"DEAR LEADER"

Way way back when, so far back in time that I can’t remember exactly when, someone mentioned in passing, that if you were going to be a poet that you should never use abstract words or concepts to express yourself. May be they/he/she said something else but overtime this is what I remember hearing somewheres in my head…
So remember, if you are an artist, an amateur artist, a curator, a critic, an amateur critic or a gallerist please keep big words far from your nimble and feverish mind and snuggly tucked somewheres in inaccessable body parts. Otherwise, you’ll sound like a tool and will only impress those of you who are dumber than you; the rest of us will be forced to ignore you.

Steer clear of Art speaks like these: Narrative(!), resonant(!), dissonant(!) meditative(!), discourse(!); cathartic(!), organic(!), dialectic(!); mediate(!); appropriate(!), gender-based(!), textured(!), imbued(!), fractured(!), manufactured(!); pioneering(!); fractious(!), contentious(!), heterogeneous(!)….

They may not have the heart to tell you but when you write like this, you sound like a fucking prick. Construct(!) phrases others might like to read, instead of making the rest of us skip your entreaties(!)groaningly.

Take Hiroshi Sugimoto for example, whose show I just saw at the De Young, in San Francisco. Try him on for size and see if this is a paragraph you might be able to craft. Lo and behold, it’s actually interesting and informative(!)….After reading what he has to say I find myself liking him and his work even more. Go to his site for more.

Portraits: “In the sixteenth century, Flemish court painter to the British Crown Hans Holbein the Younger (1497-1543) gave us the imposingly regal portrait of Henry VIII now kept in London’s Royal Portrait Gallery. Based on this Holbein portrait, the wax figure artisans of Madame Tussaud’s in their consummate skill recreated an absolutely faithful likeness of the king. Which allowed me—based on my own studies into the Renaissance lighting Holbein might have painted by—to re-do the Royal Portrait, substituting photography for painting, the sole recording medium available at the time. If this photograph now appears lifelike to you, you had better reconsider what it means to be alive here and now.” (see portraits above). You see it’s not that hard, just come out with it and stop giving the Arts and your fellow artists or critics a bad name.

So, yesterday I went to the De Young in San Francisco’s Golden Gate and saw Hiroshi Sugimoto’s. I have always liked his work. Let me re-phrase that, I have always really liked half his work. I like his Portraits, his Dioramas, his blur-chitecture, theaters and Chambers of horrors. The rest of it, the conceptual forms, Joe and in Praise of Shadows are less interesting to me personaly. I may not appreciate his more “cerebral”(!) works, but at least when he writes about it, I respect it and understand it. I am interested in what he has to say, and do not, as I often do, find myself wishing I could strangle him, or you, with a shoe lace. Check it.

I just came back from a date on Clement street; San Fran’s™ Chinatown’s ugly-homely second cousin. In San Fran™, we are blessed with lots of Chinatowns; there are at least a dozen Chinatowns in San Fran™. The famous one is downtown, the one where you can go looking for props like straw sandals, the ones buddhist pilgrims wear on Emei Shan™, or a dozen oddly sized Golden Buddhas™. Those are in my home office now.

San Fran’s™ second biggest Chinatown is located in what I sometimes call Clementtown™*. It’s not technically a town of any kind but I don’t mind. From Arguello, it runs down the length of Clement street and peters on 26th. It’s also creeping south, branching out and sideward™ towards Geary boulevard, pushing Russians onward™ . Clementtown™ might have spread on to California Street, just north of Clement street, but there the neighborhood changes abruptly from lychee stands to ritzier stomping grounds. It’s a predominately rich white ward, a tougher nut to gentrify.

To fill my pills, I visited with Doctor Z… Them pills help me to concentrate on the ” Day to Day™”; like not forgetting to listen to people when they speak to me, or wash my hands after I eat fish bits. We chatted, it was great….. We laughed, we cried™, he watched me dry, he’s used to that…. I told him all about my Dearly Departed™, who took too many pills, and promptly keeled over into a pauper’s grave; leaving nothing useful behind; at least, none that we could find.
Those natty pills make it easier to focus and remember people I love to hate and flood my brain with: Meth-yl-phen-i-date™.

*C-town, see the C eat the T, that’s a tasty part of town.

I was doing a little house cleaning when I came across some of my old diaries. I am not sure I want to re-read them again for fear of personalizing embarrassment, but still, I found some pics, when I was twenty three. I am very much against self incrimination as a general rule of thumb. These pictures were taken in the spring of 1987 while in Hong Kong and Thailand. I think the mustachioed ones were shot in a booth in Kowloon, within shouting distance of the Chungking mansions; Hong Kong’s Nathan road’s backpacker’s overnight attraction. I can’t recall exactly where I bought the mustache but I vaguely remember purchasing it a couple streets over, near that movie theater where I used to watch kick flicks before returning to China on a new visa. The middle image was shot in Bangkok that same year in July; the details of which are lost to time and within the putrefying folds and cavernous recesses of my forty two year old mind.

Anyway, and since I am going down that lane, here is what I looked like in 1978, when I first traveled to the United States. All of five feet one inches. My hair has since migrated towards the gray but my eye color still has not changed.