modern love

me either, bro.

and as always, more here.

The best 8:40 you'll spend today

way up on way up on way up on

Rainy Saturdays

= Zizek on youtube.

JULEZART

My talented and connected sister in wanting to have a good time all the time Molly does lots of zanily awesome art things for Cochella and asked me to design a piece for Julian Casablancas, one of my faves. I admit I almost died when presented with the chance to make something that will end up in the hands of JC, who has topped my list of currently breathing ballers since I was about sixteen. So hopefully he'll think it's kind of really fucking awesome.

"Yalls faith has got to be greater than your fear. " -- JC

Here it is:






Also, I'm currently available for hire, world.

gifts 4 evry1

New stuff here!!!

Tracy Emin

"There is nothing girl about me anymore, its gone. I've always said it is sex that got me out of bed in the morning, sex that keeps me in bed... Now my life is very different, now it's definitely all about the ideas and about being in control of myself, understanding myself a lot more. That's quite interesting, also I'm afraid of that as well. I wonder where it's all going." --Tracey Emin

thanks to Elsa for the link!

Answers to the End of the World: PART 1

Yu Hong, Witnesses of the Rise, 2000


In celebration of Blogtrack's first birthday, I'm answering questions sent in by loyal readers with a high tolerance for douchery. For past month, the questions and comments have rolled in, and they'll be addressed in this exclusive two-part special.
I'd also like to thank those without whom this blog never would have made it into virtual reality:
Kelly, who urged me to further extrapolate on my disturbing views of the world for her enjoyment, and my mom, who, upon realizing she gave birth to a loud-mouthed megalomaniac, suggested a blog as a proper receptacle for my gratuitous unfounded opinions. Here's thanking her and hoping that she doesn't read this.

And now, the answers to a nation's most pressing questions.

does every artist living in a post-9/11 world have to acknowledge/understand 9/11 in their art?
"Post-9/11 world" means post-American security world, or post-American as the most popular kid in the class world. Some of the other kids apparently hate us, and others feel bad for us, and others don't care. If anything, we (Americans) are a little less sure of our place in the world, our place in America and even if our government is actively hostile toward us. 9/11 neatly bisected the country into opposite sides, so we're told, and although we complain about it, we actually love it. Can flip on the TV and either feel like Jon Stewart of O'Reilly gets us. Everything we do is a political statement. As people in their early 20s, we can can eat meat, get married or drive a car or not, and either choice is probably an indicator of how we vote.
I think acknowledging or understanding 9/11 in one's art is inevitable, as our entire country, and our entire world is now directly or indirectly defined by that event.

what's the deal with sleeping around?
Ahem. Certainly not something I know much about. But: when there are no rules, no one wins. So why does it seem like people still lose?
On the other hand, why the hell not? We're all just people, and we all want the same thing. Someone very wise once said "it's all about communication." Hurt feelings are not a good idea. ahem.

if i told you i liked electronica and folk music, what face-melting tracks would you put on my mix-tape?
"Sweet Love For Planet Earth" by the Fuck Buttons followed by "The Weight", "Carey" by Joni Mitchell and "Boyz" by MIA, "Loud Pipes" by Ratatat, "Helpless", "Baby's On Fire" by Brian Eno and "I'm Sensitive by Jewel." And that's just side A.
Your pants will be off before that tape comes close to flipping. And Neil Young protects against hurt feelings.

how the fuck are you pulling off that denim vest?
Stephen Hawking couldn't begin to guess.
Seriously.
But here's a hint: I apply it every morning with sweat from the back of Bruce Springsteen's neck, straight from the back of that '68 Chevy rolling down those hot New Jersey nights circa the Nixon administration.

