Extracts from my diary over the past few months:
"How thick is my loneliness? How deep is my contentment? How viscous is my bravery?"
"The gap of light which falls between train carriages tickles the grass."
"A hard plastic children's slide hovers like a blue worm in a vast flat grey front yard."
"The chimneys of factories are giant cigarettes shitting spirals of toxins directly into the mouth of the sky."
"Museums: the extraction or acquisition debate."
"This is me, in my body (if I may be so bold as to say it is mine) experiencing utterly new environments, with no one else to protect me or to refer to. This is me, at the frontier of reality, with a spinach dumpling. That is why I am here.
The simplicity of a spinach dumpling deserves my appreciation. I am here to taste, to see, to smell. Why should it be any more complex?"
"A roasted wrinkled lantern of a yellow cherry tomato. Glowing. Frail skin."
"All about me are the humans. Couplets of bipeds feeding... How strange to be surrounded by consciousness. How strange to feel lonely with people all around."
"I also enjoyed Claes Oldenburg's Mouse Museum. The wall text described the objects inside as 'non-art' which is true, but I found it more profound that they were objects of mimicry... plastic pretending to be a peanut, a double ended penis, a pigs face (or two)... this is the pictorial plane transformed into 3 dimensions, and far more mundane and perverted! Oil and pigment pretended to be trees and people for centuries, and here plastic and wood and metal now pretend to be other things."
"The woman who picked bones from her teeth (or maybe it was gristle?) is mean. She makes fun of the young waiter. Her mouth twitches as she questions him, pinning him down with embarrassment. He is a bland little moth with a pin through his thorax, where he feels a bit queasy. I don't know what it's all about, but the head waiter is in on it too. The balding man laughs with an incredulous open mouth at his wife after the young waiter has passed. He finds her funny. I find her bitter. She's a lemon, why else would her lips pucker and twitch like that? Sour puss."
"Three or four people surrounding a dog lying down, it's lower jaw was snapping up some food like a wind-up toy."
"Entering tunnels through mountains is like penetrating the earth, I am a little sperm."
"Slow falling big snowflakes remind me of polystyrene - shouldn't it be the other way around seeing that snow came before human debris?"
"Human and earth's architecture change between countries. In Italy, pastel coloured apartments: apricot, yellow, yucky pink, turquoise and brown. No small wooden huts at the side of the train tracks as there are in Austria. The mountains are softer - less pointy and less snow. The roofs are flatter in Italy."
"Art galleries are places where people come and look confused. I suppose they come here to experience beauty, but the way they wander around and turn their heads suggests bewilderment."
"Sometimes when things are put in close proximity they begin to merge. Like when you pack a banana and a sandwich in your lunchbox and your sandwich ends up tasting and smelling like a banana. Such is not the case with Europe, despite these countries being so small and close. No, they have maintained their distinct flavours. Although a somewhat bland English language sauce has been splattered on top. Made from b-grade ingredients."
"I knew I wanted to grow by exposure."
"Today I went to the gallery of Modern Art. And that is all I have to say about it."
"Today I saw one of the conmen who was pretending to be a station official at Termini again, walking down the street. So unlikely that I would see him twice. He was the old guy with the hat who was a bad actor. He was wearing the same clothes, a brown leather jacket. He looked worn out."
"...there was a parade of Bolivian dancers on the way. Strange vibrant tokenistic cultural experience. Pumps, short dresses. I love chunky thighs."
"I saw a man wrapped in a piece of golden spandex with an Egyptian mask on his face. He was being a living sculpture. He was all wrapped up still like a pupa, but I saw him jerk with a sneeze."
"I gave a clementine to a homeless woman. I found a tiny plastic bird on the ground."
"The sarcophagus of Raphael was there. The inscription said that nature thought she might die herself upon Raphael's death. Such an incredible statement. By what process does marble obtain it's bruises and veins? There is no other substance so deeply connected to the earth. It is earth. Dense earth. So interesting to see it enthroned in an edifice to more ethereal divinities.
We get to the sky god through the earth's belly."
"Watching a gaggle of Chinese children playing - leaping and racing and climbing. They are enjoying themselves."
"Like water that forms the shape of whatever space it is poured into, I form the attitude and outlook of any socio-political context I'm poured into."
"My experience as a human is an embodied experience. Yet there is a complication somehow. My spirit refuses to be on the receiving end of so much oppression, and so I disassociate with womanhood."
"When my body is dead, I want it to have been well loved. It's that desire to be consumed. Individuation blurred through the construction of bodies. When you stick things together, they seem more whole. If I stick a lot of humans in me, will I feel more whole? Connected?"
"The waitress is beautiful and has one broken eye. It looks inwards."
"Art and Language perpetuate a culture of elitist rhetoric. Even though they are sardonic and reflectively critical of Western art history they are just as exclusionary. People can't approach them."
"Have no home and no money. Create a web of relationships founded on trust, sharing and respect."
