finally !

Clayton Patterson’s Front Door Book is complete. I transcribed the interviews in the book, spent a few weeks making some edits in it and have (!) editing credits on the book’s back page. I also contributed a chapter based on an interview between Clayton and Triby.

Clayton (click to see what the The New York Times wrote about him) is a Lower East Side artist and community activist I’ve been fortunate enough to assist and intern for. The documentary about him, Captured, explains and displays his legacy – his time in jail after refusing to hand over to the district attorney his hours-long video documentation of the Tompkins Square Park Police Riot; his thirty years spent photographing every character in the Lower East Side; his artistic forays into a whole bunch of New York City’s 1980s creative scenes (hardcore shows, cross-dressing performances, etc). But this book is even more personal – 100 pages of color photographs and Clayton’s autobiography, in which he describes the experiences that inspired him to move to New York, as well as his commentary on the recent economic problems New York City has suffered.

The book is available through the O.H.W.O.W. gallery and publishing house HERE but I believe it will also be in the aNYthing store and at a number of other spots. . .Below are a few excerpts from the essay I contributed, A Window to the Soul of A Neighborhood:

The window, though – the Hall of Fame – is one of Clayton’s best-loved legacies. He photographed nearly everyone in his neighborhood, posting the images to the front window of his Essex Street gallery and frequently replacing them with new ones. The story of the Hall of Fame is the story of the Lower East Side: “The Lower was lovely in the early days,” Triby remembers. “Wow. It was a little out of control. It was really out of control…but it was…I don’t know…alive…It was more alive back then than it is now. And I remember that a lot of people used to look forward to seeing the window, making sure you were up, you know what I mean? Every week, you used to change the wall up. That was like the trend – always coming up to get on the wall.”
. . .
Even more emotionally and historically significant is Clayton’s primary reason for attempting to give the window its deserved recognition: “It documents the population that was here. There were so many people who didn’t have pictures of their moms, their dads, their brothers, their sisters, their grandmothers – and that’s what the window represents. It’s really incredible. If you go through the pictures, it’s shocking how many people are no longer here.” Triby, days before the interview, went through the boxes of photos himself: “It’s shocking how many people I grew up with in those pictures…It’s shocking how many of them have died.”

Clayton’s photographic archives are a documentation of personal lives and stories that wouldn’t exist otherwise; collectively, the people in the photos are part of one cultural biography. Clayton adds, “People don’t get it, but this is really rich. It’s certainly bigger than me. It’s a whole neighborhood; it’s all of us.”
. . .
His mission is to find people – people like Triby and others interested in telling their stories – “because we want to save that history. We still have access to something very rich. And it should be saved…” To give the neighborhood a history would be to give its former inhabitants a future. It would flesh out and enrich a rapidly changing New York City, a city that’s been both conducive and treacherous to cultural history. An entire culture, neighborhood and era exists almost solely in Clayton’s archives, an indication of the power of combined art and altruism. “We want to build the history that already exists,” he says, “to create something substantial out of these memories.”

paris, a movable feast; amsterdam, a movable sandwich

Awkwardly and accidentally intimate moments on my first day in Amsterdam:

-Walking past a woman in the Red Light District and smelling her perfume. I felt ashamed to be there; understanding my role as tourist does not sit well with me because I am an American and nobody likes us, anywhere. (“Once you stop producing shit in America,” said Artun’s roommate, “you’ll stop getting shit elsewhere.”)
Her makeup was caked in the way that makes otherwise either plain or beautiful women look like Fellini characters. I think, often, of doing this to my own face. To decorate my face with plastered makeup would be to distort myself, like a caricature or a comic, until I transcend my own appearance and my concept of self, like this woman did. I think it was Foucault who wrote of the frustration caused by aging, that to look in the mirror and see a weathered face is disturbing. To change and adorn it is a comforting simulation of Utopia, of being able to rid oneself of one’s own distasteful parts.
Every purple-reddish alien woman stayed inside except for her; she stood in the doorway and, when I walked near her, was looking over her left shoulder and making this girlish sound by smacking her lips and sighing incredulously. Her scent was strong and unappealing – like flowers dipped in the peculiar scent of my grandmother’s Coney Island bathroom – but comforting, as all perfume is comforting to many young girls, because it reminds us of mothers and accepting our womanhood.