is obama the man we've been waiting for? (and what do you think about the slew of hollywood movies coming out about superheroes that are actually watchable?)
I like this question, because, yes, I really do think he is what be have been waiting for because we truly believe he is. I haven't seen the country this excited since the Kennedys were alive and running. We all know that he won't save the day just by showing up, but he'll be the first president chosen by a new America. I think the blood of the America that quietly but truly cares about things, or desperately and angrily wants to see change, has been boiling long enough that it will win this election. We are sick of war and money, and know we have enough to enjoy life and want to, and that's what we believe Obama will let us do.
As far as superhero movies that are watchable.... The Dark Knight filled my quota for probably the rest of my life. I'd like to see more original ideas on the screen, smaller movies that respond to the world in it's current state rather than some re-heated idea by Hollywood from some white guy post-WWII. I really liked Tropic Thunder, but there was nothing near ANY sort of role for a woman, perhaps besides Tom Cruise's assistant who appeared for almost three seconds. For such a slyly intriguing film that attempts to serve Hollywood's own embarrassing tendencies back to it, it would have been nice to expose the sexism synonymous with Major Motion Pictures (unless Ben Stiller is ahead of the curve and purposefully excluded females from the film to make just that point and to see who would notice. Might be giving him too much credit, but I never would've thought he'd pull off a scathing meta-orgy of Hollywoodian ridiculosity ). I realize that some films are unavoidably male-centric, but the willingness with which we accept this is pretty startling.
Related: Barack is Harvey Dent. Obviously.

olympics: douchey excuse for hyperconsumption/NBC to jerk itself off on pro-america slobber OR a troubled world being united through athletic prowess/forced to accept china's fucked-upness as our collective capitalist creation and maybe an opportunity to rearrange our priorities?
The world is too small for the Olympics now. It's like shaking hands every so often with the people you share a house with. It's like we used to all be neighbors who got together once a month but now we're sharing in a living room and getting sick of looking at each other's faces. America and China both think the other one spends too much time in the bathroom and each thinks the other is using their expensive lotion.
It would nice if the Olympics were an opportunity to get together with your family in a respectful way and define what you are, what you're not, and how you can be a better person, but like most families, everyone just wants to show everyone else up. Conceptually, on a wide scale, the Olympics fall short of achieving any sense of global unity and understanding. We're all too happy to go to our rooms at the end of the day and knock on each other's door when we need to borrow a sweater.
And christ, the triumph of the American spirit is any advertisers wet dream. Global unity is conveniently sponsored by Visa while we celebrate universal triumph in a country that's killing its minorities and protesters? I think skeptics are justified and cynics are vindicated in this case.

...and what's the deal with china?
Contemporary chinese art at SFMOMA! Like that one artist who said: "Buddhism is a good dream, but it's just a dream." And the curator who wrote: "In modern China, young women are nothing more than tourists in their own dreams." IE: THIS (globalization, a nation that's sold it's soul for a flat screen and a spot at America's dinner table of excess and doom) is a bad idea!
Now we know that Tinanmen Square is a long national nightmare that no one can wake up from. There seems to be more class disparity than we can ever imagine: part of the country is turning their kids into the world's best divers, some of them are CEOs, and the rest are either being displaced by the government for damns and mines or making our electronics. Maybe they'll have a French Revolution-style uprising in a few years: the proletariat versus the ruling class. Either way, it's obvious they can't power the train they're fueling with myopic blend of capitalism and oppression forever.

...brian eno?
Genius. Friends with David Byrne, the one reason U2 is anything more than Modern English or Bow Wow Wow. Someone can that man's DNA. It's worth everything.

when can we get a fucking coffee machine?
GOOD GOD NOT SOON ENOUGH

No is Boring

Art by Katie Loesel, Burlington, Vermont based artist

"The critical impulse... is to suspect, doubt, tear at, and to take something apart to see how it works. Which of course is completely the wrong thing to do to art. I used to tear books apart, and tear art exhibits apart - I was an art and book critic for a few years in San Francisco - but my urge to do that was born of bitterness and confusion and anger, not out of any real need to help or edify.... The worst sort of critics are (analogy coming) butterfly collectors - they chase something, ostensibly out of their search for beauty, then, once they get close, they catch that beautiful something, they kill it, they stick a pin through its abdomen, dissect it and label it. The whole process, I find, is not a happy or healthy one. Someone with his or her own shit figured out, without any emotional problems or bitterness or envy, instead of killing that which he loves, will simply let the goddamn butterfly fly, and instead of capturing and killing it and sticking it in a box, will simply point to it - 'Hey everyone, look at that beautiful thing' - hoping everyone else will see the beautiful thing he has seen.

...