"I smell like wet dog. Like dirty clothes. Like hundreds of thousands of dead skin cells. What will I be like when I am 35? Will my chemical composition have changed dramatically like that of a cake? Will I bloat and rise? Will I become more wise? Wiser? Will I be wiser? Do polka dots come from Spain? Did they spread like measles across the planet on bags and skirts, infecting people with their symmetry and simple joy? How are they so happy, these little dots? They are like a perfect society. they are a perfect Socialist state. Each equal size with an equal amount of space around them. I am sitting in a flamenco bar."
"I cried a bit just because I'm hungry and tired and so close to the end of my trip. A drop of liquid snot fell out of my right nostril like a nose tear."
"I don't think it's an ideas day. There's so much going on in the world - but right now I can't see how to comment on any of it in an innovative sustainable way. Boo. I'm only having mundane domestic ideas. Idea: obtain cars that are going to scrap metal and make them into community gardens."
"Right now I am feeling especially prone to doubt regarding my capabilities.
My capability to make good art, to dedicate myself to art, to be focused, to comprehend the vast web of connections and meanings in the contemporary art world, to make something with appropriate balance between coherence and ambiguity, to make things rich in meanings, to make things grounded in politically potent human experiences, to not get lost in the intellectual side of my work, to be good at promoting myself, to realise my relationship with the capitalism of the art world, to have faith in myself and not chicken out on my art...
Dedicating myself to my art is a frightening possibility because it involves:
- MAIMING OF MY EGO IF I ATTACH MY IDENTITY TO THE WORK OR ROLE 'ARTIST'
- POTENTIAL POVERTY
- UNWAVERING FOCUS AND FAITH IN MYSELF AND THE WORK
- GIVING EXISTENCE TO WORK THAT IS EXPLICIT AND PROVOCATIVE (thus limiting my future possibilities for employment and possibly causing some tension in personal relations)
Fear of failure should not be enough reason not to try.
The possibility of giving something: a new angle, a different position, some humour, something sobering, something informative, the possibility of sharing should be sufficient impetus to try. Really it is a duty to carry out these ideas.
It would be wasteful not to try, and I'm all about sustainability.
If I really want to live a zero waste lifestyle, I should not waste my
TIME or my POTENTIAL or my IDEAS"
"Talk to more people about everything."
"When I am delicately drunk, things are pleasant and I am relaxed. When I get back to Australia, I will picnic, I will make sangria, I will get my bike fixed (maybe), I will write postcards to my friends, even the ones I see often. I will relax, and by relaxing I will have surreptitiously fucked the system."
"All people want to individuate and simultaneously be consumed. What quantum process is this ??????????"
As you can see, I am far more lavish with my usage of punctuation, capitalisation and underlining in my hand written diary. There are lots of drawings in there too, but I will keep those for my own private enjoyment.
"How thick is my loneliness? How deep is my contentment? How viscous is my bravery?"
"The gap of light which falls between train carriages tickles the grass."
"A hard plastic children's slide hovers like a blue worm in a vast flat grey front yard."
"The chimneys of factories are giant cigarettes shitting spirals of toxins directly into the mouth of the sky."
"Museums: the extraction or acquisition debate."
"This is me, in my body (if I may be so bold as to say it is mine) experiencing utterly new environments, with no one else to protect me or to refer to. This is me, at the frontier of reality, with a spinach dumpling. That is why I am here.
The simplicity of a spinach dumpling deserves my appreciation. I am here to taste, to see, to smell. Why should it be any more complex?"
"A roasted wrinkled lantern of a yellow cherry tomato. Glowing. Frail skin."
"All about me are the humans. Couplets of bipeds feeding... How strange to be surrounded by consciousness. How strange to feel lonely with people all around."
"I also enjoyed Claes Oldenburg's Mouse Museum. The wall text described the objects inside as 'non-art' which is true, but I found it more profound that they were objects of mimicry... plastic pretending to be a peanut, a double ended penis, a pigs face (or two)... this is the pictorial plane transformed into 3 dimensions, and far more mundane and perverted! Oil and pigment pretended to be trees and people for centuries, and here plastic and wood and metal now pretend to be other things."
"The woman who picked bones from her teeth (or maybe it was gristle?) is mean. She makes fun of the young waiter. Her mouth twitches as she questions him, pinning him down with embarrassment. He is a bland little moth with a pin through his thorax, where he feels a bit queasy. I don't know what it's all about, but the head waiter is in on it too. The balding man laughs with an incredulous open mouth at his wife after the young waiter has passed. He finds her funny. I find her bitter. She's a lemon, why else would her lips pucker and twitch like that? Sour puss."
"Three or four people surrounding a dog lying down, it's lower jaw was snapping up some food like a wind-up toy."
"Entering tunnels through mountains is like penetrating the earth, I am a little sperm."
"Slow falling big snowflakes remind me of polystyrene - shouldn't it be the other way around seeing that snow came before human debris?"
"Human and earth's architecture change between countries. In Italy, pastel coloured apartments: apricot, yellow, yucky pink, turquoise and brown. No small wooden huts at the side of the train tracks as there are in Austria. The mountains are softer - less pointy and less snow. The roofs are flatter in Italy."
"Art galleries are places where people come and look confused. I suppose they come here to experience beauty, but the way they wander around and turn their heads suggests bewilderment."
