...on taking that back

...or on taking joy in something

you know, it just figures that you want to spend a crappy monday feeling crappy about yourself and just having a big ol pity party when something this good comes along to remind me of what i take joy in. you see, it wasn't too long ago when the nice lady asked the bastard if he takes joy in anything anymore and for that matter, have i ever. truth to tell is i do. my problem is that the bastard takes himself way too seriously to the point of detriment. my friends outside of the office tend to find me humorless sometimes and i look like i'm having an awful time even if i am not. next time you're at a party and you see the cranky looking bald guy in the corner dropping gin like it's tap water smack him in the head and say, "lighten up ya bastard". that said, let's start with a history lesson.

before the bastard was a cynical graphic designer on a collision course with disaster, the bastard was a cynical art student on a collision course with disaster. i focused on painting, i was pretty decent at it. it made me happy then and i think taking it back up may be the catalist for bringing the bastard around again. i missed the boat on sculpture due to the fact that my sculpture teacher opted to lecture us on sexual politics rather than how to use the medium. the fact that connor (that's her name) did installations which at that point was foreign to me didn't help either. you see the bastard went into art school thinking that painting was to be done in the style of the renaissance and sculpture was an object you made from the medium not a room as the object so i got a bad start on sculpture. apparently, the poet from hotlanta whom i took the class with refreshed my memory with a story of my adventures in sculpture which is a testament to my crap memory. it goes like this.

one day connor was lecturing the class about the evils of the patriarch and how awful men are and gave us all a handout from sexual personae by camille paglia, and the bastard was sitting next to the poet from hotlanta and i raised my hand during the class. connor said, "yes, what is your question?" i asked her if i should get out then. class got a laugh and i forgot this incident for all these years.

anyway, i love art and i love the ironies that come associated with it. whether it's going to the greene street gallery to see a giant plaster apple core to to stand back while the guy in the black turtleneck telling the girl in the peasant dress next to him how he feels that the piece in indicative of the fall of man and can i have your phone number. or if it's a trip to see a jackson pollack retrospective and sitting quietly in front of arabesque and thinking about how the space floats and takes me to a magical place in my subconciousness. either way i tend to gravitate towards painting more than installation but i make an exception for christo. his work is both laughable and inciteful. i've paid attenbtion ever since he covered the reichstag in cloth. recently we had an exhibition by him called the gates and allthough bastard did not walk to the whole walk, he did get to see some gates on the way home from somewhere in manhattan, i don't remember where (there goe that memory again). either way, it ran for a good part of the winter and christo's wife said alot of esoteric shit that makes the bastard laugh at the art world and the hype it creates for itself.



that said, here is the taking joy part. for the last month, there has been an exhibition moving up and down manhattan on a garbage scow by robert smithson called "floating island". it's essentially a garbage barge made to look like central park. i'm sure it's menat to mean much more than that buit the bastard doesn't care at this point (re: installations). either way, this tug boat goes up and down manhattan with this barge with trees on it every from the 17th of september until the 25th.



apparently on saturday, somebody put a miniture "gate" on a radio controlled motor boat and chased the central park barge around. i laughed so hard that it momentarily shook me out of my funk long anough to remember something that i take joy in. thank you art world. thank you for making the bastard feel better.

—the bastard