The Nature of City, Barry Bonds and Lobster

For the first time in nearly two years I’m making art outside of Brooklyn.
I don’t take many vacations in general, the art residencies I’ve attended count as “vacations” to me. I work a lot and unfortunately my brain does too. Often I can’t figure out which needs a break more, my brain or my body. It took me until the age of thirty to realize that both are intrinsically connected (I’m 32 now). If I didn’t start to stop and smell the roses my art would suck and my health would crash and burn. This trip to Cape Cod (Orleans to be exact) is just what the doctor ordered. However, at first I had trouble getting acclimated. To begin with I have an estranged relationship to nature. I often joke with my natively natured friends that I was raised in a dumpster. Okay, that’s an exaggeration, I just played in some and my mother would cry if she heard I went around telling people that. Being raised by a single mom we didn’t exactly make regular trips to exotic lands. Philly has some nice parks but they’re all within the scope of half-day-trips. The kind of nature I’m talking about is the kind you could die in (*see earlier blog entry about Emily). That’s not to say that I didn’t almost die in Fairmont Park, Philly.
I remember one insane sunny summer day me and Howie Goldman dressing up as ninjas, running through junkyard creeks and throwing Chinese stars at each other. Not to mention the impromptu bon fires made of trash to celebrate victory (and pubescent angst). The quiet kind of nature is what I’m experiencing now.
Or maybe it’s experiencing me considering I feel greatly outnumbered by woodland animals, insects and deadly wild growths. I feed the bunnies carrots and run from the wasps. I sweat and smell gross and Lucky doesn’t mind… until it’s time to get in to bed. I’m making some work in an attic studio guarded by a Ben Shahn portrait – awesome! Now this is the difficult acclimation part: On the way up here I thought I’d be alone with my thoughts, besides Lucky that is. I pictured that I’d have immediate revelations in my new environment. All the good stuff would glow and all the bad stuff would fade. For the first week I was here though, I thought very little. At times my mind was semi blank. Calm I guess.
I didn’t want to think about the direction of my work, the benefits of clean living, what to do about family problems, if the Knicks will suck again this season.
I found myself just looking around, breathing, eating slowly. This is what I realized: So much of city living is reacting. There is a constant sense of fighting to survive (especially on a 90 degree day in Red Hook). All the SUV’s running you down, the thugs, the deadlines, the lines, running to stand still… and so on.
Your body is in a constant state of bracing and your mind in a constant state of reacting. Well out here there isn’t much to fight against, hence the semi blankness. The trouble with making art was that I’d have to reconnect to NY art world Aaron to complete the circuit. It took about a week but I’m back to thinking about not-so-zen things. When I go back to Brooklyn I’ll have to reconnect with bunny feeding Aaron to keep things level.

…So Barry Bonds did it. We knew it was coming. And he knew all the questions
about steroids were coming along with it. One popular argument “for” him is that plenty of ball players have been doping for years… so what’s the dif? My argument “against” him (and that) is that we have to start looking at people individually. Individuals must be accountable for their own actions! If you’re wondering how baseball history will digest this, just picture five years from now. There is no way he’s going to be held as deeply in collective heart of
baseball as Hank Aaron.

…Lobster. Hey, if you’re cool with eating giant cockroaches with claws, that’s your thing.