It’s been six months since I moved to New York. I live in Bed-Stuy, the Brooklyn neighborhood where Spike Lee filmed Do The Right Thing. The apartment I’m in has two floors and one and a half bathrooms. My bedroom is tiny. I have four housemates, two of whom are jazz musicians. There is a door in my room that leads to a backyard. The backyard is basically just mud. The apartment is less than a block from the Flushing and Broadway intersection, and I can catch the elevated J and M trains pretty easily. I’m also within walking distance of the G and L trains.
Something I appreciate about the subway is how it can be a place where the unexpected happens. Coming home from work the other evening, a homeless man got on the train and announced he’d be reciting a poem. I expected something trite, but what he began reading was modern and inventive. I started listening more attentively and, as we rolled into the next station, he abruptly stopped mid-sentence. He then robotically announced what stop we were at and listed all the connecting lines at that particular station. After the train started moving again, he continued the poem from where he’d left off.
A lot of my time in New York is spent just wandering around photographing the ground and decaying walls. On Facebook, I’m in a group that documents involuntary painting. I’ve been trying to write a blog post describing involuntary painting, but I can never piece together the right words. Involuntary painting is basically industrial residue that was not purposely made to be art, but through the eyes of the viewer, there is an unintended beauty that can be seen. Sometimes involuntary painting resembles abstract art, like a Jackson Pollock or a Mark Rothko. At work, a co-worker of mine spilled a can of paint. That’s the simplest example of involuntary painting I can think of. To her, it was just a mess, but to me it was art. I wish I would have taken a picture.
One of my goals upon moving to New York was to visit John Zorn’s legendary jazz club The Stone. I didn’t have much time (it was closing at the end of February), but thankfully my friend Steve Dalachinsky had a poetry reading scheduled there. The Stone was just a simple black room with folding chairs. It was located a short walk from Houston Street. There was no drinking or video recording permitted. Dalachinsky read with Frank London's Shekhina Big Band. I was impressed with everything I saw. These were serious musicians. Steve read between each musical composition and the way it was handled by the musicians made the whole performance feel like one big piece. Honestly, the poets of New York are the best I’ve ever seen when it comes to reading to an audience.
Around this time I saw Zorn himself play at the opening for Performance Space New York. I also caught the Sun Ra Arkestra in a movie theatre near Times Square, the industrial rock band Chrome somewhere in Greenpoint, and James Chance at the Bowery Electric. Chance’s show was my favorite. When Chance took the stage I was kind of worried. He looked a lot older than I expected. He appeared disheveled like he'd been walking the streets of New York in an anxiety-laden haze. He was constantly squinting his eyes and tugging up his pants. At one point, he tried dancing on the stairs in front of the stage but tripped and fell down in front of me. I was afraid he’d broken a hip. Instead, he got up and continued dancing and playing the saxophone. He pushed himself to his limits and didn’t give a shit how frail he was.
Speaking of artists who don’t give a shit, at the end of March I attended a screening of Boiled Angel: The Trial of Mike Diana at the IFC Center. Directed by Frank Henenlotter, the film focuses on how cartoonist Mike Diana became the first artist ever convicted of obscenity for his work. Later that month there was a show of Diana’s at the Superchief Gallery in Queens where Diana displayed huge grotesque and pornographic banners alongside small petite paintings. The gallery workers created this long intestine that stretched throughout the space, and they were still painting it with bloody drips as I arrived. After I got home I found the red drips had somehow gotten all over the legs of my brand new overalls!
When I first got to New York, PS1 had a Carolee Schneemann exhibit with her Interior Scroll on display. Although I wasn't crazy about everything Schneemann did, Interior Scroll is like some kind of modern art relic. The Whitney also had an interesting show of Zoe Leonard's work. There I was able to see another sort of relic: an original typed version of Leonard’s infamous piece I Want a President. But the show that impressed me most was Nobuyoshi Araki fantastic exhibit at the Museum of Sex. Araki is mostly known for his bondage photography, but there was a series of photographs he did that really blew me away. They were from his book Erotos, which contained black and white abstract images of flowers and other natural elements, juxtaposed with close-ups of genitalia, body parts, and various orifices. I wanted to buy an edition of Erotos, but all of them on eBay were in the triple digits.
In May, I took a quick trip to Boston to see my friend David's band Casual Burn play. Casual Burn is a punk band from New Orleans and they were on an East Coast tour, but both their New York and Philadelphia shows were on nights I worked. I was able to spend the day after the show at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, a museum that seemed to rival the MET in size and quality. My favorite piece in the museum was Elihu Vedder’s The Questioner of the Sphinx, which they had hidden away in a little corridor. I also took a trip to Cambridge and visited the Harvard Art Museums where I saw some rare Hannah Höch collages.
Lastly, I finished Cosey Fanny Tutti’s Art Sex Music which took me several months to work through. The book is largely a big call out directed at Cosey’s former lover and Throbbing Gristle bandmate Genesis Breyer P-orridge. Band drama aside, there was one particular moment that really bothered me: after their final split, Genesis violently assaulted Cosey in a jealous rage. I’ve seen Genesis speak on a number of occasions, most recently at Mast Books promoting Brion Gysin: His Name Was Master. It’s hard for me to reconcile the abusive partner I’ve read about with the intelligent, positive teacher I’ve seen at lectures. I realize their breakup happened over forty years ago, but I wish Genesis would acknowledge Cosey’s words. Some kind of attempt at accountability would be appreciated.
Other books I’ve read since moving to New York:
Chris Kraus - After Kathy Acker
Sarah Schulman - Conflict Is Not Abuse
Matthew Zapruder - Why Poetry
David Antin - Code of Flag Behavior
Daniel Kane - “Do You Have a Band?” Poetry and Punk Rock in New York City
Mike Diana - America: Live/Die
Music I’ve been listening to on the subway:
Black Tape For A Blue Girl - The Rope
Chris and Cosey - Technø Primitiv
The Birthday Party - Hits
Wall of Voodoo - The Index Masters
Some publishing notes:
Three poems of mine were accepted by Five 2 One magazine. They will appear in the spring 2019 issue.
I answered a questionnaire on smallness for the surrealist magazine Peculiar Mormyrid.
I’m working on a new chapbook called Seven Nightmares. After having it rejected by one press, I’ve decided I’m better off doing it myself. I plan on having it finished this year. I’m just waiting on some paper samples.