gastro

This military guy seated next to me on the plane from Portland to New York farted in his sleep the entire flight, and I thought to myself "this is why we must hold accountable not only systems of domination but those individuals who act as their agents as well."

There was something so slow, sad, and dumb about this man–name Gallagher, as the other military guy seated on the other side of me told me. His farts smelled toxic and made me think about his diet; what were they feeding him and where did he come from?

I hate to ever admit to myself or out loud to other–but here I am doing that–that sometimes it is very draining "being an artist" simply in that I am probably giving little parts of myself to others at a consistent rate. I think I've gotten better at managing that and getting new or similar pieces back, but after a week like this one, of smiley studio visits and a lecture–all fine and worthwhile–I feel washed out. And then I feel scared because if I get to keep doing this, then I'm always going to have to manage this rate of replacement problem.

I also don't like admitting this feeling because much like even making an artwork in the first place, it runs the risk of sounding like an announcement of my own importance. Do people really want so much of me that I could get hollowed out? What a pathetic, narcissistic fantasy! Is it really so exhausting? I should be so lucky!

The other layer to this is that its hard to know how absolutely disturbed this voice in my head is or isn't because it's not a good look to bring up in conversation the problem of people wanting you to do the thing you love, talk about yourself, and tell them how you did xyz.

Maybe this low-level fatigue is called for but I guess it has to be between me and me. And perhaps it is important to say that in admitting this to the no one of this blog's audience, I don't hope for sympathy; rather, I'd like for someone to tell me that I should drink more water and take a nap and I will feel better or something.

I bought so many books at Powell's. I had a beer and a martini with the students after crit, and then I walked to the bookstore a little drunk and felt really guilty smoking a cigarette on the street in Portland where I was certain I was being judged. At Powell's I had a coffee which ran through me very quickly . I only mention this because it was scary and evil-feeling. I couldn't concentrate and felt a full bodied sickness for those fifteen minutes. I focused more on book buying after I felt better even though I still felt a little drunk and unfocused. I wondered if I looked confused or weird browsing at such a wobbly pace. But there is no way I stood out to anyone. I'm trying to be better at remembering that people don't know me and therefore usually couldn't possibly think I'm acting out of the ordinary.

Anyway, in my drunk browsing I ended up with books exclusively by dead white men: Walter Benjamin book of short prose, script and production notes for Samuel Beckett's Film, Brecht, Ibsen's Peer Gynt, an old copy of Kafka's Amerika mostly for the illustrations, Virillio, Jean Cocteau. I texted Zoe and asked for a woman writer recommendation partially out of genuinely wanting to even things out, but mostly because I had this vision of the white choppy haired feminist cashier looking at my stack of books disapprovingly, hypothetically prompting me to vomit from the anxiety of letting everyone down even though it would be mostly people I categorically do not fuck with. So, I got Helen DeWitt's Last Samurai, and some Jean Rhys, both at Zoe's suggestion.

I read some of the DeWitt on the plane as we descended in to JFK and found it very good; I'd been reading some of a friendly acquaintance's debut novel on the ascent because Natasha, Emmanuel and I agreed to read it as a 547 book club sort of thing. I was liking it, but in reading the DeWitt, I realized I didn't like the woman we sort of know's debut that much. It was good (I think?) but maybe it was something about the prose or whatever, like it isn't particularly experimental in style but somehow feels very much like Reading with an exhausting capital R. Maybe this means that on the other side of it some exhausting Writing capital W happened. I'm finding it interesting but maybe a little joyless, and now I'm sitting up in bed after a nap wondering why I like any of the writing that I like.