The so called, “Feedom Tower” that looked something like the side view of the “Kentile” sign in Brooklyn, is dead. It was an awful design with the idiotic conceit of looking like the burnt out skeleton of the Stature of Liberty… what would that have actually said to people? Looks like they’ll build something a bit simpler… might even be elegant. Let’s hope… but I still think the THINK project was a better solution…. this new concept looks like one of those new New Jersey towers you see off in the downtown distance and dream of Hong Kong. In short, it ain’t to pretty, nor witty, nor novel, but at least it’s better than the previous stab. Still, the beauty of the twin towers, was the space between them and their monolithic (non-tapered) sillouhette. They were plinths for the sky… this is just another tower.











The dog kept me up all last night making a strange coughing noise. I think it’s the airconditioner, but the better half wants to get some sort of cough medicine for dogs… I’m trying to imagine a syrup for a dog and get ready for a meeting to show some e-books out in Greenpoint… When I get there, its nothing but computer glitches and sweat and general no sleep all night inarticulateness. I hope the work speaks for itself, because in this heat with no sleep I was barely functioning… dog seems better now…. but what a horrible noise…. Like ghosts choking.

I dreamt I was hanging out with Sonic Youth at the bus station trying to organize my luggage. My mother dreamt I was making abstract paintings like my old man’s, only looser (which I sort of am). I was rolling around in the subways yesterday seeing all the shapes I’m playing with (though I can’t imagine these paintings will stay like this too long… they seem more like architecture for little people to run around on). Seems like there’s a million things to do, and I have no desire to do any of them, but maybe ride around in the subway and look at shapes… or sleep and dream. The heat has me out of sorts.

I was again thinking of painting in the 80’s, when Clark came up to me asking for a light. Was it Schnabel, or Bill Jensen who was laying down the future of Abstraction? But Clark didn’t care, he was after coke and a beer and the belle in the stockings, who was dressed more or less like an International Harvester Combine. “Ahhhh college,” I thought. “What was she thinking?”

In the book it is written of triangles and the scent of flowers that fills the sunset street with its humid perfume of the New Orleans’ brothel quarter. There is the sound of Pop’s trumpet playing “Azalea” and three yellow dots and always the sweet wet air around you. It’s hot out and in the far foggy distance, you see a great tower lumbering down the Brooklyn streets towards Bethlehem…






I awoke from a college dream, where I’d somehow missed my last final in English and would maybe not graduate. This because my betther half’s mother was in town causing chaos. But on the good side, she was giving a me a big hug as she left in a car for the airport and I was waking up. Not bloody likely, but ain’t dreams nice?

I continue working acrylic onto the new canvases to ground them. I also keep experimenting with ways of abutting them and arranging them that links them aesthetically together. I suppose it is a continuation of How I scroll photos on the blog, or installed drawings at IT IN space.




After the studio, it was out in the sunset East Village for Margaritas with old friends in town from Providence (such a forboding city name)… Somehow the light and air reminded me of Providence and my misspeant youth. I seem to be struck with sudden overwealming bouts of Nostalgia lately. Wonder what that’s all about? I was even tearing up in Spielbergs fairly schmaltzy, The Terminal. He is the cinematic equivilant of a stripper, in that, you know you are being manipulated and lied to just for money, but you some how go through all the feelings anyway… in this case it’s tears and not a hard on, but it’s all the same at the end of the night. When I told Conrad that, he gave one of his aphorisms: “I don’t drink before noon and I don’t watch Spielberg movies…” or something like that. Speaking of Conrad, one of the people in from Providence used to stay in on Friday nights to watch Relativity…. We started talking about Vonnegut’s notion of the Karass (I’m still convinced that Vonnegut would be a better scifi writer to base a religion on than L. Ron Hubbard any day, but then we couldn’t watch Tom Cruise on Auto Destruct). Now that I remember it, Conrad was also dismissive of Vonnegut: “Literature Lite,” I believe he called him. Seems to me that most of our friendship is based on verbal sword play about culture… I’m suddenly nostalgic for my contrarian youth, where it was always about argument, just for sport… like hunting ideas (and fuck Good Will). I don’t have so many people I like to argue with any more…. just myself playing three characters in my head.

Continued with the three canvases and taped up my cut thumb to streatch two more. Thought I’d play with a Max Ernst technique of dipping a string into paint and laying it on the canvas.



It was an emotional day. The Godfather of this blog and probably fifty percent of the reason you’re reading it right now, was out in L.A. on a “medical adventure.” The past couple of days, I’ve been enacting a number of art ceremonies in lieu of praying. Chanting in Willoughby makeup, “I don’t want to die” was one. Abstract painting was another and then today I called his cell hoping to wish him well, only to find his beloved, who’d just left him in preop. Slightly shocked at how fast things move once they start moving, I decided I should walk bridges, like Arc Along the Watchtower… something physical to focus the energy on positive, forward motion. I ended up walking from Williamsburg over to Manhattan, down through Chinatown, back over Brooklyn Bridge and then back through Carrol Gardens to the Slope. You could call these places new and old stomping grounds. Turns out I was walking more or less the length of his operation (which was several miles).



















So I walked an enormous smile shape and meditated on the fragility of all things…. including my feet.



I made it home in a cloud of bubbles that floated and burst around me in sunset soap rainbows. “Forward,” I thought. “You must always move forward. It is the nature of living in Time.” Pop pop pop and it was then that I photographed “fragile” signs on a shipping box. My better half was out on the town, so I cooked some dinner and finally Before Sunset… the sequal to Before Sunrise. As I write this, it is sunrise. Vigil, vigil… I hear by e-mail that things are going well on the left coast.

Yesterday I spent spelunking through my storage space and finding old canvas. I’m thinking of stretching my old dropcloth from Soho as a way of transferring some energy from IT IN space. Then I did some Willoughby makeups and then I cut my finger making a sandwhich with stale French Bread.



Here’s the door to an old studio I summered in…. christ how many years ago? It is now part of Superfine Restaurant. I still can’t believe that Between the Bridges is gone. Never thought I’d see the day… where do all the Teamsters drink now?

I still can’t figure this “nice move” out. Someone is building a three or four story structure with a car built into the the third floor… do they want the engine? Is it like that kid’s book, “Mike Mulligan and Mary Ann” where they build the steam shovel into the basement of the town hall? Puzzling. Maybe it’s one of those Al Jaffe Mad Parking Solutions?


This is more or less the continuation of yesterday’s (read this mornings) blog. I woke up on the couch at 5:30 in the morning and posted the Hollywood episode. It seemed sort of dreamy and self contained, so this is the more technical (how to fix a drum) caffinated episode.





You can barely read it, but someone’s taged “Penelope” on this building. Joyce, or Homer rears his head again.




Stopped off at Major Tom’s on the walk back. He’d bought this set of drums in the East Village in the eighties when he first got to town and tried to be a rock star. Now that he’s having his Fitzgeraldian second American act, he’s refinishing his kit (its nice and simple with only three drums: base, snare and one tom tom… plus his new Swiss cymbols). I guess he’s beat it pretty bad, so he was doing some glue repair on the rims. We also had a couple of Spatens to celebrate Summer Solstice.




In one of those magic moments where you gets whatchya need, Tom had some big 68″ heavy duty streatchers he let me have. I had to carry them home through the streets, like Jesus with his cross, or at times like Buster Keaton with a board, nearly bonking people as I turned to snap a picture… also I was like a soldier marching with a gun… i kept switching shoulders in a drill-like manner and fealt like I should be doing some Full Metal Call and Response (This is my streatcher… there are many like her, but this one is mine… etc.)