Velvet rabbit, burlap rabbit, perils of writing in second person.
Platonic diatribe between pals— do you think artists eventually cross the threshold into cockiness by force? Do you think it requires self-definition to be recognized outside?
I think conceptual art ought to be a little more nonchalant. Pollock’s year is over, baby, move aside for the Minimalists, the black-on-white instructions, egg and butter worked an hour or so, a piano shred to bits. Take no pills or take all of them or take the cigarette and throw it all the way across the street— but tell the truth. Because someone is reading— your eyes burn with a Vertigo protagonist and now you really are a man. Two big bulging eyes red-green, red-black. Bleed vision like the cellophane screen.
You're never seen but always watched and now you're doing the watching. Boyish. Baah-eish, in that posh accent, dark room, anyone becomes you. What a great thing to survive at such a dear age, what a fitting, quiet point of confluence. Those standoffs you pretend all of your peers are having, the duels you read about, the passion, how much more you to have a half-laugh and a half-life and a lecture all in one. Like a Hawk, you will remember. You're full of references that nobody needs to understand you— you're already transparent. Should I be once more a craftsman?
Friday is a defense you walk into like a firing range with a cassock on. Red burns so nicely into black— you want it all to burn. The work should shatter in front of your admirations, leave you with nothing, that's when you can finally go back to words, to worlds like a good well-tamed academic. Maybe craftsman is a poor shoe to cobble, maybe what you need is less.
