add end umm...

I would like to offer a sincere apology to the invisible yet unimaginary readership of Sasparilla Simperstein; I have been unloading (uploading?) a whole lot of wordly blah-blahs here recently. I apologize for the indiscretion. I promise only that I will continue doing whatever I feel like doing here.

One of the reasons that I have been writing so much is that the semester has ended and I suddenly have time on my hands. But this is less important that the fact that I have been working on a project which is writing-based. Well, all of my work has to do with writing, but I have never really brought my "creative" writings into the work. Rather the projects focus on writing as a practical communication between two people or a conversation with a specific goal. The most creative language included in the work usually is the interpretation generated by the viewers.

After working on "Tin Can Carousel" with L- G- I was thinking about how, despite contemporary art's all-consuming-bloblike tendency to absorb all forms of expression into the gallery/museum/biennial world, there are still things that are not acceptable forms of expression. These include many aspects of writing - anything that smacks of entertainment, any jokes that are funny, any in-depth exploration of character, any appreciation of the beautiful flow of words that is not an ontological investigation into the nature of language, etc. One quite silly issue is simply LENGTH - the novel is some years away from being coopted by the art world. Some might say that artists should not ask they viewers to read long texts because there are usually no seats in the galleries, and the viewers have very little time so it would be asking too much of the viewer to present too much text. Now, I've got some sympathy with people who ask ethical questions about these relationships. But I think that these ideas disrespect the viewer by underestimating their capacity to invest time and energy into their appreciation of art (though I should say that there is a lot of stomach-turning, truly impenitrable vinyl writing glued to some walls out there). It is true that most people these days can barely read and are usually whining lazy fucks in most respects. Not that I expect that all of my viewers are my IDEAL VIEWERs who have the motivation and ability to become deeply involved with the work. I hope that I can relate to people on many levels. But I'm not going to gyp those who commit themselves to a deeper reading of the work. Huh, "reading." We can also talk about how art "uses" dance, film, poetry, music, science, sociology, the list goes on and on. There are also a thousand other modes of thought that are forbidden from the appreciation of art, some with good reason, some just seem to be a matter of tradition - most of these can be boiled down to ideas about the voice of authority, of expertise, of opinion. The righteous motivation for this exclusion is the amazing mystic truth that artists communicate with a visual language that goes places where words can never go. But I don't think that words are entirely useless in helping us find new entrances to this place.

Anyway, back to what I was saying about my writing. I think I have developed a kind of style here on this blog. Now, I don't want to confuse what I am saying about style with claiming that this is GOOD writing - this blog, with it's small readership of friends and allies, is in a semi-private space that just happens to be visible to the public, like the front yard. Anyway, the elements of style that I am concerned with include (and, really, stop me if I am being a jerk here); use of descriptive imagery that relates to my drawings, an often-tangential but basically expositional mode of communication, the use of nonsense as a device for changing our relationship to the topic and a focus on exploring metaphor through nonsense, use of language that is inspired by technology, contemporary physics, and consciousness studies, and a tone that hovers between confessional, mystic, and science-fiction. (I would like to say that I know that I am untrained in the study of language as literature, and that this analysis seems rather incomplete and shallow, but I think it will do for a start.)

Now, what I would like to focus on is the difference between the style and concerns of my writing (especially on this blog) on the one hand, and my recent artistic practice on the other hand. I think these two parts of my creative life have many similarities, but some obvious differences as well. In my mind they are not so much divorced as symbotically separated, like those seizure-prone patients who in older times had the nerves between the two hemispheres of their brains cut.

The two modes of communication inform each other, but are never united. But what I would like to do is to make a more concerted effort to bring over some of the concerns from my writing here into my practice. Why? Because this writing is actually quite personally meaningful to me. Perhaps it is easier for me to be true to my own ideas here because I am less familiar with the history, especially of contemporary writing. I have been asking myself about my art practice - asking what is worth doing, asking myself why I am working, what my "voice" is as an artist. I think part of the answer is to cross over some of the ideas from here, be they embarrassing, inappropriate, or whatever.

Now, let's move out of this analysis mode and talk about these embarrassing ideas. What would it be like if I were to allow myself to write out these futuristic fantasies in an unobfuscated style? What if I allowed my silliest characters to pop their heads into my serious drawings? What if I made the same kind of bullshit-prone mysticofuturistic annunciations in my work as I do on my blog? Ahhhh - shit. It's all good to talk this talk, but it's hard to figure out how to do it. I have some ideas though. I am making some basic changes to some work that is already started, moving some clearer ideas in, pulling it away from the colder approach I was taking earlier - an approach that kept the thousand flashing sick ideas in a bottle in my mind, an approach that used violent, rational methods to create a cold, false hand that moved people and ideas around like virtual chess pieces. I just want to let some of my disgusting self squirt through the cracks and put some nice pollution marks on my work.

Too many damn words here today. Again, it's theory and praxis. Between thought and expression lies a lifetime. Maybe I aught to be drawing pictures when I am at this damn plastic pane, but both actions, all actions, seem like I'm just jerking myself around. Only the finished product seems real to me, realler than reality, the only thing real enough to live for.

Other than a hundred thousand other reasons for living.

As a post-script I should say that I do give these things a light read-through before I publish them, but I hardly ever take anything away.