The thing is, I really like saying yes. I like new things, projects, plans, getting people together and doing something, trying something, even when it's corny or stupid. I am not good at saying no. And I do not get along with people who say no. When you die, and it really could be this afternoon, under the same bus wheels I'll stick my head if need be, you will not be happy about having said no. You will be kicking your ass about all the no's you've said. No to that opportunity, or no to that trip to Nova Scotia or no to that night out, or no to that project or no to that person who wants to be naked with you but you worry about what your friends will say.

No is for wimps. No is for pussies. No is to live small and embittered, cherishing the opportunities you missed because they might have sent the wrong message.

There is a point in one's life when one cares about selling out and not selling out. One worries whether or not wearing a certain shirt means that they are behind the curve or ahead of it, or that having certain music in one's collection means that they are impressive, or unimpressive....And if anyone wants to hurt me for that, or dismiss me for that, for saying yes, I say Oh do it, do it you motherfuckers, finally, finally, finally."

excerpted from a 2000 email correspondence between Dave Eggers and a writer for the Harvard Advocate.

anti-formalism

And I will stroll the merry way
And jump the hedges first
And I will drink the clear
Clean water for to quench my thirst
And I shall watch the ferry-boats
And theyll get high
On a bluer ocean
Against tomorrows sky
And I will never grow so old again
And I will walk and talk
In gardens all wet with rain

Oh sweet thing, sweet thing
My, my, my, my, my sweet thing
And I shall drive my chariot
Down your streets and cry
hey, its me, Im dynamite
And I dont know why
And you shall take me strongly
In your arms again
And I will not remember
That I even felt the pain.
We shall walk and talk
In gardens all misty and wet with rain
And I will never, never, never
Grow so old again.

Oh sweet thing, sweet thing
My, my, my, my, my sweet thing
And I will raise my hand up
Into the night time sky
And count the stars
Thats shining in your eye
Just to dig it all an not to wonder
Thats just fine
And Ill be satisfied
Not to read in between the lines
And I will walk and talk
In gardens all wet with rain
And I will never, ever, ever, ever
Grow so old again.
Oh sweet thing, sweet thing
Sugar-baby with your champagne eyes
And your saint-like smile....

Van Morrison, Sweet Thing, 1977

painting: Elissa Gore

Re-think that cell phone upgrade

chrisjordan.com


...even though it's only like 30 bucks for a sweet new razr with tons of features you don't need.

Creation/ Destruction/ Transcendence

"To grossly use more than you need, to destroy, is biologically unsound. Much of the production and consumption of modern societies is not necessary or conducive to spiritual and cultural growth, let alone survival, and is behind much greed and envy, age-old causes of social and international discord."
-Gary Snyder

"A well-ordered harmony does not begin with the self, but rather places the world before life, life before man, the respect for other beings before the love of self."
- Claude Levi-Strauss

But, transcendence is still possible.

Lizard Brains and Extraordinary Courage

Christopher Wool
Art
"People don't make literature, architecture, and art-- the culture makes those things," says Dave Hickey, art critic, lizard brain and compadre of Lester Bangs and Hunter S. Thompson.

Joanie D. is a punk. But is she a traitor to her gender?

&Politics
Now it's only 403 days! "What progressives should be focused on now is taking on the political movement that brought Bush to power. In short, what we need right now isn't Bush bashing—what we need is partisanship," says Paul Krugman.

Hitchens on Bhutto's extraordinary courage.

An Open Letter to Dave Eggers

Dear Dave,

Oh how our world has changed. A mere half-decade ago, we were living in pure bliss, bathing ourselves in the excess our existences had lent us-- needs for survival as humans more than met, we had advanced to the next level-- the search for self-realization. Steeping in the question of what it is to be human, allowed to focus on what makes us all so unique as humans, and striving to secure immortality, you were allowed to write a memoir.

AHWOSG was a lightning bolt. So painfully self-conscious, equally loathing of and reverential to the self and world, you did nothing less than peel back all the layers of the psyche of a human who is fully alive in the world right now.
You Shall Know Our Velocity is an equally revealing portrait of 21st Century American Man as prisoner of himself within the dying world we all inhabit. Less autobiographical but still as self-focused, Velocity delivers the same psychologically violent meditations on the self-in-world. Will is bleeding with a (justified(?)) hatred of himself and the world (we all are! or should be!), and the book is a piece of of terrible beauty.

