May 2004 Archives

We have been doing a lot of time travel recently. It is as if the future wanted to grab us by the shirt and then the past got hold of our behinds and so the experience of the last few weeks has felt like a record under the fingertips of a very eager DJ. And the scratching only goes so far of course, the past that manages to pull us back is more of that dumb pre bubble arrogance and the future, well the future contains some really busy moments filled with very strange conversations about some very unimportant things. Among other things. But the future is never as clear as the past, of course. And the past is hurting. And I am not sure I like it. This site here will have the pause button pressed for a little while btw. Starting Saturday (which is "The day after Tomorrow"), there will be a pause. I will not post, I will not check my mail, I will not go out on my hunts for comment spam, I will not even check the news, I hope. Not sure where exactly I am going on Saturday. It is as if a tiny loophole opened up in this strange stretched out perception of the present and I will be able to sidestep and take a look at the sky. The real sky, not the ceiling, which is not the real ceiling anyway, just a suspended simulation... I hope to come back with a slightly clearer mind... and I do not know what the consequences will be... Hopefully all good. I have done a lot of time travel recently... and thought travel... and imagination travel... but on about 4.5 hours of sleep each night... wait a second... no wonder I can not really focus...

An email from a friend of Sarah's this morning pointed me towards the news that were unfortunately not what all of us were hoping for. A body was found yesterday. Our conscious world appears saddest when it is left by somebody who was much too young to leave. We should probably try to let moments like these remind us of the importance of every minute that we have the privilege to share with each other. We should surround ourselves and all of the ones we can possibly reach out to with kindness. We are after all probably just different representations of the same idea... When a loved person leaves our world, and it is regardless of their age, then the love we felt for them should not be imagined to have left with them. We should redirect this love towards the memory of the person who left and also with multitude towards those whom we have the privilege to share this world with...

Is she back? Is she okay? Are things allright? There are so many of these printouts all over the city... all of new york might be looking for Sarah Fox... hmm... not sure if this is going to be in any way helpful, but here is the posting from my deli down the block... -- update: this entry is now slowly turning into a place where those who remember Sarah like to leave their little virtual notes. I do not know why most of the search engines point towards this entry here. I had written one after I was contacted by a friend of Sarah's family (here)... But maybe it is a good thing that the search engines are pointing towards here. Here I did not yet know who or where Sarah was. Here we were all still hopeful that she was somewhere in the city, maybe distracted, but certainly not really lost. Until the murderer(s?) of Sarah are found, it is quite possible that this humble entry on my blog is going to appear as one of the top search results for her name. And maybe this is a good place for friends and friends of friends to leave messages. This here is a very quiet corner of the web. So yes, maybe it is good.

Some streets across the river felt as if it were a summer evening in Frankfurt, perhaps, then Offenbach, then... not Germany after all, then the night in Katowice, then... hmm... Bought a drawing in Chelsea on Saturday and it is a really silly one. The drawing is a bit odd, probably from the late 60's. A young man holding up his arm to welcome a falcon. The falcon is shown in three flight phases. How could I have possibly paid any money for a piece like this? I think I liked the slightly imperfect tip of the young man's nose. Probably also liked the very good technique of the artist. I think what made me actually buy the drawing was the fact that the man is attached to the falcon by some sort of band... yet his hands are bare. Imagine hunting with a falcon without having gloves on. Now we're talking interesting. The drawing is currently in its ripening stage, I tucked it away, I am not looking at it. I will come back to it. I might take it out of the house altogether. Some pieces only work in a certain context. When I used to design records (and later CDs), I would often take the dummies of the product to houses of friends. I would place the designed object somewhere in this familiar to somebody else environment, and often the design would reveal subtle and often not so subtle flaws. One of the dangers of designing on screen might be the fact that the screen is a very set and in itself designed environment. This goes beyond browser compatibility issues here. When designing something that will not be used on screen alone, one should always take it out of context. And even when designing for screen, one should also either take a look at the work at somebody else's computer, or even print the stuff out and take it to the park... or under the shower, or well, maybe be the shower is not a good idea. But maybe taking the piece and looking at it at a dunkin' donuts will reveal different elements than when the piece is looked at at a starbucks.. Hmm... so yes... letting falcons fly, and not wearing gloves... now that's not very smart. That's like trying to eat a pretzel while completely drunk, maybe... Buying a drawing out of some strange impulse might also be one of the not so smart things... perhaps. Oh, and Saturday was really amazing... I will have to post some of the pictures taken from that roof in Dumbo... but I am really, really too tired now... and the falcon might come back any minute now... oh, here he comes, like a speedy bullet.