-At a restaurant, I apologized to my waiter as he set down my drink; my fork was in the way. Without intending to be secretive or flirtatious, he crouched and whispered in my ear “That is okay,” which made me want to sleep, although such a moment was necessitated only by his location in proximity to both the table and me.

I’d eaten what I later discovered was space cake and felt immature for doing it. I wanted to finish my beer and my pizza and maybe K’s food, too, but I needed to leave quickly. The decorative statues of goddesses were beginning to whisper to me (much like the waiter was). They were saying “Your brain is melting, and you can’t ever leave New York because you always miss it too much!”

try to read more hemingway

I spent the weekend on a boat in the south of Holland and felt like this:

And now I look like a lobster.

1. Melons
2. Lawns
3. Summer flings
4. My best friend
5. Temporary flatmates

1. I was camping for the first time* in Bieschbos, where the Dutch were naked and friendly. The place is a swampy river land outside of a Southern town in Holland (Warik), occupied by the Underground during World War II. I was dry and warm for nearly 48 hours (score! – no sore throat anymore). I awoke before everyone else after falling asleep surrounded by sweet people and sank my feet in the mossy mud which felt so pleasing and unusual I wanted to eat it. Then L woke up and gave me a piece of melon and it was the freshest I’d ever had. It was wet and I could drink even its solid pieces; then I buried the skin in the sand.

2. I’ve rolled all over them for a week and the result has been several moments lacking self-consciousness; added up, I would say I’ve experienced nearly a whole hour sans self-awareness!

3. They do not happen with people; they happen with cities. (I had one with Paris. Let’s make it long term, baby, please.)

4. I wish she was here.

5. One of Artun’s flatmates looks like a bearded, tall Dutch king in sunglasses and tattoos, but a royal who would dance to minimal house. “Want to hear the news?” a girl asked when we went camping, and he said, “I hope it is all decaying out there, so we can turn around and come back here.” The two flatmates are so blonde and healthy looking and willing to jump from tall distances they make me want to me to eat vitamin C and cancel my ticket home, for the sake of being adventurous and self-sufficient, like them.

*Sleeping on the beach for a few hours in Fort Lauderdale does not count.

well, do you?

The really lovely Jazmin Venus Soto has stressed her brains out putting together a group show and it’s coming together nicely. I’ll have two photos in it, but you should come for everything else!

may 22nd may 22nd may 22nd
do u want 2 kno us?
New School University
66 West 12th Street (4th floor)

6:30pm art panel:
Ann Messner
Asher Penn
Aurel Schmidt
K8 Hardy

7:30pm exhibition:
Cammisa Forrest Beurhaus
Christiana Femano (theiglu.org/cmf)
Emily Alexander(madethemoon.blogspot.com)
Gina Murdock (GEM)
Gregg Cook
Horatio Baltz(mynameishoratiobaltz.com)
Jesse Hlebo(jesselhebo.com)
Leah Meltzer(leahmeltzer.com)
Monica Uszerowicz (monicalaura.wordpress.com)
Ryan Naideau
Ryan Whittier Hale(ryanwhittierhale.com)
Sarah Castronovo (flicker.com/tidalwaves)
Xavier Veal(ninjastatus.com)
Vanity (gelnweave.blogspot.com)

art zines featuring the work of:
exhibition artists +
Emma Choy Brown
Geoff Kim
Maya Barrera Loeb
Paige Lipari
Reni

seating for the art panel is limited, please rsvp:
doyouwant.toknowus@gmail.com

d r e a m s

It would be good if I could record mine because I feel all of them very intensely. They are filled with names I’ve never heard, or feelings with which I am so familiar they last well past the moment I wake up. Sometimes they become lucid.

I dreamed, once, the pilot episode of a television series starring Dave Chappelle, Claire Forlani and one of the guys from the Scary Movie films. It was about robots and beings that looked human but had the brains of machines. The “Scary Movie” guy was named Joe Tevron, and he had the capacity to become a robot, but spent his entire life living as a human till the moment he was stabbed in the head by part of the evil, robotic army. He then allowed his brain to become a machine, so he would not bleed out or die. In doing this, he fulfilled his destiny. He understood that in order to live, he could never be human again, and was now responsible for fighting these evil robots, who are attempting to take over the entire country via the government. Claire Forlani is the First Lady (I do not remember who the President was) and Dave Chappelle is like Joe Tevron, but became a robot much earlier in his life. They’re the “good robots.” Joe Tevron and Claire Forlani, I understand, will fall in love throughout the series, which will be a problem, since she’s married to the President and all. She wore a yellow dress in the episode and told her husband, confidently, that “they cannot destroy our will or our might.”

this is probably incorrect

Smokey Robinson & The Miracles’ “If You Can Want”: the law of syllogism expressed in a love song?
If you can want, you can need/
and if you can need, you can care/
if you can care, you can love/
so when you want me, I’ll be there

Also employs analogy: “This may take some time/but if time was money/I would be a millionaire.”