"Sometimes when things are put in close proximity they begin to merge. Like when you pack a banana and a sandwich in your lunchbox and your sandwich ends up tasting and smelling like a banana. Such is not the case with Europe, despite these countries being so small and close. No, they have maintained their distinct flavours. Although a somewhat bland English language sauce has been splattered on top. Made from b-grade ingredients."
"I knew I wanted to grow by exposure."
"Today I went to the gallery of Modern Art. And that is all I have to say about it."
"Today I saw one of the conmen who was pretending to be a station official at Termini again, walking down the street. So unlikely that I would see him twice. He was the old guy with the hat who was a bad actor. He was wearing the same clothes, a brown leather jacket. He looked worn out."
"...there was a parade of Bolivian dancers on the way. Strange vibrant tokenistic cultural experience. Pumps, short dresses. I love chunky thighs."
"I saw a man wrapped in a piece of golden spandex with an Egyptian mask on his face. He was being a living sculpture. He was all wrapped up still like a pupa, but I saw him jerk with a sneeze."
"I gave a clementine to a homeless woman. I found a tiny plastic bird on the ground."
"The sarcophagus of Raphael was there. The inscription said that nature thought she might die herself upon Raphael's death. Such an incredible statement. By what process does marble obtain it's bruises and veins? There is no other substance so deeply connected to the earth. It is earth. Dense earth. So interesting to see it enthroned in an edifice to more ethereal divinities.
We get to the sky god through the earth's belly."
"Watching a gaggle of Chinese children playing - leaping and racing and climbing. They are enjoying themselves."
"Like water that forms the shape of whatever space it is poured into, I form the attitude and outlook of any socio-political context I'm poured into."
"My experience as a human is an embodied experience. Yet there is a complication somehow. My spirit refuses to be on the receiving end of so much oppression, and so I disassociate with womanhood."
"When my body is dead, I want it to have been well loved. It's that desire to be consumed. Individuation blurred through the construction of bodies. When you stick things together, they seem more whole. If I stick a lot of humans in me, will I feel more whole? Connected?"
"The waitress is beautiful and has one broken eye. It looks inwards."
"Art and Language perpetuate a culture of elitist rhetoric. Even though they are sardonic and reflectively critical of Western art history they are just as exclusionary. People can't approach them."
"Have no home and no money. Create a web of relationships founded on trust, sharing and respect."
"I smell like wet dog. Like dirty clothes. Like hundreds of thousands of dead skin cells. What will I be like when I am 35? Will my chemical composition have changed dramatically like that of a cake? Will I bloat and rise? Will I become more wise? Wiser? Will I be wiser? Do polka dots come from Spain? Did they spread like measles across the planet on bags and skirts, infecting people with their symmetry and simple joy? How are they so happy, these little dots? They are like a perfect society. they are a perfect Socialist state. Each equal size with an equal amount of space around them. I am sitting in a flamenco bar."
"I cried a bit just because I'm hungry and tired and so close to the end of my trip. A drop of liquid snot fell out of my right nostril like a nose tear."
"I don't think it's an ideas day. There's so much going on in the world - but right now I can't see how to comment on any of it in an innovative sustainable way. Boo. I'm only having mundane domestic ideas. Idea: obtain cars that are going to scrap metal and make them into community gardens."
"Right now I am feeling especially prone to doubt regarding my capabilities.
My capability to make good art, to dedicate myself to art, to be focused, to comprehend the vast web of connections and meanings in the contemporary art world, to make something with appropriate balance between coherence and ambiguity, to make things rich in meanings, to make things grounded in politically potent human experiences, to not get lost in the intellectual side of my work, to be good at promoting myself, to realise my relationship with the capitalism of the art world, to have faith in myself and not chicken out on my art...
Dedicating myself to my art is a frightening possibility because it involves:
- MAIMING OF MY EGO IF I ATTACH MY IDENTITY TO THE WORK OR ROLE 'ARTIST'
- POTENTIAL POVERTY
- UNWAVERING FOCUS AND FAITH IN MYSELF AND THE WORK
- GIVING EXISTENCE TO WORK THAT IS EXPLICIT AND PROVOCATIVE (thus limiting my future possibilities for employment and possibly causing some tension in personal relations)
Fear of failure should not be enough reason not to try.
The possibility of giving something: a new angle, a different position, some humour, something sobering, something informative, the possibility of sharing should be sufficient impetus to try. Really it is a duty to carry out these ideas.
It would be wasteful not to try, and I'm all about sustainability.
If I really want to live a zero waste lifestyle, I should not waste my
TIME or my POTENTIAL or my IDEAS"
"Talk to more people about everything."
"When I am delicately drunk, things are pleasant and I am relaxed. When I get back to Australia, I will picnic, I will make sangria, I will get my bike fixed (maybe), I will write postcards to my friends, even the ones I see often. I will relax, and by relaxing I will have surreptitiously fucked the system."
"All people want to individuate and simultaneously be consumed. What quantum process is this ??????????"
As you can see, I am far more lavish with my usage of punctuation, capitalisation and underlining in my hand written diary. There are lots of drawings in there too, but I will keep those for my own private enjoyment.