Birdhouses and birdcages attached to stretched out, long hair of women entering the picture. Each one or the birdcages appears like a hull of a memory of a person who left a long time ago. These are not the skins of reptiles that in any way give hints of the form of those who used to inhabit them. The cages were created at a different time, made to fit a certain type of species. Now these containers are like the shells of memories. Shadow casting pointers. Some are the same. Were the birds living in them the same? We will not know. The women carry them, there does not appear to be a chance for them to remove the cages from their hair. This is the way things go. This is a working, logical system. A group of burdened women enters the stage with their snowmen. It is as if they had been assigned to each other. Not all snowmen were created equal, of course. Some are cool and bold, complete. Some look rather soft and melted. Some just lost their head. Some need to have their carrot reattached. The women seem to be in control, even if some of them do not really seem to want to be. Some have to carry whatever is left of their snowmen. Some carry just a zink bathtub, maybe one of the ornamental sweaters, the leftovers, the memories, not even water seems to be left in some cases... Went to see the Amy Cutler show at Leslie Tonkonow again this morning. It was actually one of the very first things I did today. Looked at the twelve or so pieces in the show for a second time.. I like coming back to art. It is much better than seeing it for the first time, at least with good work it is. Perhaps because going back to see good work makes the experience a bit closer to the process of making it. A tiny bit closer. It was good to see the blue tongues of the piled up giraffes again. It was good to see the beautiful fabrics on all of the portrayed figures. It was good to see the portions of faces of women carrying back their eyes into a possibly common past. It was good to see again the very particular way in which Amy Cutler draws wood. Her ornate fabrics are rather incredible. Some of the compositions look like elaborately cropped snapshots. And yet the love to detail makes it very clear that not much about this work happened by accident. There are enough layers in the work to make me come back several more times. The show is on at Leslie Tonkonow through June 12th. Just enough time for a few more visits. Oh, and one should definitely go in the morning... my first visit to the show was more of a packed experience.

-"Monkeys and robots are a really nice description of so much these days. Maybe that's why they are so popular, maybe?"... -"yeah, it will all come down to a fight... of monkeys against robots." -"maybe there could be robots in monkey costumes. they would be placed in forests and cities and cars and behind the controls of aircraft..." -"or maybe monkeys in robot costumes... or monkeys in monkey costumes... or..." .

Another Subway Palm drawing. I blurred it here, and liked the way it looks blurred... I also made a little color version of it, but it looks a bit too wild almost... if there is such a thing... oh yes, there is. Here is the original palm drawing:>> (it looks so tiny, i know...)

Another mystery meeting note.

Remix idea for graffiti. This one happened by accident in SoHo, but I think it does work pretty well... I wonder what the Berlin Wall would have looked like remixed. Is it a bit like the exquisite corps? Hmm, oh, and there is an actually slightly related observation written when I had the time to post slightly longer entries... And today? Late again. Very frustrating...

Can we please go outside, I am sick of playing with the kids who were told too early that they are beautiful and smart and really talented. I would like to play with the kids who are beautiful and smart and really talented and maybe even kind, because all of their superpowers have not yet been turned into a measurable dimension of some personality test. Or maybe they at least do not know that they even could be... "Hello Pigeon. How are you doing pigeon? Why don't you come over pigeon? I would like to tell you something, pigeon?" The girl was waiting for the same train we were waiting for. It was the train to Kraków, we were in Katowice, it was a slightly desaturated, cold morning. The girl was dressed in clothes that seemed to be from a completely different time. I wish I could remember what she was wearing, but I only remember her voice now. And I also remember her guardian. The nun was maybe 24, 25, but who knows. Where one would have usually seen her hair, there was a stiff white insert, shaping the hood of her black habit. "The pigeon will not come to you, because you have no food for it." "Hey there pigeon..." the girl did not want to give up that easily... I do not remember much of that scene, even though it was just four years or so ago... I think it was four years ago, maybe in the summer of 2000? I wish today had been a good day. But I must have not had enough food for the day. Maybe I have not very much food to give in general... now that's an encouraging thought... oh, I don't know....

mystery meeting note....

mystery meeting note 001...