Smokey Robinson himself raises further questions. For example, why does he always look airbrushed?

giving thanks

Lately, I feel an incredible sense of discomfort, shaken by the state of the world – it is very easy to tune such troubles out, to dim them, but when they suddenly bring themselves to the foreground of the brain, the weight of it all is comparable to a game like Jenga, dominoes, building blocks; everything collapses. I feel an alien invasion is not only imminent, but necessary. Something is happening – ask Li’l Wayne what he thinks about the year 2012. Or nothing so significant is happening; I am simply witnessing the changing condition of all things. I worry, now, for Mumbai.

I take solace in the lighthearted. Illness and despair reduce one to an elementary state (again, the dominoes: too many thoughts will eventually equate to none): glancing at the television, at an old episode of Jay Leno that featured Michelle Obama, I unexpectedly shout “Beauty!” upon seeing her face.

subway mathematics

Current conditions having an effect on all variables: winter gear. Heavy jackets and scarves add considerable weight to the body.

We are on one of the older subways: the kind without the robot announcements and too-bright lighting. A couple – a man and a woman – are standing. I am in between two puffy-coated individuals. The nearest “window seat” is occupied by one person. Neither the man nor the woman choose to take the other window seat, presumably because one would be sitting and one would be standing. Across the train, the window seats are both taken, and a teenage couple – the boy has a skateboard that curves upward on only one end; I am puzzled – are kissing in the three-seat section.

At the next stop, the individual in the window seat on my side of the train exits. This gives the couple the opportunity to sit side-by-side. Unfortunately, the man to my left seizes both, reclining and occupying two window seats. I notice that one window seat (across the subway) is now available and that the teens have scooted over, making it possible for the standing man to sit next to them, and the standing woman to take the window seat.

But they do not. (Perhaps they just don’t feel like it.)

If I were a superhero, my power would be a much better version of this subway omniscience I possess. It would no longer be the result of a.) my being a ditz in the classical sense and having nothing else to think about or b.) the real troubles of the world being far too complex and worrisome to ponder. Instead, I would have subway omniscience because I’d be strong and powerful and have the ability to, invisibly, push people into the seats they so righteously deserve. Pregnant lady, this one’s for you.

babies.

Question: Why are some people freaked out by them?

Answer: Because they represent humans in their most elementary, near-primordial form. This is obvious. But it’s like feeling squeamish at the the sight of one’s own blood: because it sustains your life but is always hidden, it is simultaneously a part of you and separate from you. Babies reveal our biological makeup. They come into existence just months after the strands of their DNA decided how, exactly, they would exist. They’re people, but more accurately, they’re liminal: nearly people-people. A lack of physical contact from a baby’s caregiver – or an obvious display of worry about parenting on the mother’s part – can cause an infant to become depressed and anorexic. Looking at babies is glimpsing into human biology and psychology.

Also, some of them look like aliens.

But not my niece!

don’t bite your friends

Yo Gabba Gabba’s co-creator is a member of The Aquabats. The show is an audio-visual nightmare of colors and explosive sound. The celebrity appearances, though, have me hooked; I do not mind watching the show with my one-year-old niece. Biz Markie teaches kids a “beat of the day.” (Really!) Considering this and Baby Einstein, another set of programs my niece enjoys, I’ve compiled a list of qualities that, when combined, create the perfect formula for very young children’s shows. The goal is to keep them interested and engaged. The trick:

-Vibrant color

-Music ranging from “twinkling” to “frenzied”; the guiding principle is that it must inspire movement (toe-tapping, baby slamdancing)

-Lyrics one can remember for at least the next two decades. For example: “Don’t! Don’t! Don’t! Bite! Your friends!” or “This is the song that never ends.”

-A focus on images that look tactile and touchable. A literal focus: you will notice the camera lingers on such objects in these shows.

-Most important: other children. If there’s one thing babies love, it’s babies.