proteanme

Took the train down to Eugene this weekend to visit my sister. I think this is the first time I’ve made that trip on Amtrak in the summer and the whole ride was kind of magical. I could have filmed everything I saw outside the window on the way down there. It was one of those days where everything you see seems like it has artistic potential. I took a ton of photos on my phone trying to capture it all - the sun, the lines, the colors, and the things you see because of the way train slips behind everyday life or runs along side it. I felt like I was in another world. Kinda of poetic is the only way I can describe it.I was going to read on the train trip home. It wasn’t sunny and I wasn’t expecting any more poetry. Plus, I was tired. So I bought a New York Times. But almost every time I looked up from reading I saw something that seemed to me cinematic and I ended up taking a bunch more photos.

Three days in a row with blue skies. It feels kind of fragile but I’m in love with it anyway, not jumping for joy in love, because that’s not me. But more a quiet “I just want to experience that you mean the world to me” kinda thing.  It reminds me of something a critic said about abstract expressionism about how you have to open yourself, let in the energy and spirit of the painting, and allow it to dance with your psyche.

Broken Promises by Paula Rego

Originally uploaded by proteanme

Just discovered Paula Rego this morning. Her work reminds me of Lucian Freud and John Currin.

Today, I ran across this abstract painter I’d never heard of, Maria Elena Vierira da Silva. Here’s a whole slew of her work. She was the first woman to receive the French government’s Grand Prix National des Arts in 1966. She reminds me a little of Julie Mehretu, who was featured in the New Yorker this spring. Or Julie’s work reminds me of Maria’s. Either way, they both get at something that can’t be expressed in words, even something as elusive as poetry. It’s got to be experienced without language. It’s got to get to a place inside you without all the jargon.

Larry Sultan died. He did some really great work. I hope one day I get to see it in person.

Been listening to Pitchfork’s best tracks of 2009. Lots of great singles there. More and more that’s what I find. Not so many great records, but lots of great songs. There’s this one by Matt and Kim, Daylight; it’s been running through my brain all day.

I’m really interested in reading Stephen Elliott’s Adderall Diaries. I’ve finally got some breathing space for leisure reading after spending my fall reading strategically this writing certificate program I’m in. Not that I’ve not read some great stuff, especially when it comes to Amy Hempel and Raymond Carver, but it’s not quite the same as the thrill of finding something new on your own.

I was thinking about marriage today. And how asking someone if they are married and how the question just assumes heterosexuality. And how if gay marriage ever does happen, asking “are you married” will be just that, and not some passive way of trying to parse the orientation of queers who don’t stand out.

• Drawings by Gisèle Celan-Lestrange
• From Rauschedberg’s Night Blooming Series
• Pitchfork’s Best tracks 2009
• A poem called Ray
  

• Joan Mitchell
• Grace Hartigan
• Dressing up
• Cooking

• Jenny Saville (again)
• Sonia Delaunay
• Arshile Gorky
• Annoying as hell blinking cat
• Chloe Sevigny (torward the end it’s nsfw)

Lately, I’ve had good luck with a run of recipes that feature some kind of ground meat. The overhead is low but the taste is high. So run don’t walk to your kitchen and try one of these: Curried pork noodles, Thai Basil chicken, and Green chili with pork.

With the economy so uncertain and having endured a round of layoffs, I updated my freelance site. Next up my resume.

At the end of 2008, I recorded a couple songs. These are scratch tracks and  here’s one of them Just Now (at 3am).

Rachel Papo is an Israeli who was born in 1970 in Columbus, Ohio but was raised in Israel. She began photographing as a teenager and attended a renowned fine-arts high-school in Haifa, Israel. At age eighteen she served in the Israeli Air Force as a photographer. These two intensive years of service inspired her current photographic project titled after her own number during service — Serial No. 3817131.