Dear reader, it appears that I am not really able to write anything here right now. I have really tried. I am barely able to write any emails even. (So if I have not replied to yours... that's why...) So instead of just not posting anything here, maybe it is better if I at least share some random pictures taken this weekend on which I did not get the paper and kept constantly in motion. Oh, and calculate your own knackerfactor.

Cancelled the paper a few days ago. It was a bold move, away from the piles of yet to read sections of the Times, the half solved friday crossword puzzles (is it still a lie if it is as obviously untrue as that last statement?), towards a cleaner, nicer place, a virtual folder in my browser bursting with links to articles and linked entries and overall the electronic, digital, internetational future perhaps? (Let's click harder, my friends.) Oh, and there would be fewer dead trees as well. Less time spent sitting with the giant printed sheet of pressed pulp in front of me on the floor in the morning. Less brutal imagery flowing into my brain, even without electricity. The paper was cancelled. ("To suspend your subscription please press one now.") That was two days ago. And it took just this tiny step to realize that what I thought I was getting from the web and from the news sites on the web was not actually what... please excuse me while I go and try to catch that thought. I seriously thought for a brief moment there that the digest that I serve to myself in this very browser here is the actual real thing I remember. I mean... what was it that I meant? During a short brainstorming session yesterday, some of my memories that triggered ideas were actually from... the paper. I even remembered the location where I read the articles I remembered. It was as if I were speaking of moments in the past and then this smiling face of a friend would pop into the memory again and again and again (oh, I think I need to use the phone...)... how incredibly strange... Right now my perception is that my reading of the online editions of the press is at best a bit of a booster shot, something to remind me that the world is still turning until I get the next paper at my door, around sunrise, and so the world slows down a tiny bit and I can see badly printed images, even if not of them quite joyful, yet without electricity and I can sit on the sofa with a giant sheet of printed paper in front of me and... well, the tree thing can not really be turned into anything positive at this point. How does recycling really work at this point in time? Is my wanting to get the paper back just a manifestation of the same pattern of addiction that is hard wired into a child that does not get a constant stream of confirmation, just a mild tap, now and then, a very addictive little biological mind trick common to some substances... that biologically hard wired circuit about which I read just recently... in the paper?... I hear it is dangerous to misinterpret this "paper knowledge" litter in ones brain for the actual thing... (wars were fought because of... well, but wars were also fought because of women, which does not make women bad, now does it?... oh dear brain, what are you doing to me?) My New Yorker subscription will expire in February 2005, I am seriously worried right now... And clearly nothing beats reality as a source of misinterpretation, not does it?... Please forgive this confused writing style... I spend much too much time clicking on links and other virtual things... (Ever wondered how I earn much of my living?) Wait, was I just reminded of the tragic angle of this silly situation by viewing This brilliant classic Spot for the Guardian, written by Frank Budgen, over at Gorgeous?... I really do not know... or at least not right now... .

It was probably in 10th grade when I had decided to be the cool dude. My words would turn into icy little sharp shards of metal, launched calmly in the case somebody dared to enter my well guarded inner circle. My eyelids would barely open, I would scan my surroundings with a level of apathy I imagined in the man with the iron mask. I would become the well trained samurai who would take comfort in the knowledge that a single blow of my open hand could easily kill a grown bear. My lips became thin. My chin moved up, though just by a notch. About 20 seconds into my plan I had to give up. I just could not keep up a façade like this. My personality was naturally more like a strangely colored cotton ball with a impenetrable yet ever changing core, not a silver painted chitin skinned giant cube filled with a polo mint. Strange decisions are made in chemistry class, when the focus of the material discussed by the other students turns from being a graspable chandelier filled with aromatic candles to a faint little single star, out of the range of even the best brain booster rockets... My brain never caught up with chemistry class. And I never again tried to be the cool dude...

