jean Genet, but the three are not the same. There are secret endless twins, but no triplets. I guess I'd phrase it: what no one will ever reveal to you, specifically, is that s/he is exactly the same as you, specifically.
It took me a long time to put my head back on after I read that. As far as I am concerned, there is hardly anywhere to go from there except to blood and bleach and out. It was months before I even started the actual book.
If that is our enormous and unlit, well, a smaller wink belongs to you and me
so as many of you know, i had the fortune of hitting up the Drawing Restraint retrospective at its only U.S. location, SFMOMA [twice!]. anyone who also owns the DR9 sketchbook either got it at SFMOMA or in Japan. or through eBay etc.
this photograph was at the entry to the floor with most of the Drawing Restraint stuff, framed and poster-size, maybe about 30" tall?
In the first place, I'm writing this without the magazines at hand. I'm in a room where musical instruments are scattered upside-down, empty glass bottles crowd every surface, and a busted trampoline faces me directly: my view. Not exactly how I planned it but at least Storz+Bickel are present.
I encountered this girl in the apparently final print issue [2001] of Propaganda Magazine, an enterprise of Fred H Berger, a dude whose cultural role I have never quite gleaned. He takes photographs [which are pretty good]; reviews minor music releases. For a time, I guess, he was behind a print magazine called Propaganda. I always find that the most unexpected people know Propaganda Magazine, so if you know it, you know it. If not;
Early issues were goth-oriented and 2 steps above Xerox. As years passed, it grew into a reasonably glossy... 'scene magazine'? 'Fictional photoessay' magazine? Basically, these really hot, androgynous boys and girls would pose for clearly made-up Life Magazine-type photojournalism pieces. Or would you call the pieces porn? The narratives were similar. The pictures were generally sexual, but didn't have nudity.
For example, in the photographs below, The Girl, dyed blonde in black leather looking like a boy, is acting the part of 'Dmitri', a Russian street hustler. Dmitri's words are briefly quoted; he mentions his girlfriend 'Zosia' [the other girl below]. He actually says 'I'm not a faggot' with reference to his invented profession, and this gets a block quote. Seriously... at whom was this magazine aimed?
So yeah: The Girl. I don't know her name. My feelings for her are singular... unlike, unlike, unlike...
One time I tried to explain it by saying I didn't know whether I wanted to fuck her or to be her. It wasn't a flippant expression; it was an honest attempt to reduce the conflict, to aim it at a 'central tension', chill the situation out. I asked other people, who is it for you? You can't decide whether you'd prefer to be or fuck who? And I mean really, like if you actually gave it a lot of thought?
I got gorgeous answers: Egon Schiele, Kim Gordon, Morrissey. But I realized that my friends played the game differently. To the names that attracted them, enormous lives and myths were attached. No one proferred an anonymous photo and said, That One. Instead, they felt a pull, more or less, between Fucking That and Having That Career / Having Made That Art.
It's true that with the girl in the photos, I don't know if I'd rather fuck her or be her. I know that I'd say yes to either and both. The former, of course, is unremarkable: you can all see that she's boyishly cute, self-aware, and involved in some kind of weird art project. But as for being her, I don't know what her daily life is like now, or what it was ever like; I don't know where she lives; I fundamentally don't know what she does. Further, if I were to be her, it wouldn't be so that it was me in these photos in Propaganda Magazine. It's not that I wish I had been the one to make that art- art that's totally unobjectionable and quite sexy at turns, but not the sort that makes me jealous.
I guess I see: The Surface of The Girl. If she walked toward me, in a mirror or on the street, and said, Do You Want To Switch?... and she would become me and I'd become her and we'd walk away, each into a new life formerly belonging to the other... I Would Say Yes. No doubt, I would probably try to fuck her too. So basically this makes her... a point of entry? I see the other side already.
Some people want themselves. Some people want you. Some people want boys or girls coaxed halfway into existence; some people want light; and some people want the whip. Me;
Today I had the shitgiggles-deskdance honor of having a piece of writing posted on the Great Dennis Cooper's blog. Dennis is hugely generous with that coveted space he captains, and he frequently allows his readers to 'curate'/write blog posts on specific topics- pieces that Dennis calls 'Days'. For example, Australian Music Day, Werner Herzog Day, and Derek Jarman Day have been some recent [and super] reader contributions.
