Dance with me through the arts, my lovelies:
This week I did as much as possible - it’s restaurant week and I went to some great places to take advantage - a terrific omakase dinner, staggering chef-driven skyscraper fine-dining, a secret coffeeshop growing sunwarmed blackberries in its more-secret yard, some back alley speakeasies, and some cozy restaurants at ground level. Made new friends, caught up with old friends - busy week. Visited my neighbor in rehab. Saw a new one-person play called “Open” by Crystal Skillman. Kudos to the sound and light design (Emma Wilk & Sarah Johnston) on this simple, heart-wrenching play about a magician picking up pieces. I too am looking for—and finding—magic.
Discovered an amazing little book-themed art installation on the Lower East Side called The Book Shop.
Enjoyed round two of the excellent D&D game I’m playing in the Snakebite Society’s secret room in Tribeca - round three tonight! They’ll be opening to new players soon - sign up if you’re local - or if you’d wish to pop in some Sunday night if you’re from out of town! It’s amazing. The space alone is worth your while. (Also they are eager to bring in new OG players, nervous never-before-players, and even eager observers).
But I really delved into the Diane Arbus photography exhibit I saw at the armory this weekend. Her messy life was cleaned up and put into a long timeline that stretched across an empty space and was read as though it might explain her.
Or perhaps function as a kind of sterile artist statement:
The photographs were hung in intentionally mixed ways - timeline, subjects, mood - each photograph framed and hung on a black grid in a transparent maze, the backs of the photographs mirrored as was the entire back wall - you were lost in a vast fun house full of mirrors. Like all fun houses, this one was full of expectations.
This one is my favorite:
I found the curation quite intriguing. Photographs that might be offensive to some people were hung in awkwardly low or awkwardly high locations that required contortion to examine (notably a nude family with several children, a man with a face deformity, and a strange coupling of a foppish man on a park bench with a young boy) — I found the mixed-up timelines and subjects quite fun. You know I love games and my mind immediately started to sort the images into subject matter similarly to playing a game of concentration. Before I read any reviews or explanations, I had identified her penchant for circus people, strange couples, children who look older than they are, old people who look happier than you’d think, shadowy photographs, moments of unguarded personality, famous people looking real, rich people looking slightly tarnished, old women, people at nudist colonies, people with Down’s syndrome, drag performers backstage, strongmen and quirky beauty queens posing for hungry audiences… it was very much the fringes of humanity, but everyone relaxed and just being real. I wouldn’t say she normalized the fringes - more like she didn’t see them as fringe, just human.
I liked her vision.
My friend Luba (a quite brilliant portrait photographer - she took the terrific author photos of me on my website) and I must have discussed this exhibit and the photographs, the curation and the photographer herself for three hours total. Time flew by.
And with delicious coincidence, I ended the night (and week) in Joe’s Pub watching Martha Graham Cracker - a quite popular Philly drag show - absolutely brilliant talent, what a voice, and what a range of time periods in the music. Loved it - had particular respect for the stand-in pianist who sounded like he’d been in the band fourteen years but had actually stepped in two hours prior. Incredible really.
Diane Arbus wrote in her 1959 notebook:
“What’s left after what one isn’t is taken away is what one is.”
LIGHTING THE CREATIVE SPARK:
I’m supposed to be doing a public reading in Chicago and Ben Tanzer is going to be in conversation with me — the event is on August 7th in the evening on the Magnificent Mile. I had hoped to have more details and maybe even a promotional image for you by now!
Everything is on summer time - languid, torpid, reluctant to move forward. I’ll tell you more news when I have it. I’ve been writing only short things that are little more than words on a page. It is hard to finish anything.
RANDOM FINAL THOUGHT:
Is it possible to be an artist without anyone knowing what you have accomplished?
Was Emily Dickinson a poet while publishing anonymously and sending verses to her friends in lengthy letters ? (yes) Here is a list of 14 authors whose first books came out after the age of 50. You aren’t less accomplished if you are accomplished late. Getting your test in three minutes before the deadline doesn’t mean you will score lower than the person who finished first. But you’ve got to finish. So let’s go.
Let's go, indeed! Thanks for the motivation! 😊
As always, amazing.