There is a serious thunderstorm across the river in New Jersey. The lightning is spectacular. Again and again and again. What a day it has been today. From the very morning when there was barely any time to eat, until now, when it is far too late to even eat. Spent five hours at FIT today, reviewing senior portfolios. Nine students had chosen me for a one on one conversation. The talents varied, which is not a bad thing. Tried to provide some valuable feedback. I hope it was okay. I had a fantastic time. really. Each one of the students had to see five of somebody like me... I wonder if any one of the students will even remember me. I am glad I stayed the entire time from 5 to 10PM, the last two portfolios were really extraordinary. I am too tired now to elaborate any more on this... it was a great time... I have a presentation tomorrow... it is really time to get some sleep... yet again... This thunderstorm will work really well, I hope... good night...

really like the little air bubbles on the stems of the flowers in the vase on the table next to me. Would love to stay here and take a better look at them, maybe just tilt my head and stare at them, but I have to run out now, right now and I will not be back until much later today, I guess. So what is going to happen to the bubbles?... They will certainly not care if anybody will watch them or not. Does every bubble of air contain the memory of time past and is it the traveler into the time to come? And is each pone of them just a temporary state of being that was is and will be only never in this particular shape and place again?... Aren't we all? : ) Why this entry?... It felt weird to have this page start with a four letter word... you know... okay?

so we won. gold. the hyatt was packed, or at least this area of the hyatt was. we got the golden spot (one of them). yes. lou dobbs spoke and he spoke wisely... and so now I know who will win in november... but for now... we won. gold... not quite sure what it means... so am I a multiply award winning guy now? not sure. it was nice that the ceremony took place in the hyatt, which is near grand central, which contains the little campbell's apartment... which contained some good beverages on ice and some good stories, of course. oh, and this couple at the bar basically had sex in front of all of us... and later again outside of grand central, as we were hailing the cabs, the new rate cabs. And as I was leaving the yellow car, and looked back... all over the seat, spread out, there they were... my credit cards, my green card, all the nice little documents that snuck out of my mocket while i was being happy about that gold award... it is late... and it might be time to take a good nap. Gold baby. All together now... good night... (Oh, and the greatest moment of the evening might actually have been the walk to the awards... but that's a completely different story, of course...)

and whenever it appears that things are completely clear, this is the moment when they begin to not be. and when everything looks completely established, this is when it begins to not be. and when everything appears calm, this might be the beginning of a storm, and when things look very dark, then there might be some light around one of the corners... and when i look around here and I see the images and the words of which some traveled so far to be with me. some of them were here before. some of them came with me for the ride. and we are here, in this perfect moment just about now and now only and this perfect moment is here to never return in this particular way. it will be so completely different tomorrow. it really will be. not only tomorrow... in a few split seconds... there... this humming was much more quiet wasn't it?... and what about this pain in the leg? there are voices around the corner now... some familiar. some definitely are not. i can not express how much i am looking forward to going to the desert. i hope that there will be nothing. and i know that there will be everything. and both possibilities are perfectly fine. and i will dive through the experience and the experience will just blow right through me, with little particles stuck to every atom of me. it is all good... somehow... at some point... i am now smiling just to cheer myself up, with all might, somehow... please. good. that shaky ground is not even a ground... i think... and the balance of things is neither balance nor things... well... maybe...

Todd Levin, the brilliant (and) very photogenic writer, who is currently renting out parts of his soul to the demons of comedy, recently asked me to shoot some photographs of him, just because all the other photographers were either too busy or too dead to help him this time, or maybe also because all of the pictures he happened to have the rights to at the moment contained journalists, dressed up as food piled up to portray various food pyramids... okay... i will not even attempt to be funny. Todd needed a little picture to appear in the Onion, that sarcastic paper, also available online. We had a great time shooting Todd. Some of the pictures that came out of the session are too good (and I do not use this word lightly with anything I do) to ever be shown near any vegetable. The onion received a shot which was subtle... The editors at the paper took the liberty to not only doctor the portrait of Todd Levin, they also must have thought that their creative chopping skills made it completely unnecessary to provide any credit for the person who actually took the picture. Funny, eh? : ) I think I will have to send the onion guys one of these fine tools. Or maybe we should have just sent them one of my favorite pictures from the session... (btw, Todd, you were a very fine model.)

walked into the office of a friend and he looked a bit guilty. on his screen was some familiar site... he immediately admitted that he had found it among my links. So he was reading this page. He felt as if he had been observing me through some special device. I tried to explain that it was really okay and that whatever is written here does not really represent a reflection of what I really do... or does it? I have been losing track of certain thoughts lately. I do not quite remember what I have already written and what I postponed, wanted to write later... and it is scary that I seem to remember less and less. Will I soon dissolve into this website and exchange my real self for an illusive version of me, put here into strings of little words in my third language? Am I possibly in the midst of this process already? All of the waiters at Pigalle, the little French bistro across 8th avenue are Russian. Pigalle actually seems to be a Russian restaurant. The conversation I had with the waiter should have tipped me off... the hostess and what appears to be the owner actually looked somehow familiar as well... Hmm... There is one user connected to my iTunes right now... but I think it is time for me to go home and to take a walk... and maybe I should not log on anymore today... maybe I should try that. Something is telling me I will not really be able to resist... ... I can hear the sound effects of IM in the offices next to me... typing, the bells again... more typing. I think I am not the only one who is turning into the idea of themselves...

