I have a tendency to repeat myself. Not because I don’t remember having said something the first time, but because certain events are indelible.
Monday
I had my teeth cleaned on Monday and later struggled with my use value. I dropped off three photographs for a local exhibition, saw a photographer friend, and confessed that I yearned to use a lens again, even though I am happy with my current practice— the one without a viewfinder or lens. The one that requires a tripod and is bunglesome and slow. The practice in which I pretend I am not making objects.1 The practice in which I deem the physical object an albatross while taking great pleasure huddled under the glow of a safelight watching an image appear.
Tuesday
The water bill arrived on Tuesday and at 2pm sharp, I had coffee with a friend in their studio. We talked about life and art, mortality and meditation. Just outside, a carpet of pine needles.
Wednesday
The Year of The Snake. Wednesday was the beginning of the Lunar New Year. It was noon somewhere, and I proceeded to slam two Red Bulls with a solemn oath that I would catch up on my bookkeeping and accounting.
Autotheory. I rewarded myself for completing phase one of the above task by listening to Maggie Nelson’s The Argonauts while staring at the progress bar on my Libby app. I am unable to listen to books while free-range multitasking and I am jealous of people who can. Reading, ingesting information of any sort in any form is a reverent activity I do first thing in the morning. I rarely, if ever, read in bed at night. I may have tried once about 20 years ago in accordance with one of those things that tired married couples do, but fuck it, by day’s end, all I want to do is tuck myself in tight before obliterating the events of the day.
I wasn’t sure I’d find it relatable. Anytime the word motherhood comes into play, or family, or child-rearing, or couples, or desire—the whole lot really, I feel as though I’ve walked into the wrong room at a convention center. But perhaps that is, in some way, the beauty of navigating Nelson’s writing because I am thoroughly enjoying the book, relating even, despite my only dependent being a blind, sometimes incontinent senior Jack Russell rescue who cost me a mint last summer at the doggo ER.
Thursday
On Thursday I made yogurt from scratch and rearranged my bookshelves according to Munsell's color theory in preparation for another day of accounting. The sky is corpse white and there is a constant dull roar from the air traffic on Thursdays.
I printed a few pinhole images for a solo show later this year, experimenting with different formats. The space is unusual and highly specific, and maybe it’s the fear of trying too hard (TTH) or being redundant that makes working site-specific susceptible to artifice, but I guess that could be true of all art when it is splayed out for dissection in the public. Nonetheless, I am nothing if not ambitious. I made a large test print and was surprised at how much I liked the wildly unsharp image with dog hair and dust— imperfections compounded by the enlargement.
The rest of the week is a blur of numbers and words.
I rearranged the bedroom and did the unthinkable by placing a short, but not short enough chest of drawers in front of a window after seeing Gary Schneider and his partner, John Erdman’s tiny Long Island bedroom on Apartamento. I no longer have a proper bed but maybe this is the year.
The weather is warmer, but still damp and death rattle white. I’m expecting paper samples to arrive this week.
I listed On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century in my previous post, but I’m highlighting it again as a quick read.
Lesson 1: Do not obey in advance.
It is written in language so clear than even an aspiring antifascist three-year-old could comprehend its tenets. It’s not rocket-science, nor does it pretend to be.
1,374 days left before the next presidential election, hopefully.
I am aware this is a heretical statement to photographers who feel “a photograph doesn’t exist until it is printed.” Ironically, the Internet can’t seem to cite the source for this quote definitively, attributing it to either Ansel Adams, Constantine Manos, or the painter Lucien Freud.
You are so industrious. I am thrilled to get back from the increasingly shorter dog walka and have the energy to look at Heather Cox Richardson's latest email. After that clean cat boxes...