Next came How We Are Hungry, a collection of short stories that followed the lives of numerous disillusioned twenty-somethings; probably solid but not completely memorable. By this point, you were a bona fide literary rock-star and could do whatever you wanted, and did! although critics had shifted from falling over themselves to try to find the most imaginative superlatives to describe your art, to wondering if you really had the audacity to try and assume the voice of your entire unconscious generation. (Genius' title predicted its reviews; Hungry was "prankish".) (although you know critics don't really matter, are the soul-sucking flatworms of the artist.)

Then, the realization that things are naturally and culturally ending became too heavy to bear. You wanted to shed your skin, escape into someone else's. What Is The What was an insistent departure from the portraits of the young, white and privileged, and a very conscious effort to absolve yourself of the sins of the white male. A first person account of the Sudanese genocide, you assume the voice of refugee and orphan Valentino Achak Deng, telling his true story and doing your part to bring this modern holocaust further into public attention.

The reason I'm writing in the first place is that I read your Opinion piece last Sunday in the New York Times and it reminded me of how much I miss your art-- and I wanted to let you know that just because the world needs a lot of help right now, we need inspiration too. I understand your deep hatred of yourself and the world-- I feel the same way-- how else can we feel?!?! Why did you give up on us? Is it because you're getting older? Because you're a dad? If that's the case, I want to thank you and wish you well. But if it's because you think the only way you can change things, help the world is by publicly taking a political stance and throwing money at politicians, that's depressing and dead. Your opinion piece was boring, quiet. Your contained disgust could've come from anyone.

Did you become angry at your success-- hate the world more? Was it the old Woody Allen thing-- you didn't want to belong to any club that would accept you? You wanted the world to love you, and then when it finally did, you decided it wasn't really that great. Are you pulling a Dylan-at-Newport? (you too were saddled with the "voice of a generation" curse.)

I'm only saying all this because I loved your work from the page I met you almost three years ago; sure I was young and clueless, probably more than a little self-involved. Your book was pained and beautiful; I saw in you both a brother and a mirror to the future, a courageous human who was figuring things out for the rest of us.

With Admiration,
Emily

(And if you think this is revenge for when you rejected my piece for McSweeney's a few years ago (it was about a boy. sorry.), I promise, it's not. I'm over it. I was just kidding-- I was drunk when I sent it. (Actually, I really hope you didn't read it, and that the name on the rejection email was not your alias.) Also, I stopped reading McSweeney's about two years ago because it's so damn boring. But Valencia 826 sounds great. I would love to help.)

Cuckoo Cuckoo

How I lost my boy How I lost my boy How I lost my boy How I lost my boy

The king did not die

He kept floating past my eyes

And singing his songs

Life was good now death's all wrong

Cause you can't feel a thing

No heart flutters in late spring

You just drift and pray

For sun-kissed golden days

And I can't hold what's in my hand

Don't do any good to say this isn't what I planned

And little kids slide down on the steel park slides

Little kids can't play with things that've died

Sometimes all I want's one favorite song

And two to three minutes don't seem so long

And where's my mom, I wanna hold her tight

She's so far away from crowded nights

I'm going cuckoo cuckoo

Well I'm going cuckoo cuckoo

I'm going

I said please stay

You can see me, don't go away

I can't see the landscape

Please describe it's amarynthian haze

It's odd where I am

They're people, you're not like them

They just look away

For rain-quenched golden days

My tears quenched five feet along

And I can scream but cannot yawn

And people gonna come and people gonna cry, we cry!

We just hope it's worth the age we die

Don't try to erase what you have done

Put your favors in a mouth, and kiss it if it wants

And where's my friend, I wanna hold him tight

He's so far away from mountain light

I'm going cuckoo cuckoo

Well I'm going cuckoo cuckoo

I'm goingAnd I can't hold what's in my hand

Don't do any good to say this isn't what I planned

And little kids sliding down the steel park slides

Little kids can't play with things that've died

Sometimes all I want's one favorite song

And two to three minutes don't seem very long

And where's my mama, wanna hold her tight

She's so far away from crowded nights

I'm going cuckoo cuckoo

Well I'm going cuckoo cuckoo

I'm going

-living human minds

American River

American River, Karen Williams Edelmann
courtesy of artbackroom.com