Wrapped the blanket completely around my head and managed to filter out some of the car noise on broadway. I sometimes pretend that what I am hearing are waves of a violent ocean, pounding against the high coast. The house here placed on the edge of a cliff. The honking and the police syrens somehow disrupt this phantasy. The syrens could probably be monkeys. Little apes, calling for some love. there must be some reason why there are such similarities between the sounds. I used to sleep with the earplugs in. Maybe for a night or two. It really did not work for me. The plugs would give me the feeling that my head was about to unfold in the morning, as if the pieces of my skull were like the petals of some bizarre flower. So the blanket works relatively well. I wrap it around my head, I look like a beduine... I turn off the lights and slowly glide into the darkness. I have not drawn for a really long time. It is very depressing. I put the pen to the paper and it just does not want to draw. It does not work. But I was called by Nylon magazine to illustrate something for them. (You can find the drawing in the next issue...) It was somehow funny to see that they would pick my very first sketch... not the one I spent days thinking about and hours drawing. They just liked the one I just jotted down... About 12 years ago this would have made me think that I am a genius. Today it makes me think that my thinking is not really worth much... or that I think in circles or that what I think is thinking is not even that. It is really somehow crazy how my mind is on an implosion trip... okay, now this really is not very interesting... let's move the camera over there and point it towards the trees. See, much better now. Thousands of flowers attached to the branches, call for flying insets to have simulated sex. (or was it food... or both?) And the fragrant haze embraces us and crawls into us and intoxicates us... just like music crawls into our ears and makes us hear its vibrations through many more parts of our body... just like little melodies straighten out a mess of thoughts and put many of them onto the right kind of track... Some sounds take a bite out of the thought process we have... Another monkey sound just cruised by the window... another wave hit the cliffs, another seagull called somebody's name. I will not listen to music now... I will probably go to sleep... oh, below is the not selected illustration... the chosen one will be in the upcoming issue of Nylon Magazine (yes, I know... I mentioned it before)... it is a fun independent magazine... get yourself a copy... I am amazed and very thankful that they asked me to do something for them... will it ever happen again?

Why wouldn't the weather be perfect?, it is May first, the first of May, the grand day, oh what a day... also the day on which, among other important things, the borders came down. The borders which we had to cross in some strange way in the summer of 1981... well, the borders are now gone. Janek was always able to read between the lines: "They showed this guy on television who received a certificate for being the first person to cross the inner European border. Except, if the borders are gone... he could really not have crossed it, could he? Oh, and they renumbered all the tramway lines here. What used to be 41 is now 31 and 31a. And the police made a little stand and whoever wanted could have their fingerprints taken, just for fun." Some things change, and thus they stay the same. I hear that Poles will not really be allowed to just leave their country and look for work in Germany. And the Euro is actually also more of an alternative...for now... not really the full blown new currency... and what else... oh, apparently some Germans were now learning Polish. So highly interesting. Oh, and Ukraine may be next, they say... probably before Turkey... (Which is technically not completely European... now is it?) The Salvation Army store really did not smell right. It was really packed... An older lady was showing off her little "t-mobile sidekick", checking if the air was clear behind her, or if somebody was trying to spy on the sites she was surfing on that freshly donated green sofa. A man emptied an entire bag of carb-crumbs onto the landscaped area of broadway. (Hello rats.) I was offered clearly raw fish in a French restaurant... Oh, and also accidentally helped this incredibly talented upper westsider with her toy decorated carriage.. "That car matches your shirt." A guy pointing towards a little honda civic picked the wrong line to impress his first date in front of the building here. "Hey, how's it going?" somebody else on the floor here has a new boyfriend... which also solves the mystery of the strange marks in the carpet... they must have been caused by his hairy hands dragged as he walked like a slightly drunk silverback... Oh, and I do not believe that FAMILY stands for "Father And Mother I Love You"... (as seriously suggested in a recent piece of spam...) I do believe that what is here now is the real spring.