So mine is called 'Fucking Poets: A Day for Research Chemicals'. It details the Research Chem phenomenon from roughly 1999-2004. If you don't know what Research Chemicals are, they're a subset of 'designer drugs'. They're not particularly chemically related as a whole, but they're grouped together because they all enjoyed faddish internet popularity around the same time.
The idea of crafting a Day for Research Chemicals arose when I happened to mention, on Dennis' blog, that I took some 2ci at Matthew Barney's recent Drawing Restraint retrospective at SFMOMA [which, by the way, is where I first saw Barney's Hypertrophy, which, by the way, effectively shattered my brainscape with its genius sloganeering and absurdly sexual fascination with Harry Houdini- given, of course, the particular character of my brainscape at the moment I happened to walk near the wall where said piece was hanging].
So yeah: Dennis returned that he'd never heard of 2ci and asked for more information. Aside, perhaps, from 5-meo-dmt and 2ct7, 2ci struck-and-strikes me as the most famous Research Chemical- at the very least, it's in the top 5. I thought hmm: if you don't know 2ci, I guess you probably don't know Research Chemicals? As any reader of his non- and fiction knows, Dennis Cooper is no stranger to obscure drugs or internet sensations, so I was surprised that the grand tale of Research Chemicals hadn't yet made its way to him. While the Research Chemical phenomenon has never been one of 'my stories', I was certainly there when everything happened; I feel like I remember the events with reasonable clarity; and, on several in-person occasions, I've done my best to explain the whole deal to flabbergasted strangers. Mostly while hosteling.
As I went about writing the Day, the appellation 'Research Chemical' grew rapidly comic, because I had a pisspants-difficult time conducting any real 'research'. There's Erowid.org [one of the Great websites, period, on any topic], Mdma.net, Bluelight.ru, Good Old Google, and, kinda, not much else. Naturally, 'trip reports'- accounts of what it's like to be on these drugs- abound. But I was trying to tell the story of an industry boom, the rapid expansion and subsequent contraction of a particular scene. About each individual substance involved, an entire book could be written to detail effects, dosages, common uses, locales of popularity, and so on.
To make a long story this: I did my best to read everything I could, but I largely wrote the Day from memory, and from some notes I took in the early 00s while the whole thing was on.
Thus this post. If I made errors, neglected interesting or important tidbits, or really whatever, here's a place to enlighten me and others. It's also a place for general discussion, q+a, speculations, attractive myths, really whatever; about the Research Chem boom, the drugs involved, related substances, Etc Etc Etc Nothing's Off Limits. So please: fire away. Like I said, 'trip reports' were basically outside the scope of the particular article I wrote, but if you'd like to leave a brief note or extended treatise regarding your personal experience[s] with these [or related] chemicals, I'd be honored to read whatever you have to say, not to mention very excited to engage with you.
Here's the Day at Dennis Cooper's. It's the same text. If you're reading the piece over at Dennis Cooper's, to continue the article after the first section, click the text in the 'Previous Posts' sidebar- 'So, somebody somewhere set up some labs?', then 'Rolling Stone published an article', and so on. [Dennis' readers obviously know how to navigate his blog already, but not everyone who surfs here reads Dennis' blog. I know, I know- too bad for them.]
If you're so inclined, you can also read some initial comments on Research Chem Day from Dennis Cooper's readers by navigating to the Previous Post beginning 'p.s. Jesus fucking christ, there's more than 140'. Needless to say!, however!, there's no prerequisite to read that before posting anything here.
I have about -6.5 vision in one of my eyes and about -6.0 in the other. I don't remember which is which. For those who aren't familiar with that particular system of numbers, it means I'm incredibly nearsighted. Minus 6.0 is, as they call it, 'off the scale' so far as the familiar 20/20 schematic goes. That scale stops at 20/400.
I once visited an optometrist who was also nearsighted. I don't know to what degree. She explained nearsightedness this way: actually, nearsighted people see more 'strongly'. She didn't quite use the word 'better' but that was the implication. We see so intensely that our brains can't process it. Intense, apparently, in a good way. As opposed to, say, a war.
I didn't know, of course, at the time, that I would probably never find another optometrist, or any other kind of medical professional, who agreed with this at all. Or would think about describing it this way. I have yet to find a doctor who thinks 'nearsighted=stronger sights than brain can handle' is a useful way to think about it.
What was particularly unusual about the moment is that it didn't seem like she was saying it for my sake or for her sake. I didn't need to hear this. She didn't seem like she needed to hear it either.
